Outer Rim is much smaller and more easily stored (just a square box that fits the single expansion that I deem the ‘necessary’ kind) and cheaper and more available.
If you like Star Wars more than Firefly: definitely that one.
However, if you like Firefly more than Star Wars… I can’t help you. I have both but I have not managed to do more than dabble with the giant coffin box of Firefly I acquired via crowdfunding.
Outer Rim and Firefly let you add to your crew; Xia doesn’t.
Outer Rim and Xia let you change your ship; Firefly doesn’t.
Firefly and Xia have maps with lots of route choices; Outer Rim mostly doesn’t.
FIrefly has a set map, Xia has discover-in-play, Outer Rim has optional-randomise-at-start.
Xia has generic A to B to C trading as well as missions, Firefly has a little trading but is mostly mission based, Outer Rim I think is all mission based.
Have you played both of them solo? If so, what are your thoughts on each?
I’ve played both, but really just a solo game of each once, plus the Firefly PbF here which prompted me to buy it, and each was well over a year ago, so my memory of the rules is fuzzy.
I’ve played all 3 solo but not in a span of time close enough to confidently rank them.
I will say that I feel of the 3, Outer Rim is the easiest to get on, and then get off, the table. Firefly (due to expansions possibly?) is the longest/most complex, and Xia somewhere in the middle. But, due to the modular nature of Xia, I feel like it could really drag on whereas Firefly is somewhat more likely to stay consistent.
The biggest wildcard, perhaps, is that the solo experience of Firefly depends wildly on the setup card you use; officially I think there’s just one (or maybe more now?) but there are a lot of fan-produced options that open it up to endless variety in how the solo game plays.
I have soloed Firefly a few times, Xia once. Xia’s solo is basically “play the game, but the NPCs are gaining points too”. Firefly’s officially is “use this variant, try to complete the goals within a time limit”. The BGG community has produced a solo rules set that works with story cards other than the official solo one.
Variability is a thing too. Firefly is always a race, but what you’re racing to do and the situation you start in varies. In Xia it’s always the same race, but you have to adapt to what the shape of the universe will let you do most efficiently. I only played Outer Rim once but it felt as though there was only really one path to victory; this is one of the things I think the expansion fixes.
Seconding that: Outer Rim (as well as the easiest to get to the table by far) is vastly improved by the Unfinished Business expansion.
Games with nearby friends last night. We started with a couple of games of FUSE, finally beating it for this particular set of four people—on easiest difficulty without the level-six puzzle cards. (Though we thought we might have got quite lucky with relatively easy puzzles.)
Then on to Nokosu Dice, which always takes longer than I expect, but remains good fun. And in one round we all made our declarations, and thus none of us benefited thereby. This is a vicious and sneaky game and I love it.
It’s been a while. Apparently, I am not completely obsessed with this one:
Of course today came the package with the expansion and in a household of 3 people that are usually always at home: I’ll have to go pick it up at the drop point tomorrow. And I don’t have time to go tomorrow.
My favorite “sometimes I just want to put down some tiles” game right now:
Got through my first game of on Mars playing solo. It’s fun, well thought out and the theme and art are great… but it just wasn’t as enjoyable as Lisboa. I felt like there were a few mechanics which weren’t needed (private goal cards seemed completely superfluous) and as you reach the end game going into Orbit becomes mostly redundant (again very on theme but kind of feels weird to start ignoring half of the game).
The solo deck is meh. It works but only to get in your way and seemed very easy to beat. The objectives for each level seemed to be much more the point of the solo game. Having the AI so far behind that I didn’t at points need to worry about it too much did detract from the game a bit.
Not sure if this one is staying or not. Next up KANBAN EV.
Power Grid: Outpost - Fundamentally it is Power Grid, but changes enough to be different - a la Brass. Like OG PG, I don’t need this in my life so it is going to the sell pile.
The changes is that there’s now a labour market, instead of a resource market. Workers can be hired seasonally, but if you build shelters, then you get them permanently. The amount of workers in the game remain the same, so the more shelters are built, the higher labour cost goes for seasonal workers.
The map is different where the connection costs are randomly generated at the start of the game. And also, there are now these bonus cards which builds up your mini engine.
What is interesting is that you need to build power plant pieces on the board to make your power plants operational. So, if you only build 2, then you can only have 2 operational. So that means, you can go for density. Same with shelters.
However, this is all a moot point because of the late game convergence. You all want to reach a certain threshold, say, 17 cities. And the strongest power plant is a 7. So, you need at least 3 and have a 7-5-5 or 6-6-5. Only with 4 power plants on the board, you can be loose with power plant density
Like I said, I don’t need it. I’m proud to say that I have around 35 big box games in my core collection.
Le Havre - 4 players. Bloody good game.
Fields of Arle - 2 players. The comboing, the timing of the seasons, and the long term decisions with tools is just fun.
