In S. J. Simon’s book, “Why you lose at Bridge” he invents a character “Futile Willy.” Futile Willy isn’t bad (per se) but his defining feature is making bidding decisions that have limited rewards, but huge risks. Playing in a two session event with Roxie, our opponents are mostly what I deem “experienced novices” (playing for years, know a bit of bidding, but have not progressed far) mixed with intermediates. Perhaps two pairs are of similar caliber.

There are many ways to judge experience; one is knowing when to compete. And when not to compete.

Experts love …. LOVE … to get in the bidding, but also know when to shut up.

Example #1

I pick up something like xx AJxx Kxx JTxx and it goes 1D by Partner and 1S on my right.

I make a (negative) double, LHO passes, Partner bids 2C and RHO rebids two spades.

My negative double only guaranteed hearts, not clubs (I have five hearts with a hand too weak to bid); I actually have four clubs. So (despite having no extra values) a raise is reasonable because a) you never want to let them play at the two level unless they are in a misfit¹ and b) my hand is mostly “working”. The King of diamonds is probably golden given that partner has 8 or more minor cards, aces are always nice. (If I had points in spades, I’d be much more content to defend).

LHO hems and haws and then bids 3 Spades. Roxie and I are done, and I am happy to have an easy safe lead of the jack of clubs. (I could lead a diamond, to be sure, but it’s matchpoints).

The final auction

LHO CHO RHO Me
     1D  1S X
  P  2C  2S 3C
 3S  All Pass

Dummy is a massive surprise. Sure she has two spades, but also five clubs (Q9xxx)! Passing gets her an above average board, doubling gets a likely top and her actual bid gives her a terrible board. Afterwards neither partner and I could believe it.

Example #2

Later on I pick up a regular 1NT opening with something like S: Qx H: KJx D: KJxx C: AJxx.

Roxie responds 2 Hearts (a Jacoby Transfer, indicating spades) but before I bid RHO doubles (showing good hearts).

Roxie and I haven’t discussed it (at least — I’m not sure we have) but typically I play that accepting the transfer over a double confirms three (or more) in that suit. With only two spades I can pass, and partner can redouble to “re-transfer” or bid spades herself. (It probably doesn’t matter on this hand, but if she had the king of hearts instead of me…).

So I pass. Roxie then bids …. 4NT.

This is a quantitative slam try. I am at a minimum, so normally I’d pass … but my hearts are well placed. If RHO has AQxxx of hearts, I have two heart tricks, so my KJx of hearts is worth closer to six or seven points instead of four². Therefore, I bid six NT.

I get a surprise when Roxie shows up with Ax of Hearts. Was RHO doubling on Queen – sixth? Nope, just Qxxxx.

But in any case there is nothing to the play³ because LHO did not find the killing lead and instead led the suit partner had asked him to lead. Doubling on AQxxx and out is reasonable … you tell your partner what to lead. There’s a risk of getting redoubled (with KJTx or so behind you). but its an acceptable risk.

But with just a queen empty suit, the odds of a redouble (or other “bad luck” as in this hand) are high and do you really want partner to go out of his way to lead a heart?

Example #3

The most egregious example.

I pick up a strong NT, but I’m third to bid. Partner opens one club.

My hand is flat (4324) so the only issues are: A) do we have a major fit and B), does partner have extras.

I bid 1 Spade and partner rebids 1 NT. So the answers are A) No and B) No, therefore I’m bidding 3NT.

Except my RHO (who couldn’t bid over 1 Club) has doubled. They are vulnerable, we are not. 3NT is probably +400 to +460. We can get much, much more by defending. So, redouble.

Despite a slip up on our part, we get +500 easily for what should be a top (except that someone bid a hopeless slam and was allowed to make it). Without the slipup we easily beat the mere +990 for the non-vulnerable slam. What was RHO’s double? A semi-balanced ten count, after opener had fully described her hand. It would be one thing to double if I passed 1NT … then there would be an expectation points were (roughly) evenly divided.

In this case the double did nothing but offer me a fielder’s choice.

With us encountering three Futile Willys (or Wilhelminas), our mistakes merely turn tops into “almost tops”, so it’s a highly successful day.

1. And while they might be, nothing about my hand suggests so. Even if dummy has no spades, RHO’s spades are probably fine playing opposite a stiff, and partner’s spades and underneath them. ︎
2. KJx opposite xx is averages 1 trick (if honors are split) and gets 2 tricks 24% of the time and 0 tricks 24% of the time (when honors aren’t). So if KJx with no knowledge is one 4 points, KJx expecting both honors onside is worth more. (And 24% instead of 25% due to the Law of Vacant Spaces, which Wikipedia calls “Vacant Places” but OK) ︎
3. In fact, I missed a small risk-free line to make the overtrick; but it didn’t matter, because everyone else passed 4NT (assuming their partners even bid it). ︎

This video on the attempted hacking of XZ (and therefore, all of Linux and most of the Internet) is great, not only for the story but for the clear/concise descriptions of key exchange, public key encryption and compression work¹. (And I wasn’t aware of some of the other aspects, like audit hooks).

How far back can you understand English? A story where the language jumps 100 back every few paragraphs.

Play NetHack … in Factorio.

Why water infrastructure is so hard to get right, and the noble efforts of Ek Son Chan to fix it in Phnom Pen, including facing down an Army general and his body guards while personally installing a water meter on the general’s house.

That famous shot of Bigfoot has finally been exposed as a hoax (according to a new documentary).

Benjamin Franklin apparently coined many common terms related to electricity, which makes a lot of sense in hindsight.

Brick Technology (a video channel of Lego builds) programs cars to act like (simple) humans or robots and then sees how changes jam traffic.

I might have bought a Vizio TV in the past, before they required you to have a WalMart account.

A Crossword from Wei-Hwa Huang.

1. Because of my background was aware of some of them, but even so, well done. ︎

I’ve now played High Frontier, 3rd Edition, High Frontier 4 All and I owned Rocket Flight (aka Lords of the High Frontier). I’ve never played 2nd Edition, but as far as I know, there was no second edition, but I’m sure a comment will correct me. I’ve gone from “indifferent” to “suggest” back to “indifferent” and I’m back to “suggest.”

