The Month of Galactic Conquest : Part IV "Many Bothans Died to Bring us this information"

Next up in our analysis of Twilight Imperium races is the Clan of Saar. Somewhat of an enigma, the Saar have abilities which under some circumstances play quite well while other can be difficult to take advantage of. The Clan of Saar’s primary strength lays in their opening rounds as their starting conditions, most notably their 2 carriers combined with XRD transporters and their racial ability to gain trade goods for taking planet means you are all set for a great start. The tough part is to maintain that momentum and ride it to victory, to which your racial technology that turns your space docks into mobile carriers are central for offense and defense. As a rule you should remove the Saar from selection if you are using simulated early turns as this effectively removes their primary and perhaps only advantage over other races and very easily makes them the worst possible race to play by a very wide margin.

The Wolves with a bite

I approach the Clan of Saar as a race meant to be played aggressively but not hostile. You have to expand, capture as many planets as you can early on to get those all important trade goods which effectively act as your reserves and ability to put up the best defenses you can to ensure that when you expansion is complete you aren’t going to loose it to a player that attacks you. That is actually the toughest part as aggressive expansion is usually seen as a hostile act and players tend to respond with guns. More than any other race if you get attacked early on and loose a battle or two you’re chances of recovering are slim as you’re starting production is so weak.

Strategy: The opening round is absolutely crucial. You have to take full advantage of the two carriers (should be 3-4 planets), diplomacy secondary (1 more planet) and Production (to build another carrier and more ground forces). Take the trade card if you can to ensure you get the additional 3 trade goods and control negotiations so you can make the most of your 2/1 trade contracts but be a pleasant negotiator, no hostile trade denials. You might find since you are already acquiring a lot of trade goods from your racial ability that people are reluctant to trade with you, which if it does occur don’t be afraid to say ‘listen unless I get my contracts traded for even money, meaning 2 for 2 and 1 for 1, no one is going to trade today. You might think that is hostile but its considerably less hostile then selectively choosing who trades and who doesn’t, and I think most people will appreciate that as the Trade card holder there is nothing for you to gain on the deal if your trades don’t get picked so most people will respond with offers.

Alternatively to starting with trade you can go for Warfare (I or II) as the Saar are in good position to take Mecatol Rex on round 1 since you have Carriers with XRDs (2 move) and if you take warfare II or I you can reach Mecatol Rex from your homeworld. This strategy is pretty circumstantial and risky if playing with Mecatol Guardians. Mecatol Rex is a 1 production planet and while you can certainly use the influence, you really need to control the highest and most production you can get your hands on because your home system is so weak. Take Mecatol Rex if your secret objective involves it and it can be done in a fashion which will allow you to later defend it and will not force you to give something else up. If playing with Guardians you may be able to pull this off if you managed to get Production Secondary, build a carrier with 2 Fighters and 4 ground forces. Send that and your cruiser, hope for the best, odds are however you will be able to take it in round two as well since most people will see fighting guardians as having a fairly high risk level early in the game, but more importantly are not setup as well to take it.
By round two you should control more space than anyone else, really that isn’t so much a strategy as a necessity. At this point it’s also important that if you are going to venture into someone else’s territory that you are prepared to defend it. Be sure to put up as much fleet as you can and lean your expansion strategy in the subsequent round towards one opponent. Don’t spread in all directions and try not to upset the whole table with your actions.

By the third round your expansion should be just about complete; you should have a fair amount of units on the table and hopefully managed a victory point. Now it’s time to settle back, make some alliances with other players, then slowly and methodically let the public objectives help make your decisions. After turn three you are going to be looking to score a point each round. If you managed to grab Mecatol Rex, defend it heavily, especially with ground forces and build a space dock as to you these will become carriers with five fighters in them in the future that do not count towards fleet supply limits.

Technology is not that crucial to the Saar, but what you get is important. Your racial tech will turn your Space Docks into mobile carriers so be sure to get that. Stasis Capsules are going to help you a lot; Sarween Tools are a must and Neural Motivators for those all important action cards. Gen Synthesis is helpful given your likely spread out nature it might help to have that extra line of defense. It’s important that you don’t waste too many resources on buying technologies, especially not Trade Goods. Save them If you can and use them wisely as they are a onetime gift for the Saar and once you spend them you’re going to have a tough time getting more. This exposes you to some risks via action cards, so do what you can to keep the trade goods pile reasonable and not overly attractive to holders of trade good stealing action cards. Military based technologies in later game are a good call especially if you find your neighbors reaching for Warsuns.

Your strategy card, strategy should be a responsive one based on what public objectives that come up. Think about what you need the absolute most and take the card that gets you there. As a rule, the Saar do well with anything that gives them resources as their resource poor planets put them in a disadvantage compared to all other races so Trade or Production are never bad choices for you.

In the end game you above any other race can very bravely take the biggest risk as controlling your homeworld is not a requirement of winning, hence every point you earn is in the bank. Bunch up your Space Docks which should have 5 fighters on it each (15 fighters) and use them as part of your attack force when making your final moves. Remember your space docks DO NOT count towards fleet supply and they only cost 1 resource more than regular carriers so abuse them. Naturally you don’t want to risk them too early so only use them for combat in the final moments, but definitely use them.

Beating the Saar
The Saar are really not that tough to beat. While they have an advantage in the early part of the game if they can manage to expand quickly, they generally see a decline of power as they go compared to the rise of most races. Striking at them early during their initial expansion while they are still vulnerable is the simplest way to push them out of contention and more often than not you can push right onto their homeworld taking out their space dock(s) which almost certainly spells doom for them as their strategy depends so heavily on them. Of all the races they are the easiest to take out militarily, but you really have to question the logic of attacking a weak race as their road to contention is a lot tougher than other stronger races. If allowed to blossom however go for Warsuns, it’s a tough tech for them to get and in all likely hood when you face them in the later part of the game you’re warsuns will make short work of there spacedocks and fighter swarms. More often then not the easiest way to beat the Saar is let them be, make friends with them and use their vulnerability and fear of attack at the negotiation table to gang up on someone else.

Bullet Point Strategies
· Expand early as much as you can taking full advantage of your starting conditions and special ability to gain trade goods.
· Avoid early round conflict above all else, its far better with the Saar to fall behind on points then it is to be weakened militarly as even though you don’t need your homeworld to win you still need ten victory points, a tough feat to pull out if you have a bad opening rounds with the Saar.
· Get your racial technology early and pile on those fighters on your space docks.
· Take Mecatol Rex in the first or second round if you can and defend it heavily, if you can’t get it without a confrontation with another player, forgo it.
· Bunch up those Space Docks in a central location, and take advantage of the fact that the fighters on those Space Docks do not count towards fleet supply, especially in combination with your racial tech that offers a potential 15 fighters with 3 spacedocks.
· Trade and Production are your best friends as you are likely to be short on resources in most games due to your resource poor homeworlds.
· Avoid confrontations for as long as you can, but prepare yourself for war from a central location (where your space docks are located).

Rules Clarifications
I often see posts on the FFG forums about how powerful the Saar are and how difficult they are to beat because of their ability to have very strong opening rounds and their strength of their space dock ability to move. Unfortunately almost in every case the reasons behind this perceived strength is that people are simply not following the rules. The Saar above any other race suffers from rules complications and unfortunately if you follow the rules correctly you will find most of the maneuvers people win with are actually quite illegal. Here is a list of things you have to remember about the Saar.

1. Space Docks do not count as ships: That means all ship related rules do not apply to them including Warfare II alert token, action cards that improve ship movement (In the silence of space for example) nor can they ever retreat.
2. You can’t build and move: A common oversight is that people forget that the Saar cannot move and build in space docks period even if you remove an activation counter in a system and even with production primary or secondary. Effectively when you move a space dock it counts has having been built that turn and all the same rules apply.
3. Saar production limit is 4, planets have no relevance and yes building 2 fighters with 1 resource counts has building 2 units. Both are common errors made in Saar games.
4. Saar Space Docks are not protected by planets and cannot be blocked: This means that if all the ships in a system are destroyed, the space dock is destroyed regardless of ground forces or PDS’s, unlike the space docks of all other races which only count as blockading when all ships in a system are destroyed but the planet in which the Space Dock resides have ground forces.

