More gaming with some nearby friends.
Tonight's game was
Meadow. We had a
shortened game (6 rounds rather than 8) and I think there were some
advanced cards not in play.
It didn’t feel like a two hour game, but it took us two hours all the
same. Granted, we weren’t being hasty in our turns, but I don’t think
we were taking ages either. A turn consists of putting down a “path”
marker, either at the edge of the card market (4×4 grid, notches round
three edges, chosen notch + number on marker determines which card you
get) or round the campfire board (which lets you use that marker’s
special power).
It felt to me like a classic “large deck” game like Terraforming Mars
or Ark Nova, and not in the good way: card A depends on having a card
of type B, the only B that’s come out depends on a C, and C just
doesn’t appear for half the game. Which is fine in terms of having to
be adaptable, but I at least felt I was mostly playing turn to turn,
never getting much of a look at the larger objectives that would need
this kind of plan to be achievable at all. (Half-way through the game
you switch one of the decks from “moderately complex objectives” to
“much more complex objectives” and we all felt the designers expected
rather more of an existing tableau than any of us had built.)
Also, it’s very clear to me that the designers of Forest Shuffle
were familiar with this game: similar theme, similar idea of
consumption chains. (But Forest Shuffle forces you to choose between
chasing six different things, while this may leave you with nothing
you can go for at all.)
I had an… OK time. It wasn’t offensively bad or anything. But it
really felt like a 45 minute game that turned out to have taken two
hours to play.
