progress makes perfect – Nerds on Earth https://nerdsonearth.com The best place on earth for nerds. Fri, 12 Feb 2021 15:44:45 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://nerdsonearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/cropped-nerds_head_thumb2-100x100.png progress makes perfect – Nerds on Earth https://nerdsonearth.com 32 32 All the podcasts from NerdsonEarth.com, under one umbrella. We create short run podcasts for nerds, covering D&D, Marvel, Starfinder, and more! You vote for your favorite shows and they just might get a second season. progress makes perfect – Nerds on Earth false episodic progress makes perfect – Nerds on Earth jason.sansbury@nerdsonearth.com podcast All the podcasts from NerdsonEarth.com, the best place on Earth for nerds. progress makes perfect – Nerds on Earth https://nerdsonearth.com/wp-content/uploads/powerpress/noe-podcast-logo.png https://nerdsonearth.com/blog/ Build Up to a Game Like Terraforming Mars with a Walk Through of Engine Builder Board Games https://nerdsonearth.com/2019/05/progress-makes-perfect-engine-builders/ Wed, 01 May 2019 12:00:55 +0000 https://nerdsonearth.com/?p=24109

One of the best types of board games are what is called "engine-builders." We walk you through a simple one first, then "build" from there.

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In my last installment of this blossoming series, I suggested Forbidden Island as a starting point for getting into role-based cooperative games. From there, we turned up the heat with Flash Point: Fire Rescue before putting on our hazmat suits to cover Pandemic.

But I’m done playing nice! No more co-op board games! It’s hot, I’m covered in sand, and I’m definitely coming down with a low-grade fever…

This time around we’re shifting gears (literally) to talk about engine-building board games! For those of you unfamiliar with the termengine-builder, these games revolve around creating an ecosystem that generates resources. Depending on the game, this could mean points, wood, mechs, unicorns – anything. 

At the beginning of the game, the engine starts off slowly before gradually pumping out resources at a rapid rate. It is really satisfying to see your creation grow – hopefully you can keep it in control! (More on different types of board games.)

First, pull out your jeweler’s loupes for our entry-level engine-builder, Splendor. Once we’ve had our fill of peddling gems, we’ll blast off to the stars with Race for the Galaxy. All that space travel will certainly make us homesick so we’ll need to settle down. How about the Red Planet? Terraforming Mars rounds out our venture!

Progress Makes Perfect: Splendor

For the entry-level board game, I was really torn between Splendor and Century: Spice Road. Both are similar games revolving around commodity trading, but at the end of the day I felt like Splendor is a bit easier to grasp. If you’re interest in the Century series, here is an article about the second installment in the series, Eastern Wonders.

Splendor is a game about buying gem mines and earning prestige by displaying your great wealth. Although engine-builders can be difficult for newer players to grasp, Splendor is about as barebones as it can get. Once again, there are only three actions players can take on their turns:

  • Add gems to your pile, which can be used to purchase mines
  • Buy/build a mine card by selecting from the tableau of available cards
  • Reserve a card for later and acquire a gold (wild) gem

The turns pass with players buying mines and building up a cache of gems in front of them. Each mine that is built is going to provide a ‘free’ gem resource, as well as granting victory points (VP) towards the end-game scoring.

This is where the engine-building aspect comes into play. By building more mines, players are going to have more resources at their disposal. These can be used to purchase low VP cards for cheap (read: free) or fuel the engine in pursuit of more valuable cards.

There is a delicate balance between amassing mines to build your engine and focusing on victory points. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if your engine can buy any ruby-gem cards for free if you don’t have any points; the game ends at 15 VP. 

At their hearts, most engine-building games share this same concept. While it’s boatloads of fun to create a massive engine, knowing when to switch gears towards the endgame is a skill acquired with time.

Here are the main mechanics introduced with Splendor:

Gem tokens.
  • Engine building
  • Limited set of player actions
  • Set-collection
  • Victory points
  • Card drafting

One of the main downsides of Splendor is that it isn’t the most social game in the world. Player interaction comes in the form of denying other players from coveted cards, otherwise the game is akin to Solitaire. This can be a pitfall of many engine-builders, so just keep that in mind.

