Hey folks. What is the best way to learn how to play Space Alert?
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You definitely shouldnāt do it at 10pm, on the second day of a convention, after 12 hours of gaming, whilst hangryā¦
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The game comes with a 4 mission tutorial built into the game. It takes about 3 hours to run through it.
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Cascadia
Terraforming Mars + Colonies - very simple expansion to add. Which is good. I canāt say much about how to use it, but it seems that directing your efforts on a moon (or some moons) would be a strategic move and would require that kind of focus. At 17 credits, a colony seems like something you have to use otherwise itās a waste of resources (but then you can say the same on other parts of the game)
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Space Alert is a game in my collection which Iām not sure Iāll ever get to play again (although Iād very much like to).
Itās one of those games where every player needs to have internalised all of the rules before you start the game or itās going to go pear-shaped in ways which are not satisfying for anyone. You half-expect it to go pear-shaped regardless, but thatās only enjoyable if the mistakes made had been avoidable, and thatās only the case if everyone has the theory down.
That 3 hour tutorial (a sequence of training missions which gradually introduces all of the complexity) gets you to the point where youāre ready to play the game properly, and then each proper game will take a while; so you either need a group which is dead keen to spend many hours on a single game on a given day, or a group who is willing to spend those initial hours on a training exercise and then all reconvene in a sufficiently short time frame for some real games so that everyone still remembers how it works.
Either way, you need a significant commitment from your players. My groups these days tend to be both casual and infrequent, so Iāve never felt like even suggesting Space Alert.
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A long while ago (probably 20 years ago?) there was an old flash game where you had to cooperate with yourself by doing a level multiple times; you would run through the level, stand on pressure-plate triggers, or flip switches, or jump on a seesaw; and then you would probably have to kill yourself (I think there was a key you could press to do so). And then you run through the level again, and you can see the phantom of your previous life doing all the things, and if the phantom opened a door, you could go through it; and if you both jumped on the seesaw, it might be enough to trigger that thing, etc.
I donāt remember what the game was called; I think there may have been a few games made around that time that all used that same premise; these days, I canāt even find evidence that these games existed or if that mechanism ever got a name in the zeitgeist.
But, regardless, Iāve been thinking for a few years now that you could play Space Alert like that. Play as all the players and use the same soundtrack/events/etc; each time you play through the game, you know a bit more about what is going to happen, but at the same time, you have to remember what all your previous actions were.
Iāve been waiting for the adequate headspace to try it out.
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Just as a counter-point, I have found that running through the tutorial missions is fast and fun, and perfectly adequate as an experience in and of itself. Depending on the group, you might be done with all the tutorial games you need to play done in an hour. The only risk is that you might find players overly eager to skip to the āreal gameā when everyone isnāt quite ready for it, so you need to be a good judge of just how many of the tutorial games you need to play.
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Monthly game meet:
2x4p Race for the Galaxy, good times as always. Winning tableaus were an appallingly efficient robotic development engine, and artifact hunters that ended up as a galactic imperium that crushed all the rebels.
4p Glory to Rome, good to get this played again. Baths fed by an Aqueduct lead to a ridiculous number of clientele, and an imminent win by building the Forum was instead won by points when a different end condition was triggered.
2p 300: Earth and Water, a short and punchy dicey war between Greece and Persia where early over-confidence by the Persians was punished by a Greek counter-invasion, leading to an early win by the Greeks. This is apparently āa thing that never happensā. Not a bad game, but dice.
2x3p Innovation, both games over surprisingly quickly, but still managing to cram in some crazy upsets.
3p Age of Civilization, a āpocket-sized civ gameā that is perhaps a little too vulnerable to becoming stripped down to the bone in terms of actions > cash > VP conversion efficiency. While two civs competed militarily, the 3rd pushed some early peaceful research, and ended up as the Polynesians, immune to war losses, fishing, trading, and āculturingā efficiently enough to overrun the end of the scoring track. This also is apparently āa thing that never happensā.
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It wouldnāt be GtR without something ridiculous happening
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Today started off with a 2 player game of Mottainai. I started off with a Taylor, a metal and 3 clay cards. Thinking starting out with a clay to cover sales and some potters to build it up would be a strong start. Things got better when @lalunaverde played a Smith as first player. I played no card built a clay work to stop Luna having helpers on my actions then drew another clay card so realised Iād get to do the start Iād already planned. A things went I also built a metal work and things just spiralled in my favour. Got to end the game with a double Smith action thanks to a helper and won despite my only having drawn a single clerk card and getting prevented from using Lunaās clerks without having one to reveal. Felt a bit too easy how things fell for me but it was also quite fun to steam roll a hefty 3 point builds start. I ended up winning 30 to 14.
