So, since I last wrote I have played two games of Root (4 and 6 players respectively), and two games of Betrayal Legacy. Rather than do individual posts, I'm going to post some quick hits of my evolving thoughts on each game.
Root
We still have yet to play a game of Root and get all the rules right. On our game last Wednesday night, we thought that you couldn't move into a sympathetic clearing if you had no cards in your hand. This proved to be downright wrong, although in fairness the rulebook was worded poorly. On our game Saturday, I failed to figure out that for the Riverfolk Company there was a difference between "Spend" and "Commit," to my detriment. Part of my problem that game was being underutilized by the Marquise, but a bigger part was handing back warriors that I should have kept to slowly grow my funds. I'm going to have to revise my original position on "ease of learning" vis-a-vis Root. The individual factions all seem fairly straightforward, and the boards explain exactly what you do on your turn. However, at the interplay of the factions lies the problem, and we have to look up FAQs online constantly to resolve certain interactions.
That being said, Root is quickly becoming one of my top 5 games. When it comes together, it's like a beautiful symphony, and we've finally taught enough people in our expanded group that we should start getting really good games where people actually understand what's going on.
The Vagabond won both games, although they benefited from a rules understanding error during our Wednesday night game. I do get the feeling that the Vagabond is very strong with novice players, as it's hard for newer players to understand when they are strong. I increasingly think the proper move is to start attacking the Vagabond once they hit 7-8 items if they have not gone hostile already. In our Saturday game I prompted an attack on the Vagabond, then attacked them myself and forced them into the forest to repair. It didn't make a difference. They still skated into a win, being too strong already to be reined in.
I really want to see the Ranger persona used and the Vagabond take a more combat heavy role, as so far all of our Vagabond players have been hardcore farmers. I love what the Vagabond adds to the game though, and the kind of trollish, free-spirited playstyle combined with the sheer action economy of a late game vagabond appeals to a lot of the players in the group. Playing the Vagabond is a little like leveling up an RPG character, and it's really rewarding to see how strong you've become by the end of the game. Final note on the Vagabond: the "Favor Of.." cards seem extremely strong, but you can only craft them in a two vagabond game or with the Tinker persona, so it seems balanced enough.
I never want to play a game without the Riverfolk Company again. I love the economic and diplomatic aspects of playing them, and the key seems to be shoving your warriors into trouble spots and effectively forcing the other players to utilize your mercenaries or lose their battles. They completely change the game for the Marquise and Eeyrie; the Cult/Alliance to a lesser extent. Having more cards available early is just huge, and I think is a massive buff to the Eeyrie in particular. With the knowledge that there is a difference between spending and committing, I think players will be a little more reluctant to buy from the Riverfolk, but still....cards early are so huge. I love that the Riverfolk can control the flow of the board and structure their prices and deployments to preserve the balance of power and prevent people from running away with the game. They are truly the ultimate diplomatic faction. I will say though, that the fact that they lose half of their funds with a single trading post being destroyed makes them feel very fragile (and easy to rein in). I know for my part I was reluctant to put too many down and tried to keep all of them protected at all times. Despite this, one was destroyed anyway by a vengeful Vagabond with a Crossbow.
The real stand-out of the game on Saturday was the Lizard Cult. Everyone wants to play the cult. Notably they didn't win, indeed they came in last. It's seemingly really hard for the lizards to produce guns and butter, and Dani leaned heavily on guns to terrorize the board with her legions of lizards. I will say though, they feel really oppressive to play against, exacerbated by people not understanding how they work. The first "Sanctify" came as a shock to an unfortunate Fish playing the Eeyrie. When I say oppressive, I don't mean unbalanced, merely that they require opposing players to be very cognizant of their potential and which clearings are likely to be outcast clearings. By the end of our game, people basically understood how the outcast was determined and were playing cards accordingly, a fascinating effect to see in action. Side bar, if Saturday is any indicator, of all the factions the Vagabond and the Cult seem to lend themselves the most to fun roleplay.