Got your spacesuit on? To the stars!

Progress Makes Perfect: Race for the Galaxy

Are you addicted to card games? Have you ever wanted to create an empire…in space? Do you dream of intergalactic economics? If you’ve answered with a resounding ‘YES’ to any of these questions, then Race for the Galaxy is for you!

The objective is to develop a civilization by playing cards that affect the general infrastructure of your empire. These cards all contribute to the end-game either in number (first player ending a round with at least twelve cards) or through victory points (VP). 

Unlike Splendor, players have many more actions to take on their turns. These actions are divided into Phases to help keep a semblance of organization, but it can be daunting at first glance. Essentially the game progresses as follows:

  • Phase I – Explore by drawing cards and discarding
  • Phase II – Develop by playing a development card from your hand and paying its cost with other cards
  • Phase III – Settle by playing a world card from your hand and paying its cost
  • Phase IV – Consume by using consume powers to discard (gain VPs) and draw
  • Phase V – Produce by placing goods face down on production worlds.

Cards are going to be flying in all directions here. Between the constant discards, playing, and draws, hands are being recycled CONSTANTLY. This can complicate things for new players as they learn what the icons on the cards represent. As mentioned before, this can be a common theme with engine-builders; learning what strategies work and don’t work comes with time.

Eventually, players reach the end of the game and points are added up by combining the totals from any VP chips, their tableau of cards in their civilization, and any extra VPs from high-cost development cards. Highest points wins.

I chose Race for the Galaxy as the perfect bridge game between Splendor and Terraforming Mars because of the overlapping mechanics, but also because of the mechanics they don’t share. You’ll see the similarities once we get to the third game.

As far as mechanics go, here are the things you’ll experience in Race for the Galaxy, including checks next to ones introduced to us by Splendor:

Click to embiggen and peek at some of the iconography.
  • Engine building – Check!
  • Limited set of player actions – Kind of…
  • Set-collection – Check!
  • Victory points – Check!
  • Card drafting – Nope!
  • Intricate cards (in Abundance)
  • End-of-game point salad

Not much new here apart from the complexity of the cards. This is important as we venture back to the fourth rock from the Sun, because our next game has a TON of cards. 

Seriously, I should weigh them out.

The card drafting component is also new to us, if we’re comparing Race for the Galaxy in a vacuum. If you’ve ever played Dominion or Magic: the Gathering, odds are high that you’re familiar with the concept of selecting one card from a field of many. It’s just like picking teams for kickball: try to get the best possible players on your team to give yourself the greatest odds of winning.

Or like picking the best astronauts to help colonize Mars, which is where we’re going next.

Progress Makes Perfect: Terraforming Mars

Terraforming Mars. It’s the game where rival corporations are competing to carve out their slice of profit from the arduous task of making Mars habitable for colonists. We already have a write-up of this wonderful game so be sure to check that out for a more comprehensive review.

The elegance of the game comes from the players working together to improve the quality of life on the red planet. Over the course of the game, players are trying to place water tiles, raise the oxygen levels, and warm up the surface. Doing any of these will grant players victory points, so it’s in your best interest to help out in some way.

It would be pretty boring if people came to Mars and there was nothing to do there, though. That’s where cities and greeneries come into play. At first glance, these might not be the most attractive tiles to produce. However, they are going to be incredibly beneficial during the end-game scoring, so it’s another thing to keep your eye on as the game progresses.

At the same time, players can also earn points through the cards that they draft and play. Remember when I said there are a TON of cards? Between amassing microbes, collecting Jovian tags, or housing pets, there are numerous avenues that players can take to earn some extra points to their pool.

Each player can take one or two actions each turn before passing to the next player. Play continues this way until all players ‘pass’ and the generation is over. At this point, resources are produced and income is generated in preparation for the next generation of terraforming.

On you turn, you have a limited number of actions that you can perform:

  • Pay the costs of a card/project to play it and gain the benefits
  • Complete a standard project available to anyone
  • Perform an action on one of your blue cards

Now, obviously you’re going to be constrained by your own resources, so the key becomes sequencing your turn in a way to gain the most benefit. You may want to hold off on raising the temperature if you anticipate another player is going to do it in order to gain an extra bonus.

