F@$ AquaSphere

AquaSphere

Plot:  Back Off Man, I'm A Scientist.

You and you're competitors are sharing an undersea research facility.  You need to do the most research...never mind.  Thematically this is a threadbare setting only used so you don't have to call items "generic point gathering apparatus number one".

Gameplay:  AquaSphere is a worker placement "point salad" game.

INTERLUDE - POINT SALAD

A points salad game is a game where every move earns you points in a variety of ways.
Named that, because game play is like working your way through a salad bar.

 Stefan Feld, the designer, is notorious for these types of games.  Castles of Burgundy is his most successful (per BGG's rankings), but he has 10 games in the top 300.  I haven't (and won't) break down the top 300 for a stupid blog post that 6 people read, but 10 sure seems like a lot.

I kinda despise the points salad label, especially if it's used as a pejorative.  There's plenty of games where every action furthers your game that aren't labeled "points salad" and investing in an economy to later clean up in victory points instead of just always earning points is semantics.  You're still searching for optimization.

END INTERLUDE

The game board consists of six pieces centered around a central core.   Each game piece is similar but has slight differences (the wild card robot changes).

So you have two main actions, ready a robot or place a robot.

There's 7 types of robots (color coded)

- black robots are miners, they acquire a rock asset.
- blue robots are submariners, they acquire submarines.
- green robots build lab upgrades
- red robots acquire bonus cards
- pink robots shoot squids
- yellow robots acquire "time".  Time is better described as action points.  More on that later.
- white robots are wild cards, they train an additional robot of the above 5 colors based on your location when you play them.

Readying a robot is mostly moving up a tech tree.   By picking a path you eliminate some robots from your pool, so planning ahead is important.  The tree changes round by round, so the same choices won't remain for the entire game.  You can also spend three "time" to ready any robot you wish.

oh yeah, minor blip.  You can only have two readied robots at one time.

Playing a robot is, well putting a robot into your current area.  You're allowed to move around first, which costs time.  The robot goes onto a board spot and can be displaced into a holding pen.  The robots further stay in the holding pen until enough (6?  I think?) enter then pen, and then may return.

When a pen is filled to capacity, duplicate player's robots return to their tableau into the unready position costing you points.  Don't take this personally, it will happen and it will happen multiple times a game.

You're also capped on efficiency by your lab.  Let's say you play a squid shooting robot, or a mining robot with your basic lab.  If there's 3 squids or rocks, you can only take 2.  So you need to upgrade!

Subs are also complex.  You start with one.  You have to pay time to build more (and the resource investment ends up being a lot for anything more than a handful of subs), but they increase your time income and "robot in play scoring cap"


Scoring

This is complex and interwoven.  Take a quick bathroom break if you need to.

So literally everything earns you points.  The simple act of readying a robot earns you a point.

Shooting squids earns you triangle points immediately based on how many squids you shoot that action.

Buying subs and cards earns you points immediately based on what round it is (late game acquisition earns you more victory points than earlier).

Subs also increase your "robots in play" cap for end of round scoring, and if you build 6 subs (maximum) you earn end of game bonus points.

Cards can give you some VP engine.  Really, cards are way beyond the scope of this review.  They give something that helps you.  Like a VP engine, a free robot a turn till the end of the game, or a one time resource bonus.

Yellow robots acquire time, which is end game points.

Miners get rocks; rocks score triangle points during end of round scoring but you also have to spend one (or a readied robot so generally a rock) to pass periodic scoring barriers.

Lab upgrades make your lab better (MOAR squid shooting, cards or rocks!) and/or send out additional robots onto the game board, possibly displacing control of that area.  

The robot displaces to an area labelled A-F.  That letter is important, because at end of game you get triangle points for each letter in your lab.  Additionally, you get MOAR points for upgrading your lab 5 times.

White robots are just ready an additional robot.  I said just, but this is actually pretty nice.  It keeps you in the round longer and can be used to duplicate an action (not a trivial consideration.)

At end of round you earn some income.  Timing is important, because part of income phase might be readying a robot from a card, and readied robots score points.

So you score for readied robots and robots in play and rocks on hand.  It's important to note that you score rocks first, before spending them on barriers.    You also score for area control.  If you control more areas than anyone else you get some points.  If you control an area with live squids, you lose some points.

