Space Alert strategery guide: part 1 of probably a dozen

so after operation "lets try a real mission" fell on its ass, we did a post mortem.   Not going to get into specifics of that post mortem, but we did come up with a few tenets.

"Serious Threats are not named Serious to fool you"

These will kill you dead.  When they are announced everyone should consider whether are not they can help.  They will probably need multiple people working on them to solve before Bad Things Happen.



"Read the F%#$ing Card!"

Of the few cards we have seen so far, rarely is one straight forward.  The consequences usually require some thought.  So even if you can't dispense with the card altogether, perhaps you can mitigate the damage, making Bad Things Happen, happen later or sting less.





 "Use special cards to save actions"

The individual resource you must manage is your actions.    It's a waste to use the special shoot +1 if you just have shoot the same target again next round.  Having said that, the movement part of these cards might be the most important.  Getting to a far away spot in 1 move instead of 2 is the easiest way to get multiple actions from a special card.

Nerdy Friday Recap - quiet kid or you'll end up floating home

games played Galaxy Trucker, Space Alert and Bohnanza.

4 player Galaxy Trucker

So my review was flawed.  The rules say pretty explicitly that your ship must be connected at all times.  You can however claim 2 pieces to save while building your ship.  What does this mean?  You can't build outside in, you have to build inside out.  So I take back my praise of Ryan's ship building skill.   I do like it better this way, it makes it tougher and more things break off in the dock.

Mike won pretty handily, but special kudos to Warren who finally had a good round getting 30+ points, which is awesome.

5 player Space Alert

1 new player, Eric, so of course we made him captain.  We did one easy training mission, one moderate simulator, one advanced simulator and one real mission.  The easy and the moderate missions we breezed through, had a couple hiccups on the advanced but still did ok, and got our ass kicked by the real mission.

That real mission was tough based on the cards we drew.  The early internal threat, unstable missile warheads, was 2 spaces away and needed to be fixed by turn 4.  So that either required two people handling or the use of the 1 shot super cards.  It went downhill from there.  We didn't allocate enough resources to handling the serious internal threat, reactor link, and when those consequences happened we were screwed.  Reactor link drains power, screwing up power doesn't have a ripple effect on everyone else, its more like a tidal wave.

5 Player Bohnanza

A really close game, 3 people finished with 15 gold and it went to tie breakers.  Mike tied David with a great come from behind surge.

F$@& Greatest Hits

So there I was, relating another pointless anecdote.

“Did you buy links?”

Car Wars

I did not witness the provocation (Mike did and I am sure he can tell that story.) but I did witness the aftermath.    Unsurprisingly, Chris Brown was the target for revenge.

Dave R. built a van loaded up with the maximum amount of heavy rockets in the front, which is 8.    His plan was to ram Chris, and have the rockets fire off via a bumper trigger.  So he goes right after Chris.  Accelerating to Ludicrous Speed and does a suicidal headlong charge into Bad to the Brown.  He is so sure that 8 rockets will finish him off, when Brown asks “So, did you buy links?”

You see, to have weapons fire simultaneously, you need to spend a trivial amount of money on weapons links.   Poor Dave.  Rules Lawyered out of satisfying revenge.

“Free Alp”

Eurorails

Building well designed track is pretty key, and in the later stages of the game you really need to think carefully before you build.  Mike P. did not think this through carefully.  He regularly drew strange off shoots and unnecessary cut offs.   After witnessing this occurrence for the dozenth time, Ryan announce, next crack track you build, we are awarding you a free alp (most expensive milestone to build).

Now the funny apart is not that Mike P. got the free alp.  The funny part is that not two turns later, he used that free alp as part of another cut off.

“Would you like to cut?”

Pursue the Pennant baseball

This is a card and dice game, with the players being represented via cards.  James H. got an expansion team.  These leagues are generally not kind to expansion teams and James’ squad was no exception.  So he managed to have fun by adopting an irreverent approach.  Inspired by Billy Martin’s drawing a line up out of a hat, James shuffled his player cards for the lineup.  This just infuriated Rich K.  I found it funny regardless, but it didn’t become hysterical until James asked Rich if he wanted to cut.

“What’s his first name?”

Trivial Pursuit

Bragging commencing now….I have a really good memory.    I have definite holes in trivia, but I get lots of questions right.    Mike mentioned this story here, and to briefly summarize the question was who played 26 seasons for the Raiders, Bears and Oilers.  I did have to think about this, and I did give a hesitant answer of “Blanda.”

The part that makes this memorable for me is Ryan’s sarcastic tone of voice asking “What’s his first name?”  my reply of “George!” and his reaction  “HOW DO YOU KNOW THESE THINGS?!?!?!?!?!?”