Dealing with the Alliance's Outrage (and the Alliance in general) continues to be a major source of frustration for players. That being said, I think we're slowly moving towards a better understanding of how to deal with them, and the need to basically always eliminate their sympathy right away if it's a clearing you remotely care about. For my part, I really want to try the cats at this point. We've been assigning them to new players as one of the easier factions, but I feel there is a lot of untapped potential to make them into powerhouse we have yet to see in action. I also feel compelled because outside the Otters they seem the most well positioned to counter-balance potential runaways.
We have another game planned for this Sunday, and I'm very excited to get to play again. The game doesn't recommend 7 players, but I would really like to try it out at some point.
Betrayal: Legacy
I am mostly still enjoying this game, I say mostly because I have now been the traitor two weeks in a row and having the board teamed up and rules-lawyering against you with a ruleset they more often than not don't understand completely gets really tedious. I also have not gotten a single item yet this campaign and its starting to really annoy me.
Through some combination of skill, timing, and luck, Roger Stone has remaining owner of the house and has now racked up three wins, all the while being a spry 100-something.
The haunts themselves have been pretty fun. For game two I got the Viking Berserker one, which was simplistic but one I appreciated for that. For the third game I got the Cult, and this one by comparison was annoyingly complex. Kader found the Bells shortly after the haunt began and it started a round of trying to figure out what monsters could and could not do - and if they were even movable by the item.
We got the helm! Dani and Amanda wasted no time buying into the cult of the helm and starting a chant of: "HELM, HELM, HELM HELM." It looks like it offers buffs based on placing your family crest of a certain track and filling it out.
I love having inhabitants in the house, it feels like a really appropriate addition to flesh out the game and I like seeing a haunt interact with them.
I will say though, I'm underwhelmed by the legacy aspects of this game thus far. Family heirloom items and ghosts seem to be the extent of it, but I haven't really gotten to interact with the former, nor have they played a major role, and the latter have yet to really interact with anything else in the game thus far. I'm withholding judgement for now, and I'm optimistic that with the addition of the Helm (cue Helm chanting), we'll get more Legacy elements introduced, but for now they seem rather sparse for a Legacy game.
Also, as fun as Roger Stone's run has been, we've all agreed it's time for him to die. We'll see if Kader can keep him alive through game 4. XD
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Legion Game - 2/21/19
I'm slowly stumbling towards having a better understanding of Legion, and on Thursday of last week Hubert and I played. We planned on this being our last game before learning how to use objectives. With this in mind, I constructed something of a classic Total War (TM) army, with a very clear "Hold" component and a very clear "Push" component. I also strove to use all the units I didn't use the first time: which I basically managed with the exception of the T-47.
My list ended up looking something like this (from memory):
AT-RT
- Rotary Cannon
AT-RT
- Laser Cannon
Han Solo
- Duck and Cover
- Emergency Stims
- Esteemed Leader
1.4 FD Laser Cannon
- HQ Uplink
Rebel Troopers
Rebel Troopers
- Z-6 Trooper
- Rebel Trooper
- Targeting Scopes
- Frag Grenade
Rebel Troopers
- Z-6 Trooper
- Rebel Trooper
- Targeting Scopes
- Frag Grenade
Fleet Troopers
- Scatter Gun Trooper
- Fleet Trooper
- Recon Intel
- Blast Grenade
Rebel Commandos
- Duck and Cover
Rebel Commando Strike Team
- Sniper
After hearing lots of good things about them from Daniel and Fish, I wanted to try out the AT-RTs. They would be used to provide covering fire for a main pushing force of Han, generic troopers to take Esteemed Leader hits for him, Fleet Troopers, Rebel Commandos. On the other flank, I planned to anchor things on the laser cannon with my sniper team and two decked out squads of troopers to lay down covering fire and pin anything that advancing towards them.
