Lets Talk: Cyclades / Kemet

These last few posts I think really touches on the biggest deterrent for me with getting either Cyclades or Kemet on the table...Both games are likely better designs but my gaming situation sees a lot of rotation. That's the downside of playing in a game shop, everyone always has something new to try.

And a game like Nexus Ops is very transparent and intuitive rules-wise. Meaning I'll usually be able to bust out satisfying games right off the bat before the attention deficit gamers move onto the next game.

Kemet is a shitty euro masquerading as a seemingly-fun DoAM/conquest game.

It seems all super aggressive and shit (the logo is ON FIRE for chrissakes), but in reality there's no randomness at all and you could basically script your moves before the game starts. Also, going last is a serious advantage and basically guarantees a win during late game.

I had a few really bad games of it and the scales really fell from my eyes, I guess.

Cyclades is OK.

superflycircus.com/2010/10/cyclades-crea...n-two-hours-or-less/

Yeah, I have my own "actual" site now, not just Blogger, because FUCK BLOGGER.

Cyclades is a nearly perfect DOAM. Different paths to victory, enough random to make it not feel Euro, and a ton of variety when it comes to each individual session. I've heard people say it's samey each time and I just don't see that. I suspect if you're playing with the same people all the time they always use their go-to strategy but I rarely play "my strategy" as much as "what will work based on the first 4 turns, which kind of set the pace." To me, it's all attacking all the time, if you're doing it right. I beat down everyone while trying to do what Jeb said - sneaky-bastard win, either through Athena/Philosopher, or via military feints and "agreements" that I may or may not keep.

If you're playing a DOAM and not making potentially lying treaties and/or agreements, you're playing them wrong. EVERY SINGLE GAME, I keep pencils and post-its (we don't allow phones at the table) so that every person can pass notes, make secret pacts, etc. Part of the fun is reading them aloud at the end. This is what makes DOAM's fun - every game has negotiation in it.

The last time I played Ikusa, there were like 30 notes passed, and I'm the one who usually passes notes that say "hey, what are you doing Friday" instead of "Let's join forces and attack Blue for the next 3 turns, at which time we'll re-evaluate our alliance". It keeps the other players who SEE me passing notes guessing.

We have a "NO SNOWDEN" agreement too - no telling other people what the alliance is unless both parties agree. If a person does SNOWDEN an agreement, they are generally immediately deemed untrustworthy and are ganged up on with the sole goal of eliminating/marginalizing them.

Our shit be CUT-THROAT!

SuperflyTNT wrote: If you're playing a DOAM and not making potentially lying treaties and/or agreements, you're playing them wrong. EVERY SINGLE GAME, I keep pencils and post-its (we don't allow phones at the table) so that every person can pass notes, make secret pacts, etc. Part of the fun is reading them aloud at the end. This is what makes DOAM's fun - every game has negotiation in it.

That is a really good idea. I'm going to do that from now on. For every game!

The best part is when you intentionally fuck people over by note-passing. My favorite:

"Hey, you see that castle/pawn/marker over there? I think it looks like a buttplug/beetle/caterpillar! Take a look!" and then they look at it intensely and unintentionally blurt out "What the fuck are you talking about?" or some such thing. Then everyone's sitting there wondering what you were talking about, planning, plotting...it's awesome to mind-fuck people.

Since I have heavily consolidated my collection from 200+ games down to under 20, I am mindful of potential replacements if a game outshines another in my collection.

I truly adore Nexus Ops. Warts and all.

But I do think Kemet has a strong potential to permanently replace Nexus Ops, mostly because of the battle card combat. Yeah, kemet is a thinly veiled euro, but it's mechanically tight when playing against other player who have an identical understanding of kemet as each other player present.

Italicized for emphasis of the qualifying statement.

Otherwise, it can drag as AP enters play, or obvious bad plays happen due to inexperience.

I think it's a great DOAM game. One which I doubt I'll get rid of unless a better game comes along to replace it among my tightly controlled game collection. The expansion looks promising, with an entirely new tech tree as well as forcing choices of which pyramids to build due to only being able to have three in your city with a fourth black pyramid available. Very promising indeed.

