Seems like the theme really begs for something faster-playing, but it still looks good and the modular board is fascinating.
newbrof
1642
I would like to recommend a board game… Imagine a game, where 2-6 players sit around, all moves are made in your head, no pieces are moved on the board. Then after a while somebody shouts a number between 2 and 20 (usually), then a sand timer is turned and everyone has the chance to try to find a solution with a lower number. When the timer finished, then the lowest number wins the point. Next round starts …
This is basically Ricochet Robot. You have 4 robots on the board, you pick a new destination square (randomly). The destination token is color coded and linked to a robot with the same color. Now you have to find the shortest number of moves for the robot to the destination. Each robot can move in one direction until it hits a wall, then you can change direction. You can move as many robots as you want.
What is amazing about this game is its addicting quality. You always want to play one more round. It’s a puzzle game in the purest sense. There might be multiple solutions, but you always want to find the shortest, most elegant solution … it is pure joy when it clicks… and you have to make your moves in your head, you only move the pieces when you present your solution…
No downtime, it scales well, can’t find a negative. Of course if you don’t like abstract puzzles, then it is not for you… but it tickles the brain on a very different spot than most other games…
Recommended!
jsnell
1643
Yes, it is a brilliant design and I’ve not seen a game group where it didn’t work.
But there are two fairly big negatives to Ricochet Robot. The first is that it’s incredibly sensitive to player skill. A more experienced player will just demolish relative newbies. Yes, the tiebreak rule will allow the newbies to get some freebie points, but it’s totally clear to everyone that they’re not really in the running.
The second problem is that the rules and board layouts cause a very high proportion of completely trivial solutions (like 1/4th of the puzzles have a length 3 solution which everyone gets within a few seconds). They’re boring, but also further demoralize the newbies, since realistically most of their points will come from “solving” these and winning the tiebreak, and there’s just no feeling of accomplishment there. Every group I’ve played RR with has ended up with different kinds of house rules to fix this. For example requiring that every solution involve moving at least two robots, in such a way that the moves of both robots are actually necessary for the solution to work. Or redrawing the chips if somebody comes up with a solution of less than 5.
JoshL
1644
If you like Ricochet Robots, you might like Mutant Meeples, which is based on the same idea but has some twists thrown in (and has a catch-up mechanism). Full disclosure, I was a playtester! (and I know the designer).
MMDuran
1645
I think I really, really like Dominare. I didn’t expect to, given that it comes from AEG which hasn’t been a company I associate with great gameplay and because the game itself offers so few chits when you open it. But once we sat down around the table and played it once, I began to grasp what makes it so good and a second playthrough made me fall in love.
It’s an area-control game in what’s essentially Venice (the city-state of Tempest where they set most of their games, including reskinned Love Letter) where you over the course of seven seasons reveal seven agents who serve as members of your conspiracy, using their influence (and/or the gold they bring you) to rally blocks within the key districts of the city under your control. If you own the most blocks in a district, you also own the district - so, for example, if you hold majority control in the Church district, you also gain control of the Church which will grant you access to using the Church’s special action each season and, at the end of the game, the victory points the Church is worth as well. However, shenanigans come into play as each block may be worth victory points (including negative VPs in some blocks that you might swallow just to gain majority control) and the VPs the Districts are worth change as well due to the machinations of your fellow players – whether it’s the Senate voting property values up or the louses of the Corte Scalzo swamp district driving those values down by way of crime and reverse-gentrification. ;-)
Oh, and each agent card you play also has special properties, some of them depending on where you play them in your chain of conspiracy. Do you use that high influence/high gold card early on to be gaining a ton of influence/gold every season or do you wait to play him/her until the last season, wherein their Season 7 power (only usable if you played them in the last/seventh season) is a gamechanger? Oh, and there’s a midgame draft for additional agents, allowing you to tailor the strategy you’ve already developed and/or block a strategy that you see your fellow players going for. Just because.
I’m deeply fond of it and expect to get it out more in coming weeks. Highly recommend.
newbrof
1646
thanks, looks really great… When we burned out on Robots, we might come back to Mutant Meeples…
Pod
1647
I suggested Mutant Meeples to my GF as a potential present in christmas 2012. I suggested it because Ricochet Robots was out of stock at the time :P (I played Ricochet robots back in uni – really enjoyed it).
Looking again now that they’re both kinda in stock, I can’t decide which one is more attractive… hmmm. Any help?
newbrof
1648
Can’t help, because I only own RR… but I can say that is a very streamlined, classic design. Since all robots move the same it appears to be a bit simpler to explain. Also RR has modular boards and MM has a 2 sided fixed board.
Also I am looking forward to play Eminent Domain. (I always wanted to play Race for the Galaxy, but it is totally out of stock here in Germany). Eminent Domain on the other hand was on sale…
On paper, the rules seem to be a great addition to the deckbuilding / role selection genre… Also many positive reviews out there.
