Tuesday, February 5, 2019

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....

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