Archive for Jeff A
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Jeff A
Canada
Edmonton
Alberta
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Starting about 2 months ago I have been going to two board gaming groups, Mondays at my friend Chris's and Tuesdays I host. It has been pretty great and I am going to keep it up.
On Monday January 30th I played a game that was new to me, Hansa Teutonica. I really enjoyed Hansa Teutonica, even though I came in last place, and even though my situation that evening wasn't the best. I have been having this weird issue with my hearing lately, due to some sort of problem with my sinuses or something. I was pretty much completely deaf. So hearing the rules explained was pretty much a no go, I just gleamed what I could, which was a lot. I didn't however fully understand the scoring or the situations that ended the game and so my play was definitely not all it could have been. It is a game that I would love to try again.
On Tuesday January 31st, we played a 5 player game of Eclipse. Sigh.
My hopes were so high for Eclipse as I watch the developer guide etc but I think I am going to have to revise my rating. I will NOT go so far as to say that the game is broken or anything, but I will say that there are some definite issues that I take with how the game plays. It will not see my gaming table again under the base rules. I am not sure what rules need to change but I am sure of a few things.
1. I believe that I play games to have fun. I want the others playing the game to have fun too. I can honestly say that I have not played a game of Eclipse and had fun. That is probably because I have never won a game of Eclipse. But that being said, the chances are that if I won, and had fun there would be at least 1 or 2 others at the table that definitely didn't have fun.
2. I have come to realize that I enjoy games with a mechanic that holds the leader back, so that at least the other players all feel they have a chance. And when that leader is overtaken, they should also still feel that they have a chance.
Eclipse only has one mechanic to hold a leader back, the cost of taking actions, but that mechanic does just as good of a job at holding back the rest of the pack as well.
Basically here is my beef, almost everything in Eclipse is suited to be easier when you are wealthy.
-Actions cost you more but chances are you are having no problem populating orange planets and the only thing it does is keep you from taking MORE actions than those you are beating.
-Research, Better technologies cost more research. While it could be possible for you to snag a key tech before your opponent, if you are getting beaten up, good luck paying for it and upgrading your ships, and building new ships <- Because when you are poor, you tend to be poor in all resources.
-Upgrading, You need to be able to research expensive ship techs in order to upgrade them, the only real tech for the poor is improved hulls as it doesn't require you to also research and upgrade power sources.
-Building, same as research, when you are wealthy you tend to be able to build more ships. Yes you have more to defend, but your ships tend to be stronger as well so you don't need so many ships out there.
-Move, only issue is the rich can have it easier at affording better drives, but they do need to move further.
-Explore is the only real action that is the same if your wealthy or poor, but the chances are that by the time your society has been crushed by the Galactic emperor, there are no more tiles to explore anyway. I haven't played a game that had tiles to explore past round 4.
So what right? Thats the way the game was designed, thats how it should work. Well no, not on my table. In my frustration while lying in bed last night I thought up a few possibilities that I am going to look into.
These are the few things I will looks at for house rules and why.
1. Taking the Galactic Centre should be less of a boost, it is already giving you more production, 4 VP, an ancient discovery. I am thinking no ancient discovery and 2 influence disks required to take it. Why?
The ancient discovery is just a bonus for what reason? If you took the center you are probably doing pretty well. As for the influence (this one I am not sure about), its another way to hold back the (theorectical) leader, and only the leader, just a bit by making actions more costly.
2. Ancient tiles that give you a resource (+5 Research), I may reclassify these as Ancient outposts, they would go on the hex like an orbital. You will get the instant bonus, and can populate the ancient outpost with a cube from the corresponding track.
The next is probably my favorite so a little back explanation. I feel that the start of the game and your economies can be too easily boosted to the best or held back too greatly by simply not getting planets of a certain type. Every game I have played I either got too few money planets so I could not effectively act, or like last night, my money was fine, but I only ever discovered 1 materials planet. I could not build anything to effectively defend against the oncoming 2 upgraded Dreadnaughts and a Cruiser.
3. All non advanced planets are considered Grey. This will lower any issues with bad luck drawing tiles. You still could get a better or worse sector by drawing one that has 3 planets vs 2 or 1, or one that has only an Ancient (see #2 Ancient Outpost), but it won't hamper anything as you can choose which track to take the cube from.
I feel this also makes advanced planets a bit more valuable as if you took most of your non advanced planets for money, then you may really need advanced mining. You can effectively play to your advanced planet draws.
Now I am not fully sure about these house rules as they were the late night, can't sleep, rantings of a pissed off loser, but I think they could help if refined. One thing for #3 is maybe if there are two planets in the hex you just influenced, you have to use 2 difference population tracks, this will at least keep it from being everyone can do 12 actions per round but build nothing etc.
Alright well I will think about this more.
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Jeff A
Canada
Edmonton
Alberta
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Eclipse is a good game, there I said it. And while I believe this to be true, it is proving to be a harsh mistress. I guess I didn't help myself any by playing the 2 player game that I did, last night. Lets meet the teams.
The Planta:
A true expansion civilization, their 2 explores per action is a huge benefit, and in a 2 player game, it makes it very hard for an opponent to beat them.
