Steam discovery queue and related stats

Some time back, Steam decided to implement a "discovery queue", whereby they would present their customers with a daily selection of a dozen games (and now, other things like streaming videos), tailored to their tastes, with an eye towards tempting them with things they might like, but otherwise might never see.  Great idea in theory, and I've played along, checking out a batch of games on a more-or-less daily basis.  Steam says I've now been presented with over 10,000 different titles... sounds like a fine time to see how the idea matches up with reality!

First, the numbers... of those 10,002 items I've been exposed to, 4,151 I've rejected outright.  I think that illustrates how well tailored their recommendation engine is... and it's no surprise to me, really.  Their tool allows you to define tags you're not interested in.  For example, I've told it I don't care about any "VR" titles (because if there's one thing I hate, it's wearing goggles over my glasses), yet still they show up in my queue.

How about the positive results?  Well, at this moment, I have 66 games in my "wishlist", waiting for sales or an unexpected "dead zone" in my gaming desires to snatch up.  I have another 21 games in "early access" or otherwise "coming soon" that I'm following - I don't buy unfinished games (what with the bounty I already have and/or are finished and waiting in my wishlist), and that lets me keep an eye on promising titles and see who makes it to a properly finished game, and who gets abandoned or rushed out the door in an unfinished state.  As for actual purchases, I've currently got 445 games in my library, along with three pieces of non-game software and three series of streaming videos... at first blush, 4%+ sales might not seem like a bad thing, but those numbers also include games I purchased before this program launched, and games I bought through the Humble Bundle, where I've often picked up a game or two I wanted, along with 6 or 8 that I didn't care about, because, at a buck a piece or so, with proceeds going to charity, why not?  Side note:  you should look at the current Humble Bundle... I'd be all over it, if I didn't already own the games I care about in it.

I guess the takeaway here would be, if you haven't tried Steam's discovery queue, it wouldn't hurt to give it a go for a few days, but expect diminishing returns to set in quick.  Unless you're like me, that is... I find it entertaining in its own right, seeing some of the dreck people try to pass off as a worthwhile, playable game, never mind some of the straight-out weirdness you can find.

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 5

Not a lot of new mechanics to reveal this time or anything... frankly, this will mainly be a sort of "victory lap" post, since I managed to not only win my first game, but also managed to take the overall lead in the standings.  There is one minor bit of mechanics and schadenfreude to enjoy, but we'll get to that.

We started the game with two partially-explored islands in play, so a fair deal of energy was devoted to further exploring those.  Personally, I intended to limit my militaristic exploits, in the interest of minimizing my fortune token expenditures, the better to buy down my on-board enmity at game end... but I also started out with a Pirate as my carry-over adviser, and being able to basically do a raid each year without generating enmity does help somewhat with that.  Beyond that, I fully intended to start collecting goods, the better to get a colony started, but turn order and finances effectively put that out of reach long enough that, by the time one of my opponents succeeded in building one (the only one this game), we were in a tight-knit pack midway to the target glory score.  From past experience, I knew the odds of succeeding at building a colony this time were very slim, so I cast about for something else useful to do.

...and there it was.  One of the milestones in play was set to trigger at getting 30+ gold from selling goods in one turn, and between different advisors and buildings, I worked out how to use my meager finances to get 10 gold each out of the three goods I had collected so far.  From reactions at the table, I'm pretty sure nobody even saw it coming until it was done, and I was launched ahead of the pack, two glory shy of the target.  There was some talk about trying to sink one of my ships to drag me back, but everybody pretty well shifted to "get some glory while the getting's good" mode.  Just as well for them... I spent most of the gold I got the turn prior on a 2-glory treasure, then padded my score by discovering an island (now officially named 'Overkill').  One of my competitors discovered another island that same turn, so next game is just going to be exploration mad.

Not everyone's final round plans went as well, though... the leader since the first game went for the seeming sure bet of exploring a tomb of the ancients (both prior successes had resulted in a tablet and glory equivalent to a milestone).  On his last turn, he succeeded flawlessly in his endeavor, and received... 45 gold, and no way to do anything with it this game, doubly painful since there's a "have 60+ gold in your treasury" milestone waiting to be claimed as well.  On the plus side (?), that result also didn't call for the closing of the tomb afterwards, so it will still be a draw as well.

So, yeah, loads of fun this time around (the more so for me, since I won and finally got an appellation for my leader, making her Princess Kitty the Vengeful).  On to the next game!

