1621

Well then, awesome. It’s a very reasonable priced game, for sure, even for 2 players. Back on the list.

1622

There’s a lot of different suggestions on bgg about how to build evenly distributed decks. One interesting suggestion had you shuffle all the cards together and then, while filling the board, you discard and redraw a card if it went outside some parameters of even-ness. That removes the annoyance of having to randomly build the decks up front. Still, it sounds like the general approach is just putting all the decks together. One of the designers is quite active on BGG and my recollection was his preferred method was to shuffle all the cards together.

I’d personally argue that you don’t ever need stability. But even if you do, that’s something you can account for when over-building cards (sure, you might fall behind on efficiency using lower techs for a round, but if you need it to keep you out of a death spiral then you do it and try and catch up later). Playing with the uneven distribution is definitely more difficult and increases the chance of getting death spirals. That’s part of why you leave the cards out until you’re ready for them. I recommend playing with just the intermediate decks first before adding in both extra decks. The rest of you starting out with all three decks are crazy! I think you’re a lot more likely to create death spirals for inexperienced players doing that.

1623

First, please stop being a dick; it’s unwarranted.

Second, here is what I see in the rulebook (located here).

p.4 - “Shuffle the Event Card decks for each age separately. Place the Event Card decks for ages II-IV aside for now. For your first game leave out Advanced and Expert cards. See more on page 11.”

So this just says to leave out Advanced and Expert cards for the first game. It does not say anything about substitution when you do use them, and I would say, implies that you just add them in later (as opposed to substitution).

p.5 -“Shuffle the Progress Card decks for each age separately. Place the Progress Card decks for ages II-IV aside for now. For your first game leave out Advanced and Expert cards. See more on page 11.”

Pretty much the same thing that was said on p.4.

p. 11 (“For your first few games”) - “Even if you are an experienced gamer, it is still highly recommended to start your Nations career with the basic card set. Using all cards will create interesting swings in card distribution that can be very difficult for the inexperienced Nations players to master, even if you are a very experienced gamer.”

Again, I do not see anything there regarding “substitution,” it just says to only use the basic card set in the beginning.

p.21 - “o With beginners, use only basic cards, the A-sides of the Player Boards, play with 3-4 players and take no worker the first few rounds. o With advanced players, use basic and advanced cards, play with 2-4 players. With expert players, use all cards, play with any number of players.” (Emphasis mine.)

Also from p.21 - The advanced and expert cards add more interaction, variation, and new concepts. After a few games with basic cards you can add the advanced cards, mixing them in with the basic cards. After a few more games you can add the expert cards."

Perhaps they should have added “mixing them in with the basic cards” after the reference to expert cards, but I think it is fairly clear they mean add the expert cards to the advanced and basic cards.

That was about all I had time for before I got tired of trying to find something you are asserting (that it talks about substituting cards) without further explanation or citation from you. (I also searched the document for “substitu” and nothing came back.)

Perhaps you could point out specifically where in the rules, with the accompanying quoted language, you believe it says you should substitute cards? I’m happy to believe you, but really do not see what you are talking about in the actual rules. I admittedly might be missing it, as I do not really want to re-read 24 pages of rules for something that you are asserting without much more to go on.

1624

Page 21, 2nd column:

So, not only do they not give you any guidance as to how to decide what to replace, they more or less admit that just adding all the cards leads to decks that are not “balanced”.

1625

I just performed a search for the word “substitute” on the nations rulebook pdf I have and it came up with zero results. Then I did a cursory look in the sections that discuss cards and could find no such suggestion. Each mention of the cards simply says to use the basic for the first few games, then add in the others as you get more comfortable with the rules.

1626

Ah. That’s a bit different. I do not really take that to mean the game is unbalanced with all the cards (in that it gives one side a better chance of winning). I think they mean that it is less structured and more random. It is also an optional rule - that is very different than saying the basic game rules give two different contradictory instructions for how to play.

I do not think they really intend or expect to explain exactly which cards you should swap out for what, because I think this is intended as a “toolbox” sort of optional rule to explain to you how you can modify the game to make it more suitable to your liking. Part of that is that you have to do the modification. For example, if you want to reduce the impact of military/war, you would obviously swap out some war-oriented Advisors with non-war oriented Advisors.

I intend to simply keep playing the game with all of the cards, particularly given that in the first game that I, my wife, my 13 year old, and my 15 year old played, none of us had any of the problems with the game going off the rails that you described. Perhaps if we run into those problems in the future, we will try substituting out cards.

EDIT: I should add that it helps that we’ve all played Through the Ages together, and so we probably already have an instinct for keeping our respective empire engines relatively balanced.

1627

They give you tons of guidance. They also give you variants. The inclusion of variants does not immediately equal a broken game.

edit: or, what slyfrog said.

1628

The Nations discussion is interesting to me, because I totally agree and disagree with Josh. I agree with him in that I think it’s another example of the rules opting out of some important game design. Namely, how are players supposed to handle the distribution of cards. The developers went to the trouble of separating them into three categories. Great. Now how about some insight into precisely how we’re supposed to manage and mix those categories? Because Josh is absolutely right that the rules are murky and inconsistent.

But I disagree with Josh in that I think Nations bears up wonderfully under uneven card distribution. Like Slyfrog and hepcat, I just throw them all into one big pile and let them turn up as they will. Because I think that’s a key element to what makes Nations unique. It’s a game about the vagaries of history, about how different tools will emerge in different games, about how last night’s game made it really hard to create food, but tonight’s game is absolutely lousy with wonders of the world and aren’t you glad you picked Egypt, but tomorrows game is going to be run away with Rome getting those fire galleys! Nations isn’t a sleekly balanced Eurogame in which all players have equal opportunities. For instance, consider how the rulesbook suggests different players can play at different difficulty levels. Instead, Nations is a very tactical and sometimes seat-of-the-pant game about rolling with whatever’s available, and sometimes getting utterly screwed because you weren’t flexible enough.

