Had a game day yesterday. In other words...EPIC POST INCOMING.
First up, the group started learning my new purchase, Space Alert, before another friend joined us. If you don't know what it is, I'd recommend reading Quintin Smith's entertaining article on it. Otherwise, it's basically a co-operative game in which you are a crew on the worst spaceship ever built who get teleported into extremely hostile territory to survive while the ship scans the environment. It's a game of two halves (ho ho!) where you plan everything and then go through the resolution to discover what catastrophe your plan has wrought. So during the first phase, your task is to listen to a ten-minute soundtrack (or use a fan-created Flash player) that functions as the ship computer telling you what will be happening and when. During this ten minutes, you also have to sort out your 12 actions by placing action cards along your track (numbered 1-12) to do something each turn (move left/right/up/down, press the A/B/C button, etc.). You need to move around to get to other weapons, recharge shields, refuel or transfer energy to other reactors, etc. Depending on where you are on the ship, different buttons do different things...and you also have to factor in the order in which players perform them. Since you only have 12 actions and even a simple movement left uses a whole turn, you will need to coordinate with your team in order to have everything (or as much as possible) covered.
In terms of what happens on a mission (shit happens), there will be various threats that attack the ship along different trajectories, or even saboteurs or ship malfunctions that happen internally. So, as time goes on, the computer might announce 'T+3. Threat. Blue zone.' which means that something will appear on the right side of the ship, approaching along whichever trajectory track is placed there. You'll randomly draw the threat (and use a '3' counter to remind you) and then try and suss out where it will be on which turn. This is because the trajectory track it is on will also determine what actions it performs and when (from passing over squares marked X, Y or Z) as well as which weapons can hit it at that distance. For example, on the right, you might have a fighter with a cryoshield that will absorb the first round of damage regardless of the amount. If it doesn't appear until Turn 3, there's no point trying to fire on Turns 1 or 2, nor should you waste energy trying to hit it with everything you have on the first go. You may find that it'll reach an X square before you can destroy so it might be better to add more energy to the shields before then.
That's just a basic example, the game will throw all sorts of crazy things at you, with various abilities/effects, during those ten minutes, and part of the fun is seeing your 'best laid plans' going completely awry. See, once the ten-minute soundtrack is up, it's then that you go through the resolution steps to see what really occurred; who went where, did what and, usually, how you died.
Someone might use A in one station to fire a gun, meanwhile someone in the same station presses B to charge the shields. Both draw from the same reactor...and say that it only has 1 energy in it. Meanwhile, the person you thought was refuelling that reactor beforehand was actually in a different room and actually dumped more fuel into another reactor instead or was simply a turn behind where you thought they were. Hijinks ensue.
We had a game where one guy rearranged his actions at the last second of the planning phase and, later, as the final turns resolved, in which some of us had planned to shoot down a big foe, he and another player started laughing hysterically. It turns out, from the two laughing guys, the one who rearranged his actions was trying to anticipate what the other would be doing and got it incredibly wrong. Instead, he was drawing all the energy from the reactor to his unthreatened side of the ship and firing a gun that had its own rechargable energy source. And, yes, by 'unthreatened', I meant he was firing at nothing. Meanwhile, the three people trying to destroy a big enemy (that required simultaneous shots just to breach the shield) were left without any energy whatsoever. Still, those guys had done well enough earlier on that we survived anyway. Regardless, it was extremely funny to watch.
During another game, a player discovered he had messed up an early action and gone to the wrong side of the ship. Easy to do if you're under pressure, sitting in a certain position in relation to the board and, perhaps, assume red = right (like my brain was wont to do). There is a rule where you can declare, "Oops, I tripped!" and perform the action you meant to, except it then delays every other action you had planned (basically, everything shifts up a turn until a blank space is filled or your 12th action gets bumped off the board completely). Problem is, we'd been relying on him to help fix a malfunction as well as sync up cannon fire in order to destroy the biggest external threat to the ship as well. He elected to just 'see what happens'. What happens is the malfunction isn't resolved, damaging the entire ship and then a space octopus tears us apart. Not to mention the fact that his movement meant he didn't shake the bridge's joystick a second time so as to prevent the ship computer's corporate logo screensaver activating, drawing too much energy from the lights, thus plunging us into darkness and delaying everyone's turn. We were screwed from about Turn 3.
