Domenic Ippolito
United States
California
-
In SC, the special victory conditions do not come into play until Phase III. Because of this, the number of event cards in Phases I & II are important. In basic SC, the combined number of cards is (n-1)*10, where n is the number of players. In BW, the number of cards is n*8+2. For a 6-player game, there is no change with 50 cards. For a 2-player game, the change is fairly dramatic: it jumps from 10 cards to 18 cards.
I've played a number of 2-player games over the past couple of weeks, and the change seems somewhat questionable. In SC, we often found that someone was decisively ahead after turn 4, but that the player in the lead would likely meet their victory condition on turn 5, and that Phase III would also come into effect at the same time. So we'd play the one extra turn and finish it out. In BW, we're usually not even into Phase II after turn 4, so we often concede rather than play it out. If we do play it out, the person in the stronger position often wins by elimination victory before meeting the regular victory condition.
I see that adding more cards to the event deck could be important, to balance the normal and special victory conditions, since not having a special victory condition is designed to be a real option in BW. That said, the 80% increase in pre-Phase III cards seems too much. Has anyone else tried playing with fewer cards in the deck? We're considering dropping down to 7 per phase as a compromise, but haven't tried it that way yet.
-
Fede Miguez
Argentina
Capital Federal
-
I say change as you see fit, the deck is probably geared to more players when there is more action blocking and more Event drawing due to it, so Phase 3 comes around turn 6 when the game is ending. I haven't played BW with 2 players but I can see how it can be too big. I mean, in our 4 player game we have turns when there are drawn like 10 Events a turn.
-
Jack Smith
United Kingdom
-
Maybe try changing it to (n-1) *10 which is what the original game was. This will nearly halve your cards for 2 player which means you will almost be at stage 3 when you were previously just going into stage 2.
The change was really to allow players to go further in research and stop the game ending too fast. But as said there is nothing wrong with changing the cards to suit your play style and preference. In our games we tend to do a lot of order blocking so we prefer the new number.
-
|
|