Not a blanket suggest …. I see a yearly game that involves all of the expansions¹ and that 10 hour behemoth is not for me. High Frontier has a snowball growth. The first exo-factories give you better patents (hopefully) which means your second rocket has first opportunity to explore and exploit key sites.

This may not be true of the most experienced players (several of which are in that yearly game). but it’s certainly true at my level and in one of my three games so far this year I busted site after site in my first hour, squandering my early launch advantage. If I had rolled well, though, I would have snowballed in a positive way. Like many of Phil Eklund games, HF is more simulation than game, with scoring tacked on. That sounds too harsh — the scoring scheme is actually reasonable. Quite often the ‘winner’ is the person that objective observers would say “Yeah, that space agency did the best.” But me personally, when I’m getting snowballed, it’s can be a bit of a drag. Three hours is often enough to determine that.

There is also the brain-burn factor. High Frontier isn’t as complex as Magic Realm, although the fact that its in the same conversation is telling. No, High Frontier’s brain burn is the paradox of choice. In the Realm, you start of with a world where you are going to wander around for a bit … the great treasures could be anywhere. Sure if you are hunting dragons you will have some preferred destinations, but the early game is exploration. In space, we’ve got decades of exploration done before the first mission launches. The map is known, and cosmically complex.

Even ignoring anything past the asteroid belt², your first mission has plenty of options limited by hydration, distance in burns and/or time, landing thrust …. and also preferences relating to spectral type and risk management. Then you have to calculate fuel, and High Frontier’s ingenious implementation of Tsiolkovsky’s rocket equation take some time to think about. Even initiates with a few games under their belt (such as myself) have to ponder mission planning.

After about three hours, I’m tired.

That being said, I’d like to learn the Bernal and TW thruster rules (some modules in HF4), so I watched the heavy cardboard rules video (and am watching the playthrough) and I’ve set up a solo game (of HF3) which I might play off and on. A solo game has the “I can get up and come back to it tomorrow” advantage.

So, High Frontier is back into the suggest rating. I’ve re-caught that particular bug.

1. Possibly including expansions still under development ︎
2. Possibly a mistake, and I also typically ignore Mercury and Venus (a definite mistake) ︎

Also thoughts on complexity and transparency in game design

GMT’s Mr. President has a free demo on steam this week, and I tried it for an hour.

The video game just moderates the board game. The graphics are the image of the board and counters. (I’m fine with that). Dialogs present your options (and the DRMs). There are certainly rules behind the surface, but it was enough to at least go through the motions and play. I assume its just as overwhelming as the board game. It did make me at least go the GMT page for the game and download the how to play booklet and governing manual and start reading them. I probably should make either the board game or videogame an auto-buy … much cheaper than bowling … but I’m torn on which, because:

There is more than a whiff of Magic Realm’s complexity; but Mr. President’s complexity is more opaque and hidden … once you know the Realm’s combat system you can look at your character and the monster’s counter and decide if the battle is automatic (either way) or how much luck it will take. To analyze (say) China’s position means having an idea of what the various charts in China’s booklet are, as well as the deck of event cards, etc.

I would love — love — more games that emulated Magic Realm’s entangled systems (but with understandable rules). Mr. President’s theme deserves it; this tries to deliver, but I feel that the volume of details buried in those 8 pamphlets means the systems won’t feel connected: that is difficult to tell from the demo.

More details of the demo:

• It plays part of a year, but does appear random as to what rolls/events are made (I played the demo and then redid it, and different crisis events showed up).
• Entire subsystems are marked as “Not yet available” so it’s tough to judge those. The demo mostly shows you how to use the main “You get X actions of these types” and “Now stuff happens.” It is certainly enough to grok the basics.
• The UI is reasonable in showing the actions and then letting you pop one open and it will tell you the restrictions, Die Roll Modifiers (based on your current game state), and results, along with the “Take Action” button (or “Take action and buy a DRM.”)
• The UI is a not great at showing the results, simply moving the counter and not really highlighting it. I mean, it shows it, but if you aren’t looking at the right part of the screen it can be hard to miss. I’ve submitted some feedback to the designers.
• I’d like the ability to examine a detailed log that explains step-by-step every decision, die roll, modifier, etc.¹
• Amusingly (to me), the game uses the unreal engine when — as near as I can tell — the entire graphics are just the board, the counters, and a few die rolls and “flashing highlight” gifs.²

What themes deserve a MagicRealm type “highly entangled” system?

I’ve actually been thinking about this for a few years, but Mr. President re-ignited the concern.

• I personally think a Jane Austen “The family wants to marry off their daughter” game would work well. (What is more complex than human relations?) Combining it with a ridiculously complex rule-set is probably not a best-seller. (Imagine that “The Daughter” wants to marry for love, “The Father” wants a wealthy son, “The bitter aunt” wants to thwart a happy marriage, etc….)
• Various employees of a corporation both running it and trying to ascend. (John Company already does this).
• Italy City/States Communi period.
• Taking a page from Mr. President, various congressional factions trying to produce legislation (while of course maintaining/consolidating power).

I’m sure there are plenty more.

1. Ideally configurable to things like ‘Show DRMs’ or ‘Not’ but even the everything log would be appreciated. ︎
2. I’m assuming there’s some reason I don’t know about, like handling a bunch of details automatically (just like a JVM lets you mostly ignore the system you are on). ︎

Note – Updated 1/31 in multiple places.

I got to play Dragon’s Down (thanks R___!). Since I had already played Magic Realm, we didn’t bother with the rules — I just asked whenever something seemed relevant. (At least once in the early game we forgot the ‘change tactics roll’ but probably were mostly right. So I may have gotten a few minor things wrong).