-Tom
1629

On a slightly related note, why is Nations so damn expensive? I know that a lot goes into these games and that its not fair to criticize prices, but it just doesn’t seem to be priced very competitively. I would love to buy the game, but its priced $20-30 more than my monthly gaming budget allows.

1630

Yes, I guess I just have a habit, after years of boardgaming, of pretty much ignoring most optional rules. If they add something to the game they’re a nice value add, but I do not think they detract from the game if they do not work or are not there.

Basically, if those particular rules had never been put in the rulebook, I would still think it was a good game and worked perfectly fine. So I tend to not think it detracts from the game.

If they had put something like that into the main rules, on the other hand, it would have bothered me far more.

Obviously it would be ideal if they were just a fleshed out and worked just as well as the regular rules.

1631

I have a guess… I haven’t seen the publisher before so maybe it’s more expensive for them to publish a game due it inexperience? Looking on BGG they appear to have done a lot of translations, but I’m not clear on which games they were the prime publishers on.

Price is a personal thing, certainly, but I do think it’s worth the price. Part of that is because of the scaling mechanics (various decks, as well as optional asymmetric powers) which gives the game a huge amount of replayability. The other part is the game is easily teachable so it can actually hit the table more often then you’d think. Plus its excellent handicap mechanics means you can pretty easily play across skill levels.

1632

Some more info on the PACG app showed up on BGG yesterday. It’s still way early to judge, but I really like what I’m hearing, especially since it doesn’t sound like they’re just moving the game from the table to the tablet (a la Star Realms and other card games). The idea of putting cutscenes and putting the locations on a map sounds really interesting, and the art looks awesome. In case you overlook it, there’s a few additional screenshots here.

1633

wrong thread

1634

I really need to know when this is coming out. I’ve been wanting to get back into the first campaign but I haven’t even finished the starter deck yet (I’m playing solo). If this will be out on the iPad relatively soon I might as well hold off on buying the physical packs.

1635

I played a couple games of Concordia this weekend. The game is a “trading-in-the-Mediterranean” euro game, and people who are looking for interesting theme and art should look elsewhere (unless ancient Rome and trading goods appeal to you). Of all the games in my collection, I think it may have the highest rules-to-depth ratio. The basic gameplay is super simple – play a card and do the action on it, build up new colonies, produce goods, trade goods, buy new cards. Each card has a certain Roman god written on the bottom, and each god scores differently at the end of the game (i.e. Jupiter scores for every colony, Mercury for # of trade goods produced, etc). Also, since every card scores individually, it pays to focus on one type to get a higher multiplier. That might sound confusing, and for the first couple games it sure is. Once you’ve internalized all the systems, then the brain burning really begins. There are tough decisions to make every turn, and I could see AP being a big problem for new players. That said, since players can only play one card per turn, the game moves a steady pace and there aren’t too many lulls.

I can see why this game didn’t win the KSdJ. Its the same reason that Spendor didn’t win – they are both too brain-burny for their respective categories. I would even say that Concordia is a heavier game than Russian Railroads or Keyflower, two other comparable, though more rules heavy, euro games in my collection. Our games so far have only been with two players (which is, admittedly, a little too open), and I’m really excited to see how this will do with more.

One last thing. This game comes in a weird sized box. Its about the length and diameter of Eclipse, but the depth of Splendor. I think the reason for this is the large size of the board. However, as you can imagine, it is a major pain to fit on my shelf. Strangely enough, the size of this box is probably my biggest complaint of the game so far.

1636

That game sounds awesome! Right up my alley. I kept ignoring it when it came up because the box art is kind of terrible. But the rules-to-depth ratio is a good sell, and the actual board art looks quite beautiful. How quick / exhausting was the game? Did you play multiple times in a row or was one play through epic enough to call it a day?

1637

Might be of particular interest to peeps here, I played a game of Battle at Kemble’s Cascade (yeah, terrible name) yesterday, and taught it to another group after. It’s a boardgame version of an 8-bit pixel-art scrolling arcade shoot-em-up. Think Raiden or Truxton: The Boardgame and you’re on the right track.

The players have little ships that they fly through a clever, ever-scrolling board, acquiring new weapons and ship upgrades, killing enemies, avoiding asteroids, and trying to get the high score Vs. the other players. Eventually the board runs out and you hit a giant, screen-filling boss monster with special powers, etc. The mechanics are sound (though we did have a couple rules ambiguities), there’s actually very little luck (though some randomness in the way the board is put together), and just enough player interactivity. It also seems like it would have both plenty of replayability for a while and be easily and cheaply expandable- a new set of cards with new enemies/obstacles, new power-ups, etc. would quickly do the trick.

1638

That sounds pretty cool, Don. How long does it take to play?

1639

Our three player game, cracking the box, reading the rules as we went, trying to look up rules questions etc. took 1.5-2 hours. It’d certainly play quicker when everyone knew what they were doing.

I wasn’t actually in the game, but it seemed like five players would be too many- there is plenty of opportunity for analisys paralisys, and it seems like it would take too long between turns, dragging out the game. I’m guessing the sweet spot is four- it still would not take too long, but you get to use the full board (in 2-3 players, you lose a column of cards making the board smaller).

1640

Once we learned the game, it took us about 60 mins to play a 2 player game. To be honest though, the first couple games were pretty exhausting, though when we started to figure out some strategy, it got better.

And yes, the box art is horrible.