Forbidden Stars - Review

^yeah, dice->card icons->card effects rolling a little deep on the combat complexity level. Remains to be seen whether it adds much.

Combat is fine, I'm sort of getting what it's trying to represent. What remains to be seen is if you're going to play this 3-5 times to get the combat to acceptable pace.

Repo and I got 2 games in yesterday. This game is the real deal. Certainly a return to form for FFG. It's a sprawling, long winded game that ignores what has become the hobby over the last few years yet streamlines the games that have inspired it to create something that will hit the table more often. Yes, there's alot of Starcraft here, but it's very much _not_ Starcraft. It's by far more accessible yet manages to be more satisfying through its upgrades (which feel as good as upgrades in Chaos in the Old World) and it's terrific combat (of which there is a lot).

So that combat...yes, it takes time and will create downtime, but it's so damned fun. After you get the rules down and understand all the ins and outs, it is not going to take 10-15 minutes. Maybe if someone is AP prone. I do wish it there was some solid criteria for an overrun, as there are battles in which it's clear one side will get crushed, though those are few and far between. It's actually remarkably difficult to straight out kill all your opponents units, not matter how outnumbered and outgunned they may be. There's always a chance, or at least a chance to survive.

Not sure if I'd play it with 4. It's excellent at 3, but surprisingly great with 2. I'm serious, give the 2 player a game a shot, I might actually like it best.

Like I said, I played 2 games yesterday, which took a total of about 7 hours. I went to bed thinking I can go a few days without playing it again, but I find that not to be the case this morning. I'm ready to go again.

I agree with all of what Josh said. Great game. The star craft analogy is weak. Outside of order tokens and non traditional combat with cards and bonuses for having a matching unit type in the battle, they are very different games.

I really dig how card upgrades replace a tech tree.

And even After two games yesterday and play again right now.

It's SO GOOD. My wife loves it too - she wants to play it nonstop which hasn't happened with any other game. We played 3-player last week and have played 2-player 3 times since then.

It might have fired Runewars for me. I like Runewars a lot, but I think it's just "off" in one or two ways that keeps it from greatness. Forbidden Stars fits in a similar niche, but is much more direct and way less fiddly.

As expected, the combat is nowhere as long as early reviews indicated. Once you see your combat cards a few times, selection is quick; you just say to yourself, "oh, looks like Mark of Slaanesh is what I need here" and plop it on the table. There's even a nice bit of yomi where you might have to counter-play against cards you know your opponent has.

I love that objectives are open information and they're on enemy tiles. There's no neutral ground, especially in 2 player.

Order placement can be agonizing. I still haven't figured out the right tempo of moving, upgrading, and building. It's easy to do the wrong thing, though being able to ditch an order and drop it on your event deck is a nice way to salvage a botched move.

I feel like there might be matchup issues, over many games, due to the upgrade cards each faction has. For example, maybe Chaos Space Marines match up badly against Orks due to a particular combat card. But that might take a while to surface.

Yeah, it's pretty good...I kind of suspect that it is a better two player game than a three or four player one.

That's not encouraging... I want it for 4 players. I'll wait for some more defined opinions.

Q

hotseatgames wrote: That's not encouraging... I want it for 4 players. I'll wait for some more defined opinions.

I don't know, man. I am inindated with great 4p conquest games. The fact that this delivers such a solid experience in that genre with only 2 or 3 really sets it apart. If it's a 4 player thing you want though, I can very comfortably say don't bother.

Good for 2....dammit. Now you have my attention. I'm an FFG fanboy, unapologetically.

Delobius wrote: I feel like there might be matchup issues, over many games, due to the upgrade cards each faction has. For example, maybe Chaos Space Marines match up badly against Orks due to a particular combat card. But that might take a while to surface.

I'm curious to hear more of your thoughts on this. If you are noticing a specific thing with the Chaos vs Orks, that's not entirely what I experienced. I felt I could beat the Orks by outlasting them. If you can defend yourself (that Nurgle card is key) you can likely beat them in morale.

Michael Barnes wrote: Yeah, it's pretty good...I kind of suspect that it is a better two player game than a three or four player one.

Prolly too mainstream. Course I was into Warhammer when it was just 1k before the franchise became a big sell out.

I am going to have to sell a bunch of shit to justify this.

BUT JUSTIFY I SHALL

Josh Look wrote: I'm curious to hear more of your thoughts on this. If you are noticing a specific thing with the Chaos vs Orks, that's not entirely what I experienced. I felt I could beat the Orks by outlasting them. If you can defend yourself (that Nurgle card is key) you can likely beat them in morale.

That was just an example - I didn't see anything in that particular matchup. It's just a vague feeling I have, based on the asymmetric nature of the combat cards. One example was last night, when I played Know No Fear (a level 2 Ultramarines card) against Lure of Chaos (one of the basic Chaos cards). Know No Fear says, "During this execution round, your units cannot become routed." Lure of Chaos is the one that has the opponent rout a unit and gain 1 die, or the Chaos player gets a free Cultist. I couldn't rout, so BOOM free cultist and I lost on morale.

I'm looking forward to trying it with 4, despite reports that it doesn't work so well. Is it mostly about game length, or does it just get too chaotic?

It's just length. I think the scaling what with the bigger board and more objectives would prevent it from being too chaotic.

I say it's the length, but I don't know, maybe after a few plays with the same people it would be fine. I bet that if the three of us that played last night played again, it would be quite a bit shorter.

I think it's important to note that I'm not criticizing the downtime. It might have been that I was watching to ensure it was being played correctly, but I found it kind of compelling to watch what happened even when I wasn't involved, if for no other reason than to see how the combat cards were affecting the participants so I could see what I would inevitably be going up against.

Josh Look wrote: I think it's important to note that I'm not criticizing the downtime. It might have been that I was watching to ensure it was being played correctly, but I found it kind of compelling to watch what happened even when I wasn't involved, if for no other reason than to see how the combat cards were affecting the participants so I could see what I would inevitably be going up against.

Exactly. This is why I've never quite understood the argument about "downtime" in these types of games. If you're all involved on the same board, then what happens to others will almost always affect you. Why not pay attention and see what happens and, in the case of things like TI3, even take advantage of circumstances with Action Cards, etc?