I think it's fuzzier than that. Sometimes cards disassociate you from your state in the game. If you no longer feel like you have control over your own destiny you disengage from the play and it becomes tedious. That happened to me in Cosmic Encounter where one guy got to switch races with me. 100% of my prior investment was gone and at that point I just didn't give a rat's ass about the game anymore. At the time I thought "why the hell would anyone put something like THAT into a board game?" But Cosmic Encounter is a kitchen-sink design and I wouldn't be surprised to see a card that tells you to swallow your opponent's pieces.

MJL, you kind of shot your argument in the foot with your second post because you essentially double-down on the same shitty concept. "You need cancel cards to deal with fuck you cards" implies that there are fuck you cards in the first place. That's essentially what Squigherder is talking about in the first place -- cards that let you just magically blow by everyone. A game like Magic is one big pile of fuck you cards and everyone is fine with it because it's the nature of head-to-head combat. It's the heart of the game. But in a game like Roadkill Rally it just seems strange for a card to zoom you to the lead. It's too arbitrary especially if it comes up at the wrong time. It's anti-thematic as hell too, but that's another issue.

Managing the players' moods is an important part of game design. When a publisher violates Rule 0 prior to the start of playing, it's a pretty damn big mistake.

S.

San Il Defanso wrote:


After a brief flurry of Euros and AT games when I first jumped back into the hobby, I've reverted mostly to my natural wargaming habitat. In the big multiplayer games like Here I Stand and Nappy Wars, "fuck you" cards are utterly crucial diplomatic carrots and situational yank-your-nuts-out-of-the-fire tools.

In a game like Here I Stand, "Negate most of the CPs played and generally give the Finger to the guy who just announced a move or assault" cards can buy much needed time to shore up a shaky situation. Or, if know you won't need the damned thing this turn, you can try to leverage playing it on someone else's behalf for something of much more immediate value to your own cause like cards, territory, or some sort of "future consideration".

They have a hugely outsized effect in PBEM games because the lag in communications usually means everyone generally *knows the exact outcome* of the move you're killing before getting a chance to play the card, which doesn't happen in face to face gaming. Even though in effect, players need to rewind the game to the point where the card *would* have been played, I couldn't imagine playing the game without them...

mjl1783 wrote:

I've been considering trimming out some of the counterspells, and I ran across this post, and I'm curious to see what someone else who is a bit more familiar with the game thinks about that particular distribution.

Those are some good points, Dogmatix. The idea of "nukes" as negotiation is also used a lot in Dune (or if you're lame like me, Rex). That whole game is about learning where the insane cards are, and how to deal with that knowledge.

No, Squigherder was talking about something else entirely. He was talking about "Blue Shells."

In case you haven't played Mario Kart, a blue shell is a weapon that's only available to the racer in dead last place, and when you fire it, it sends out a blue turtle shell that seeks out the racer in first position and knocks him off of the track (as well as anyone else who crosses its path). There's almost no way to avoid getting hit by it. It's a pure catch up mechanic. You can absolutely suck at the game, and still end up with decent placing at the end of the race because of this one weapon that's designed purely to dick whoever's winning.

It's been years since I played Maul of America, and it was pretty crap, so I don't remember exactly how that teleport card would come up in that game. His Road Kill Rally example, however, is totally a Blue Shell. It's a road tile, not a card that everyone has an equal chance of drawing from the deck, but something that you have to encounter if it's in the stack above the finish line tile, and it simply takes the player with the worst standing in the game and gives him the best.

To continue with the Mario Kart analogy, "fuck you" cards are like all the other special items in the game; they're randomly distributed, they can give you an edge in the game, and they have nothing to do with your skill as a driver. If they were all offensive weapons, the game would be a mess. Even if you were a good driver, people could still hit you with shit and knock you back to last place without any way to defend yourself. Races would likely take too long, and go to the player who happened to get a break and open up a wide lead during a lull in the weapon pickups.

Of course, you could take all the silly powerups out of the game entirely, but the racing all by itself isn't that exciting in Mario Kart, and the game would suffer for it. So, you put a bunch of weapons in there spice things up, but you also put a few defensive powerups so the game doesn't turn into a mess.



Here's what you do:

Take the black cantrips out of the deck. That eliminates enough of your useful-but-uninteresting spells. Keep the VP for kills rule from FFG, and play with the original rules for everything else. Lasting spells can count against your hand limit if you want, but anything that puts a marker on the board goes there, and stays there until someone dispels it.

Feel free not to take this advice, but that's the way I've been playing the new game, and it feels pretty much like the old game that way. I hadn't been doing the "permanent obstacles" rule before Trashfest, but having done it, and then going back and taking the black cantrips out, I think the game is firing on all 8 cylinders this way.

mjl1783 wrote:

I definitely plan to use all the old rules, I was just wondering if culling the counterspells even more was warranted. I think I'll start with taking the black cantrips outs, and see how it plays before removing other stuff. Thanks.

Not sure if Wiz War has anything to do with what I was talking about since it's a constant series of 'take that' moments but suddently I want to play it. I haven't played since the old blue box edition.