What Board Game Are You Currently Playing?

[Sweetcurse]

Yeah. Basically she started with Merchant Skellies I took over a great swat of terrain while she took like maybe 4 spaces. In a couple turns, I had 40% of the map or so and she had only a handful of well rpotected areas giving her double coins, all the while making sure to kill at least two people to get skellies back. On most turns, she was getting two new skellies!

[Sweetcurse]

Well, I TRIED to play Race for the Galaxy yesterday. Unfortunately, we didn't get past the Consume phase. It has been a while since a game rulebook made me feel stupid. I felt old or something. I have played, and currently play complex games no problem, but for some reason I kept getting very confused in RFTG. I guess the older you get you do seek simpler rule sets for quick play.

We sat down, I had read the rules before and I get the general jist of it. SO we decided to just start playing phase by phase as we read the rules to practice. We played cards, discarded and generally followed the sequence even though we didn't really know if the cards we were playing were good or not or if the ones we discarded were good or bad. But then the section explaining comsume and the whole deal with Windfalls and all the different kinds of goods just twisted my brain and I couldn't go on. The print is so small and there's so much info that is just gets overwhelming. I've gotten spolied by easy to follow rule books like the ones from Days of Wonder or Wings of War.

I probably need to play the game with someone experienced in it first. I just had too many questions as I read the rules and felt frustrated at not being able to find them. An index of key words and, or, a glossary would have been great. Then there are all the symbols for all the different powers and ahhhhh!

I'll try again sometime.

[Jormi_Boced]

RftG is actually fairly simple after you get through a play, but it is fairly overwhelming at first. If you try San Juan or Puerto Rico first you get a leg up on it. If you are going to be at Gen Con or something I could bring it and teach you.

[Sweetcurse]

That's the feeling I kept getting and hence why I felt frustrated. I could see that once you get everything, it's probably rather easy, but plodding through the rules was tough. I know I will feel even stupidier when I get how it works and see how easy it was.

Thanks for the offer. As much as I'd like to go to Gen Con, can't afford it. Maybe next year.

[Matthias Maccabeus]

Sweetcurse,

Man, I'm glad your confused! I've tried playing this game a few times and I just don't get it either. I had my brother-in-law take it home and try to figure it out and no luck there either. I feel the same way you do. It's probably pretty simple once somebody shows it to me, but man these rules are poorly written.

The funny thing is I already talked to Jexik about showing me how to play at gencon this year.

[mrbistro]

Truth and I sat down at Gen Con to play this last year, took one look at the rulebook, and played something else.

[Sweetcurse]

Glad to hear I'm not the only one. I was starting to worry. The most upsetting part it's that it was my B-Day present and she had agreed to play! But the session was just harsh.

[Hahnarama]

Don't let Bistro's prejudice scare you away.

Watch this

http://www.weihwa.com/~whuang/videos/rftg/rftg.html

[quozl]

San Juan is easier to learn, plays quite similarly, and I enjoy it more than Race For The Galaxy.

[Sweetcurse]

I hear you. As I said, I can see it's probably easy once you GET it, but the rulebook blows.

[Drumline3469]

My buddy read the rules and played a few 1 player games before he showed it to us. He sat us down and said "This game will make sense once you play through it one or 5 times" we laughed and thought he was kidding. I picked MOST of it up after one round, but my poor friend still hasn't developed a strategy beyond "Explore to get cards every round." It's almost painful to see how badly he loses. Most of the rest of us understand and love it, though.

[Hahnarama]

If you have played San Juan you will pick this right up. As a matter of fact this was the mechanic that was NOT picked to be San Juan.

IMO it kicks A S S !