Weekly Trash - StarCraft: The Board Game

Jur wrote:

Starcraft is really good. The hard decisions are best about it. The short amount of time forces you to specialise on one type of tech. That's fine with me, you can try other types in another game. That keeps replay value high (especially with three different armies).

Yeah, I'm kind of baffled by this complaint as well. To me it's a strength - in every game of Nexus I have played every player has built every unit in available to them. After one game I have seen it all. In Starcraft im lucky to be able to build half of the forces available to me, which means there are heaps more options to pursue, and that alone makes the game a hell of a lot more replayable as there will be different units going against each other every time.

I don't think players would build everything in the game even if the game did last that long. Once you pick a couple good units to specialize, building up buildings for other units is a waste of resources, and buying techs for other units will bloat your combat deck to the point where you can't hope to draw a useful card for any specific combat.

I hope the expansion helps make each of the tier 3 units more useful, so there is actually a reason to try different ones in different games, though. (who ever builds tanks?)

We had 8 players show up for StarCraft night last Friday night. We ended up playing 2 x 4 player games. We thought about making one z-axis connect the two games / galaxies but we could figure out how to handle the the orders. We're planning to play again November 8th at Euroquest so here are two comments about StarCraft.

First, is the thing I love about the about the game. I love the technology, unit and timing interaction. A typical game of Starcraft will average about 5 turns or between 4 - 7 turns. The typical game of Starcraft will be very close going into turn 5. Usually most player will have a shot at winning. So basically in turn 1-4 you are just trying to position yourself to win the game in turn 5-6. Part of positioning yourself is getting ahead in scoring (conquest point) but part of the the positioning is also having the right technology and units on the board for your final push. Some people will go down the path of using the same units / technology every game but it's probably better to pay attention to the other players in the game when picking your units.

Second, we're making a change on how planets are selected. The last two games I've played we've had very lopsided planets. In Friday game we had 4 guys and the staring conquest points were 4, 3, 2 and 1 the game before it was 4, 2, 0. The guy with 4 conquest starting points has a huge advantage over the guy with just 1. At Euroquest we're going to draft the plantets. This should help balance out the game.

KingPut wrote:

Second, we're making a change on how planets are selected. The last two games I've played we've had very lopsided planets. In Friday game we had 4 guys and the staring conquest points were 4, 3, 2 and 1 the game before it was 4, 2, 0. The guy with 4 conquest starting points has a huge advantage over the guy with just 1. At Euroquest we're going to draft the plantets. This should help balance out the game.

Unbalanced planet distributions and z-axis placements can be a big detriment to a game. I'm making some maps that are balanced to use with friends. This 2-player map is my most recent one: www.boardgamegeek.com/image/389028

Aaron - Your work is MOST awesome!

I'm gonna be playing this *finally* weekend after next and the biggest thing that bothered me when it came out was the fact that this was planet to planet warefare instead of contained to one area like PC game.

Keep up the good stuff!

Aaron - Do you play with the event deck on those maps as well, or do you make any other modifications to the rules aside from transports and such?

Aaron, have you thought about changing the rules for your maps?

SenorOcho wrote:

Aaron - Do you play with the event deck on those maps as well, or do you make any other modifications to the rules aside from transports and such?

I listed some special rules to use with the map on the associated thread: www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2766493

I'd still play with the event deck (minus "navigation error" cards), but I guess you don't have to if you don't want to. Any suggestions on what different rules there should be are welcome.

Yeah I saw those, but they weren't really what I meant.
Basically I love the maps but the whole 'planet to planet' system thing doesn't work on it. I'd maybe jack off the blue paths and set the map up in such a way that you have 'areas' instead of planets, and modify the rules to reflect the smaller scale. For example lines could be green to designate different sections in the same area, blue to represent two different areas that can be crossed by units without a transport, and black to designate two different areas that can only be crossed by flying units or ground units if you build a transport along that line. You'd need to think of something to counter the increased usefulness of flying units however.

Mr Skeletor wrote:

Yeah I saw those, but they weren't really what I meant.
Basically I love the maps but the whole 'planet to planet' system thing doesn't work on it. I'd maybe jack off the blue paths and set the map up in such a way that you have 'areas' instead of planets, and modify the rules to reflect the smaller scale. For example lines could be green to designate different sections in the same area, blue to represent two different areas that can be crossed by units without a transport, and black to designate two different areas that can only be crossed by flying units or ground units if you build a transport along that line. You'd need to think of something to counter the increased usefulness of flying units however.

I think that's basically what I came up with. Only green paths you don't need a transport for, but blue you need a transport or flying.

Aarontu wrote:

Mr Skeletor wrote:

Yeah I saw those, but they weren't really what I meant.
Basically I love the maps but the whole 'planet to planet' system thing doesn't work on it. I'd maybe jack off the blue paths and set the map up in such a way that you have 'areas' instead of planets, and modify the rules to reflect the smaller scale. For example lines could be green to designate different sections in the same area, blue to represent two different areas that can be crossed by units without a transport, and black to designate two different areas that can only be crossed by flying units or ground units if you build a transport along that line. You'd need to think of something to counter the increased usefulness of flying units however.

I think that's basically what I came up with. Only green paths you don't need a transport for, but blue you need a transport or flying.

True, but you cant nest on that middle platform.

Aarontu wrote:

Unbalanced planet distributions and z-axis placements can be a big detriment to a game. I'm making some maps that are balanced to use with friends. This 2-player map is my most recent one: www.boardgamegeek.com/image/389028

Would you object to me packaging your rules and mapset into a file? I knew this existed at BGG but could not find it until I came back here for your link. Let me know. This should be front and center on the Files links instead of dozens of Polish translations.

(Hopefully this doesn't distract from jeb's question above.)

Anyone try Broodwar yet?