Last weekend we played with the “basic” rules and wrapped in 30 minutes/player, which is Agricola-speed. But there was about 30 minutes of rules up-front. And now my head is swimming with the extra depth (but not length, per-se) you get by including rules for “support” parts for your rocket like generators and reactors and radiation shielding. We’ll probably play with those this weekend.
And then after that, the gigawatt thrusters which have to be powered by rare isotopes harvested in-situ out in the asteroid belt.
And then after that, mobile colonies, and near future sci-fi colonists to live on them, so you can manufacture terawatt thrusters that will take you out past Neptune…
I actually have the old Eagle-Gryphon version, too. They changed the deck composition a bit in the new edition, but it’s been years since I played anyway.
I decided awhile ago to not play any baby modes. We are pros, we play the advanced/real mode of everything, even on the first try. I have yet to regret this decision.
Even the basic game is full of discoveries, like “I can’t make escape velocity on Mercury so this is now a permanent colony” or “I’m using a railgun to fire solid rock out of my rocket for thrust, which means I can grind up the other half of my rocket for extra fuel”
If you play everything then the game ends with stuff like slingshotting a generation ship out of the solar system or flying an icy comet into Venus to terraform the surface or emancipating your opponents’ robotic colonists.
Then either watch these at 1.5-2x speed or go to the full rules reference, starting at section K for the Colonization rules which add supports: http://ossgamescart.com/download/HF-R.pdf
One of the futures that ends the game is the footfall future - take a terawatt thruster to a synodic comet and announce your intentions to drive it into Earth and cause an apocalyptic impact winter. The rules dryly state “This announcement moves the Politics to the “war” position of your choice.”
You have to draw the correct cards to even make it possible (space Catholics, at that), but it’s one of those little possibilities that’s amazing it exists.
I’m just going to bring some Cockroach Poker, which still has not bee played out. Also will have some KeyForge. If I don’t get it in advance, I’ll hopefully be able to buy it in person at Unplugged. If it’s not too much to carry, I’ll bring Y&Y as well. Also one more secret game.
Ugh, I just felt my first pang of not going to unplugged. I wanna play keyforge. My local store got them on time and promptly sold out. I believe they’re getting more today.
I guess FFG learned their lesson from when they released Destiny, and didn’t have enough product to satisfy the initial demand, and it was months before there was a second wave of starters and boosters.
They are still selling out in some places. My order on Amazon has been delayed twice. They seem to be printing a lot, but still not enough.
Also, they definitely haven’t learned any other lessons about writing the words on cards properly. There’s already a card that reads that it works like X, and Richard Garfield says it works like X, but FFG ruled that it works like Y, and it’s now useless and stupid. Probably more to come.
FFG are still fuckups. I’m buying a very limited amount of Keyforge, and then that’s it. No matter how good the game is. Also not playing competitively. Learned my lesson with Netrunner. Fool me one time.
From the info I got visiting various game shops during their Keyforge pre-release events, the starter kits are in short supply. The game is very token heavy: There are AEmber tokens, Damage tokens, stun tokens, chain tokens, and miscellaneous tokens.
The game is interesting, a lot of callbacks to magic and other similar card games. The big difference there’s no resource generation, and accumulating the most resources is the way to win the game.
I have a deck that uses bio matrix backup. The strategy of the deck is basically. “Get all of your Mars cards in archives, deploy them when you can also swing with your Sanctum dudes.” Build up your board and then overrun them in one or two turns.
This ruling is obnoxious, the only way it could be used is if I send my own creature to it’s death and then Archived it.
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