Is there buzz on Notre Dame? I hadn't heard anything, but as the latest Alea game I imagine others have.
Nice and solid. Resource management at heart; but a fresh feel. Only played one game, but I'll certainly be trying it again, and I suspect this will have lots of fans. My early guess includes me in that group.
Notre Dame reminds me of El Grande, without area majority. You have 9 action cards. Each round you get three at random, then draft. Pick one and pass to the left. Then two rounds of playing action cards (we're in Fairy Tale Territory here). After three rounds you have a special scoring (for the Notre Dame Cathedral) but you have plenty of scoring during the turn (a much higher percentage). After two actions each player can pick one of three people and buy a favor (if they have money). [Six of these people repeat each 3-turn round, the other nine appear once, but are sorted into A, B and C, so you know vaguely when they'll show up].
You manage money, cubes, plague (plage rats), actions, some movement. Lots of simple interlinking systems. Many different ways to score. I think the mild randomness will keep this fresh longer for many people (as well as keeping the game moving).
It won't be out for a month, so I have time to mull it over -- but I'm probably buying Notre Dame,
Basically, I have two things that I'm keeping an eye out for, one of which you have addressed.
1. Does it feel distinctive? I'm not turned off by recycled mechanics, but I am turned off by gameplay that feels too familiar.
2. How much luck is there to the card drafting? Only drawing three cards makes it feel like you could still get screwed by your initial draw, but a lot depends on how flexible your position typically is.
Your report certainly hasn't it knocked ND off my radar, but I'm sure there will be plenty more said about it before the end of the Gathering.
The variation in the card draws (and in the players' reactions to these draws) creates nice variety without (at least to my mind after just two games) screwing anyone.
Actually, you'd rather get your three "best" cards (whatever you think those are) in three separate turns so you can keep them all. But remember that you also get to look at 3 opponents' cards, and you discard one of the ones you get. So there's plenty of room as long as you don't take big risks.
The drafting has plenty of luck. For example, if you order the value of your cards 1-9 (1 is best, 9 is worst) for your position, then drawing 1-2-3 as your opening hand is terrible (as opposed to something like 1-5-9). Good play and mediocre luck will beat bad play with good luck.
It also suffers from the "downstream of the bad player" curse. Of course, so does Puerto Rico.