Barnes on Games- Barnes' Best GOTY 2016

Legomancer wrote: Miniatures games are dumb toys for little babys.

They are not a toy, they are sophisticated interlocking building system. Not a toy. There's an age suggestion because they have to put it.

Legomancer wrote: Miniatures games are dumb toys for little babys.

This makes me wonder what a Unified Tabletop Game Definition Theory could look like...

Tabletop games only exist because adults can't play make-believe without copious arguing and "nuh-uh"s. We need the rules so we can play with our dollies the right way.

Legomancer wrote: Miniatures games are dumb toys for little babys.

You sir are a mean and vindictive philistine. Miniatures, when painted properly, cure cancer and impotence.

huhu

i had to create an account to comment on your choosen game of the year...

star trek ascendancy was not the worst game i played last year (in fact it was second after vinhos, which is totally broken) but it was surly the most disapointing one...

which is worse!

why so? because the promise is so big and the execution is so mediocre (sadface indeed)

lets go into the details
first things first. the exploration is ace. the develepment of the galaxy, the starlanes, the mechanic of rotating loose ends that snap into place once the second lane is added are top notch, play well, give strategic decisionmaking to the player and are thematic... real good stuff here. its also a bit prone to luck of the draw, but yeah...

everything else from here is a serious letdown...

the rulebook ist not very good. in fact, its a mess. it reads like a rulebook from ffg from 15 to 10 years ago. ffg has made great strides in the past years to make their rulebooks better, but gf9 seems to not get the memo the rulebooks have to be concise, to the point, unambitous and clear and easy referenceable... this is specially bad for a game with a) not so many rules (you can easyly fit them on two pages) and b) not very complicated rules (the game is neither difficul, complicated nor complex)
for how to do good rules on complex games see gmt (commbat commander for example)

then game mechanics in general: oh my god... a blast from the past and not in a good way... . except from exploration everything else is soooo 1990... no kidding here. the rules remind me of something like axis and allies. yes this is ameritrash, but come on, even amerithrash games have evolved a LOT in the past 25 years. proof? look at fantasy flight games and the evolution of their games in the ameritrash sector. and the buckets of dice aproach is really all your designers come up with in this day and age...

when we see just the 4x a lot of plastic on the table genre its even more embarasing... please compare to the evolution of twilight imperium or take a look at eclipse...

into some specifics...

if you can win a sudden death victory by ascendancy with five victory tokens and you start by one and every token is composed of 5 smaller tokens, what is the networth of every small (victory) token? 5%!!!- yes that are 3 ! . what does this mean. the most effectiv action you can choose to do in a turn is ALLWAYS the one that gives you culture tokens. if you build anything else then culture on grey building spots you do it definetly wrong (because this site will produce victorypoint tokens from now on). the mathematicaly more inclined people on this forum could even tell when its even more efficent to sit on the culture tokens instead of building new sites because of given away 10% of victory points for a roi of +5% in two turns

or in other words its very very easy to build 5 culture factories, turtle up in my homesystem and just autopilot to victory ...
(just for those that still dont get it... you can autowin in 20 turns by never building or exploring anything just sitting in your homesystem, in fact its less then 20, because you start with some...)

the only way to stop this is to go all out war from the very beginning. which is no problem, just connect to the homesystem (no one can stop this from happening) and by the time you can warp more then one system (easy) you can bypass hazards... ussually red buildingpoints are of no concern, just pour ot ships, roll buckets of dice and see what happens...
the the combat system is lame (bucket of dice) and unimaginative
sidenote: the federation got massively shafted here because there biggest fleet is 6.

someway connected to this...
the science tokens!!! yeah, a tech tree... and what wonderfull thematic things i can do with it! ... but in reality there is only ONE viable option: forget about the techtree, go all guns!
yes even the shields are not cost effective (guns are way cheaper, so more bang for the bug (hehe) and faster to build. only exeption: a tech that brings you culture (see above... but is there any?)

