http://julian.togelius.com/Isaksen2016Characterising.pdf
I’m gonna read this, probably tomorrow or the next day.
This is from the NYU Game Center. I only recognize one of the four names, which is Andy Nealen. He’s a professor there. I’ve played Netrunner with him in the past.
Eclipse Kickstarter didn’t break a million. Is that good or bad? No idea.
For what Eclipse is, I would say getting the $950k that it did is a big success.
Yes, it was a popular game, and it does have some minis, but it’s not in the same mold as most million dollar tabletop Kickstarters. It isn’t truly a minis game, it doesn’t have some flashy license, and the publisher behind it is totally unproven. Kolossal Games has existing industry people behind then (they split off from IB&C), but they have Kickstartered 5 gams now without delivering their first.
IIRC, isn’t the Second Edition mostly just the First Edition with expansion content bundled and a couple of rules tweaks?
It struck me as totally superfluous for anyone who actually owns the game already.
Never underestimate the power of game specific recessed trays… 
Oh that’s the whole endless debate that was going on in the 5000+ comments. Kolossal comes across like they’re relatively incompetent (while being cocky about it) and it seems like the publisher didn’t really want to run the kind of kickstarter Kolossal wanted to so they compromised and… ran one kind of campaign while planning to handle the products another way?
For example, first question in the faq:
Will there be Kickstarter exclusives?
There will be no exclusive content. However, the option of having a factory wash on the ship models will be exclusive to backers.
Backers of the Galactic Counselor pledge will receive the Stretch goal expansion “Worlds Afar” as part of their pledge. This content of this expansion will be made available for purchase after the campaign from Lautapelit but will not be included in the retail version.
Note, at one point that said something like, “there is no kickstarter exclusive content.” And both are kinda true. But then if you dig in on the BGG forums this comment kinda explains what’s up: Stretch Goals are also part of the Retail version? | Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy
Which makes it seem like the +$50 pledge IS for a sort of kickstarter exclusive expansion, though the individual pieces of it might be rebundled/rebranded into other non-kickstarter expansions later. Or something.
The second edition absolutely does not include wholesale any of the other expansions from the first edition, and in theory the content from those expansions isn’t necessarily tested and balanced with respect to second edition. YMMV. They did include a lot of pieces from those expansions, or even updated versions of that (the new version of the ancient cruisers seems like a much more fair mechanic). So there’s a relatively clean break between the 1e and the 2e.
I guess I saw the inclusion of Rare Techs and took that as some amount of expansion inclusion.
So, I guess it’s a true 2E in that it tweaked a bunch of rules and balance things, but overall it still seems like a pretty underwhelming thing.
Pretty much. It was a lot like watching a new D&D edition war.
Honestly, four months isn’t a bad turnaround from my first game at PAX East to holding my kickstarter copy of Root.
I’m also a bit bummed about how the Eclipse Second Dawn campaign was setup. I’m a big Eclipse fan (and even have it listed in my BGG Top 5 games twice), but to me, this campaign felt like a way to sell plastic game trayz with a copy of the game included instead of the other way around.
I’ve already got A LOT of Eclipse, and not getting all that plus more in a 2nd ed. was what made me sad. I’ve already played a game with some of the included tweaks, but it seems like anyone with a copy of 1st ed. who doesn’t feel like dropping another $140~$200 (shipping and extras) could REALLY EASILY just house rule some or all of the game play tweaks.
Let me know what the deal is with the expansion. I am getting the impression I should own a copy of Root, but do I really need the full thing?
GenCon is happening, here is the biggest news so far.
We played with Riverfolk Company tonight. The expansion adds so much life to the base box… I’d say it compares to Duel of Ages. If you just want to try it out, the base box is still a game - a great game. But the “expansion” is a holistic, natural addition that expands the space the game occupies tremendously.
The marketing looks a bit too dressed up which makes me suspicious. I’d try it I guess.
The idea that you’re buying random decks, instead of just random cards, and you won’t be customizing your deck at all doesn’t appeal to me in the slightest. This seems like a weird product for FFG to release.
Yeah as a magic player (though more so on the limited side than constructed) crafting your decks is the secret sauce of TCGs and LCGs. There’s no way to do real competitive play with fixed decks and casual play with decks right out of the box are already a staple of long standing card games.
It is a really weird idea, but one or two ideas make it possibly make sense to me. I have to re-frame my brain a little bit to get there though.
Framing 1: Thinking of it in the context of a deck builder, it’s kinda like playing the same set of cards on the table multiple times. Maybe the first time you don’t realize how good card x or card y is, or the interactions that might make this particular deck work. But you get to play it multiple times and eventually get some degree of mastery over this particular deck. And then when you burn out you can just buy a new one for a new experience. Competitive for this would probably be a little bit like a draft… though I’m not positive how that all shakes out.
Framing 2: Casual friends game. Trade whole decks around when you’re bored with them. Much more fair for new players against old players. A lot more of a, “hey let’s go down to the store, pick up two new decks and play a couple games” then trade them in or something. If there is a competitive scene it’s probably really weird with people trying to buy the “optimal” or “near optimal” decks… which is pretty gross… but ccgs were already somewhat gross in that way before… just now the gambling component is even crazier and rarity is way more extreme…
Long ago I had the idea that I’m sure many other people also had. What if the CCG had unique cards. Every card is the only copy of that card on earth. Building a deck would be like being the GM of a sports team. Each player is unique. You can’t just get a copy of Lebron for everyone. You are the one person with LeBron on your team.
Of course as soon as you start designing that game you recognize a billion problems that causes. The result is that you take that idea no further because it is not feasible.
Having not played Keyforge, it seems like it has solved exactly one of those problems, and decided to just completely give up on the rest. The one problem they solved is that you can never come up with so many unique cards. So they didn’t They just generate decks randomly instead of cards. You’re going to see the same cards repeatedly, you just won’t see the 100% exact same deck pretty much ever. There are always going to be at least a few, and probably many, cards difference between each deck.
This is good because it provides completely unique play experiences every time. It’s also good because if you are not interested in competitive play, you can just buy one, or maybe two, decks and play them like crazy. It also makes it very easy to jump into the game. The barrier to entry is super low.
The other benefit is that nobody can craft ridiculously evil and OP decks. If they printed some crazy bad combo, almost nobody will have that combo. Knowing FFG who are awful at card templating and balance, they see this as a get out of jail free card. So what if there is some OP combo? Only like, two people have it. Well, everyone who has to play against those two people cares!
No card can ever be banned or limited. Errata is the only tool they have to fix anything broken.
This is obviously completely awful for competitive organized play. The world champ won’t be the best player on earth. They will be one of the many players who can play extremely well, but was lucky enough to get a slightly better deck. At least one, and perhaps a few, insane people are going to buy many many many decks in search of one that is just OP.
If the game is really fun I could see buying exactly one deck if there are other people to play with. Otherwise, no interest.
There’s apparently a Transformers TCG now also.
Funnily enough, the developers behind the Lightseekers card game that I just played last weekend are making a Warhammer CCG, that looks very similar to their original game. The online app doesn’t appear to be functional yet, although it seems to be soon, but the card game is available already. There’s a preview of the game on BGG:
Having played Lightseekers, and seeing that it’s a surprisingly deeper game than I expected, I’m actually much more excited about this than Keyforge. Still not a fan of the random card packs, but at least if the game is like Lightseekers, every card you buy physically, you can scan in to play on the app.
