My Fifty by Fifty finished a few years ago (four years late). But time marches on. So … Fifty-One. Dice Realms recently got its 25th play and picked up a few more last night, which was nice. (I honestly thought it would make the list years ago, but I’m much more of a proponent that most of the locals).

Also, the local group has switched FLGS to one of the more modern ones that has a liquor license and a kitchen. I haven’t gone much this year, but last night had a large crowd of several different groups, including quite a few couples and one adorable baby. It speaks quite well of the hobby to see such a broad cross-section of people. Now the store just needs to sell a few more copies of High Frontier 4 All (which it does have stocked!) so I can get more opponents, because that’s going to be a hard game to get fifty plays in.

‘Twas elegantly done — ignoring the fact that the cards are a downgrade from tiles — but were the graphic designers for the new AllPlay edition were trying to convey colorblindness to the rest of us? The five colors of money cards are “brown,” “beige,” “orangeish brown/beige” “purpleish brown” and “I’m not sure what it is … let’s call it … cocoa?”

Honestly, I’m not sure what the colors were, except all very similar. Seriously. Game looks beautiful, but ugh.

Played StarDriven: Gateway last night. First of all, let’s get this out of the way.

The horrific trend in the last two decades of putting a colon (or dash, or em-dash) in a book’s title and then giving it a subtitle is a terrible development and should not be extended into games. It is only allowed if the game is in fact a sequel. We have to be able to tell all the Race for the Galaxy expansions and arcs apart. Adding a “Legacy” to Pandemic (etc) is fine … they are related but different games. Apparently there is a StarDriven: Saga coming out (out?) from the same company, and they want to note they are related … but I’m watching you, Rock Manor Games. Cut it out.

The rough mechanics

(It’s been so long since I reviewed a game that was relatively new, I’m actually going to describe it a bit).

SDG is a knock off Star Trek episode, or perhaps season, and is actually a pretty nice idea. Each player has a ship, and you roll dice (of various colors). You can use red dice for fighting, blue dice to run warp drive¹ and sensors. Green dice are impulse and engineering. Some of the stations can also accept any die. Also, each station has an energy cost. (Usually 0-3 energy, but some stations gain you energy equal to the die roll).When you place a die you get one very useful thing (no matter the die value) and then use the die value to get other things.

For example, the “command” station will accept a red die (for one energy), a red die (costing two energy) and any die (three energy). When you place a die there you get an experience marker (which lets you buy/improve your crew) and then the better the die the better the attack.

Crew are a certain species, have specialties (although they can all operate any station) and can be regular or promoted. You can only take an action on a station that has a crew member, but one of your actions is “place a crew member into a station.” Each crew member also has a “Tap to due special thing” as a free action.

At some point you can give up an action to remove and reroll all your dice (and untap some of your crew).

Combat is clever … each die rolled is a hit against a section (you have six sections, after all) but you can roll your shields and if you roll a matching number you block the hit (but your shields are weakened). If you don’t match numbers, you take the hit, the spot is blocked, and your shields are still strong. (You can spend engineering actions bumping up your weapons or shields).

The owner described SDG is “kind of a 2.5X game, not quite a 4x” … at least in the early “episodes” (we played “episode 1”) combat is enough to keep you honest, but minimal. Players are not expected to fight each other, but there are a few nuisance ships out there. Presumably in other episodes there could be harder enemies or PVP. But the board has only the major planets revealed at the beginning and you fly around, encounter “anomalies” and explore the map, and finish missions. When you finish a mission you must tap a promoted crew, or discard a crew from a station back to crew quarters (where you need actions to ready them again) or lose them entirely (from your hand?). Finishing missions gets you reputation (on the nearest major planet).

After a round the last player makes a few decisions for the enemy’s attack (breaking ties only, but usually there are ties). When one player gets 9 reputation the game ends after another round or two (at least for the scenario we played).

