Infiltration - A Card Game Set In The Android Universe by the Designer of Dominion - In Stores Now Hot

Interested but waiting to see after the dust settles.

I want to see how the map plays out. If it's another game where the map is generated randomly by cards I hope they figure out a way to make it actually work with some level of dependability.

S.

It sounds a little bit like David Ausloos' Rogue Agent...it looks neat, though. I'm not huge on these kinds of games; I tried that LotR card game and it was a little wanky, but this looks better.

The general reports so far are "meh". It's not on the try before buying list for me.

Seems similar reaction to Kingdom Builder.

Yeah, this one looks pretty much DOA...they bought an old DXV design, put the Android art on the cards and his name on the box, and called it a day. I'm not hearing or seeing any compelling reasons to investigate further. Rules pretty much described a "meh" game. Not that I wouldn't try it if it were on offer, but I'm not buying or reviewing it.

I have yet to hear ANYTHING about this game, beyond the fact that it exists. It makes me wonder if DXV might be something of a one-trick pony. Dominion was a hit, but he's released three other games now, and none of them will likely be remembered in five years.

Although I do still kinda like Kingdom Builder. So what do I know?

Thing with this game is, at first, it was sort of a, "Hey, this is kind of a Netrunner knock-off. Since that's out of print, hey, why not give this a shot as a weaker substitute?"

Then...before this even hit shelves...they announce they're reprinting the real deal, and obliterate all interest in this. Why spring for a pretender when the cherished original is coming back into print? That's why this seems DOA now.

It's crazy...they should have very likely sat on the Netrunner announcement until this had at least a chance to sell a few units over the course of a couple of months.

Now here's where I get to tell you why you're wrong, Kenneth.

I agree with everything you said, but there's one key factor you're NOT considering, perhaps: The X Factor.

I, personally, know a bunch of knobs that would pay 20$ a loaf for Donald X shit if it had his name on it. And there's a bazillion Dominionites out there who will probably be the same. So, I think that this will sell OK to the "Vaccarinites" and NetRunner will sell to the Mike Pondsmith crowd and fence-sitters.

But I would be shocked if the Donaldites didn't go completely batshit crazy over this. I mean....a new card game? From Donald "Jesus" X?

Kingdom Builder was so uninteresting that it really scared me from his other designs. They're all try before you buy now. My wife wanted Kingdom Builder until we played it. Glad I save my money because I'd have been PISSED if I bought that at the FLGS for $60 or even online for $40.

I was curious to see if there were any other reviews of this over at BGG...the one I saw, like many BGG reviews, was this MASSIVE wall of text that describes pretty much everything from the box arriving on the front porch to the consistency of the reviewer's stool after playing it. Out of morbid fascination, I pasted it into Word to see how long it was...FOUR THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN WORDS. My. Fucking. God. That's literally FOUR times as long as one of my features. Does anyone actually read 4000 word reviews? It was ELEVEN freaking pages! For a little card game!

Yet another reason why board games criticism is a hopeless cause...when shit like this passes for it...

Maybe he was writing that review as a term paper or something.

Still 400 words short, poindexter!

Have 3 games under my belt now:

I like it, though a few in my group did not. The complaints were that it was too random, and that they felt like the choices were too obvious.

My take is that it is random, but it plays fast and gives you that "oh shit" sensation consistently throughout the game as you adapt to the changing environment. It felt like Dungeon Quest in a way as you were constantly eyeballing the proximity clock and trying to figure out when the best time to start your exit is. But unlike DQ, there is no real player elimination (at least not during the game) and there is often as much or more interaction with other players as there is with the board. I think the people that were upset about the randomness and lack of meaningful choice were trying to plan out a long term strategy- which is tough as I found you often had to change course due to an unfortunate (or very fortunate) change in game state.

One of the complaints was that the best play seemed to be to grab some data fast and then exit, which in hindsight would be a good strategy when you consider only one player safely exited in the three games we played, but the same could be said about Dungeon Quest. This is definitely an "experience game" where half of the fun is seeing what kind of situations play out. An example (that shows the good and the bad):

Our final game (five players) had two operatives deep on the second floor, both with fairly easy access to an elevator exit (removing the need to return to the entrance) and one of them holding the blackmail evidence which gave him another way of making a quick exit. I had stumbled early on to the secret room from the first floor and had been siphoning data and was in the process of grabbing a prototype (for big points) along with another operative and heading for the exit. The proximity meter had crept up high (around 83 I believe) and the alarm was hovering at 3, but there was a chance that the two with prototypes might make it, and the two on the top floor were almost assured an exit.

From that description you'll note that there are only four players mentioned- the fifth had been having a bad run of luck on the first floor and was creeping towards the exit with a small hand of data. On his turn he dropped a card that bumped the proximity meter up 10 (to 93) and said essentially, "Either I win or everyone's fucked." The security roll came up 5- and we were all fucked.

So all of those carefully laid plans got screwed over by one card. This seemed to be one of the big complaints- the person with the best cards has an advantage, and item cards are hard to come by. You really only get them by being first to interface in specific rooms that may or may not show up. The player that screwed everyone over said that since he knew he had no chance of competing on data points, he wanted to screw everyone else over.

Did I mention that we played a 5 player game (the last one) in about an hour? And I don't think adding a sixth player would have add much time to the game at all.

This is not a brain burner.
This is not a "lay out a grand strategy and dominate" game.

Honestly, I think that FFG calling it a "card game" by DXV is also a misnomer, and done to pull in Dominion fans. That's a poor choice, as was the timing of this game in relation to Netrunner. This may have been designed by DXV and it may use cards, but there really is no hand management and you could sub out the room cards for tiles and the item and action cards for chits and have the exact same experience.

One of the players lamented that he thought that it would have elegant mechanics since it was a DXV design- a perfect example of the kind of thought FFG marketing may have been going for, but one that I think backfires.

This is a light, quick, chaotic game full of screwage opportunities. It's fun, plays fast, and is very much beer & pretzels.

Thanks for the insight, and thanks for not going over 4000 words.

That sounds like a lot of fun, actually. Color me intrigued. A buddy of mine played it last night at game night (which I could not attend) and said it was like Incan Gold, only fun.

That is an important distinction.

No problem. I'm sleeping with the teacher, so I'm not worried about my final term paper.

I think Infiltration captures the heist theme pretty well. A bunch of bad dudes on the same job, but always looking out for themselves first. Mr. Pink would fit right in with this game, though he would still be pissed that he has to be Mr. Pink.

Many of the item cards allow you to do two actions that work well together- like whacking a lab tech (which frees up data) and then immediately extract any data in the room. Great for grabbing points before someone else has a chance to do each in turn.

There are cards that allow you to extract data in adjacent rooms- again, great for swooping in under someone else, especially if they just killed a lab tech or cracked a lock and dropped a shit ton of data in that room and were preparing to extract it themselves.

The other thing to note was that we played using the "advanced rule" that used the Extract action rather than the default Download action. I don't even know why Extract isn't the default option, as it mitigates the problem of advantage due to who acts first in a turn when grabbing data- and it makes for more interesting choices. I think that, similar to Quarriors "buy 2" advanced rule, this is something that should always be played.