Some say that the same starting setup of the game is a negative. This I don’t care too much since I am a chess player, and I prefer it that way (don’t like Fischer Random chess at all).
So all good then with Eminent Domain, right?
Eminent Domain is a good game but it needs the expansion to really shine.
You and I differ here and that’s my personal reason for not loving Eminent Domain. It was fun for a few games, but it didn’t have legs for me because each game felt too similar. I would’ve preferred a random setup just because I like trying to work from different situations every game, but more variety in end-game options would probably help a lot too. I haven’t played with the expansion, and it sounds like it takes the second route.
It is interesting comparing Eminent Domain to Race for the Galaxy. You would think with deck-building added to it that role-selection would take a back seat in Eminent Domain. But Eminent Domain is more focused on role selection then Race for the Galaxy (which is a bit more focused on card powers because of how much variance they have). ED has a neat system, but I found deck-building from the limited set of cards to not be terribly interesting. It’s much more about knowing what kind of cards your opponent is pursuing and how you can role-select appropriate to them, with deck-building just being a convenient way for players to publicly build towards particular roles. I want to see a game take the system and add more card powers to the deck-selection process. It sounds cool in my head, but it’s probably a noisy mess in practice.
So I learned something about my wife today after our latest game of Concordia. She has been a bit lukewarm towards the game, and it turns out that the thing she dislikes the most is that all the scoring is done at the end of the game instead of during. She said she feels frustrated by not being able to see how is she is doing while we’re playing. This would also explain her dislike for Agricola and Keyflower, two games that I enjoy but she doesn’t. Personally, I like it when you can see progress, but it doesn’t bother me when there is little or none in a game (as long as it’s not longer than an hour). What do you think? Also, what are some examples of games that have a good feeling of progression?
Edit: Concordia does have progression in it, but it is hard to tell which players are doing well, since a lot of scoring is done with multipliers on the cards in your hand. I’m interested in games where it is more obvious who is in the lead, and who is lagging behind.
The Eminent Domain expansion adds like 30-40 completely different starting setups that are distributed randomly one per player. (Guessing at the number.) It makes for a big improvement, both in terms of varying the game experience and in terms of getting to actually -use- the mid to lategame techs that otherwise turn up roughly in time for the game to end.
Oh I didn’t realize it had random setups. That sounds awesome! I may need to pick that up.
Steam is one of my favorite boardgames, but my least favorite aspect of it is that there’s nearly no end game scoring. All the scoring happens during the game which makes the last round or two feel perfunctory. It’s often clear who the winner will be, or at least it’s clear that a few of the players aren’t in the running. Having a good portion of points scored at the end of a game helps obscure who’s winning and keeps everyone wanting to play well till the very end, I think.
Castles of Burgundy has a great scoring system. It’s probably the best part of the game. Around 70% of the points are scored during the game. Players who go hard for end-game scoring will usually look like they’re doing poorly until the game ends and they shoot into the lead. That dynamic leads to players with lots of end-game scoring thinking they’re going to win and players who invest more in mid-game scoring to think they have the game in the bag, and keeps drama of who’s actually ahead until the last second.
We’ve also talked about Archipelago a lot here and it has by far the most distinct scoring. There’s a feeling of progression in the game as players build up their economic engines and exploit the various markets, but the game ends abruptly and no one knows for sure what’s scored until the game is over. Tension is high throughout the game because of that, and while end-game scoring declares a winner, people often say stuff like: “Well you may have won, but I had all the temples on the board so people like me the most.” (As an aside, it annoys me they’re called “temples” and not churches.) People generally feel good about their engine regardless of how the scoring round went, but the drama of scoring is extremely intense until a winner is declared. I like that feeling a lot.
Yeah, my wife loves Castles of Burgundy. However, sometimes even in that, it can be easy to tell who will win by the end of the fourth year.
Yeah, it’s a dumb thing to worry about, but I’d be really curious why in the world Archipelago uses the term “temples.”
MMDuran
1657
The European colonists are… Jews?
ducks
Seriously, what’s the worry exactly?
I suspect it’s just one aspect of the generally poor rules translation.
-Tom
I assume it’s a translation error. The game’s originally French, right? It only bothers me because they seem so obviously to be churches and calling them temples takes me out of the experience a bit. According to wikipedia: “The word temple has traditionally been rarely used in the Western Christian tradition. The principal words typically used to distinguish houses of worship in Western Christian architecture are basilica, cathedral and church.” I have a little basis for my confusion luckily.
It’s particularly weird since the evolution card translations and artwork are obviously Christian, with popes, bishops, evangelism, and whatnot.
And then you have the temples. We just call them churches anyway.
-Tom