A list of rules differences I noticed (only for my reference and those that know Magic Realm):

• Setup is much, much faster. Shuffle up and deal (apart from building the map).
• You don’t pre-plan moves — Decide as you go.
• There are types of terrain and you can play a bigger or smaller map depending on how many terrain types you include.
• Combat is similar, but simpler:
  • No Chits like “Move H5*”, simply cubes.
  • No Light, Medium, Heavy or Tremendous anything at all.
  • Weapons do not have Alerted or Unalerted side. (The alerting action simply lets you spend one more cube each round of combat).
  • No Rock/Paper/Scissors lining up (which also means if you get hit, you can always choose to take the hit on your helmet, breastplate or whatever)
  • Hits resolve by attack speed (with reach as a tiebreaker) all the time, not just round 2+.
  • If attack speed better than defense speed, auto hit, so you can still undercutting. If not you roll the dice (your odds are better if your speed is equal, can still hit even if much slower).
  • There are autokills, but when you wounded you fatigue one cube. Monsters can be wounded and down over multiple rounds.
  • I can’t actually find the “Combat ends after two boring rounds” rule in Dragon’s Down, but I did hear that it exists.
• Resting is simplified, as the Active/Fatigued/Wounded has simplified to Active/Wounded (and the asterisk system is gone).
• Hiding is free. You can improve your hiding by spending one action “sneaking,” but even if you don’t you may get lucky and be hidden at the start of the combat. (If you snuck you are much more likely to start hidden).
  • You can do things that would automatically unhide you in MR (after the first round of combat) but get a chance to stay hidden here.
  • During combat if Hidden you can only ambush with a ranged attack or spell.
  • You can alternately “make noise” to cause an additional encounter roll for that hex.
• If you fail a search roll and search again the same turn, you can keep the die that succeeded (if any).
• Monsters only move (or are summoned) after all players move, not after every player.
  • There are no chits to summon monsters, each hex shows up to two monsters that might show up if the correct symbol is rolled on the encounter dice. (There are two sets of encounter dice).
  • Monsters do not have an “order” like for goblins, the other die in each set shows a number (and some monsters total them), but if you get 3 goblins they dont have an order (like in MR) but you shuffle all and draw 3 at random.
• No charts, each type of die roll uses two special dice (but as always, take the worst). 8? 12? different pairs of dice.
• Trading is simplified, you do not have Friendly/Neutral/Unfriendly with any groups
• You can enchant any tile to any color (and there are more colors of magic)
• A DnD like item system. You have two hands for “hand” slots, one chest slot, one head slot, three random stuff slots, etc.
• The first time anyone steps on a hex, you flip up the chits (in the middle of movement) and may add sites or visitors or get a random item as an explore bonus.
• There are many missions and most dwellings let you simply take one. They are easier to fulfill and no penalty for not.
• There are many (many) more items (small and large), and probably more spells.
• There is no concept of asterisk/exertion. You can spend 5 cubes per round of combat with no exertion, you can’t spend six cubes. So chit/cube management is not much of a thing¹.
• You don’t have to pre-plan your VPs. You get VPs in much the same way (Great Treasures, Fame, Learning spells and missions, which as I mentioned are more common) and everyone can do everything, I think.
• Annoyingly much of the identical things now have different names, even when unchanged. Tell me “Action Phase and Battle Phase” are better than “Day and Night,” with the added bonus that the you know when intermediate phases are by their names (“Birdsong, Evening, Midnight.”)
• A few minor things²

Dragon’s Down does have the “Play more like Magic Realm” as a set of optional rules that include:

• First round attacks resolve by reach
• Monsters must be killed in one shot
• Luring

Observations

Between not having to pre-plot your movement, not having monsters move after each player, and reduced fatigue — Dragon’s Down is much more forgiving. One exception might be the encounter roll. You have less variety because you don’t have noise chits, but since you effectively make two encounter rolls and don’t know the number that will show up, it might be harder (at lower player counts).

I nearly died (or at least would have taken some wounds) when I got 3 Juvenile³ Dragons at once (max) on the same turn as an Adult one. Despite not having taken the hide action, I lucked into being hidden (25%).

The first round still resolving in speed order (and tiebreaking on reach, instead of vice versa) simplifies combat, but that coupled with being able to spend cubes as I wanted instead of being limited to chit speeds reduced the decision making space in combat.

Either I killed the creature, or I hid/evaded. Dragon’s Down got rid of the Thrust/Swing/Smash vs Charge/Dodge/Duck and only kept undercutting⁴. Monsters have an attack speed and defend speed (plus reach), and those numbers are all basically 0-4 (and mostly 1-3). Magic Realm’s combat was always considered a weakness because some fights are automatic/impossible, this is even less interesting.

I always forced an undercut to avoid rolling (which I guess happens on ties? Update — If you don’t undercut you roll the dice and have improved odds of hitting on ties, but can always hit). Once I spent a potion to guarantee undercutting. That may have just been my character and getting a lucky item or two.

Magic Realm’s combat gets interesting in the “what do you fatigue now?” situation. Never mattered. I fatigued a cube when I cast one cool combat spell (‘tentacles’), and then never rested for it again (I was not primarily a magic user). I did not ever really do a 1 vs Many or Many v many attack (I did a 1 on 2 but used an attack while hidden to auto kill and then did a 1-on-1 which was practically an auto kill), so perhaps those have depths.

Not having to declare your VP intents is also more forgiving, but honestly that part of Magic Realm didn’t feel great. The missions are random but doable and probably like the Book of Missions fan expansion to MR (I’ve never played). I liked the missions, they give you something acheivable.

The game is still complicated, but this moves faster and has less of that “You have nothing to do” (or “You searched and failed four times.”) Search (and loot) rolls have been made a bit easier with the special dice not being as punishing⁵

But without the weight system, anyone can kind of do anything. Sure, that could always happen in the Realm, but the Wood Girl needed to get the Boots of Striding (to carry everything) and the Gauntlets to wield that weapon before turning into the White Knight. Here, if you can get the armor, you can put it on. That changes the game from “If the Wood’s Girl does this, it’s epic!” to something that could easily happen every 2nd time the Wood’s Girl tries. But maybe because there are more items, it might be that there are other combos that are vanishingly rare (just because the deck is so big).

(Update — some treasures require the owner “have that many red cubes” so it does exist in some ways). It didn’t feel like it, because all the items felt “samey” (in the sense that they made a number go up or granted you an extra cube), and not a state change (like upping your strength from Light to Tremendous in Magic Realm).

The “Race + Class” thing isn’t as bland as I expected: because apart from adding together the stats each races and class does have one special “break the rules” advantage each (a human gets an extra action if they are in a dwelling and my runesword character could treat my single magic cube as wild). Still, this “Mix and Match” special ability isn’t as cool as the Realm’s characters.

