Lots of ways around that, though there’s the issue of annoying people in the public space regardless of how you solve it. A boom box with a CD player would work. The most compact solution is to rip the CD to MP3, and then play it on an MP3 player with internal speakers, like the iPod Touch.
Case
2042
Of the three, I’ve only played Space Alert. As someone else noted, you need a sound source; a laptop also works fine. It’s really just a computerized voice announcing threats and a few associated sound effects. But it’s actually integrated into the game. Space Alert comes with two CDs, one for “training” and one mission CD. The game does bear some resemblance to RoboRally, but also has elements of the designer’s previous game, Galaxy Trucker.
Defense of the Realm’s production values are pretty impressive. Larry Elmore does the artwork, and the publisher has done an excellent job of presenting it. Looking forward to playing it.
You can also download the mp3s from the website, and there’seven a random mission generator that I have not explored. Mp3s mean that even a decent smartphone can handle the audio component.
Vlaada Chvatil is probably one of my favorite game designers even if his titles don’t get the table time I’d like. Dungeon Lords is phenomenal as well.
Reldan
2044
My experience with Dominant Species is on par with LK (1 playthrough and 1 “first couple turns” experiences). The theme of the game is strong and the mechanics all fit together surprisingly well. It’s a territory control game with a pre-programming action mechanic - you’re vying over a small number of zones on the board by taking a set number of actions each turn, but the actions are queued up ahead of time, with each player needing to plan out anywhere from 3 to 6 actions in a row.
My only two negatives were that a few of the dominance cards can have too much of a impact on the game and that I don’t think the game design takes into account differences in how the mechanics play out with non-optimal numbers of players. The game board has preprinted action spaces (each action can only be chosen a finite number of times per turn) that neither increase nor decrease depending on the number of players, so with lots of players the more powerful actions themselves are limited resources and with few players they simply… aren’t.
The dominance cards are drawn in random order, and while most have pretty tame effects, a few can practically wipe somebody else out with a single blow. It’s crazy-hard or impossible to plan around this - for a game that has such flowing mechanics and interesting strategic gameplay, this is anathema to me.
I’d need to play it a few more times, but I’d almost suggest having a “future” market for the dominance cards (a la Power Grid) so that players can see what the next 5 dominance cards to be drawn will be and can plan ahead if needbe.
Reldan
2045
Combat in TI3 is a bit wonky, as the mechanics dictate that swarms of fighters is the way to go if you can get any sort of combat dice bonus going, since fighters receive the largest effective “bonus” by a long shot. As with any game with massive amounts of dice rolling needed to resolve combat, any fight is going to be somewhat of a crapshoot.
However, if your race is “good” at anything you need to be fucking that chicken all game long. Aside from randomly getting an excellent starting location with uber planets and some protective hexes surrounding, the racial bonuses are the only real area you can get much ahead of other players, and the game goes on for too long for much random happenstance to upstage optimized play.
I’d be fine with that, although I’m not sure how well random chance versus Power Grid’s numerical ordering + random would work out. It would be interesting if you had to take a crappier dominance card one turn to make sure a better one would be available the next one (if you have sort of a tetris slide down fill in), or if it was simply “these five will get shuffled and the replacements drawn from them” or something. Anyway, worth thinking about although so far the dominance cards’ power just seems like Glory to Rome caliber rule-breaking, and not any more “overpowered” than a properly placed regression or depletion action (which can happen again and again as opposed to just once).
For it’s more figuring out whether it’s optimal to vie for a space on the action selection list that’s already being contested or to be first on something of lesser value when both seem like good options to me, which as you say is very hard to feel out in the non-variant three player game. I suspect the variant is there for precisely that reason.
Combat in TI3 is a bit wonky, as the mechanics dictate that swarms of fighters is the way to go if you can get any sort of combat dice bonus going, since fighters receive the largest effective “bonus” by a long shot. As with any game with massive amounts of dice rolling needed to resolve combat, any fight is going to be somewhat of a crapshoot.
However, if your race is “good” at anything you need to be fucking that chicken all game long. Aside from randomly getting an excellent starting location with uber planets and some protective hexes surrounding, the racial bonuses are the only real area you can get much ahead of other players, and the game goes on for too long for much random happenstance to upstage optimized play.
My protective hexes were asteroid fields, unfortunately, so they were quickly menaced by all of my fast traveling neighbors, and those sons of bitches were stacking up the trades and techs left and right as per their races (apart from the other non-contender at the end, who ended up similarly failing to capitalize on human strengths). I needed an easy way to know everyone’s max travel speed per unit type (sort of like civ’s unit strength indicator) and strength variables, because a single tech intensive turn could radically change how safe one of my aggressive moves was. I think next time I’ll have a little more familiarity with the forthcoming tech choices and objectives, but I still fully expect to play kingmaker in the end. These guys are pretty good.
Reldan
2047
A regression or depletion action occurs early in the turn, and players have migration and other actions they can be taking afterwards. Dominance actions occur immediately before extinction which means there is nothing you can do about them to lessen the blow or work around them. Also, none of the common game actions even it extreme circumstances compare to something like “Kill all species on a tile of your choice except 1, and then kill 1 on all adjacent tiles.” or “All players save 1 species on each tile and the rest die”.