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 4

We almost got this game finished in one session, and I almost won, but I tied for the lead with the overall laggard of the group, so no dice.  Still, there was a fair amount of "being in the right place at the right time" involved in reaching that goal, so I can't claim any deep mastery of the game at this point.

With three largely-unexplored islands on the map, it was a fairly safe bet that exploration was likely to be a large part of the score-getting this time around... but it also became clear that people had clued in to the value of the milestones, as people started grabbing all the spice they could get hold of (spice being the most abundant good on the board at the moment) with an eye towards the "sell 4 goods in one turn" milestone and its attendant unlock.  My strategy of specializing my ships and sending them out separately worked nicely here, letting me raid a couple of incoming vessels with my "coastal raider" for their goods and selling them to make a quick buck, while the "explorer" vessel went off to do its thing in the farther islands.  The money I made from those raids, I put into acquiring treasures, in pursuit of that cheap milestone of having three glory worth of treasures in your treasure room.

Unfortunately, I was thwarted in that endeavor by two players.  One of the people I raided previously used the Master Spy (and a little misreading of the text thereon) to empty my coffers after one of my raids was cashed in.  The other used an advisor combo, and the massive treasury he got from being so far behind in the overall game, to get two treasures (one of them the more-expensive, worth 2 glory sort) in the same turn, claiming the milestone, and getting an adder for the first treasure in his treasure room in all games going forward.

However, if the game snatches opportunity from you, it also opens up other opportunities as well.  I used my "being behind" bonuses to stock up on Fortune this game, with an eye toward reducing my permanent enmity in-game, especially with one specific island that holds 3 stickers of mine.  Another player found another tomb site, and my explorer was in position to take advantage.  Finding the Fortune-oriented option on the tomb map, I was able to easily complete the challenge, resulting in a load of glory and a tablet for my treasure room (it may only be once a game, but being able to "teleport" a ship home will be handy).

And so, neck and neck, we two leaders raced for the goal - but somebody else also managed to pull down that unlock milestone on the last round.  This unlocked "colonies" as a thing to pursue, which require 6 goods (including one of each type) to build, but persist for you from game to game (for all they have to be "activated" on a winter round to get all their goodness).  Both your ships start with a hold size of 2, so there's improvements, upgrades, and/or other silliness that will have to be handled to make that happen... but, there's no rules for conquering each others' colonies (yet), so, if you succeed, it's a decent investment.  Oh, and of course, it's also necessary for some of the new milestones (for example, one of them involves having built 5 structures, but your home province can only support 3).  It's not, however, strictly necessary for the next unlock... that just requires you to find a particular island using the Strange Chart.  Should be fun!

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 3

Amazingly, we finished this game in one session.  Mind you, that was almost accidental, but it is possible... the winning player crossed the 13-point threshold on turn 6 of the first year, in spite of the attentions of the pirate king (event cards from our first lock box, where a fixed-strength raid hits the lead player, with "bad" results of things like losing an advisor, losing all your gold, generally targeting the "leader" of the current game, by one measure or another).  The way that happened, though, does make me understand the gripes I've heard about how some milestone cards may be overpowered.

To recap, we started this game with three milestones available - two with unlocks attached, and a cheap one for gathering treasures (which nobody has seriously pursued yet - treasures have been outweighed by the usefulness of buildings and upgrades).  Most of the players started working towards the "sell 4 of the same resource" milestone, but we had discovered one new island last game, with an odd skull symbol and a high (but fortune-aidable) difficulty rank.  I decided to wager this round on that being a "tomb of the ancients", as referred to by the other main milestone available... and it turns out, I was right.  This time, however, the unlock didn't wait to the end of the game, but happened immediately.

As part of this unlock, the back cover of the Captain's Booke is unsealed, revealing a tomb map.  Every tomb you discover lets players come back to that site for further explorations, chosen from that map.  Unlike the main site explorations to date, however, these explorations are built with a "perfect" pass required to finish them off, at which point a special item (relic or tablet) is given out, and the tomb site is closed out.  Past that, there's a mix of new cards added in... no new types exactly, except that a new batch of damage cards detailing "curses" are added to that stack, which basically count as a separate sort of damage (making the "max default" damage your ship can take without sinking as high as 4, depending on which cards you draw), which have special conditions for removal.  That, and more milestones... no new unlocks in this batch, though.

No sooner do we have everything in place, than the current game leader goes for the newly-discovered tomb, uses the hints provided for each location to intuit one that he can spend Reputation to help pass, and passes it flawlessly.  In return, in addition to the point of glory he got for the endeavor and the tablet he gets to squirrel away for future games, the story gave him 4 more glory... and then, he was also able to claim the "first to flawlessly explore a tomb" milestone for another 4 glory, rocketing him well past the glory total needed for this game, and leaving everybody else scrambling to get what glory they could before the turn ended.  By the time all was said and done, we had two more islands discovered (for a total of 7), one of which is quite hazardous, one of which looks to be amazingly tame.  A fine point to start the next game!

