The Problem With Imperial Assault

We've had Imperial Assault for about a year now and we've played it ... once. I was discussing it with Apprentice Blaster last night and he came to the same conclusion I had without any prompting. It starts with this:

Contents
Learn to Play Guide, Rules Reference Guide, Campaign Guide, Skirmish Guide
Rules - gotta have the rules!

34 plastic figures
6 Heroes
9 Stormtroopers
4 Trandoshan Hunters
3 Probe Droids
2 Nexu
1 AT-ST
3 Imperial Officers
4 Royal Guards
2 E-Web Engineers
Mini's - welcome enough!

6 Hero Sheets
Sorta like character sheets ...


59 double-sided map tiles
Map tiles are cool and might have uses in other games

11 custom dice
Kind of a thing with FFG now

Large Cards (FFG Green Sleeves)
39 Deployment Cards (3 decks)
2 Skirmish Mission Cards
10 Story Missions
14 Side Missions
18 Agenda Cards
5 Reference Cards

Small Cards (FFG Yellow Sleeves)
54 Hero Class Cards (6 decks, 9 cards each)
27 Imperial Class Cards (3 decks, 12 cards each)
36 Item Cards (3 decks, 12 cards each)
12 Supply Cards
18 Reward Cards
12 Condition Cards (3 decks, 4 cards each)
42 Command Cards
This is where the trouble starts - there are typically 5 or more decks of cards involved in play all in very similar sizes, plus the one-off cards for the  mission and each character . It's tricky to keep up with which deck means what, especially with new players.

Tokens
1 Initiative Token
1 Entrance Token
4 Activation Tokens
20 Mission Tokens (8 Rebel/Imperial, 12 Neutral)
8 Terminal Tokens
8 Crate Tokens
15 Condition Tokens (3 types, 5 of each)
12 Ally and Villain Token
45 Damage Tokens (35 1's, 10 5's)
35 Strain Tokens
20 ID Tokens and 60 ID Stickers
There are a lot of tokens in play too. This does not help with the visual complexity.

Luke Skywalker Ally Pack
Darth Vader Villain Pack
A nice little bonus for getting in early.

By the time you get it all set up, the playing area is littered with cards, tokens, tiles, and miniatures.

That is not a real example of play as even our first play-through involved more than what is shown there.

The problem we both see is that if I am going to go to the trouble of picking up a $60-100$ boardgame I'd like it to be something different, yet this has all of the complexity, style, time-to-play requirement, and expense, of this:

So if I am going to have individual characters running around with individual actions,abilities, equipment, and damage tracking, and where one player runs all of the bad guys and events while the other players run individual characters, why not just play the RPG? The boardgame even comes with a campaign of linked missions where the characters are awarded XP and credits! If I'm going to do all of that and put up with all of the cards and tokens and funky dice why not run my own adventures with a party of characters that the players made themselves?

This is our dilemma.

Also, there are expansions - just like an RPG. They're boxes instead of books, but you get the idea.

Not everything is negative. The game also has a set of skirmish rules of pointing up your own small rebel or imperial force and duking it out like a traditional miniatures battle game. This of course leads people to do things like this:

Now I already have a big box of pre-painted plastic star wars minis from the WOTC stuff a few years back, so the last thing I am looking for is a set of star wars mini's to paint, but the rules for this part of the game are a nice bonus.

In the end, we are going to try one more game and see how it goes but I suspect I already know the answer. If it takes the time an RPG session would take, has a similar learning curve, and feels a lot like an RPG but with less freedom, is that a better option for us than just playing the RPG?

Meme-tastic Monday

40K Friday - Dark Eldar Progress

It's been a little slow around here as far as 40K goes because it's been the opposite of slow for everything else. If you have kids in school then May is a busy busy month and having multiples, including one graduating high school, makes it even more so. This week marks the end of all that though so hopefully we will have some time to get back to building, painting, and playing.

In the last couple of months all I have added to my eldar forces is a big group of dark eldar warriors. This gives me enough to field 40-50 of them altogether and that should be plenty. These are the older style plastic troops as I intend to use the newer (current) style sets as trueborn.

So the entire dark-kin force consists of:

• Archon
• Haemonculus
• Raider
• 30 warriors (usable right now anyway)

That's not a great standalone force but it's a decent start for some allies (which is all they have been thus far) and it covers the core of a real army so it's not a bad start. I'd like to add another pair of raiders, then some scourges, and probably a ravager. That would end up being around 1000 points and enough to do some small battles on their own if I felt the need. It's not a super high priority but it's on the agenda for the rest of the year.

