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× Talk about the latest and greatest AT, and the Classics.

XIA, which is pronounced "ZEE-ya"

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28 Jan 2019 10:23 #290791 by Legomancer
Okay, my Xia KS stuff came in. I have:

Base game
Sellsword
Embers of a Forsaken Star
Missions and Powers

I've only played this once before. For folks who've done more:
1) what should I start with?
2) what player count is best?

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28 Jan 2019 11:05 #290793 by mezike
My Xia also came today, looking forward to playing in a couple of hours when the workday is done :)

The advice I was given in the games played thread was just to go all in. The economy board is apparently a necessary fix to trading in the base game and low overhead. I looked through the other stuff including the newest deck and it's all mostly more of the same from what I can tell. I'll be sure to let you know how well it went for us as a first time experience with everything all at once, otherwise I'm also keen to hear any advice from experienced players.

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28 Jan 2019 11:50 - 28 Jan 2019 12:03 #290795 by Gary Sax
I think three is best. Downtime can be a problem with more even though the game feels like it's begging for 4 to have more conflict. I would try to do all downtime business stuff while the other player takes their next turn for the most part to keep things moving, it can be the longest part of the turn and most often does not affect other players.

My recommendation is play basically the base game for 2 games or so to start:

-base game
-added base game rules on page 2 or whatever from the expansion
-economy board
-new exporation tokens (replace ice with a regular damage if you don't feel like learning ice initially)
-no NPCs
-play to 10 in your first game, maybe ramp to 15 in your second game if you felt the last one was clipped

Know that if the world is slightly lifeless if you're playing with 2 or even 3 that that's because you don't have NPCs so don't give up on the game. I don't play with the roll 20 VP yield but I could see it either way.

From there, tbh, add everything else into the game after a couple learning games. If you really want you can leave out the event cards initially. From a NPC perspective I'd probably add the trader first, outlaw second, then enforcer but that isn't a big deal. I don't have the sellsword so couldn't tell you on that one.

This is not me telling you to go to a thread or not start a new thread, btw, but here are some other comments from the way back machine, FWIW, I like the game a lot more than in that first thread, it has grown on my spouse and I a fair bit since then:

therewillbe.games/forum/10-ameritrash/19...-xia?start=15#272765
therewillbe.games/forum/article-discussi...h-s-marriage?start=0

Curious to see how your games go! I feel like I've been talking about this game a lot so I hope I'm not steering anyone wrong!
Last edit: 28 Jan 2019 12:03 by Gary Sax.
The following user(s) said Thank You: mezike, vegasrobb, Frohike, Hadik, Vysetron

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28 Jan 2019 13:35 #290801 by Frohike
Also, don't play it super cautiously like a boring-ass PU&D or you'll get exactly that. The penalty for dying is relatively low (with the Embers expansion rule revision), so take chances & work on multiple objectives.
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28 Jan 2019 22:08 #290833 by SuperflyPete
FWIW, I think it's more fun enunciated as "Zheee-ah" (like Zha Zha Gabor) because it sounds fancier.
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29 Jan 2019 07:38 #290852 by mezike
So we had our first game yesterday evening, me and both kids. We put everything all-in, went with a reading of the basic rules and then looked up anything new as and when it came out. This approach helped a lot as there are quite a few instances with hex borders where attempting to digest everything beforehand would have been overload (for me as much as for them). Whenever anything particularly complex turned up we just put it to one side, for instance we drew a couple of ice comets early on so replaced them with planets instead.

What struck me is that the rules are very straightforward, so much so that we spent a lot of time flicking through the rulebook just to make sure it was as simple as it sounded. Pretty much everything has risk and reward attached so yeah, go ahead and mine several times in a row if you are confident you won't blow up along the way. The challenge there though is that there are edge cases where you are reading what you think is the intent of the rules. I came away with a bunch of questions that the rulebook didn't seem to answer which isn't great, so I'll take another read through as sometimes it's easier to parse once you've seen it in action.