Then there is a slightly-too-point-salady scoring for my taste (you get points for reputation, a bonus for having most reputation on each major planet, points for anomalies, negatives for combats, bonus VP that you can acquire during game etc).

The Trouble with (Knock Off) Tribbles

Individually, the ideas work. I like the theme (and can appreciate that the license is too expensive, so I don’t mind it’s had the serial numbers filed off). The game looks nice, (the map tiles are functionally kind of hexes divided into three, but have a different look). Each ship has a slightly different coloration of dice … my ship had only one red (“Command”) die, so fighting and promoting is more difficult. Each ship also has a set of unique abilities (six perhaps) of which you pick two. You manage dice and energy and crew. I mean, the game is overproduced Kick Starter bait with a box too big, but also does give off the “labor of love” with an appreciation of the genre.

BUT ….

1. The missions are bland. Tap (or discard) the right crew and that’s it. Sure, this is a “diplomatic mission” and that’s a “earthquake rescue” but they are all the same. The anomalies feel right thematically “Oh, you’ve got an energy alien loose on your ship” vs “A metallic virus is eating your ship” but again the ones I saw were all “Take some damage and if you spend a crew you can keep this card for a bonus <something> later.” I don’t know if you can make the theme shine more with the rules, but it would feel nice if you could. Now that I think about it, the anomalies should stick around and require longer to solve … after all, those are entire episodes in the show … not just one turn distractions.
2. Energy felt too abundant, and there wasn’t any real problem if your ship took damage². Don’t know if that’s because this was “episode 1” (which sets the first few missions and enemies).
3. Rolling bad is a poor strategy. I rolled only “1s” on my three blue dice, which meant (effectively) I couldn’t warp to major planets or do anything but the worst sensor sweep. There are ways to re-roll, but they cost time (also a precious resource). Not a major problem in a short game or a game with enough die rolls; more annoying when you only roll the dice 2-3 times in a game.
4. There’s clearly a design idea of “You have these characters. Can you make them regulars instead of red-shirts?” going on, which is clever. I wish it was explored more.

But those are just peeves, compared to the fundamental flaw.

The turns are too long. This is a fixed fun game; on your turn you get two actions (plus any free actions, which includes finishing a misson! or using some special abilities). It isn’t a problem that each turn takes 2 minutes (annoying, but not a deal breaker). The turns are too long because each player gets too many actions on a turn. Yes you only get two actions, but there are enough free actions that there’s no point in planning … any mission might be gone by the time it gets back to you. Players can warp around the board, after all, so even though each mission is tied to a planet type, none are too far away.

SDG feels like it would have been more engaging if it used a worker placement (or Eclipse’s) structure of “one action around the table until everyone is forced to pass and reset” … on your turn place a die (tap a crew, let’s make that not a free action, except maybe for promoted crew) and take an action. And don’t replenish a mission until the round is over, so they are definitely being fought over. Once everyone is out of actions then the round is done, the enemies move, and you do the next round. Now each player still only takes 25% of the time, but its a race against time, and isn’t that the real pressure in all the of the schlocky TV shows we love?

Can you get to that mission before the other ship shows up? One action at a time makes it tight (particularly if finishing the mission is an action, maybe not taking dice). Now it would feel more interactive …. instead of just “maximize the board state on your turn, then wander away for five minutes.”

I’ve played six (or even eight!) player games of Eclipse where my turn-to-turn engagement was much higher than my four player game of this.

I’d try this again, but would like to try it with one (or two) less players and perhaps a later scenario. But I’m not chomping at the bit.

Rating — Indifferent.

Update — I got a note from the designer indicating that my concern in footnote 2 was misunderstanding the rules … if all three die slots in a section are damaged they are automatically repaired, but create a hull breach (which is -VP and enough hull breaches will destroy your ship). But that does mean you will always have at least one die slot in each section.