Hubert brought four decked out squads of stormtroopers, each bearing the legendary DLT-19. Add in 2 squads of snowtroopers with flamethrowers, speeder bikes, and Veers, and you had a Corps heavy Imperial Army with a lot of anti-infantry potential.
Daniel set up the table for us, with a mixture of barricades and Heroscape terrain. We made a house ruling on climbing, and treated all elevation changes below three tiles as difficult terrain for the purposes of movement. I will say though, trying to determine cover in this game continues to frustrate me no end. I desperately want something more like XCOM, with clearly defined cover. Here, it's all open to interpretation, and much of the game involves angling and maneuvering to try and get that critical half of the enemy squad with more than 50% exposed. I just don't know how this is handled in tournament settings, as I could see this easily sparking arguments. Hubert and I at least had Daniel and Fish to play arbiters to this end. At the very least, I think I finally understand how scoping works, and range, although I'll still struggling with figuring out where to place individual squad members when I move squads. On the plus side, we as a group finally figured out how suppression works! To me though, cover just adds a simultaneously critical and tedious layer to the game, and I miss the charming simplicity of finding range in Armada.
Anyway, on to the game!
I more or less got to deploy how I wanted, and I was able to use Change of Plans turn one to return Maximum Firepower to Hubert's hand. My plan from the start was to focus on suppressing the Snow Troopers and prevent them from getting close enough to do real damage. However, my opening rolls were pretty lackluster, and I made the mistake of moving my sniper team to close to be utterly obliterated by his speeders coming in from the left flank.
On the right flank, his speeders closed into range 2 of my Laser Cannon AT-RT, and due to us misunderstanding minimum range, I thought I had to have him out of the range two section of the range ruler to fire upon him. I was able to back up and fire, but this move cost me an aim token.
Turn 2 opened with Hubert scoring a massive hit with maximum firepower on my AT-RT and polishing it off with a rocket. However, I was able to nuke one speeder bike on each flank (mopping up the following one from each duo on t3), all the while finally beginning to start whittling down the snowtroopers approaching on either side. This cut down on the incoming fire, but Hubert's main force of stormtroopers remained untouched.
In the center of the battlefield were my plucky fleet troopers, who endured a barrage of fire but somehow managed to stay alive long enough to panic and run for the rear of the board.
As you can see here, there really isn't so much of a "push" going on with my right so much as a bloody exchange of fire. I do want to give a shout out to my 1.4 FD laser cannon though, providing a base of consistent fire throughout the entire game.
I shoved up Han to get into position to use his Gunslinger and engage the snowtroopers in close range since the flamethrower was ineffective against him.
With the snowtroopers finally dead, my troopers began collapsing from the left, while on the right Hubert came up just short of killing my remaining AT-RT, which would prove to be decisive. With no supporting units left save Veers, I started focusing on the stormtroopers and cut down about half of them as Hubert moved to regroup in the center - the 1.4 FD laser cannon once again doing work.
We ended on turn 6, calculating points lost and determining I had prevailed to the tune of a mere 5 points.
Still, the game was for all intents and purposes a bloodbath, and I feel like I made far more mistakes than I made solid moves. My biggest advantage was an army comp that seemed to work pretty well against Hubert's corps spam.
I continue to love the laser cannon, and units that can take Duck and Cover with Low Profile are super nice since you can effectively ignore the whole cover game and just focus on location on the battlefield. Han is a monster, and I think his deck of cards could be really strong combined with a more supportive leader like Leia who can throw out dodge tokens. I don't like heroes as a concept, but I will say I definitely would have liked to have a second leader this game since Han couldn't do much to help his corps and I had a holding force with no commander morale bubble. As for AT-RT's...eh, I conceptually understand that they are cheap sources of awesome armored firepower, but I wasn't blown away by their performance this game. Granted, a lot of that had to do with Veers.
On the plus side, I feel like I finally understand how to play Legion....mostly. Now to learn how to use Objectives. Hopefully Hubert gets his SSD soon though, as that is the table-top game I am really looking forward to.
Good game Hubert as always!