Yeah, that’s definitely a game that’s rough to play for the first time. There are just so many possibilities that even if you’re keeping up on what’s going on you’re not going to be contingency planning for certain key techs, combinations, or laws that might come out in the future - while people will gladly explain the rules to new players it’s unlikely they’re going to explain what exactly they’re about to do before they do it and there’s no way you’d be guessing these things that they’ve already long since planned for. You just have to see stuff and remember it for next time. Unfortunately it’s a long-ass game so it takes dedication to learn the ins and outs.
I’m interested now that you’ve played through it to hear your thoughts on the similarities and differences with the Starcraft board game.
Space Alert! Great fun and full of tension (the good kind!).
Ticket to Ride. Always a crowd pleaser. Every time that I have taught someone to play this game, they immediately wanted to play it again.
abrandt
2049
I played 7 Wonders for the first time last night. Absolutely as fantastic as people have been saying. We played probably 5 games in a few hours. I like that it forces paying attention to and interacting with other players much more than Race for the Galaxy.
Does anyone know if this game is available anywhere for a reasonable price in the US yet? I’d love to buy it, I’m just not going to spend the ~$80 Amazon sellers have it priced at.
Except that you yourself pointed out the extent to which a single well taken depletion action would have changed the game for you, regardless of what you did afterwards in the turn. I’m not saying the more important cards don’t have a huge impact, I just think it’s balanced within the broader scale of “attack choices” in the game, and especially so with more species where a depletion or regression attack is likely to affect multiple species significantly depending on when it happens in the game.
Yeah, that’s definitely a game that’s rough to play for the first time. There are just so many possibilities that even if you’re keeping up on what’s going on you’re not going to be contingency planning for certain key techs, combinations, or laws that might come out in the future - while people will gladly explain the rules to new players it’s unlikely they’re going to explain what exactly they’re about to do before they do it and there’s no way you’d be guessing these things that they’ve already long since planned for. You just have to see stuff and remember it for next time. Unfortunately it’s a long-ass game so it takes dedication to learn the ins and outs.
I’m interested now that you’ve played through it to hear your thoughts on the similarities and differences with the Starcraft board game.
I doubt I know enough Starcraft (or TI) to say conclusively, but my first impression so far is that they are radically different games. My decisionmaking process worked very differently in both games, despite the similarities in how the boards are presented. I didn’t get very far in the SC tech aspect, but that was a huge factor in the TI game (moreso in 4player, I suspect) that affected every aspect of gameplay from turn to turn and required keeping close tabs on people’s capabilities in a variety of traits. Needless to say, the combat in TI is much less tactical, and the shifting of resources on a strategic level back and forth across the different roles a much more central part of whether that turn’s campaign will be successful.
Speaking of Ticket to Ride, I got an email from Days of Wonder last week about an expansion to the game that seems to be just two game pieces and new cards. But the two game pieces are apparently a UFO and a Godzilla-like creature that you can set loose to wreak havoc on your opponents train lines. Sounds like my kind of ridiculous!
I saw a post by Alan Moon that he’d developed the giant monster mechanism for a proposed TtR: Japan, but the Japanese distributors just went with the original game and U.S. map. So as much as this seems like a tacked-on money grab, there may be some meat to it.
I talked to a local board game retailer about this. They told me 7 Wonders did a really small initial US run because it wasn’t expected to sell well. I would imagine the high price is due to the current scarcity of the game. I’m sure as soon as the next print run occurs, prices will return to normal.
You can currently pre-order (from the next shipment I guess) from thoughthammer for $35: http://www.thoughthammer.com/7-wonders-p-7813.html
I’ve never pre-ordered from them before, but I have ordered games from there and it’s worked great in the past.
Reldan
2054
I had planned around that particular Depletion action. Your ability to hose me with it was entirely due to the Dominance card that gave you first Initiative regardless of the fact that I specifically took Initiative the turn before to protect against the Depletion possibility. Depletion is a powerful game effect that telegraphs what’s going to happen two turns in advance so you can prepare for it.
I think they’re very different games, but it’s always been interesting to me to notice the similarities of mechanics and basic design elements since both games come from the same two lead designers and both have a similar basic theme - a space empire wargame - with TI having a heavier focus on the space empire and Starcraft on the wargame. The amount you have to focus on the techs every other player has in TI is almost overkill - given the maze of tech prerequisites you almost have to have the entire tech tree memorized to make sense of it. Starcraft definitely toned that aspect down quite a bit.
I like that the copies of 7 Wonders @ Amazon are fulfilled by Cool Stuff Inc, but if you go to their site, the game is sold out. Ah well.
On BGG, someone from Asmodee said that the reprinting is due in March so that’s good news.
Reldan
2056
Yikes… $88 through Amazon and $33 direct from the coolstuffinc page.
jpinard
2057
One of the guys in our boardgaming group just purchased Space Alert. Can’t wait to try it out. For those wondering about the re-print, it went out to distributors last week.
I’m sure I’m the last to know, but Tom Vasel’s baby boy Jack just died. A new auction is set up to raise money: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/63654/i-need-to-do-something-a-jack-vasel-auction/page/4
I donated directly because I didn’t want a bunch of money going to shipping fees.
Vesper
2059
Anyone have anything good or bad to say about Tannhauser? It has revised rules now which allegedly fixes a lot of the original issues.
I’ve never played it, but when I actually read the rules it seemed disappointingly low on story and theme for a game with a fairly awesome theme. Mostly it seemed to be a straightforward small scale combat game.