Not sure if it will replace Nexus Ops though, but it's tempting whenever we play and we get tired of the randomness of battle, even though we have fun while playing it. Kind of like Monsters Menace America. It's awesome 90% of the game, and then it stops being awesome suddenly. Nexus Ops has been such a staple its hard to imagine not owning it anymore. But I like making such hard, decisive cuts. It feels good afterwards to be liberated with a better game in the vacant space.

Colorcrayons wrote: Since I have heavily consolidated my collection from 200+ games down to under 20...

Colorcrayons, you are my new hero this is the best thing one can do with any collection! I wish I was as brave as you and could let more go - I still have about one hundred and I sold well over a hundred. I dumped all the coffin boxes for lack of time to play, for eg. I can't get myself to sell MEQ, Earth Reborn BSG and a slew of others to pare it down even more. After more than nine years in the hobby, after chasing this and that title, I have come to the *absurd* conclusion there is no reason for anyone to own more than 30 games :/ I am a little more liberal than you!

SuperflyTNT wrote: superflycircus.com/2010/10/cyclades-crea...n-two-hours-or-less/

Yeah, I have my own "actual" site now, not just Blogger, because FUCK BLOGGER.

Cyclades is a nearly perfect DOAM. Different paths to victory, enough random to make it not feel Euro, and a ton of variety when it comes to each individual session. I've heard people say it's samey each time and I just don't see that. I suspect if you're playing with the same people all the time they always use their go-to strategy but I rarely play "my strategy" as much as "what will work based on the first 4 turns, which kind of set the pace." To me, it's all attacking all the time, if you're doing it right. I beat down everyone while trying to do what Jeb said - sneaky-bastard win, either through Athena/Philosopher, or via military feints and "agreements" that I may or may not keep.

If you're playing a DOAM and not making potentially lying treaties and/or agreements, you're playing them wrong. EVERY SINGLE GAME, I keep pencils and post-its (we don't allow phones at the table) so that every person can pass notes, make secret pacts, etc. Part of the fun is reading them aloud at the end. This is what makes DOAM's fun - every game has negotiation in it.

The last time I played Ikusa, there were like 30 notes passed, and I'm the one who usually passes notes that say "hey, what are you doing Friday" instead of "Let's join forces and attack Blue for the next 3 turns, at which time we'll re-evaluate our alliance". It keeps the other players who SEE me passing notes guessing.

We have a "NO SNOWDEN" agreement too - no telling other people what the alliance is unless both parties agree. If a person does SNOWDEN an agreement, they are generally immediately deemed untrustworthy and are ganged up on with the sole goal of eliminating/marginalizing them.

Our shit be CUT-THROAT!

Pete, I think you just articulated why DoaM games tend to underwhelm me, and that's because I typically like my deal-making to be baked into the design itself. A good example would be something like Cosmic Encounter. The alliances in that game are out in the open, and highly temporal. But I never did like the whole process of creating alliances in something like Risk. Mostly I liked attacking and the drama that comes from that. I'm a very social guy, but I don't naturally see the opportunities to screw people and double-deal without at least a little prompting from the game. That's why Nexus Ops is still my favorite DoaM game, because it's all the stuff I like about the genre without the things I'm not wild about.

That said, I do like games like Imperial and Mare Nostrum. Those are Euros that naturally drift into the alliance territory. But I feel like the situation in a Euro is a little easier to read, so maybe that's why I like them so much. I don't know, I'd have to think about it more.

As for Cyclades (never did play Kemet), I like it well enough but I traded it away. It's a sharp game, but I felt like the auction was just a little at odds with the nature of the conquest genre. It's not just a matter of knocking back the winner, it's a manner of winning an auction and knocking back the winner. The auction makes it harder to do the very thing the game is asking of you.

Besides that I never did really sense how to win the game. It always felt (after maybe 10 games) like the guy who won did so largely by accident. That might just be my own myopia with the game, but it always felt a bit opaque to me.

scissors wrote:

Colorcrayons wrote: Since I have heavily consolidated my collection from 200+ games down to under 20...

Colorcrayons, you are my new hero this is the best thing one can do with any collection! I wish I was as brave as you and could let more go - I still have about one hundred and I sold well over a hundred. I dumped all the coffin boxes for lack of time to play, for eg. I can't get myself to sell MEQ, Earth Reborn BSG and a slew of others to pare it down even more. After more than nine years in the hobby, after chasing this and that title, I have come to the *absurd* conclusion there is no reason for anyone to own more than 30 games :/ I am a little more liberal than you!