My biggest dilemma at this point is the paint scheme. I originally thought I would do something that looked good and fit the background but was simple to paint as this is a secondary force - something like the black and silver or black and purple that was sort of their signature look from 3rd and 4th edition. Now though I kind of want something a little more exotic. I've seen some really nice gloss red paint schemes on dark eldar that look really good and a part of that is that it's so unexpected. 

I have a Blood Angels army on the shelf so I do have a fair amount of red already but ti does look nice. 

I've also seen some really sharp all-white paint schemes for them and that's a color I have not used as a base for an army. 

I always liked the look of white Tau (the whole mecha thing probably) but I don't have a Tau army (and some would say I don't need a Tau army) and I do have a developing army of these guys so maybe that's the way to go?

I kind of like that purple and white combination - maybe a darker purplish color ...

Anyway that's the next chapter of the 2016 eldar story. More to come!

Starting Concepts for a Rifts Campaign

With Savage Worlds Rifts a real thing now I thought I would share the three ways I have started and run a Rifts campaign. It's a post-apocalyptic game, but one where there is some organized technological /magical society and industry (unlike Twilight 2000 and most Gamma World campaigns) and most of the world has been covered at some point so I know it can be tricky trying to decide how to start a game in a way that makes sense.

Option 1: The North America opening - This is how my last campaign started. The idea is to limit the character types and the setting to the core rulebook and let things expand from there. The starting line from my email to the group that last time: Welcome to Horseshoe Bend, Arkansas, 2400 A.D. No flying cars, and not much indoor plumbing either.  It was a backwater town with some local problems where the PC's were drawn in and things gradually expanded from there. It's a classic "bullseye" type campaign where you have a fairly high level of detail for the town, some detail on the surrounding area (say a day or two of travel for normal folks), and a general idea of what's outside of that. The main premise here is that it's easier to add things to the game than it is to take things away from the game. It's easier on the GM and it's easier on the players too. Plus it makes no assumptions about where the campaign is going - it's just a starting point and once the party finds their feet it could go anywhere. Maybe they end up headed for Tolkeen. Maybe they become heavily invested in the town and the local NPCs and become local champions and defenders. Maybe they take it over and rule. It's wide open once things get rolling and it's largely player-driven at that point.

Specifics: I liked Arkansas as it was near parts of the Coalition, Texas (and so vampires), the Federation of Magic, and it's not all that far from Florida and Dinosaur Swamp. I prefer an area that's not in the middle of some heavily detailed region or plotline but is close enough that the party could dive into those if they wanted to. Parts of Texas, Iowa, and Pennsylvania would work well here too.

Option 2: The Epic Quest - I used this for my longest-running campaign. The concept goes back to everything from  Jason and the Argonauts to Sinbad to Lord of the Rings. Heroes from all over gather when a call goes out to join an expedition into mysterious territory.  In my case a wealthy patron wanted to travel across half of North America from Arkansas to the ruins of Detroit to retrieve some legendary artifacts. You can read more about it here.  The thing to keep in mind is that just because the Rifts allow instant travel to other places you don't always know where they go or how long they will last. People are still going to travel the hard way and the epic quest is based on doing just that.

This opens things up for the players to bring in almost any character type as a "wandering adventurer" with any motivation from a worthy goal to revenge to a simple payday. It keeps the GM sane though as you're not required to explain why all of these disparate characters are working together - it's built into the concept and it's up to the players to explain why they are joining up! So if you end up with a juicer from Texas, a Triax full conversion borg, a Japanese cyber-samurai, and a Venezuelan anti-monster, that's perfectly fine. Maybe they traveled by ship, maybe they came through a Rift, maybe they want to get home, or maybe they don't remember how they got here - it all works! It gives all of you time to discover the backstory of each character if you want to without having to know everything up front.

For the GM it puts the "why" on the players and let's you focus on developing the "where". You have a major quest goal that is the long term focus of the campaign but while everyone is traveling there you can have impromptu side adventures. It also puts a definite end point to the campaign when the quest is achieved. After that you can reset the campaign with a new situation and some or all new characters as desired. If you think of your game as having "seasons" like a TV show then this would be a great way to start and finish a coherent storyline or season. It's also a good way to explore another area of the world if you have veteran Rifts players. Maybe North America is something you've all played before and you want to go somewhere different - the quest for the heart of Africa (meet the Egyptian gods? Take on the Four Horsemen?) is a definite change up. The team could outfit in NA in relative peace, then board a ship (or a fleet) which would utilize Rifts Undersea/Coalition Navy for some adventures along the way/ once they land in Africa there's a whole support book plus material online and something besides Coalition Troopers to bash.