My list ended up looking something like this (from memory):
AT-RT
- Rotary Cannon
AT-RT
- Laser Cannon
Han Solo
- Duck and Cover
- Emergency Stims
- Esteemed Leader
1.4 FD Laser Cannon
- HQ Uplink
Rebel Troopers
Rebel Troopers
- Z-6 Trooper
- Rebel Trooper
- Targeting Scopes
- Frag Grenade
Rebel Troopers
- Z-6 Trooper
- Rebel Trooper
- Targeting Scopes
- Frag Grenade
Fleet Troopers
- Scatter Gun Trooper
- Fleet Trooper
- Recon Intel
- Blast Grenade
Rebel Commandos
- Duck and Cover
Rebel Commando Strike Team
- Sniper
After hearing lots of good things about them from Daniel and Fish, I wanted to try out the AT-RTs. They would be used to provide covering fire for a main pushing force of Han, generic troopers to take Esteemed Leader hits for him, Fleet Troopers, Rebel Commandos. On the other flank, I planned to anchor things on the laser cannon with my sniper team and two decked out squads of troopers to lay down covering fire and pin anything that advancing towards them.
Hubert brought four decked out squads of stormtroopers, each bearing the legendary DLT-19. Add in 2 squads of snowtroopers with flamethrowers, speeder bikes, and Veers, and you had a Corps heavy Imperial Army with a lot of anti-infantry potential.
Daniel set up the table for us, with a mixture of barricades and Heroscape terrain. We made a house ruling on climbing, and treated all elevation changes below three tiles as difficult terrain for the purposes of movement. I will say though, trying to determine cover in this game continues to frustrate me no end. I desperately want something more like XCOM, with clearly defined cover. Here, it's all open to interpretation, and much of the game involves angling and maneuvering to try and get that critical half of the enemy squad with more than 50% exposed. I just don't know how this is handled in tournament settings, as I could see this easily sparking arguments. Hubert and I at least had Daniel and Fish to play arbiters to this end. At the very least, I think I finally understand how scoping works, and range, although I'll still struggling with figuring out where to place individual squad members when I move squads. On the plus side, we as a group finally figured out how suppression works! To me though, cover just adds a simultaneously critical and tedious layer to the game, and I miss the charming simplicity of finding range in Armada.
Anyway, on to the game!
I more or less got to deploy how I wanted, and I was able to use Change of Plans turn one to return Maximum Firepower to Hubert's hand. My plan from the start was to focus on suppressing the Snow Troopers and prevent them from getting close enough to do real damage. However, my opening rolls were pretty lackluster, and I made the mistake of moving my sniper team to close to be utterly obliterated by his speeders coming in from the left flank.
On the right flank, his speeders closed into range 2 of my Laser Cannon AT-RT, and due to us misunderstanding minimum range, I thought I had to have him out of the range two section of the range ruler to fire upon him. I was able to back up and fire, but this move cost me an aim token.
Turn 2 opened with Hubert scoring a massive hit with maximum firepower on my AT-RT and polishing it off with a rocket. However, I was able to nuke one speeder bike on each flank (mopping up the following one from each duo on t3), all the while finally beginning to start whittling down the snowtroopers approaching on either side. This cut down on the incoming fire, but Hubert's main force of stormtroopers remained untouched.
In the center of the battlefield were my plucky fleet troopers, who endured a barrage of fire but somehow managed to stay alive long enough to panic and run for the rear of the board.
As you can see here, there really isn't so much of a "push" going on with my right so much as a bloody exchange of fire. I do want to give a shout out to my 1.4 FD laser cannon though, providing a base of consistent fire throughout the entire game.
I shoved up Han to get into position to use his Gunslinger and engage the snowtroopers in close range since the flamethrower was ineffective against him.
