mc wrote: So the "no double dominance check in the market" is a pretty big rule, isn't it, especially on top of the fact that the last one goes for double VP. It meant for quite the finish in our game as each market cleanup could spell the end. I wonder how often that's going to happen in this game.
(Matt - check your PMs).
Done. Looking forward to getting a game in, although my relative inexperience and UK time zone may spoil your play a bit. Hope not.
I feel the same I think about its place. The smoothness is great, and the VP thing is not what I feared, in that each dominant check is nice and tense. I've still got mixed feelings about the catchup stuff. And it is missing the same level of board manipulation. Like, there is some, but it's a lot more straightforward.
It's definitely distinct and different with the alliances, which I greatly appreciate. These games run on the same engine but I don't feel that they're redundant.
Gary Sax wrote: It's definitely distinct and different with the alliances, which I greatly appreciate. These games run on the same engine but I don't feel that they're redundant.
Yeah, not at all. and the alliances and flipping those is definitely the standout thing.
I played Konig von Siam recently and maybe it's just the proximity of plays, but the feel of that kind of feels similar to Pamir to me. Judge the board state.... now, which train to I want to get on? The cards and actions and the spies and so on add an extra, woolier level, obviously. And I haven't played a lot of stock games, or Imperial, either, and maybe they are closer in that respect. The first edition also had it, but was just harder, or more complicated, and slower, to manipulate.
I was listening to So Very Wrong about Games talking about this (Mark), and he thinks it's more static than Pax Ren. What do you guys think of that? I'm not so sure about that. I feel like the assassinations and especially the political card/tribe link mean that you can move across regions pretty easily, even though the regions themselves are locked to the cards you draw which can create pretty distinct card strongholds---see our current game with Matt.
By contrast, I think it is very easy in Ren to lock people out of regions and, especially, to strangle them financially via trade routes and running them often enough to keep the coins away from anyone later in the route. That can really lock down the game into a few strong empires, and if they're controlled by the right people it's very locked in.
The East is critical to the early game in Pax Ren, because that's where the money is. There's a predictable flow of cash, and you have to be in place to get it. You can buy stuff out of the market to scrape a few coins, but that's not very predictable or sustainable compared to having a cube on a Hungarian border.
Pamir is different in that there's no real money injected into the game, so you use a decentralized "Tax" action to grab cash, or scrape it up from the market.
To my eyes, that make it less static than Ren, in the sense that what comes into the market defines the game even more. Taking over England or Hungary in Ren? Hungary every time. In a Pamir game, it's harder for me to tell what or where is going to be important, especially since there's the faction patriots, regional bribe rules, etc. You really don't know if you're going to get anything you want, or if it's going to be in an affordable market spot when it does.
It sounds dumb, but I hadn't thought about Root as dueling models of political and economic organization... even though once someone said it I'm like "fucking duh."