1. Since it’s not licensed, SDG doesn’t use terms like “Warp Drive” or “Impulse” that might get them in hot water, but you know what I mean. ︎
2. In theory your ship can blow up, but we came nowhere close to even “lose some VP if one of your sections is totally blown up.” Also, from my quick glance at the rules, if your entire engineering section is blown up, you lose the ability to do any repairs ever, which seems like it could be a flaw and is definitely anti-theme for the “daring comeback from impossible odds.” See update after post for clarification ︎

I have been told that Ken Tidwell passed away (Matt Leacock has apparently posted a note on Facebook)¹. Many of my readers will have at least know-of Ken …. because he founded The Game Cabinet, which was the go-to site for European games and (I believe) inspired Aldie to make BGG. Ken was also an entrepreneur who founded multiple startups, and at various times in my career I asked him for advice and/or commiserated with him. I got some good stories (and hopefully told a few as well).

My condolences to his family and especially his wife Jocelyn.

1. Searching revealed that there are a number of Ken Tidwells with Obituaries, but none of them are the one I know. Also, not using facebook, I wouldn’t know how to find that. ︎

This article is an attempt to starting clarifying my (evolving) thoughts about Slay the Spire II by putting them into words. There are presumably (much) better players than me, but are they writing anything? My normal answer is ‘Nope.’ but actually Youtube is awash with videos by people who monetize content, so actually there are. But you are here, so presumably you like the printed word over audiovisual.

I’ve played … a lot. Probably 200-250 hours solo¹. Right now I’m at a roughly 5²% solo win rate³ on the most difficult ascension level (A10) in Slay the Spire II, which is approximately where I was at on the most difficult ascension in the first game first game, but that was with Act IV, which doesn’t exist yet.

So … not great, but not terrible. Good enough to pounce on a great card/combo when it shows up; not good enough to jury-rig a win out of spare parts. (This influences my thoughts). My “micro” could be better. I often take a few extra points of damage due to negligence; which is a huge leak on my win rate; but I’ve been getting quite a few more “almost” wins, which is a good sign.⁴

This post is just a mish-mash of thoughts, but not really re-hashing general thoughts from the first Slay the Spire that transfer. (A few for emphasis). I was going to write some thoughts on cards/etc, but those are ever changing. For clarity, I’ll do this as bullet points.

(Also check out Jorbs’ recent video on “How to win with Silent (and other Characters)“⁵

General Concepts

• You play three of your five cards each turn (in a simple world where everything costs one). So you’d like 1) huge attack(s), to end the fight or when you aren’t attacked 2) huge block(s), when you are being attacked 3) flexibility for the remainder (often long term scaling, covering weaknesses, etc).
  • You don’t care how many “cards” you convert to attack/block/whatever, you want to be able to convert your mana to attack/block/whatever efficiently. This means a “2 Mana — Block 12” card is often (much) better than a “1 Mana — Block 7/8” … you’d get more with two of the latter in your hand, but that also requires two card picks.
  • Realistically, early on you’ll play 2/3 mediocre attacks/blocks. Starter decks lack density.
  • Playing two-three cards leaves room for cards that are dead most of the time (or all of the time for curses), but solve an important fight or two.
  • But, Dead cards leave you vulnerable to variance, particularly multiple dead cards. If you only have three cards you can play, your only choice is the order/targets. So (some decks) may want a bigger deck, to double the staples, which creates space for more specialized cards.
• Extra block survives more variance than extra attack (because if it doesn’t win right now, you take a hit). Even in Act I the elites (and some hallway fights) dish out 20+ damage a turn.
  • The more I play the happier I am taking two cost block cards.
  • This does lead to decks that block for 5 turns then get outscaled, but I lose less often that way than to being to aggressive. I still need to tune that variable.
• As I get better I’m more prone to save a potion for a boss/problem floor.
• I’m fine skipping elites in later acts once I’ve bottled the lightning, unless I’m just confident in the matchups. Even a good start needs to snowball.
• The Act II ancients give you a lottery ticket that’s a winner, but often just a small/medium winner. The Act III Ancients usually grant a golden ticket.⁶ I am OK having no idea how I’m going to beat the Act III bosses if I feel confident that I can get to Act III, and let the blessing (hopefully) clarify things.