Adjusting The Saar
The Saar when played according to the rules are considerably weaker than if you overlook some of the drawbacks of their Space Docks. This is why most recommended changes I have seen are built around fixing the Saar Space Docks. Here are some suggestions.
· Mobile Fortress: The Saar Space Docks can move and build in the same round, they can also retreat. – This effectively gives them the ability most people give to them accidently anyway by not following the Saar Space Dock rules correctly. It makes defending space docks a bit easier and more effective in combat.

· Space Dock Landing: Place a trade counter on any planet in which a Saar space docks resides. This Space dock looses its ability to move permanently , however it gains +3 to its maximum capacity. You may only have one space dock that has landed in play at any time. All normal space dock rules apply to this space dock rather then the special rules of Saar Space docks. – This allows the Saar to have at least one decent production center which is often part of the problem with the Saar who have a capacity of 4 resulting in an excess of resources quite often.

Conclusion
The Clan of Saar is another pretty tough race to win with, especially at a table with experienced players. Still unlike the previous three races in our countdown the Saar certainly have useful abilities that really change the dynamic of the game and last throughout the game most notably their mobile space docks. To me playing the Saar is a challenge without the sense of ‘I have no chance’ feeling you might have with the N’orr or Xxcha. This race definitely belongs in the hands of an experienced player and is not recommended for novices, however outside of removing them from selection if playing with Simulated Early Turns I think they should be left in as they can really be great fun to play.

The Month of Galactic Conquest : Part III "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villiany"

Without question the Mentak has been the toughest article for me to write. Twilight Imperium is such a complex game and the Mentak are probobly the toughest of all races to grasp. Add to that the fact that I have rarely had a chance to play them, albeit it played against them very often, it made it difficult for me to see objectivly their advantages.















The Mentak Coalition

Without question the Mentak Coalition is the most commonly debated race of all Twilight Imperium races. Many will argue that they are among the worst races in the game, claiming that their racial abilities are completely useless and easily countered while others swear by their starting conditions and racial combat ability, more specifically in combination with their amazingly useful racial tech. In my perspective the Mentak are a bit of a mixed bag while I don’t particularly like playing them as I do find that their abilities are not that substantial and they require an aggressive play style that is difficult to win with, I neither particularly like them as a neighbor either, as their combat driven play style can be quite intimidating. Unlike other combative races like the Sardekk N’orr and the L1z1x who while having good combat abilities are better or at least in my experience more often played peacefully, the Mentak core strategy is all about aggression, sort of pushing their way to victory. The odds of having to fight a Mentak neighbor are quite high and those 2 free shots combined with their racial tech that pays in ships makes them something to worry about, even though statistically the odds are not that much improved over other races.

To me the Mentak’s biggest strength is their ability to punish opponents who do not respect their strength and their uncanny ability to catch people making mistakes. This is where I believe much of the debate about whether or not the Mentak are a good race comes from as their abilities are circumstantial and actually based on luck (can you hit with those 2 free shots?). The question you have to ask yourself are you a gambler? If used against a table of novice players you can run the Mentak to great success as people will very commonly underestimate their racial ability and racial technology, after all its luck with odds at about 40% chance per roll not to mention the ability to recover ships so you have to plan a little for it. At a veteran table you will find it less likely these types of oversights in judgment occur, as veteran players will account for this ability when planning their defenses, making their abilities considerably less scary and useful. To run the Mentak successfully you really have to have a strong grasp of the rules, know how to take advantage of strategy secondary’s and generally work a fairly complex strategy. If done right however the Mentak can be a real threat at the table.

Pros: Very nice starting conditions allow the Mentak a comfortable and very forgiving early round opening the door to early victory points. Descent combination of combat racial abilities between their 2 free shots and a racial technology (salvage operations) make it very easy to wage war with pretty good odds, albeit still very luck driven so be careful. Good Home world production with a bonus for Enviro Compensator combined with an extra command counter in fleet supply and three starting cruisers allow you to get a nice force up early acting as both a good deterrent and a good early strike force.

Cons: Crappy trade contracts combined with not so friendly nor particularly useful trade goods stealing racial ability and a disposition towards inhospitable play style in general means you aren’t going to be high on anyone’s list of diplomatic allies, likely making someone’s people to kill list. Like the Sardekk N’orr they are a combat driven race and combat is not a particularly good route to victory, nor is it a reliable one, as it’s based on dice which means success with the Mentak Coalition really requires expert knowledge of TI3’s game mechanics and strong execution of generally good strategy.

Strategy: Playing the Mentak is all about posturing, fluidity of movement and attention to detail. It’s difficult to illustrate specific actions you can take, you really have to know the game and how to best respond to it to get the most out of your races core ability and the salvage operation tech which is important for you to get as early as possible.

The overlying problem with the Mentak is that your combat prowess will not likely help much with getting victory points so you must focus on opening other routes. An aggressive early expansion combined with a focus on technology acquisition is probably the best route. The more planets/resources you have the more likely you will be able to make some of the tougher objectives, while technology will give you a general advantage in the game as the Mentak benefit quite a bit from things like Stasis Capsules, Neural motivators and XRD Transporters to help beef up your movement flexibility and ability to wage war.

Your early tactic should be building a large fleet of mostly cruisers and destroyers to pose a real threat to your neighbors early on and throughout the game . You should jump on Stasis Capsules in the first round (take technology if you can) then make B line for Warsuns, with a short stop early on to get your racial tech. You will already be in a good position to get warsuns with Hylar V and Enviro Compensators both being pre-requisites. This will serve two main purposes. First it will allow you to have the strength to stop your neighbors in the late game as with the Mentak like the Sardekk N’orr military attributes don’t normally help much early in the game to get victory points so you will likely find that someone will be a contender for the win ahead of you. You want to make sure you can effectively stop them. A secondary reason is to ensure that your neighbors are blowing a good chunk of their resources on their own fleet in response to your build up, hopefully attributing to a general slowdown of their own strategies to gain victory points. If they aren’t doing that, take advantage of the situation by striking at them early and claiming some much needed planets. As the Mentak Coalition you are fairly tough opponent for most races, but it will be crucial for you to have a proper fleet makeup that takes full advantage of your cruisers that roll at 6’s with the Mentak 2 free shots ability and destroyers anti-fighter barrage to clear the cannon fodder while having your own cannon fodder fighters allowing your fleet to dish out the pain to the rest of the fleet. This means you are always going to be trying to increase your fleet size permanently and creating complete ready to fight cruiser and destroyer based fleet’s in every space available along your neighbors borders. The idea is to intimidate and follow through on the intimidation if your neighbors are not respecting your fleet strength. Remember however only take what you need, don’t over expand.

Smart players will respect your fleet size and respond appropriately by building up their own fleets to match you, but don’t fear an attack as there are few races in Twilight Imperium that can successfully run a war campaign without hurting themselves in the process, especially against combat races like the Mentak. If someone does attack you, odds of you coming out on top are very good as you generally have a lot less of a volatile situation. Like any race however long wars are the kiss of death. The best way to avoid long wars is to hurt someone bad enough that they will see their ability to win slipping away if they continue, so hurt them fast and hard and then try to offer up a truce. Unfortunately one of the fallouts of this approach is the ‘revenge factor’ which the Mentak are a victim of more often than not.

The Revenge Factor is essentially the idea that when a player gets beaten so bad that they are pulled out of contention for the win, the only thing left for them to do in the game is take the personal responsible for that with them. Even a badly beaten opponent can do considerable enough damage to drag someone out of contention with them, especially if they no longer care about getting victory points. Be very wary of this effect, remember the goal isn’t to remove someone from play or hurt them so bad that they can’t win, the goal is to get what you need to make the points you need to win, so plan accordingly and always keep the revenge factor in the back of your mind each time you make a combative move.

