Voidfall

Since the final rules were published I've now played this 9 times:
6 solo
2 co-op 2p
1 tutorial 3p

The first 6 solo games were done pretty rapidly over a period of two months. The last 3 game were done pretty rapidly over a period of two weeks. It's clear that there's something very compelling about the game which makes me play it back to back in spurts. The gap between the first set of games and the most recent set of games was a period of a few months but because of the strong graphic design work I was able to pick up where I left off with relatively little effort. Despite the heavyness of the game, I do think this speaks to how clean the rules are. I originally thought the game might be too long to play with other people and while I still do think that about the co-op game beyond 2 players, the competitive game is surprisingly swift and I could see being enjoyable, even with 4.

On the topic of Mindclash's house style, I really appreciate their commitment to building out the lore of their universes. I'll admit I've only skimmed the pages of background fluff they've put out but the care and consideration they put into world building comes through despite being a cold and analytical euro in play. Their efforts makes a lot of the game feel thematic even if you're probably not actively engaging with the theme while working through your turns. My opinion of the game has only risen with each play and I haven't even started exploring some of the later scenarios and more complex houses.

Glad to hear all this as I have a copy kickstarted. I really like Mindclash's previous work.

Only the one play for me, part of that 3p competitive match.

I enjoyed it enough to want to try again. It was quite exhausting as it is a very dense and demanding game to play, although I felt like I was having enough light-bulb moments toward the end to have a reasonable line of sight into the strategic levers of the design. I'll be better prepared for the next time!

There is something almost Lacerda-esque in that you need to sequence the order of actions to be able to accomplish your core goal, but this then leads to sub-optimal/inefficient plays elsewhere as there are severe constraints on just how much you can accomplish.

For example, I made a big push to grab territory in the final round. In order to do this I needed to play two conflict actions (one of my four card plays plus a bonus picked up along the way, which I had to plan for. I realise in hindsight that if I had been a bit more careful I could have opened this up to three). But I had to first raise a fleet - which needs a different card play beforehand - and to have active ships waiting to deploy before even that with yet another card - and to have resources in place to do all of this before I even began. So my whole round was swallowed up building to this one big push (that turned out to be almost game-winning and probably would have won the day if I had turned left instead of right with my targets); however the by-product was having to do a bunch of other things that I either didn't really need or which were firing off in the wrong order for me to take best advantage off. And all of this was based around deterministic combat outcomes so it very much involves figuring out precisely what you need rather than going big enough and putting some trust in the odds going your way. Plus it was all at the cost of doing other things that needed to be considered and balanced before pushing ahead.

I'm a little on the fence about just how tight everything is, especially with such a vast array of options. Going back to the Lacerda comparison, at least with Vital the options may be layered but they are few and clear whereas Voidfall felt almost overwhelmingly dense at times. This is not necessarily a negative though, as it will likely be better for longevity despite being a very big bump to climb over in the beginning.

As for the theme, I don't know anything about the backstory but I liked that it seems similar to Dune with various factions of Humanity developing divergent socio-technological paths rather than a jumble of space-animals who are designated as military-focused because they have kitty-claws or whatever. It allows for some rational synergy in the tech trees and the desire to struggle over the same colonisable systems.

So a reserved recommendation I suppose - I don't think it's the kind of game where you can go in with any illusions as to what you are about to get into, and if you want to be at the party then you will most likely enjoy the tunes.

mezike wrote: I don't think it's the kind of game where you can go in with any illusions as to what you are about to get into, and if you want to be at the party then you will most likely enjoy the tunes.

I completely agree with this characterization.