Specifics:

• "Expedition to Africa" as described above
• "To the End of the World" - NA expedition to Antarctica via South America. Could take a ship down the coast, could take a giant robot over land - either one could be interesting.
• "Transcontinental Transport" - it doesn't always have to be a one-way  traveling quest. What if someone gets an idea to rebuild a transport network across the continent? Part of the campaign would be talking to locals and working out deals along the way to extend the line, and part of it would be defending what you've already built. This could be a crazy back and forth campaign and could easily accommodate multiple groups of players and characters if you're fortunate enough to have multiple groups. It gives them a chance to change the landscape of the world in a notable way and gives them plenty of diplomacy and combat as well. Keep in mind it doesn't have to go east-west either - maybe Northern Gun wants to ship products to Mexico - or Chile!
• "Moonshot!" - Mutants in Orbit gave us details about what's going on up on Luna. It's kind of a wasted book if no one goes there, right? Maybe someone on Rifts Earth is convinced that pre-Rifts civilization survives on the moon and thinks humanity's last hope is to establish contact with them and get some help.  This could be a 3-stage quest: First, getting to Florida to what was North America's major spaceport. Second, taking control of the facility and figuring out how to get to space. Third, launching for the moon, landing, and finding out what's there. If all goes well then you might have set up your next campaign: "Red Planet". 

Option 3: Slave Ship - All of the characters begin the game on an Atlantean slaver. First session it comes under attack, the players break out, get to land, and begin exploring the area. There are some similarities to both of the previous options.

1. Player character choices are wide open. The Splugorth trade and raid across the multiverse, so if it's in a Rifts book (or any Palladium book really) you can justify it showing up here. Bring on your Robotech characters and Ninja Turtles! Characters from prior campaigns could even appear in this one with nothing more than "I passed out in a bar and then I woke up here".
2. The GM gets to pick the setting - I used this kickoff to explore those shiny new South America books back when they were shiny and new. Want to run around Russia or Australia or Japan for a while? Here's a great way to do it. You can assume your players will be spending a fair amount of time at the beginning just figuring out where they are and what they want to do so you can dive into that area of Rifts earth that interests you but has never made sense to include in your previous games. 
3.  ...but the players drive the campaign forward - once they have their bearings what do they want to do? Take over? Help the locals against those oppressive jerks from the kingdom next door? Find their way home? Pay back Atlantis for what they have done?  It's totally wide open at this point and it's mainly up to them. Sure, the GM can plant interesting rumors about a pre-Rifts city that's intact up in the mountains, or a powerful magic item hidden in a tomb in the desert, or a really nasty monster that dominates a local region, but the direction of the campaign is all about what the players want to do.  

Specifics: Pick a book! Any non-North America book, or any book that doesn't cover a region you've already played through. Talk to your players in advance about what areas of Rifts Earth they are interested in - veteran players will probably have some ideas. I don't know that I would open this way with a group of players totally new to Rifts but for vets it should be a blast.

So there are 3 ideas to help get a Rifts campaign organized and off the ground. They all worked for me when I tried them out so I believe they can work for other people too. It's hard to predict where a campaign will go most of the time so these are mainly focused on "how do I get started?" After that, hopefully, you won't need much help. If you do try some version of them out, let me know how it goes!

Starfinder

The big announcement over the weekend was Paizo's new game: Starfinder There's more information here. It's more than a year away (August 2017) but I have some early thoughts.

As a player/GM I am interested but not bowled over. A new game from Paizo is a big deal as they are one of the major players in the hobby and with the built-in player base this game will instantly be one of the bigger games in the hobby, but I am not sure I am looking for "D&D in space". Paizo isn't calling it that, but since it's still at least lightly tied to their Pathfinder setting and is supposed to be backwards compatible as far as monsters, I think they will have a hard time escaping that label at least.