Since the Mentak are not really setup up to get victory points based on their race alone you will have to think very hard about what you can do about that. Usually in the early game its too tough to tell if your aggressive actions and technology acquisition will be enough to get caught up to some of the stronger races so ultimately getting your secret objective is really quite crucial for you. Without it your chances of making the points in time before someone else does may not be that good depending on the situation. Positioning yourself to meet your secret objective is vital so whatever it is, even if it’s a really tough and seemingly impossible one, from the very start, treat it likes it’s your only hope. Push hard for it and be prepared to negotiate with weaker players in secret to help take down stronger players in the event you can’t. Fortunately your mobility and toughness should make getting most of the secret objectives considerably easier than many other races.

There are a couple of really good strategies that work well for any combative race, but particularly well for the Mentak as they have far less too loose if an all out war breaks out; My favorite is the Trade Control Strategy.

In the Trade control strategy the idea is to take the Trade card at the start of the game and really bust people’s balls about what trades you will allow. Turn down trades unless you can get 2 for your 1’s for both of your contracts and force payment for any trade 3 trade contracts between other people on a per round basis. People may and probably will refuse you in which case someone will be forced to take the trade card to get trades going. Your response will be to promptly take the trade card again and cancel trades that earn people too many trade goods. This isn’t going to make you particularly popular but like the strategy for the Xxcha in which you invent chaos to get people to make mistakes, this will likely have a similar effect. Ultimately what happens is you take away people’s ability to get easy access to those crucial extra trade resources and frankly the Mentak can easily be played using nothing but strategy secondary’s so it’s not that crucial for you to have a useful primary strategy card each round, wasting a round to get trade and cancel trades is good as it will in turn force others to re-acquire it. Since you have 1/1 trade contracts you really have very little to lose if you get nixed out of trade all together. Forgo this strategy if the Hacan are in play.

Bullet Point Strategies

· Early Expansion is the key, get Stasis Capsules in round 1 and make use of those 3 cruisers you start with. Don’t be afraid to fight for planets in the early stages of the game, you’re in good position to do it. Don’t overlook high influence planets, you need to have 6 influence available each round for Leadership.
· Technology is your best long term strategy, acquire as much as you can keeping in mind that you need to diversify to ensure that if technology objectives come up you can meet them (2 of each kind is a good method). You should have Warsuns by end game time.
· A continues increase of fleet size is important for you so be sure you have the influence planets to take advantage of Leadership each round.
· Avoid fights with Sardekk N’orr and L1Z1X. These guys are as capable as you of waging war, especially in the late game so its best not to get those players to upset at you, in fact you may consider partnering up with a Sardekk N’orr player as you will have a lot in common with him.
· To whatever you can to slow other players down a bit, best way is intimidation through fleet strength forcing them to respond, so build up your fleet is key.

Adjusting the Mentak

Adjusting the Mentak is a complicated situation since it is really difficult to analyze whether or not they are ask weak as some say or as strong as others say. In my opinion you have to thread lightly as in the hands of a experienced player the Mentak are actually quite descent.
Trade Good Negotiator: (Replacement for their current trade goods stealing ability) – You may spend 1 command counter from your strategy allocation area once per round to swap trade contracts with another player. – This is actually a quite powerful and not particularly nice ability which I would only add to a game in which a novice is running the Mentak.
Trade Good Stealer - (Replacement for their current trade goods stealing ability) – Spend 1 command counter from your strategy allocation area to steal 1 trade good from another player. This is a fairly balanced trade good stealing ability that has the side affect of acting as a turn staller.
Trade Terminator - (Replacement for their current trade goods stealing ability) – Spend 1 command counter from your strategy allocation area once per round to cancel any one trade agreement between two players. You may not terminate a contract involving the Hacan.

Beating the Mentak

Beating the Mentak is all about convincing them that you aren’t a good target and to go elsewhere. If you find they are a neighbor, lean your primary fleet along their borders and when the Trade Round comes up offer them a token 1 for 1 or even 2 for 1 trade contract. That will probably be enough in most cases to have them seek war elsewhere. If they do attack you, swear to the player that you will not end the war until he’s eliminated and attack him with everything you got like a wild man. Even though you are likely to suffer heavy losses, hurting the Mentak fleet is the absolute best way to push them out of contention and the Mentak player knows it. A wise Mentak player will very quickly change his tune if he see’s that you aren’t going to give him even an inch without an all out war and come to the diplomatic table. If the Mentak are stubborn, hit them where it hurts, blow up space docks and slow their military buildup more importantly convince the Mentaks other neighbor to help you take them out.

Conclusion

The Mentak are a tough race to run and while they certainly have their advantages in comparison to the rest of the races they rank pretty low in most areas if for no other reason than the fact that if those dice work against you, you have nothing else to fall back on but your own wits and game knowledge. Exactly why the Mentak belong in the hands of a veteran player, as a novice looking at the race card will not find much that can help him. With the Mentak you are going to have a tough game, they really do make a great challenge for veteran players who already know how to win with other races. I can’t say that they are bad enough to pull from the race pool, I mean there are routes to victory with this race and I have seen them win plenty of games as evidence of that. I would say however that if you have a mixed group of veteran and novice players, be sure not to stick a novice with it.

The Month of Galactic Conquest : Part II 'Gamera but not so scary'

Sometimes no matter how hard you try you just can't trim an article down without sacraficing content and I hate that. The nice thing about having your own blog however is that there are no editors to hassle you, so enjoy the lengthy discussion on the Xxcha and the countless gramatic and spelling errors!!

Diplomatic Turtles, they are as not so scary as they sound

The Xxcha thematically are supposed to represent a sort peaceful race who uses politics and diplomacy to achieve their goals and rely on their defenses to act as a sort of deterrent. Unfortunately the designers didn’t give them enough steam in either their political abilities or their defense capabilities failing to make either racial ability reliable, The result is a race that doesn't do anything particularly Well. You will find that most groups and online TI3 communities share this consensus and by far this is the most commonly house ruled race. They are definitely a race reserved for expert players as you will have to rely on your skill in the game rather than the racial abilities and attributes to win a game with the Xxcha.

Still despite this overwhelming consensus, I have found that in almost every group I have played TI3 the Xxcha actually do quite well, considerably better then what some of these obvious flaws in the race would suggest. I attribute this more to the skill of the players and the race being on the benefiting end of the consensus fear effect than anything else. I wouldn’t go so far as saying that this is a reliable statistic as the consensus fear effect probably doesn’t apply to every group and I don’t recall ever having the Xxcha in the game where some minor alteration to their starting condition was not made.

Pros: Benefits from the consensus fear effect in which players presume that other races are so much of a bigger threat that they do not worry about the Xxcha player. This allows the Xxcha to often get through a game unmolested, opening the door to surprise victory. The Xxcha’s defensive ability coupled with a ok starting fleet, 2 decent trade contracts and 2 diplomat leaders (if playing with leaders) means it’s easy enough politically to stay out of a fight and keep people at bay from the start.

Cons: Two racial abilities that are useful only under rare circumstances means you have to play the game straight up for the most part. Poor production on home worlds and a single carrier means you’re going to have a slow start and your first two rounds are absolutely vital to long term success. Racial technology that is only marginally useful and too expensive for a race that tends to be resource poor in most games.

Strategy: The Xxcha are exceptionally tough to play, poor racial abilities aside you get a very slow start because your homeworlds have such poor production and you start out with only 1 carrier. The Xxcha do considerably better when playing with Leaders and using the expansion racial technologies as both of these make attacking the Xxcha quite frustrating and difficult for your opponent. If you can manage to keep up on points during the game the diplomats leaders and diplomats racial tech are the key to seeing yourself through to victory, although it’s worth noting that the racial tech is expensive enough that it may not be worth the benefit in most games. The general strategy is to try to win the game without ever firing a shot.

Unfortunately if you are not playing with leaders or racial techs the Xxcha are so weak that it’s difficult to conceive a strategy that will actually work reliably, you are really going to be counting on getting a lucky planet draw and placement as well as easy to meet public objectives and opponents willing to leave you alone until you can get on your feet. You may be able to out sine your competition in the later rounds if you overcome your poor starting conditions.

