Leslie Taylor
United States
Florida
-
Note: I am still unused to writing session reports, and this is from a game a week ago.
I barely got any chances to play this last summer when I bought it. I was showing some friends my game collection, and they asked to play this.
Components wise, this game is a mess. There are so many little things for everyone that I never organized it, so we spent a half hour setting up and organizing while i tried to explain the game.
The rules were simple enough for everyone to get very quickly. We started playing a four player game, with me as these beetle guys who are very tough. I picked them because I figured there would be more player vs. player combat with four players, and my opponents are all magic players who chose the races that get the most cards.
I very quickly realized the problem with playing Magic players in a game with card abilities: they figure out ways to exploit abilities to do awesome stuff (I do not wish to type out an explanation for one of these, but it involved teleportation pants and us all running out of Space Stuff cards). I say exploit, but is clear that general ridiculousness is a design decision. Here is an example: The Arbiters are designed to get points from controlling destroyed locations. They also have the abilities to destroy a location, and spawn on destroyed locations. Naturally this causes everyone with Atomic Bombs to want to bomb each others boards so the guy playing the Arbiters can spawn on their board. However, we all realize that this will be a path to victory for that player because his stated goal at the beginning of the game was "destroy every location." So he could spawn his guys on any of the five or six destroyed places we got on the board, plus he had teleportation pants that let him move his guys onto one spot anywhere once a turn. This caused the game to be about preventing one player from destroying everything, while the rest of us attempted to eek out a win.
I clearly find this game weird and silly, but it's fun. I don't like it as a "game" in the same way A Few Acres of Snow is a game, but as an experience. This is fine because that's the point of board gaming is to have experiences. I wouldn't put a score or number to this game. I already gave it a 7, and that seems right, but it felt like a ten when a friend had four saucers destroyed by a teenage couple with a strength of 0 who had rolled four 6's.
-
Matthias Desbois
Netherlands Amsterdam
-
I guess you caught the essence of the game: fun
Nothing serious, enjoyable moment with lots of laughs
-
Leslie Taylor
United States
Florida
-
The game is great fun, but that can turn into great frustration easily. I had another game tonight where one player went from first place to last in three turns, and could do nothing to stop it. Then another player took a city and had three lucky fights and won the game. I love the luck when it becomes an epic story, but goddamn if it doesn't make the game annoying sometimes.
-
|
|