I haven’t played Escape Plan or On Mars yet so I’m out of date with that assessment. I’m not excited about the theme of either. I find I only enjoy Lacerda’s designs when the theme is speaking to me so I’m not sure if that will change, unfortunately.
New year’s resolution: become more involved with this forum! Hello everyone. Special hi to @Vesper and @tomchick.
Lately, my game group has done the deep-dive into Root. It’s quite the thing. I have many thoughts. I do think it’s brilliant, and I don’t think it’s as complicated as some people might first assume. However, it does run into the problem of everyone juggling their own ruleset and strategy, understanding that it’s important to keep the leader down BUT NOT completely grasping how best to interfere with the other players’ machinery. This can lead to a partially unsatisfying experience of everyone being in the running until the very end, and then someone wins - and the table left wondering what they could have done differently to prevent that outcome. This is, of course, partially unfair - as even the few plays we’ve given it have revealed many layers to the proverbial onion. BUT I will say, and I cannot say this STRONGLY enough, I do not understand how Cole justifies unequal turn numbers in a game that features a “race to VP threshold” win condition AND is this tightly tuned. If you have 1 more turn than me, and win the race, I don’t feel particularly cool with that.
We also played Blood Rage recently with some of the new new monsters, and I kicked ass with an anti-Loki strategy that saw me and my Mountain Giant double-scoring Yggdrasil and witnessing the abject demoralization of my opponents. Still my favorite game, for all the drama and tension and fulfilling strategy. Just make sure to leave Odin’s Throne in the box.
Also, @tomchick is wrong about Tapestry, it’s pretty cool and I like it and therefore he’s stupid.
Odin’s Throne is indeed ridiculous, but late game Dragons (ship upgrade that gets points on ship destruction) are even more ridiculous, especially with that damn upgrade that lets you invade from Valhalla. I love how broken Blood Rage is. It’s my favorite game too.
Thanks for the detailed writeup @Nesrie. As a fan of wizards and trains, this totally has my interest. Did you play it at 6? Did it drag? I would love to have more 6 player games. BGG has the playtime listed around an hour too, which sounds great!
I’ve played Empyreal with 6. It goes remarkably quickly. Yes, there is downtime between turns, but you’re spending it trying to figure out what the heck to do, so the downtime isn’t painful. And the game isn’t long at all. With six you end when somebody gets 4 delivery bonuses, so you may get as little as, say, 16 turns (although probably it will be a bit more than that). The rules have an optional rule for a longer game where you go to one more delivery bonus, which might actually be quite a bit longer, as bonuses get harder and harder to get as the goods on the board get depleted.
We did find the board a bit hard to read, and it’s true you’ll be looking up what the specialists do for a while. But if you end up liking the game at all, it’s a good choice for 6 players.
We actually did 4. The fifth was not feeling well that night, and discounting the learning curve, I’d say it didn’t drag at all except the couple of times we had 2 even three people waiting to select a specialist which is actually a meaningful and important decision to make.
At no point in the game did I feel like I wasn’t doing something. If I wasn’t studying my existing choices or looking at the spellcars that I might buy, I paid attention to what others were doing or studying the map. The map is really, really busy, and that’s not a gamplay issue so much as component choices I think. But having 2 more people do that won’t make it worse.
I’d easily try this with 6 and not be afraid of a scaling issues due to that. Anyone used to a larger group that plays games that are not just party games or those 1-99 type games would find this easily manageable. If this stays on the rotation, and because it can do 6 I am fairly certain it will, everyone will eventually memorize those icons, be familiar with the specialists by sight and know the companies too which will also speed up play.
We tried Empyreal: Spells and Steam today to take advantage of the holiday and yeah, it’s pretty neat. I really had no idea what to play towards to start with so I ended up a fairly distant third, but I still had fun and can see so much potential variety. The thing I think to keep in mind is that for all that there are a lot of potential things you can do in the game, there is exactly one actual thing that scores you points in the base game: delivering goods to cities that want them. (An advanced rule mixes in a few bonus VP tiles that have other criteria but they’re secondary.) So, you need to be moving your conductor to the End of the Line space on your folio (which is where you deliver), and you need to have a connection with a city, and goods of that color available in your network at the time of delivery. Period. Everything else is setup for that, fucking with your opponents, or a distraction you cannot afford. What’s especially tricky is that you never actually own goods. You just establish access to them, by placing your trains on the tiles with them, or using effects to place or move them into a tile you already have a train in. But…your opponents can do the same. And if they deliver to that city (or a city with the same color, in maps with more than one city of a color) first, well…
Still, there’s tons of really cool powerful spellcar effects, your rail company makes a big difference, your captain makes a big difference, your choice of engineer, surveyor and station manager make big differences when/if you can afford the time to grab them…and turns really are remarkably fast. You might use a specialist power or two (but only the station manager can be used every turn and in general they’re situational enough that probably won’t happen every turn). And then you either refresh mana and specialists and get a spellcar, or you move your conductor and use 1-3 spellcars or deliver/upgrade. It’s possible to have enough going on in a turn to take 5 or 6 minutes, probably, but that uses a lot of resources so you won’t be doing that every turn. Usually they’ll be more like 1-2. And yeah, the major slowdown is just being unfamiliar with what icons mean or special powers can do. Which is solvable.