So, yeah, it can be a tough game but perhaps more entertaining when things go disastrously wrong...or at least a different sort of fun from seeing well-coordinated teamwork pay off. The great thing, though, is that the difficulty is highly adjustable. The handbook actually structures tutorials that gradually introduce all the various gameplay elements, so you get an idea of how to pace yourself with learning things, but you can also use these to build on. You could opt to keep players' hands open and have action cards played face up; you could opt not to include the screensaver step; you could leave out internal threats entirely; you could leave out 'serious' threats and deal only with 'common' ones; or take out the 'advanced' versions of any of them. In fact, we didn't quite get to a 'full' game because we were still tracking ship damage as simple numbers rather than flipping damage tokens that dictate what systems got affected (broken lifts, reduced power weapons/shields/reactors, etc.) which even further complicates how everything really resolves.
I was also worried that the resolution phase would be quite laborious 'accounting' but it actually goes fairly smoothly since it goes in quick, simple turns and everyone's keeping an eye on their moves. Of course, it's also the phase where you discover the monumental cock-ups that occurred. Anyway, highly recommended hilarious fun, provided you have at least 2 people to help teach and then run the game. Certainly helps that the missions go by so fast (ten minutes goes faster than you think) and are quick to reset for another go.
We then did a different scenario for Firefly. One I'd chosen to hopefully keep things moving and not take five hours, since the guy who really wanted to play it couldn't stay too late. Basically, you ignore the starter Alliance guy and his jobs and the sole focus is on earning loads of money, with a bonus for doing illegal jobs. This prevented things bottle-necking like with some of the goals and it actually opened up things a little more to completely different strategies. For example, the guy who eventually won was playing 'traditionally' and doing a lot of jobs, whereas I'd figured the strengths of my captain (Mal) and where best to find the supplies I needed (Regina). I literally spent the whole game around the top left part of the board, bought all my supplies bar one, from the same planet and for a long time had completed just one job. However, I'd bought myself something that helped during salvage ops (extra contraband and money) and nearly filled my entire ship with cargo and contraband, which I then sold to the only person with whom I was solid after completing that job, for somewhere between $5-6k. I'd jumped up to $11k of the $15k goal in just a few turns. Unfortunately, the Reavers made progress a bit slow (such is life in border space) and I only got to complete one more job (after which I didn't pay my crew) before the leading player called time. Lost by around $1k in the end.
Either way, I think most people really enjoyed it, except perhaps the one guy who got really unlucky a couple of times and then kicked while he was down (not by me!) Definitely think that's a better story card for that many players.
Unfortunately, the guy had to leave after that (well, during the last few turns of Firefly in which he'd been a very close third) and we went onto a couple of games that were new to me.
Pacific Rim (yes, really). Picked this one out just to see what the designers had done. Thematically, it doesn't really feel like the film or capture any part of that. The 9 jaeger pilots are lined up from right (position #1) to left (position #9) and players are also dealt two of them at random (not co-drifers) that they keep secret from others. At the end of the game, players get the 'fame' that their pilots have earned. Fame is earned based on what kaiju cards come out. Basically, a kaiju card is drawn that will do 'something'. It could give 1 fame each to the pilots in positions #1, #3 and #5, it could give 2 fame to only the pilot in position #1 but then damage them (preventing them from earning more fame) or other various things. Whoever's turn it is can choose to do nothing (if they were happy with that outcome as is), use and then discard one of the three movement cards to rearrange the order of the pilots, choose to heal all damaged pilots or guess another player's pilot. If they guess successfully, they get half of the fame (rounded up) currently under that pilot and obviously now everyone knows who one of those pilots belongs to, so can take appropriate actions to mess with them (or help conceal their own motives).
So, while it doesn't really capture much about the film, it's an intriguing little game about deception. Unfortunately, I'm crap at that sort of thing and one guy guessed one of my pilots (Chuck) then capitalised on a wrong guess by me to identify the other person I suspected of holding a particular pilot card. Still, I kept my other guy (Herc) 'hidden' in the middle of the pack and he built up a decent amount of fame while no one could really prevent the already rumbled Chuck from earning even more fame, putting me in second place, 4 points behind the winner.
Yes, to anyone who remembers, I got the two Australian jaeger pilots and had to seriously restrain myself from talking in a really bad Australian accent. In fact, my reticence with regards to doing that may have given me away somewhat...
I enjoyed it though. Certainly not a bad game considering it was a joke purchase by the owner.
Lastly, we played Chez Goth. Instantly, I recognised the Munchkin-like art and got a sense that it would involve random funny things and screwing people over. As I learnt the rules and things went on, I got the sense that it might play better than Munchkin in that the mechanics keep you using cards and doing things rather than saving everything for the end. Unfortunately, I think the theme and attempts at humour got in the way of coherent on-card rules and so I never felt entirely confident in what I was doing, which I'd never really found with Munchkin. Didn't help that I seemed to be the most targeted player...
After that, my back started telling me that it had had enough of the incredibly uncomfortable chair and that it was time to go. All in all, though, great day.