As a long time gamer I have also seen this before. Mixing tech and D&D goes back to Gamma World and Boot Hill and the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide in the 70's. We played around with some of that way back when. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is a well-known example too and was usually a pretty good time even after playing through it more than once. Starfinder seems to be a pretty close in concept to Dragonstar which was a d20 boom RPG from FFG that took all the elements of 3rd edition D&D and expanded them into space, including an empire ruled by dragons. We played a little bit of that and having wizards and elves running around with spaceships and robots using 3E mechanics was a little weird - but fun - even for a veteran of Shadowrun and Rifts.

People seem to be getting worked up over the mechanics assuming that it will either be straight-up Pathfinder as we know it or that it's a sneaky way to create a Pathfinder 2E without alienating the current player base. This aspect of the new game does interest me as so much of PF was constrained by legacy concerns. While I assume the base mechanic will still be "roll a d20 + mods, higher is better" the skills, feats, and class designs could be radically different. Seeing how they approach an alternate version of their core game will be interesting.

From a business perspective it does make a lot of sense. They are heavily dependent on Pathfinder as a universe or IP even with an RPG line, a miniatures line, and a card game line spreading things out a bit. Creating what is effectively a separate universe for a new game line potentially doubles their prospects even beyond the announced RPG. There's no reason we couldn't see a Starfinder card game or a miniatures line down the road too. Having a fantasy line and a sci-fi line that share some concepts and mechanics makes them look a little bit like Games Workshop in the late 80's and that worked out pretty well for them.

The potential downside is that there really hasn't been a dominant science fiction (and by that I mean spaceships, planets, robots, and lasers) rpg in a long time - really ever. Traveller was the big one for a time in the late 70's and early 80's because it was the only game out there. Star Frontiers, Star Trek, Space Opera, and Star Wars all popped up in the 80's to fragment things. Dragonstar was well supported for a year or two but was never one of the "big" games. Rifts does some of the same things but is a post-apocalyptic game largely focused on one damaged planet and even it is not as popular as it was years ago. I see two mitigating factors: 1) Having it tied in some way both mechanically and in setting to a game as popular as Pathfinder is a plus as D&D even at the height of its popularity never tried a direct connection like this and 2) The field is pretty open right now with FFG's Star Wars games the most popular from what I've seen. Star Wars is a very specific campaign compared to science fiction/science fantasy in general and there is an audience who has little to no interest in playing that game. Paizo is excellent at supporting material so in short order there will be a nice universe of adventures and supplements to focus on a campaign on different styles of play. I would bet that there will be cyberpunk, transhuman, and psionic supplements out fairly early in the game's life.

Best case scenario: it takes everything Shadowrun did well and adds the best of Traveller and Star Wars on top of that. That's probably aiming too high but it would be a great thing to see.

Worst case scenario: it takes enough resources to create and manage that it damages the main PF game, splits the player base, but is not successful enough to stand on it's own and fails a year or two out of the gate crippling Paizo and PF. I can't see the team at Paizo failing at this level but it is the worst case.

Personally I am interested but it's not an instant "awesome!" in the way that say Savage Rifts was.  I'm sure I'll pick up the initial core book when it arrives but I'm not planning any campaigns just yet. I'm not sure my players and I are looking for this game. The Iron Gods Adventure Path we plan to play at some point is probably enough to cover that for us, and if we want a more "pure" SF game I think Star Wars or Star Trek or Traveller will be on the list.

This is the kind of thing I worry about when the kitchen sink DM gets carried away ...

I am sure this game will spend the next two years shaking up the hobby during the build-up and the initial release and will definitely be worth following during that time.

Batman vs. Captain America in the Age of Apocalypse

You know, we're not quite halfway through 2016 and the comic book movies have been pretty good:

• X-Men: Apocalypse is good and pretty thorough in covering that story. Serious stuff, action scenes, and enough humor to keep it lively.
• Civil War was great, a really well-done treatment of one of the better comic book stories of the last 20 years. 
• Deadpool was a revelation - a) he was a good choice for a movie and b) someone at Fox is up for something good beyond just the X-Men series. 
• Batman vs. Superman - well, 3 out of 4 ain't bad.

Now granted it is interesting that the "good ones" IMO are all Marvel-based while our problem child is once again the DC movie. I don't think it's the source material - I think it is based completely on how the studios have handled making the movies. Marvel has had a few missteps along the way too - remember the Hulk movies? Spiderman has had some trouble at Sony though we can hope that's over now, and the Fantastic Four haven't been handled well at Fox either. 

But 3 out of 4 is still something to be happy about if you like these kinds of things. 

