BrettSpielWelt (skip if you hate Dominion, John Eno)

For a little while, I've been hanging out and playing Dominion (and thinking about trying other games) on BrettSpielWelt, a nice German online-boardgames site.

It is definitely a different, and inferior, experience to playing these sorts of games face to face.
Faster setup and teardown is wonderful, but is met with the problems of network issues, players mysteriously dropping, a pace that is too fast, lack of trash talk, and turning it into a pure mechanical and mathematical exercise.

But what I came here to say about it was:
I've never played the Dominion Alchemy expansion before; I've got it on order, to arrive along with my preorder of Prosperity.
I have heard that the game is "best" with 3 to 5 cards from Alchemy or none at all.
However, in my experience on BSW with "all random", at least purely mechanically, it doesn't seem too disruptive to have just 1 or 2 Alchemy cards in the mix.
When you normally play Dominion, there are typically a couple of cards in the Supply that just don't get bought anyway.. and this doesn't seem to grossly affect that. And it still gives you an option; sometimes just Golem in the supply is worth buying a few Potions, or whatever. It really depends on the environment.
(Also, I've had my good 4-cost cards Swindled into Potions countless times; that's really obnoxious.)

So, I think I will favor "all-random", or at least "not artificially affecting the number of Alchemy cards in the Supply", when I end up owning this expansion, and we'll see how it goes.
Adding both Alchemy and Prosperity to the card universe at the same time is going to lead to a lot sparser distribution of cards from any particular set anyway.

As for the BSW interface.. well, at least games are over in 20 minutes or less, as opposed to JOL or BSG PBF.. ;)

Eulogy

Posted to rec.games.trading-cards.jyhad this morning:

I have not posted a formal, general, thanks to this thread yet, other than

in specific reply to LSJ.

I just want to say a few things:

First, yes, thank you to Oscar for trying to keep his favorite game (no, not

Racer Knights) alive in the corporate eyes. And for all of his dedication

to the game from long before he was getting a paycheck from WWCCP.

Thank you to LSJ, for taking on the task of not only *design* for this game,

but in-place redesign, in order to manage balance issues while keeping nearly

every card ever printed tournamet-legal. And for tolerating Stupid Questions

(which show no sign of stopping).

Thank you to those who keep the VEKN running on a volunteer basis.

Thank you to Prescott Jenner, for pulling me in to the Boston VTES Group back

in 2001 in response to some of my early Stupid Questions on the newsgroup.

And to many people named Ben, Matt, Kevin, Chris, or John (ok, there are more

names than that, but this covers a lot of people) who have been at Boston

VTES with me for the last 10 years.

Thank you to the international community of VTES players who have always

been welcoming, generally friendly, and often entertaining.

But all those thankyous being said, "Ceasing Production" does not mean the

game is over.

The only thing that is stopping here is the physical and legal printing of

new cards.

There are thousands of cards; thousands of potential decks (both Josh-esque

and Tier 1), which haven't even been thought of yet.

Other than, perhaps, Poor Group 6, a hiatus from getting new cards printed

would actually be beneficial to people's creative juices. And, seeing

current circumstances as they are, maybe there will be Final Official Errata

turning all the G6 vampires into G5, I dunno. Why not?

The VEKN is pretty much entirely player-run.

The game design has always been influenced by the players, and "fan

expansions" are totally not out of the question.

The game is still fun.

And, if all else fails, it is about the community.

VTES players love to play games. VTES players are *good* at games in

ways that non-VTES players are not, drawing on the skills unique to this

game. Play your BSG and your Chaos in the Old World and your Dominion with

other VTES players, and you'll have just as rewarding of an experience.

I say don't raise up your torches and pitchforks against CCP and WotC and

RSD over all of this. Continue to play the game, continue to play games

with your VTES mates, and see if you even notice the Cessation Of Production

in the next several months.

Thanks for reading.

Josh "Jozxyqk" Feuerstein

Former Prince of Boston

Asker of Silly Questions

MSPainter of Silly Art

Player of Games

RIP VTES

If you're reading this, you probably know the news. V:TES is Ceasing Production (again).

I've been playing the game since early 2001, and will continue to play it until there aren't 3 other people to play with anymore.

As much as this wasn't unexpected, it's still significant.

I will spare you most of the history lesson; most of my personal history with VTES was already written down in my eulogy for Your Move Games anyway

I've met so many cool people through VTES, I'm happy that this news doesn't break those connections.

And the thing about VTES players is, they're very good at the types of games I like to play. Being sneaky, calculating and secretive, has become a part of so many newer games.. Glad that I can still pull from that pool of folks.

The game won't evaporate; it has lived without corporate sponsorship before, and it will do it again; so I don't think I'm going to blather on much more.

I'm just glad that my artwork managed to get onto a card before the game died.

But I do know someone who's sad:

Stuff Ordered

With money gained from some recent VTES ebay auctions, I have put in an order to Thoughthammer (because I've heard of them and because they take paypal) for a couple of things: Dominion Prosperity, Dominion Alchemy (which I wouldn't have bought right now if it weren't "free"), and Small World Tales and Legends (which I wouldn't have bought without an official online FAQ if it weren't "free").

So, perhaps Small World will go back into "the rotation" for a while -- they've got another expansion (or two?) coming before the end of the year, which more ebay funds might go towards.

