Yep, we do need two I think (three might work, though, but I never played with that number). Maybe we should ping the players of the previous game?
@Nikolaj, @sharaleo, @JoshL, @Grunden, any of you up for this? @scottagibson, you can join too. this is prone to be long and provide room to learn as we go (that previous forum game was my first play with anything other than the very basic rules).
I’m reading the new rules and I love what they are doing with Colonists, limiting them to three per player max and making them less prone to runaway leader issues.
We’ll have to make a cheat sheet that summarizes changes for the modules. (There’s one for the core game in the rulebook.) Big change I noticed for futures (and now elevators): EHOs can be modified by FINAO.
Yeah, I suggest, once we are set to go, to make a combined PDF rulebook fromt he three modules and use that as a sort of “locked rule set”. Then we can list perceived big changes from there. The changes seem to be very significant. No ventures, systemic glory, etc…
The previous forum game I won because the other competing player was reading the wrong VP tally rules.
Component limits reach their ugly head again, when tallied against VP. Being the first player end game SUCKS unless you can manipulate the law into the right spot, which can indeed be worth the VP you lose from having the cube there. If playing without politics (module 0) it just sucks.
Glory is huge, given the new VP limits.
The TNO lab strategy becomes a bernal dirtside strategy. That’s how you maximize cube VPs. Building colonies is risky since it locks cubes and now there’s no decommissioning even as a felony.
Futures are not limited, so that might be a huge VP strategy. In particular, you will be limited to one TW and one Freighter future, but can have up to three colonist futures at the very least, perhaps more if you are able to decommission one colonist with an achieved future. I think the lack of limits on Colonist Futures might be a mistake.
I’m liking the politic rules as they are now. At the beginning a lot of cubes will be there and the law is bound to change, but as the players industrialize, less cubes will be available as delegates and the seniority disks (which are fixed) will make only two or three laws viable end-game.
In general, it feels even more sandboxy, with less pre-ordained early VP routes (Ventures and specific glory spots).
It’s also going to be super long, at 84 turns. Since there’s no immediate ending trigger (Except if you crash a comet on Earth, I guess), maximizing Futures + Factory and colony location is going to be important. You can play the mid game slowly without risk of losing too many opportunities.
In general, while I like most of the new rules, the scoring might be out of wack, with most players reaching maximum VPs in tokens and factories and Futures, and Glory and the end-game law being the deciding factors. We’ll see I guess.
I imagine we’ll be starting a new thread with the orders and discussion. I’ll try to take some regular screenshots of the map for posting for the peanut gallery.
Yes, I’m guessing this will be a PbF with PbEmail in the backend. The auctioning is perfect for the forum format, specially now that there’s no set order.
How long do you guys think we should wait to start the thread? It’s going to take a while to set everything up, create the rule PDF, pre-game discussion… We could keep the 5th player slot open as we move forward…