Even though my culling of my collection predates this article by Superfly Pete, it would still cause me considerable pause to make me take a cold, hard, and very brutal look at my collection.

superflycircus.blogspot.com/2013/10/why-...nt-more-or-cart.html

I beleive it's an article everyone needs to read and give serious rumination to afterwards. Likely the best article that he has ever written. And that makes it pretty darn good.

I do miss my copies of Thunder Road, Forbidden bridge, X-Wing, Queens Gambit, Monsterpocalypse, etc. etc. etc. But the liberation, once accomplished, is empowering.

San Il Defanso wrote: As for Cyclades (never did play Kemet), I like it well enough but I traded it away. It's a sharp game, but I felt like the auction was just a little at odds with the nature of the conquest genre. It's not just a matter of knocking back the winner, it's a manner of winning an auction and knocking back the winner. The auction makes it harder to do the very thing the game is asking of you.

Winning the auction is knocking back the winner. My buddy says that every bid in Cyclades is giving someone the finger. I'd never thought auctions could be thematic and confrontational before this game - at least games that aren't explicitly about having an auction, anyway.

You have to do three things in an auction in Cyclades: 1. Get the turn order that you want. 2. Get the action that you want. 3. Prevent your opponents from getting these things. You'll almost never be able to do all three of those, so you need to constantly evaluate what is most important - getting what you want, or getting what the other guy wants. Winning the auction on your terms is as much a conquest as taking territory.

Besides that I never did really sense how to win the game. It always felt (after maybe 10 games) like the guy who won did so largely by accident. That might just be my own myopia with the game, but it always felt a bit opaque to me.

There are a couple of ways to win, and usually the person who does so is moving forward all of the options instead of pursuing just one path. You need to have enough buildings in play to be threatening, and enough philosophers to also be threatening, and be in a position to take away something from someone else who also happens to be threatening. Do any of these too early and you'll get stomped. It's all about timing.

yeah, i read that article by pete. I agree it was a great one.

madwookiee wrote:

San Il Defanso wrote: As for Cyclades (never did play Kemet), I like it well enough but I traded it away. It's a sharp game, but I felt like the auction was just a little at odds with the nature of the conquest genre. It's not just a matter of knocking back the winner, it's a manner of winning an auction and knocking back the winner. The auction makes it harder to do the very thing the game is asking of you.

Winning the auction is knocking back the winner. My buddy says that every bid in Cyclades is giving someone the finger. I'd never thought auctions could be thematic and confrontational before this game - at least games that aren't explicitly about having an auction, anyway.

You have to do three things in an auction in Cyclades: 1. Get the turn order that you want. 2. Get the action that you want. 3. Prevent your opponents from getting these things. You'll almost never be able to do all three of those, so you need to constantly evaluate what is most important - getting what you want, or getting what the other guy wants. Winning the auction on your terms is as much a conquest as taking territory.

Besides that I never did really sense how to win the game. It always felt (after maybe 10 games) like the guy who won did so largely by accident. That might just be my own myopia with the game, but it always felt a bit opaque to me.

There are a couple of ways to win, and usually the person who does so is moving forward all of the options instead of pursuing just one path. You need to have enough buildings in play to be threatening, and enough philosophers to also be threatening, and be in a position to take away something from someone else who also happens to be threatening. Do any of these too early and you'll get stomped. It's all about timing.

I don't doubt that you're right in all of these things, but the truth is that I gave it a lot of tries and realized I didn't actually enjoy it as much as I thought I did. I've always had trouble articulating why, which is one reason I never actually wrote it up.

Boardgaming and minimalism (and related concepts) needs a new thread.

I'm interested to hear more.

I've only got a little over 30 games at this point, and still I'm feeling like it's too many. However, I have a hard time deciding what I would cut and there's about 5 more I want to add. A dilemma.

Yeah, new thread! I've got 20 and I'm putting a hard limit on myself.

But part of that is due to $$$ factor. We paid quite more while having significantly less income than you guys. I also a firm believer that games should be replayed to death so every nuances explored and meta developed.

That said, I still have a few vital things lacking such as non-fantasy dudes in corridor, train games and CDG.

Sevej, you could have my 1861 if you want. I just can't think how to actually get it to you.

Do you have an Aramex mailbox or something?