Pax Pamir 2nd Edition

I kept my 1st edition as well. I understand Wehrle's desire to make the game more accessible - of the three Pax games I've played, this one seemed the toughest to get into , both mechanics wise as well as "WTF do I do?" . With ROOT pushing him name out there, I can see Euro fans being stonewalled by the original design. Kind of reminds me of STUDY IN EMERALD and how it evolved between editions. I played both and while I prefered the original, I can appreciate the advantages of the newer one. I can see this going down the same way.

The only bit that confused the "who am I" aspect of the original was Eklund's bizarre and unnecessary liner notes, I thought. Wehrle was clearly uncomfortable about that aspect, but I guess there was a bit of, well, the guy is publishing my game so.... he's managed to make that aspect more focused, both in terms of how it's described, and in terms of the gameplay, with the "Empire" bits (it was always clear to me they were all or mostly Afghans, but whatever) pushed away more clearly. It looks like some of the paxiness - the manoeuvreable changing political state - has gone, and that's essentially what I like about the system; I'm not as interested in a points race. Thurot just said this morning on BGG he knows there have been changes since that review and will probably do another one closer to release.

Yeah, the changing game state is one of my top things about the system too. I have Ren and Porfiriana though so I'm open to something new. But there is risk there when you take out one of the most interesting gimmicks.

This entire conversation has inspired this year's 1x1 gaming resolution, wherein I vow to trick my friends into playing the 1st edition Pax Pamir that has been languishing on my shelf in sadness since it was released.

My 1st edition is going in the Conn Con auction. It just doesn't get played. I'd rather play Porfiriana, and that also doesn't get played (but I'm holding on to it). I'm also okay with reducing the number of Eklund games I own. Pamir is nice in theory, but I'll never know it in practice.

I was skeptical about some of the bits they were "upgrading" to in the kickstarter, but the most recent update makes the game look pretty unique (and good, with the wash in Cole's pictures):

www.kickstarter.com/projects/1243243962/...dition/posts/2397897

Incidentally, how did the last edition of this game play with 2? I think Pax Ren is quite interesting with 2 but Pax Porfiriana is a little less so.

2 lost a lot out of the box, I think.
It was a bit better with the "Nation Building" rules from memory, which was the step towards this new edition - you play for points at the topples rather than the outright win.

I quite like Porf at 2. You mess up and you're generally gone though.

Heavy cardboard did a live stream of Pamir 2e last night with Cole wehrle. I tuned in late and missed the rules and stuff, but I'm looking forward to watching this this afternoon. Looks great. I'd be interested to hear comparisons to first edition of anyone's familiar.

Watched it too. Looks fucking great, though a 5 person table is more than I'd play pax with. Though it did bring out the interesting dynamic teams aspect which is cool meta stuff.

They were also pretty out of steam in this video and dawdled way more than they usually do (I generally like heavy cardboard a lot).

Cool. One of the only games in my queue right now.

Hey Sax, do you want to use your mod powers to fix up the title on this thread? It was barely a "Phil Eklund" game to begin with, and this second edition is completely not. It's sort of a confusing anachronism now.

The takes are coming in, charlest just posted in the big games played thread. Anyone getting their copy of this one? Got it? Impressions?

It's very, very good. This is my impression after one play, so nothing is concrete here. I do think I'll prefer John Company slightly over this one, that's simply a more unique and singular design. This is a little less mind blowing due to it being a Pax derivative.

I think Cohle really accomplished his goal here though. It's a more streamlined Pax but I don't think it's any less deep. It has more social maneuvering due to the waving of bribes and how players collude with their coalition to perhaps prop up the Brits or Russians and try to swing a big point gain. Since you're not likely to win from a single moment (the largest diversion it has from Pax's topple structure), you are more inclined to take second place in scoring in a particular round as long as you can work towards repeating the process and always staying near the top of the leader board. This allows for more long term planning I think.

Really enjoy the action system, particularly with suit and free bonus actions. Spies on cards are such a fantastic mechanism and much better than the army thing in Porfiriana IMO.

I also really enjoyed the length of our game. With five players it didn't even stretch to two hours. That's a first play. I do worry it could feel too short, but I'll let that sort itself out after multiple plays.

I've been thinking about it non-stop since we played last night. That's quite a feat considering the St. Louis Blues won an overtime NHL Stanley Cup finals game last night - their first Stanley Cup finals win in Franchise History (53 years).

I think what you're saying is very interesting, because it places it in a DRASTICALLY different strategic space than Porfiriana and Renassance, which have diplomatic angles but are not overly alliance-based. It's interesting to think that this was Wehrle's intent the whole time but the Pax model didn't work for him. In fact, if you think about it, it would make more sense with some of his other games, especially an infamous traffic and John Company, which require cooperative/competitive alliances. It's a real shame because that Heavy Cardboard playthrough above had almost none of that, which makes sense because people rarely can grasp alliance mechanics on a first playthrough.

I need to set up a Wehrle mini-con or something somehow and get fellow TWBG fans in.

Also, my wife is a big blues fan too, she had a jager shot after the goal because she was so amped up.

Ha, awesome. I normally wouldn't schedule a game night during a Blues playoff game but schedules wouldn't work out this week so it had to be done. We finished Pamir just before it started, so it only distracted me during the other stuff we played. Thankfully, because this one is such an interesting one to tumble around in your head while playing.

The alliance thing is big. Like John Company though, this game feels a little like a sand-box and allows you to engage it in different ways. You could totally not collude or you could work together.

It's clearly baked into the game as a substantial diversion though. You even begin by picking which of three factions you want to form a coalition with in clockwise manner. It allows firing lines to be drawn right from the get-go.

The big switch from instant win on a topple to incremental point gains really is the magic that fuels this though. It allows for combining of efforts and temporary pacts.

In our game, people pushed their coalitions hard. Another player and I ramped up British troops early, and a Russian aligned player responded to keep the status quo. In retrospect, much of our actions were wasted but it felt as though it was a bit of an arms race.

I jumped ship on pushing the Brits and worried about my own tribes/position instead late game. This allowed me to tie for first but I lost on the tie breaker.