Liars Dice -
Tajuto - 3 players and it’s such a weird Knizia. At first glance, it seems that there’s no game here, but yeah, there is. The risk-taking with the bag draw is really good. And the interdependencies with the offerings, the Torii gates, and building all nicely binds together. The goals are also pretty clever.
Alas, I think the early game is too incremental and slow. But by midgame, juicy decisions can be had. Plus, the production choices are just poor. Also, there’s not much legs here, to be honest. The divergence of players decisions seems to go on the same arc. Meaning that players will be roughly playing the same way after several plays. There’s only so much decisions that a light Knizia can do, to be fair.
Also, in the pub we play, there are THREE colours that are so similar to each other. Abysmal.
Rebirth - 4 players. Another light Knizia. Good game. Not as slow as Tajuto. You draw a tile amd you play that tile. Despite the “1 tile hand”, there are choices to be made. Not a stunner, but it was a good light game.
Liar’s Dice - played with Playte edition again and the game went fast. Great filler
For Sale + Advisors - the addition of the advisors made For Sale a heavier game for a quick card game, probably increasing an additional 20 mins. But that 20 mins is worth it. Better strategic decisions for very low rules weight addition. Definitely elevates it. And the exp can be removed easily if you want the lightning fast base game
Fields of Arle - yes. TWICE! I went for flax strategy and didn’t really took off. Bad decisions were made as I haven’t played this for a while.
I have played 3 games of Obsession over this week.
And 3 solo learning games of Let’s Go to Japan on BGA, which is cute and when the German version is out next year will likely find its way to my shelves.
But back to Obsession. The first game was played in anticipation of the expansion package having been mailed and to refamiliarize myself with the rules–of which there are a few spread over multiple rulebooks (2 expansions are already out), leaflets for promo tiles and cards and a glossary. Then the expansion arrive and I played two more games with the expansion content.
So I assume those of you who might be interested in the game already know how it works. If not… somewhere in this thread there is probably one of my posts which explains more of the game. Since I scraped most of my longer posts from this thread and put them on my blog for ease of reference here’s a link to that.
What is in the expansion:
“Modules!”
“Oh yay…”
“Now don’t look like that, it’s good. Also just give Dan more money.”
So overall a bunch of small changes. You’ll mix in the guests, add the tiles, switch out Mr Fairchild, probably put out the Dowager’s sideboard and choose a new and improved family member. Soon you’ll have forgotten what else besides the Dowager was even in this tidy new box.
My favorite is probably the variants booklet. (I can’t wait for the consolidated rule-BOOK that has been promised to hit Kickstarter). I’ve mixed and matched a whole bunch of them. I was only a little disappointed there is no variant that keeps the starter guests in a separate pile. I so hate to have to assembled card stacks from different types of cards (spoiler: I don’t. I just draw cards until I have the starters I need and return the rest to the bottom.
Obsession has included variant gameplay from the start. The different market and courtship versions have always existed. But now there is such a nice bunch of mix and match… there is quite a bit more in the booklet.
All of these variants make the game easier. More relaxed. More cozy. More tea-time game.
I always play the extended game. I don’t like the pressure of the short game. But with some of the variants the game also gains a little bit more strategy and mitigates some randomness–which is the “Dan”-stated purpose of those.
I think I’ll stick with most of these for my solos anyway.
edit: Some very satisfying moves in both games when I get to host huge parties with a bunch of guests and afterwards all of the servants are tired and it takes minutes to “enjoy the favors” the guests bring. My biggest move was 9 guests using both the hall-boy with the carriage house and the Dowager to add guests to an already impressive 7 guest activity… it took almost all of my servants except the cook…
I had a very good time and game 4 is already set up on my game room table. I updated my rating for the game to 9/10 (up from 8/10).
So what would I recommend if you don’t already have the game?
The all-in for the game is pretty big with 3 major expansions and a bunch of promo materials so:
I suspect I would like Obsession very much.
Tried out my new copy of String Railway (I’d forgotten how brutal it was, still great fun) and went on to Project L and somehow it all went my way,
So many manuals!
Part of me wants to play and enjoy Obsession for the theme, but… I grabbed it at Wellycon a couple of years ago with the intention of playing a solo game to see what I thought of it, and I feel like I struggled with the rule book for about 90 minutes and managed to complete one single turn of the game, before I needed to pack it away again.
I’m not a quick learner, so I’m sure some folks would speed through that process without any problems at all, but I don’t think I’m going to try this game again in the same manner. I’d happily give it another go as a multi-player game if someone who knew it already was teaching it, though. I don’t think it’s a game I should ever buy, though…
I think it’s easier to play than the rulebook suggests.
I’m not sure how you feel about video content, but I think Heavy Cardboard did a full teach in a video
That’s what I found in a solo playthrough: the rules seem complex, but playing it once (or watching a vid) shows that the actions are actually very simple.
