Friday Mike, Big Time, James, and I settled down in our stocking caps to kick some space aged ass. That is we played our first game ever of StarCraft.
I have been waiting for over a year to get this game, and when it arrived last week it was burning a hole in my house dying to get played. So without further waiting… here are my thoughts on the most anticipated (by me anyway) game of the year.
It come from Fantasy Flight Games, so I knew the quality of the pieces would be excellent. I was right. I few of the miniatures broke in transit but are easily repaired. The board, pieces, and cards are all excellent quality and just scream, “play with me!”
The rules… Well even though they are a hard to digest 48 pages long, most of that is sample game play. I was able to condense them into a 1 page “Cheat Sheet” which worked very well.
Game setup – about an hour this first time since it was read the rules, setup a bit, read some more, setup some more, etc… Once it was setup though the concept of how you “create” the galaxy seemed to work well and the advent of Z-axis routes was pretty neat. (Z axis simply means that since the 2-D board is supposed to represent 3D space, some planets on the board, even if not physically located next to other planets, can be traveled to as if they were adjacent.)
So then game play started. The first turn went well and no one seemed overwhelmed by the rules or phases of each turn. In the end the scoring was very close (having done away with the special winning scenarios since they made the game go to fast and no one was really paying attention to them anyway) The game took about 4 hours (average for 3.5 new players since Tim had played once before) and I we all learned some very good strategy for the next time we play like what seemed to work and what did not help us much.
Final thoughts:
This game needs to played again so we can use the strategies our first “dry run” gave us. I love the twist on movement and combat. Even at one of the board, you are not necessarily safe unlike Twilight Imperium where you can build and defend your home region. This game certainly comes off as a kill quick or be killed. The one player who played it completely safe got the lowest score by a fair margin.
I love the combat system since it is fresh, used no dice, and allows a strategic element to the combat system as a whole as you decide whether to save or use your special cards. Add to this the technology deck which allows you to place add on items either to combat or in general and each combat round was unique.
I like the development and resources. Nothing feel better then upgrading a building to make new types of units.
I like the fact it really feels like a Board Game version of StarCraft, not just a game using the name.
What I was not sold on was the special victory which seems to blind side you unless you are watching very single aspect of the other players. I had more time working toward area control and victory points, then special victory conditions which in my mind were way to easy for some folks to achieve. Fantasy Flight seems to love making special victory conditions and/or easy ways to archive points (like the Twilight Imperium Strategy that gives 2 Victory Points each time you choose it, although this was changed to 1 in the expansion, most folks won using the original card rather then a mixed strategy.)
Combat was cool but long. A large battle took a long time waiting for the two players to choose cards, etc… Not terrible, but long. Thank goodness combat is only 1 round.
I think most of the game is well balanced, but combat did seem to favor the Defender at least in being able to hold onto regions. It will take a few more games to see if this is really true.
The combat deck is messy, in that you have a combat hand, a combat deck, a tech deck, and a discard all using the same background. Some times my combat hand was bigger then my deck, and all in all the placement of so may “same type” card got confusing. Only the tech desk had it’s own little area, the rest seemed to get confused as folks grabbed their Combat Deck thinking it was their hand, etc…
All in all, I give this game a solid 8 our of 10 for being one solid fast paced game of area control, combat, and resource management. Even with my little gripes this game was worth the wait and one I look forward to playing again soon.
I have been waiting for over a year to get this game, and when it arrived last week it was burning a hole in my house dying to get played. So without further waiting… here are my thoughts on the most anticipated (by me anyway) game of the year.
It come from Fantasy Flight Games, so I knew the quality of the pieces would be excellent. I was right. I few of the miniatures broke in transit but are easily repaired. The board, pieces, and cards are all excellent quality and just scream, “play with me!”
The rules… Well even though they are a hard to digest 48 pages long, most of that is sample game play. I was able to condense them into a 1 page “Cheat Sheet” which worked very well.
Game setup – about an hour this first time since it was read the rules, setup a bit, read some more, setup some more, etc… Once it was setup though the concept of how you “create” the galaxy seemed to work well and the advent of Z-axis routes was pretty neat. (Z axis simply means that since the 2-D board is supposed to represent 3D space, some planets on the board, even if not physically located next to other planets, can be traveled to as if they were adjacent.)
So then game play started. The first turn went well and no one seemed overwhelmed by the rules or phases of each turn. In the end the scoring was very close (having done away with the special winning scenarios since they made the game go to fast and no one was really paying attention to them anyway) The game took about 4 hours (average for 3.5 new players since Tim had played once before) and I we all learned some very good strategy for the next time we play like what seemed to work and what did not help us much.
Final thoughts:
This game needs to played again so we can use the strategies our first “dry run” gave us. I love the twist on movement and combat. Even at one of the board, you are not necessarily safe unlike Twilight Imperium where you can build and defend your home region. This game certainly comes off as a kill quick or be killed. The one player who played it completely safe got the lowest score by a fair margin.
I love the combat system since it is fresh, used no dice, and allows a strategic element to the combat system as a whole as you decide whether to save or use your special cards. Add to this the technology deck which allows you to place add on items either to combat or in general and each combat round was unique.
I like the development and resources. Nothing feel better then upgrading a building to make new types of units.
I like the fact it really feels like a Board Game version of StarCraft, not just a game using the name.
What I was not sold on was the special victory which seems to blind side you unless you are watching very single aspect of the other players. I had more time working toward area control and victory points, then special victory conditions which in my mind were way to easy for some folks to achieve. Fantasy Flight seems to love making special victory conditions and/or easy ways to archive points (like the Twilight Imperium Strategy that gives 2 Victory Points each time you choose it, although this was changed to 1 in the expansion, most folks won using the original card rather then a mixed strategy.)
Combat was cool but long. A large battle took a long time waiting for the two players to choose cards, etc… Not terrible, but long. Thank goodness combat is only 1 round.
I think most of the game is well balanced, but combat did seem to favor the Defender at least in being able to hold onto regions. It will take a few more games to see if this is really true.
The combat deck is messy, in that you have a combat hand, a combat deck, a tech deck, and a discard all using the same background. Some times my combat hand was bigger then my deck, and all in all the placement of so may “same type” card got confusing. Only the tech desk had it’s own little area, the rest seemed to get confused as folks grabbed their Combat Deck thinking it was their hand, etc…
All in all, I give this game a solid 8 our of 10 for being one solid fast paced game of area control, combat, and resource management. Even with my little gripes this game was worth the wait and one I look forward to playing again soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment