<div>Mix Heroscape and Heroclix. </div>
<div>Mix Heroscape and Heroclix. </div>
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New Image for Heroscape Marvel: The Conflict Begins
<div>Mix Heroscape and Heroclix. </div>
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First martians: Learning how not to play for a touchdown!
First of all thank you for all the feedback below my previous post. I very much appreciate all the comments.
One important note - many of you posted solutions how to fix the game. The game is not broken, there is nothing to fix. I wrote the article to show you how the players' behavior changes with the theme. The same mechanism, a different theme, different behavior. There is no problem with the game itself, though. Listen to today's story...
Learning how not to play for a touchdown!
When we play games, we have a clear goal to achieve. Get 25 points. Control most regions. Build 10 Wonders. When we get there, we win the game. It's like a touchdown.
Magic the Gathering is about reducing enemy's Life to 0. No matter how many points we have, no matter how great monsters he has, no matter what he would do to us next round and how badly he would kick our ass. Reduce him to 0 and you've won. Touchdown!
Race for the Galaxy? Build this tableau of 12 cards in front of you and finish the game - even if your opponent has a better Production/Consume combo under way and would win in the long run, you just score a touchdown and win the game.
Kemet? Grab 8 Victory Points - even temporary ones and you will be fine! No matter what happens next, no matter how weak your forces are, if you manage to get 8 points, you'll win no matter what.
Games teach us achieving goals. This is what you have to do. Do it, win. Touchdown.
And to be honest... actually that's what the games used to teach us. Because then Rob Daviau came and shook the box a little.
It turned out that blocking China in Pandemic: Legacy is awesome and will let you win the game, but now the road is blocked and you will have problems with that blockade for the next 6 long months. Legacy style game changes your approach. Suddenly you need to play wisely.
***
The case with “I am not rolling these fucking dice in space” is a perfect example of a classic approach to games. The player wants to achieve the scenario's goal and is not thinking about the upcoming scenarios or the big picture. He plays the way most games are played. He plays safe, he focuses on the goal and on nothing else, he achieves the goal. Touchdown, win.
In the second scenario he dies of hunger.
That's an interesting lesson, huh?
So he's learned his lesson. He plays again. And this time he does all he can to see the whole picture. The whole campaign.
A small problem with the Oxygenerator? It is a problem that might kill you sooner or later.
A warning of sand storm that might be heading towards the HUB? It is a signal that cannot be ignored.
Suspicious noises from the Command Control computer? They are no longer only stupid distractions. They are a clear signal that there is a problem with the Command Control and you'd better find out what's going on in there. Because sooner or later it might kick you in the guts.
In Legacy games, or let's call them Campaign games, everything matters because you play with a longer perspective in mind.
***
Playing Legacy games, or any campaign games, or playing First Martians, is actually learning to play board games from scratch. You will learn that your environment is so important. That you cannot devote all your attention to the goal of the game and ignore everything else, ignore things that keep your character alive or protect the cities from infection. You act in a more realistic manner, you act more like in real life. You care about your life and then you try to achieve the goal. Not the other way around.
Achieve the goal? Yes.
At any cost? Nope.
And that's something super interesting that changes entirely the way we play. When you play First Martians, there is no touchdown moment. Because there is always a new story behind the corner. And you'd better prepare yourself for that.
One important note - many of you posted solutions how to fix the game. The game is not broken, there is nothing to fix. I wrote the article to show you how the players' behavior changes with the theme. The same mechanism, a different theme, different behavior. There is no problem with the game itself, though. Listen to today's story...
When we play games, we have a clear goal to achieve. Get 25 points. Control most regions. Build 10 Wonders. When we get there, we win the game. It's like a touchdown.
Magic the Gathering is about reducing enemy's Life to 0. No matter how many points we have, no matter how great monsters he has, no matter what he would do to us next round and how badly he would kick our ass. Reduce him to 0 and you've won. Touchdown!
Race for the Galaxy? Build this tableau of 12 cards in front of you and finish the game - even if your opponent has a better Production/Consume combo under way and would win in the long run, you just score a touchdown and win the game.
Kemet? Grab 8 Victory Points - even temporary ones and you will be fine! No matter what happens next, no matter how weak your forces are, if you manage to get 8 points, you'll win no matter what.
Games teach us achieving goals. This is what you have to do. Do it, win. Touchdown.
And to be honest... actually that's what the games used to teach us. Because then Rob Daviau came and shook the box a little.
It turned out that blocking China in Pandemic: Legacy is awesome and will let you win the game, but now the road is blocked and you will have problems with that blockade for the next 6 long months. Legacy style game changes your approach. Suddenly you need to play wisely.
