Oh yeah… the thing that just arrived for me was Light Speed Arena which is the latest version of Light Speed, the real-time card game first published by Cheapass Games. In the middle there was Stellar Conflict which was a more complicated version with a larger selection of ships and asymmetric fleet-drafting. The two older games are somewhat renowned for taking ten times as long to score as they take to play, as you need to figure out what’s actually happened in the space battle between all the ships that you’ve frantically arranged on the table, and you do this by manually following the lines of their lasers (with string or elastic bands or rulers) to see what they’re hitting (following the initiative order of the ships – some might be destroyed before they can act at all).
Light Speed Arena is the first app-supported game I’ve ever bought. When you’ve finished playing a game of this one, you take a photo of the table, and after a few seconds you get an animated battle showing the outcome. The app is not self-contained, sadly – it needs internet access to upload the photo because the processing is done remotely – which would be a non-starter for me, except I happen to like Light Speed and I couldn’t help agreeing that this was a good use of technology, and that if it means that five games can be played in the time it would previously have taken for one, I can get on board with that.
I suspect the app approach will also eliminate some of the tension and drama that comes from working through it manually, but I feel that the benefits must outweigh the negatives. But hey, you could still score it the old-fashioned manual way if you wanted (but if you’re planning to do that, you can buy (or PNP) the old version much cheaper!)