I've come to think a few things about strategy in this game in the solo/coop context. I think I really, really like this game with what Mezike said above in mind. I'm not sure the following would hold in multiplayer competitive necessarily which is much more unpredictable.

a) I think having some sort of defensive military tech---even if you're going econ for most of your points---is crucial if it is anywhere on the offer. Even if you're going to win all the combats and have carefully calculated enemy counterattack strength and kept on board corruption low, it is a huge own goal in solo/co-op to consistently lose ships via attrition in this game to voidborne skirmishes. You can't afford it, there are too few opportunities to reinforce. Something like shields, dreadnaughts or carriers for salvo defense, or having enough sector defenses is essential to keep forward momentum.

b) I think getting one sector to 6 population/3 production dials is also essential because of the safe haven rules. The safe havens are a bit of clumsy solo/co-op rule that makes an economic equivalent of the voidborne rifts the enemy gets points for if you haven't completed construction of by the end of the game. Even if you're going military, I think you have to boost one of your sector to 6/3 ideally by cycle 2, so you can finish one of the safe havens. I'm not sure if it's necessary to win the game to close at least one of the rifts, by contrast, though it may be. So even if you're going econ you may have to beeline for a rift to prevent the 30 point punch at the end of the game.

Overall, I find myself going military or flex almost every game. It's something about my instincts in this sort of game, something 4x psychological for me. It's like, once you get the force to conquer your 3rd or 4th system, which you're going to want to do even as a tall econ empire so you have spaces for production guilds, I can't stop myself from pushing for the rifts with what I've built up to do that.

Gary Sax and I played another co-op game of this on the weekend. This time we both picked medium complexity houses and it's amazing how small subtle changes to the cards and house powers can completely upend your intuition on how to play the game. Despite it's heft, the asymmetry is quite economical rule wise in terms of what it changes to the effect it has on how you play.

It's also interesting to see how despite some pretty clear signposting on how to play a faction in a given way, there's a lot of expressiveness and room for your personal preferences to come through in the game. For example, Gary Sax feels that military techs are required to do well with most factions but I like economy and scored a reasonable score without a single offensive or defensive tech on the board.

I think the design on the faction you used, Nervo, is a creative partial inversion of the entire game.

We taught Not Sure this game. I still think it's an excellent design but for a niche audience and you gotta know if you're in the pocket for it. I've become more and more confident about that review of it I posted.

The thing that I think has emerged to me that is a good amendment to that review is that I think you should either play 3 or 4 pip aggressive maps or play coop. Besides learning games (co-op introduces complexity and jaggedness), I don't see the point of competitive Voidfall on unaggressive maps. For our learning game with Not Sure we played a one pip aggression competitive game, which did a good job for a learning game and I'd recommend it if you don't want to go through the (pretty good) tutorial scenario, but is in an awkward place for a real game. For me as a gamer american, I don't know what/who the one pip aggression competitive game is for. It's way too predictable without a potential opponent on your borders or the AI cards flipping up messing up your rhythm and plans.

I came back to this space game after some of those kind of grindy Arcs experiences. I played an excellent close win with Dunlork/Energy Cells in the solo hard difficulty game and then sornars and I played some co-op with a painful but easy win over medium.

It's a little hard to believe given how numbers based it is when you see it, but if you know how to play I cannot overemphasize how thematic the game is. I used Fenrax for the first time, who based on the flavor text about them are akin to the Quarrians in Mass Effect, and it was incredibly spot on. Their unique cards and development card mean you're always pushing to move population around and go to new sectors, and the fact you start with Carriers in version A (which I used) and get points for spreading out means you end in a real dispersed nomadic flotilla vibe that can disgorge fleets to the front line at any time. The nitty gritty is very economic numbers stuff but if you can even squint a little bit past the costs and benefits of individual actions, the bigger picture is spot on asymmetric space empires stuff. I wouldn't start with Fenrax, but if you know how to play it's a fun time once you put the unique cards and powers together into a coherent picture in your head.

I had a similarly thematic solo game where I got the tech trade nexus action card 1 and focused on cycling tokens in and out of the board and funded a lot of my operations based off of it---I made no credit production guilds the whole game and simply profited off the externalities of being a trade based civilization.

