Virgin Queen groping in the dark game

Everyone needs to hold their horses. My copy won't be in my hands for a least a week more like 10 days.

andyinkuwait wrote: Everyone needs to hold their horses. My copy won't be in my hands for a least a week more like 10 days.

I haven't ordered a copy yet, so that may slow things down a bit.

S.

Gary Sax wrote:

Msample wrote: Got in my first FtF play this past weekend at a small con - one dude played FOUR games this past weekend.

One learning was that France may look weak early on due to impending revolts and the Catholic league, but can score a lot of points early on thru marriages ( they get extra VP ) and piracy. Make them pay for marriage. Several of us didn't and regretted it later.

Have another game set for this weekend.

Overall impression? Big picture differences from HIS you noticed?

Take this with a grain of salt, as I have only played 1 game and 3 turns of another.

Scoring seems much more dynamic. In HiS , absent the much maligned Copernicus card, a non Ottoman power could only score a VP or two per turn without being at war, usually via hot dice in the New World, or maybe the odd special VP like building a chateau/ St Peters. Even those two VP are usually already in the bank by the time a player gets close to the magic 25 VP. Or getting the Diplomatic Marrigage card and getting a Venetian or Genoan key.

In the VQ game I finished, France got about 6 VP on the final turn . They get special Valoise VP for marrying off certain royals. If you are marrying one of them, make sure you get something in return.

There are a lot more options for spending CP and thus earning VP - Marriage, Science/Art, and piracy are all open to every player.

Overall, I like it and I suspect HiS games will take a back seat to this for a while.

Msample wrote: In the VQ game I finished, France got about 6 VP on the final turn . They get special Valoise VP for marrying off certain royals. If you are marrying one of them, make sure you get something in return.

I'll offer a different perspective, because this makes it sound like France is especially strong and needs to be reined in. With the game we're currently playing, I'm playing as France and I'm the one pitching deals trying to get my royals married off. There are only so many female royals to go around (and Elizabeth I will rarely be on offer), so I've got Henry III, Charles IX, and the Duke of Alençon all sitting around with no skirts to chase after. Valois royals can't marry each other, so you have to pair them up with royals from another power.

Gouvernante de France can potentially roll back Huguenot gains in a big way, but it's much harder for France to regain keys once they switch to Huguenot control in a rebellion. You can't play GdF for that effect until late in the turn (hand size 3 or less), so by then the Huguenots may already have fired off 1 or more rebellions. Even when you do play it, the Protestant gets to decide if he's going to give back religious control or political control of spaces. Keys outside the Netherlands are huge for boosting his card draw, so he probably won't be keen to return one of those once gained.

I have found the French position very challenging (Tourney Scenario start). Only by cutting a sort of crappy truce deal was I able to get Marseille back in my hands, and even with my control of Paris VP, winning the Polish throne for 2VP, getting 1 from piracy, and marrying off the 2 Valois girls, I'm hopelessly behind the Ottomans, who are on the brink of a domination victory. Spain and England are trying a last-ditch effort to keep the game alive--Spain's Armada is transporting a force into the Med to try and snatch Algiers (the game's first military conflict of any kind, in the dying stages of the 2nd turn).

There are a lot more options for spending CP and thus earning VP - Marriage, Science/Art, and piracy are all open to every player.

Totally agree.

I wasn't suggesting France is any stronger than the other powers - just using them as an example of how its easier to rack up sudden bursts of VP. They won two of the four games played at a con this past weekend. In both cases, had the Protestant been more aggressive in fomenting rebellion, they would not only have lost keys/VP, but would have had less cards and more things to spend CP on than just harvesting VP.

You did remind me that they won a dice off for Poland, which was 2VP. They threw in a crappy card, but the other two powers, despite tossing in a Home Card apiece, rolled like shit and he got it.

Msample wrote: You did remind me that they won a dice off for Poland, which was 2VP. They threw in a crappy card, but the other two powers, despite tossing in a Home Card apiece, rolled like shit and he got it.