Act I

Act I is tough⁷. In StS 1 I’d sometimes die to an early Gremlin Nob (before the middle floor treasure) or the Act I boss; in this version I perished in Act I often — a too early elite or just damage accumulating 3-4 floors in a row. The elites hit hard. For a while I was skipping most of them, but you have to start engine building. To win you need a cornerstone: a card/relic that provides a clear direction towards victory. It may not be the best option, but a cornerstone is an understandable option.

In early games, I hit an early elite and died … then realized my deck would have lost to any of the elites. But that just delayed the loss to the Act I boss or early Act II You need to start that snowball of growth. A good deck will roll through the second half of Act I like butter. Now I prioritize hitting as many late elites as I can, or trying to highroll a gift from Neow into a deck that can hit an early one … and then decide how many elites to take. Ideally I’d fight 3-4 elites in Act I (as late as possible).

Why fight them? If you get 10 relics 7-8 of them are going to be “yeah, that’s OK” but the great ones really help and form your cornerstone. (Best get it early, then you can work on combos and covering weaknesses). Elite fights are lottery tickets, but you aren’t going to win on slow steady investments. You need to hit the lottery (rare card or relic). As you get better what counts as a hit will grow.

And it’s not like the hallway fights are cakewalks. (Moreover, there are only three elites and you won’t duplicate until you’ve seen them all, so you can often tailor your picks against them. The hallway fights have a much bigger pool to select from). Even the events are a mixed bag.

Neow’s Gifts

(I have much less experience with the new ones that just appeared a few weeks ago).

Great

Leafy Poultice is my top pick. You trim out two basic cards via transformation … and get two lottery tickets that may have downside (at worst, a do nothing curse), but usually are strict improvements. Sometimes you high roll and a solid foundation. Losing Max HP is next act’s problem (mostly).

Silver Crucible — Getting an early “Common Attack+” or “Common Block+” really helps your deck’s density and with three upgraded cards you can handle the early elites (maybe not well, but you’ll likely survive). An early upgraded uncommon (or rare) can snowball.

Cursed Pearl … sure the curse is bad (a dead card roughly every other turn at the start), but that first store will hopefully give you at least a spark to bottle, if not lightning. (Golden Pearl to a lesser extent, and these both assume an early store).

Stone Humidifier is another big deal. I know I said Max HP could be ignored for now, but Stone Humidifier can let you skip a few elites for extra rests. Each rest becomes “Upgrade a card OR take a +5HP relic when you rest” (if upgrading a card isn’t that important. Also, Miniature Camp and Waterfall Giant are in the game and a high max HP is a great way to avoid a random loss due to variance. But in the last few weeks I think I might downgrade this a notch.

Winged Boots — These let you path very aggressively into multiple elite fights where variance would likley kill you 25%+ of the time. You take the first fight, if it goes great, you take the second. If not, you jump over to a rest.

Avoid

Precarious Shears — Removes two cards (like the Poultice), but has no possible upside and 13 damage (as compared to Max HP) is a big problem right now.

Lava Rock — You need help now, not at the end of act I.

Neow’s Torment — 10 Damage and some cards back is OK, but there is almost always a better option.

Anything not listed is OK … I certainly take Lead Paperweight and Pomander often enough, I’m just not terribly psyched when doing it. I’m actually kind of fond of Neow’s Talisman, which just upgrades a strike and defend. Partially because the Spiral enchantment event shows up fairly regularly (replay one) and also because removing all your strikes and defends is much harder in this game than in the first. You are probably carrying a 1-2 of them throughout the game. The defend (in particular) can really help with the chip damage accumulating across fights.

