3 ms·
The enormous variety is absolutely a strength, but can also be a weakness. When my daughter was a baby, my partner and I used to play a lot of Dominion with ano
by mikepurvis 6y ago
The enormous variety is absolutely a strength, but can also be a weakness. When my daughter was a baby, my partner and I used to play a lot of Dominion with another couple who had had a child around the same time— it worked well as a quick, easily-interruptible game that could mostly be played with one hand as needed.
Initially it was the Intrigue base game (theme: cards with choices) and Prosperity (theme: treasures with side effects) and we played probably several hundred games. But later on as the other couple got more and more of the expansions, the game became less and less balanced— even with just Seaside and Hinterlands added to the game, it would have required significant study of all of the additional cards and their effects in order to have any hope of forming a coherent strategy on each game. And since that time several more expansions have come out [1].
Is this bad? No, not necessarily. Obviously if the various modules are stored separately in their individual boxes it's easy to just play with the cards that everyone at the table feels they have a reasonable comfort level with. But I think that feeling of being overwhelmed by the possibilities did ultimately lead us to playing other, more self-contained games like Agricola.
[1]: http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Expansions http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Expansions
- dmix 6y ago> But later on as the other couple got more and more of the expansions, I had the same experience for a different game. This is an annoying dynamic of playing board games (I guess with any group you play with frequently). Damn those expansion couples! Trying to read up about strategy online to keep up just kills the fun. Although I'm no expert on board gaming so take my word with a grain of salt.
- adrianN 6y agoFor me, minmaxing takes the fun out of any game. I like plays best when everyone has played the game often enough to know the rules, but now often enough to really think through a strategy.
- colmvp 6y agoFor me, constantly losing or being close to last place takes the fun out of the game. I've played 7 Wonders for years, and recently played with friends. I kept losing despite thinking I had a grasp on the game. Recently I read an exhaustive advanced guide on BGG and from that point forward I've finished close to 1st/2nd with my friends.
- slx26 6y agoYeah, related to this, I wanted to comment on this paragraph on the article: > There should be no reason to ever study a game where a beginner stands a reasonable chance of winning. I want a game that rewards experience, that permits further study, that has meaning to its replayability. I agree with you and disagree with the article on this point. I think a truly good game must have an explicit, adjustable factor of randomness or odds so you can match different levels of players and play for fun. It's hard to balance, but that's the point of game design: rules simple enough to be accessible, but that at the same time can combine in infinite ways giving each game depth, and have the opportunity to match players of different levels without that being overwhelming.
- mattmaroon 6y agoThe only game I have ever found that is both worthy of study and where a newbie could beat a master a reasonable percentage of the time is poker. The randomness makes poker nearly impossible to study though. You can only look back and determine if your decision was right if you had had complete information, but you didn’t and won’t in the future so that’s not as meaningful as it may be on other games.
- lmm 6y agoI enjoy the process of figuring out the right strategy; one of the things Dominion does well is that it gives you that "figuring out the best strategy" experience every time, in a way, because each time you're seeing a different spread of cards and having to figure out what the winning strategy is. I'm not sure how you're defining "minmaxing"; for me playing to win is very much part of the fun, but a game goes stale once you've figured out the strategy to the point that you're just executing it every time you play.
- jnwatson 6y agoExpansions are a problem with a lot of board games: More rules to remember, more parts to set up. There are several games I’m hesitant to pull out because the expansions increased the complexity too much to explain to a beginner.