The case with “I am not rolling these fucking dice in space” is a perfect example of a classic approach to games. The player wants to achieve the scenario's goal and is not thinking about the upcoming scenarios or the big picture. He plays the way most games are played. He plays safe, he focuses on the goal and on nothing else, he achieves the goal. Touchdown, win.
In the second scenario he dies of hunger.
That's an interesting lesson, huh?
So he's learned his lesson. He plays again. And this time he does all he can to see the whole picture. The whole campaign.
A small problem with the Oxygenerator? It is a problem that might kill you sooner or later.
A warning of sand storm that might be heading towards the HUB? It is a signal that cannot be ignored.
Suspicious noises from the Command Control computer? They are no longer only stupid distractions. They are a clear signal that there is a problem with the Command Control and you'd better find out what's going on in there. Because sooner or later it might kick you in the guts.
In Legacy games, or let's call them Campaign games, everything matters because you play with a longer perspective in mind.
Playing Legacy games, or any campaign games, or playing First Martians, is actually learning to play board games from scratch. You will learn that your environment is so important. That you cannot devote all your attention to the goal of the game and ignore everything else, ignore things that keep your character alive or protect the cities from infection. You act in a more realistic manner, you act more like in real life. You care about your life and then you try to achieve the goal. Not the other way around.
Achieve the goal? Yes.
At any cost? Nope.
And that's something super interesting that changes entirely the way we play. When you play First Martians, there is no touchdown moment. Because there is always a new story behind the corner. And you'd better prepare yourself for that.
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Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: Rules:: Re: DEUTSCH / German: Zentraler Thread Deutsche Errata (Spoilerfrei!)
by therobbot
pit123 wrote:
[o]Wobei bei der Forscherin diese zwar eine x-beliebige Stadtkarte geben aber nicht erhalten kann, glaub ich zumindest, sonst wär das schon eine ziemlich "mächtige" Kombination [/o]
[o]Ja, das stimmt natürlich. Halt genauso, wie sonst auch die Ausnahme für die Forscherin ist. Das einzige, was sich durch die Beziehung ändert ist, dass eben nicht mehr beide in einer Stadt stehen müssen. Man könnte es vielleicht so ausdrücken:
"Die Kollegen-Beziehung sorgt dafür, dass man bei der "Wissen teilen"-Aktion so tun kann, als würden beide Kollegen in derselben Stadt stehen. Einer der beiden Kollegen muss sich allerdings tatsächlich in der betreffenden Stadt befinden."
So verstehe ich es zumindest.
Und die Kombi mit der Forscherin ist trotzdem noch recht stark. :)
[/o]
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Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: Rules:: Re: DEUTSCH / German: Zentraler Thread Deutsche Errata (Spoilerfrei!)
by pit123
Für die welche den Februar schon durchhaben:[o]Eine Frage zu den Quarantäne-Plättchen: Diese kann ich ja auch auf Städte mit 3 fachem Befall rauflegen + diejenige für die keine "Heilung" möglich ist. Sind die dann auch vor Ausbrüchen umliegender Städte "geschützt"? [/o]↧
Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: General:: Re: How well did you do in the game? (ENTIRE season 1 spoilers!!!)
by Wesker
We played 2 player with my partner and did it in 17 games. 10 wins and 7 losses. Lost both months in June and September. Our biggest mistake was not taking coda more seriously and let it go wild and ended up with 30 faded cities. As you can imagine, it was not easy to vaccinate so many cities, but we did win the second month of December :DIn the end we got 724 points which we was very happy with. Considering I only started playing regular pandemic a few weeks before on the iPad and it was my partners first ever time, we felt we did well.
We only had two collapsing cities, but luckily had no fallen ones. For us the traitor was the colonel, but he actually died from scars just before we found out he was the traitor. lol. That was a fun moment :laugh:
Gave the game a 9 out of 10. I think to get a higher score we would have maybe needed to play with 2 more players who were better at role playing. We did it a bit, but nothing like some people I see online. Rahdo was so into it, the guy even cried. We were no way near as invested, but I think we could have been if we played with another couple like Rahdo and Jen.
I do think there is a correlation between who you play with to how much fun is had with certain boardgames. We have so much fun playing games like Through the Ages and Agricola, those two are our personal straight 10 games.
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Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: Rules:: Re: Rule question - Rivals & Timing - some spoilers.
by clivej
Yes, rival A can discard to take a card that rival B discarded in order to take a card that rival A discarded.Yes, that works when rival A is discarding to come back within hand limit.
