[Brian,
Friday November 7, 2008 at 6:15pm]
Why Race Goals are Meh.
Since you asked ...
The emotional reason? They bore me. Also, I fear change.
The intellectual reasons used to justify the emotional one --
- They add big, non-granular randomness to the game. (Don't you just love being New Sparta and then seeing the Biggest Military tile not in used? It's like rain on your wedding day). [It hasn't happened yet, but I'm just waiting for player A to win because B and C tied each got 3 VPs instead of B winning because he got 5 VPs.]
- They reek of chrome. I don't play Cosmic with Lucre, or moons, or reverse hexes, either.
- I happened to like the prior level of interaction, which focused on role selection. I didn't think we needed a whole lot of cards like "Mining Conglomerate," but now we've six of them in every game.
- They slow the game down.
3 I'm not sure about this yet... only played this with solid competition about nine times.
4 I'm definitely concerned about this but not to the point that I'm ready to give up on them yet. Players seem to jockey more for the goals than to force the pace as much as the base game. I've only won once without taking a goal.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/353854
I guess I'm a little surprised that so many people are so willing to give up on the goals already.
You can argue that things like the military goal help boost the military game slightly due to its being underpowered, but like you said, the military goal doesn't always show up, and then the spartan gets hosed while the producers get a couple goals that DO work (sliding the game even more in favour of the other players).
It just seems like it was slapped on to put a bit more meat into the expansion. I would rather have not seen the goals added at all and price the expansion a few bucks less. I think they take away from the quality of the game. Unfortunately, the slight majority of my game group seems to be generally in favour of them (though not overwhelmingly) and I expect that they will be played with regularly.
I just really don't think they add anything positive to the game. Just more chance.
What makes the game fun for me is having difficult valuation decisions for each card, and the goals, while adding some randomness and imbalance, do add another layer to complicate valuation, so ultimately I have to say it's a welcome addition.
If I had to complain, I'd say I wished they were darker / spacier in color.
It is like advance axis and allies. Chrome that doesn't add much.
To a certain extent, that's how I feel because of point 3.
Second, I already posted this regarding Greg's BGG poll, but I think the differences between the goals are odd. You have luck driven goals, and timing driven goals. 3 Alien cards are hard to get, let alone to play. Similarly for a power on each phase (there are only 7 develop powers in the deck). First to discard, however, doesn't rely as strongly on your draw, but on changing the speed of your game. Same for first 6-dev. I find these second types of goals more interesting, but I'm undecided as to whether I'd actually want to play with goals even if they were all like this. I certainly don't like the goals as is.
As regards your point 1: this is why I'd never play the goals with new players. They really emphasise the random elements already in the game, and I can see it putting people off.
2. I can see that.
3. Role selection and card play have always been the primary means of interaction. Card play is a big source of interaction without goals, as it can force responses by the opponents.
4. I've never seen it slow down a game with experienced players more than say the new cards added to the deck. It takes 10 seconds to shuffle them up, another 2-3 seconds each to claim them when you take them. Keeping track of other people's tableaus should be second nature once you've played enough games. After people get used to them it speeds right along.
I'll agree that playing them with people with <100 games is probably a bad idea and will slow the game down.
I'm still not totally sold on them. But I feel better about them then I did before.
You know, my initial reaction was to disagree with the notion that the goals slow the game down - they really haven't for us - but that's because I'm nearly always playing with folks with many hundreds of plays.
I won't play with goals with two; with more, we're starting to flip one, and if it comes down face up play with them, otherwise without.