Again, this game does suffer a bit from the ‘solitaire’ mentality that usually traps players in engine-builders. The main difference is that, since everyone is terraforming Mars together, the gamestate is always changing. This, in turn, affects your turn sequencing and planning.

It’s interactive by seemingly being the opposite.

So how does the complexity stack up against the other two games we’ve talked about? Terraforming Mars is hardly more than a mashup of the two!

Click to embiggen.
  • Engine building – Check!
  • Limited set of player actions – Check!
  • Set-collection – Check!
  • Victory points – Check!
  • Card drafting – Check!* – game variant
  • Intricate cards (in abundance) – Check!
  • End-of-game point salad – Check!
  • Tile placement
  • Fluid game board

Terraforming Mars, although more complex than our other two games, isn’t really bringing much new to the table in terms of mechanics. We’ve added in an ever-changing game board with global parameters and tile placement elements, but at its core the game is using mechanics that we’re familiar with.

Learning the cards can be a complicated task; it can be a lot to take in at once when first experiencing the game. With so many paths to victory, I’ve seen new players circle the entire game trying to do everything. In a way this is helpful in exposing yourself to different strategies and learning the cards simultaneously.

There are a bunch of expansions for Terraforming Mars, including the Turmoil Expansion which has a Kickstarter ending in a couple days at the time of writing this. In addition, the solo game is a fantastic way to learn the intricacies of engine-building. I’ll warn you though – it can be incredibly difficult, especially just starting out.

Progress Makes Perfect: The Little Engine that Could

Engine-building board games offer a fun gameplay that puts players in the driver’s seat to create their own winning combination. We’ve looked at three games that get increasingly more complex to help ease you into that seat and get comfortable with the genre.

Trying out games in varied genres can help you find the games that you enjoy the most. This particular game type isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay!

You should be able to find any of these games at your FLGS without too much trouble. Some stores have demo days or rental opportunities that are great ways to try before you buy, so be sure to ask about them!

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Progress Makes Perfect: Role-Based Cooperative Games https://nerdsonearth.com/2019/03/progress-makes-perfect-role-based-cooperative-games/ Wed, 27 Mar 2019 12:00:10 +0000 https://nerdsonearth.com/?p=23758

Abram sets out to walk you through a series of role-based cooperative games that increase in complexity, but only deceptively so once you've mastered their basic mechanics.

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Submerging yourself in the board gaming hobby can be daunting – where do you begin? How do I know what kinds of games I’ll like? What is Board Game Geek?! 

There are so many games out there. Seriously, there are a TON. There’s no way that you’re going to be able to try them all, so you want to be sure that the time you’re investing is going to be worth your while. 

Luckily, most games are simply reimagined or reinvented uses of existing mechanics. Once you find a set of mechanics that calls your name, you can easily find other games in the same arena that you’re more likely to enjoy!

In this series of articles, I’m going to showcase a set of similar games that fall into the same category. Starting with the least complex, we’re going to gradually sprinkle in some additional mechanics and eventually end at a game that initially SEEMS complicated. Further inspection, however, will reveal that you’re already familiar with the majority of the gameplay through the other games listed before it.

First up on the docket are role-based cooperative games. These are games where everyone at the table is working together to achieve a goal before certain failure conditions are met. Either everyone wins, or everyone loses, which makes it a great entry point into the gaming hobby.

Starting with the ever-sinking sands of Forbidden Island, we’ll heat things up with Flash Point: Fire Rescue before testing our world-saving skills with Pandemic.

Progress Makes Perfect: Forbidden Island

Forbidden Island takes a group of treasure-hunters to a mystical island in an attempt to recover four long-lost artifacts of immense value. Using their unique talents, the adventurers must secure the relics before the entire island is swallowed by the sea.