After scoring you reset the tech tree and populate the game board with time, rocks and squids,

End of game is more of the same, except now you don't have to spend rocks to pass barriers.


Review

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(I think you'll find I'll use that emoticon a lot)

Ok, mostly positive.  I've played this game a half dozen times and am still intrigued.  That puts AquaSphere in the top 25% of games I've played.

I just have doubts about the long term replay.

Lab Upgrades are super dooper important.  The end of game points are really lucrative.  The additional robot launches are really lucrative.  The game play upgrades might be lucrative but vary pretty wildly in actual effects.

Rocks are really important too.  Paying for a barrier with a robot costs you both actions and points.  Plus, rocks score triangle points, which can be LOTS!

Shooting squids, getting cards and time are circumstantial.  They all could be good paths or depending on how your game is going, they can be ignored.  Everyone will probably do each of these a little bit regardless.

Subs are not worth the long term effort.  It's pretty important to a second one early.  It's not an entirely bad move to place a third.  But anything after that you have some harsh diminishing returns.  In practice the additional time income and increased scoring cap is not worth what you spent to get them.

So in a "points salad" game with 6 typed plays, 2 are must do's and 1 is an ignore after early, almost trivial progress.  So, like half the games actions are dictated by that.  I'm not sure I like that, I have to play more to make up my mind.

F@#$ Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Thar be spoilers ahead!  Don't read if you don't want anything spoiled!

The final word first!

I liked, but did not love this movie.  There's quite a a bit to like, but I know of people who are on their 4th viewing, and I am completely dumbfounded.

The Good:

Well, this is probably the most important part, but the new characters were good.  I liked the concept of Finn the defected Storm Trooper, and if he said some hokey lines and was altogether goofy, whatever.  His debut was a good start, I look forward to seeing more of him.  Same with Rey and Poe.

I'm going to praise, praise, praise, the direction of Kylo Ren.  He might be the best villain the Star Wars films have dreamed up.   It's certainly arguable that Darth Vader was more interesting, but he didn't really get interesting until the very end of Empire.  I love everything about Kylo Ren, including the tantrums and the inability to defeat the good guys in the film's climax (something that has been criticized in various forms by the nerds).

The backgrounds and action shots were also terrific.  Early in the movie there's a scene with a wrecked Star Destroyer on a desert planet.  And it's a gorgeous back ground.  Later in the movie, there's a simultaneous ground assault and air combat scene.  It's busy, but not overly so, and more to the point, there's a reasonable explanation on why that shot was necessary, beyond "Boy this would look cool!"

The Bad:

The over all story was a retelling of A New Hope.  This went beyond parallels, and dove straight into tropes.

Now maybe that's ok.  But, after about the 6th or 7th eye roll it did start to annoy me.  To the point, that the huge surprising spoiler...wasn't.   Kylo Ren kills Han Solo about 20 minutes from the climax.  By that point, Han had completely taken on the Obi Wan role of mentor to the new kids.   So when he walked onto the platform to confront the big bad guy, I knew that he was dead.

and The Perplexing:

Zomg, at the nerd criticism.

#1:  Kylo being too big of a wimp to defeat Finn/Rey at the end.  Jeebus, get a life.  There was, no, I repeat, no way he was going to kill the new characters at the end of movie one!

#2:  Rey is a Mary Sue.  For those that don't know, Mary Sue is a super competent young woman.  Great at absolutely everything.  Mary Sue, also is more of a young adult/fan fiction trope; not a movie cliche'.

Now, maybe there are Mary Sues entering movies.  I can't say for sure having no interest in watching the Hunger Games or the Divergent series, but both of those were Young Adult novels first.

Now is Rey a Mary Sue?  Maybe.   But more to the point, I don't care.  The movie, in my opinion, adequately explained why she's good at fixing stuff.  Every named character in the Star Wars universe is a crack shot and pilot.  And someone in a movie named The Force Awakens was going to be a force user.  So there.

So if this is your primary criticism, you had better find a way to hate on James Bond, Jason Bourne, or pretty much every other super spy ever.