Han was an absolute monster this game, proving extremely tanky with the combination of Duck and Cover and Low Profile. I flubbed using his Esteemed Leader with my generic trooper squad and forgot about his emergency stims, yet he still lasted forever with clutch rolls from Uncanny Luck. However, the snowtrooper squad on the right was able to bypass him and eliminated by generic trooper in one pillar of flame, a disappointing outcome after I had spent much of the game suppressing it and whittling it down. Han shot up over half a dozen troopers on his perch above though, and eventually Hubert turned all of his free stormtroopers to focus him. At one point he had 8 suppression, and finally died right before he could panic.
On the left, a similar tragedy befell my trooper squads, as the depleted snowtroopers finally became un-suppressed and moved up to nail 4 of my guys with their flamethrower. This was a major flub on my part, as I just didn't focus fire on them hard enough and allowed them to get too close. I left this game with a healthy respect for snowtroopers, as both punched above their weight, killing six opposing troopers each. The one of the far left held off my two decked out trooper squads for half the game and went 1 for 1 in kills before finally going down.
We ended on turn 6, calculating points lost and determining I had prevailed to the tune of a mere 5 points.
Still, the game was for all intents and purposes a bloodbath, and I feel like I made far more mistakes than I made solid moves. My biggest advantage was an army comp that seemed to work pretty well against Hubert's corps spam.
I continue to love the laser cannon, and units that can take Duck and Cover with Low Profile are super nice since you can effectively ignore the whole cover game and just focus on location on the battlefield. Han is a monster, and I think his deck of cards could be really strong combined with a more supportive leader like Leia who can throw out dodge tokens. I don't like heroes as a concept, but I will say I definitely would have liked to have a second leader this game since Han couldn't do much to help his corps and I had a holding force with no commander morale bubble. As for AT-RT's...eh, I conceptually understand that they are cheap sources of awesome armored firepower, but I wasn't blown away by their performance this game. Granted, a lot of that had to do with Veers.
On the plus side, I feel like I finally understand how to play Legion....mostly. Now to learn how to use Objectives. Hopefully Hubert gets his SSD soon though, as that is the table-top game I am really looking forward to.
Good game Hubert as always!
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Betrayal Legacy First Impressions
Well, continuing my trend.
I might have a problem.
In fairness, I didn't buy this one - a friend actually bought a legacy game for a change. I have heard nothing but rave reviews for Betrayal: Legacy thus far, but was always a little bleh on the base game, so I'm coming into this campaign with solidly average expectations.
Last Thursday, we played the prologue game. To that end, very little has happened thus far. But I'll briefly discuss the things that have.
SPOILER WARNING.
I love the conceit of playing the same family over generations. We all had a lot of fun coming up with family and character names. Let's see if I can remember all the ones we made on Thursday.
Danielle: Millicent Enya
Dave: Godbewiye Martel
Wells: ??? Belmont
Kader: Roger Stone
Amanda: Laura ???
Those question marks will need to be filled in at a later date. Kader was able to pretty handily win, getting a critical kill on Laura, picking up her pistol, and then gunning us all down. I love that there was no witch the entire time and the game turning all the players on each other. It was a perfect reveal and I think we all faced the prospect that even if we suspected we were being played, the optimal move was to turn on each other - otherwise you would just die. I'm really intrigued by the idea of family heirloom items and am curious to see where it goes. Thank god the weapons are not eligible for this though. Finally, I'm really curious to see how the ghosts work out, and interested to see where people most often die in the house. I wish the game had been more up front about noting we didn't need to find stairs to the basement in this version of the game, but c'est la vie, we figured it out I suppose. Next game we get to go back to the house and fight a now aged Roger Stone :D
In sum, thus far I'm very intrigued to see where this game goes next. I really didn't think Betrayal would lend itself to a Legacy format, but so far it has piqued my interest and I can't wait for the next game.
I might have a problem.
In fairness, I didn't buy this one - a friend actually bought a legacy game for a change. I have heard nothing but rave reviews for Betrayal: Legacy thus far, but was always a little bleh on the base game, so I'm coming into this campaign with solidly average expectations.
Last Thursday, we played the prologue game. To that end, very little has happened thus far. But I'll briefly discuss the things that have.
