Argent: The Neutrally Balanced Arrangement of Business

I like the idea of flipping the Argent board. Like eight tiny angers flipping each tile.

Another night. MORE ARGENT. My wife is hilariously better at the game than I am. She won by the narrowest margins this evening (6-6 tie, influence tiebreaker), we had a very interesting board where the only influence point was yielded by going to the archmage and swapping mages. Had to get it from supporters and artifact draws, instead. The unique corner case board is actually one of the things I love about the game, it's a new (confrontational) puzzle every time.

Good game of Argent tonight, two player. We played full rules aggression, so I used some sorcery and spells to burn her usual maximum rush strategy. She still won, but this time she had to think about it and choose some spells to assist. Much more satisfying.

I want to talk about influence in this game. It is the alpha and omega unless you have a certain type of board. Even if there wasn't a guaranteed voter AND merit badges, it would STILL be the most important thing in the game for tie breaks. I guess what I'm saying is you have to make your opponent pay dearly for easy influence spots or you're toast. It creates a lot of friction but it definitely reduces a little of the sandbox element. In most games, it is THE priority to secure.

I make a point to mention how important IP is in Argent. It's not exactly the victory condition, but it's a little like the money in Power Grid. It'll decide a good portion of the games you play.

There's actually a variant in Summer Break that turns the game into a regular Euro, point salad style. It translates wins on voters into more influence directly. I've never tried it, I like the all or nothing flavor of the voters, but it gives you a sense of how important influence is.

Influence is too important. So we decided to mod the game, even my wife who beats the shit out of me at this game (85% win rate maybe?) agreed.

We started pretty mild but I like it. We took the influence voter out of the game completely. Not just making it not automatic, but yanked entirely---11 unknown supporters. There are still more than enough reasons to grab it. Think we'll keep doing that, if anything we'll have to implement something more severe at some point.

More Argent and therefore more talking to myself on F:AT. Two things:

First, I love the subtle interplay between spells vs. artifacts, supporters and sorcerers. So, when you first start playing you have this reaction like "why would I get any of my aggressive tools from non-spells?" The spells provide many of the game victory conditions and they're usually more powerful than their non-spell equivalent. But there's this beautiful interplay between the incredibly powerful spells and the blue mages. Like, the blue mages are a full stop hard counter to all the spell business you could get up to... it's a sweeping, comprehensive counter against ANY spell effect, even shadowing or something innocuous like that a spell might do. Suddenly having even a supporter who has a wounding power or an artifact (rather than a spell) which creates shadowing is invaluable because it will still work against blue mages. It's this risk reward you get from overinvesting your plans in spells vs. diversifying in the slightly more expensive and harder to get other ways to do things. This game my wife managed to get the sorcerers hat, an artifact that wounds a mage once a turn, and it completely broke my lock on the key influence spot on the board because blue was no longer invulnerable there anymore.

Second, I think my favorite color/characters may be the yellow student mage A and B sides (light gray neutral board)? They get an automatic extra merit badge which is a big advantage early and both their powers are pretty cool. Of course, you have to have two useless yellow mages, but that isn't actually as bad as it sounds since frequently one or two of your mages go into uncontroversial spots where you don't need/can't afford to activate their powers anyway. I especially like the guy who lets you drop a mage after the opponent takes the last belltower, it gives you some security and lets you push tempo hard earlier in the round by taking first player and influence since you know you'll get that last, extra, drop.

Two players might be the best way to play the game with the elements of move and counter move for positioning.

It's certainly the reason to never play with more than 3. I think 3 is still calculated enough---you can glance at what your opponents have available and make plans. 4 you can just forget about it. That said, playing this game with 2 is very cagey but in a fun, tense way.

Been playing this a lot 2P with the girlfriend. Its such a different game at 2. I find myself doing weird things like only getting 2 influence in the whole game. Weird different stuff works.

Garry, your thoughts on the B side starter spell for Black, Its so crazy powerful if there are any rooms that give immediate rewards.

Should be playing tonight, so I should have a report tomorrow.

Bernie

Agreed on 2p. I think board control is vastly more effective in 2p. The game becomes a real move/countermove about controlling the key parts of the board. Since you're keeping tight track of what the other person is doing and there's less threat, you can accomplish all of that. Also, denial is critical in a way that it will never be with more than 2. There are things you might do simply to deny your opponent rather than construct your position since it's a zero sum game.

4-5 players is chaotic risk management, never doing something on the board that would be useless without something else happening. 2 players is the opposite, doing very little risk management and just carefully putting together the dominos in such a way as they can't be knocked down. 3 players is just the right balance of calculation and move/countermove WITH a fair dose of hedging your bets so that your entire turn isn't thrown into chaos if something unexpected happens.

Trying to remember what black 2 is so obviously it hasn't made as big an impression. Black 1 is the dude with the 2 mana action spell.

I played a two-player game this weekend, and lost 8-4. I lost the IP battle (natch) but it was really my own fault. I put myself in a situation where I lost a couple of 2IP spots because I wasn't paying attention, and it created a pretty much permanent 4-5 IP gap when my opponent wounded both mages with a spell and took both spots in the next turn.

I'm debating whether or not I think IP is too powerful. I also played a game of Power Grid this weekend, and I keep comparing the role of money in that game to IP in Argent. I haven't played enough Argent to really nail down any issues I might have, but both feel similar to me. In Power Grid it feels like it's more of an issue of the game just ending in a tie too often. In Argent, it feels like it might drag down the unknown elements of the voters. Rather than getting rid of the IP voter, I'm curious what would happen if voters with tied qualities simply abstained and didn't give votes away. But then I expect more games would have equal numbers of votes, then something like IP would be needed to break THOSE ties. I dunno, this is why I don't playtest.

But on the other hand I'm not sure it's a problem for me after all, especially not with more players. I make it very clear at the outset that it's the tie-breaker, and a very common one. I think I'm good with exploring the game more before saying it needs fixed at all, since I like it better with more people.

Yeah, I think it's an issue too. Curious to hear how your solutions work out.

Months ago I purchased this game, but, I've been too busy to break the shrink. What's the best way to learn the rules? Read the instructions? Or, is there a good play through video? I remember some on F:AT had a Vassal game going. Can't wait to try it.

Our games finally died, as many PBEM games do, but only after we finished 2-3 games. Which is a good run.

It's actually quite easy to learn, rules aren't bad. It LOOKS overwhelming because there are a bunch of different currencies and symbols but once you get used to that it's not complex.

It's worker placement with a couple twists, most significant that you only get the stuff you placed your workers on at the end of the turn so people can do all sorts of dirty tricks to your workers. Your first game should definitely be with all A sides. You can use the suggested starting tiles if you want.