It is a joke amongst my Duplicate Bridge friends that I traditionally come fourth in the Canberra selection trials, in which only the top three pairs form the Canberra representative team. (I have enjoyed ![shake]()
no less than 8 fourth places over the years.) But this year I confounded my bridge friends' expectations, cunningly avoiding fourth place --- by failing to qualify for the final.![shake]()
Likewise, I am the fourth to write a review of Rise of the Ancients. My group has played this expansion a zillion times over the past five months. (The only game more popular in our group is our traditional favourite of Power Grid, which we have played to infinity and beyond times.)
Our collective prejudices on the RotA modules are:
1. We collectively prefer to tilt towards skill and tilt away from luck, hence after a couple of experiments we now always exclude the Ancient Hives, finding them a tad too random for our taste. (Of course, their very randnomness may make the Ancient Hives compulsory for another group with opposite tastes.)
2. The advanced technologies are automatically inserted into the white bag, since from our point of view they provide extra variety and extra strategic options, not merely extra randomness.
3. Our consensus has not been fully formed on the developments, sometimes we use them, other times not. We have a slight tendency to avoid them in a three player game and a slight tendency to adopt them in a five or six player game. (We only once have played with seven players because of time constraints; nowadays such a turnout would result in a 4-player Power Grid and a 3-player Eclipse.)
4. We have not yet used the giant pink and gray pawns for two players taking simultaneous actions (with only the pink pawn permitting Research actions), but the next time we have a 6-player game we will house-rule them in.
5. We looove the clockwise/anti-clockwise benefit tile for the second player to pass, using it all the time, even in 3-player games. (The raison d'etre of our group congregating together is to avoid 1- and 2-player games.)
6. There is NO number 6.
7. After experimenting with the Alliance rule in a 5-player game (two 2-player alliances crashed and burned, with the solo player the winner), we now avoid the option, partly because it slows the game, and partly because we are red-in-tooth-and-claw individuals.
8. To balance exploration fairly, we always use the Ancient Homeworlds to fill the gaps during set up (but choose to place unused AHs back in the box, not in the II stack).
9. The basic game GCDS is too weak in our opinion, becoming an ex-parrot very quickly, so we always replace the GCDS with the Ancient Dreadnaught.
no less than 8 fourth places over the years.) But this year I confounded my bridge friends' expectations, cunningly avoiding fourth place --- by failing to qualify for the final.Likewise, I am the fourth to write a review of Rise of the Ancients. My group has played this expansion a zillion times over the past five months. (The only game more popular in our group is our traditional favourite of Power Grid, which we have played to infinity and beyond times.)
Our collective prejudices on the RotA modules are:
1. We collectively prefer to tilt towards skill and tilt away from luck, hence after a couple of experiments we now always exclude the Ancient Hives, finding them a tad too random for our taste. (Of course, their very randnomness may make the Ancient Hives compulsory for another group with opposite tastes.)
2. The advanced technologies are automatically inserted into the white bag, since from our point of view they provide extra variety and extra strategic options, not merely extra randomness.
3. Our consensus has not been fully formed on the developments, sometimes we use them, other times not. We have a slight tendency to avoid them in a three player game and a slight tendency to adopt them in a five or six player game. (We only once have played with seven players because of time constraints; nowadays such a turnout would result in a 4-player Power Grid and a 3-player Eclipse.)
4. We have not yet used the giant pink and gray pawns for two players taking simultaneous actions (with only the pink pawn permitting Research actions), but the next time we have a 6-player game we will house-rule them in.
5. We looove the clockwise/anti-clockwise benefit tile for the second player to pass, using it all the time, even in 3-player games. (The raison d'etre of our group congregating together is to avoid 1- and 2-player games.)
6. There is NO number 6.
7. After experimenting with the Alliance rule in a 5-player game (two 2-player alliances crashed and burned, with the solo player the winner), we now avoid the option, partly because it slows the game, and partly because we are red-in-tooth-and-claw individuals.
8. To balance exploration fairly, we always use the Ancient Homeworlds to fill the gaps during set up (but choose to place unused AHs back in the box, not in the II stack).
9. The basic game GCDS is too weak in our opinion, becoming an ex-parrot very quickly, so we always replace the GCDS with the Ancient Dreadnaught.