Good game guys. I really like this one and might actually end up buying a physical copy. Tom maneuvered well from the beginning of the game to get this victory; it didn’t really feel random at all. I think we could have stymied him with better communication between the rest of us, i.e. it would have at least delayed things if I’d actually communicated that we should research the tipping point card away. But I still think he was effectively rolling things up. I’d play it again, or take a stab at one of the other Pax games I haven’t played.
One of the things I love about the endgame with these intricate Pax puzzles is that it feels like any given player is only ever a move or two from victory. Not in a cheap “whee, everyone is being pushed along a score track!” way (love ya, Root!), but because every victory point is something you have to fight hard to earn, and fight harder to keep, and then the winner wins with something absurdly low like five points.
I would gladly play this again, or even jump into a game of Pax Renaissance. I’m eyeing Pax Viking to maybe buy in a few months or so, but I don’t have that one yet. That said, I would love to watch a Pax Viking game. In fact, that would be my vote: for some of you to fire up a game of Pax Viking. That’s one I want to see.
Did you get the second edition of this? The production value is way way up. Viking is similar. Aa far as a deluxe treatment in Pax I still like the latest Pamir. But Ion has done well making Renaissance and Viking look good.
When I Kickstarted the John Company reprint, I also added a copy of second edition Pax Pamir. That’s supposed to arrive next month. But otherwise, all my Pax’s are first edition. Are there any meaningful changes in second edition Pax Renaissance?
this is the quick copy and paste from the second edition rulebook
A4
. CHANGES FROM 1ST EDITION
1.
New Components
include wooden tokens for Pirate ships, Pawns for Concessions and Serfs,
placards for Player Boards, and squares for Victory & Empires.
2.
Extra Map Cards.
These allow the mounted gameboard to be left behind for small game portability.
3.
Player’s Guide (Book II).
This adds the solitaire game, “Push-Start” playthrough, Strategy and
Frequently-Asked Questions.
4.
Expanded rules
include Dalmatians, Cryptography, Condottieri, apostasy, and the solitaire game.
5.
New Emporium & Trade Route.
This adds a white Trade Route to the Red Sea.
6.
Thrones.
These allow storage of Queens, Bishops, and Repressed Tokens even if the King is not in any
Tableau.
7.
4 States
have been added to each Empire, making possible a Medieval Papal States, Catholic
England, Orthodox Greece, or other possibilities not possible in the 1st edition
There are 168 Tableau cards as opposed to the 120 listed in total for first edition. So I think they rolled the expansion into it too. I’m not 100% though.
As evidenced by the length of the forum game, one thing I really like about Pax games is that they don’t overstay there welcome while remaining fairly complex games. They don’t push everyone along a vp track to victory like Root does but I think the game tends to move where winning becomes easier and easier until someone finally does. In Transhumanity the splay is what helps this along the most. As viability gets easier and easier players will have more and more options open to them to finally clinch what they need.
I don’t remember face to face games of Pax taking that long at all and this moved really well as a forum game.
So how did the scores turn out? @Juan_Raigada, would you have been able to earn any points on your turn?
The regime was Cloud Dominant, and my hidden sphere was blue. That would mean a total of 3VPs per blue problem or company. I had two blue companies and the Tipping Point would have given me my choice of problem, so I would have taken a blue problem. The nuclear exchange would have destroyed one blue company or problem, leaving me with two, each worth 3VPs, for a total of 6VPs.
I wasn’t sure about where the problems would be returned to. if one would have been available for you to pick up or not. Reading the rules again it looks like it would have been returned to where you could pick up another blue and get the 6 vps otherwise I believe you would have been tied with Juan at 3(?) as he had already picked up the last blue problem to solve. I think I’ve got only the 2vp for my hidden sphere problem and company. The blue I had disappears into nuclear dust. I believe Matt got 0(again?) but that’s the thing about these Pax games and the wild victory conditions. You could be playing very well but the conditions can be so different and scores can be all over the place.
When you discard problems and companies due to nuclear exchanges, they go back into the pool. So resolving the Tipping Point would mean you and Juan would have to discard a blue problem. This would mean when we move on to the next impact icon, there would be two blue problems available for me to solve. I would have ended the game with one blue company and one blue problem for 6VPs.
Otherwise, I would have had to take a non-blue problem, leaving me with 4VPs. Still more than Juan’s 2VPs for his remaining blue problem (with a possible additional VP if his hidden sphere is blue or green).
So the score ended up being:
Tom C: 6
Juan R: 2*
Tom Mc: 2
Matt W: 0
I find that victory in a Pax game is usually a matter of when you end the game, arguably more important than how you played along the way. You guys did a great job, but the blue stuff just kept lining itself up for me, starting with my hidden sphere and extending into the cards, impact icons, and splay. And some of those text abilities made this a pretty nutso game.
When it’s blue dominant and your hidden sphere is also blue I don’t think you get any VPs for any other problem/company. I did read where it was clear the problems go back to the pool. It would have only been tied had they not and even in that case the tiebreaker would have been on amount of capital.
Ah, yes, of course. Naturally, I remembered that when calculating other players’ scoring and then conveniently forgot when calculating my own. Doh.
Fortunately, the nuclear exchange would put blue problems back into play, so it’s a moot point. Again, when the game ends is arguably more important than anything else. While the puzzle of putting Ideas into play gets easier, the puzzle of the game’s end and scoring gets more complicated! :)
That blue Tipping Point couldn’t have come at a better time if I’d placed it myself. I feel like my win had less to do with anything I did and more to do with how that card ended up in the deck at the exact right place for my exact situation.
Also, I think we all did a great job navigating that crazy matrix of special text abilities during the opening moves. I would have hated to see all that on the table with a group of new players, but you guys didn’t seem to have any problems wrapping your heads around the implications and putting them to work for you. That was a lot of fun to watch.
I will say though, that I deliberately imported it so it could be researched away by Tom or Juan (and then didn’t say anything about it.) The blue one was the worst, so I was hoping we could get rid of it. @tomchick, your plays were pretty dominant from the start of the game, but I think if we’d coordinated better we could have re-evened the playing field (probably at the cost of making another player dominant.)
Yes, I noticed several ways it could have been averted, but I was very wary of starting to push for coordination, since that kind of dynamic is cool with some groups and not for others, and so far nobody had suggested any moves.
