Tuesday 10th Jan

karl_b wrote:Yeah and I wanna play trains anyway!

Sorry Karl Its looking very unlikely that'll make it down tonight

AntW wrote:

psychomansam wrote:One space currently available for Dune, though 5 would be grand too. Anyone following some links on how to play wins brownie points :-)

I have printed out some extra crib sheets.

Found this one, Looks like a beast of a game!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig0VEf3WR3k

Good find cheers.
It does look really interesting, especially as I love variable player powers.

Right, I've done my Dune homework and am very excited. Looking forward to some scheming and general underhanded behaviour later!

Rich_Swan wrote:Right, I've done my Dune homework and am very excited. Looking forward to some scheming and general underhanded behaviour later!

So you're PLANNING on being underhanded eh?

uh...that is to say, I look forward to witnessing some general underhanded behaviour...

Rich_Swan wrote: uh...that is to say, I look forward to witnessing some general underhanded behaviour...

If by underhanded you mean 'winning without anyone seeming to notice' then sure.

So we've sort of played Dune.
I made the mistake of providing multiple player aids / rule sets which had mildly conflicting rules.
Three players made the mistake of forgetting not to hand The Emperor the victory.

It would be handy to streamline the rules provided to clarify some minor points for people and ensure everyone is clear on their powers. The game would then clearly also get better on subsequent plays as you introduce 'advanced' rules and massively ramp up a lot of the player power.

Any other reflections?

psychomansam wrote:

Any other reflections?

I'm ashamed to say I ruined my own game in Kanban... basically my last two turns were just a total waste of time...

Still Junk Art afterwards was great fun.

I liked Memoir '44: Operation Overlord, though was a bit miffed that we got the Russian rules wrong. That seemed to give our team a considerable advantage. I consider this one a void game.

The mechanic is that the Russian commander-in-chief, instead of simply handing out up to three cards to play on their turn, must commit to those cards one turn earlier, and they are placed under the Political Commissar chip ready to be delivered the next turn, but for three quarters of the game the Russians were handing out cards as normal.

I think the idea is that the political commissar of history was an over zealous enforcer of Soviet government orders, and thanks to Stalin's reputation they were pretty well feared. So perhaps the Russians had a less flexible or efficient chain of command. Historians?

Anyway, had a good time playing. How did my field-generals feel? I know a few of them went several turns without much to do.

I should probably be weighing up tactical gains and strategic gains better. Tactical results are dice dependent, whereas getting yourself into broadly good positions on the board over the course of the game will probable outweigh bad dice rolls. I think Stephen had a strategic plan that I mostly put the back of my mind as I was thinking about hand management.

And, as always, card games: playing again when you know more of the cards must make a big difference.

I really want to play more Memoir, whether an Overlord match again or just with two players. Certainly would like to play Overlord again as a general rather than Commander in Chief. Who's playing again?

Web of Spies still sucks. Nothing new to report here. It's still rubbish as a deck-builder. It's got such a boring arc of predictably whittling each other down as equally as possible until someone ends up in the right place with the right cards and wins. I guess I could try really hard to play it as a memory game and track what cards each player has, but that doesn't sound very fun either. You've had (at least) three chances, Web of Spies. I do not like you.

I really enjoyed Operation Overlord - it made it quite exciting not knowing what 'resources' (cards) I was going to be granted each turn and then trying to make the best of a position with the constraints presented. I'd definitely like to play again - either the base 1 vs 1 game or some more Overlord. I did wonder how interesting it was for the commanders who were essentially playing a card game. Maybe it would be more interesting for them if we played 3 vs 3 and they controlled the centre in addition to holding the cards?

I definitely think that knowing what's in the decks would help with strategy. I think there must be something in the idea of 'saving up' cards for a zone so that you can press an attack for several consecutive turns. And knowing how many copies of "Their Finest Hour" there are, for example, would help with understanding how special/rare it is.

But overall I really enjoyed the game and think it does incredibly well at making you feel like you're playing something with decent strategy (as well as some luck) whilst being mechanically very simple.