i could go on and on, but i think you get the point
you have a wonderfully thematic game with one rally good idea that boils down to 2 effective ways to play (turtleup and autopilot to ascendancy or to avoid that, all out war from the getgo)

that a deep disapointment and really a wasted opportunity (my treckie girlfriend went nuts about the theme... and was deeply frustrated that all of that went poof the moment play beginns)

and that for 100 Euros!! (which ist STEEP) and at least 25 euros just for the license. my gf went all in (170 euros with both expensions) for something that boils down to "roll more hits than the other guy (dice it out). in a three hour plus game! maaaan...
there is a small hope that the expansion can remedy something about this disapointment, but were not holding our breath here...

as a sidenote: have you played mechs versus minions? THATS how its done. 75 euros, a steal. production value through the roof AND gone the extra mile for fantastic gameplay... gf9 take a note... or two...

the only people i can see having fun with this are roleplayers (yes!) which play "how its meant to be played". one competitive player or someone who is a tiny bit analytical and effective and evverything fall apart

for me it seems that gf 9 rushed the game out of the doors because of the anniversary which by nature has a deadline. which ended with one great idea and a lot of mediocicy with a ruleset from 25 years ago.

what a shame

evilduck

ps: the above is a perfect example of germans not being able to make short sentences...

Ouf...good thing we won the war

Evilduck - some good points but a lot of it rubbish, I suppose if you only play against your gf then you may miss aspects of the game.And 100 euros man, I got it for under £60 delivered and that was in rip-off Britain, you can't accuse a game for being costly on you not living in the US.
But just to answer the turtling bit, if you have converted your open nodes to culture unless you have luckily drawn lots of production you are not going to be able to withstand attacks. You don't like it, fine as it has got some old school stuff in it but some people still like rolling dice, I think it would work better if research worked and the advancements weren't random (although that is easily fixed with one of the suggested variant rules).

GF9 hit home runs with Spartacus and Sons of Anarchy, and a standing double with their WWE game, but the mediocrity of Firefly should have given them pause before trying to tackle something as large and complex as a 4X Trek game. It feels like they took a simple and intuitive design (which they have a clear knack for) and bolted on a bunch of mechanisms until they were left with an appealing looking mess.

Firefly was a game I really liked on my first 3-4 plays but after that I soured QUICKLY. The splay the whole exposed decks out thing was a big downer.

At the rate this thread is going, by weekend we will have a mob with pitchforks and torches ready to go after Star Trek: Ascendancy.

I'm a fan of GF9, but the discussions of Star Trek: Ascendancy elsewhere at F:AT turned me off, because the strategy and mechanics and gameplay all seem too detached from the Star Trek show. Any game based on a licensed property owes the players a game that connects well with that setting, because that is what they are hoping to get. Even the word Ascendancy in the title seems like a warning, because wtf does "ascendancy" have to do with any of the hundreds of episodes and dozen plus movies of the Star Trek franchise?

Shellhead wrote: At the rate this thread is going, by weekend we will have a mob with pitchforks and torches ready to go after Star Trek: Ascendancy.

I'm a fan of GF9, but the discussions of Star Trek: Ascendancy elsewhere at F:AT turned me off, because the strategy and mechanics and gameplay all seem too detached from the Star Trek show. Any game based on a licensed property owes the players a game that connects well with that setting, because that is what they are hoping to get. Even the word Ascendancy in the title seems like a warning, because wtf does "ascendancy" have to do with any of the hundreds of episodes and dozen plus movies of the Star Trek franchise?

That's a great point, the game does seem a little too militaristic for an IP focused on enlightenment and exploration. It's especially surprising coming from GF9, a company that's built it's reputation on licensed games that perfectly emulate their source material. The good news is that we already have the perfect Trek game (Fleet Captains).

Shellhead wrote: At the rate this thread is going, by weekend we will have a mob with pitchforks and torches ready to go after Star Trek: Ascendancy.