The Legacy:

If you look at this movie as a Star Wars relaunch, it was very effective.   It does have me caring about Star Wars again.  The primary characters are intriguing and I am very much looking forward to the new release.

F@#$ Eldritch Horror Expansions

F@#$ Forsaken Lore
F@#$ Mountains of Madness
F@#$ Strange Remnants
F@#$ Under the Pyramids


Disclaimer:  I will be using game terms in this post.  If you don't know what I'm talking about read my review or look on Board Game Geek for the rules.

Board Game expansions are a mixed bag.

Quite often, expansions come about because the game is a hit and the publisher sees away to keep that wheel rolling.  I'm looking at you Settlers of Cataan and Carcassonne.

Sometimes, they address a problem with game play.  Race for the Galaxy's first couple expansions did that.  That's the only one I'm aware intimately, but there's gotta be several more examples.

And sometimes expansions keep the game from getting stale.  The Eldritch Horror expansions mostly fit into this category.




Forsaken Lore on the surface didn't add much.  The only big addition was Yig as the cosmic horror that needs to be defeated.  What it did, which was fantastic at the time, was add something along the line of 25% additional encounter cards.  I don't think the impact of this can be understated.  After only a handful of replays, I started recognizing Other World (gate closures) encounters by the title, and a handful more had me memorizing the more popular location encounters (Rome, Tokyo, San Francisco).

Expansion Rating 8/10.  I could have done without Yig (at this time) and double the encounters.  But a fantastic addition that didn't twist the core game into knots.








Mountains of Madness added the Antartica sideboard, two new bad guys (Elder Things and Ithaqua),  a Prelude deck, 8 new characters, unique assets and the adventure deck.  Plus more additions to the encounter decks.


Ok this was a big one and did change the game quite a bit.

From least to most impact on game play.

1. The Bad Guys.  Just the new villains.  They all have new wrinkles and keep the game fresh, but the core rules do not change.
2. The sideboard.  You either need to play the Elder Things as the bad guy or draw (or choose) the correct Prelude for this to matter.   It's crazy important with the Elder Things Ancient One, but just flavor otherwise.
3. Adventure Deck:  Again requires the correct Prelude card to play.  But a big deal when it comes up.
4. New Characters.  This is where it gets hard to parse the impact, because starting from now, all of these things really change the game.  Of the 8 new investigators, 5 are really really good.  Ursula Downs the explorer, has a ridiculously good passive.  Tommy Muldoon, the rookie cop, has the best starting weapon in the game.  Daisy Walker is a very good gate closer and is a clue generator.  Agnes Baker, the waitress, is surprisingly versatile.  Finally, George Barnaby, the lawyer,  provides decent support and has the ability to do other things besides supporting the team.  Ursula and Tommy get picked in our games so often that there's an argument to be made that this was the most impactful change.
5. Prelude Deck:  Some kind of bonus (or beneficial trade) to begin the game.  I don't think these are terribly well balanced; some preludes are way way better than others.  Some can turn out so well, that the game can be won before a single die is even rolled.  Those do depend on additional luck of the draw, but I've seen it happen.
6. Unique Assets:  These wouldn't even be worth a mention if not for tasks.  The unique gear and ally's, while potentially great aren't that great of a departure from the gear you can normally get.    Tasks are...well...tasks.  You accomplish something, and you add some counter to your task.  When you've gathered enough you can reveal what the task does.  These, like Preludes, vary wildly in effectiveness, but a well timed task can turn the game completely around.

Expansion rating:  9.5/10.    At this point, in my opinion, the game needed some help for the players, and Preludes and Tasks certainly offered that.  Also a 66% increase of investigators to play was very welcome too.  Two thumbs up, way up, on EH:MoM.






Strange Remnants was another smaller expansion, like Forsaken Lore.  It mostly just added to what was existing.    4 new investigators, and they were ok, but not Ursula or Tommy.  The usual addition of encounters, gear and bad guys helped a bit too and added additional wrinkles.  Plus a new adventure deck and a new encounter called "Mystic Ruins".  Both required the proper prelude card to play.  

Expansion rating 7.5/10.   More of the same really.  I like any and all additions to gear, encounters and events, so this is still definitely worth getting.   But the new ancient one and the mystic encounters deck was meh.