“You’re welcome to try”

Robotech RPG

When the old game at Vintage got huge, we split into groups.  And this night, we played in the upper floor of the restaurant I worked in.  Springs shout out.  The split group was still F%$ing huge, like 8-10 players.  Looking back, I don’t see how we put up with that but anyways…

So the game was lame.  We didn’t do hardly anything and Mike got bored.  He started checking recording Joe L.’s dice rolls.  Joe L. was a douche bag.  The game was rolling 2D10 to generate a number from 1-100, using one color as the ones digit and the other as the tens.  This requires the player to ‘call his die’.  Joe would not.  You wanted to roll low, and I was shocked, shocked I say when Joe’s rolls had the tens digit less than the ones digit 24 out of 25 times.   Mike shared this project with me, and soon required a pencil.  I had to borrow one from James A.  I made the notation and gave it back.  James A. is kind of a dickhead too.  He would not rest until he found out what that notation was.  Joe overheard the explanation and the jig was up.

He stormed out, but forgot his sunglasses.

Now after someone calls you out for cheating and you storm out only to return, you can’t just slink in grab your forgotten items and slip back out.  I expected a confrontation.

Set the scene, between me and Joe there are two really heavy 12 foot tables together in the center of the room, and narrow passages on the sides.    Between me and Joe, were about a half dozen people including Darwin W., 6’4” and 240, and Steve K., 6’2” and 240 (not much fat, Steve was built).

So when Joe screamed “I ought to rip your head off!” I replied (after doing that quick people between me and him calculation) “You’re welcome to try!”

So leaving some off.  Teasers?

"I don't even know what your deck does?"

"Let me get this straight, the first thing your mom thought of when she looked at your baby self was Orc Slayer?"

F#$% Practice...and Replay-ability

Few games survive more than a dozen plays. Prehaps this is the most impressive accomplishment of games like Settlers and Puerto Rico: they are old games, but they have shown staying power. A new game is usually not much fun for me the first time. I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm just taking actions to learn. I rarely win. Subsequent plays are much more satisfying as I move along the learning curve, and have (or try to have) a cohesive strategy I'm trying to accomplish through the game. This is the sweet spot for me. I'm rapidly learning about the game, hopefully faster than my friends :) I'm able to plan and have these things work out as I plan! At some point I'm even able to figure out what my friends are up to.

I don't like to read strategy guides (although I have!) or other peoples takes on games. Don't get me wrong, I really like to win, but it isn't NEARLY as satisfying if we don't all start on an even playing field. For a few games, Brass comes to mind, I read a lot of material online. In retrospect, some of that advice was not good. It helped me understand some concepts, or just put words to concepts I hadn't quite put my finger on. But you can't teach someone how to be an elite player in a thread. It takes practice.

The more I play different games, the better I get at applying the things I've learned to the new ones. Because as creative as some of these games are, many of them use similar mechanics. Strategy concepts that apply to one often apply to others. But primarily, the way I get better (besides obsessing about the mechanics between sessions) is just practice. Playing the game. Each game has it's own learning curve, and we all move up it at different rates. In my view once everyone has plateaued, the game is dead. To put that another way, once the group stops benefiting from practice, we're done playing.

F$@& Space Alert 2: The Empire Strikes Back

Space Alert Redux

 

I was skeptical about Space Alert.  Mike likes to joke that I don’t like any game, and there is a kernel of truth to that.  However, I think it’s more accurate to say that occasionally we have wildly different ideas on what makes a good game.  Now I’ve seen Mike get really excited about a game before, only to have me say “meh” or “yuck”.  And the most likely culprit is a co-op Adventure Board game (ABG), which I thought described Space Alert.

As I’ve said repeatedly, I do not enjoy the Adventure Board game.  To me they play like a table top version of a “Choose your own Adventure” book.  I lost interest in “Choose your own Adventure” books somewhere around 10 or 11, so I am 30 years removed from liking ABGs.  

Tagging Space Alert as an ABG is a misnomer.  It is in the setting, but there’s no dungeon to explore, and there’s no loot to acquire.  In all honestly, the game it reminds me of the most is Battlestations (BS).

Space Alert is Battlestations stripped down and timed.  You perform similar tasks in Battlestations; power the shields, fire the guns, hit the engine, etc, etc.  But the spaceships in BS are much bigger (only 6 spots in Space Alert and movement is simplified), there are more tasks, and the turns are untimed and sequential like a standard game.

Since we covered the game play already, skipping to what I learned.

So tactics I learned:

You can’t trade cards freely, only at periodic 5 second intervals.  And you don’t have to trade you can just give cards away.  Donations are important, don’t work out a trade just say what you need and take the donation.

Power is indeed critical but you really only need 1 person running the main plant.  That guy really needs to know when the guns are firing and when the other batteries are charging.  You get a maximum of 15 additional power tokens, and that’s more than enough…unless you screw up the timing.

Shields can be great or they can suck; it totally depends on the timing.  At least 2 of the threats killed all our shields (I found these the most challenging threats we faced, not only do they kill the shields, they damage off-bore areas…or areas you think you have dealt with already…)

The bad guys come in staggered.  Really pay attention to the timing!  The final game Mike mentioned, while everyone was handling Center (white axis), Right/Starboard (red axis), I planned no actions because it really looked like those were handled.  Instead I moseyed over to Left/Port (blue axis) because I was sure we’d be hit there too.  So good call Darren.  I was in position to wail on the blue bad guy.  