Hey Paul! Look! Here's yet another new and inventive way in which ACTS can and will fuck you completely [You do realize now that those ridiculous dice that led you to just smoking my Ottoman advance in the face of the *perfect* Turk hand a few F:AT games back was actually ACTS showing its absolute hate and disdain for ME rather than helping you. Once you were finished with dismantling me, ACTS reverted to its normal state of looking for ways to kick you in the 'nads...]

Sagrilarus wrote:

andyinkuwait wrote: Everyone needs to hold their horses. My copy won't be in my hands for a least a week more like 10 days.

I haven't ordered a copy yet, so that may slow things down a bit.

S.

I'm with Sag here, I haven't ordered a copy yet either.

I have been boning up on the rules all week and am seriously excited to grope this virgin queen. If all goes well, I'll pick up a copy for my mantle later.

Dogmatix wrote:

Msample wrote: You did remind me that they won a dice off for Poland, which was 2VP. They threw in a crappy card, but the other two powers, despite tossing in a Home Card apiece, rolled like shit and he got it.

Hey Paul! Look! Here's yet another new and inventive way in which ACTS can and will fuck you completely [You do realize now that those ridiculous dice that led you to just smoking my Ottoman advance in the face of the *perfect* Turk hand a few F:AT games back was actually ACTS showing its absolute hate and disdain for ME rather than helping you. Once you were finished with dismantling me, ACTS reverted to its normal state of looking for ways to kick you in the 'nads...]

ACTS and I have had a decent relationship until the last month or so. I swear, the last month I've been unable to even roll average hits for anything on the dice that are "mine". It's not even that other people's dice are hot, it's that constantly rolling below average numbers of hits makes it impossible to do anything. I set up a situation where I have more dice than someone else, then bang, average hits for them ties or exceeds the crap hits for me.

That Pope hand of six total cp didn't help very much either.


edit: Woop! I won a roll! It was a meaningless non-electorate space to beat the Prots back from 13 to 12, but it was a win nonetheless. I can feel it all changing! Look out bitches, here comes SPAIN!

Got my copy last night, the box is a fucking BRICK.

Not Sure wrote: That Pope hand of six total cp didn't help very much either.

I got hosed by that once in a 3 player HiS game. I was the Enlish/Prots and my combined hand averaged less than 2 CP per card. That is a problem with any CDG that uses a wider range of OPS values as opposed to the ones that stick with 1-3 OPS.

Gary Sax wrote: Got my copy last night, the box is a fucking BRICK.

Yea, my copies of VQ and 1989 landed this AM; it was more like a brick and a cinder block in this box

Going to go sit down and start punching and reading shortly.

Gary Sax wrote: Got my copy last night, the box is a fucking BRICK.

The Virgin we're groping in the dark is a brick.

The legend grows.

S.

Msample wrote:

Not Sure wrote: That Pope hand of six total cp didn't help very much either.

I got hosed by that once in a 3 player HiS game. I was the Enlish/Prots and my combined hand averaged less than 2 CP per card. That is a problem with any CDG that uses a wider range of OPS values as opposed to the ones that stick with 1-3 OPS.

The worst I've ever seen was playing Haps, and ACTS gave me seven cards that totaled 12cp. I don't think I had anything higher than a 2 that round. On the plus side, lots of those are combat cards, so my strategy that turn was "come at me, bro!"

And +1 for BRICK. I'm going to have to yank the insert to fit a counter tray, and even then it's going to be packed full.

The insert was junked almost immediately. I got in just one counter tray for info markers. Each power gets a baggie for all their stuff. Cards aren't in sleeves yet. The lid barely fits .

On a related note, I recently ordered a mapsheet version of the Virgin Queen and Labyrinth maps. I dislike hard mounted maps for air travel, as they weigh a lot and take up space. I roll them up in a shipping tube and put the counters in baggies in the middle. I carry the tube as carry on luggage, although with Southwest I could check it I suppose, it's totally bomb proof.

Zazzle was running a sale and I said WTF and got Labyrinth printed on canvas for about $28.

Wow. Totally worth it.

Zazzle runs sales very often for like 50% off. You can get a regular paper poster sized print at this price for about $9 plus shipping. Something to keep in mind.

WRT Zazzle: To get it printed, did you send them the map or a jpg of the map pulled out of the vassal module?