Anyone played CO2 or Archipelago yet?

I'd like to try both of these games as both seem to be new super-heavyweight Euros with strong themes and lavish components, which I'm all about. Archipelago seems to have some nifty new mechanics, but I wanna know if the AT crowd has impressions from either.

TOS seems to think CO2's rules are just a pain and that the symbolism on the bits is lacking, leading to an overall sloppy ride.

Drakes Flames reviewed Archipelago and he kinda liked it, but I guess it's a no bullshit 4 hour affair, and if I'm going to sink that much time into a game it had better be great.

I've played Archipelago (3 player short game). The short game is 30mins/player AT MOST with practice. The long game could go 4 hours.

There is a TON of stuff here that is new. If you played Earth Reborn, then you know what the man is capable of. Archipelago has a billion kinda new ideas at the fringes and is a little baffling.

Personally, I bet everyone will hate it. I want to play again, but I'm probably the target audience of like 4 people.

1. It is a Euro. Resources, markets, worker placement and a turn order auction are all present.
2. It doesn't reward over-planning and calculating. At all. This means the pure Euro crowd will hate it. The key is that there are 4 categories for which you score VP in the game (In a 3 player game, anyway. That goes up by one per player you add.) One of those is public, and each player knows one category secretly. So in a 5 player game, you know 2 of the 6 scoring mechanisms. The same goes for end game conditions which are on the same cards. And there are a dozen of each cards for each game length level.

The end result is that stuff will score points. If someone is obsessing on some aspect, you may wish to join them. But you'll never KNOW.

3. No conflict. People can coexist, and the big issue is going first each round. HOWEVER, it allows for pretty open negotiation.

4. The game is mean to you. There are crisis cards that make you pay random goods to keep your people happy. The downside isn't huge, you can't use them that turn. But this opens the gate for everyone to lose immediately as the revolution indicator rises when this happens.

5. The end result is almost like a kind of sandbox Euro. You are screwing around with things and someone wins. It is actually pretty compelling, but not the most overtly competitive of games. Thus my original statement that everyone will hate it. Except perhaps for the RPG fans who like lightweight and kinda random euros. So maybe it isn't really a Euro, but nicks the mechanics.

I think I'm probably in the target audience for Archipelago. As a Dungeon Twister and Earth Reborn (for playing it all of once, anyway) fan I was immediately interested in a new Chris B. game. What you describe sounds cool as hell to me, but I wonder if I'll be able to find someone to play with...

I haven't played it because I'm deaf to hype, but a couple of copies were available at the local big gaming event this weekend. The two demoers from Filosofia were raving about it and it now piqued my interest.

The box says 30-240 minutes and they told me they've actually played a 30 minute game, where everybody lost collectively. It's apparently a huge negotiation/backstabbing kinda game.

Edit: I'm talking about Archipelago.

Cheers for alerting me about Archipelago - it was completely off my radar. These third-generation, new-wave Euros might save the genre for me; there seem to be more and more Euros that design to theme instead of designing independent of it, which is excellent.

I have a review copy and am working my way through the rules. It's definitely on the heavier Euro side, with a lot of moving parts. It looks interesting to me, but like Frank said it might have trouble finding the proper wedge of folks to play it regularly.

The designer is definitely a brilliant "think outside the box" kinda guy, so I'm expecting there to be some good things going on in there. Even from what I've just seen if what Frank said sounds at all interesting to you, you should check it out.

Ken B. wrote: I have a review copy and am working my way through the rules. It's definitely on the heavier Euro side, with a lot of moving parts. It looks interesting to me, but like Frank said it might have trouble finding the proper wedge of folks to play it regularly.

The designer is definitely a brilliant "think outside the box" kinda guy, so I'm expecting there to be some good things going on in there. Even from what I've just seen if what Frank said sounds at all interesting to you, you should check it out.

The rules aren't that bad once you start playing it. Most of the rules are just a slog through the Worker Placement Action list. And that is where you spend most of your time. All of the rest is mostly bookeeping.

The two tricky bits are:
1. Working out Meeple status. Lying on their back means that they are revolting and can't do anything. Meeples are engaged when they are building or running a building or harvesting resources, but are NOT engaged when Reproducing. They also can't reproduce when lying on their backs. Because they are revolting.

2. Red Crises and Events only happen when you are buying cards, and the rest of the Crises happen during the Crisis phase.

The turn order should really read:

1. Reset Stuff.
2. Walk through the markets and adjust the neutral and revolution markers.
3. Bid for turn order
4. Whine over the current crisis.
5. Worker Placement Do Stuff phase.
6. Buy Cards

"Sire, the Meeples are revolting!"

"Yea, they stink on ice..."

...


Ok, well, at least this game will have opportunity for a History of the World Pt. I moment. That, in itself, is worth the ticket price

If anyone in the States wants to dump their copy of Archi, PM me. The Usual Suspects don't seem to have any copies left, no doubt because of Black Friday.

Hey dudes, belated thanks for putting this thread up. Archipelago sounds really cool... I also read Stonecutter's impressions in the boardgame playing thread. I'd love to read any further impressions if you got 'em.

One follow up...

Really interesting reaction on BGG to this game, the semi-coop part. It seems pretty intuitive to me, you need to win, but if you're winning by too much or perceived to be the future winner somebody can end the game and make you all lose (unless the winner shoulders the burden of paying the "not lose" tax).

Then I read a post by the designer, who said this and had me nodding my head:

"In Archipelago you need to win discreetely and not outrageously. You need to finally tune your victory, not being too obvious, not smash down your opponent under your feet with a huge gap of difference, let the others think they are still well in the game. At least This is what I think and discovered after quite some games."

I didn't think this idea was too hard to understand, but it appears that some of the BGG crowd can't get onboard with this sort of nuanced player interaction. Maybe this is strange, but this feels natural to me. It's the sort of thing that I (and everyone else) does in social situations every single day at work, etc. I find it second nature; I havent' played the game, don't know if I'd enjoy it, but....

My usual gaming partner and I logged two more plays of this on Saturday, one full four player short game (with two of the four players being randoms at the FLGS who were learners) and then another 3-4 turns of a five player short game before the store closed with three other randoms. It's interesting how much more you pick up about the ins and outs of a game when teaching it several times vs learning it.

This is an excellent game. It's not for everyone, but I think the AT crowd will love it. The game definitely has "heavy euro feel" to it, and the fact that the rules are densely written and the components lavishly produced certainly adds to this. It's a bit ironic, then, that the game doesn't really shine till it's subtitles come out. Jockeying for turn order is SO important, and sometimes it's best just to go last. If you know the crisis is a resource you don't have, and you're out of the discovery tokens, (resource wild cards) and the domestic market is empty, go last! If the rest of the table is worried about the separatist crisis they may just stand your meeples up to prevent the rest of the table from imploding.

Furthermore, since every cube spent has to stand up the requisite number of meeples called for on the card, whether they belong to the player spending the resource or not, there will almost always be spill over from other players. If you're viewed as weak, you can use this to your benefit.

I'm not sure there's ever been a more Euro-y game that has this much negotiation, bluffing, backstabbing and general skullduggery, and the amazing thing is I'm not sure any genre of game could have pulled this off better than worker placement.

Archipelago, by all rights, shouldn't exist. I know this is going to sound hyperbolic, but it's making me rethink so much of what I think of and expect from the hobby. It's a game about shipping crap from the new world back to Europe and yet we've yet to have a game that hasn't had at least one

"FUCK YOU, YOU'RE WINNING, YOU'RE GOING LAST"

"NO I'M NOT, SHE IS AND SHE ISN'T GIVING YOU CRAP, TAKE MY THREE FLORINS AND PUT ME THIRD, ASSHOLE" exchange.

Isn't that really an esoteric truth that we as experienced gamers acknowledge most of the time through our game play?

Get too far ahead, at least in games where player interaction is possible, and you paint yourself a target for the rest to bash the leader.

This game just gives a concrete way for exacting the toll we all charge normally for a person in front.

Yes, I like Archipelago very much. It plays like a euro but there is much more going on. Negotiation is very important also.

repoman wrote: Isn't that really an esoteric truth that we as experienced gamers acknowledge most of the time through our game play?

Get too far ahead, at least in games where player interaction is possible, and you paint yourself a target for the rest to bash the leader.

This game just gives a concrete way for exacting the toll we all charge normally for a person in front.

What you say *should* be true, but it so often isn't. If it was always, or even mostly, the case, no one on this site would have ever heard the phrases "runaway leader problem" or "issues with kingmaking" before outside of Papal conclaves and NCAA Division I football ranking systems. Too many folks are willing to take a passive role, cloaked in smug expectations that a "proper" game should "take care of the problem" for them. It sounds like Archipelago is designed to acknowledge those complaints and then grab the complainers by the collars and shake them until they do something about it themselves. If they fail to do something about, the game calls 'em all losers and laughs in their collective face.

That's just Punk as Fuck, in my opinion.

*And* it plays solo (well, for an extra $9 anyway), which I think is interesting. I suspect that it's very different sort of game (kind of like 2-player Here I Stand is a good game but is radically different from the 6-player experience), but it demonstrates a kind of nimbleness of design (or designer, anyway--Chris B. seems to go out of his way to design games that will work out for the cat who buys it even if all his/her friends hate it ) that is hard for me not to both admire and respect.