What makes Forbidden Island a perfect entry-level game is that it’s incredibly easy to teach and players don’t have to worry about an abundance of trackers or potential actions. On a base level, players can perform three actions from the following:

  • Move to an adjacent part of the sinking island
  • Shore up a sinking tile
  • Give a card to another adventurer
  • Acquire a relic by trading in a set of matching relic cards

As the game progresses, the island will begin sinking. It’s up to the players to keep the water at bay; if access to a relic is lost before the team acquires it, then it’s game over. 

What really makes this game great, however, are the various role cards. At the beginning of the game, each player gets assigned a role, granting them an extra level of utility. One player might be incredibly mobile while another might be exceptionally skilled at keeping the island tiles from submerging.

These unique roles allow players to embrace their position within the team. You’ll find your table suggesting actions and strategizing optimal movements on the way to victory. More experienced players can help newer players by offering input but ultimately letting each player decide their actions on their own.

Forbidden Island offers tension in droves; as you get down to the wire and the flood counter is slowly ticking upwards, each turn feels more important than the last. And when you finally signal the helicopter to come extract your team, it’s fun to see what might have happened on the following turn!

As players flip through the Flood deck, sometimes you’ll encounter the dreaded ‘Waters Rise’ cards. These are BAD. When drawn, the flood counter advances towards failure and several tiles become flooded. This is an important mechanic that creates the tension between each turn.

So what specific mechanics does Forbidden Island introduce? Let’s take a look:

  • Specific player roles
  • Limited set of player actions
  • Randomized, internal game-clock
  • Cooperative game with multiple failure conditions
  • Set-collection
  • Catastrophic Events

Once you get the hang of the base game, you can increase the difficulty through the arrangement of the location tiles or the starting flood level. Additionally, there are other variations of the game in the Forbidden series that you can check out. (Get the game here for under $20.) Each one offers a new take on the same concept.

If you’re ready to branch out, however, it’s time to raise the temperature!

Progress Makes Perfect: Flash Point: Fire Rescue

In Flash Point: Fire Rescue we are shifting gears from actively avoiding water (like we did on the Forbidden Island), to wholly-embracing the extinguishing characteristics of water. Players assume the roles of a brave fire rescue team whose goal is to save the victims from a raging fire before the flames get out of control and before the building collapses.

Each player will take turns navigating through the hazards to locate Points of Interest, hoping to find victims that they can carry to safety. While this is happening, smoke and flames are steadily spreading through the building, threatening the lives of everyone inside.

Things are going to get a little more complicated from here, but let’s see which mechanics carry over from Forbidden Island and you’ll see that the complexity is an illusion!

  • Specific player roles – Check!
  • Limited set of player actions – Check!
  • Randomized, internal game-clock – Check! (Through dice this time, not cards)
  • Cooperative game with multiple failure conditions – Check!
  • Set-collection – Nope!
  • Catastrophic Events – Check! (Through Explosions)

There are only a handful of new mechanics that you’ll need to familiarize yourself with. First, when it comes to player actions, Flash Point: Fire Rescue introduces the idea of Action Points (AP). Instead of being able to perform any three actions, players are granted a stipend of APs that they can spend on various actions. Certain actions may only cost 1 AP, while others might be more powerful, costing 2 AP. Players can, potentially, perform up to four actions in a turn from the following sets of actions:

  • Movement through the building (hampered by fire)
  • Opening/closing doors
  • Extinguishing Fires or clearing smoke
  • Chopping walls to create additional paths of movement.

The other main mechanical addition in Flash Point: Fire Rescue is the use of a spreading mechanic. I also refer to this as a ‘living adversary’ because the gamestate is constantly changing based on its previous state.

What I mean by this is that the Fire and Smoke are constantly spreading, but their behavior is semi-predictable. You know that areas already affected by Fire are prone to explosions, and the smoky areas will turn to Fire. Players can use this knowledge to strategize and try to mitigate damages before they happen. It creates a sense of overwhelming dread and forces players to use their actions to react to the ever-changing board.

Since there’s already a ton of mechanics that you already know, since you’ve played Forbidden Island, it really makes the learning process easier. You’re just tacking on a couple pieces as you continue assembling your Voltron-esque gaming knowledge!

