I had a very similar experience with Septima. It was setup on my table for days… perhaps weeks, even. Unfortunately, by the time I was prepared to actually play, my older two daughters insisted that I include them – this was a very poor choice and many regrets were had.
I ended up putting the game away; not because it was bad and it must be punished, simply because I had to get it off my table and hide it away for a while so that I could re-approach after a while, hopefully this time without the aid of a 7 and/or 5 year old.
However, I’ve had Endless Winter: Paleoamericans now setup on my table for about a week. Granted, last week was “spring break”, which meant my children were home, and that break from routine and structure wreaked havoc upon this household. Mix in the fact that my partner is using this week to catchup on many things that had to be postponed last week, my hope is that by next week, I will get this game played.
Unfortunately, it appears to suffer somewhat to what I discussed when talking about my experiences with Merchants of the Dark Road – I feel an experienced player is necessary to set the tone/pace for the game, but it’s just me here, so… I’ll have to wing it and try to figure out what all the knobs and levers do on my own (and by watching videos on Youtube)
What is it about them that you enjoy? I’m always curious to know what enthuses people about games that haven’t clicked for me, at least partly in case I missed something!
Personally, I can’t get along with these games because I can’t get a feel for these games by myself. I would need to invest so much time in one of them… that I don’t have. I was able to get into Gloomhaven because my partner decided he liked the basic premise of play and willingly engaged in exploring the game with me and by exploring I mean “learning and internalising the rules”.
I can’t get games like Septima and Voidfall into my brain at this time because I have too much other stuff that needs attention. I am keeping both of them for now (I regret the big insert edition of Voidfall because unlike Septima the insert is terrible). Because I have hopes I will eventually be able to play these like “penguin in the water” right now I feel like “penguin out of the water” when I try to play either.
If I had someone who would willingly spend hours getting into these games with me, like I had for Gloomhaven… I could see myself enjoying them more. If I were to get into Spirit Island right now, I might not have the capacity to fully grasp the rules and enjoy myself playing it?
I get the impression that that’s an intersection of nu-Euro and Kickstarter game. A huge Kickstarter Ameritrash game can have lots of expansion but you don’t need to use them, indeed maybe you can’t use them all at once. But nu-Euro orthodoxy says that there is one correct way to play the game, and anything less than everything is just a learning game. So you get a hugely complicated game, and these days increasingly a game with a bunch of separate mechanisms all of which you have to work at least a bit.
And yet Septima (maybe Voidfall, too, I don’t recall) has a “simple” introductory mode. But the simple mode keep suggesting that you aren’t playing the Real Game™ when using those. Which is why I set up the full game–against my better judgement. (And it’s still there blocking my game table for fun stuff like Harmonies and Beacon Patrol)
edit:
Thinking further… I come to one conclusions regarding myself is how I vastly overestimated my table’s capacity for big complex games. I can have a few at a time that I engage with. But right now I have a backlog that will last me until retirement. This is at least partially the result of my early-pandemic-I-will-never-leave-the-house-again buying spree because these games look great as Kickstarter campaigns and I had yet to be super-disappointed in a KS at the time. I hope I have learned a few lessons for myself.
I am certain there are people out there who spend way more time with these games than I do and who will come to entirely different conclusions.
That’s a consideration for me personally, as someone who plays a lot of games a little bit each, and with different groups: it doesn’t matter how good the ultimate complete game is, I’m going to be playing the intro game with my friends because they haven’t played before or because it was a long time ago (and the same may be true for me). If I can’t put the full game on the table with a new player, it may well not get played.
I think I love those kinds of games because they’re like a big logic puzzle that is never completely solvable. You try to plan out a round or whatever, what resources you’ll spend where for what gain, then something happens to mess you up (you miscalculated, another player takes a thing you were counting on, etc), and you have to rethink on the fly. I like the planning and plotting and I like the reworking in the moment. I’m not the greatest at these kinds of games because I do my calculations with gut instinct and what part of the game sounds fun to interact with far more so than actually trying to math out the single most efficient actions to take every turn, but that makes it the most fun for me with just the right amount of mental workout.
“Euro” was initially coined as a contrast to American style games (call them ameritrash, thematic, or what you will) and at that time was pretty clear.
When the two schools merged, a new kind of game evolved. This inherited the name “euro” but it got a bit fuzzy. Still, we all kind of feel what it means and many of us think this was a golden age of gaming.
The design ethos has continued to migrate and by now the meaning has changed again and it now is very hard to determine what it means. We all still have a feel for it, but depending on how engaged you were with earlier “euros” your meaning may vary.
May of us feel this last “euro” is less than its progenitors.
Hopefully that’s distilling all right and not projecting.
It leaves me with one last subtopic - this current crop of games is not like the Euro that came before, and I for one like the one that came before better, but most of us still like some of these new games very much.
If I were to take a stab at giving better names to contemporary euros (distinct from modern euros, circa 2000-2018) I’d say this:
Individual Efficiency Game - characterized by low interaction and a dense puzzle where you win by solving it best or fastest. Exemplars might be Great Western Trail or Ark Nova.