Game very very good, but I still don't think a lot of people here should touch it. You'll know if it's your thing. It was sure good to play it after playing Arcs, though. It does a lot of things Arcs does pretty marginally really well while not being the highly interactive game that Arcs is so missing that angle. This has definitely been a big hit for me and not a one hit wonder, real staying power. My counter says 36 plays. A lot are solo but sornars and I have played a lot co-op of too. If I had 3p or 4p I'd definitely play competitive though. I hit 3 hours pretty much every time I play whether solo, co-op, or competitive if people know how to play. Not counting an arduous setup.

On the comment of play time, one thing Gary Sax mentioned while I apologised for taking time to think on my turn was "don't worry, this is not dead game time, I'm planning my turn right now too." I think that's why the game reliably hits 3 hours. I'm beginning to suspect that'll remain true even with 3 or 4 players in co-op. It still requires players dedicated to playing at a decent clip but isn't an unreasonable expectation. What I find fascinating about Arcs and this is that I feel like 3 hours in Voidfall flies by but 3 hours in Arcs leaves me feeling exhausted. Both are full of agonising decisions require you to navigate an action constrained hand management puzzle but the way both games are paced make me feel entirely different emotions.

That could be interpreted as an indictment on the level of interactivity but the moments of player to player interaction just about mirror the amount found in Spirit Island. In both games, there is frequent cooperation to the effect of "do you mind if I let this bad thing happen to the board? The alternative is I let this other bad thing happen to the board, or else this bad thing is going to happen to me...", the player making the decision presents the opportunities and outcomes as they see them and consult with their partner while still owning the decision. Optimising the actual process or validating the set out outcomes as the "best ones" is impossible for the other player so it keeps the game focussed and moving quickly. The closest quarterbacking can come is "do you see a way to do this instead? I really need something else to happen by the end of the round".

Infrequently there is the opportunity for direct player cooperation; in SI this is through presence spreading sufficiently to have adjacent/overlapping spheres of influence and in Voidfall this is through the three Joint Focus cards found each round. It's difficult to plan for these and usually comes in the form of "I can let you do this at minimal cost to myself, would you benefit from it?" but when it comes together it feels so damn good as suddenly a light shines down from the heavens and the puzzle you were trying to solve has its solution revealed for you. I'm sure higher level play intentionally engineers those moments but I'm not sure I'll ever grasp the game/mind meld with another person sufficiently to get there.

In Voidfall the way the Joint Focus cards work is you can do a more powerful version of the card and have the opportunity to split the actions on it between yourself and the other player(s). Since actions are so tight, getting given an additional action almost always feels amazing. In our game, a war we were not prepared for was coming at the end of the round. Gary Sax was struggling with trying to figure out a way to not get wrecked by it, I had a path forward but it was kind of unambitious - I saw the opportunity to trigger the joint focus card on the display letting Gary Sax deploy his fleets to the right places and protect himself. He wasn't anticipating it and didn't have the actions to make it come together on his own but me being able to gift him the one action he needed to both defend himself and score some points felt really satsifying for both of us. The game is filled with those moments of build up and tension release where you manage to struggle through some impossible feeling challenge by the skin of your teeth. At higher player counts it'll be interesting to see how this dynamic plays out as the cards generally only gift one of the other players an additional action.

Anyways, it had been a while since I last played but the rules to this game are incredibly solid and I picked up where I left off with minimal rust. No pace halting lookups for specific term definitions across multiple books (despite having multiple rulebooks they are pretty clear about where you need to look for information), just the occasional glance at the reference manual for an icon interpretation. The game is really good for its intended audience and I'm extremely optimistic about the upcoming expansion. Someone needs to get on TTS with us so we can explore the competitive mode more!

As an aside, there's an incredible web app that fully implements the solo mode. It has decent UX and includes the full fat game. You'd think I'd love it and would be grinding out games on it but it turns out I hate it! I play much better and much more focussed on TTS. I can internalise the board state much better there or in person.

voidfall-33a59.web.app/

^here's a link to that app. It's good, but like sornars said, I don't have a great time with it but it'd be a good way to familiarize with the game. There's something about the literal visual perspective that I struggle with.in this solo app.