Argent: The Neutrally Balanced Arrangement of Business

themothman421 wrote: From reading this topic, I am afraid some of the resident pacifists in our group will have a hard time getting over the aggression, unless I can somehow justify it thematically or point out that the "aim of the game" is to get points, and that any "meanness" is a bi-product of trying to get points, or something.

I haven't played the game yet, but perhaps characterize the "attacks" as being just good old fashioned magical pranks between students. Hogwarts was full of 'em, after all!

No matter how you interpret them thematically, they definitely feel like attacks and hurt if you're more of a uwe rosenberg worker placement fan.

The spring break expansion is super tiny. Adds a new voter, a scenario, and a few vault and supporter cards.

Gary Sax wrote: No matter how you interpret them thematically, they definitely feel like attacks and hurt if you're more of a uwe rosenberg worker placement fan.

Right, I'm just trying to drum up a way to say, "Don't worry if he attacks you on this space or <insert dick move here>, the point of the game is really about getting the voter conditions" or some such thing

This game rocks! My oversimplified take on in is that it's Agricola with 20x the butt hurt.

Jem, NotSure and I just finished a game via VASSAL. It was fun but we were groping around a bit. I saw like 4-5 marks early and many of them synergized really nicely with a sort of hoarding strategy, where I gathered resources and bought things but didn't do too much scrapping or spell casting. I came out ahead at the end, but it was a close run thing that depending on the tiebreaker of having gotten to the spot on the influence track first vs. Jem.

I think I really like the winning conditions. They are much more dramatic than points.

Yeah, if JEM had been there first it would have ended 4-4-4 and given the victory to me on IP. I also could have swayed at least one voter if the turn had gotten to me as well, I was going to explode for a 3-action move.

Definitely fun, but the mix of stuff in play made backstabbing too expensive and/or slow. We'll see what the next one has out. The flow is really well-suited for VASSAL, there are basically no rollbacks, and minimal interruptions aside from Reactions.

I like the votes as well, but I have a feeling an odd number of voters would make things even better. 12 just divides too neatly.

I realized too late that I was pushing too much on mana- I was hoping to get enough to threaten with some of my pretty offensive spells/consumables. As it turns out, if I'd just gone for IP instead, I might have got that 4-4-4 result which would have been pretty great. On the matter of not enough shivving, I got shivved even on the first turn But I know I made a mistake in one round- I placed in a spot I knew Sax wanted, and he shivved me out of it. I should have placed in the lower spot, waited for him to go to the contested spot and then shivved him with no space left in the room to deflect. But, he also was green, immune to wounding, so who knows.

It's a fascinating game, and the vassal version cards don't suck up spilled water like a sponge which is a bonus.

My criticism of this game revolves around the fact that when I first played it, I had no fucking idea what was going on or the impact of my decisions and came within a gnats dick of winning.

That sounds to me like a game where planning is a waste of time and getting drunk while playing is the optimum strategy. I actually have this game but I am loathe to bring it to the table (I've generated a game players group here who currently only play BSG) because it seems to me that you can bumble through this and still stand a good chance of winning. I hate that 'victory point catch up' mechanism, which I think is happening here.

I prefer games where if you play in a brain damaged state, you lose big time because you weren't concentrating. This game seems a bit meh to me.

In our PBEM game, I think the first turn was the stabbiest. After that, you and I got down to racing through the turn with fast actions and free placements, and Sax was busy just trying to place all his mages before we ran the turn out.

I had some offensive potential, but I was saving it up to combine with a turn-end play, to avoid the inevitable return-stab. Didn't happen.

Thirsty, I think that's a valid concern. But I don't necessarily believe in it. I really like the hidden win conditions, I think they're one of the things that make it fun. If you want to make it a pure optimization exercise that drunks can't accidentally win, play with the voters face-up. But to me the imperfect knowledge of the win conditions makes it interesting. In this last game I only had four or five marks, meaning i had roughly half the win conditions known. Of those, I knew I would win some, knew I would lose some, and knew there were some still to play for. I also knew there were 6 more that I hadn't seen yet, so I guessed in some cases, and my guesses didn't come up for me this time. Doesn't mean I didn't plan, just that planning with imperfect info involves more risk.

I think that's a good thing in this game, even if it makes for some surprise victories when someone wins a lot of categories that weren't being fought over.

I also like the fact that Marks are their own sort of resource, where you can trade actions to get a better view of the win conditions. However, too much of that and you won't have the juice to act on the knowledge you bought. I also think having 11 or 13 voters would lead to fewer IP tiebreakers.

For anyone playing along at home, we (me, JEM, NotSure) started a new game and got a wild setup that I'm attaching to this post. So... uh, gold might be an important issue in this particular game of Argent.

edit: F:AT image software makes the image small, here it is my BGG gallery at a much larger and legible size if you're interested.
www.boardgamegeek.com/image/2887138/garysax?size=large

I do not see much mana on that board either. Makes me glad I chose Sorcery B side

Will be a knife-fight to stop anyone exploiting Catacombs 1/2 combo.

And any game where there are uncertain winning conditions, someone *might* win on the first play just by random whatever. That is less likely the more you (and more importantly, your opponents) play. Argent is excellent. Optimization, douchebaggery, mystery, bluffing, tactics all in there. Sax made pitch perfect IP gains against me to claim tie-breaker on two categories even though we tied on actual IP points. That's not random, that's great play.

You're making me blush. Getting the 2nd most IP as a voter made that last game incredibly interesting. Like, not a huge point in overinvesting in IP but you have to be sure to be at least 2nd...

Dunno if anyone reads this, but I played a couple games with my wife. Good times!

Our last game was fun, but if you've tuned in to my boardgames played posts before you know that my wife was tormented by her family for her first 18 years when playing boardgames so cannot deal with any significant direct fuck you in a game. My solution was to pull sorcery and not take sorcerers and not spit wounding spells on her, and that worked great for a fun, casual game. Unfortunately, this game had me gritting my teeth and holding back curses because she essentially immediately created a very clever engine that could only be effectively countered and dismantled by nuking the shit out of her mages with sorcerers, banishing, nasty items, etc.

She had 2 purples, 2 greys, and a spell or two that facilitated mass dropping of mages. In first turns she dropped 4 mages (fast place purple, spell that drops two mages in a room, place gray due to spell action). So she's sitting there with 1 mage and I have 6 mages that move at moderate speed (2 purples, 1 gray rest normal) and no spells to place extremely fast. Now, if I'm playing a normal game with someone who won't board flip if they have one of their pieces eliminated or nuked, I tool up the sorcery spells, grab some nuke spells and go to town on her fast place but completely vulnerable mages. But of course, that is impossible. She doesn't know she's doing it (crafting a strategy to perfectly take advantage of my handicap), and I like the game even with the gloves on, so I didn't say anything, but it was very aggravating to watch someone dropping a clever combo and know that the only potential response on my part to it was off limits to me. Anyway, had to bitch about that.

Other than that, it was fun. It was a limited mana board, with only one space straight giving mana, so I hoarded items and supporters who yielded mana when I had the actions to use them. She had to subsist on the 2 mana she would get every turn which ground her engine to a halt, she would have blown me completely out without that quirk fo the board. It was a very interesting situation.