Comments on: Card Markets, The Secret Cabal, Unfair Advantages, and More! (April 19 2023 FB Livecast)

By: Steven St. John

Steven St. John — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 12:29:10 +0000

Star Trek TNG: My very favorite episode from all the series is The Measure of a Man. It’s season 2. Absolutely brilliant, dramatic, deep episode.

By: Steven St. John

Steven St. John — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 12:10:40 +0000

Card markets: the incentivization system is great (e.g., Castles of Mad King Ludwig adds money each round on unchosen tiles). I also really like Lords of Waterdeep, where quest selection from a 4 card market is an action with 3 action spaces. The third space forces a refresh prior to selecting a card. Even though I’ve been burned by this many times (seeing a card go away that I wanted), I find it works out very well to keep the game moving forward.

By: Erishy Sungam

Erishy Sungam — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 18:49:31 +0000

What are you current thoughts about trying out the "preorder" orders for Expeditions vs the previous way of doing orders?

By: Jev Voight

Jev Voight — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 18:23:16 +0000

Regarding the questions of the day, I think the issue of a stagnant market deck is bigger when you need a very specific card come up such as in Everdell. It doesn’t usually bother me that much and can lead to some interesting moments. I am looking forward to trying the new Dune expansion because not only can you wipe the card row but there’s also another place to pull cards from using a different feature giving you more options. Multi-use cards are also nice so that even a less useful card can still be treated as a resource. Dune and Wingspan both have an element of that.

I have to admit unfair advantage is unfortunate wording. The most immediate example that pops into my mind is privilege… which is a rather discouraging a depressing subject and one I know SM games has already committed to addressing. Maybe you should word it in a different way, like “what’s your superpower?”

I have a bit too much kryptonite in my life to have a good answer to that right now. Maybe I’ll rethink it if it ends up being a blog post down the road.

By: Jev Voight

Jev Voight — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 18:06:54 +0000

I’ve only played the North Sea Trilogy but I do want to give Viscounts a try. Although my favorite North Sea game is still Explorers, I really liked the drop and pick up worker placement in Raiders. I played a demo at Pax last year of a game called “Forges of Ravenshire” that used a similar mechanism but with dice and had a pretty cool engine building element to it. I was excited by the way these features came together in their game so I ended up backing them when they started the kickstarter last week, even though I try to use KS sparingly! I’m surprised there aren’t more games that take inspiration from Raiders.

By: Rafi Weiss

Rafi Weiss — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 18:05:55 +0000

I really enjoy the card market of Imperium (Classics/Legends). It doesn’t rely on a single massive refresh, rather relies on individual card “exiling” where you can choose a card in the market to throw away and then replace it.

And if there is a card in the market you want and don’t want someone to throw it out, you can protect it by placing a victory point on it. But then you’re incentivizing other ppl to pick it up! Tough decisions!!

By: Jev Voight

Jev Voight — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 17:15:43 +0000

6:18 I no longer have the attention span for it but I did enjoy Star Trek and Doctor Who in my high school days. In particular I liked the arc of Deep Space Nine. Star Trek shines when it delves into the cultural differences across the galaxy and DS9 does this in many ways being one of the more diverse crews, featuring different types of antagonists, and having the main character find himself being cast (somewhat unwillingly) as an important figure in an alien planet’s religion. I could not rewatch a series that long and it was too long ago to know why highlights to recommend but even when I skipped to only the “essential” episodes near the end I thoroughly enjoyed it. My main issue with Star Trek in general is that it is not quite fantastic enough to feel like an escape, meaning either it feels artificially optimistic or acts as a depressing reminder of reality. (Similarly I fell out of Doctor Who as well when the fantasy elements were phased out and just haven’t tried to get back into it since)

These days I watch far less TV so I don’t really venture too far outside what I normally tune in for (Star Wars, Marvel, Disney, and sometimes anime).

By: DD O'Brien

DD O'Brien — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 16:49:04 +0000

I'm working on a design with a card market that only has auto-refresh when it's completely empty. If the market has only 1 card or if the cards are of the same "suit" the current player may choose to refresh. The market *refills* empty slots through certain cards in an event deck that have triggers based on the suit. Players may spend a not-so-easy to obtain token to refill the empty spots as well.