I know the feeling… Had two games going at once where I had to select headline and had Cuban Missile Crisis in hand.
One where that was a great idea (possibly game winning) another where that would greatly reduce my chances.
Guess where I headline CMC…
–
With regards to future formats; I’d love to see “home and away” (ie. one where I play Soviet, one where I play USA vs. same player) but that may increase the number of games needed a bit too much; could be combined with group stage(s) where 2 of 4 qualify? (with 3 opponents, so 6 games, running in parallel) possibly with turn/AR as the “overtime win” decider.
–
And of course, anyone who wants to play a ‘more relaxed’ game - my playdek ID is ForzaA, and any challenges are welcome :)
I find Playdek to be really good at giving you tools in this regard, something they did since their early days with Ascension too. If I’m ever uncertain it’s easy to cycle through discards, or turn records, to see what the plays have been. There’s even the handy marker for when a region has been scored that shuffle.
Sure you may still get crossed up. But I’ve got no complaints with the features Playdek has to enable player memory.
I sometimes do this for “important games” if I have to multithread. Just print out my little card spreadsheet and keep notes…
NOTE - I’m not pushing a major format change super-hard, but since there have been significant timezone and match-finishing problems I thought I’d offer a look at what’s at least a plausible alternative.
One minor thing I’m missing (even if the information IS available by deduction) - “cards unaccounted for” (especially if you’re playing with a variant with less familiar cards/familiar cards removed) ie “cards that the opponent holds, or that are yet to be drawn”.
Not quite. Quagmire hurts the US more than Bear Trap hurts the Soviets.
Soviets get a guaranteed 2 consecutive, unopposed rounds in a row when they headline Quagmire. U.S. headlining Bear Trap only get to go first. America can’t get 2 guaranteed consecutive actions even if they play Bear Trap on the final round of the previous turn, because they’ve spend their action round just playing the event.
I agree that bad Quagmire/Bear Trap luck is no fun, for either side.
I’ve been getting down on how luck is handled in general. Too often it seems like the game was swung on a single roll, or dealt hands in the first two turns. Too much riding on that first coup roll in Italy/Iran; the difference between rolling a 1 and rolling a 6 is massive. Then there’s the fact that, in a starting influence handicap game, U.S. drawing Middle East scoring first turn is like an instant 8 VP swing!
I really think the game needs some kind of mulligan system. Blood Bowl style rerolls for the dice (you get one or two rerolls the whole game you can use), or forfeiting 2 VP for a first turn redeal.
There DEFINITELY needs to be a time limit between 7 days and 21 days. What the heck is with that gap?
Don and I got up early this morning (although it was much earlier for one of us than the other!) and played a live game. Took 3 hours. Though we were delayed, we technically did make the deadline (which was April 30th - today).
The game was really weird for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that only Europe scoring played in the Early War, and Asia scoring played once, on Turn 3, and never reappeared. USSR was under a Purge for Turn 1 but managed to Nuclear Test Ban coup Italy off the bat. The US dominated the Middle East for pretty much the whole game, but Don was ahead on VP until the Late War, when the balance swung to the US. Up until about Turn 7 I was worried about the possibility of Wargames as Don was up by 6-7 VP. But I had SAm Control and that swung things back. The US was headed toward a VP victory when Don (USSR) drew this as his Turn 10 hand:
Bleh! Don mitigated it by Headlining Grain Sales (which I used to take Truman Doctrine and grab control of Italy, which I had made uncontrolled by the play of Special Relationship (under NATO) on my own Headline) and Spacing Duck & Cover, but was left with CIA Formed for the last play of his turn. I actually declined to coup and put the influence in E Germany (which was then uncontrolled) because I thought I could then use the China Card to grab it (and thus have Europe Control, as I had grabbed Poland after an uncovered Solidarity play). It was going to be a cool style-point win. But I miscounted! And would have been one point short in E Germany as a result, so I ended up playing into CentAm and taking him from +5 to +1 there. The final scoring was +22 for the US, with USSR dominating only Africa, while US Controlled SAm, Dominated Europe and Mideast, while Asia and CentAm were even (with USSR getting +1 for Cuba adjacency). Wild game, very swingy. Thanks, Don! (I am now 2-3 against you according to our Profiles.)
Btw, I timed out of a bunch of non-tourney games over the past couple weeks. If you were one of my opponents, sorry about that - work became basically the only thing on my schedule. Will be less busy over the next month.
I drew the Soviets this time around, and had an excellent early war: by the end of turn 4, I had control of South America and domination of everywhere else except Europe, which was dominated by gumers.
And then my luck soured. If the scoring cards had come up straight away, I might have won by the middle of the mid-war. As it was, of all those dominated regions, I only managed to score one of them all game. A combination of awful draws, appalling coup rolls and some sloppy play on my part in turn 5 - I got into such a muddle that I had to play Nuclear Test Ban for the event to avoid defcon suicide - left the game very much in the balance by the end of the mid-war.
Thankfully, from turn 9 my luck came back. Some handy cards let me re-take lost dominations and have an advantage going into turn 10. And then the coup de grace: terrorism removed the US’ powerful ability to place influence last. rho21 beat gumers by 12 points in final scoring.
Here’s a screenshot of a typical hand I got during the game where I got ONE 4 value card for the entire first four turns (and it was an opponent event I didn’t want going off so I ended up spacing it). This was the turn I headlined Lone Gunman just for a comparison in hands.
I’ll second the call for US +2, or at least bidding if that’s preferred - it can seem intimidating but it’s not complicated, and I feel somewhat strongly that US +1 is insufficient; it won’t decide the majority of games, but it leaves open a larger chance of an insurmountable USSR lead such that I think it is imbalanced.
I like the idea of a home/away system too, although I understand concerns about implementation/simultaneous games.
Apologies I’ve been swamped in real life with my new job kicking into gear and family visiting – I didn’t have the bandwidth to push this forward and it’s been my first visit to Qt3 in a while.
@Berbatov and @rho21 could you please get your game underway?
@Brian_Reynolds , I’ll ping you separately to see if we can schedule time to overlap this weekend. If I’m not able to knock out a game in real time I doubt I’ll be able to finish during the week.
Sorry, I was feeling under the weather for a week after the last game finished so it sort of slipped by the wayside. I’m busy this evening, but I should be free to get a game started tomorrow.
Great; let’s try and increase the game length slightly to account for the time difference (if you’re okay with that @Syzygy); based on the last game, even if we each play every time we’re awake the timer could be an issue.
Just a reminder, y’all are playing for a brand-new copy of any Kim Kanger game of your choice from Legion Wargames. I have contacted Randy Alien and he will await the winner’s choice.