Dragon’s Down isn’t bad. It’s clearly Magic Realm adjacent but its one of those cases where changing a few rules completely changes the flavor.

Here’s your SAT analogy — Dragons Down : Magic Realm :: Federation Commander : SFB.

Federation Commander and SFB are both starship combat games, but SFB has bluffing and tension (because of the hidden energy allocation and pre-plotted speed changes). Fed Comm isn’t bad — it does many things much better than SFB.

Dragon’s Down can setup and play a full (2p) game in 2.5 hours or less. It still can be lethal. It scratches the same itch, while not quite feeling as “alive” as the ream. I want to play again. There are so many items and spells that the game might really have surprises, but from a quick glance every item felt like just … better stats, better cubes. I never saw anything where “Oh, the Barbarian can do this, but the Witch never could, or vice versa.” (But again, I was a warrior with a wild magic cube, so I could do quite a bit).

I might even get a copy, if I saw one.

Ironically — part of why Dragon’s Down is simpler is that it hasn’t implemented parts of Magic Realm, like Horses or Hiring Natives, and that once it gets up there, it will be as complex or more! There is a room for a “less complex, more forgiving” Magic Realm in this world.

I think you could play Dragon’s Down with programmed movement, original rules hiding and encounter/blocking and even put in the entire Rock/Paper/Scissors combat system. You could also say “If you use your maximum number of cubes in a round, fatigue a cube.” I’d have to think about this more, and probably BGG has threads on this, but I couldn’t find one.

Also, it must be stated that Dragon’s Down appears to be an excellent introduction to Magic Realm. I suspect a new “If you know DD, here’s how to play M.R.” rulebook would be concise and quite useful. I’m not going to write it.

What would I steal into Magic Realm:

I mean, you could ditch the programmed movement and simplify the encounters, but I think that’s a bit much.

• I’d definitely play with the “If you search again the same day after failing you can keep a good die between rolls” rule (not across turns). This would be “seek/location” not loot.
• Losing only 1 phase for being undergound (instead of 2) is interesting (you’d probably have to ban the Dwarf, then).
• Switching to the better looting table (where 6 becomes 0 and 0 is “pick”) is also possible (or you could use the first rule as well).
• The “First hero to step on a tile might get an item or treasure….” is fun. I mean, it’s a random bonus, but it’s nice. But with the components of Magic Realm, tough to steal/add. You could make new chits and have them give +Fame, Gold or Rep. Probably too minor to bother.
• I need to look at the Book of Missions … more missions is more fun.

So Dragon’s Down is Suggest (for now), while Magic Realm is “Enthusiastic” (but requires a lot of time to setup). I must admit I’m tempted to spring for a copy … Magic Realm is impossible to play in a few hours at a random game night.

Update 1/31 — Read the combat rules, updated above.

Update 2/2 — Someone on BGG asked for the above list but from the “How does Magic Realm change Dragon’s Down” perspective. I answered there.

1. To clarify — You still have to decide “which” to use, but don’t have to worry about fatigue over multiple rounds slowly restricting your choices. Wounds — of course — still do that. ︎
2. You only lose one action in a cave, you can flee out either way from combat, not just from whence you came, there are some chits that let you teleport between them (jump gates); a few other things I don’t remember. ︎
3. Equivalent probably to M.R.’s weakest dragons ︎
4. A random die roll probably gives similar odds to the lining up stuff. ︎
5. For example, the search die is not 1..6, but 0..5 with zero being “pick one of the best 3” ︎

As a big fan of High Frontier, one of my regrets for this years GoF is that I didn’t get to try Leaving Earth. (And in a teeth-gnashing development, Mrs. Tao played it and liked it!) Well, we had a game day last weekend, and one of our coworkers owns that as one of the games in a tiny collection (he’s more a rocketry history enthusiast). So a copy arrived!

I missed that game, too.

But we borrowed his copy and I read the rules. There’s much to like:

• The genre feels right. I could do without the entire chance that you get to Phobos and say “That’s no moon!” but hey — the 50s were days of wonder (from a Space Race perspective). And the bureaucratic nature of the space agencies …. lovely. Losing unspent budget is one of the more delicious rules I’ve encountered0.
• Graphically beautiful. ‘Nuff said.
• Like High Frontier, Leaving Earth models fighting Tsiolkovsky’s rocket equation well. There is math (that’s unavoidable) but its understandable. To run a big mission you have to expend a lot of rockets and you need stages.
• Fun research rules: For each tech you get you build a deck of three cards (without looking). Whenever you use the tech shuffle up and flip one an get a success or failure (major or minor). Rockets that fail may not fire (minor failure) or have a rapid unscheduled disassembly (major). If you drew a bad card, you can get rid of it for $5 ($25 is your yearly budget). If you drew a good card you can get rid of it for $10! Why do that…. well, if you never get rid of it, can you really be sure your rocket won’t fail when it’s the final stage of a Mars probe … where nobody is around to fix it (or after you’ve spent 5 stages getting it there?) — If your deck only has one success card, you get rid of it for free. Between $10-$25 (plus costs for parts expended in testing) you can prove a technology. Or you can just keep using it and slowly gaining confidence that the deck is all successes (but never knowing for sure). It’s a risk/reward.
• More risk/reward. Send an astronaut on a mission or not? They aren’t cheap to train (thematically correct that they aren’t free … but let’s be real, it costs millions of dollars to train them, not 20% of NASA’s yearly budget) but they all have benefits (converting specific major failures to minor failures, for example) …. but if they die that’s negative VP.
• As for the math …. The rules provide good example missions, including one involving leaving stuff behind in orbits and re-joining with it (which requires a technology). Leaving Earth’s (LE) mechanisms differ from High Frontier’s (HF), but like synchronous orbits you arrive in the same place.

So I setup a solo game and worked through an easy mission (winning) then a harder set of missions (failing).

And here’s where I started to feel the big difference. In HF, you can play a variety of missions and rules. The scenario may guide you, but it may not. In LE the missions change the game in the sense of “Well, the superpowers have decided that sending a probe to Mars is more important than a manned lunar mission, so let’s do that, boys!” but you are always working from the same (common) set of parts. Your Juno/Atlas/Soyuz/Saturn rockets stay the same from game to game.