Complex System Wrestling - characterized by a game that is just more and more and more, trying to get that next hit for gamers who are bored with the simpler stuff. Certainly games over 4 complexity tend to land here, but as I’ve thought about it it’s more about mechanism sprawl. Pirates of Maracaibo (Maracaibo lite) just dropped on BGA and it looks fun. But there’s the exploration board, the carribean map, your ship, your crew, the raiding mechanic, on and on. These are games with just a lot of boards or sub games or mechanics going on. Exemplars: Feast for Odin, Barrage, John Company.
Modular Faction/Board Jamboree - These are the children of Cosmic Encounter. Games that offer near endless ways to play and numerous puzzles out of the same system. Expect asymmetric player powers, double sided player boards, decks of cards where only a portion is seen each game, a mechanic for goals. Exemplars: Anything from Level 99, Spirit Island, Gaia Project, Unmatched.
I was going to throw point salad out as well but I can’t think of examples where it doesn’t overlap with the first two. Most with the second, a dozen mechanical areas and scoring for each one. But maybe point salad?
So last questions: Would you toss out different or additional buckets to capture the contemporary (post-modern) Euro? And, given that these are different but not inherently worse, what games delight you in this era (maybe by bucket)? I’m guessing everyone but @lalunaverde loves at least one
I skipped most (all) of the discussion, but calling John Company a Euro is silly. It’s antithetical to everything that Euros are, contemporary or otherwise.
Garphill’s newest, the South Tigris trilogy. I suppose they’re part Individual Efficiency Game and part Complex System Wrestling. For me they hit just the right spot; I think they’re great. I thought I loved much of Shem & Sam’s previous work - for me these are better.
hahahaha! I do love Age of Innovation and Spirit Island. And if we count Antiquity, that one too.
The others I own are Rosenbergs. I haven’t explored these games that much but I really like Feast for Odin, Caverna, and Nusfjord. Im sure I will start complaining once I play these more and more.
The reason why I hate Euros is because a lot of Euro game designers are too busy designing a system and forget to design a game. And because of Sturgeon’s Law: everyone and their dog are designing Euro games and with little understanding on the whys.
I don’t talk much about it, but I now hate most 18xx
I agree that John Company doesn’t fit in the same bucket as Barrage and AFFO. It does have a lot going on, but the main point of the game isn’t to grapple with the system to get the best result, it’s to grapple with the other players to get the best result (preferably to their detriment )
Sturgeon’s Law. Also, the other half of 18xx where everyone just play nicely is boring and there’s not much agency. People complain about “mean” but getting rid of it is to get rid of agency
I heard 1861 being used as a game for newbies. 1861 is about the mergers of the first 1/3. Theres no decisions on the other 2/3’s of the game. Mind you, I never played every “run good companies” game, but Im extrapolating my existing experience to the rest.
Most might be too strong. These are the ones I would rather play:
The Old Prince
1830 (cant beat the classic) and a few of its derivatives (Shikoku)
Verging off topic, but it feels that the 18XX crowd is obsessed with the ‘correct’ way to play (possible topic of the week, meta-gaming?) rather than the play fast and see what happens way to play.
Lile you should never bis more than XX for Y company
My instinct is to rail (hoho) against “correct play” but I think the games can have a kind of wristwatch balance where one or two wrong choices can make the whole rest of the time a redundant waste of time.
I think it’s cool that games have this “first turn can be death” but i think it’s harder to feel okay about when your first choice is only death because the whole thing was spun out of control by someone else (because of the shares and what not).
I wonder if this is what the experts are annoyed about - the experience of games which just clowned themselves to pointlessness.
I wonder if, for example, if people got round to play a war game and then one person just decided to rotate all their tanks in a circle. I don’t think anyone would criticise the other players being annoyed at that.
(and I spent some time staring at Beyond the Sun (2020). With the relatively small deck, which means cards are somewhat predictable, and the single delineation of gameplay, it actually feels a bit of the older school?)
That’s a smaller set than I expected. Maybe I scanned my collection too quick, or maybe I just haven’t played the newer stuff yet to identify favorites. Things like Everdell or Ark Nova I enjoy but they don’t get onto “best of” for me.
Just a note - the more I sit on this I think the characterization comes from sprawl more than complexity. Lots of different (often unrelated) things to do, which only sometimes transforms into the heaviest weight classes.
This is good to hear. While I haven’t moved my West Kingdom Trilogy yet, it’s star has fallen a bit. Paladins is too hard to teach, so solo only. Viscounts is good not great. And Architects has gotten less enjoyable over time. I’ve often wondered if the set gets reduced to just one, or none. If there’s a better evolution out there, all the better!
introductory mode. But the simple mode keep suggesting that you aren’t playing the Real Game™ when using those. Which is why I set up the full game–against my better judgement. (And it’s still there blocking my game table for fun stuff like Harmonies and Beacon Patrol)
)