Next we played 18NewEngland. I really enjoyed it and Iām now re excited about getting the smaller game in the expansions. Hopefully soon . As to this game it was tight for a long time but the third player ended up winning heavily when Mr Verde and I compounded a few mistakes each. Part of the problem was playing the game as we imagined it was rather than what was in front of us. I also got greedy with some share hopes which allowed a company to dumped on me inappropriately. Ah well. Fun was had and hopefully Iāll be less silly next timeā¦
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Played a game of Everdell with our usual Bellfaire and Newleaf and we broke a points record I think. I lost this one 137-154. Newleaf has really made the points ceiling just explode with its combos, the visitors and the ticket. Holy crap. Still SO good, though!
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My brother-in-law joined us today for Lords of Vegas. We all got rather lucky at setup, as we each had at least one property on the strip, and even more lucky when we all had developed them by the time the first strip card was revealed.
Through mostly luck, and just one trade, I owned all but two lots of F block before the end of the game, but could never save enough money to raise the whole thing. I was also able to trade for four lots of E, which I was able to fully raise just before the end of the game. Meanwhile, my brother-in-law had a 9 tile casino in C and all of B block with a 6 tile there. My wife had a decent sized casino, but it was not on the strip, while she also had a good sized one in the C block (6, I think) which was. She had some other scattered ones, but nothing which could score points due to their size and the scoring track breakpoints.
Thanks to a well timed casino swap, I broke ahead of my wife, as she had been ahead of me, and then I would catch up, just for her to score again. I pulled off the win, 66 to her 49, with her brother at 44.
After that, the two of us played Lost Cities, which had me winning the first round by about 40 points, and she was not able to catch up in the other two rounds, so I won this game as well, 112 - 82.
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Itās been a few days but I got to play 2-player Revive again against my friend with whom Iāve played a few of times before
It was nice not to have to teach a game.
I won the game narrowly.
We only reset twice each, having long drawn out combo-tastic rounds and suddenly I did a turn and made a choice and said āoh shit I ended the gameā and now all my plans are for nothing.
This is how all games should end. A bit earlier than you would have wished. I should have seen it coming though. I meanā¦ I keep forgetting that if I take that last mask, I do not get another turn. But the 4VP for ending the game are quite nice.
With 2 players the number of masks is reduced and itās just a fast game. We didnāt get a lot of points, I think I had 88 and my friend 78. Iāve had scores over 100 in multiplayer.
Iāll definitely try to pick up the expansion at SPIEL, the game is just a very good shared map, multi-use card, tech-tree, combo game that works well both as solo or multiplayer and 2 player being very valid is important to me.
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Carnegie
I really wasnāt sure what to find in this box. I know a lot of people talked a lot about this game; I think it had a large amount of pandemic-era success via Boardgame Arena. Could it be incredible? Perhaps itās one of those things thatās better computerized than in analogue format?
Well, I did open the box and I discovered whatās inside: cardboard!
And, for a pandemic-era boardgame, it certainly has nice components. Now, I donāt have the deluxe edition, but the components certainly are nice. The solo-mode cards (that are actually used to some degree for 2- and 3-player games) are wonderfully thick and have a superlative-inducing linen-finish.
The triple-layer player boards are interesting andā¦ nice? Not exceptional but satisfactorily functional.
It took me a while to actually get a solo game started. This game presents you with myriad variables to solve for, without grounding any of them firmly at the outset. For example:
Game: āHere are some cubes. You can gain and spend them to do things.ā
Me: āLike what?ā
Game: āYou can build departments with them. And you can build projects with them, too!ā
Me: āOkay, why would I do those things?ā
Game: āWell, some departments will give you more opportunities to get more cubes!ā
Me: āā¦ Okay. Cyclic, but fair. What else?ā
Game: āWell, you could gain some workers!ā
Me: āGreat. What do those do?ā
Game: āYou can use them to get more cubes!ā
Me: <exhausted noises>
So what the game doesnāt really tell you in the rule book is that the timeline events really should be the crux of how you decide what to do and how to do it. So what does that mean? <exhausted noises> I really canāt say.
So, weāve gotten this far and I have gleaned from the rulebook how things move, but how do you win? Victory points (the chief export of the US during the 19th century, probably) So do cubes and workers give you victory points? āNoā and āsort ofā, respectively. No, the majority of your victory points will come from the projects you build and the donations you make. Oh, and maybe the departments you build and the transportation you develop.
