My God man, have you no morals!?!??!
I can’t expose a 9 year-old to Drizzt. I’d be tripping over Menzobarranzan junk all over the house within a week.
Grabbed my copy of Eclipse during lunch today and it looks like War of the Ring gets in tomorrow, woot! I’m having some friends over for a board game day in two weeks, Eclipse is definitely going to take up a good portion of the day.
Lorini
4323
For all you Eclipse players, please report on the random allocation of VP’s in the game. That is the biggest reason why I’m not getting it. While not all of the VP’s in the game are allocated randomly, 25% of them are, and that’s just too much for a game of that length.
Impressions relating to that factor will be much appreciated.
Dave47
4324
How does FFG handle new editions? Will the rule changes be freely available? I picked up Descent a month or so ago, and haven’t even had a chance to crack open the box; I’d be bummed if I’m now stuck with an inferior version.
Descent 2nd edition is looking to be a massive revision of the rule system that will be incompatible with 1st edition components. I think their main focus is in reducing game length and generally streamlining everything. It will also offer campaign support out of the box.
However, 1st edition (base and expansions) won’t be completely out of the dark as they will be selling an “upgrade kit” that will include everything you’ll need to play with 2nd edition rules for around $20.
The impression I got from the announcement of the conversion kit was that it still requires the 2nd edition base game, but it will have stats for all the heroes and monsters in 1st edition. The monsters and heroes in the 2e base game will be entirely new, if I haven’t failed at reading comprehension.
That’s what it looked like to me too. But FFG usually posts rules on the site, so you might be able to adapt it without buying 2nd edition.
FFG posts all their rules as far as I’ve seen. The only thing typically left out are details on cards, etc.
Vesper
4329
Playing Eclipse tonight. I sent my board gaming group a message saying “I don’t care if only one of you shows up, we’re playing Eclipse.” It looks like I’ll either be playing a 2 or 3 player game. Very excited! I’ll write up a little mini-review (or at the least, some thoughts) afterwards. Unfortunately that means we won’t be using diplomacy as that is only for 4+ player games.
dtolman
4330
I must be missing something from my rules read-through but… how are 25% of them randomly distributed? Are you talking about the hexes?
Vesper
4331
When you are involved in a combat, you randomly pick 1-5 reputation tokens out of a bag based on how many ships you killed, etc. You can keep one of these and, if you choose, return 1 of your already claimed ones to the bag (for a net of either +0 or +1). The tokens have a hidden value on the back ranging 1-4. The fact that you can upgrade bad draws makes the randomness not a very big deal, in my eyes. But as far as I can tell, that’s the only random VP factor.
Lorini
4332
Correct Vesper, that’s why I said it wasn’t the whole shebang and the 25% number was given to me by someone who had played. I’m interested to see how it feels as you play it out, particularly if the games are close.
My gut sense is there’s enough randomness for it to typically even out, and other random factors will have a bigger impact.
But yeah, that was my least favorite of the game mechanics in Eclipse, though I’m still looking forward to seeing it.
On the other hand, it does have one significant advantage – your score is hidden so there’s no analysis paralysis as people try to precisely game the score.
Enidigm
4334
Fog of War: Strike of the Eagle looks incredible. Going to order today.
The Polish-Soviet war of 1920? I would never get anyone around here to play it. I am tempted to buy a copy for Bruce Geryk just to hear his thoughts on it.
dtolman
4336
Hadn’t thought about that - but that could be a big swing:
Assuming you get 4 reputation tiles, thats a potential maximum difference of +12 if you draw four 1’s, and your opponent gets all 4’s. And as unlikely as that sounds, one of the recent session reports had just that:
Winner with 42 - 16 from reputation, 13 from hexes, 6 from monolith, 3 from protecting ancients, 2 from discovery tiles, and 2 from military tech
Second place with 32 points- 7 from reputation, 13 from hexes (rest unrecorded).
Reverse that reputation score, and you change the winner.
That said - they screwed up taking reputation tiles, and it seems with more experienced players that the scores get substantially higher. So perhaps this is an outlier.
Enidigm
4337
The mechanics of the game look to transcend the Slavic flavor. It looks like the perfect game for my group; simple, straightforward, limited number of moves or decisions per turn, lots of tactical depth per turn. I also love boardgames that employ a fog of war mechanic well, and this one looks to do it very well. Go to the website and watch their interactive walkthrough - it sold me on the game immediately; which, btw, i just ordered.
Vesper
4338
One other note about the reputation tiles is that they share a track with diplomacy tiles. Spaces may only allow diplomacy OR reputation or both. Once you’ve decided a given dual spot is reputation or diplomacy, it’s not easy to change that decision. Diplomacy ties can only be broken by acts of war, and to remove a reputation token you’d have to earn another one.
It turns into a balance of diplomacy VPs which are known and ‘locked’ for at ime, versus the unknown of combat VPs.
Any willing and able to talk me out of grabbing Runewars from Amazon? $54.99 is really tempting.
Card combat. Though every other aspect is awesome!
