So this weekend was Stabcon - it's 21st Anniversary event in fact (there was cake) which means drinking, gaming and no where near enough sleep. Stabcon for those not in the know is my favourite gaming con - it's a bi-annual con in a hotel in Stockport and I like to think one of the friendliest places to game I know. I keep trying to talk my friends into going but I keep failing - I've no idea why.....
Anyway - one of the joys of Stabcon is standing in the middle of the room and seeing what is being played. You can often tell the game of the moment simply by counting how many copies of it are being played simultaneously. It's probably the most accurate definition of "what's hot" it's possible to get.
And this time - what's hot is Eclipse because I doubt there was a single point in time during con from 10 in the morning till midnight where there was not a game of it going on. Often 3 or 4 simultaneously on the go - I played it twice over the weekend.
It's a large scale space command and conquer game is the "twilight imperium" tradition - plastic ships, space exploration, technology trees. It's incredibly well designed and damned intuitive. For that sort of game I'd of expected 45 mins of rules explanation which left me looking puzzled - I still don't get Twilight Imperium for example. After 30 mins of rules for Eclipse - I felt I got it - and even better I was right.....
It's user interface - how you track information - how you interact with the game is incredible. It manages to provide method where you have different ship design in which you customise with technology to make your ships work the way you want. Easily, simply, obviously - and which feeds into a combat system which provides a genuine feeling that the design of your ships really matters and different players can fight different ways. Hulking brutes that soak damage, glass hammers, lighting fast fighters trying to strike first or missile boats that try and end the combat before the opponent even gets to fire.....
And at a speedy pace as well. Don't get me wrong it takes hours - but compared to twilight imperium it's a cheetah. It looks like people who know what there doing can get a game done in about 30 mins per a player (our play time was longer). And with revolving actions the down time is not massive either.
It's not perfect - in my opinion it's got a nasty death spiral made worse by high stakes combat, there are times when the smart thing to do is hunker down and ignore the universe which is a little dull. Also luck is a big factor as combat is dice based and frankly can sometimes just suck and which tiles you find as explore has a massive effect. I don't mind that - but for some people it's the kiss of death......
While the overall rules are clear - there are a few oddities tucked away as to exactly what happen in some circumstances which adds to the complexity and frankly one of the most commons conversations of the weekend was something along the lines of "are you sure that's not what we did last time......."
But I think overall it's better then starcraft - my previous "twilight imperium done right" game - and if I wanted a giant universe conquering game right now I'd get eclipse. For a game that's just released I want to say - I look forward to the inevitable second edition which can smooth out the oddities......
It's also apparently bloody impossible to get - which also tells you something about Stabcon that there were multiple copies for sale (at the recommended retail price no less)......
So that was Stabcon - and at Stabcon we got a play test. 5 people - one of the least successful play tests ever. Somebody got a village killed on turn 1 and frankly was doomed to lose at that point because they were unable to rebuild. This is a repeat of something that happened the previous play test - and shows I've got a serious issue so rather then have that person have a bad game we called it off at the start of turn 2. Quick discussion later - and it was agreed the problem is not the burning the village down - but that the resource map meant that they had no chance to rebuild....
So it's the "rebuild" opportunity that needs to get fixed. I've been unhappy as to how the resources were working any way so it's back to the drawing board there. I also need more cards as the deck ran out in pretty short time. Plus some incentive to get stone heads down early......
Oddly these tests - well going wrong - and going really rather wrong leave me more hopeful then the version 1.n tests which superficially played better but always left me with the nagging sense that something underlying was wrong.......
I also got to play test my friends PB game -and that was good. Still early days - but it has potential. Oh and somebody wants my help thinking about a game project.... So it's nice that people seem to think of me as somebody to talk to about games and design......
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