April Game Day Report

In April, in two flights, we played Leaving Earth (went too long), Tobago (new to Don who gave it thumbs up), Terraforming Mars learning game (Marty and Dave both enthusiastic thumbs up), Doom (abandoned - couldn’t grasp the rules on the fly), and Targi (new to Marty, thumbs sideways). 

Opinion:

Doom - Going to the used game store.

Terraforming Mars - We really enjoyed it.  However the components are mediocre.  I have acquired enough sleeves to protect the cards.  I may acquire an overlay for the player mats similar to those available for Eclipse.  This game is not leaving my collection.  I’m eager to play it with more than two.

Leaving Earth - I love this game, but the more I play it/observe it the more I think its sweet spot is either solo or two person play.  With more than two and no trading it suffers from a run-away leader problem.  With trading it seems like it would turn into king of the mountain with the missions fading in importance compared to figuring out who is in the lead and trading to overtake them.  If I want to play king of the mountain, King of Tokyo is a lot faster!  So my take:
Solo - awesome
2 Player - great as long as they are OK with pulling the plug once it is clear who is going to win
3 Player - OK, but don’t play above “normal” unless all players can plan all of the easy and medium missions off the cuff and everyone realizes the trade or not to trade trade-offs clearly
4 Player - Best with two teams of two - will be really long otherwise
5 Player - Don’t bother!
For me this game continues to be more about the journey than about the end.

Rotation Adjustment:

After playing the games we briefly discussed what to do about themes that we missed due to cancelled months.  The original plan was to have a set two year rotation, however that means that any missed theme could wait a long time to show up.  Since we had a quorum, it was decided that I would determine the missed themes and tack them onto the end of this rotation.  In the future we will not have a fixed two year schedule, but instead will rotate the themes as necessary to keep them in order - fixing January as the “new games” month and September as the “themeless” month each year.  The themes we have missed are Oldies, Trains and Pick up & Deliver.  I will update the blog as time allows.