Star Trek: Ascendancy

Played about an hour and a half solo to get the rules down. I get what you guys are saying about the old school straightforwardness of a lot of it.

No idea if it will be good, but I liked it after playing so many 100 card tableau 60 different army unit you can buy games.

After a few more plays I'm beginning to think that this game does not work, well at least not for three players. Even though it has some neat new mechanics and theme there are just some old-school stuff in there that weakens and nearly wrecks the game.
The way that Research does not work with both Weapons/Shields and Advancements, the unfortunate way that the clever exploration mechanic clashes with the too diverse system discs and exploration cards that can basically knock a player out after only a few turns, the way that each player does both the build and attack parts of his turn in one go, and just the Risk-like 'multiple' tank rushes once you've built a massive fleet (in the same turn).
Lovely idea for a game, some great mechanics but overall I'm regretting spending the money, I do think this will play very differently with five players but unfortunately I will never get that many players - this was meant to be one of my go to 3-player games.

Looks like in addition to the Cardassians and Ferengi, they have a Borg expansion in the pipeline.

boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/62730/tweets-...gacy-season-2-firefl


"To add a bit more detail, the Borg are run by an AI and can appear all over the place. They weaken other players as they attack, and you might view that as a good thing, leaving them to ravage someone else's planet while you do things to improve your position, but as some point a damaged player can become the Borg, which then lets them take control of the race and give them a chance to win the game a different way."

Sounds like an interesting balance challenge.

I'm keeping my copy of this because I liked what I've seen when I messed around with it (esp. one ship type, one colony type) but it's going to be a long time before I get it on the table. It may end up shelf toad territory.

I've given up on it until the expansions come out so we can get 4 players. I think having a bunch of NPC Borg flying around the table is awesome.

www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1764607/borg-teaser-startrekcom

Details of the borg expansion. This expansion sounds genuinely creative, I love the ideas they're putting into it. As long as it's balanced, of course.

Still no play of my copy of this, unfortunately, but I still love the parts I've messed around with solo.

10 years ago, maybe, I developed a game where a player could conquer the AI bad guy and then choose to become their king, abandoning their original quest for the sole purpose of taking over every city in the game, while one of the players' original goals is to stop that from happening (vs the AI) . It was almost as if two games were going on simultaneously.

It was very, very hard to balance these things, and I'm not sure it would've worked, despite years of play testing. If they get this Borg thing right they'll have created a new mechanic that will be knocked off for decades.

While I love most things about this I don't really want to go back to it while the problems of 1st player doing their whole turn (build then move/attack) before anyone else can do something to defend plus the tank-rush strategy (amplified with the commands system giving them multiple move/attack opportunities. And the random system draws in the first few turns can make this even more imbalance, sorry this is just going back 15 years where you can have someone knocked out early/mid game (this happened in one of our games).
I'd love to play this more but until something changes a bit in it or we work out a way to play it so we enjoy it then it's just going to be an expensive box on my shelves. We played Homeland, City of Remnants, and Dead of Winter today with TMNT- Shadows of the Past last weekend and I would choose all of those games over Ascendancy at the moment

This sounds freaking great...but what happened to the Ferengi/Cardassian expansions? The game needs more seats than a neutral addition...even though this sounds cooler than just another faction.

Production problems, supposedly... BGG speculating that they switched production for this one so it may even come before the other ones they have to shift to someone else.

I set up this game since I got the Cardassian pack and played about half a two player solo game.

Do not sleep on how tight and bottlenecked the opening is! I was shocked by how careful you have to be in the open lest you lose all your ships or not have enough production to build new resource or other nodes. You can easily blow up your initial fleet and/or spend on ships near the beginning and be in a very locked up situation with little to do on turns.

Oh, definitely. The Cardassian opening must be methodical. Planet, ship; planet, ship. A small contrast to races other than the Federation is that you can actually benefit from finding a not overly dangerous phenomenon to get you a jump start on your research. They're a good test case for using the optional research rules, too, in which you choose a new development from the deck, rather than drawing a random one. Some people think it gets them up to par with the others, but there's a decent argument that it can turn them into a machine with a more experienced player. Labor Camps and Covert Military Bases can do wonders for your production capacity and ship availability, respectively. Also, establish the Overseer Fleet ASAP! And don't be afraid to stretch yourself to get to good Production planets, even if it seems like overextension. The Cardassian military advantages (and early Command advantage) will usually be enough to keep you stable.

Supposed to be new info on the release of the Vulcan expansion this week.

They're both up for preorder but no info yet...

Gary Sax wrote: They're both up for preorder but no info yet...

I believe the info is supposed to come Monday.