Qt3 Boardgames Podcast: Crusaders, Outer Rim, Glorantha

I’ll bet (having not read it myself…yet) that The Glorantha Sourcebook would provide a good jumping off point!

Either that or just do what I did and play King of Dragon Pass obsessively, which will certainly give you a certain window onto the setting.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t one of the PDFs included in my pledge. But maybe one of these days.

What all did they give you?

War criminal.

I have only played Merchants and Marauders twice (I do own it),and not recently, and Xia not at all. M&M is decent, just long, and I recall it drags in the late game. For people into pirate games I would recommend it, but people who hate the theme will not be convinced.

I can’t speak to anyone else’s recommendation, but I agree with @MikeOberly that Merchants and Marauders drags, which is a real issue given that player interaction is almost non-existent in that game. It’s also one of those games where you really should buy the stupid expansion if you want to play it, because the base game has some gaps that need plugging. That said, it’s a pretty nifty pirates of the Caribbean setting.

However, it doesn’t have solitaire play. I believe the context for me talking about Xia on the Star Wars: Outer Rim podcast was the solitaire version added in Xia’s Burning Embers of The Lost Stars of a Distant Galaxy* expansion. Xia+expansion is noteworthy in comparison to Outer Rim’s half-assed solitaire mode for how it creates a sandboxy living world, in which lots of various things are happening that can change from game to game. It’s also got a kind of basic but cool campaign mode based on driving each of the different ships around.
And as far as games about driving your ship around to do stuff, Xia is way more brisk than Merchants and Marauders. I like Merchants and Maraurders just fine, but in some important ways, it’s an outdated design.

However, when it comes to the “driving your ship around” genre for multiple players, neither of them can hold a candle to the Firefly game.

-Tom

* I can’t be bothered to remember the actual name, but I’m pretty sure it includes some of those words.

According to the KS reward list:
Guide to Glorantha (2 vol encyclopedia over 800 pages long)
King of Sartar
Glorious Reascent of Yelm
Fortunate Succession (solar history)
Heortling Mythology (Orlanthi myths)
Entekosiad
Arcane Lore
Middle Sea Empire
History of the Heortling Peoples
Argan Argar Atlas

I have no idea what any of that is except the Guide.

Most of it is the Stafford Library, the canonicity of which is, I think, murky, and all of which is pretty arcane. King of Sartar is cool and is a very old product, maybe one of the first if not the first, but it’s not a great entry point unless you like diving in the deep end. Looks like the Guide is your best bet. It’s not an encyclopedia, really, more of a gazetteer, but there are also some parts that are more overview-style.

I have the hardcover version of this and it is outstanding.

Great. The copy I ordered was “lost in transit” (refunded by Amazon) and won’t be be back in stock at Amazon until 7/24, so who knows if I’ll get it in time.

I still am on Outer RIm’s side here. Yes the shear amount of content in Firefly does cast a pretty big shadow over what you get in Outer RIm but I think that when it comes to gameplay “verbs” Outer Rim does better right out of the base box and the design is a little tighter. Things like established PVP scenarios right out of the base game and not dependent on the expansion. Also genreral pacing is snappier. You may not have as much content right away but the gameplay variety is certainly as much and likely a little more right there.

M&M doesn’t officially have solitaire, but I’ve played a couple times solo to 20-25 points with a few modifications to make the naval ships harder to avoid and had a lot of fun with it.

Oh, I don’t doubt it can be a decent pirating sandbox. But for various reasons, the design of Merchants and Marauders doesn’t lend itself to solitaire play. For instance, it’s got tactical combat that includes, IIRC, some hidden take-that cards and even a little bit of decision space in terms of what parts of the enemy ship to attack. That’s the sort of thing that would need to be designed around, or at least given an AI. Also, the scoring involves hiding gold from other players, and that’s not really going to work solitaire.

Did you do anything specific to work around that stuff, or did it not seem to matter so much without it?

-Tom

I settled on making the goal to accumulate 20 or 25 points before being sunk, rather than to get points in X turns or before an AI got ten. I changed the military rules to never remove the ship of the nation with the most enmity, make them a tad more aggressive with a die role to randomly increase their speed, and to cycle through the other national ships as indicated by the cards. I didn’t bother with having the opponents try to stash gold but I did try to play one to maximally disrupt the optional solo trade route, and the other to play the bounty game so I’d have to hustle for bounty. For combat I just tried to play honestly, but I think I could make a little decision deck or tree without much trouble. I tried to coordinate the opponent most friendly to the nation with the most enmity to try to hit me twice in a row in the 10-20 point range as my ship became too good (the ships are pretty imbalanced at this game length since the advantage of cheaper ones disappears.)

As of today, Xia and both expansions are back in stock at the publisher’s web site:

https://www.faroffgames.com/pre-order

No idea if or when it’ll show up at other stores, at least in the U.S.

For anyone who thought Glorantha: The Gods War sounded cool but missed the original Kickstarter, Petersen Games has announced the followup Kickstarter for January 20th (there’s a cosmetic first player mini if you back day one, not that that especially matters). This brings three main things as far as I can tell from the preview: 1) a reprint of the core game and Empires expansion, 2) a new storage solution for those two releases from Gametrayz, standard in the reprint and a fairly inexpensive addon for veterans (SO happy to see this), and 3) oh yeah the actual new content: namely, three new gods for each faction, a War god, a Secrets god, and a Magic god, sold in boxes by type rather than faction. I’m not quoting pricing because that could still change before the 20th.

I’m definitely in, at the very least for the storage, and probably for the new gods as well.

How much are we talking here.

If prices stay the same, which is likely, $100 for the core box, $200 for core box + empires (so all eight factions), $50 per new god box, $100 for all three god boxes. Also, less importantly, $100 for Elder Races expansion, $40 per for Monster expansions (there are three), and for previous backers (new printings will include this), $25 for the insert.

Currently there’s no all-in pledge level, option for just Empires without the core box, or storage solution for any of the expansions, possibly including the new gods. I think any serious play of the game will want all eight factions, the elder races and monsters are new but nonessential wrinkles for the hardcore fan, and it’s not yet clear to me whether the new gods are essential or not.