Exactly this during our first play through last night, but actually the guy who aligned with the Raccoon figured out how to min max points by gear transfers to just barely squeak in a win. Completely demoralizing playing for the second half of the game knowing we were dead in the water.
The extra problem was it wasn’t even my copy of the game at the table. I’m now stuck thinking I’ve got an absolutely beautiful Boardgame that nobody, including me has the patience or desire to bring back to the table again.
The thing about Terraforming Mars drafting is, if you wanted an intricate economic synergy game with interactivity between players, why play TM in the first place when there are a dozen other better suited games? I don’t even think there are that many choices with drafting. Since half the cards are crap beyond the first 2 turns, and a quarter of them worthless until the mid to late game, there is almost always one clear cut choice, even when taking draft denying into account.
The appeal of TM is in the board and narrative feel, and certainly not in any kind of carefully crafted mechanics. I’d enjoy it in a relaxed casual way as the board develops. Doubling the play time for drafting just so it can play at being a pale imitation of an actual strategy game bumps the price of admission past what I’m willing to pay. Why not just play Race for the Galaxy? More thought required, more interactivity, same tableau building, faster play time.
Yes! Totally agree with this post. I’ve been trying to figure out how to put my feelings about TM into words for a while but am instead just going to steal yours from now on. This really gets at when I’m in the mood for TM vs something more mechanically interesting.
A dozen? I’m not sure about that. I will give you Race for the Galaxy may be a more finely tuned game (with expansions), but I think the base mechanics of the two games are different enough that each can have their own place. Race is awfully dry compared to TM. If I’m playing both these games fairly casually, I’m more drawn to TM which has a nice theme wrapped up in a decent strategy game.
I’l stop complaining every time we play Detective, I promise, but just wanted to say that we completed case 3 and got our first win, but it didn’t turn any of us around on the game. It just reinforced the same complaints above.
I so wanted to hear that it was good. I can’t think of a more target audience for that thing than me. Me and a group went through Consulting Detective but were frustrated that there wasn’t more of a “game” there with very murky win conditions (“Have we solved this thing yet?”). We wanted to go nuts with timelines and oh my god Detective has you connect with pins and yarn!!!
Played the new version of History of the World today. This version is streamlined from prior versions with only 5 Epochs and roughly half the map spaces. It was quite good. All 4 of us had played some version of the game previously but none recently. Including set up and some rule-learning / rule-figuring-out time, we played a total of two and a half hours, which is pretty fast for that type of game. The game was mostly close but an early mistake by one player (giving a faction which moved first to the player who had just conquered half the map as the Romans, essentially allowing that player to score the big Roman conquest twice) ended up being the difference. Will play again.
In my view, it’s got all the strategy of the prior versions, but plays in roughly half the time, so that’s added value in my view. In terms of map size it’s based on 2009’s A Brief History of the World, rather than the 1991 History of the World version. In terms of number of epochs, the 1991 version had 7, the 2009 version had 6, and this version has 5. But 5 is plenty in my view and our game had a lot of back and forth in just 5 rounds.
This is definitely one my main complaint against drafting in Terraforming Mars. I don’t see the time extension it adds to the game as being useful. It just gives the illusion of being useful.
e.g. Imagine a 4 player game. Without drafting, you get 4 random cards. From those 4 random cards you choose which ones to buy, hoping to play with/change your current situation.
With drafting, you look at 4 random cards, and select one to keep/not pass to the left.
Then you get 3 random cards which have been filtered by the person on your right, so they’re worse than random.
Then you get 2 random cards which have been filtered twice, so they’re worse than random.
Then you get a card you can’t choose from, which has been filtered 3 times.
And then from those 4 random-or-worse cards you have to then choose which cards to buy. I don’t see why that’s better. It just means 14 decisions instead of 4, and I don’t think those decisions are in any way better?
(Actually: one benefit of drafting is that you can pass people cards that you would usually take out as they’re good for them, but in this case them playing that card also benefits you and doesn’t cost your money. But that’s the only benefit I can see, and it’s marginal.)
I think the new History of the World works really well. I’ve not played the older versions, but from reading the rules of those I can see that I’d definitely prefer the new version. It tends to have a “gang up on the current leader” problem, as shown by your back-to-back Roman scoring. And I’d like the Americas to be useful ins more than just the last age.
But other than that it’s quite a decent and straightforward area control game. I often think I’d rather player 2 or 3 games of smallworld/Vinci in the same time-frame. They’re a similar idea and have more back and forth.
AFAICT, having never played the previous ones, is that it’s the same game in a shorter play-time due to fewer rounds. They also changed some of the card mechanics so that you choose each round rather than some at the start of the game.
And with drafting, you get 9 cards (4+3+2) to choose among. You have more than twice as many options when you play with drafting. Think of it this way: in an intricate economic engine builder, can you flex the gameplay more by choosing among 40 cards, or among 90 cards? Because that’s what it comes down to in a typical 10 generation game.
Aside from the difference between getting to chose among 90 cards instead of 40 cards, I think you’re giving far too little credit to the importance of synergies. The key to drafting – and therefore the key to playing Terraforming Mars, in my opinion – is having more control over these synergies for your own economy and that of your opponents. I’m looking at cards and assessing how useful they are to me, as well as everyone else at the table. The other players are doing the same thing. Frankly, I think drafting is one of the most exciting parts of the game. It’s certainly the most tense.
In a game about planning and strategy, I would argue there is no such thing as “worse than random”! In fact, when something is determined by decisions made by the players, I’d say that’s gameplay. :)
I’ve never found there to be much of a choice though. There are so many crap cards (or at least cards not worth playing for 90% of the game) that even with the max of 4 cards, there’s one obvious best choice, whether it’s one to keep or one to deny.
I dislike the whole “buy” system in general. You’re limited in how many cards you can draw or draft, then on top of that you have to pay money to keep them in your hand.
Even if it does increase choices or strategy, it’s not by enough to justify literally doubling the play time. It tilts the faster casual enjoyment of draftless TM into a slightly more complex game that’s not much more enjoyable and whose increased fiddliness makes it not worth it. It feels exactly like making the jump from King of Tokyo to King of New York, or Kingdomino to Queen Domino. There are technically more choices and strategy, but it went from a casual/fun experience to becoming a fiddly mediocre strategy game.
Months later Dungeon Degenerates update: I did end up buying and playing it. Kinda fiddly and the explosion-of-color map is a little hard to parse, but my 8 year old and I enjoyed it. There’s a class called the Witch Smeller, which is something I wish I’d thought up. I backed the recent expansion kickstarter. Unfortunately, sometime in the last few days, the designer/artist, Sean Aaberg, suffered a “severe cerebellar stroke” and is in the ICU in critical but stable condition (all according to a facebook post by his wife). Sucks. Guy’s only 42.
Well, yeah… but I think it looks like a cool one. I really like “Dudes on a Map” games and this one sounds pretty cool to me. The price is about the same as the Blood Rage kickstarter when it first launched, which has become my personal favorite and most played >1hr game, so I’m not counting it oustide my price range. Plus the Mayan Mythology theme looks really cool!
The designer is the Small Box Games guy, who did Omen (the company publishing Mezo is doing the Omen reprint/expansion) and various other, you know, small box games. I haven’t gotten to play most of them myself because they tend to be two player and I tend to have more than two players, but he’s got a good rep 'round these parts.
I’m still gonna skip this 'cause minis and I only have so much space for boardgames.