Just like Forbidden Island, there are multiple ways to increase the difficulty and complexity of Flash Point: Fire Rescue. You can add in vehicles and additional actions or hazards to really challenge yourselves in your rescue skills. There are several great expansions to enhance your game and push yourself to the limit. Get the game here.

Once you’ve successfully extinguished enough fires, however, you may want to move on to an even more complicated role-based cooperative game: Pandemic.

Progress Makes Perfect: Pandemic

There’s been an outbreak! The entire WORLD is affected! In Pandemic, you’ll be putting on your rubber gloves in an attempt to contain, cure, and eradicate the diseases plaguing humanity.

Four diseases are spreading through cities while the players rush around the map trying to simultaneously find a cure and treat the disease. Similar to the other two games, infections happen between each player’s turn. During the Infection stage, there is the potential for an Outbreak to occur, which can cause a chain-reaction of infections.

The game is all about prioritizing the most problematic areas and juggling multiple objectives against a severe time crunch. It’s one of the best thematic games that really makes you feel dread and worry as the diseases spread. You truly feel like you’re an entire world away from the rest of your team at times!

Players are able to perform four actions on their turn from the following broad categories:

  • Movement (driving or flying)
  • Build a Research Station (needed to cure a disease)
  • Treat a Disease
  • Share Knowledge with other players
  • Discover a Cure

Again, don’t be daunted by the larger rulebook and pieces. Even though the game has more moving pieces than the other two we’ve learned about, it’s very similar at its base level. Just like before, here are the main mechanics that we’ve learned about; which ones are reused in Pandemic?

  • Specific player roles – Check!
  • Limited set of player actions – Check!
  • Randomized, internal game-clock – Check! (Through cards, like Forbidden Island)
  • Cooperative game with multiple failure conditions – Check!
  • Set-collection – Check! (Collecting in two ways)
  • Catastrophic Events – Check! (Through Outbreaks)
  • Living Adversary – Check! (Diseases instead of Fires)
  • Action Points – Nope!

You see? Fairly similar! Basically, Pandemic is taking the existing mechanics and compounding them to create more tension and difficulty. 

For example, players are collecting sets of matching colors in order to cure diseases. At the same time, however, players need to collect cards to build research stations in strategic locations AND they may need to use cards to travel quickly across the board. By doubling up on the set collection mechanic, players must thoroughly weigh their options and think ahead at the possible ramifications of giving up a specific card.

Additionally, complexity is added by having four separate diseases spreading simultaneously. Instead of fighting a single figurative fire, players must concentrate their efforts on multiple fronts. I don’t consider this to be a new mechanic, but it does change the game enough to ratchet the difficulty up a notch or two.

Other than that, Pandemic really only offers a ‘building’ action to set it apart from the other role-playing cooperative games that we’ve previously discussed. This mechanic functionally adds a minor roadblock towards completing an objective.

In Forbidden Island, for example, players have to get to one of the two specific tiles to trade-in their cards for a treasure. Pandemic allows players to cash in their cards at any space that they’ve already built a research station, which offers more flexibility but additional resources compared to the former. Get the game here.

If you’re looking for even more Pandemic action, be sure to check out Pandemic: Legacy. This version uses the familiar theme and mechanics in a legacy version. This allows you and your group to play out an overarching story through multiple sessions of play. Over time, the game evolves with new rules and mechanics, offering a truly unique experience for Pandemic-lovers everywhere.

Progress Makes Perfect: Mastering Mechanics

When you break games down in this way, it becomes much easier to see how the industry tends to repeat itself by using recognizable mechanics. All you have to do is associate mechanics with ones you’ve already become familiar with and new games become much more manageable.

Don’t feel like you HAVE to play these games in this order to get the most out of them; I’m just trying to recommend a good sequence that slowly builds up a foundation of knowledge for role-based cooperative games. If any of these really jump out and interest you, go for it!

And you know what’s really great? These games are becoming more mainstream, meaning that you should be able to find them without much trouble. Check with your local game store! It’s also really awesome seeing some of these games line the shelves of other retailers, since it means the hobby is growing in a positive way.

Well, that’s all for now! I’ve got treasures to collect, fires to extinguish, and an epidemic to cure. And the only prescription…is more gaming!

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