When playing the Xxcha your primary goal early In the game is going to be to get your production up to specs and get your second carrier out with ground forces to colonize planets. Having only 1 carrier, 2 ground forces and only 3 resources (4 if you count the Sarween Tools) you are going to have a hard time getting planets in the first couple of rounds. Fortunatly if using the expansion (which I'm assuming most people are) there are good routes to acomplishing this.

There are a couple of ways the first round can go down but the absolute best route is for you to take Trade II and use your secondary allocation on Production, Assembly and Diplomacy II. This of course assumes that all these cards are in play, but there is little risk that they won't be picked as typicaly they will be. The strategy is simple. Your openning move should be to move your carrier with 2 ground forces to a system with 2 planets and claim them both preferably in the direction of Mecatol Rex. Use Production II secondary to build a carrier and 2 ground forces (4 resources which you have available with Sarween Tools) when it comes up and if your lucky this will be popped before your first turn. Then on your next move use your freshly build carrier with 2 ground forces and use them to colonize preferably a system with 2 planets, if production wasn't used stall with Trade II primary. When diplomacy comes up use your Xxcha ability to get the secondary effect of claiming a neutral system to get an additional planet. With a little luck you will have your 2 planets exhausted when Assembly is played so use your last remaining strategy allocation token to un-exhaust your planets and with the Trade goods you got from Trade II and the extra 3 production (with sarween tools) you got from the refresh build a nice defensive force for your homeworld.

Alterations to this plan can vary, if you didn't get Trade II, take Production, the plan would basicaly work out the same just in a different order. If neither Trade II or production are available go for Assembly. Regardless you will always have the oppertunity to use Production secondary and this is the key to getting that second carrier out and working. There is a possibility that you might get stalled out, especially if someone like Yssaril gets production but when playing the Xxcha you have to really rely on certain likely events and hope for the best. If you are really concerened about that and have the option the most sure fire way to not get stalled on production is to take it yourself.

Hopefully by the end of the first round you have your 2nd carrier with sound additional ground forces on the table and if you were lucky you have already used those ground forces in a landing.

The next goal should be Mecatol Rex. For the Xxcha influence for votes as well as the extra command counters it will produce with leadership is pretty vital since you are generally at a disadvantage in many other respects. You should in the first round set yourself up in such a fashion that you will be able to make a play for Mecatol Rex in by round 2. Obviously you are going to be short with your carrier so taking technology in round 2 or using technology secondary to get XRD Transporters is key to the strategy. With a little luck someone will draw diplomacy in round 2 to get its secondary in which case you should use your Xxcha ability to use the diplomacy II primary and block Mecatol Rex to prevent anyone for having a go at it. This is tougher if you’re playing with Mecatol Guardians, but fortunately if you are playing with guardians a round 2 Mecatol Rex is tough for everyone so you will very likely have a shot at it in round 3 in which case you should do the same thing, although you may actually have to take Diplomacy II as it may not be selected that late in the game. If you can’t get Mecatol Rex this early, it’s not worth going to war for it, so if someone else gets it let it go and fall back on your main strategy.

In the perfect situation by round 3 you will control Mecatol Rex and have 2 carriers with at least a respectable amount of resources at your disposal. It’s not very likely everything went according to plan and there are a couple of variations you can make to this plan to pull it off anyway depending on the variants and strategy cards available. With how weak the Xxcha are unfortunately you have to start out by taking big risks as even if you have succeeded in your plan you are probably in a pretty weak position militarily and someone may decide to take a pot shot at you so be prepared to negotiate.

Your long term strategy is going to be very similar to the Sardekk N’orr. You are going to have to be flexible, build up slowly and remain as neutral and unthreatening as you can while simultaneously grinding out those victory points and maintaining your fleet strength. With the Xxcha it’s good to pick up Hylar V and Cybernetics as these bonuses combined with your first round penalties to your opponents will act as a good deterrent. If you find your doing well on resources don’t be afraid to go for those Warsuns and/or pick up Stasis Capsules for that extra ground force portability. While this is not central to your end game strategy, warsuns are always good to have in late game, especially if you are playing with Technology II which practicaly ensures some if not all the other players will have them. It’s absolutely vital however that you keep up on victory points so watch those public objectives and respond accordingly, but make it a point not to get into conflicts with other players when working on points. Any public objective that will put you in harm’s way should be something you save for the late game.

The end game is going to come early for the Xxcha and its going to be very risky as regardless of how well you have done you are not likely to be ahead on points, at absolute best you will have kept up with the pack. That means you are going to have to trigger the other players into action against each other in hopes that their squabbling will open up a hole for you to sneak into. Take bureaucracy when you start seeing people at 5-6 points, hopefully at this point you will have public objective II’s on the board. Put out things you know strong players will be able to meet quickly and make it known to the other players that next objective (which you saw and put back) is also something those players can meet and that you believe the game will end soon. This will hopefully be enough to trigger wars for contention, but you may need to spice it up a bit and lie. The idea is to get people to fight each other in an effort to block wins, stay out of these fights and setup your own win conditions, you should have the advantage since you know whats coming up next. With a little luck the chaos will open up the much needed hole. You might ask.. is this really a strategy? Well truth be told, given that you are at such a disadvantage in the game luck is unfortunately part of your arsenal and in my experience war and chaos on the board will usually raise the tensions resulting in people making mistakes. It’s far better to be the inventor of this chaos, then a participant. Certainly if you found a route to victory without having to do this you should follow it through, but in my experiance the best way to catch up on points when you are behind and the late game is approaching is start playing on other players fears of loosing and knowledge of public II objectives is central to playing on those fears as if it gives you an air of legitamacy.

Hopefully as the chaos ensues you slip in and anyone trying to stop you will face your diplomat leaders and diplomacy racial tech if you managed to afford it, as well as a fleet that has hopefully strong because it has remained neutral up to this point in the game.

The Xxcha really are a long shot and being flexible is the key, but keeping a level head and avoiding personal conflicts while simultaneously inventing personal conflicts between other players is a strategy that sometimes does in fact work. I'm not a huge fan of table talk but there is no denying that it does in fact sometimes work.


Bullet Point Strategies

· Your opening rounds are absolutely vital to your long term success, plan them out carefully and don’t be afraid to take big risks for the big rewards.
· Claiming Mecatol Rex is also vital to your long term chances to win the game, use your Xxcha ability to block out players with diplomacy if you can and take whatever risks you have to and get control of it.
· Hylar V and Cybernetics are must have technologies, combined with your Xxcha penalty to opponents this will go a long way to deter players from engaging you militarily.
· Let public objectives drive your strategy but avoid direct conflict with players.
· Use bureaucracy early in the end game and use the knowledge of the public objective II’s to give the appearance that the end game has arrived to push players to act against each other. Lie if you have to create as much chaos and war as possible but don’t get involved yourself.


Adjusting the Xxcha
If you have ever played with the Xxcha you know how tough it is and how much actually has to come together in order for you to have a fighting chance to just keep up with the other races let alone win a game. I’ve seen countless versions of the Xxcha, everything from minor adjustments like adding a few units to a complete re-write. Of the many changes I’ve seen these are the ones I found both the most balanced and thematically correct for the race.

· 1 extra carrier – To me this is simplest solution and actually solves the biggest problem the Xxcha have early on which is just expanding in a timely fashion. This will alleviate the very complex series of events that must take place in the opening rounds for the Xxcha to get what many far better races get by default. This does not make the Xxcha even with the other races by any stretch of the imagination but it brings it a lot closer to the pack.
· New Racial Ability: Political Power: Each political card in the Xxcha players hand count as 1 additional vote when political voting takes place, these cards are not discarded when used to vote. – This ability appropriately allows the Xxcha to slowly grow into a powerhouse politically and a wise player will build a nice big hand of political cards and shove his/her weight around during the Assembly strategy card activations. This is probably the more powerful version of the Xxcha but I like the idea of players fearing the assembly activation.
· New Racial Ability: Hostile Negotiations: When activating an Xxcha system you must spend 1 additional command counter if a PDS is present in the system. – This version is also very powerful and very useful to the Xxcha. It’s a bit of a bigger play on the Xxcha defense side rather than its political side, but its thematically correct and it makes their racial tech considerably more useful as a player would lose 2 command counters when the racial tech is activated instead of just the 1.