Finally, Under The Pyramids.  Expect an update on UtP in the future, as I have only played this once.  A new sideboard of Egypt, new investigators, a new mechanism called impairment, and more of everything else previously mentioned.

First impressions:

The sideboard of Egypt is much better than Antarctica.   There's multiple exits and 'free movement' once a turn.  I suppose the flavor of Antarctica is that it is supposed to be a desolate abyss that's hard to get out of, but I didn't find that experience particularly enjoyable.   I like that there are many things to do in Egypt and getting to the next thing to do isn't ridiculously hard.

The Cursed Reporter character looks really really fun.  He's a slow build up, but if you can keep from losing, he'll probably end up as the most powerful character on the board.   Without some kind of power combination though (through gear or whatever) it's going to take a ridiculously long time.

Impairment sucks, but it was totally necessary at this point of the games life.  Pretty much every previous expansion only added benefits to the players and not anything to additionally hinder them.  The pendulum had swung to the players side and some new difficulty needed to be added.  Impairment is anti-improvement tokens.  Instead of increasing your skill, it decreases it.

The Abhoth Ancient One was very entertaining.  Defeating cultists is now various skill checks determined by a deck, instead of grabbing the biggest gun and shooting them in the face.

Preliminary rating:  ~9ish/10.  I need replay but so far so fun.

F@#$ Libertalia

Two posts in a week!
What are you thinking?
Won't you get burned out again?
Will people still not care either way?

Libertalia

Libertalia is mostly a card game with some neat mechanics.  It's not overly deep, but it's paced decently well and plays at about 15 minutes per player.  30 minutes per with Juan.

Theme:  fairly well implemented, you can imagine this with another genre but the goal of gathering booty with your rogues gallery works quite well.

Game Play:  each player gets 9 identical cards to start the round of 6 plays.  In between rounds, you draw 6 more identical hands for each player.

Each round has 6 plays.  You place a card, resolve its effects, grab some treasure and move onto the next play.  But not everyone plays the same card at the same time, so hands will change!  In fact starting the follow up rounds, everyone has similar hands but its quite unlikely that any are identical!

During the round set up, someone added a bunch of treasure tokens for each of the 6 days of the voyage.    Each day you select a card to play.  Each card has some power that helps you: select moar treasure, is in addition to treasure, or what have you.  Each card has a numerical value, the higher the value picks booty first, the lower the value has it's Dawn effect first.

Wait, what?  Dawn effect?  Oh yeah, each day has three phases:  Dawn Dusk and Night.

Dawn - this is pre-select treasures.  A bunch of cards manipulate who selects and what during the dawn phase.

Dusk phase- this happens when you select treasure.  like maybe you don't pick any, or maybe you pick two or maybe you throw all but one of your treasures overboard.

Night phase - some cards have an ongoing power for every night.   Like gain 2$ every night this card is in play.

these are all represented by symbols on the card, along with a 4th end of voyage symbol.  Those effects go off at the end of the voyage.  Duh.

So the booty:  Some are good, some are meh and some are bad.  And in a turn without any card generated exceptions, you must select one.  So there is a reason for all those treasure manipulation powers.

(I am not google searching images for Bad Booty but I want you to be aware it did
occur to me)

So that's the game.  Play cards, select booty, repeat until end of voyage and follow the directions on the cards in the meantime.

The intrigue happens because quite a few cards are good if only you have them in play or need to make it to end of voyage amidst a ridiculous amount of rounds of people trying to kill your dudes.

So it is very much tactical and strategic, if not overly intellectual.

Review:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There are things to like about this game.  

The interactions of everyone's cards are cool.

It's a pretty elegant design.

I'm just not convinced of how much fun it is.

And I'm fairly good at this game.  And by good, I mean I figured out good tactics really really early.  But the tactics are 'don't get greedy',  'look for cool interactions' and 'count cards'.  Literally every single player I play board games with can figure out the proper tactics after a game or two.

Maybe there's a deeper strategy I'm not seeing, like maybe there's cards that are way more advantageous to carry onto round 3, but it sure seems like that's a game to game decision.