I'm a fan of GF9, but the discussions of Star Trek: Ascendancy elsewhere at F:AT turned me off, because the strategy and mechanics and gameplay all seem too detached from the Star Trek show. Any game based on a licensed property owes the players a game that connects well with that setting, because that is what they are hoping to get. Even the word Ascendancy in the title seems like a warning, because wtf does "ascendancy" have to do with any of the hundreds of episodes and dozen plus movies of the Star Trek franchise?

Strange then that, if my memory serves me OK, guys like Mike and Charlie and Josh who have reviewed it (and many at BGG) says it does feel like an epic Star Trek theme, not a USS Enterprise tactical game but the Federation and other races exploring the galaxy. It's not about Kirk or Picard winning battles or having adventures (there are already a couple of current ST games out their that do that) but seeing which empire (and their credo) becomes the Ascendant one in the galaxy. I feel that it will play, and feel, different with more players and players will get to use more of their empire abilities as a 3-player game does assist a 'tank rush' strategy, especially if one player has had a slow/poor start in exploration - in fact I think it may be a very different game with five players.

Southernman wrote:

Shellhead wrote: At the rate this thread is going, by weekend we will have a mob with pitchforks and torches ready to go after Star Trek: Ascendancy.

I'm a fan of GF9, but the discussions of Star Trek: Ascendancy elsewhere at F:AT turned me off, because the strategy and mechanics and gameplay all seem too detached from the Star Trek show. Any game based on a licensed property owes the players a game that connects well with that setting, because that is what they are hoping to get. Even the word Ascendancy in the title seems like a warning, because wtf does "ascendancy" have to do with any of the hundreds of episodes and dozen plus movies of the Star Trek franchise?

Strange then that, if my memory serves me OK, guys like Mike and Charlie and Josh who have reviewed it (and many at BGG) says it does feel like an epic Star Trek theme, not a USS Enterprise tactical game but the Federation and other races exploring the galaxy. It's not about Kirk or Picard winning battles or having adventures (there are already a couple of current ST games out their that do that) but seeing which empire (and their credo) becomes the Ascendant one in the galaxy. I feel that it will play, and feel, different with more players and players will get to use more of their empire abilities as a 3-player game does assist a 'tank rush' strategy, especially if one player has had a slow/poor start in exploration - in fact I think it may be a very different game with five players.

And that's precisely the problem. The tv shows and the movies generally don't give two fucks about the Federation on grand strategic level. Ascendancy may be set in the Star Trek universe, but it is largely disconnected from the experience of the show, so it misses the mark. Sure, there is exploration, but on the show, the exploration was never about how a given discovery will help the Federation develop. No, the exploration was all about the adventure experienced by the crew of one ship, especially the bridge crew.

I think Dan Thurot said it best:

For me, as a longtime lover of Star Trek, one of the things that appeals to me the most is how Ascendancy truly captures the feel of the “best three” series. The early stages are all about the danger and adventure of exploration à la the Original Series, with entire fleets getting gobbled up by space amoebas or stellar nurseries. Colonization is a testy prospect, ships are sort of slow, you have no idea how the map will shape up. And since the map itself is organic and ever-changing, filled with surprises and deadly corridors and various avenues of approach into hostile territory, each match presents something entirely different. Then you make first contact and the game changes. Now it’s border tensions and stolen research projects and diplomatic wheedling, straight out of The Next Generation, and eventually the escalating alliances and warfare of Deep Space Nine. Remember how the Federation finally got the Klingons and Romulans to put aside their differences to beat the Dominion, so the Dominion teamed up with the Breen to sack Earth, and so on? That’s how the latter third of the game feels, with everyone trying to wreck whichever team is about to dominate the Alpha Quadrant.

He obviously is mistaken and has no idea what he is talking about.

I've not played Ascendancy yet, so I'm really not a good source of info on it. But my impression is that rather than recreating the feel of a Star Trek episode, it recreates the feel of the Star Trek universe. Nothing (that I know of) really pitches Star Trek from the POV of the Klingons or Romulans, but their goals are definitely different from that of the Federation. From a distance at least it seems like Ascendancy recreates that well.