Both the Political Power and Hostile Negotiations racial abilities are designed for the race to have what all other races have, a ability on which to build a strategy. I’m not a big fan of creating new rules for races as I believe very strongly in most cases while fixing one thing you break another, but the Xxcha are a unique case as they lack a fundamental synergy that all other races have. Even the Sardekk N’orr albeit their +1 combat bonus isn’t statistically all that powerful is something one can base a strategy around. The Xxcha abilities are really quite random and useful only in very rare circumstances, so a I believe this race if any deserves a small alteration to the rules.

Beating the Xxcha
Well frankly this should be no problem. I can’t foresee many circumstances in which a motivated player determined to take out the Xxcha is unable to do so with any race. The Xxcha are their own worst enemy and leaving them to struggle in trying to keep up is usually all it takes to beat them. If you find them growing in strength or find that they have gotten in your way of a win, don’t fear the -1 to initial combat, statistically it shouldn’t make that much of a difference. The Xxcha will likely be weak in most games militarily and production wise, but in the event they have gotten lucky and managed to put up a strong fleet it will probably be at the cost of victory points so if they are in your way but not a contender to win, don’t bother with them, find another route to victory.

Conclusion
It’s tough to have anything positive to say about the Xxcha mechanics, I really think that this game needs a good, strong race with a political edge, but the Xxcha are just so poorly designed. I recommend just taking them out of the race pool when setting up games, it’s really the best solution as there are plenty of other races to pick from. If you insist on having them in for aesthetics either be prepared to lose a lot or use one of the many suggested alterations to make them competitive. In my own group the experience with the Xxcha actually goes against the statistical consensus, I mean I’ve watched them win or come close to winning in almost every game they have been in. It’s difficult to explain this, but sometimes group dynamics play a very big role in how good a race plays. This is probably the only justification I have for putting this race in 2nd to last place behind the Sardekk N’orr rather then last place.

The Month of Galactic Conquest : Part I 'The Only Good Bug is a Dead Bug'

I have already written and posted my article on the epic board game Twilight Imperium, but I have always looked back at that article and felt it just wasn’t complete. Twilight Imperium really is a wonderful game and deserves far more then a simple endorsement article so this month I have decided to write a series of in-depth articles taking a closer look at this amazing game of galactic conquest, this time however I'm going to assume that you already own the game, know a little about it and are looking for some detailed advice and clarification to improve your experience and perhaps get a better understanding of the games subtitles that may Not be immediately apparent. Another words this article is for the fans!!

Twilight Imperium can very easily be broken down into its three largest contributing mechanics and when discussing the games intricacies you will find that these three mechanics are the key to unraveling the games secrets. The big three are races, strategy cards and units or more specifically ships and I am going to go into great detail about each of these components. In addition we will look at the various minor mechanics, some variants both good and bad and a few ways you can alter the game to get some interesting effects into your games.

The Races
Whether Twilight Imperium races are balanced and/or require house ruling is always a topic of hot debate on the official forums (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/) and in my own gaming group, one which I have butted heads with people about on a number of occasions. Many players are quite passionate about the topic on how to best alter the Races to 'balance them out', however in my experience no matter what alternate version you use ultimately you effectively correct one thing while breaking another. In My humble opinion there is really no way to balance out the Races in comparison to each, at the absolute best you can bring them closer into scale to each other and the best way to achieve that is through minor alterations. Personally I find that the races have far less an impact on your chances of winning or loosing then say your opening draw of planets or the skill of the player sitting next to you. Still there is a considerable difference between races, especially in the best approach to playing them and the various challenges that they pose.

One thing I can say from experience is that Twilight Imperium suffers from the ‘Consensus Fear Effect’, a phenomenon I have seen in many board games in which a perceived advantage is mentally projected to be so great that people go out of their way to stop it making having that advantage actually the biggest disadvantage of them all. For example it’s a general consensus that the Yssaril Tribes are one of the best races in Twilight Imperium and the Xxcha one of the worse, yet in my experience the Yssaril tribes and Xxcha win loss records are pretty much even. The reason for it is that the Xxcha are assumed to be such a weak race that they are generally left alone to build up throughout the game because they are perceived as weak while the Yssaril are ruthlessly harassed and often unnecessarily so just because of the perception that their mechanics give them such a big advantage. Each gaming group is different of course and how much weight the Consensus Fear Effect will have will vary but as a rule I strongly recommend to players that they play with the races unaltered for several games and keep track of how the so called weakest and strongest races do. I think most people will find that there really is no consensus at all and that victory in Twilight Imperium has far less to do with what race you get and far more to do with how you play that race and the hundreds of other variables that make up a Twilight Imperium game.















"The Only Good Bug is a Dead Bug"

The Sardekk N'orr
This is often the race by which Twilight Imperium is judged a war game as it is really the only race who’s only advantage is combat, unfortunately combat is probably not the best way to execute this race and strictly speaking war is definitely the absolute worse way to try and win a game of Twilight Imperium. It’s a debatable whether or not the combat advantage is strong enough considering the competition and the fact that Twilight is really not a war game at all. This is probably why despite their combat prowess this is by far and wide considered the weakest race in the pact. In my experience if there is any race that can be justifiably altered it would be the Sardekk as they do not benefit from the ‘Consensus Fear Effect’ in my experiance. Their military technology gives them at least the appearance of a threat and players generally will not ignore you when you start building up. In fact it’s a very good strategy if you are neighbors with Sardekk N’orr to make an early strike or to punish them politically or through the use of Action cards as they really have a hard time recovering from any sort of negative effect. Sardekk N’orr are notorious in my gaming group for falling way behind on points. Once they do actually manage to build up a fleet and get going while not generally a threat to win the game by victory points they can be a very considerable threat militarily and usually have considerable stopping power to prevent someone they don’t like from winning. There is an elegant simplicity to the Sardekk N’orr and you might think it’s a good, simple race to play, but in my humble opinion this is probably the toughest race in the game to run successfully because you really need to have a very strong grasp of the rules, the potential tactics of each race and how to best expose everyone else’s weaknesses because you can not win on the Sardekk N’orr’s strengths.

The Good: A +1 to space combat and Invasion rolls and the fact that its starting conditions place the Hylar V and Deep Space Cannons into its hands means this race is unmatched in combat early in the game and if managed correctly for its entirety.

The Bad: Pretty much everything else. Weak trade agreements means you aren’t likely going to entice anyone to trade. Weak Starting fleet makes you a juicy target despite your technological military strength early on. Poor political influence means you are usually short on Command counters and have a weak position in the political Assembly round and thats just to name a few I’m sure I could think of other things, needless to say there is plenty of disadvantages to the Sardekk N’orr.

Strategy: The best strategy when it comes to Sardekk N’orr is to take the ‘quiet as a mouse approach’ and actually avoid political and military conflict while quietly creating the conditions you need to gain victory points as victory points above all else is going to be the toughest thing for you to get. Always maintain a intimidating enough defense to keep people from engaging you directly, so spend your resources on Destroyers, Cruisers, ground forces and PDS’s so that you can get as many dice rolls as possible for the least amount of resources putting that extra +1 to the most use you can. I suggest really playing up the peaceful player card, be sure to really give the impression that your intention at the table is to scathe by and that you appear to be relatively scared of the competition and not a contender. The chief overlying goal is to keep up on victory points. You might ask at this point, ‘wait a minute, isn’t my whole advantage combat?’. Yes indeed it is, but keep in mind that there aren’t that many opportunities to gain victory points through war and galactic conquest victories are practically impossible in Twilight Imperium. I have been playing since the game was released with relatively regular groups the entire time and I’ve never seen or heard of anyone coming even close. War is what you do to stop people from winning but in on itself it very rarely leads to you gaining more then what it will cost you to wage it.