HF forces you down different paths. A game where you build a solar sail driven raygun robonaut will naturally play out differently than your E-M buggy. It drives your mission and paths. More subtly, you can tweak your fueling and time vs fuel costs to  a much greater extent. LE does have this by combining rocket stages, but even by the third game this felt somewhat repetitive and while looking up a rules question  I stumbled on a “Book of Missions” that just laid out “Well for this mission the following stages are optimal.” (I didn’t read it, but just glanced at it).

I then tried two multiplayer games (with the TaoLing). Tense games. But I’m also less enthusiastic than I was pre-rule reading.

Firstly, a minor launch failure on your first rocket is wonderful. You chuck it for $5 and the minor failure (unlike success or major failure) does not use up the rocket. So, you are ahead of someone who has a success but pays $10 to thin out their deck to prove it. (You are up $5 and a rocket). This — coupled with the paranoia of even after 5-7 checks wondering (what if there’s a disaster lurking in the deck) makes proving out nice. I’m not sure how I feel about this. There are some catchup rules, but there’s also some snowballing. I can’t claim this is a dealbreaker (since I play HF).

Secondly, this is much more a push your luck game. Which is fine, but it’s a push your luck brain burner that’s slow. So in my last game I made a relatively low-risk play of sending up a mechanic to orbit with two capsules to earn the “Space station” mission. No, I hadn’t tested life support, but the deck is 4/6th successes, 1/6 minor failures and 1/6 major failures (I didn’t know this at the time, but I knew it was roughly 50+% success). In order to fail I had to draw two major failures (since I had the money to pay to remove the first failure, it would not be redrawn). I rolled snake eyes (1/36…actually slightly less likely because cards not dice) and so my 6 VP for first space station became negative 2VP (death) and  a bunch of time and money lost. On the other hand, I then later did a daring “Don’t test everything, let’s just have a Soviet-style run for the Moon” and risking 3 years budget on unproven rockets and I got a yahtzee. So, it balances.

BUT …. dice versus cards. If I get a bunch of bad cards, that means that other people are getting less. Compare that with HFs hazard dice. A minor point, perhaps (and HF is a longer game where everything can hinge on a roll, so that’s not a downside). You never have to make a roll in HF if you don’t want to, and any events that happen happen to everyone. They may hurt someone much more than another, but it feels linked.

I do have a few nitpicky rules which could be more thematic / better. (Surveying takes no time and is practically automatic. Rockets that fail during a suborbital phase can be recovered. Life Support is assumed for single year missions, it should really be called multi-year life support).

But what keeps coming back to my head is that even after a handful of games the missions felt predictable. “Oh, I’ve seen that before.” There only real combinatorics of the game are weight and mass. Even without the support module (or the other more complex ones) HF had more surprises after a dozen games than LE did after three. I suspect there is an optimal opening, and for the missions nobody says “Well, what patents do you have?”. And there are no faction differences.

It seems unfair to blame LE for not being High Frontier, but the heart wants what the heart wants. I like calculating space missions more than the average gamer, and I’m always on the look for solitaire games, but after 8 hours of this I’m nowhere near the same level of enthusiasm.

I am far from writing LE off — I spent a fair chunk of this weekend playing it — but it does not appear to threaten to displace HF in the long run.

Rating — Indifferent plus, I’m willing to explore it a few more times. The rest of my family is looking at acquiring a copy, so I may have an opportunity.

(This was originally published in incomplete form. I hit “publish” instead of “save.” Lots of updates since then).

I remember playing Fugger, Welser, Medici dand realizing the basic game was too … basic. (I later relayed this to Frank and he said “it wasn’t for gamers like us, that’s what the advanced game is for.”)

High Frontier isn’t exactly the same thing. You need at least one basic game to learn the mechanics. (I needed lots). Jumping straight into the advanced game is optimistic. Even adding only the support module ridiculously increases the number of moving parts. But even for slow people such as myself the basic game does seem too basic after a few plays.

It ends just after it gets going. Industrialize a second colony, you are done (or almost). After the first few games,  TaoLing and I played “longer” extended games to seven colonies, where you might get something like a claim on Sycorax, but our most recent 7 colony game took …. 40 minutes. We’ve started adding advanced modules.

The basic game is not without interest, so some thoughts.

• This is a race game. Only one action a turn, but also space travel in addition. If you start your trip a turn or two earlier that can be a big advantage because its hard (but not impossible) to make up time later on.
• One rule I was taught wrong is that you can’t bid if you have three (non-crew) cards in hand. It turns out you can bid if you have less than four (so, three is OK).
• My big mistake in my early games: buying random cards, then trying to make something work. Most cards are good for something, but trying to figure out what is hard.
• In general, Robonauts before Refineries. Makes sense — Robonauts prospect. Yes, you can use your ISRU 4 crew but here’s the list of ISRU 4 sites inside of Jupiter: Mars (10 gravity, ugh), Ceres (a good target, although 6 gravity probably means you’ll need your crew) and eight inconvenient size-one sites (which aren’t near anything). It’s not a great list. Even an ISRU of 3 opens up a lot of options.
• If you only looked at the asteroid belt for your first mission, you’d probably be right. (For your first game narrowing your decision space is a good idea). If you are playing to seven (or some higher number depending on # of players, which isn’t a variant) you can start looking at Jupiter’s moons or even more distant.
• Remember — the map represents delta-v. Sites on opposite sides of the board but in the same belt are surprisingly close (in terms of number of burns and turns). You can run from Lutetia (a 3M-3 hydration site) to Hertha (ditto) for two burns in a single turn (via Sol-Jupiter L1 burn). Think of the board as “energy bands.”
• There is no “C” class refinery, FYI. Type D and S sites are much rare (in the basic games) so those cards are slightly less useful.
• Weight matters, but less with good fuel efficiency. A nice rule of thumb I found on BGG states “Your wet mass/dry mass ratio will need to be roughly equal to your fuel single-burn fuel consumption (or better).” So if you have the Metastable Helium thruster (5 Mass, 5 Net Thrust * 1 fuel per burn), then your wet mass doesn’t have to much exceed your dry mass, so you can get a heavy robonaut and refinery and still go tooling around for 4 water. But if you get the Mirror Steamer (0 Mass, 3 Net Thrust * 4 Fuel per burn, Solar, Push) you are going to have real trouble if your dry mass gets above three-ish, so you’ll probably need two trips. Bid up the 1 fuel/burn cards.
• Getting your first factory ASAP is a big deal. It provides:
  • 8 free water for refueling. Even if your robonaut and refinery can’t be built, you can take a turn to refuel and send your (now light) rocket back to LEO to pick them back up instead of having to re-boost and refuel the rocket.
  • ET production. Not only are the black side of cards better (much, much better), you get a card out there a few years in advance, save the cost of re-boosting, etc.  ET producing a robonaut to prospect for your second factory (using your on-site thruster) is a big deal. If you have a robonaut and refinery of the type you just colonized, it’s probably a winner. (With both for Vs, aim for Vesta, which at size six means you can’t fail the prospecting roll, and only has a half landing burn. Getting both Ms aim for Lutetia then Hertha, for a 75% chance of a claim. Ds and Ss