Meme-tastic Monday

RPG Futurist for a Day

1984 - Actually used a variant of the color chart system that started in MSH

Sometimes it seems like there's nothing new and interesting in the RPG world. I'm not suffering from this right now with Savage Rifts and some other Kickstarter delivering soon, but my friend Barking Alien mentioned something about it on Facebook a while back. he was asking in one of the FB RPG groups "what is your newest RPG purchase" and there was a wide range of responses. The thing that struck me was how many of them were just a new iteration of a game that's been around for years. How much "new" are we really getting in RPG's these days? For example:

• D&D - 5th edition
• Pathfinder - another edition of D&D
• Star Wars - new system but it's covering the same ground (less ground in many ways) then the prior games on the subject
• Shadowrun - 5th edition here too
• Runequest - reprints of old rules, reprints of newer rules, and possibly a whole new system coming soon
• Call of Cthulu - 7th edition from a kickstarter
• Traveller - Mongoose is publishing their 2nd edition, which is at least the 7th version of rules for that game overall.
• Umpteen re-edits of the original D&D rules. Wheee.
• One Ring - it may be good but it's at least the 3rd version of a LOTR RP that I can think of.
• Conan - different mechanics but I've seen (and owned at some point) a TSR version, a GURPS version, two d20 versions, and now we have a new one coming out.
• Vampire the Requiem 2E is a 2nd edition of a 2nd edition. I think there's a sorcerer joke in there somewhere.

1989 - Played around with this one quite a bit at one time

Think about it - most of these games are updates of something that's been in print for 25+ years. As excited as I am for Savage Rifts its not all that new - Savage Worlds has been around since 2003 and Rifts came out in 1990.  I'm trying to think of genuinely "new" RPG's in the last few years and I'm not coming up with many.

• The Apocalypse World engine games like Dungeon World and Spirit of 77 have covered some new ground
• FATE while based on FUDGE is new-ish and has spawned some interesting new games. 
• The Warhammer 40,000 games by FFG were something that had been requested for years and were interesting but even those have started the circular motion with a 2nd edition of Dark Heresy.
• Monte Cook's Cypher System games seem to be getting something of a following and the mechanics and settings are unusual enough so far.

But I look at the What's New or Hottest Titles section  on DTRPG and it is dominated by very familiar names. There is some new and interesting stuff being done, especially in PDF-only form, but a very large percentage of the business is "game you already know next edition." I suspect some of that is that a fair number of games are created by Kickstarter now and new editions of old games seem to do very well on Kickstarter. Even without crowdfunding, a new edition of a known game is a more solid bet to sell books than something completely new. 

Another factor is that we can divide RPG's into two broad elements: Mechanics and Setting. While players tend to get wrapped up in mechanics, campaigns largely run on setting in my experience. As long as the mechanics don't badly violate the assumptions of the setting, you can get away with all kinds of system changes between editions and people will still buy your game if it's in the same setting. 

2004 - There was an "Atlantean Edition" (second edition) of this one too

That said there are a surprising (to me) number of RPGers who play a very limited number of games and are not terribly interested in picking up more. These are the guys who have been playing the same AD&D campaign for 30 years and have maybe played some Call of Cthulu years ago. They aren't like some of us who are always interested in the Coming Thing - they are happy with what they have and that's what they play. I admire that. I can't do it, but I admire it. To them, new editions are a hassle, not an innovation and it takes a lot for something "new" to get their attention.

Over the last 10-15 years boardgames have undergone tremendous changes with the influx of euro-style games, Board wargames, one of the more dusty corners of gaming have gone from hex and counter games (usually with single-color counters featuring simple black NATO symbols) with lots of charts to more graphically interesting presentations featuring blocks or miniature-like pieces and specialized dice or card-driven mechanics. Even miniature wargaming has seen a surge with the new approach and sudden popularity of X-Wing which features pre-painted (well-done pre-painted) miniatures in individual packs at a relatively low price point for a game that uses special dice and cards and gameplay that's interesting but takes less than an hour most of the time. 

I have yet to see the same "revolution" in RPG's. 

There has been a move back towards simpler mechanics: from D&D 5th edition to recent Supers games Icons, Supers, and BASH (a genre known for comprehensive rules) there is definitely a trend, but I don't think it's a revolution just yet. The FFG Star Wars games and their special dice mechanics are a step in this direction but they way they are handling the games holds them back from "revolutionary" status I think.  

What are the main constraints to a tabletop RPG? 