What strategy cards to pick with the Sardekk N’orr is probably the toughest part of playing them as it really depends on the game situation and no generalization will work which is why I always say this race is best played by an expert TI3 player. You really need to have the forsight and game knowledge to know what each strategy card will mean to each other player and which card will give you the overall best round by both hurting your opponents and helping you. In my experience its best to do whatever you can to ensure that you gain a victory point each round, picking the right strategy card is often key to this and only once you have secured your point for the round consider other strategies. The Sardekk N’orr benefit from the blocking of other player strategies the most because if you can’t get a point, your only other option is to stop someone else from getting one too. If you can’t secure a point for yourself, be sure to do whatever you can to block someone else’s, again often times the easiest way to do that is to take a strategy card that someone needs as this is a very non-hostile way of making a point stop. If I were to pick a central card for the Sardekk N’orr however it would probably be Production if using the expansion. Building up a strong fleet is central to any good strategy and since you are likely to have less of everything production saves you both a command token and offers 2 free resources so it tends to be an easy pick for Sardekk N’orr. I also like them for the trade card as this is a poor man’s production and it’s always better to prevent others from gaining the free trade goods it offers. More importantly if you can get the Trade card in the first round you can stall resource gathering or negotiate your way into 2 for one of your 1 trade contracts.

When it comes to technology make a B line for Warsuns but don’t be in too big of a rush to get there, you just need to make sure you have warsuns for the end game (the last couple of rounds). This is probably the only part of your strategy that should be automatic. If you get lucky with technology resource planets and can get there sooner then later action cards are your best friend so push for Neural Motivators next. You have to be flexible on this strategy however, its far more important to get victory points then Warsuns especially early on so if technology based Public Objectives come up, get them, don’t let yourself give up turns (letting a turn go by without gaining a victory point) else you will find yourself falling behind very quickly and the warsuns won’t help. None the less before the end game you should have some Warsuns on the table because you are going to need them for the final moments. Technology is really not that crucial to the Sardekk N’orr beyond warsuns as strictly speaking you have the two most important ones to setup a proper defense at the start so always keep in mind that you should be letting the Public Objectives make most of your decision as to what to go after.

Going for the win. With the Sardekk N’orr its tough to get a win, frankly I think it’s the toughest race to win with, but then again when you do pull it off its far greater glory then winning with other races and you should give yourself a big pat on the back. The best approach to winning with Sardekk N’orr is being flexible in your strategy. Don’t hardwire yourself into doing it a certain way or following some pre-determined path, don’t get involved in personal political conflicts and keep your eye on the ball, the ball being public objectives. The most important thing for you is to get a victory point each turn and keep up with the pack, as this in itself will be a challenge. Tactically you should be setting up invasions on your neighbors by having lots of units like destroyers and cruisers that can reach 2 and place as many as you can on whatever borders you have with your neighbors as possible. Be a threat to them towards end game so they are forced to burn resources on units to maintain their own defenses. Be stingy with your action cards and hold on to as many combat based cards as you can. When the end game comes if you have kept up you actually have a pretty good shot as your military will be hard to stop and you should have a lot of stopping power to prevent other players from making their last points, especially if you followed the warsun doctrine and you have some on the table. The ultimate goal is to get yourself into a position where you have the potential to win on points, so that you can use your military to force it through.

When to go on the war path? With the Sardekk N’orr there may and most likely will come a moment fairly early on when you realize that it’s just not possible to keep up with the pact point wise. At this point take a round or two to put yourself in the best possible tactical position to hurt your neighbors and let them have it. Take out as much as you can and hit them as hard as you can. Enrage them, distract them and make them pay with blood. Sometimes this strategy will actually buy you enough time to get caught up and possibly even win. You never really know what the end game will look like and what people need to happen to gain their own victory points. Doing something completely unexpected, at an unexpected time is often the catalyst to derail their plans and this might be just what you need to get back in the game. If it fails, shrug your shoulders and pat yourself on the back because there is nothing to loose when you already know what the outcome will be if you don’t attack.

Bullet Point Strategies: Here are some quick tips to keep in mind.

* Your destroyers are as good as everyone else’s cruisers at the start of the game but for half the price so don’t be shy get them on the table first and remind players of how strong they are to entice them to build up their fleets in response (the more they spend on fleets the less they spend on other things).
· Controlling Mecatol Rex can make winning with Sardekk N’orr considerably easier so secure it if you can early in the game.
· Don’t get involved in personal political conflicts, quiet as a mouse should be your motto.
· Remain flexible in your strategy, don’t look for a fight just because you have the military might, use it as a deterrent as you complete public objective and strike only to prevent others from winning so that you can.
· If you don’t think it’s possible to win, go on the war path and weaken the strongest players as much as you can, this might buy you enough time to catch up.
· Get the Warsuns on the table as soon as possible, but remember that public objective (victory points) always come first.

Adjusting Sardekk N’orr: The best adjustment for Sardekk N’orr is to help them out in the one place they are the weakest, getting victory points. Start the Sardekk N’orr out with 1 victory point more then the other players. While this doesn’t really make up for the disadvantages they face in comparison to the other races, it does buy them a little time they need to establish themselves without the pressure of falling behind on victory points which is usually at the center of the problem when playing Sardekk N’orr. More importantly it is an adjustment that does not require anyone to remember any additional rules.

Something of a standard in the general FFG (Fantasy Flight Games)forums is to give the Sardekk N’orr an additional carrier. I have never tried this so I’m not sure how much difference it would make but generally unless you are using Simulated Early Turns having a second carrier is a considerable first round advantage. Given that the Sardekk N’orr play pretty slow early on I can see this being a reasonable way to improve their starting condition and again I like it because it doesn’t require anyone to remember any additional rules which is always the best way to make adjustments to races in my opinion, there are enough rules in the game already.

Beating The Sardekk N’orr: There are really two common scenarios when it comes to the Sardekk N’orr. The first is the ‘I can’t win’ scenario. If you end up with the Sardekk as a neighbor you have to be prepared to face a potentially frustrated player who gives up on the idea of winning by points and is going to want to take someone down with them. More often then not they are going to be looking for payback against people who attributed to their downfall and/or the strongest players. The fact is that even a weak Sardekk N’orr fleet can do considerable damage and put you out of contention. The best strategy is to make good with them right out of the gate, offer them up good trades when the trade contracts come up and avoid confrontation with them while quietly building up a intimidating enough defense in hopes when the preverbal shit hits the fan you are not going to end up in his/her crosshairs. If you find yourself squabbling with the Sardekk a good offense is the best defense. Take out their space docks and blockade them rather then trying to do invasions.

The second scenario is a Sardekk player who is in contention to win. This is actually the worse possible scenario and the best action to take is a preventative one. If a Sardekk player is clearly holding his own and able to stay with the pact on points you need to act before he gets warsuns on the board, else you will find yourself in some real trouble. Its usually enough to hit him once or twice when he doesn’t expect it militarily and derail his plans enough to prevent him from getting warsuns on the table or at least delay it. Be careful to ensure you get the better side of the unit vs. unit akilesheel. If war is not an option for you, action cards or a pact with another player to slow him down may be necessary.

Conclusion: The Sardekk N’orr are indeed a race really ment to be in the hands of a more experienced player. They really suffer considerably more from strategic errors then any other race, it’s quite difficult to recover from a dramatic event with them and because you really can’t lean on their strength you are forced to play the game in a more straight up fashion using sound tactics and strategy. I suggest that this race is removed from the pool when playing with a relatively green group and in the event you have a mix of veteran and newbie players this is a good time to challenge the vets by having them play this race. In a room full of vets making a minor alteration like an extra victory point or an extra carrier can bring them up to pace, but regardless of anything whoever plays the Sardekk N’orr should be prepared for a challenging game.