Common planning pitfalls to avoid:

1. Can you land? Remember, your net thrust must exceed the sites size. Some ways to get around this (if your main thruster isn’t good enough).
   • Afterburning.
   • Size games. Take everything, drop a part in orbit to lower a size class (increasing net thrust). Leave the first part on the site,take off, pick up the last part. (Dropping off and picking up is a free action, but you can’t pick up in the middle of a move).
   • Use your crew to land. It costs no fuel (if there isn’t a lander burn). Vesta and Ceres with their half lander burns are reasonable. (If you have to pay a full lander burn, your main crew’s rocket may be prohibitively expensive).
2. Will you be able to take off? (This mainly applies to aerobraking). You can easily trap yourself if you use your crew to go someplace like the moon. (If you can’t take off, you can turn your crew into a colonist and get some VP).
3. Do you have enough fuel? Seems obvious, but don’t forget fuel for afterburns. Size tricks may cost you some fuel as well
   • Consider Demos (or some other high hydration site) for a turn or two of refueling. Particularly if you have a low ISRU, you can get a lot of fuel that way. Seeing a ‘pit stop’ at the (already busted) Demos to refuel was my first “aha” moment.
4. Do you have the ISRU rating to prospect the site (or refuel)? (Even after ten games I’ve still just said, “Oh, I’ll go there” and then realized my robonaut couldn’t cut it because I was so focused on fuel/thrust/etc.

Sites of Interest

The training book’s guide is good and worth reading for your first few games. Some thoughts:

Planets are Hard. You can go for Mercury (North Pole) or Mars but you’ll need 11 thrust (or aerobraking rolls). But those are basically one way trips unless you can build a factory. For those, you’ll need a crew with a 10 Net thrust and afterburn. You could also just send down a robonaut and refinery, but the advantage of getting your first factory is basically negated because you can’t really ET produce or use the factory to refuel unless you have a powerful crew rocket. On the other hand, these can be a guaranteed second factory.

The moon is easier, but you’ll need a good ISRU.

Ceres is a sure thing with four hydration, requires only 7 thrust (usually within the reach of a basic game crew) and only a half burn. Depending on your thruster you may need to stop at Demos. Vesta is also a sure thing but slightly farther away and requires an ISRU of 2. (To compensate, its a V world, which is likely to score better and will have a few refineries that can be ET produced there).

Thrusters

In the basic game the most important thing is Fuel per burn, because lower means you can go farther. High thrust is nice (because that lets you land on more places, or maybe get there a turn or two earlier) but you often get around that by taking your crew and using it (assuming no lander burns, or maybe a half burn). In the advanced game the worse rockets are balanced by needing more supports, or worse rad-hardness, but in the basic game? Nope.

If you ordered thrusters by FPB in the basic game, you’d be close to right. (Ignoring the solar sails, because 0 net thrust is a problem).

Key is [#Mass, Thrust * Fuel per Burn (After Burn cost, Class), P = Push, S = Solar]. I’m not going to worry too much about the advanced (black) side because you won’t for your first games.

In rough order of worst to best:

Photon Heliogyro / Photon Kite Sail [0M, 0*0 (-,C) Solar] — Basically the same. Not really useful in the basic game (said the guy who almost never goes inside the earth orbit]. You could use these to get maybe a free burn if you are a small light ship, so perhaps I shouldn’t discount this.

Mirror Steamer [0M, 3*4(2,D) SP] — Zero mass, but 4 fpb. Ugh. The one thing that’s nice is that you could boost this with a robonaut and leave really early, take a pot shot at Demos and refuel. But the problem is that the mass savings from boosting are (in the basic game) a one time savings. You’ll be paying for fuel the rest of the game. Also, this can’t land too many places.

Ablative Plate [4M, 2*2(1,V) P] — Two fpb isn’t bad, but nothing else is great. High mass, low thrust. If you get the black side you get a mass reduction and a thrust increase, but its nothing to write home about. You’ll almost certainly need to take your crew to land anywhere. The rare case where low fpb isn’t great.

Cermet NERVA [2M, 7*4(1,S)] — OK, terrible Fuel per Burn (fpb), but the 7 thrust means you can land on Ceres or Vesta (which are sure things], but you are likely making two trips. If you can flip this you lose one thrust (but can afterburn) but your fpb drops to 2, which makes this pretty good.

Hall Effect [2M, 3*2(-,C)P] — No afterburn and a low thrust means you’ll need your crew, but otherwise good.

Mass Driver [5M, 4*3(-,M)P, Dirt] –This is heavy, 3 fpb isn’t great, but being a dirt thruster compensates. You can always grab 10 fuel anywhere (dirt rockets refuel at ten and ignores ISRU rating!) so you really only need to pay to get to Demos and then jaunt out. If you flip this over you go to 3M 2*0.5, which basically means you never run out of fuel, but you’ll need another rocket to land most places.

De Laval Nozzle [4M, 5*2(2,M)P] — Decent thrust, decent fpb. Can even land on Ceres or Vesta (often taking two trips).

Ponderomotive VASIMR [3M, 3*1(1,V)P] — Compare with the mirror steamer. You pay 3 more mass, but you save so much fpb.