Overgrowth vs Underdocks

This has been discussed elsewhere (Jorbs covers it in a video) so I’m not going to touch on it too much, but be aware of which elites are in the pool and which aren’t. The big “Bomb” in the Overgrowth is the Bygone Effigy, a cakewalk if you can slam out the 132 (!) damage by the end of turn 3 (or turn 4, taking a single hit). Without the Effigy, if you can just block for 15-20 a turn (and still do reasonably damage) you’ll be fine, particularly if you have some AOE damage. With the Effigy‘s high HP and massive hits, you need a damage source (or slow source). Both Byrdonis and the Phrog Parasite scale up …. Byrdonis by adding strength and the Parasite by shoving junk into your deck. So you are going to want to favor attack over defense, since long term fights don’t favor you. (Byrdonis is arguably more dangerous than the Effigy, but it’s less of a Bomb. Both are damage races; both can kill you but since Byrdonis attack each turn you probably have to eat 20 damage even if you win on turn three (just going all out) but Effigy gives you three free turns, so a one turn difference is a bigger jump.

But in the Underdocks you can focus more on block than in general. Sure, the Phantasmal Gardners grow (slowly), but they punish multiple hits (and the Skulking Colony caps damage per turn). The Terror Eel is trickier, but big block + poison will work great, unlike in the Overgrowth.

The Underdocks (literal) Bomb is Waterfall Giant, responsible for over 8% of my deaths in the game⁸. Impressive considering it only shows up in ~16% of the games! If your deck is a fast attack deck, you might kill it but still need to tank a hit for 30 (either having block or enough HP left), and if your deck is a big block deck, you are probably slower and will need to tank a bigger hit. The Waterfall Giant is one reason I like the Stone Humidifier. A higher Max HP means a higher current HP in your final fight, so you can eat a bigger hit. This is also true of the Act III double bosses, where you need a buffer (unless your deck is absolutely purring), but with the Giant you need it.

Part II at some point …

1. I am retired, after all. ︎
2. There are few enough runs that a single win will drive it up and then drift down, but “1 in 20” seems roughly correct. ︎
3. Multi-player games are a whole different thing, with a win rate around 15%. I attribute this to the fact that a) either player can “go off” and win the run more-or-less solo (or with a the partners dealing with a troublesome fight and/or providing support) and b) sometimes you die due to variance in either game, but in multiplayer you get resurrected when your partner survives the fight, a recovery not possible in solo. ︎
4. My win rate also crept up after the first adjustments, make to make Act I easier and Act III harder, and I think this is not variance. I have not tried the Beta branch. ︎
5. Cliff note’s version: 1) Improve your Worst turn, 2) Improve your Best Turn, 3) Condense your Solution, 4) Improve your initial velocity, 5) Don’t overscale, 6) Understand Short term value vs Scaling Density & 7) There is a max hand size ︎
6. Darv (the merchant who offers relics from the first game) complicates things because he can show up in either Act. ︎
7. Written before the first balance patch of ~3 weeks ago. Still true, less so. ︎
8. This was written a month ago, before the patch, and a) he is now slightly weaker and b) I have really focused on beating him. Now he’s back in line with the rest of the baddies. ︎

So, in late Jan/Early Feb I heard Dark Pact was coming out soon and asked my FLGS to get a copy. One month later they were sure it was coming into their distributorship “soon” and a month after that it was sold out at the distributorship and they never got a copy. It is things like this that make me wonder if they are money-laundering front for … someone¹. (Despite that they have a pretty good selection of games). So I got it from Amazon.

I don’t like Ascension, the game Dark Pact is closest to (IMO). Looking at my archives², I never really get into it, but there are a few things that jump out at me.

• The random nature of what’s available at any given moment means that often the game is decided by “Oh, he bought a great card, a terrible card showed up. I bought the best thing available … and the next person got a great card.” At least, it feels like that. (Or you can get combat points when you want money points and vice-versa).
• It’s a snowball, but it takes a long time to roll downhill.

OK, two things.

Since Dark Pact is by Tom Lehmann, I naturally assumed he’d address both of those problems and they are … mitigated. (It is probably impossible to eliminate them).