The Faster the Better

If there is one type of board game that I'm partial to besides massive strategy games it would be racing games. I'm not sure exactly why, but I own several racing games and I find myself always drawn to any type of racing game when i'm parusing the internet or a game shop. Today's article will talk about some of the great racing games of the past and present so get ready, set ..go!!!


Arena Maximus

Despite weak reviews I purchased this game on impulse when it was released and to date it remains one of my favorite games rarely collecting dust on my shelf. Arena Maximus is a fantasy based chariot racing game where you play as one of five chariot drivers, racing on a deadly oval track. As you race down the track you have to avoid various obstacles, while simulatnously fighting with the other chariot drivers and trying to maintain control of your chariot. The game mechanic albeit it simple is very clever using a system where the cards in your hand represent control and whip cards played on the table represent your speed. The tough part is that your limited to 7 cards all together so the faster you go (the more whip cards you play) the less cards you have in your hand which are used to avoid obsticles, fight, cast spells and defend yourself, in effect your control. The faster you go the less control you have. When you fail to avoid an obsticle or defend yourself against a player attack your chariot takes damage, if you take too much damage you crash. Naturally the first player across the track wins the game but the game is played in reverse order so at the start of each turn the last player goes first, then the second to last etc.. etc.. so being in front can be a big disadvantage, while being too far back can put you out of the running for victory. The end result is that every race is extremly close as players try not to get too far ahead or fall too far behind until the very end when everyone makes a play for the goal line. In this game its rare that the race is anything but very very close. A very fun game I love to play, albeit the instructions are not very well written which I think has ultimatly lead to this games 'bargain bin' status, but all the better you can pick this game up dirt cheap.


Mississippi Queen
Mississippi Queen is one of those rare games that I can actually get none gamers to play and love. Its simple to learn and quite addictive. The premise is quite simple, you control a river boat in a race to the finish line on the very hazardous Mississippi river. You control the speed of your boat, but the speed you set you are commited to and you can slow down and speed up only so fast. In a pinch you can use your very limited resource oil to make the really tough manuvers, but watch out, the resource is in fact very limited and once its gone its gone. The trick to the game is that you don't see the track as you go down the river. A die is rolled to determine which way the river will turn and a randome tile is used and placed in the right position. The result is a sort of wacky race where you never really know if you are going too fast or too slow and what direction the river will bend next. To complicate matters you also have to pick up passengers along the way. The games mechanics might be too simple for some, but Rio Grande games usually function on the premise that the people playing their games aren't nescessarily gamers and I think the game works very well as a party game. You can pull this out after people have broken into the wine and expect it to be a very popular and fun experiance. Unfortunatly this game can sometimes be hard to find, a search on Ebay revealed only two copies, both severly over priced. The reason for this however is not that the game is rare but that people seem to have trouble spelling the word Mississippi correctly. A closer examination on Ebay reveals that quite a few copies are sold for as little as 10 bucks with various renditions of badly spell 'Mississippi's'. Really a great buy I strongly recommend it.


Formula De
Formula De is one of those games that benefits from more players and tends to be less fun with the fewer players you have. In fact even a 4 player game can seem uneventful. However if you do manage to get 6 or more people in a room to play a game, this is an experiance well worth it. Formula De uses a interesting mechanic in which you change gears represented by the type of dice you roll which in turn determines your speed (how far you can travel). You have various statistics for your car like tires, body and brakes which are a limited resource that allow you to avoid crashes when you go to fast or potentially crash into someone. In addition the track has control points which force you to travel down certain paths around turns, hence you must decide as you enter a turn which position you will travel along. This decesion can easily lead to a crash if you aren't planning your driving strategy appropriatly. Its a very addictive game, one that I wish I could play more often but unfotunatly as mentioned with anything less then 5 players much of the excitment is lost. The game has a pretty good level of support from the publisher with a variety of tracks and expansions available. The pricing on the game is kind of strange though, certain sets are very expensive in excess of 100 dollars while others barely breaking the 10 dollar mark. I'm not sure what the reason for that is but needless to say its difficult to recommand this game for 100 dollars, but if you can find it reasonably price it definitly deserves a place on your shelf.

The Good Not So Good

I don't normally do negative reviews of games, simply put this blog is about the games I like and recommend and generaly if I don't like a game I stick it on a shelf and quickly forget the reasons why moving on to better things. There are however several games I have played in the past few months that I simply didn't like and while Im not going to go into detailed reviews, here a few thoughts on some of the games that just didn't do it for me.

Last Night On Earth

I had an oppertunity to play this game a few times in recent weeks and I have to say, while I loved the concept and the exceptionaly high quality parts I just couldn't find much to like about this games mechanics. I was actually quite suprised to see so many positive reviews of this game on boardgamegeek.com and although its average score is at about a 7.5 out of 10 on that site, I personaly would rank it a few points below that. The game is simple enough, one player acts for the zombies and the rest of the players take on the personas of the sterotypical zombie movie survivors , aka Cheerleader, Football Jock, Preacher etc.. The simple combat game has the survivors running around the board equiping themselves as they kill zombies and perform any number of missions depending on the scenario of the game. To me this game just felt like it was missing a layer of complexity for it to be entertaining. The fights were grossly based on pure luck (dice rolls) and each game boiled down to the survivors doing pretty much the same thing which is to find the best weapons possible and avoiding packs of zombies, especially in melee combat. In the company of friends joking around and roleplaying their characters and zombies the game was tolerable but all and all I really can't recommend this one as anything more then a entertaining ruse, especially considering the hefty 40+ dollar price tag.

Runebound
Another game that has managed to get a fair following despite itself and considerable support with dozens of expansions already out. This one I played quite a bit when it was first released and recently a friend of mine pulled it out and we played a couple of rounds. I can understand the appeal of adventure games like Runebound, it sort of offers a short version of what roleplaying games are like for people who just don't have the time to commit to a roleplaying game. For me however, as a roleplayer when I play adventure games of this type which basicaly boil down to 'Kill Stuff, Loot Stuff, Level Up' I find myself wondering why we aren't just playing D&D or some other roleplaying game who's mechanics and feel are going to be considerably better. Even more so today with great adventure board games like Descent available. Runebound is a simple game, move your character around the board to adventuring site and fight whatever is there to gain experiance in an ultimate goal to acomplish a overall mission. The mission depends on the expansion set your playing with but generaly its just a boss monster at the end to defeat. It has some clever mechanics and plenty of interesting equipment and gadgets to peek the interest of any role player, but it very quickly wares out its welcome when you realize that there really isn't much strategy involved and the scenarios favor the player making it quite easy to beat the game. Playable, albeit it repetative, I certainly cano not recommend it if for no other reason then that the replay value is extremly limited. The only way to get a 'new' game feel is to constantly buy expansions which might explain why there are so many. For great adventure games I strongly suggest you look at games like Descent: Journeys in the dark and its various expansions.

Settlers of Catan
When I decided to add Settlers of Catan to this list of games i don't like I thought for certain I would stand alone. With an enormous following beloved by thousands this game is practicaly mainstream at this point. Its worth noting however that even on BoardGameGeek.com this game has recieved a 7.5 stars making it a middle of the road review for such an overwhelmingly popular game on one of the largest review sites for board games. I have played this game on a number of occassions however hoping to find what it is so many love about it but while I normally like Euro designed games, this one seems to me at the very least to be quite dull and very simpleton. I can see the strategy involved, but all and all its a game of luck which can often beat you despite you playing a wise strategy, a frustration I find to be quite often true with most of the Catan games which use die rolls to determine the resources you'll get to work with and build your strategy. The flaw in that is that if the dice don't roll your way your options are extremly limited, sometimes even non existant. The other thing I don't like about Settlers is that once you fall behind you stay behind, its a game which is very difficult to make a come back in. With that said I have to admit that I find the games overal concept quite appealing even if its mechanics miss the mark and I went out on a limb and purchased another game from the Catan line called Starship Catan.