We played fairly slowly for a couple of hours and called it at 4FP. Any of us could easily have won it in that time, we were just enjoying exploring the elements of the game, upgrading our ships and whatnot, which was more like prepping for a longer game than racing to an end point. The market board works well but for some reason isn't very intuitive. I think that must be because it was cobbled on to the original design as a fix. NPCs were straightforward despite having Loath and the Enforcer's world right next to each other which created some silly NPC behaviour for a while. We didn't get much into combat this go around and were only just loading up with blasters and shields when we had to call time.

Looking forward to the next game which will hopefully be faster paced so that we can get deeper into it.

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29 Jan 2019 09:08 #290857 by Legomancer
Read through the rules and yeah, it's very simple. Very appealing. Can't wait to get it on the table.

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29 Jan 2019 09:43 #290863 by Gary Sax
Few hours for 4 fp? Sounds a bit long. You score points for almost everything since most stuff ends in a sale at least.

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29 Jan 2019 11:13 #290881 by mezike

Gary Sax wrote: Few hours for 4 fp? Sounds a bit long. You score points for almost everything since most stuff ends in a sale at least.


Yeah, I hear you. It was just under two hours I reckon and given how slow we were taking it I don’t think it was too bad. Like I mention, any of us could have won it sooner but we were taking cash instead of FP and buying upgrades and new ships because the space adventure side of it was more appealing than the playing-a-game part of what we were doing. We undoubtedly missed something too, so I’m looking forward to poring through the rules in detail tonight.

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29 Jan 2019 18:50 #291042 by stoic
My Kickstarter copy and expansions arrived today! Lot's of good advice in this thread about how to begin playing Xia.

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30 Jan 2019 02:27 #291069 by mezike
Played the solo version last night, it works really well and went at a much faster pace than our learning game. Managed to get to a 15-9 win in around ninety minutes with some events really helping out. Didn’t make it to a stage III ship yet either. Best moment was the Scoundrel ramming themselves through a planetary shield for nine damage just to get close to me only for an event to give them a change of heart and force them to give me goods instead of attacking. I thanked them very much and then blew them up with my laser cannons.

I’m sure now that we missed a few FP in our first game for things like ship upgrades and whatnot, and we did a couple of things a bit wrong, it’s easy to do so definitely good to have a learning game and trying the solo mode helps if you are going to be the main explainer/moderator for your games.

My absolute favourite part of Embers is the single space upgrades. Boy they make things so much better by allowing a bit more control over your own fate in toning down the randomness.
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31 Jan 2019 09:16 #291222 by Legomancer
Played last night:

3 players
10 points
4 hrs (including rules)
Base set + economy board
no NPCs
$5000 starting instead of $3000

We had a blast. Final scores were 10-8-6 (I was 6). This is a definite keeper. Thanks to everyone for the advice!
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04 Feb 2019 14:47 #291465 by Legomancer
Another 3p game yesterday, pretty much the same setup except I rolled in the extra expansions ships. We also played this time with the natural 20 FP rule (I think it went off once).

Again, another great time, with a fun moment. I was at 8FP and we were playing to 10. The Title out was to do salvage 7 times for 2FP. Salvage doesn't require energy, just that I have space in my cargo hold, and I can jettison cargo for free. So I attempted it. (On Salvage you roll a d20. 4-20 you get a cube, 1-3 you straight up die.) Made it through six and then for the seventh rolled...a 2. We all yelled and laughed. It was a dumb but great moment.

Really glad I backed this one and I'm eager to start bringing in other expansion stuff (though we haven't even played with NPCs yet!)
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04 Feb 2019 23:12 #291497 by Gary Sax
You're in for a treat with the expansion. It is dynamite.

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06 Feb 2019 16:47 #291710 by Legomancer
Third game down, this time with NPCs. I am loving this and glad I finally backed it.
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