Anyways, this is clearly not a favorite, but because it plays fast and doesn't last all night I'd keep it in semi-regular rotation.  It would also be a nice filler game at board game sessions with multiple tables playing different games.  

"You have an hour left? Ok Let's break out Libertalia"

F$%^ Star Wars prequels

It's not timely!
It's not unique given the flurry of other Star Wars' retrospectives!
It's not asked for!
and it's not well written!

But my review of the Star Wars Prequels!

When I first saw them, I absolutely hated them with varying degrees of malice.  Phantom Menace was atrocious, Attack of the Clones was perhaps a little bit better but still pretty bad, and Revenge of the Sith was the most watchable but that's a low fence to get over.

Years have passed and now I have mostly forgotten the details.  They didn't wreck my childhood memories, they didn't permanently tarnish the legacy of the first trilogy, and they didn't forever cripple future Star Wars endeavors.

What happened was the prequels were three sub-par movies that a lot of people saw.

So what happened initially?

If you follow this blog regularly, and you don't, because I don't actually post regularly, you'll see in movie reviews that I talk about 'conception' quite a lot.  And 'conception' in this context is the core story telling idea.  It's the ideas that are likely to stick after the script's first draft.

It's possible to have a pretty dumb idea lead to an entertaining movie but everything else needs to be fantastic.

Two examples:  Dodge Ball and Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.

Basing a movie on the grade school game of dodge ball is ridiculous!  At best I was expecting a movie that had a tone of an overly long 'one joke' SNL skit.  It was surprisingly good, because it did not rely on people getting hit in the face with a big rubber ball for most of it's humor.  Vince Vaughn nailed the "Bill Murray Sarcastic Straight Man" and Ben Stiller was a hilarious heel.

In the late 90s, who would think a parody on the 60s spy genre would work as a movie?  But AP:IMoM hit the perfect irreverent tone   Mike Myers was great as both Austin and Dr. Evil and the supporting cast (down to Tom Arnold even) really sold the premise.

Chronicling Anakin Skywalker's fall and the rise of Darth Vader wasn't the dumbest idea ever, but Vader is not nearly the most interesting character in the prequels.  It's Chancellor Palpatine.

Star Wars at it's best borrows from the classics and history.  Imagine Star Wars Clone Wars as a retelling of the rise of Napoleon.  Or Stalin if you need to make the villain less ambiguous :).  This is just like my opinion man, but that sounds like a much better movie to me.

Furthermore, in an attempt to prop up the worse idea for the trilogy, ST:PM turned Vader into Space Jesus in a ham fisted manor with 'the prophecy to bring balance to the force' and the 'midi-chlorian pregnancy'; these utterly failed to make this story the least bit compelling.

The Scripts

I won't spend too much time parsing and nit-picking the scripts.  Red Letter Media and a host of other bloggers have more than adequately discussed the faults of the script.

My take on the scripts is that they all read as if every single brainstormed idea for a 'cool shot' made it into the final draft.  So excess time was spent on justifying why that cool shot was necessary instead of actual character development.

The Acting

It's almost impossible to separate the acting from the writing, but I think it's safe to say that Ewan MacGregor, Liam Neeson, Samuel L. Jackson and Natalie Portman didn't give their best performances.

And finally, the CGI

sigh.

Yeah I hated the CGI.  Or more accurately the prevalence of CGI everything.

Someone I know from the interwebs once made a pretty good point.  Phantom Menace was a CGI pioneer.  It was an early example on what was possible.  Later movies really learned what can and can't be done with CGI; and the combination of CGI and practical effects can make a truly breathtaking movie.

So maybe, maybe, you can forgive SW:PM for being first through the wall but that in no way lets AotC or RotS off the hook for bland CGI backgrounds and cartoonish CGI characters.

So what does it all mean?

Sure seems that the Star Wars machine is steam-rolling on.  The Force Awakens opens this week and folks are already camping out in line.  The merchandising blitz has also reached fever pitch.

For me, Star Wars is no longer a must see.  SW:TFA needs to get decent reviews (~80% on Rotten Tomatoes) for me to even bother.  And there is no way I'm seeing it right away.   A couple weeks after the hysteria dies down is completely adequate.

hawk on my fence

pink spot on head