First — each player has a grimoire of a few staple cards that they can buy if they don’t like what’s on the offer.

Second — what counts as a victory point depends on which Dark Pact(s) you purchase. For Player A it may be curse cards, for Player B it may be treasures, Player C might want Insight Points, etc. “One mans trash is another’s treasure” means that you might be fighting over cards, but you might not.

On the other hand, you need a Dark Pact to win³ and it’s possible that the only ones you see are terrible. But in my five games so far that hasn’t been an issue. (I did play with the “everyone starts with a reasonable Dark Pact” variant once).

Dark Pact still has flaws. I’ve seen people complain that they played their turn and then flipped up Gold/Multiplier cards (which are usually good) for the next player (the first flaw above), and that when it’s not your turn sometimes another player is taking a 2-3 minute turn of play a card, draw some cards, play a card, etc and running through their deck and that you have nothing to do.

That’s true, but it’s also common for the genre. Dominion can (depending on the setup) have that in spades. But for Dark Pact, it is usually a sign that the game is about to end … that player’s engine is up and running …. whereas in Ascension/Dominion you have to wait for the supply (of cards or points) to empty. But Dark Pact has sudden death⁴ … when a player draws their entire deck, the game is usually over on their turn (or perhaps a turn or two later if they’ve figured out which card their engine is missing).

It’s not totally flawless … setup and teardown take longer than Ascension (or a game of Dominion with just a set or two) unless you always play with the same # of players, but any other flaws are pretty much built into the game’s DNA (unless you object to the art or the theme, I suppose).

Dark Pact is admittedly tedious if you are playing with someone struggling to build an engine, who takes too long on their turns. But that’s always true. I don’t think that Dark Pact is going to be one of Tom’s games that easily flies to 50+ plays,⁵ but a few dozen plays seem likely.

Rating — Suggest

1. Occam’s Razor suggests I’m overthinking things. ︎
2. Most of the searches for “Ascension” turn up Slay the Spire stuff, since I am referring to Ascension levels there…. ︎
3. Probably ︎
4. Or Sudden Enlightenment ︎
5. I expected Dice Realms to make fifty, and it didn’t, but he’s got more than any other designer (for me). ︎

Games Played and quick notes (on new-to-me games)

• 1846 x3
• Dark Pact x3 — I finally got my copy just prior to the Gathering and played several games. I will have a review soon.
• Tricktaker’s Guide to the Galaxy x3 — I would definitely buy this if it were easily available. You deal out your hand, play a game of “No Thanks” to get rules (which give you +5 points if you fulfill them and -20 if you don’t) and then play the hand out. Nice fast filler.
• Bomb Busters x2
• The Gang (Deluxe Edition) x2 — Has rules for up to 10 players. Surprisingly … they work.
• Quartermaster General WW2 (2nd Edition) x2 — Really wanted to try the second edition. But didn’t have the expansion. I hear 2nd edition cleaned things up, but …. there were obvious mistakes on the box (2-5 players? Seriously?) and downgrades on the board (no SOP), so I wonder how carefully they cleaned up the cards.
• Scout x2
• Sides x2 — Cooperative password-ish game where you have to use clues starting with specific letters. Perfectly fine.
• 1822MX — Note to self, do not try to play using PNW rules for the first hour.
• 18EU (Minor Powers Variant) — I don’t know if the variant has been published, but it makes it similar to Railways of the Lost Atlas.
• Azure — Surprisingly good abstract filler that I’m still thinking about. Might buy, even though I dislike abstracts.
• Dice Realms
• Dune
• Fast Sloths — Cute enough, probably has good replay value with all the different animals you can put in the game (who carry around the sloths).
• Got Five! — Reasonable deduction game.
• High Frontier 4 All — Decided to splurge and upgrade my set. Played a 3 hour teaching game, not the 10+ hour game.
• Liar’s Dice
• Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship — Very clever improvement to the Pandemic system, and you can feel the theme. Not a purchase for me, but I’d play again. This was getting constant play
• Magical Athlete — Fun but stupid game-adjacent activity. “Bunco for Gamers” as Mrs. Tao might say.
• Meister Makatsu — Another Reiner card game filler, so … it works. Would play again.
• My Book Nook: Cozy Word Building Game — Good idea, mildly infuriating execution in that you score based on word length, but the hard letters give trivial bonuses (instead of saying “Count word as longer” or something). But do we hold cozy games to the same standards? (I do).
• Oath
• Petiquette — A clever party game idea (you get a sequence of animals with hats of various colors, with a ? and the judge decides which animal/hat/color combination should go there, and everyone tries to guess). But it got old way too fast. Avoid.
• Santa Fe
• Soothsayers — Maybe I got a bad rules explanation, but avoid and play Glory to Rome or any game in that family instead.
• Time Agent
• Titan
• & Two Unpublished Prototypes of which I will not speak. I also saw several other prototypes that I didn’t feel the need to play, because I mostly don’t play prototypes and they seemed like “I will not like this” or the occasional “I will simply buy this when it shows up¹).