We then followed that up with Champions of Hara in coop, doing Oric’s first scenario. We had Oric (of course), Thomas, and Icarus played by me. Basically, you have to find a boss called Jurojin’s Hart and relieve him of a magical jar of spiritual waters, out of a randomly placed and face down pool of monsters from the Dusk deck. Once you do, a Corrupted called Ashura pops up and chases you while you visit six randomly placed mystical wells. We pulled out a win late on day 4, despite a slow start getting to the Hart and a really terrible roll for Ashura’s spawning (placing her literally on top of Oric, who had just claimed the Jar.). But it was pretty nailbiting throughout. Ashura just getting to the hero with the Jar 3 times ends the scenario, and she 1) moves 1 closer any turn she doesn’t take damage (though if she’s hit hard enough she can be moved back), 2) on her actual turn will move 2-3 spaces closer, and 3) the scenario roll has a 2/3rds chance of either having her move 2 more spaces or take a full additional activation. (We rolled one of these two results every turn but one.). She also has nasty attack components if she gets to her target but frankly you want to be keeping as far away as possible so she never does.
We basically had me kill a monster with a special loot of stealing an item from another player to get some initial distance from Ashura with the Jar, then Oric and Thomas played path-clearer and boss-staggerer to keep me as mobile and far away as possible, supplemented by Icarus’s weird and wonderful ability to deputize other players as “Grimslingers” and then make them do stuff on my turn. Eventually Thomas managed to level up into the ability to temporarily take the Jar from me across the map and do some fancy footwork while carrying it to clear most of the remaining wells (also dividing Ashura’s focus in movement somewhat), and (while I got it to the 6th and final well in a massive burst of speed) finally get it back to the Dojo to clear the scenario. Of course, the whole thing would have been hilariously easier with Icarus’ passive, Silver Tongue, which lets him and people he’s made Grimslingers trade items at any range, but technically you’re not supposed to play with passives or the other Ultimate until you’ve unlocked them via the scenarios for that character. (So Oric now has his Dragon Stance thanks to this one.) I know Tom thinks that’s silly, but hey. I like unlocking stuff.
I’m enjoying the comments on Empyreal, but I’m concerned it has the same problem as Argent: The Constortium, which was designer Trey Chambers’ last game. Argent seems really cool at first, and it is, but as you play, it gets crazily out-of-control intricate. By the time you’re playing the last few turns, it’s pretty much impossible to track what’s going on because there are so many colorful moving parts bogging the game down, drawing out the playing time, getting in the way of making things happen. Argent drowns in a confetti of inconsequence.
It sounds like that might also be the situation with Empyreal. I wonder if Chambers and his developers just don’t know when to streamline.
RE: Root
Great observation, and I’m not sure what to do about that beyond “make everyone play a half dozen times with the same factions to learn how they work/interact”. I guess it helps that Root is relatively short and snappy.
Oh, great, now I’m not going to be able to un-see that. It’s also my experience that the game tends to end with everyone one or two moves from winning, but it never occurred to me to invoke who had how many turns. Isn’t Root very particular about turn order, though? Or is it just that the cats always go first? I don’t recall the specifics, but surely (i.e. hopefully) that’s baked into the asymmetry?
Hey, you’re one of two people whose comments convinced me to give it a try to find out for myself! Maybe I just need to give it more of a chance to grow on me. Is it one of those games you like more the more you play it?
Naw, I get it. I love unlocking stuff, too. But I love all the cool character asymmetry in Hara even more than unlocking stuff. Gratz to your Oric for leveling up!