Yes, if a disease is Efficient to Sequence, you can cure it outside the action phase of your turn, even during someone else's turn.
However, note that you cannot cure between drawing cards and discarding down to hand limit: you have to bring yourself back within your hand limit first.
Also, though it's been established for definite that rival A can take a card that rival B is discarding to come within hand limit, I don't know that the question has ever been addressed of what precisely happens when rival B then discards to take one of the cards rival A discards. I see three possibilities:
• Rival B can't do that
• Rival B can discard to the Rivals effect before (therefore, instead of) continuing to discard down to hand limit
• Rival B must finish discarding down to hand limit, and only then discard two more cards in order to activate the Rivals effect
My guess is the third option applies, but it would be good to see official confirmation.
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Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: Rules:: Re: April Spoilers Question re: outbreaks
by clivej
NB: These spoilers are for mid-April, not start of April.↧
Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: General:: Re: How well did you do in the game? (ENTIRE season 1 spoilers!!!)
by clivej
One thing that surprised me about the final scoring was that the penalty for letting a rioting city become fallen was less than the penalty for letting another city riot. If we'd known that, we might have made slightly different containment choices.↧
Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: General:: Re: How well did you do in the game? (ENTIRE season 1 spoilers!!!)
by Wesker
clivej wrote:
One thing that surprised me about the final scoring was that the penalty for letting a rioting city become fallen was less than the penalty for letting another city riot. If we'd known that, we might have made slightly different containment choices.
Very true. There actually should have been points taken away for letting a city fall. At least -5 I would imagine.
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Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: Rules:: Re: DEUTSCH / German: Zentraler Thread Deutsche Errata (Spoilerfrei!)
by therobbot
pit123 wrote:
Für die welche den Februar schon durchhaben:[o]Eine Frage zu den Quarantäne-Plättchen: Diese kann ich ja auch auf Städte mit 3 fachem Befall rauflegen + diejenige für die keine "Heilung" möglich ist. Sind die dann auch vor Ausbrüchen umliegender Städte "geschützt"? [/o]
[o]Grundsätzlich ja. Letztlich ist es immer so, dass statt dass ein Würfel auf das Feld kommt, erst mal das Quarantäneplättchen weggenommen wird. Völlig geschützt sind sie natürlich trotzdem nicht. Wenn z.B. Essen drei Würfel und ein Quarantäneplättchen hat und St. Petersburg nur drei Würfel und bei der Epidemie wird zuerst Essen gezogen und dann St. Petersburg, dann kommt das Quarantäneplättchen bei der ersten Karte weg und bei der zweiten gibt es eine Kettenreaktion von Ausbrüchen in St. Petersburg und Essen. [/o]
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Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: Rules:: Re: Mid-April Spoilers Question re: outbreaks
by JohnnyDollar
clivej wrote:
NB: These spoilers are for mid-April, not start of April.
True. Although IIRC start-of-april's mission briefing is
[o]"carry on" until the 2nd epidemic[/o]
and I would be surprised if anyone will have any rules questions about that :p
But, I modified the thread title to be more clear...
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Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: General:: Re: About to start a new 2p game
by JohnnyDollar
I'm through April and am playing through the whole campaign with my fiancee. While we're enjoying it, we have won all 4 games, pretty easily, with I think no more than 2 outbreaks a game, and after 4 months we only have 6 unstable cities (not even any rioting). This is even without any funding at all the last 2 games.So while it's fun, somehow it seems a bit too easy, I don't want to coast through all 12 months easily (or who knows, maybe we're just genius Pandemic players? :p). So, thanks for the tip about doing 2 characters each, we might do that in the next game.
I wish they had scaled the game a little better so that 2 players is sufficiently difficult, like maybe added an extra epidemic card that would only be used in 2-player games.
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Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: General:: Re: About to start a new 2p game
by JohnnyDollar
Although now I'm second-guessing doing 2-characters each, after reading this thread:Too easy with two players?
especially
I just finished playing a 2p campaign with my wife and we experienced the same early winning streak. We didn't lose until the Summer, then we won a few more times and then lost 4 games in a row in the Fall! So don't worry, it will become more challenging.
This is interesting too
the first few months seem to be a kind of calibration period, where the game finds the players' level. Experienced Pandemic players usually find themselves starting with a winning streak; it's entirely possible you've got the hang of things relatively quickly. Also, consensus is that the game is a bit easier with lower player counts.
I expect you'll soon be wistfully recalling those early months when things seemed so simple. If you remain disappointed by how easy it seems, you could switch to running two characters each. Nothing says you have to have the same number of characters in every game of your season, so you can easily switch back again if you change your mind.