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 2

OK, for starters, I really don't know where the folks at Plaid Hat Games come up with a 90-120 minute game time for this game.  Our group is taking about one 3-hour game session per "year" in the game, which, at 2 years per game so far, comes in closer to 5-6 hours per game.  Maybe things will speed up with time, but I don't see it going anywhere near as fast as stated.  Of course, that means that we're likely to get a full year of play sessions out of this game before we're done, so that's not a terrible thing.

But enough of that, you want to know about how the game went this time, right?  Well, the first thing was the effects of the new rank cards from the unlock box, which gives a boost to the underdogs (in the form of gold, luck, or influence) and a drag to the leaders (in the form of pre-distributed enmity tokens).  That helped me get off to a quick start, at least.  Second, most of the "easy" explore sites were taken, which seemed to prime the game for a more raid-centric play style.  That was mostly true, but it turns out exploring for islands is a fair bit easier than I expected, so we did manage to pick up our fifth island this go around... and likely, I'll be in hot pursuit of island #6 next game.

No unlocks to worry about this time, for all we did pull a couple more milestones (including one for sinking an opponent's ship, which we had to mark the site of for future reference)... the one thing that did bite a couple of us (myself included) was a misunderstanding about handling enmity end-game.  I was of the understanding that all you had to worry about in that regard was enmity with the islands, when it actually encompasses your enmity kept by the other players as well.  So, I've a fair bit of work to do to get some of that down... but nowhere near as much as the guy who won the last two games, so I'm actually feeling pretty good about my position, overall.

Another of life's little milestones

Today, my mother moved into an assisted living facility.  Thankfully, that's something she wanted to do, and not something being forced on her by the rest of the family, so that's a plus.  There's a whole lot of financial uncertainty involved (stuff that, in my opinion, should have been worked out before the move), but it's a nice enough place for what it is, and her area is definitely larger than the apartment she was living in before.  I guess we'll just see where things go from here.

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 1

We finally finished our first "real" game of Seafall last night, thanks to the imposition of Valentine's Day on our regularly scheduled night.  Unfortunately, that lapse also caused one of our players to forget the proper night entirely, so we had to make do... the rules have options for if a player is missing for one session, but not for an interrupted session like this one.  Our solution was to give the missing player either the standard missing player score (one less than the lowest score in the round) or their actual score, whichever is higher.

So, for round 1, the victory condition is 11 glory, with four milestones to pursue in aid of that:  fully explore an island, build 3 structures for your home province, obtain 3 treasures, and successfully raid a 6 defense site (which also gives you your first opportunity to open one of the sealed boxes).  Since I was fourth in the play order, I watched the first three players start pursuing the easier unexplored sites on the islands, and tried a slightly harder site on my first round, failing badly enough to sink a ship.  That was my first mistake.  The second mistake was taking that failure to heart and pursuing a mainly mercantile method thereafter, leaving my ship in a sunken state for entirely too long.  It may be possible to do something along those lines in later games with higher glory totals required to win, but there simply wasn't enough time to bring that to fruition this time around.

All that said, there's no significant new mechanics to worry about in the first game.  Your group is stuck with the same set of four islands, and exploration tends to be a little trickier than the prologue round, but still easy enough that a ship mod and/or the right adviser on tap will see you through handily.  We completed two of the four milestones (island exploration and the unlocking raid), each giving the person completing them a permanent boon and a healthy chunk of glory, while adding one card each to the conditions deck.  No great surprises score-wise this game - the two people who scored milestones came in first and second, the other two present eked out just enough score to tie with the person who missed out, so, per our prior decision, he ended up with one more point than he otherwise would have had.

Once the game was done, we got to open the appropriate box for the unlocking raid milestone.  Contents included rule stickers to cover research, exploration, and raiding other players' ships; islands to discover; a fair number of new advisors for the advisors deck; some new sealed condition cards, likely to go along with the new milestone cards; a few more retired advisor sticker sheets; and two all-new card decks, one for research, and one for exploration.  It should be fun to see how these changes affect the next game... oh, and two of the new milestones are unlocks for chests, so things could get increasingly crazy in short order.  The first unlock's story did say something about a pirate king, after all... we haven't seen anything concrete in-game about that yet, but I'm sure it'll come shortly.