None of this is going to get shipped until TH has Prosperity in stock, but that should be within the next few weeks and maybe I'll have another excuse to do EliCon 2...


Of course there are still a bunch of other games I wouldn't mind getting in this "effectively for free" category:
Pandemic's popularity may have been vaccinated (har har!), but Talita might enjoy playing it 2p with me..
There's always Pegasus..
Betrayal at House on the Hill's re-issue is on my radar..
Defenders of the Realm is, sort of -- a co-op game with "a winner" but no Traitor.
I could go on, but the more important stuff is about what I *did* buy, not what I *might*...

Galactica, you and me need to have a talk

Last night, I was number 6 to arrive at VTES night.
(Yes, I made the evening-gown joke, and yes it was just as bad as you think. So stop.)

After a rousing game of VTES where my cruddy Marconius+Krassimir vote deck managed to win a 6 (ugh) player game (partly thanks to my grandpredator's Anathema giving me 10 yummy pool), we decided to play Galactica.

Now, see, I like Galactica. I think it's a great game.
But the last 2 games have soured it a bit for me.
In the EliCon game, the humans lost before the sleeper phase, due to randomness and unfavorable crisis deck shuffling; mechanically a total flop. The No Sympathizer rule didn't even enter into it, but you've heard my feelings on that.

In last night's game, which used Pegasus (but not New Caprica), another house rule was introduced to me:
If there is a Cylon Leader in an even-number-of-players game, he modifies the Loyalty Deck to ensure that there won't be 3-on-3 cylon-vs-human action.
I was on the Human side, playing Ellen Tigh, and didn't feel like we were ever in danger or challenged at all. I didn't ever even feel the need to use my special abilities, and spent the whole game tossing Treachery cards into the Engine Room boilers.
And, even though Morale got down to 1, it still seemed like an easy win for the Humans.
The Cylon Leader (John "Eno" Cavil) had a Hostile Agenda, and so the house rule dictated that there was only one other Cylon. It was Admiral Cain (played by Chris), who didn't get her Cylon Loyalty until post-sleeper phase after blasting us 6 distance forward.
Had there been another Cylon loyalty card in circulation (as per the standard rules), then there would have been a lot more sense of tension in the room; granted, the Cylons probably would have won in that case, but I think it would have been a more interesting game.
Despite winning, it kind of gave me a "meh" feeling about the game; especially the feeling by most players that House Rules are necessary "to balance things", when in fact they often don't matter or don't actually balance the game in the intended way.

I still don't know if I'm ever going to pick up Pegasus.
But whenever I am in charge of setting the "House Rules" for a game of BSG, I'm always going to be in favor of being minimally invasive.
That is, when playing the Base Game, leave the Sympathizer in a 6p game (unless someone twists my arm real hard) and only use the new rules from Pegasus that apply to the base game, and no other "house rules". I'd even love to play an "as-written" BSG base game sometime, which isn't really that outrageous. The Forum game I played (which barely counts) used completely unmodified base rules and I didn't have too much of a problem with, for example, old Investigative Committee...

When playing Pegasus, I'll encourage playing by the rules as-written, except for the choice between New Caprica (which I'd love to try, incidentally) or not.
You can say I'm overthinking it in the other direction, but as much as I love inventing house rules and variants, I really want to try the game as-is to be able to judge the imbalances for myself. Because, in my observation, none of the Major house rules (especially the respective No Third Cylon rules) have really accomplished what they set out to accomplish in the games I've played with them.

Ideally this game would get another expansion; there's plenty of plot left to work with, and I've even written down a bunch of ideas for a "wish list" for an expansion that covers the rest of the show.
I'm not holding my breath on that, but I'm sure it would address balance issues once again in its own way.

EliCon Report (brief)

EliCon was a total success.
First of all, the namesake was a really good sleeper. He got up twice, confused by the noise downstairs, but went right back to bed when I went to talk to him.

There were about 12 people who showed up, and I didn't get to play games with every single one of them, and that's OK.

Apart from a few timefiller games (We Didnt Playtest This, which lives up to its name, and Fluxx), I got in a 4player game of Dominion (in which the winner, not me, gave 8 curses to everyone with Sea Hag), and the 6 player game of Galactica that I was itching for.
Unfortunately, the Galactica game was a big clusterfrak :)
A decision was made to play with the No Sympathizer Rule, but it didn't matter (or actually hurt us due to lowered resources) because we Humans lost before the Sleeper Phase, due to a Cylon Adama and an atypically large number of Cylon Attacks and other nasty crises.

A bunch of other games got played; Small World, one of my other favorites lately, was not one of them.
The only game I really would have liked to try and didn't get a chance to was Chaos In The Old World; maybe next time.

Could totally envision doing something like this again, especially with Talita actually in town so she can participate too.

A couple of announcements

First, once again, this Saturday night is theoretically going to be rife with boardgame playing at my house. Contact me for info.

Second, do not be alarmed if my avatar disappears; my phone updated to the newest and greatest version of Android, which caused my photos to sync from picasa (which is where images are apparently hosted when they go onto blogger blogs), which led me to realize that I had not one, but eight identical pictures of Ossian up there; in an effort to clean up the mess, I'm deleting them a few at a time and then I'll re-upload if my avatar dies.