Starship Catan, a better alternative to Settlers
Starship Catan is a two player game, using some similiar mechanics, albeit it toned down enough to eliminate the element of luck that you have in Settlers leaving far more to the players strategy. In StarShip Catan you are one of two space traders that has been lost in a distant galaxy and you are trying to find your way home. The local alien races are willing to help you for a price. The game is about you trying to raise the money you need to acomplish the various tasks for the alien races so they will show you the way home. You compete against another player by gathering resources, upgrading your ship and exploring the galaxy. The mechanics of the game are simple to learn and fun to play, its one of the few two player games I find myself playing very regularly. Again many of the concepts of Catan are in this game, but without the overbearing luck element. While only a two player game there is a Catan game which I believe this game was loosely based on, or at least inspired by called StarFarers of Catan. I have never played it but its definitly on my list.

Brain Teasers


I love games of all types and I try to make it a point never to judge a game until I've tried it. In recent years I have been introduced to a number of what I like to call 'Brain Teaser' games, often refered to as Abstract games. Generaly I have always stayed away from these types of games as I find that I enjoy a game far more if it has a story behind it then just some of the wall puzzle game. Still there are a couple of games that I have tried that I really loved and I thought they deserved a place on the blog.

Khet

Khet is a very interesting game played on a chess like board with a variety of pieces that have angled mirrors. On each side of the board is a simple red laser which when activated bounces off the various mirrored pieces until the laser 'hits' something. The object of the game is to move the pieces around and position them in such a way that they hit your opponents 'King' piece. Each player makes a single move each round and presses the lazer to see if it hits any pieces, if it hits a piece, regardless of who's it is, it is removed. Its a simple yet clever design that is extremly addictive while being incredibly complex. An easy game to learn, but very very difficult to master. Khet is a two player game, but I think it would be great to see this game adapted to have more then one player.

Ricochet Robots

This game I can only describe as painful yet exciting. The premise is quite simple, each round a random location token is drawn with a certain color. A timer is started and players must find the fastest route for that robot to take to that location on a game board with a variety of wall obsticles. You shout out your best guess how many 'bounces' it will take to get to the location, the player with the shortest route, that can prove it by moving the pieces gets the tab hence a point. The robots can only move in straight lines and must always move until they hit something before changing direction. You can move and use any of the other robots in play as well so it isn't just about finding how many bounces in the most logical way it would take, but creating new routes by using the other robots as walls to bounce off of. The hardest part of it all is that you can't touch any of the pieces, meaning you have to do it in your head. Once you shout out a number your stuck with it so if you made a mistake you can't change your mind. Its an easy game to learn and fun to play. I think I like it because its one of those games that it doesn t really matter how many players you have. It can be 2 or it can be 6, its fun either way. Its a great mental challenge as well, great way to warm up your strategic part of your brain before getting into your board gaming evening, although be warned that you might not play any other games once you start with this one.

FURY OF DRACULA SPECTACULAR

If there is one thing I love its discovering a great, new board game that captures my attention the way many of my nostalgic favorites did the first time I played them. This past weekend I discovered such a game, a true gem in the rough that deserves all the praise I can offer. The Fury of Dracula by Fantasy Flight Games however is not a new game as I quickly discovered, in fact it is a gold box classic from the 80’s. I played the 2^nd edition of the game recently released, but my understanding is that little has actually changed in the base design.

Van Helsing, the famed vampire hunter

The Fury of Dracula is a game in which one player represents Dracula and the remaining players represent the 4 famous vampire hunters from the Bram Stoker novel including none other then Van Helsing in a search to find and destroy the famed blood sucker in Europe. The simple yet elegant design plays very smoothly with an uncanny ability to keep all players glued to the game board regardless of who’s turn it is and maintaining a constant surge of suspense.

It might look complicated in an screen shot but the game is very simple to learn.

The premise is simple. You have pieces representing the hunters moving on a map of Europe from city to city searching for equipment, resolving a variety of events and encounters while searching for clues to Dracula’s whereabouts. Dracula also moves around the board in Europe, but unlike the hunters, he moves in secret through the use of ‘location cards’ which are placed face down in a row representing where Dracula is currently and a trail of cards of the locations he has been. When the hunters land on a city in which Dracula has been the location card is revealed from which the hunter players can make estimates of where Dracula might have gone and continue to follow the trail. Dracula leaves behind ‘encounter’ tokens to slow the players down, representing things like henchmen and traps for the players to fight through and overcome. The unique balance comes in the form of timing as each round represents a turn of the clock and as the day changes to night the advantage does as well as Dracula is stronger and has more powers at night while being considerably weaker in the day time. The hunters must not only find and trap Dracula, but time it so that they face him when he is weak else they can quickly become the hunted. The objective of the Dracula player is to survive long enough to spawn 6 Vampires in Europe, a task done in a variety of ways including planting Vampire encounters in cities to defeating on of the hunter characters.

The Box art for the original 1987 release of the game

The game is beautifully balanced although it may at first appear as though Dracula has a major advantage since he can essentially win the game over time by avoiding the hunters, initially a pretty easy task, but it becomes increasingly difficult for Dracula to do so as players pick up event cards and equipment that make locating Dracula easier. One drawback for Dracula is that he cannot return to places he has been in the last six rounds (the last six locations which are his trail). This fact makes it easier for the hunters to figure out where Dracula might have moved as well as help them to set up traps for Dracula through the use of various event cards and equipment. Dracula also spends blood to use his various abilities like wolf form which allows him to move faster, or hide which allows him to remain in place. This means over time as the players get stronger he can actually become weaker, a sort of count down for Dracula pushing him to act. In order to win as the Dracula player you must wisely avoid the hunters while also appropriately take advantages when their guard is down or they are weakened by the encounters you leave behind in cities. Timing, location, event cards and equipment are just some of the things that go into the complicated formula that is good strategy, but despite juggling these various resources the rules are so simple and elegantly presented that its quite easy to keep track of everything. Its really just a matter of good execution of a plan and a bit of luck.

If and when you do finally face Dracula or one of his many minions you are exposed to the unique combat system of Fury of Dracula, which is perhaps the only time when luck comes into play. Essentially each player has base abilities (both hunters and Dracula) like Punch, Escape and Dodge. Dracula has additional abilities like Mesmerize, Fangs and Claw, but many of these abilities only function at night, in fact during the day Dracula is considerably weaker then any single hunter especially if they have equipment like Pistols, Rifles, Crucifixes, stakes… etc.. Combat is resolved by each player choosing an action, ability or equipment card and simultaneously revealing them. Then a six sided dice is rolled and the player with the higher roll wins the round of combat. This does not however guarantee a victory of the combat or even that the winner of the die roll damaged his opponent. Each individual action, ability or equipment has a reaction to each other type of action, ability or equipment. Hence you resolve the round of combat depending what types of cards where played by each player. A pistol against a knife for example will have a very different result then say a Claw against a crucifix. Sometimes even if you win a round of combat you manage to only stay in the fight but not actually do any damage. Coming to a fight with the right equipment is crucial for the hunters, while simultaneously for Dracula its important to be fighting at the right time (at night) so that he has all his abilities available.

First time players might find that killing Dracula is very difficult, perhaps even smilingly impossible as they are unaware of what the various abilities and combinations of equipment and event cards can do, but one of the key advantages the hunter players have is that they are playing as a group and can share ideas, strategies, tactics even equipment. The Dracula player must effectively beat the group alone. Its also worth noting that it takes some time to see the big picture of the game, like chess you can learn how to move the pieces around quite fast, but knowing where the best place to put them and how the best way to use the pieces is really at the heart of the game.

One aspect of Fury of Dracula I really love is that the game plays very well as a 2 player game, in fact the experience is very much the same. Obviously its always more fun to have more hunter players who can discuss strategies and tactics, but in as a whole the game does not change whether you are playing with 2 or 5 players. In fact if you are looking for a really great 2 player game with a bit of complexity this is a great choice.

Fury of Dracula really has all the elements of a really great adventure game and even more so for fans who love the myths and legends of Dracula which this game has translated so honestly. Within you will find quotes, characters and plot elements from Bram Stokers novel as well as the ever growing popular culture of the Transylvanian tale. To me this game infuses great design with great story making for a great evening of gaming.

Enjoy it!