• Big rulebooks that take time to read and can be expensive. 
• Complex rules that often get in the way of a good time
• Need for multiple players to get together in person for hours at a time on some kind of regular schedule

How do we mitigate these barriers?

• We're already seeing simpler rules systems as a trend and PDFs are usually a more budget friendly option
• Some kind of a system where the rules are just built in to the medium of the game, whether everything you need to know is on your character sheet - period - or  there is technology involved. Have you seen the manuals for MMORPGs? They have complex mechanics behind the scenes but they do not publish 300 page rulebooks.
•  There has to be a way to let people participate in a meaningful way that doesn't require 4-10 hours around a table per week or month.   

2016:Latest and greatest?

I'm not sure what it will be but I think we will some kind of major change in the next few years, probably with some major upheaval among the major game companies. Some kind of confluence between physical mechanics, settings, presentation, conceptual approach, and maybe even technology like smartphones + augmented reality will combine to give us something new. Imagine if a GM could set up encounters through an augmented reality app ranging from monsters to chatty NPC's that players could encounter away from a table, while going through their daily routine. With some kind of integrated and persistent chat/skype you could theoretically have a game going on "in the background" all the time and then have specified times to gather as a group to focus on major milestones in the game. This would require a GM with a vision for a campaign, an app that could handle this kind of game including visual assets and a rules structure - or a means to insert them,  players looking for something new, and it can't cost $1000 per player to set it up. 

Of course, it may well use an existing setting. Maybe Star Wars. Driving in to work when your phone pings that there's a Mandaloran on your six could make things quite a bit more fun.

It's definitely a different kind of campaign than our traditional books-around-the-table exercise. It's not LARP. It's not an MMORPG. That said it is playing a character with your friends in a setting and hopefully doing some fun and interesting things. It's a moderated "let's pretend" and "what if this happened", and isn't that a big part of why we do what we do?

Traditional "book" games will still exist for us old-timers but I think a lot of good could come from an infusion of new approaches and new thinking as lifestyles and technology change and a new generation comes of age.

I admit some of this thinking comes as my daughter graduates this weekend so I'm having more past-future thoughts than usual. Our oldest son started running his own Pathfinder game last year and I have a second kid who is now running his own game with friends too. 

(#doingmyparttogetthenextgenerationgoing)  

They all grew up with the internet all around them. Between texting, social media, skype, and smartphones in general they are as connected to their friends as they want to be at any given time. With xbox live and mobile apps they don't have to gather around a table to play games with their friends and doing that is an unusual occurrence, a special occasion, not something they do every day. What kinds of games will they be playing when they are my age? Will it be retro-cool to meet up and play King of Tokyo at a friend's table? Will they be playing some kind of Everquest Hologram Dream Park run from the comfort of their own home's holo-set? Will they look at Dad's shelves and shelves of game books the way we would look at a storage room full of vaccum tubes?  I don't know, but I hope I'm around long enough to see where it goes next. 

Pandemic

We (finally!) managed to play pandemic for the first time (I know!) over the weekend! I thought it looked like fun and I can now confirm - it is fun! On the surface, to me, a game about fighting diseases sounds pretty dull but remarkably it is not. Lots of exclamation points here but it's a rare thing to find a modern boardgame that adds something new and clever and yet is interesting enough that the whole family gets interested and it becomes a member of our (admittedly very slow) rotation. King of Tokyo did that for us last year and this year it's Pandemic.

The coolest thing about it is that it's cooperative, so we're playing as a team. That's cool, especially for "family game night". Each player gets a "role" which lets them deviate from the standard rules in some way - typically doing things faster or at a lower cost than other players. There are 8 roles so with 4 players there is a different mix of abilities in every game which changes up how you might tackle the problem. This plus the random nature of the card decks keeps it interesting and it's a lot trickier to come up with a "standard" solution compared to something like Axis and Allies. The roles also make it feel a little like an RPG as you're playing a character to some degree and people do seem to get into it.

I am convinced that this framework could be used in a superhero themed boardgame with the roles being replaced by superhero archetypes, the diseases representing criminal outbreaks or organizations, and research centers being replaced by super-team bases. I need to think about how to add more super-themed options to it but I think it could be done.

If you're wondering about the game there's a good episode of Tabletop that explains it more entertainingly than I can here. Take a look - if you have friends and especially kids it's an interesting option. We failed our first game yet everyone had a good time and agreed that we need to play it more.

Meme-tastic Monday