I think, on balance, I prefer 1v1 Memoir 44. I enjoyed Overlord, but since I'm not the best at keeping my mouth shut, only being able to speak to one commander was frustrating - particularly when they didn't carry out the action I would have taken! That's not to say the did the wrong thing, just not what I would have done.

psychomansam wrote:
So we've sort of played Dune.
<snip>
Any other reflections?

The Rules was an issue sure, but I think it was more not really understanding how the game 'should' be played.

I almost think it needs to be played as 6, or at least the Guild needs to be in the game if The Emperor is. Everyone giving their spice to the Emperor and then the Emperor spending Spice to give to the guild rather then the bank might have been a balancing factor slowing The Emperor down. Also being only able to form alliances when a worm sign event happens probably isn't a great thing, when its a big balancing factor.

Some player powers did seem unbalanced with two players being able to move 3x as far as others. I really didn't like the Bene Gesserit win condition. It's thematic but stupid. Guessing the race which would win is okay, but then having to pick the turn they win on (Out of 15) is a little much?

It seemed you and Ian were the only ones to impact the game, I was trying not to give The Emperor any of my bidding spice. (being Bene Gesserit) I could have deployed to empty strongholds and forced people to not fight at those places. Which would have dragged the game out until I allowed my prediction to win at the right turn I guess? (If the rules allowed, who knows!)

I really like the theme ( Go Dune!) I really liked the traitors mechanic, with the combat having that plus the cards from the hidden bidding. Could make for some great stories/turn arounds. The storm mechanic was nice, but i'm not convinced we did the first player part right, seeing as we was the only two that got to role for its movement.

It definitely has potential once all the rules have been streamlined/smoothed out a little.

Aneurin wrote:

psychomansam wrote:

Any other reflections?

I'm ashamed to say I ruined my own game in Kanban... basically my last two turns were just a total waste of time...

Still Junk Art afterwards was great fun.

You weren't winning even if you got your perfect turns in there though, really. Pushing out black cars maybe would've let you go point for point with me on final scoring (you would only have been able to get 1 though, realistically, as Meurig was grabbing cars then too) but i'd nudged ahead by then, and I scored heavily on all the training tracks.

I thought we all played quite well up until that point, and it was such a tight game all the way through (it was something like 45-45-44-44 going into the final end of week scoring, and then meurig triggered the end of the game meeting and scoring 1 turn later or so). The two turns earlier in the game of pushing cars out then nabbing them before anyone else could was definitely the winner though, nudged me ahead by 6 points in that final week scoring, then during the final meeting i just kept my nose ahead of paul and meurig, and final scoring having those 3 cars and the upgrades just let me mop up all the points.

Great game. When are we playing it again?

On reflection, I was expecting Dune to have more balancing factors built into the game rules, like a more contemporary game, rather than relying on the players to appreciate that the power in the game is very uneven, and take appropriate action right from the start. We could have cooperated a lot more from the beginning. Instead we were waiting for the worms before allying to each other.

The weakness of the Fremen and Bene Gesserit could've been an advantage as we could have peacefully occupied territories to prevent others from moving into them. However, that would require strategic deployment from the start because the Bene Gesserit have severely restricted movement, and we didn't have the experience to do that.
Being weak is fine as long as there's still enough to do and think about, and still ways to influence the developing game, which I assume there is, but couldn't appreciate as was too busy getting my head around the basic rules.

I'm quite keen to give it another whirl to see how differently it plays next time.

PaulC wrote:I think, on balance, I prefer 1v1 Memoir 44. I enjoyed Overlord, but since I'm not the best at keeping my mouth shut, only being able to speak to one commander was frustrating - particularly when they didn't carry out the action I would have taken! That's not to say the did the wrong thing, just not what I would have done.

To be honest I've not played either enough to form an opinion on which I prefer - and the mistake with the rules doesn't help with that either! I certainly enjoyed the game but the dynamic just felt a bit... weird.

I'd like to do the mission again, with the Russian rule in place from the start and also someplace quieter - the background noise made discussion very difficult I thought - next time maybe grab the little room to play in