The Eridani Empire: Can you say "cash rich, equity poor"? The Eridani start with a large wad in their back pockets, but they don't have a material planet off the start and they start loosing money even before you take control.
So off the bat things started getting ugly. In a 2 player game there are not that many hexes to explore, the planta getting to explore 2 per action gave them an advantage, of the 5, 3rd sector tiles in the game, the planta got 4. Now it is not that the Eridani didn't get to explore enough, we did, however the problem was that money was not available, Orbitals, the tech to make money was not available, and Quantum Grid, the tech to offset the reduced influence of the Eridani, well they never showed up either.
Things went alright up until about the 6th round, then Left with no tiles left to explore, the Planta invaded the centre tile, and subsequently Eridani space. While the Eridani did make a small push against the Planta invasion in the 9th round, the Planta ended up taking 3 Eridani sectors, and doing most of the combat in the game, had 3x4P rep tiles.
Final score 44-26
Now, I knew going in that my game would be a tough one, I made some good decisions, and some bad, but overall the sectors of space and the lack of supportive tech was my biggest downfall. If things had gone a bit better for me, I could have seen it being closer, but it would have taken some serious attacks into Planta space to counter him.
Lessons Learned -
1. Don't let your opponent play Planta in a 2 player game, if you do, at least take the Hegemony and make your plan from turn 1 to be on him like butter on toast.
2. I found a new respect for the Orbital tech, I have never played a game where someone used them yet, and I never had the chance this game, but it really could have turned my problems around. There were a number of turns where I was material and research rich, Orbitals could have been a deciding factor.
3. The Eridani tend to pass first due to the fact that fewer actions cost them more money, especially early until they find money planets or orbitals.
4. Eclipse can be fun, even if you are bound to lose.
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Jeff A
Canada
Edmonton
Alberta
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I adopted Kingsix as my a general handle about 10 years back. It was started out initially as a gamer tag. Back then I played a lot of games like Counterstrike and Day of Defeat, also the original Call of Duty, in particular a mod for it called Heat of Battle. Very cool mod btw. Anyway prior to Kingsix my gamer tag was Wheezy Mcfatfat. ... I know, but there was a reason to it, I had a few buddies, we were all McFatfat's, there was also Fatty McFatfat and Sweaty McFatfat. Our general thought was that when we killed someone it would add that little extra something, shame.
Then I got on to Xbox Live, I decided I needed to change to something a little less loser-esk.
There used to be a show on TV called Space: Above and Beyond. If you watched it you will know that it was basically the most kick ass thing on TV at the time. The characters in the show had military call signs based on playing cards. Ace of Clubs, King of Hearts, Jack of Spades etc. Their commanders callsign was Queen-Six. I thought that was cool, but at the same time I didn't want old dudes thinking I was a chick and hitting on me, so, Kingsix is was. Its been my mainstay ever since. You know how on XBL you can have a little saying? Mine, Watch your Six.
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Jeff A
Canada
Edmonton
Alberta
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So I started looking at things on boardgamegeek.com a while back but it wasn't until about 8 months ago that I really started using the site.
A bit of a back story, I have always enjoyed games, mostly I stuck to video games. Then one eve a friend of mine brought me with him to a friends house to play a game. That game was, what else, Settlers of Catan. I cannot say that I really enjoyed myself. Its not that I hate loosing, its that I hate getting pummeled until my brain is numb. Lets just say the two of them were veterans that did not pull their punches. A few years went by of me getting into some other games, staples like Carcassonne etc. Then I started going to a games night of a friend of mine. There the doors were opened to me on other possibilities. Since I have played a lot of games, and have started my own small collection, however I intend to have a collection that is bright, not large.
Now back to me and BGG, one day I was looking for good space games, we had just played Adastra and Cosmic Encounter, finding them lacking, I stumbled upon Eclipse. I did some designer diary reading and was hooked on its idea. I followed the game weekly, sometimes daily. Jumping ahead about 6 months I was 2 days from receiving my copy.
I thought to myself, self you are going to be rolling dice, something you are not really used to and don't like much. You don't like how some people roll crazy and other people roll to the point that they are almost just sliding the dice gingerly from their hand to the table. Self, you are creative, you can do something about this.
So I knew of the dice tower concept but I find the typical too large, and I thought a plinko type thing would be "funner" So I got to work.
Working at an Engineering office and using Autocad came in handy. I made a design and set to work. I settled on a rectangular box approximately 10" high and 3-1/4"x 3-1/4". I would use nuts and bolts to randomize the dice. That however was about the extent of my plan, I started building not realizing what the finished product would look like.
I had used very thin wood for the walls, later I realized that gluing them would not be possible. So I worked out a system where the bolts themselves would secure the walls together through pressure. At first I was thinking to just let the dice fall through and land on the table below, picking the tower up to reveal the results, but that would limit the amount of dice possible and I had no idea what the future would hold for my tower. A ramp and a door it was then. I put it together and bam, it works perfect!. I added small plastic guard made from a 2L pop bottle to keep the dice from flying out too far.
The test came 3 days later when we played our first game. Everyone was impressed and it really made those battles easy. Eclipse was great by the way.
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