I’ve been trying to get back into gaming, and last night, out of nowhere, I had some free time and energy, so I grabbed a couple of short-ish card games that I’ve been looking at trying, especially now that I have some snazzy new card racks.
Star Trek Missions
While Fantasy Realms certainly got a lot of early praise, the artwork direction gave me pause. So when they released the Star Trek retheme/reimplementation, I grabbed it pretty quick. And, since it has no official solo mode, I let it sit on shelf for a while.
However, I’ve been seeing it discussed in solo gaming circles. There’s a monthly challenge for a fan-made solo mode. So I figured I’d give it a go.
I can see how Fantasy Realms could be fun and rewarding, like pulling the handle of a slot machine. Maybe Star Trek Missions just has a bit too much more structure than Fantasy Realms. The Mission cards seem stifling and, overall, I just feel that I don’t see enough cards in a game to do anything really interesting.
I played a couple of games last night, but didn’t record scores. I think I scored 12 on the first game and 24 on the second game. Obviously, there are people out there that do better than I; these scores are SUPER low. But looking back at the cards I discarded, I didn’t really miss any opportunities for card synergy- I seem to just have bad luck getting the cards to synergize with the Missions I draw. I return to my suspicion that solo gamers have a tendency to cheat; I’m totally fine with that, but I wish they would be transparent about it when they go and post about the scores they get that are double or triple that of mine. Honestly, it makes me feel as though I’m just not seeing the game the same as them.
Bloody Inn
I was following this for a while and eventually it went out of stock everywhere. So this past fall when it started popping up available here in North America again, I made sure it was at the top of my wishlist for Christmas. Still nobody bought it for me, so I treated myself to it as a post-Christmas gift.
I think the decisions in the solo game are so tense. The pace and tight action economy of the game are real and instill a sense of (appropriate?) dread.
I thoroughly enjoyed my play last night. I scored 110F, which is the lowest possible score to “win”.
After playing both games, I sat for a minute and contemplated how I was feeling. I realized that while card games are fun and the decisions I made were thematic, I actually wanted more engaging. I realized I am craving a “simulation” of running an inn or… uhh, producing a couple of episodes of Star Trek(?), I’m really not sure what the theme of Star Trek Missions actually is.
So, once I find some more time and energy, I am looking to get some simulation-style games going. High Frontier 4 All seems appealing, but it requires a very large table footprint, and my table is very cluttered with household stuff overflow at the moment.
What other simulation games should I play? The Mechanic: Simulation isn’t very helpful on BGG, and appears to just be a marketing vector.
EDIT: I was browsing Mechanic: Simulation and saw that Bloody Inn is tagged as such. Along with, I believe, every single wargame. What a pointless data point(less)