So … most of the new games² are fine (nothing set my world on fire), whereas many of the older games had spectators and onlookers going “Wow, I haven’t seen that in ages.”

Part of me wants to do some stats on my games played by year (or counting by “hours played” instead of “plays,” which should shove the date several years back further) but I am tired right now. Perhaps later, unless there is a tool that already exists to do this?

Also, there was a nice memorial to Bill Cleary, who died last summer.

Update — Put a few stories on BGG.

1. More Mage Knight ︎
2. “That I played,” and I had a pretty high standard (the new game shelf covered a wall) although sometimes I just agreed to a blind game for the company. There were many new games that were obvious avoids if you share my tastes … point salads, etc. ︎

After playing 18CZ (again!), I was trying to pin down why I thought it was “OK” and not “Great.” Why does 1822 PNW make me want to get it back to the table, while CZ is merely a “Yeah, sure.” (I mean it’s still a positive feeling, but more “indifferent plus” than “suggest” or “enthusiastic“) and I think this comes down to one thing that I have touched upon a few times over the years, but bears repeating.

Entanglement — The (Not So) Secret Sauce

By their nature 18xx games are more entangled than most business games. In typical games, each player controls their own (single) corporation. What is good for the company is good for the player, and vice versa. In 18xx, a player can juggle multiple (competing) interests; it can be great to trash a company under your control (shifting its assets to a ‘better’ company).

This brings up the Principal-Agent Problem , but also Implicit Collusion because there might be other shareholders and they will want to know if the company is going to pay out or with-hold, and if it will be headed for a glorious future or Chapter 11.

It can be impossible to state the “right” play is for a company merely by looking at the board. You need to understand the stock split dynamics. Does the president own 60% (and 40% is in the IPO/Bank). Or is it a 40%/30%/30% (in a three player game). Treating those situations identically is a recipe for disaster.

So — The board position is entangled with the players’ stakes. That’s the “hook” of 18xx.

(Acquire also does this, and is rightly acknowledged as one of the greatest games of last century¹. Its board play is much simpler, the stock entanglement does the heavy lifting. In Chicago Express the entire game play revolves around implicit collusion — getting the incentives right so that others make plays to your benefit)

Of course there are levels of entanglement, and ripples to the chaos.

How many companies (and which ones) will open?

If the same companies open in the same order every game, the game will likely start to feel the same (although various splits of minors still have interest)². Varying how many companies (and which) provides variety because the “train rush” is triggered by that one additional company operating. In many games, there might be “semi-permanent” trains. If X companies open, they last. The X+1st company opens and they rust.

Some games (like the ’22 family) randomize the order that some companies show up in, this forces each play into a new line but also means that the number of viable companies might change, which has implications on the train rush.

