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October 30, 2008

Tribune and The Gathering Storm - first impressions

Played the Race for the Galaxy expansion yesterday and definitely found it a good and interesting expansion. All the new cards seem generally good (and the Green windfall world will probably be my new favorite for a multiplayer game) and the goal tokens (4 3VP first to X goals, 2 5VP longest road style goals) seem interesting too and for those who mistakenly think the game is multiplayer solitaire, this definitely helps to dispel that. My only immediate concern is that the central goals make getting off to a bad start a harder problem to overcome and the bigger deck also creates a greater chance of a string of bad cards (for your strategy). In both games last night, one player got absolutely crushed, scoring like half of the player a position above them and a third of the winner's score. Interestingly, one of those players was me despite my being the one to end the game with 12 cards using Improved Logistics twice but still having an absolutely horrible score, but keeping the game going would have only made things even worse for me.

Related to the above, Tom (designer of Race) had highly recommended Tribune to me a while back so when I saw it on Felix's shelf I requested it and people were kind enough to agree to play and teach it. I thought the game was quite good but did have a couple of issues with it. First, we played a 5 player game and I went last. Getting late choices for the first 3 turns (game went 5 turns [which I gather is unusual] but the early ones seem much more important to me for various reasons) seemed to not nearly be offset by only a few extra money. I also had a poor hand (like never got a leader the whole game or think I even could have gotten one except so late and of a color where the existing group was so strong that would have been useless) and ended up being unable to take over any faction in Turn 1 and only one on Turn 2. This is just luck but it felt like very important luck in such a short game and I don't feel even in hindsight that there was really anything I could do about it. Also, like every time I took over a faction, the next turn it was immediately taken away while two factions that were taken on the first turn were then kept for nearly the entire game despite no Chariot defense of either. Again, just luck but how does one catch up in this game at all? I am sure I didn't play great in various respects but still, I kind of felt doomed from the beginning given the early luck. Definitely interested in trying this again though. Doubt I would ever buy it but worth exploring some more.

Posted by aarondf at October 30, 2008 02:08 PM

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