Review:  Holding off on a numerical review at this point, because I don’t like to judge games after 1 session.  But this part of our NF session was 10/10!   As Mike repeatedly told me how excited he was to play, I forced myself to go into this with an open mind (no adventure games, blech!).  I found myself reminding me of that multiple times last week.   And I am really glad I did.  Not only would my lack of enthusiasm affect the table at large, I was dead wrong in what this game was about.  I dunno.  Maybe I am growing as a person.

Nah.

FTG search hits

Which one of you knuckleheads searched for Viral Doober Spawn?

F&%# Space Alert!

Space Alert!

Premise of Space Alert is that the players' ship has just warped into a distant and dangerous part of the galaxy. It will take 10 minutes for the ships computer to map the area before they can warp back home. The crew must protect the ship during the interim. The goal for the crew is to keep the ship functioning so they can get home safe.

The crew works as a team. There is no traitor, it's purely cooperative. The game is played in two phases: an Action Phase, and a Resolution Phase.

The Action Phase is played in real time representing that 10 minutes that the crew spends in the remote part of the Galaxy. There is a 10 minute track on a CD to act as time keeper (it has several different variations in fact to preserve some replayability). Periodically the CD will announce a new threat has arrived (type and location/direction) and the players will flip up a card to reveal the specifics of the threat and attempt to deal with it in whatever time they have left. Each players can play 12 actions during the 10 minute Action Phase and they do so by playing cards from their hand face down on a board in front of them. The actions are not resolved at this time, they are resolved during the resolution phase. Players must try to coordinate moving around the ship, firing off the lasers at external enemies, and moving power to different sections of the ship to power those lasers (and shields, but really, who needs shields).

After the CD announces mission complete, the players can take a deep breath, put there head in their hands and quietly weep to themselves.

In Resolution Phase, each players actions are revealed and resolved one at a time, starting with the captain and going in clockwise order. There are very limited mechanics that allow a player to change his action during the Resolution Phase when it's determined there's been a mistake where someone did not do what they intended. But on the whole, this is where the game hands you your arse.

At first glance, it seems pretty straight forward. Play out your cards, double check everything, maybe do a couple of dry runs. But actually, 10 minutes goes by really fast. No really. It's fast.

But that 10 minutes of chaos is really the whole game. You just spend the resolution phase seeing if it worked. Whole game takes less than 30 minutes.

Obviously a key here is you must communicating effectively. It's like a job or something. Everyone can't micro manage the whole ship. There's too much information out there and too many different types of threats. The best you can do is figure out is who depends on your actions and whose actions depend on you. For example, if you're powering the starboard side (that's the red side), then you need to make sure a) there is power available from the main reactor when you try to bring it over to your side and b) there is power available on the red side when someone tries to fire the lasers. When you figure out who you are working with, you coordinate with them as best you can. Then of course it would be nice is there was someone has to make sure all the threats are being handle. Like a captain or something.

Once the rules are clear the game seems pretty straight forward (and by the way, it's way way way easier to be taught this game than to learn it from the rules). We're still noobs and adding rules as instructed, but all games seem to be winnable. It's just a matter of whether or not you made a catastrophic mistake or not...and as a random element is added, how well the team accounted for unexpected issues.

During the action phase you can do just about anything in the name of coordination and planning short of showing your cards. All we did was move our figures around the board so the rest of the team could see where we were working, which allowed them to coordinate with us. But certainly you can do more.

During the resolution phase of our final game I noticed a couple of things. First, I had no idea what I planned in the first couple of actions (out of the twelve). "Did I do that right? I hope I did that right!" It seemed like I played those cards an eternity ago. However, it all worked out ok. Second, there were threats that I was not involved in handling, and they were cared for just fine. Not all players have to be aware of everything that's happening on the ship.

As I said, everything seemed winnable. In many coop games you can play a game where the way the challenge mechanic unfolds, you find the game is not winnable. So really your just playing the game for the sweet spot, where the challenge was not a gimme, or the challenge was not impossible. Space Alert does not appear to be that way. I may not feel this way once we insert all the different threats :)

The threats thrown out against you all follow the general pattern, but they each have a wrinkle that impacts how you must react most efficiently. The group has to read and re-read the cards. Read read read. You don't want to find your plans go horribly wrong because the ship you shot at three times doesn't take damage until it gets in close to the ship.

The most challenging part of the game seems to be managing the power. Most of the time we just generated more and more power and prayed it was done effectively. The player managing the main reactor has the toughest job because he needs to coordinate with the most people.

The last couple of actions don't seem to matter as much. You've either managed the threats by now or not. It's too late to move to another part of the ship and try to help out there. Moving seems incredibly inefficient.

I really enjoyed it, the pace was crazy and made for mistakes which while annoying, are still fun. We are playing with just a quarter of the threats. The harder threats are yet to come. There seems to be quite a bit of replay-ability left in this game...which is good because the game is short, easily completing in less than 30 minutes. Results are still early, but so far this is the very best straight coop game I have played (one with no traitor). The game allows you all the slack you need to resolve the complicated knot placed in front of you, it just doesn't give you more than 10 minutes to do it. Clever.

I'll give it a 9/10, but acknowledge that there are a lot of votes left to be counted.