Metastable Helium [5M, 5*1(1,V)] — The king of rockets. Yes, its heavy. But 1 fpb rules. If you flip it over you’ll drop some mass and your fpb goes to a ridiculous 1/3rd, but even unflipped its a workhorse in the asteroid belt. With 5 thrust (maybe 4 or 3 due to weight) you can often make a hohmann pivot every turn and gain a lot of time. And you save time by taking your robo+refinery in one trip. Letting this go cheaply is a mistake.

Robonauts

Buggys let you get a re-roll or multiple sites (on a planet), so that’s nice. Missiles have a built in thruster (Uusually with terrible fpb, but in this case you save an auction and a part, so you could buy this and start scooting around early to make a bunch of pot shot claims and then buy/send a refinery later). And Rayguns let you go for multiple sites from orbit. Unlike thrusters (in the basic game) there’s lots of differences between robonauts.

There are a few different ‘classses’ of robonauts:

• The 4 fpb missile. These are good to grab as a first card if you can launch and run to Demos (etc) to refuel and go get a claim, planning on getting a thruster and refinery later.
• The rayguns. These let you hit a bunch of asteroids at once.
• The oddballs (including buggies).

A quick note of sites: C are common, M aren’t common, but there are a few good targets. There are many S targets but they tend to have lower hydration (often zero). V and

[#Mass, type-ISRU (Type) ]

In alphabetical order:

Cat Fusion Z-pinch Torch — 3M, Buggy-2 (D).  Decent mass, decent ISRU.  Turns into a higher mass ISRU 0 Missile.

Explosive Gas Dynamic Laser — 3M, Raygun-2 (S). Improves to 2M Ray-0

Flywheel Tractor — 2M, Buggy-3 (S).  Improves to 1M Buggy-1.

Free Electron Laser — 5M Raygun-1 (S). Don’t let the 5 mass worry you (I mean, unless you have a 3-4 fpb thruster). If you get the Free Electron Laser you may want to go to the Karin cluster and hope to get one of Karin-a, b or c. That’s a 50/50 shot in one turn (you can raygun produce without going onto the hazard roll). If you get the claim you can ET produce this (as the Wakefield E-beam Missile with a quite decent 4*2(2) dirt rocket, but it becomes a Missile-1.

Kuck Mosquito — 1M Missile-3, 10 * 8(2) (V). The Mosquito pairs nicely with Ablative Plate or other low net thrust thruster, in that you only use this for the landing. You save weight on crew, its mass is low. If you happen to build it on a V planet, you can ET produce the Ablative Laser, which is a 3 * 1(3, push) Missile 2 with no mass. No raygun, but it can hop around quickly.

MET Steamer — 3M Missile-2 5*4(1) Push (C). This guy is a reasonable first buy. Buy, boost, fuel, go to Demos to potshot and/or refuel. By itself it can make a run at Ceres (small size for +1 thrust, afterburn for another). You’ll need another rocket to bring the refinery, but then you can ET produce the Nanobot, a zero mass Buggy-1.

Neutral Beam — 5M Raygun-2 (S). Slightly inferior to the Free Electron Laser, but this does flip over to the a 3*1/2(1) Missile.

Nuclear Drill — 2M Missile-3 5*4(1, Push) (M). Like the MET Steamer, this can be used as an early scout, planning on bring a rocket+ refinery later. This is an odd card in that the black side has a much higher mass (5), but it does become a Raygun-0 (while still having a thruster), which means you can scout a bunch of small asteroids (like the Koronis group) in one go.

Phase-Locked Diode Laser — 3M Raygun-3 (C). A very good robonaut, because there are lots of C targets, and it flips over to 0M.

Rock Splitter — 3M Buggy-4 (V). Buggy is good, but ‘4’ is bad. You could claim 2 Mars sites, I suppose. But there has to be a worst robonaut.

Solar-pumped MHD Exciplex Laser — 5M Raygun-2 (C). Doesn’t the name just roll off the tongue and fall like lead to the floor? This is another one of the 5M rayguns, and this one flips over (Quantum Cascade Laser) to a 3 mass ray-0. Ray-0 is great, and as a ‘c’ type card, this is the easiest to get.

Tungsten Resistojet — 2M 5*4(1) Missile-3 (M). Another decent “early thruster explorer.”. This flips over to a decent 4*2(1) Push missile-1.

Refineries

In the basic game, basically you just want to get one. If it matches your target, that’s nice. Mass 3 is nicer than mass four, but unless you have a bad fpb its not a huge deal.

They’ve just released 0.15 (up to 0.15.2 for some bugfixes). I’m sitting here waiting impatiently for it to download. Nuclear power, rebalanced combat, a ‘marathon’ mode (critical items take a lot more materials to build), and prebuilt settings for various styles of play….

It is a sign of good sportsmanship on my part that I didn’t skip gaming to download it yesterday (when it released), but that’s only because I’d promised that I’d teach High Frontier.

Update — It’s slower going (7 types of science instead of 4 — and purple science is no longer “stuff you get for free by killing natives”). I’ve got a horrible spaghetti maze because I haven’t been looking ahead. I should probably punt, but my goal is to use this base as a starting point for a big base, so its ok. But I do like many things:

• Flamethrowers are still good, but much more expensive. Bullets have been buffed, because they were terrible.
• Infinite science (even if some of it seems to be a bad deal, like mining productivity).
• Lots of quality of life fixes (showing oil patches underground, etc).

I need to get logistics bots for this factory. It’s not pretty. Gotta find a new copper patch, too. Have basically run out.

(Update — Fixed some typos, fleshed out thoughts, added links. Also, I don’t wish to imply that Mombasa or Jump Drive are bad. I like both. I use them because I played them during the same week).

During my time at the Gathering, I played 31 games. Eclipse, Colonists and 3 plays of High Frontier took roughly 21 hours. The remaining 26 games took about 20 hours.

I spent my first two games of High Frontier doing terribly. I earned 1VP apart from Heroism (aka “The Challenger Explosion card” aka “Pity Points”).

Suppose winning just involved earning VPs at a fixed rate (ignoring opponents). It takes about 40 VP to win High Frontier, so I would ‘win’ after four hundred hours of gameplay.