SPOILER WARNING.
I love the conceit of playing the same family over generations. We all had a lot of fun coming up with family and character names. Let's see if I can remember all the ones we made on Thursday.
Danielle: Millicent Enya
Dave: Godbewiye Martel
Wells: ??? Belmont
Kader: Roger Stone
Amanda: Laura ???
Those question marks will need to be filled in at a later date. Kader was able to pretty handily win, getting a critical kill on Laura, picking up her pistol, and then gunning us all down. I love that there was no witch the entire time and the game turning all the players on each other. It was a perfect reveal and I think we all faced the prospect that even if we suspected we were being played, the optimal move was to turn on each other - otherwise you would just die. I'm really intrigued by the idea of family heirloom items and am curious to see where it goes. Thank god the weapons are not eligible for this though. Finally, I'm really curious to see how the ghosts work out, and interested to see where people most often die in the house. I wish the game had been more up front about noting we didn't need to find stairs to the basement in this version of the game, but c'est la vie, we figured it out I suppose. Next game we get to go back to the house and fight a now aged Roger Stone :D
In sum, thus far I'm very intrigued to see where this game goes next. I really didn't think Betrayal would lend itself to a Legacy format, but so far it has piqued my interest and I can't wait for the next game.
Charterstone Chronicle, Game 8
Well, I know how Daniel gets all his points now, and I'm mad. No, not about him having Booker (worth 5-8 points per game) or landing both of his friends for ungodly combos of gold and VP Nor his prioritization of the 2VP per income building, or recognition that scrolls are by far the best treasure in the game. No, it's that damn persona that gives him a VP for putting a minion down. I estimate that thing is worth .5 VP per turn, and just feels incredibly strong. I think we all realized last game that having multiple personas out simultaneously was incredibly strong and all made an effort to start sinking glory into it. Well, Daniel got there this game and leveraging those personas combined with the above-mentioned factors resulted in him having another 100+ finish.
Just like last game, I found myself in something of a catch-22. We determined last game that my minion recruitment income building was just not very good on its own. But, this game, Daniel broke out his Arena, which took my building from meh to amazing. However, to use it, I had to weigh the costs and benefits of giving Daniel a free advancement card pickup versus the value of the gold and VP to me. I was generally able to wait until it was open to do it without paying him, but still funneled a couple cards into his hand to the detriment of the entire table (especially considering one of them was a scroll).
I had a better game than before, finishing 2nd right ahead of Megan, and knocking out a couple of personas, a Charterstone, alongside building one of my 20 point buildings. It just wasn't enough and I finished 3 glory below Daniel (annoyingly at 78 points and unable to get the last two to make it to 80). It hardly matters at this point though, the campaign winner (and almost certainly second place) are decided and there is little that can be done about it. This is probably going to end up being my second big critique of Charterstone (barring some new mechanic in the next game or two). The game is a snowball game that rewards making the right choices early. In this case, the correct choice was the Charterstone new boxes for as many personas as quickly as possible. Daniel played the winning strategy and is reaping dividends for it now, but its simply depressing that no matter how well anyone else does (me and Caralee had exceptionally good games), we cannot equal his point totals at this stage. His snowball started too early and its now uncatchable.
I can't believe I'm about to say something positive about Seafall, but this is a moment where I realize Seafall did something much better than Charterstone. Legacy games all suffer from the possibility of repeated self-reinforcing wins, making the end of the campaign a foregone conclusion (and less fun for the last place players especially). To that end, Rob Daviau realized the need to include a better rubber-banding mechanic in Seafall than in Risk: Legacy. It was a punishingly annoying rubber-banding mechanic, but it allowed for the three last place players to interact with the leading players and take meaningful steps to arrest their progress. In Charterstone the rubber-banding is minimal (the free capacity and the Ghost for Amanda), and because of its Euro-style roots, there is basically no way to interfere with another player's progress. That was the best aspect of game 8's temporary rule, because it finally made the stakes of using another player's building higher. In an average game though, the most meaningful decisions to be made regarding another player are one or more of the following:
1. Is bumping their worker and giving them that advantage worth the immediate payoff to me?
2. Is using a building in their charter with a minion on it worth the immediate payoff to me?
3. Is taking the advancement card/reputation track placement/cloud port placement worth it for the denial value?
At the end of the day, Charterstone feels like 6 games of solitaire. Something I think works well for about the first 5-7 games, but rapidly grows annoying as the campaign reaches its conclusion. Machi Koro is a good example of a Euro-style game that still retains meaningful interaction between players, and this game desperately needs something akin to MK's Restaurants and Business Centers. Dani and I are very frustrated that after nearly 20 hours sunk into the game all we can do is gamely play out the last 10 or so with little possibility of affecting the outcome. I also firmly believe that all Charters were not created equal (Purple in particular feels lackluster), but I cannot firmly say that yet and will save that speculation for another day.
This was the first game that saw extensive Cloud Port usage, which made sense as Megan and Daniel were largely out of Charterstones to unlock and buildings to build (well, Daniel at least, Megan is trying to build everyone's 20 point buildings just for denial). This was reinforced by the glut of gold we now have in the game, with multiple players having huge gold reserves by the conclusion of the match that they dumped into the cloud port. The economy of the game now feels gold abundant and reputation/resource comparatively scarce. This continues to make the Perfumery simply one of the best buildings in the game.
I am going to have to reassess my previous ranking of minions, based on a clarification this time. The way we play, the minion effect triggers before the building's cost. The effect of this is that you can place a golem or butler to immediately gain what you need to activate a building and then use it. This is extremely strong, and makes both of them quite a bit more powerful than I thought. Indeed, I'm actually a little hard pressed to rank them now. All I can say with certainty is that robots are the best and ghosts are the worst. The order from there probably being golems, chefs, butlers, then cats. Cats honestly have been the most underwhelming for me thus far, the extra VP just doesn't compare more often than not to the number of VP you can leverage from the other benefits.
Amanda landed this game's guidepost by a pretty large margin. However we had not cleared all the peril off and invoked the king's wrath. We now have....... a candle.....? And whoever's turn it's on when it goes out (or gets blown out?) will suffer some unknown consequence? It's the most gimmicky thing I have ever seen (outside Seafall's dar light flashlight) and I love it.
As a final note, I unlocked a fun persona for next game: The Gambler. I roll a dice every turn and it the side shown matches the charter I just placed a worker in I get 2 VP. It's not as good as it sounds, it works out to be somewhere in the neighborhood of .25-.33 VP per tun. But, there is some swingy potential, and I will get to have an additional persona out next time, so I can just spam roll dice every turn in addition to my main persona and hope for luck (or at least to produce my expected point outcome). Caralee built the Shoemaker this game, so I'm really interested to see if people try to get a large number of their personas out this game. It sounds strong, but also like a lot to keep track of....
Just like last game, I found myself in something of a catch-22. We determined last game that my minion recruitment income building was just not very good on its own. But, this game, Daniel broke out his Arena, which took my building from meh to amazing. However, to use it, I had to weigh the costs and benefits of giving Daniel a free advancement card pickup versus the value of the gold and VP to me. I was generally able to wait until it was open to do it without paying him, but still funneled a couple cards into his hand to the detriment of the entire table (especially considering one of them was a scroll).
I had a better game than before, finishing 2nd right ahead of Megan, and knocking out a couple of personas, a Charterstone, alongside building one of my 20 point buildings. It just wasn't enough and I finished 3 glory below Daniel (annoyingly at 78 points and unable to get the last two to make it to 80). It hardly matters at this point though, the campaign winner (and almost certainly second place) are decided and there is little that can be done about it. This is probably going to end up being my second big critique of Charterstone (barring some new mechanic in the next game or two). The game is a snowball game that rewards making the right choices early. In this case, the correct choice was the Charterstone new boxes for as many personas as quickly as possible. Daniel played the winning strategy and is reaping dividends for it now, but its simply depressing that no matter how well anyone else does (me and Caralee had exceptionally good games), we cannot equal his point totals at this stage. His snowball started too early and its now uncatchable.