And things in the rules like “the holiday round towards the end lets you invite posher guests” sound like just another rule change, but after one play you realise that’s a really huge opportunity that you need to plan around.
I’d definitely recommend watching a game or instructions, it’ll make everything really clear.
Dan Hallagan is aware of this issue and has promised a consolidated rulebook. I suspect this will be on Kickstarter along with some promos or so next year and I also suspect that the PDF will be made available regardless. He has enough fans willing to hand over money to make the Kickstarter work out. (I‘ll definitely back it)
In any case as others have pointed out the bare-bone structure of the game isn‘t all that difficult. And 3 games back in I barely have to look at the rulebooks. The iconography could also do with a consolidated player aid but it is not complicated for the most part. Only a few of the latest cards have any icons on that I have to look up and I could be lazy and discard them and draw others instead.
The basic structure of a standard (non-passing, non-courtship event) turn is this:
That is basically it. On a passing turn you recover your guest deck and refresh all the servants and you can recruit more with your Butler or do other stuff, but of the 2-3 passing turns I usually do in an extended game, I recruit at least twice.
Courtship events are a little different, there is no activity. There is a type of activity revealed that the Fairchild heirs prefer this season and whoever has the most (or solo if you have more than indicated on the opponent card) VP in that category on their estate gets some additional VP and one of the Fairchilds visits for this season (they are very prestigious guests with grand favors).
The different type of servants in the base game are basically all the same. The game indicates which one you need for a particular guest or activity. That‘s it.
With Upstairs Downstairs 4 new types of servants are introduced who have special abilities. But in the base game the servants don‘t have any of those.
The puzzle lies in balancing what you buy from the market against the types of guests you can invite so you always have money to build, new activities to pursue (each rose side usually has more VP, doing an activity twice loses you an option go get VP), new guests to invite so your hand doesn‘t empty and in which order to host those activities so you can always provide service. You go from activities with two or maybe three guests to huge turns where you invite 8 people over.
It is really quite thematic for what is still a euro game. And I love the regency theming.
Seasons - brought it at the request of a club member. 3 players and it doesn’t stand up to be a Tier 1 game, but I’m keeping it out of sentiments. Indeed, nowadays, I would just bring a Chudyk game like Innovation or Glory to Rome which has similar duration.
Take 5 - a thinkier game and less of a party game version of 6 Nimmt. Really loving the screwage. Would love more plays of this.
A Feast for Odin - 4 players. We kept it at 3, but one showed up just in time to join as everyone is already on a game.
Caracas - standard tile-layer with a shop where you grab tiles from a la Cascadia. And just like Cascadia: it’s fine. Oversaturated range and so, you have all these pedestrian games like this one.
Terra Nova - no. this isn’t the Terra Mystica Jr game. It’s an old game. And it’s still awesome. Tense and cutthroat in a small box game that goes for 30 mins. Amazing game. 5/5
Haven’t posted much on here lately, as all games played have been either Star Wars Deck building game, Lost Cities, Lords of Vegas, or Ethnos, with a smattering of Kingdomino thrown in.
But today, we will invited our friends over, and the ladies went to lunch while the menfolk watched my kids and ordered pizza. And the two of us played Undaunted 2200: Callisto for the first time.
I own it and Normandy, but have not played either until today.
So I taught, we set up Scenario 1, we settled on me playing the Breakers and him playing the LFA and off we went.
The objective is the same for both sides: control 5 objective points or neutralize three opposing units. Neutralizing means removing all cards related to that token from the player’s hand, discard pile, or deck. When that happens, the token is removed from the board and it is out of the game.
The LFA start with two objective points already controlled, with three more locations worth one point each nearby. The Breakers start with no points, but have two locations worth two points each close by, and is also close to one of the points near the LFA, making that a highly contested location.
He got to the contested location before me with a mech and one of his units that could control it, but in doing so, only reached one of the other locations, and it took him a while to actually control that. Meanwhile I got the two locations near me, then sent up one of my units that could actually damage his mech to the contested location.
Due to bad rolling on both sides, very little headway was made in eliminating either side around that location. So, instead, I made a break for the last unoccupied objective points with one of my Control units. I got there while at the same time he moved one of his Control units and his other mech to one of my controlled objective points and managed to Neutralize the unit I had there.
Came down to whoever could draw a card for our Control unit first. We both did at the same time, but I had the initiative so got to go first and won the scenario.
We both really liked the game. The turns fly by as with only four cards in hand, one of which has to be used for Initiative, you have very limited options each turn which you have to make the best of. And sometimes you really have fewer options when you draw Interference cards, which are unusable.
It’s a great system, sets up quickly, and even if the game itself runs long, it feels quick. No idea when we’ll get a chance to play again, but I am looking forward to it.
When our wives got back, we played a game of Ethnos, which my wife won, though only 4 points ahead of second place.