Soā¦ itās a point salad? Yes. At the beginning of your Carnegie journey, the point salad is so opaque that is effectively a black box mechanism: turns go in one end and are transmuted into a small amount of victory points.
I think further plays will uncover increasingly more of the mysterious black box, but now I find myself in a conundrum: do I want to continue to explore this game as a solo experience and risk setting myself up to completely trounce any friends/family that sit down around a table with me in the future? I dunno. But I think Iām at least going to play a second game, this time focusing differently, and trying to get a knack for the sequence of actions that I should be doing.
Because at the end of the game, I came to appreciate that, like so many other great games, I felt torn between doing 2 or 3 different actions; each of them seemingly the best choice, but sacrificing the true potential of that action for not having completed a different action first.
Thereās definitely a game here; and it appears to be clever, once you get past the multivariable algebra.
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Carnegie: Not played yet but realizing Iām definitely a Xavier Georges fanboy (more on that belowā¦) Happy to learn the game on BGA if you want to play over there!
Isle of Cats: What a ride here. I have enough polyomino games. Definitely passed early on, despite the hype, as it just seemed long and complicated for what it was. Finally played it an loved it, thereās a lot going on the elements interconnect. Wondered if I needed it? Now Iām about five games deep and itās settled into a rut. So many Lessons come out each game that you generally see the same set each game, by the end of the game. Overall it feels repetitive. Hooray, maybe Iām done with this one?
New Frontiers: Back in the saddle over at BGA. Still say this might be the perfect async game, in terms of length and complexity. Somehow this one is creeping up my list of favorites - I feel like it shouldnāt but I just canāt get enough of it. The more I play the less like Puerto Rico it feels. And while Race is still better, after 200-300 hands of that game New Frontiers has a newness thatās bringing me back into the model.
Troyes solo: Xavier Georges FTW. The big problem here is French. The solo rules were translated incorrectly and despite 13 years and numerous reprints, theyāve never been corrected. I joined the long line of pilgrims to BGG to find the errata and (eventually) a fan translated version of the French rules that added all the omissions and clarified all (but one) of the ambiguities. Made a new player aid in excelā¦
Lot of work to get started.
But in the end, you get to play Troyes. The bot succeeds, it feels like Troyes. Itās a bit swingy in that certain cards let you cleverly capitalize while Le Roy (Leroy) flails, while others give Leroy a huge, free boost while you have to work really hard to capitalize. So I won the first game and lost the second. But I got to play Troyes, it felt like Troyes, and man this game is good.
Impulse 2e: Iām jealous of all you with the 2e set. Iāve got the ugly 1e and have only gotten to play 2 handed by myself. I was very confused by the āinvisible space monsterā in the rulebook and did an embarrassing amount of work to determine it was actually a joke.
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Sounds like me explaining Dyson Sphere Program (computer game) to my nephew. He may not be old enough for that one 
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I wouldnāt have entertained the possibility of BGA normally, but I do find myself with a fairly light workload at the moment and my kids are settling into a routine during the work/school week (despite the district doing their best to disrupt our routine with 2 days of no school for parent-teacher conferences).
Iām game for a Carnegie@BGA adventure, and I shall resume this conversation over there
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I must admit Iāve merrily played Troyes solo for years just using the English rules that came with it (or with the expansion, I donāt remember) - and Iāve always loved it, and itās always felt like Troyes!
How much difference is there with the French rules (does it make it easier, because I donāt win very often?)
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The biggies are:
- The English rules give no indication of how long the game is. The French rules tuck āplay according to 2 player rulesā somewhere in the bullets and most everyone has intuited that itās a four round game.
- Some players game the system by buying all of Leroyās dice - and therefore limiting his actions. The French rules indicate that Leroy continues taking free actions, with no dice, until all the dice are off the board. Thatās only a problem if you were getting cute.
- Some rules around what to do if Leroy rolls an 8 and all the characters are already scored (scores 1vp) or if he rolls a Worker action and that building is blocked by previously bumped workers (priority order for choosing another building)
Thatās the top of my head. I also had to resolve how Leroyās number is never relevant, even when placing workers on buildings, and the color is also irrelevant outside of setup and placing a worker. Thatās not a translation problem, just a game-to-solo gap that would have benefited from more explicit writing.
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Played make the difference with the monsters. This is a great kid friendly game and would recommend it as a stocking filler. The art is cleverly rough that your marks are near indistinguishable and there is something incredibly fun in creating and playing your own spot the difference.
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