I can't believe I'm about to say something positive about Seafall, but this is a moment where I realize Seafall did something much better than Charterstone. Legacy games all suffer from the possibility of repeated self-reinforcing wins, making the end of the campaign a foregone conclusion (and less fun for the last place players especially). To that end, Rob Daviau realized the need to include a better rubber-banding mechanic in Seafall than in Risk: Legacy. It was a punishingly annoying rubber-banding mechanic, but it allowed for the three last place players to interact with the leading players and take meaningful steps to arrest their progress. In Charterstone the rubber-banding is minimal (the free capacity and the Ghost for Amanda), and because of its Euro-style roots, there is basically no way to interfere with another player's progress. That was the best aspect of game 8's temporary rule, because it finally made the stakes of using another player's building higher. In an average game though, the most meaningful decisions to be made regarding another player are one or more of the following:
1. Is bumping their worker and giving them that advantage worth the immediate payoff to me?
2. Is using a building in their charter with a minion on it worth the immediate payoff to me?
3. Is taking the advancement card/reputation track placement/cloud port placement worth it for the denial value?
At the end of the day, Charterstone feels like 6 games of solitaire. Something I think works well for about the first 5-7 games, but rapidly grows annoying as the campaign reaches its conclusion. Machi Koro is a good example of a Euro-style game that still retains meaningful interaction between players, and this game desperately needs something akin to MK's Restaurants and Business Centers. Dani and I are very frustrated that after nearly 20 hours sunk into the game all we can do is gamely play out the last 10 or so with little possibility of affecting the outcome. I also firmly believe that all Charters were not created equal (Purple in particular feels lackluster), but I cannot firmly say that yet and will save that speculation for another day.
This was the first game that saw extensive Cloud Port usage, which made sense as Megan and Daniel were largely out of Charterstones to unlock and buildings to build (well, Daniel at least, Megan is trying to build everyone's 20 point buildings just for denial). This was reinforced by the glut of gold we now have in the game, with multiple players having huge gold reserves by the conclusion of the match that they dumped into the cloud port. The economy of the game now feels gold abundant and reputation/resource comparatively scarce. This continues to make the Perfumery simply one of the best buildings in the game.
I am going to have to reassess my previous ranking of minions, based on a clarification this time. The way we play, the minion effect triggers before the building's cost. The effect of this is that you can place a golem or butler to immediately gain what you need to activate a building and then use it. This is extremely strong, and makes both of them quite a bit more powerful than I thought. Indeed, I'm actually a little hard pressed to rank them now. All I can say with certainty is that robots are the best and ghosts are the worst. The order from there probably being golems, chefs, butlers, then cats. Cats honestly have been the most underwhelming for me thus far, the extra VP just doesn't compare more often than not to the number of VP you can leverage from the other benefits.
Amanda landed this game's guidepost by a pretty large margin. However we had not cleared all the peril off and invoked the king's wrath. We now have....... a candle.....? And whoever's turn it's on when it goes out (or gets blown out?) will suffer some unknown consequence? It's the most gimmicky thing I have ever seen (outside Seafall's dar light flashlight) and I love it.
As a final note, I unlocked a fun persona for next game: The Gambler. I roll a dice every turn and it the side shown matches the charter I just placed a worker in I get 2 VP. It's not as good as it sounds, it works out to be somewhere in the neighborhood of .25-.33 VP per tun. But, there is some swingy potential, and I will get to have an additional persona out next time, so I can just spam roll dice every turn in addition to my main persona and hope for luck (or at least to produce my expected point outcome). Caralee built the Shoemaker this game, so I'm really interested to see if people try to get a large number of their personas out this game. It sounds strong, but also like a lot to keep track of....
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