Let’s flip that around. Wins/hour. For those first two games I earned 0.0025 WPH.

Among the other games I played were Mombasa and Jump Drive. For Mombasa I earned about .7 WPH, since I generated enough VP to win in my game, which was about 1.5 hours. A nice rate. My Jump Drive rate was 4 WPH for the Gathering, slightly higher than my typical 3 wins per hour. But I taught the game twice.

So, for 10 hours of High Frontier (roughly 1/4 of my gaming time) I was arguably the least effective game-player in all of the gathering. I’d have to go to ten gatherings to eke out a single win. (I have some true anti-skill in that game. But I did eventually get a bit better). Apparently I did OK in my only game with second edition (although it left me cold), but we did the fast start, so I may have randomly gotten a good setup.

Of course Wins Per Hour is a somewhat ludicrous idea. Isn’t it? It seems obvious, but winning isn’t the problem. And we routinely praise games for being “tight” or “fast” or having a high decision density.

I was already pondering the similarities between High Frontier (the current hotness) and Factorio (the current hotness is not necessarily a singular). I mean, they both have Rockets, but there were other similarities. I’d been thinking about it (vaguely) even before Jeroen asked me to pitch Factorio to him over breakfast. One of the random thoughts I blurted out was its old school scoring. (It was a long pitch. In my defense, I had previously warned him that if he asked about Factorio he should set aside a day for my answer).

Anyway, old school scoring. Launching one rocket (aka “Winning”) gives you a score of …. one. Its like how the original pinball machines had scores like 1-2-3 for each bumper, but now you get a million points for simply launching the ball. But after you get on the scoreboard in Factorio, you can keep going.

Factorio is optimization, but you are free to decide what to optimize:

1) Speed (the speedrun: how fast can you win?)

2) Throughput (how many rockets per unit time can you get? This can be subdivided to a final sprint, ignoring the setup time, or over the lifetime of your game).

3) Size (How small a factory can you get a rocket out of. This is currently a challenge on Reddit. Yes, these rockets would take roughly one year of real time to be built, but they are ludicrously small factories).

There are others. People play without using robots (or just logistic robots, or just personal robots), or without lasers, or trains. Some play peaceful, some play Deathworld. Factorio has a victory condition, but people often ignore it. You can keep playing after you win. It’s a sandbox. You make what you want. I’m watching “The Belt Diva” on youtube, and its like watching Bob Ross. Happy little conveyer belts. She wants to build a mega base. I have no idea if she’ll launch a rocket. Does it matter?

Mombasa is not a sandbox. Neither is Jump Drive. You could argue that High Frontier isn’t a sandbox either, it has VP and end game conditions, but the standard criticism again Eklund’s games is: “Great simulations with arbitrary endgame/VPs attached.” (The latest edition of High Frontier’s scoring seems reasonable and at about the right time).

Ignore the victory conditions for High Frontier and just play with the system and it would still work. (Also true of American Mega Fauna, or other games like Seven Ages. You could just tell people to play in the best interest of their species/nation and not the actual victory conditions).

You could add self imposed conditions on your game. Only use solar sails, or “try to get out to Neptune with only basic cards,” or “Make the Kessel Run in 7 parsecs.” For any Eklund game, you could take a reasonable goal (“Expand your species,” “Become President of Mexico,” “Kessel Run”) and if you achieved it, who cared what the VPs said?

High Frontier feels like a sandbox (much like all Sierra Madre games).

Can you do that with a Euro? I suppose you could just say “I’m trying to maximize my red cubes and not VP” But that seems silly. The goal is to maximize VP.

Objectively, there’s no difference. You lose, the other players win. You may throw the game by being silly. But in a sandbox game it feels acceptable.

You might not even mess up the other players. (If you didn’t mention you had mentally altered your victory conditions, they might not even notice, assuming you chose something ‘reasonable’) We’ve already quietly accepted the premise that in a sandbox game the VPs are somewhat not the point when we criticize the poor victory conditions in otherwise good games.

We wouldn’t play a Euro similarly broken. Wouldn’t make sense.

I once knew someone who built a Magic deck with 58 islands, 1 mountain and 1 fireball. (Several of my readers should remember him). The point was to build a deck that could theoretically win (if you drew the mountain, the fireball, and then managed to play 20 lands). He’d pull this deck and lose and lose to people who often did not notice that their opponent never did anything except play islands. He was truly Andy Kaufman, CCG player.

Or perhaps Stanley Milgram.

When I’m losing a game like High Frontier (or Combat Commander, or Seven Ages, or Here I Stand), I may flounder and grasp for a way out of my situation, but I feel perfectly happy just exploring the system even though the time invested is well out of proportion to what I’d normally give to a game.

I’ve dismissed countless games after one play (or less), games I’ve won included. Games I won especially. Those tend to fail the test of time (unless everyone was new).  A game where I can beat experienced players probably isn’t that deep, or has too much luck.

Whereas games I lost repeatedly include Titan, 18xx, Magic Realm (counting dying as a loss), Chess, Go, Bridge.

Clearly, I’m not optimizing my wins per hour. Knizia has that quote….

When playing a game, the goal is to win, but it is the goal that is important, not the winning

Pretty Zen, but I get (and approve) the idea. Those guys who crushed that sub-sub-Mendoza line Magic deck and chortled and kept playing it again and again to rack up wins? Not great gamers.

But is the goal really to win? Usually, yes. When I played American Megafauna with non-existent or terribly wrong Victory Conditions, I don’t recall having less fun. In High Frontier I started out trying to win. Mainly I was trying to do something constructive. A Winning-adjacent goal.

Some play games to explore systems, but that requires a system worth exploring. Which is not to say that Mombasa or Jump Drive’s design is not deep. Just (relatively) transparent. You can argue about the best path to winning, but that path is well defined. With Combat Commander or Magic Realm or High Frontier, you aren’t sure what’s going to happen, and sometimes the joy is just in unlocking the secret or even seeing that rocket take flight. In fact, defining the direction of the path is surprisingly hard … the player that did best may be the one that lost, according to the rules. It’s like that old Supreme Court definition of pornography. You know who won when you played it. Who cares what the rules said?

Its like watching your factory grow, then deciding what you want to optimize next.