It’s gets a 3.5 complexity rating on BGG (for whatever that’s worth). To me, that’s not seriously heavy, but it is heavy enough to easily put off new players who aren’t serious gamers.
I have not played it, so I can’t speak to its Euro-ness. Is asymmetrical wargaming Euro?
Variable player powers makes me think of Citadels, but obviously there’s not much of a Euro component. There’s not even dudes on a map.
Citadels sidebar: For years, I saved a link to a Fantasy Flight press release announcing that Citadels was coming to mobile. In like 2008.
In that time, I’ve produced two children, switched jobs, and watched as the mobile scene changed utterly. And I sincerely doubt anyone ever wrote a line of code for Citadels.
(Well, my wife produced the children. But still.)
The problem with the BGG weight rating is that it’s arbitrary and any user can rate any game however they like. Root has received some 230 votes for a 4 or 5 weight rating, which is just silly. Playing as any one faction is fairly simple, and although understanding the game as a whole is more challenging, it’s not difficult. New players who try the game once and are left all at sea go on to rate the game’s weight much higher than it is because the initial bafflement created by the asymmetry doesn’t fade immediately. Same thing happened to Vast.
One of the worst things about board gaming is the focus on buying loads of games and playing them hardly at all, so games get watered down in hope that the first play will be easy, to encourage repeat plays.
For the record I found the rules for Root absolutely terrible for learning the game, maybe the worst I’ve ever tried (obviously not the worst in existence). Maybe others had the same experience and it skewed their rating.
Depends. You should be learning from the faction boards and the LtP, not the Law of Root, which is a rules reference. I quite like the latter as like the COINs, it’s very literal.
I haven’t read the Root rules, but my personal worst rule book ever is Space Hulk: Death Angel Card Game.
This is so true and a really great way of stating it. I’ve thought the first clause a lot, but adding the second clause brings it into real focus.
I think it’s a result of a sort of perfect storm of factors all happening to gaming at once:
~Board gaming exploding with new players wanting to dive right in with little experience
~Board gaming exploding with new developers and manufacturers, making competition quite stiff
~A shift in society to humans having much shorter attention spans and a harder time focusing
~Technology cycles and binge-watching making “the cult of the new” even more pervasive/normalized
~Kickstarter
There’s a sea of games coming out every month–no one can keep up. The era of a handful of games becoming “classics” is gone, and while a lot of people will point to “innovation” conceptually and say it’s a good thing, I’m not convinced.
So I played roll for the galaxy for first time yesterday.
Super fun! I love Race, but I think this is actually a better play
I had an opportunity to play Tapestry last night and I quite enjoyed it.
A few things up front:
The civilization-building theme is more or less tacked on. The theming makes sense and the actions do generally feel like you are doing what they relate to (exploring, conquering, developing technologies, etc.) but the game really doesn’t feel at all like a civilization game. It is an interesting engine with a civilization theme.
The miniatures, which are a huge selling point for the game, are almost pointless. They serve the same purpose as an Uwe Rosenberg tetromino piece. Their same function can be accomplished with a cardboard chit. That said, they do look great and merely compliment and already great-looking production, which you would expect from Stonemeier.
Still, the game was a lot of fun and had little bits of Scythe and Terra Mystica in it. You are really trying to race up four separate tracks that offer their own special actions but also interact with each other just enough that you don’t want to neglect the wrong thing at the wrong time lest you can’t actually do what you’re intending. There are a lot of moving parts but they make sense almost immediately. There is also just a little bit of luck thrown in, which I appreciate because it levels the board for me against the neurologist and the mathematics PhDs that I tend to play against and who slaughter me at any straight forward min/max efficiency games.
Overall, I want Tapestry in my collection. It isn’t what it seems at first but it offers enough interesting decisions that I want to play through it a few more times just to try different strategies and see what they do.
I am very much looking forward to playing my mates copy which should rock up any day soon.
A wine and cheese game, or heavier?
It’s not all that heavy. There are four development tracks that have a bunch of iconography but i had it all figured out in a couple minutes. There is a great player aid if you need. The mechanics themselves are fairly simple and even though there is a lot of information and quite a few areas to actually play on, the available actions are very basic. It’s more a matter of trying to figure out what you want to do rather than how you can do it. In my game, my wife won by a substantial margin and I took second by another substantial margin; I don’t know if we would have any great advice other than playing to the strength of your civilization card. I played as Isolationists, who ate more or less immune to conquest and who get a nice end-game bonus for their largest land mass. I didn’t really know what to do at the start of the game but I figured with those traits it would make sense to expand. I, therefore, spent most of my time in the exploration and military tracks.
Enjoy learning. Have fun playing!
More on Tapestry:
There is a really interesting mechanic in it that I quite like. Periodically throughout the game you will run low/out of resources and will have to move on to the next era, which includes a few steps and gives you income based on your income tracks. It works similarly to Terra Mystica for anyone familiar. However, when you move to a new age you don’t need to wait for the other players to end their current age; you just keep playing. In our game, a couple people moved in very quickly while I stretched out my early eras much longer. However, I ended up finishing the game first and had to wait for everyone else. My wife, who won, actually ended up with 10 or so turns at the end of the game after everyone else had finished. It is an interesting flow to the game.
Also, while I focused heavily on the map, my wife didn’t expand a single time until the very end of the game. She won by using technology cards and also by filling up her capitol city quite substantially. There are certainly multiple paths to points.
Has anyone tried the Transformers TCG?
My son is almost 7 and is reading fairly well now. I’d like to play some confrontational games with him and a CCG or two might be fun. Pokémon is the obvious option but Transformers is right up his (ok, and my alley). Is the game worth trying?
Does anyone have any experience with Dinosaur Island? Every time I try to watch a review my eyes start to glaze over, but that tends to happen with euro games, most of which I end up loving.
What do you want to know? I like it quite a lot.
I don’t know, lol. Just general impressions. We tend to play euro and and hybrid games in my group, with favorites being Terra Mystica, Scythe, Caverna, and recently Tapestry. I’m just looking for a fun game in that style that isn’t too heavy but also bring a unique something to the table.
The game is pretty light. Definitely lighter than Caverna. In terms of complexity I think it’s a bit below Terra Mystica. It’s got a good number of moving parts but the game has very clearly delineated phases so you’re not focusing on everything all at once.
It very much is Jurassic Park without the license. You run your park (placing buildings, dino enclosures, manage visitors), play with dino DNA, and manage your security/staff so you don’t end up with visitors getting munched on.
There are a few different options for game length which basically just add more objectives you must complete to trigger game end.
It sounds like it could fit my collection nicely. Thanks!
I’m not sure which editions come with them but try to get one that comes with the plastic dino meeples. They’re not needed but they add a nice visual element to the park as you get going.
