by Willottica
Second campaign complete:
The first campaign was exciting and left us wanting more.
The second campaign was good up to, but not including, the end. With all the same players, it was far more competitive right from the start - but at the end of it all, I was done. I had no desire to start anew (which is fine, because $90 a pop!)
Part of the problem was our final game, and our lifestyle. We have 3 small children, and with all the little pieces, we can't really play until they're all in bed. And then once you start a game, you kinda have to finish it.
In an attempt to increase the difficulty of the final game, we
(MAJOR finale spoilers)[o]1. Decided that the gates of Hell could only be closed when all three seals had been retrieved. (
I believe this decision is supported by the rules, and avoids the situation where someone just goes and closes the Gate on turn 2 and really kills the buzz.)
2. Houseruled, at the start of the campaign, that we would have to discover the secret of a statue before we could retrieve a seal (this thematically makes sense, but is contrary to the rules for the final game, each seal has instructions written to tell you how to retrieve it).
3. Used the ruling that you had to own, or have owned, a tablet, in order to use its number.
These rules seemed like a good idea at the time. But the final island got discovered quite early: at the end of Game 9. We hadn't yet found ANY secrets (though at least we had discovered all 3 statues and the tablets had all been recovered).
So in our final game, we had to first raid each other to get missing tablets, then explore the hidden Tombs to get the three secrets (and avoid the dead-ends, which we hadn't started either), gather the required tribute, get the seals, and finally close the gate.
It took us 5.5 hours (starting at 8:30-9:00, with a crying baby interrupting us every so often). We were both exhausted from a long work week, performing in a show the next day, and dreading the impending awakening of our kids at 7am. So to say the final game was a slog is an understatement.
That being said, if we didn't have kids, or could have effectively split the game in 2, I think it would have been a much more enjoyable experience. As it was, I wanted to go to bed, and was getting mad at my fellow players because
they weren't actively raiding tablets and I had run out of enmity tokens.
We did it though, through three winters and into our third year, the world burned until there were no colonies left. We had scarcely a dozen advisors left (after Death and token-passing). We got lucky and only hit one Hidden Tomb Dead End. We each recovered a seal. And on the final turn, our temple-mason only needed to roll a single success (which he achieved, shocker)!
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I don't believe that the end-game has much replay value at all. But maybe in a month or two I'll suggest we replay it [o](not having to rediscover the secrets), just retrieve the seals.[/o] I think we'll randomly distribute the colonies, maybe even the province boards. And it might be good, if it happens, I'll update with a review again.