If you're certain the game is way too easy, as a last resort you can (with Rob Daviau's blessing) include a sixth Epidemic. You don't actually have a sixth Epidemic card, but you can fake it by dividing the deck into six packets, shuffling an Epidemic card into each of the first five, keeping the sixth packet to one side then, when the first Epidemic shows up, shuffling it into the sixth packet and putting it under the deck.
I expect you'll soon be wistfully recalling those early months when things seemed so simple. If you remain disappointed by how easy it seems, you could switch to running two characters each. Nothing says you have to have the same number of characters in every game of your season, so you can easily switch back again if you change your mind.
If you're certain the game is way too easy, as a last resort you can (with Rob Daviau's blessing) include a sixth Epidemic. You don't actually have a sixth Epidemic card, but you can fake it by dividing the deck into six packets, shuffling an Epidemic card into each of the first five, keeping the sixth packet to one side then, when the first Epidemic shows up, shuffling it into the sixth packet and putting it under the deck.
Sounds like Daviau endorses a 6th epidemic card for 2-players?
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Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: General:: Re: About to start a new 2p game
by clivej
From what various people say here, it seems that plenty of people find themselves falling off both ends of the 0-10 funding scale. A scale from 0-20 with the previous 0 at about the 8 mark would have done a better job of covering all skill levels.Our four-player team spent most of the year knocking against the zero-funding endstop. We'd probably have gone down to -2 or even -4 if that had been possible, and it's obvious there are better players than us in the forums!
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Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: Rules:: Re: Rule question - Rivals & Timing - some spoilers.
by rmsgrey
I'm pretty sure things happen in order:B draws 2 cards, putting him over hand limit.
B discards, bringing him back down below hand limit
A discards to pick up one of B's just discarded cards
B then has an opportunity, with a full hand, of discarding cards to pick up one or both of the cards A just discarded
If B does discard, A then has the chance to discard to pick up some of the new discards.
You'd need a much more robust timing model to support being able to discard cards to pick up cards that are only being discarded to pick up cards that you haven't yet discarded...
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Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: Sessions:: Re: March Playthrough - Toledo Tuesdays Gaming Club [spoilers]
by rmsgrey
One quick rules note: You should have kept the mandatory objective you had in February too - to win March, you need to "Cure the 3 non-COdA diseases" and either "Eradicate a disease" or "Have a military base in each region".Objectives only stop applying when the game explicitly tells you to destroy them.
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Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: Sessions:: Re: The Legacy Continues... (April Spoilers)
by rmsgrey
Wulf684 wrote:
I'm way overdue for you to 'fix' anything, but you have the Alert marker on the wrong space. That's the 4th space, with the infection rate marker already being in the first space. In other words, you got the zombies a couple of turns later, which probably means you had a more widely spread C0dA.
But maybe this helps future players?
(We just finished April.)
But maybe this helps future players?
(We just finished April.)
From what he said, they did the Legacy draw at the right time - immediately after the second epidemic - so presumably they did it when the marker reached the space before the reminder, rather than when it landed on the reminder.
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Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: General:: Re: One card brought this game from a perfect 10 to a 7 (endgame spoilers)
by rmsgrey
clivej wrote:
Woah! You're in this thread and you've not played September yet?
September is the month in which the theme hits you hardest. I wouldn't be in the least surprised if your feelings about the endgame changed somewhat once you've experienced it.
Experiencing it without spoilers would be different again, but it seems that ship has sailed...
September is the month in which the theme hits you hardest. I wouldn't be in the least surprised if your feelings about the endgame changed somewhat once you've experienced it.
Experiencing it without spoilers would be different again, but it seems that ship has sailed...
Yeah, I've known the general shape of spoilers since before I started playing - I got the game on the back of a spoilery review - so that ship has long since sailed.
I will admit to having been glad that the other players chose to doom the Colonel when the relevant choice came up - okay, we'll miss his ability to dispose of Faded, but with both him and the Soldier in play, wrangling cures is a bit stressful...
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Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: Sessions:: Re: The Legacy Continues... (April Spoilers)
by Wulf684
rmsgrey wrote:
From what he said, they did the Legacy draw at the right time - immediately after the second epidemic - so presumably they did it when the marker reached the space before the reminder, rather than when it landed on the reminder.
Yes, I completely missed that. Everything is awesome!
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Reply: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1:: General:: Re: How well did you do in the game? (ENTIRE season 1 spoilers!!!)
by Antistone
The scoring is set up to encourage you to maximize the number of safe cities, rather than spread the damage around. I think that's a defensible choice, especially if they don't want to completely ruin players who took a roadblock strategy.↧