What I Played Today: March 25

Nightfall, 51st State, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

I cannot win that one game about vampires. The dynamic give and take of the game is still interesting, although you really do need to pay a lot of attention to what is going on. I got really excited to play all five cards in my hand in one chain, but only when I started to resolve it did I realize that I didn’t want to do that, as I had to target my own minions with direct damage attacks. So, after a couple of dumb moves, I lose, unable to keep up. We also keep tossing Vulko out of the running. He’s just such a priority, so we often decide that nobody gets to play him.

Stumbling through a game of 51st State, I think I finally understand how to play. You get some resources each turn, you spend them to bring cards into play, and you keep having to look up in the book to see exactly what each symbol means. I don’t understand why they thought they needed to make a confusing series of icons on every card. But it eventually came together. There are a lot of cards that aren’t very useful, and because the factions have one type of action they do well and the others they do poorly, it’s tough to get moving. It is ridiculously easy to score victory points though, so it keeps the game short enough.

I’m officially no longer any good at Assassin’s Creed multiplayer. I just don’t have my chops around the peers that I’m getting teamed up against. I’m officially against Assassinate now, because it’s a very constrictive form of gameplay. You make a single mistake, accidentally hold down the right trigger, and you are instantly marked for death, which you can’t really counter. The worst part is the accepted strategy now seems to be everyone acting obvious, and whenever they are marked, running away from crowds as quickly as possible. Your opponent will either give chase, marking them and making it easy to stunlock and counterkill them, or they will give up, keeping you safe. It’s not how I want to play, and I don’t think it’s the intention. At least in Wanted if you act like an idiot, there are plenty of counters, from low point scoring to multiple hunters on podium players. Here, there is no disadvantage to acting like an idiot if you have your smoke bomb prepped, because nobody can sneak up on you without you knowing about it. So I won’t be playing Assassinate again if I can help it, and it’s impossible to get a game of Escort up, which is too bad, I want to try it.