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!
Friday, May 12, 2017
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
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!
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!
Tuesday, March 28, 2017
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.
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.
Friday, March 24, 2017
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.
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
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.
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.
Friday, February 3, 2017
Looks like a fumble for Sony
Two months back, I posted how I submitted for my share of the PS3 Linux settlement... and fully expected to be knocked down to a lower class because of my limited documentation. Well, looks like the judge in charge has shut down the settlement. In brief, it looks like that partly because the settlement administrators were throwing needless requirements in to pare down the payout, and partly because the lawyers involved were scheduled to get a fat payout with little justification. Well, we'll see how things progress from here, but, as with most things Sony, I'm not exactly holding my breath.
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Spoilerrific! Seafall, prologue round
Thought I'd try something a little different this time... my game group just started in on Seafall, a so-called "legacy" game with a nautical theme, where the act of playing the game alters the game permanently for both the current session and future sessions. I won't go into great detail on game mechanics and such (here is a handy video that covers that pretty well). More interesting to me is where the game goes from that basic start point... and where better to post that than a little-viewed blog? So, in case the title of this post wasn't clear enough, this is your final spoiler warning. SPOILERS AHEAD!
The prologue is different from the main game. Fresh out of the box, the game starts you out with four mostly-unexplored islands, and the stated goal for the prologue (gather enough glory to claim milestones that let you name each of the islands), combined with the relative ease of earning glory through exploration, says that one primary goal of the prologue is to populate the game board a little more thoroughly, making the coming games more dependent on skill and management rather than simple luck. The fact that they use this as a no-long-term-detriment play session to get everyone familiar with the rules is brilliant, in my opinion. Well, no major long-term detriment, at any rate, but I'll get to that in a moment.
Being seasoned gamers, the first players in our group quickly went after the few resources available on the opening round, which turned out to be a mistake. Early-game exploration opportunities on a fresh board are plentiful, low risk, and guaranteed to earn you one glory for successful completion... plus, you get introduced to the "Captain's Booke", which adds a "choose your own adventure" element beyond the simple "you found a source of iron" that would otherwise prevail, and slowly introduces you to the lore of the game. It's not just "subjugate the natives and take their stuff", you start to find bits and pieces that don't add up to a wholesome picture, whether that's odd coins in one place, or peculiar bones in another that the natives rush to prevent you from disturbing, or the natives wanting to meet you at the ruins of a port the 1000-year-dead Empire left behind, it's got the hallmarks of something Lovecraftian starting to come to life, but it's much too early to say what form it will finally take.
Once we clued in to the risk-reward of the exploration option, we went after it with gusto, finding more resource sites, naming our provinces, rulers, ships and advisors as we went. Soon the milestones were falling, and we were all rewarded with the opportunity to name the islands, as well as entries detailing what was going on from the point of view of the provincial rulers and their underlings. More stories of dreams of glory, grand things to come, that sort of thing... and then, we triggered the final milestone. Turns out, whatever influence was in play must have gotten its hooks well and truly into the rulers of the provinces, as they basically all sailed west out of sight and were never seen again. The provinces each blame each other for the loss, which brings each raiding the other, and it's in that environment that the new rulers are raised (so, the rulers you first selected from the initial batch of 10 are destroyed, and you choose from the remainder for the rest of the game). So ends the prologue, with a little gut-punch for the players who've gotten attached to their leaders... and now, the game and players are really ready to play.
The prologue is different from the main game. Fresh out of the box, the game starts you out with four mostly-unexplored islands, and the stated goal for the prologue (gather enough glory to claim milestones that let you name each of the islands), combined with the relative ease of earning glory through exploration, says that one primary goal of the prologue is to populate the game board a little more thoroughly, making the coming games more dependent on skill and management rather than simple luck. The fact that they use this as a no-long-term-detriment play session to get everyone familiar with the rules is brilliant, in my opinion. Well, no major long-term detriment, at any rate, but I'll get to that in a moment.
Being seasoned gamers, the first players in our group quickly went after the few resources available on the opening round, which turned out to be a mistake. Early-game exploration opportunities on a fresh board are plentiful, low risk, and guaranteed to earn you one glory for successful completion... plus, you get introduced to the "Captain's Booke", which adds a "choose your own adventure" element beyond the simple "you found a source of iron" that would otherwise prevail, and slowly introduces you to the lore of the game. It's not just "subjugate the natives and take their stuff", you start to find bits and pieces that don't add up to a wholesome picture, whether that's odd coins in one place, or peculiar bones in another that the natives rush to prevent you from disturbing, or the natives wanting to meet you at the ruins of a port the 1000-year-dead Empire left behind, it's got the hallmarks of something Lovecraftian starting to come to life, but it's much too early to say what form it will finally take.
Once we clued in to the risk-reward of the exploration option, we went after it with gusto, finding more resource sites, naming our provinces, rulers, ships and advisors as we went. Soon the milestones were falling, and we were all rewarded with the opportunity to name the islands, as well as entries detailing what was going on from the point of view of the provincial rulers and their underlings. More stories of dreams of glory, grand things to come, that sort of thing... and then, we triggered the final milestone. Turns out, whatever influence was in play must have gotten its hooks well and truly into the rulers of the provinces, as they basically all sailed west out of sight and were never seen again. The provinces each blame each other for the loss, which brings each raiding the other, and it's in that environment that the new rulers are raised (so, the rulers you first selected from the initial batch of 10 are destroyed, and you choose from the remainder for the rest of the game). So ends the prologue, with a little gut-punch for the players who've gotten attached to their leaders... and now, the game and players are really ready to play.
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