Star Trek Deckbuilding Game
I went to the new game night, and it wasn't so bad! There were some guys that I'd never seen before playing Doom, and that was weird, but otherwise there seemed to be just enough space for everyone, and there were less people acting like lunatics, so that was nice.
There I played the Star Trek Deckbuilding Game, and it's...okay. It does a weird thing with its deckbuilding mechanic, having only a couple of common cards and having everything else come out of a common deck, a la Ascension, but makes cycling through that deck ridiculously easy, and purchasing from it pretty hard, since no card that comes from the common deck actually provides you with currency. Instead they provide you with statistics and special powers that you use to take on exploration effects. These are missions and space fights that are worth points, and you need these points to win. Of course, it's completely random whether you get a mission, a space ship that is always trying to kill you, or a declaration of war, in which case all players get to shoot at each other. If your ship gets blown up (which seems to happen a lot), you get a cooper and reset your deck.
I just don't like how unfocused the game can be. We played with a rules adjustment that allows us to start with a slightly stronger ship than the starting ship so that we could hit the ground running, but our decks were still pretty weak, and it took a lot of turns around the table to get even slightly powerful enough to win against some of the challenges in the deck. If you get a bad hand, then you can't get any points (not uncommon, to be fair), but if war is declared, you could lose your entire hand in a fight, and be weakened to the point where you can't try again next turn. The fact that half the cards seem useless in most situations anyway make things worse. Why would I ever buy Warp Speed, which gives me a 5 speed boost for one turn, when all speed does is determine who goes first in a battle? If I can't win the battle with my other four cards, then it's pointless. I'm just not sure.
I went to the new game night, and it wasn't so bad! There were some guys that I'd never seen before playing Doom, and that was weird, but otherwise there seemed to be just enough space for everyone, and there were less people acting like lunatics, so that was nice.
There I played the Star Trek Deckbuilding Game, and it's...okay. It does a weird thing with its deckbuilding mechanic, having only a couple of common cards and having everything else come out of a common deck, a la Ascension, but makes cycling through that deck ridiculously easy, and purchasing from it pretty hard, since no card that comes from the common deck actually provides you with currency. Instead they provide you with statistics and special powers that you use to take on exploration effects. These are missions and space fights that are worth points, and you need these points to win. Of course, it's completely random whether you get a mission, a space ship that is always trying to kill you, or a declaration of war, in which case all players get to shoot at each other. If your ship gets blown up (which seems to happen a lot), you get a cooper and reset your deck.
I just don't like how unfocused the game can be. We played with a rules adjustment that allows us to start with a slightly stronger ship than the starting ship so that we could hit the ground running, but our decks were still pretty weak, and it took a lot of turns around the table to get even slightly powerful enough to win against some of the challenges in the deck. If you get a bad hand, then you can't get any points (not uncommon, to be fair), but if war is declared, you could lose your entire hand in a fight, and be weakened to the point where you can't try again next turn. The fact that half the cards seem useless in most situations anyway make things worse. Why would I ever buy Warp Speed, which gives me a 5 speed boost for one turn, when all speed does is determine who goes first in a battle? If I can't win the battle with my other four cards, then it's pointless. I'm just not sure.
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