inconsequential ruminations

I am enjoying the discussion on the Board Game Geek a lot these days. Compared to Spielfrieks and rec.games.board, it’s more focussed around specific games and less about general gaming discussion, which I prefer.

I am reading it through SharpReader and the Geek’s RSS feeds.

I was offered Galaxy: the Dark Ages in a trade for Verrater, which I thought was a good deal. Galaxy had lukewarm reviews, but that this was mainly from people who thought it inferior to Titan:the Arena or Grand National Horse Racing, its simpler ancestors. I have not played either, so I thought I’d give it the benefit of the doubt.

The theme is of a galactic power struggle between different worlds, welded onto a card game – a strange mix. Epic themes fit best with large, complex games; so naturally, this is a large, complex card game. After playing it, I can see how a relatively simple base game was blown up to this galactic scale.

The basic card play, ignoring the fiddly extras, is classic Knizia. Broadly, this is a good thing, but once you have played a few of these games, it’s difficult to feel excited by them. Maybe I’m a just jaded old-timer?

Good

• Plenty of backstabbing and tension as the Worlds columns disintegrate into the void.
• Great theme. I wish there were more sci-fi German games and fewer archaeological ones.
• No rules ambiguities (but see the next point).

Bad

• The rules are very wordy.
• Complex, it is impossible to learn without a reference sheet.

In summary, there is much complexity for only average strategy. Instead of our normal dummy round, for learning, we had to play an entire dummy game. On reflection, I should have got Grand National Horse Racing instead, but now we have spent the time investment to learn it, we will probably stick with the richer gameplay of Galaxy.