-Tom
I can’t see this happening, because there are a lot more constraints on a) what you can actually do and b) what is actually worth doing in Empyreal. Like, in Argent you’re ending up with, what, six or seven workers to place every turn, plus spells, plus item cards, plus supporters with special effects. In Empyreal, your absolute maximum crazypants all out turn is Captain + Engineer + Surveyor + Station Master (if yours has an effect you activate manually) and three spell cars. But the Surveyor is once ever, many Station Masters are passive, you have to deliberately recharge your Captain and Engineer, and you have to pay mana to use more than one spell car on a turn. If you have more than one spell car at that spot to use (the winner got I think three additional spell cars all game, so he often didn’t).
And in Argent, there are a few dozen voters all checking different conditions, so there are definitely optimal ways to focus your efforts, but in theory anything could contribute. In Empyreal, you need goods, and a city to deliver to, and then you want to deliver. If your turn doesn’t get you goods to deliver, get you closer to a city to deliver to, or get you closer to actually delivering? Maybe not a great use of a turn. (Edit: Or occasionally, you might need to Administrate and charge up a turn that does that stuff. But still.)
I mean, I love Argent anyway, and my read on Empyreal should absolutely be taken with a grain of salt since it’s literally our first play and everything. But I think that despite the superficial similarity in a box full of All The Stuff, Empyreal’s likely to turn out a lot tighter.
Haven’t played Argent, and my playthrough is currently a total of 1 too, but I agree because there is a limit to what you can do a turn no matter how perfect you might be playing. A person is going to have to make a choice and be limited heavily based on a specific set of rules be that mana, the management of their specialist or the fact that at any given time you don’t have access to all your spellcars and you have to pay a kind of hefty cost to use the ones you do have access to which might cost you in the speed of your deliveries. Doing a lot all the time isn’t going to do you any good if someone is just delivering faster than you are for the same goods you are trying to do.
I am hopefully these considerations actually manage any sort of out-of-control mechanic too.
Yup. This is what did me in in our game. I was playing Golden Sands, whose Captain ability lets you use an entire column of spell cars for no mana. No extra cost for using more than one, no cost for using cars with an inherent cost. It’s great. So obviously you stack columns with powerful, expensive spellcars and step through them using them all all the time, right? Nope. Waaay too slow on what counts.
Me too!
I was cruising along, getting my network spread out, getting a huge bundle of goods and then two Demand Tiles taken one turn before I could do it.
I know better now than to maximize, at least not with the company and engineer I started with.f
I also waited too long to use my surveyor waiting for the perfect attack, so by the time I did use him it was already too late.
Same Tom. I wanted to back this game, but was worried it would be another Argent or their fighting game I didn’t back. Now I’m wondering if I made a horrible mistake.
The thing I didn’t like about Argent was that the fun stuff in the game wasn’t how you won. Getting a good combo going was nice, but ultimately you need to be chasing these arbitrary goals. They may line up with what’s fun in the game (building cool spell and action combos) but they really often didn’t.
As far as I know Empyreal will be fully supported at retail. Worst case scenario you might not get the really spangly deluxe bits. They are nice and everything, but it’s cosmetic.
No, sadly, the Law of Root states: “Determine the starting player and seating order randomly.” In the Learning to Play Guide, they might suggest that Cats go first in the walkthrough game, but that’s not the default rule.
And can I say here and now that I ABHOR multiple rulebooks in games. Is it too much to ask that designers/publishers put all their god-damn rules in one stupid volume that is logically organized and maybe even has a reasonable table of contents/index? They think they’re helping us cretins with the 2+ books. BUT THEY ARE NOT.
Tapestry has legitimate serious problems that i don’t think anyone who has played it can deny. I just happen to like what it does more than I hate what it does. If anything, I suspect more plays would just make you angrier. Having said that: if you published a negative review of Tapestry, I would read it with great interest and you would attract the ire/adoration of many Stonemaier lover/haters, so there’s always entertainment value in that.
Would they be more or less obnoxious than the Call of Duty/ Journey fans that showed up to Tom’s negative reviews? Because those are amusing.
Most definitely. I looked at buying on BGG shipping is 85 bucks!!!
It’s almost as high buying from Level99. That’s crazy. I’ll wait for coolstuff, amazon or gamenerdz to get it.
This coming weekend is the 4-day Total Confusion gaming convention in Mass. I wrote about a confluence of events that led to a burn out Con two years ago here.
This year, I am only running two games of Fury of Dracula, and have schedules a few pick up games of Rebellion and Spartacus. For the most part, I am going to play D&D organized play.
One thing I am looking forward to is playing the new version of Top Secret with the original designer, Merle Rasmussen. I still have my 1st edition stuff and will ask him to sign it.
Tom Vasel thinks the deluxe edition is very cool but overdone for the kind of game it is:
From watching the video, if he had bought it, it seems like he would have rather gotten the retail version.