More subtlety, 1846 achieves the same effect by having some dubious companies that frankly aren’t great. Is it worthwhile to open a second company? Uh, sometimes. For a long time the fact’ that the game’46 had mediocre companies puzzled me, but borderline companies are a ticking time bomb. If the incentives are right, someone will open them just to watch the world burn trains rust. The fact that their ROI isn’t great is borderline.

Thinking about this with 18CZ; I suspect that it does do better at this that I thought … but three players is not its sweet spot³. The train limit is a bit too generous at that count (at least in our meta). Again compare this against ’46, where the number of companies (and trains) varies based on player count to keep things tight.

How entangled is the board?

The game board should be small enough so that each company’s track plays have ripple effects.

The game that best exemplifies this is, naturally, Go. There are “joseki” — opening lines that theoritically should provide roughly equal chances for either side … in that particular corner. Professional players spend an inordinate amount of time on the first 20-30 moves (out of 150-250 ish) because the corners influence each other and the josekis will combine. Joseki A (in the NW corner) may be great if Joseki B is in the NE corner, but terrible if Joseki C is in the NE corner.

So you want to leave things in flux and arrange joseki(s) that work together in your favor.⁴

In our last few games of CZ, Eastern Side of the Board never impacted the Western Side … everyone met up at Prague, which held enough token slots that most companies could get through, and the ones that didn’t at the end had their runs on the appropriate side. Sure, there was jockeying between companies on each side, but the corners never impacted each other. (Again, might be a problem that is solved at more players).

Which is not to demand that “every company cares about every other company,” but there should be some tension and chokepoints; companies fighting to place track or station tiles. For example, ’46 has Chicago (and Toledo, and Indianapolis). PNW has Seattle and Portland literally fighting over growth.

CZ (at least with three) felt like it had walled off suburbs. My branch in the SE eventually merged with the NW companies (and the Northerner), but it was a minor event. Like finding a run worth an extra few dollars in share. A rounding error, not a bomb.

(1862 almost achieves “every company really cares about every other company”; because of merger opportunities but also because the board is so tight and different company charters will have very different track preferences).

And even companies far apart and destined to ne’er meet; they might compete over tiles. Every 18xx player knows the sinking feeling when you discover a needed tile is missing.⁵⁶

What doesn’t interest me

Hunting out the extra dollar and operations minutiae all the time. (Hunting out extra money in the opening is the entire point of compound interest). Yes, sometimes that extra dollar really matters. A few bucks might make the difference between buying another certificate. In that case, the extra few dollars is a “bomb⁷” (a big deal).

Token wars, snatching up the right train, ownership battles, dumping companies … those are always bombs. If the few extra dollars is a bomb only 1% of the time, it can be simplified away. But I’ve learned that in order to entangle the board (and stock) you have to have the possibility of not entangling it. Sometimes even great games can have a relatively dull run.

There are other things that don’t interest me. (I’m no longer fond of the ’30 family’s script of “first company low, second company saves first.” Nothing wrong with that play … but I’ve seen it enough). But in general I’m looking for a reason to play an 18xx title and most of them give me plenty.

1. The BGG HoF got some things wrong, but they got that right. ︎
2. I owned 1835 back in …. ’92 or ’93, but never got to try it. I know it has its defenders and variants…. ︎
3. After writing this, I went and checked BGG and 4p is listed as best with 3p and 6p having the lowest recommended numbers. ︎
4. I don’t play Go well enough to know how to do this; but I played enough to know this is true. See the proverb “Memorizing Joseki loses two stones.” ︎
5. Yes, its a horribly gamey thing …. why should the fact that some company hundreds of miles away built a branch mean you can’t? Well, just imagine that they got a compliant politician to hose you. ︎
6. Also, I swear that 1846 is influenced by Coriolis rotation of the earth, because tiles that are mirror images with 4 each will have one set empty and the other set untouched. ︎
7. For those readers unfamiliar with the term, I am using the meaning of “bomb” from a Jonathon DeGann Article, which is still available on the Wayback machine. ︎

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.