Voidfall

Since the final rules were published I've now played this 9 times:
6 solo
2 co-op 2p
1 tutorial 3p

The first 6 solo games were done pretty rapidly over a period of two months. The last 3 game were done pretty rapidly over a period of two weeks. It's clear that there's something very compelling about the game which makes me play it back to back in spurts. The gap between the first set of games and the most recent set of games was a period of a few months but because of the strong graphic design work I was able to pick up where I left off with relatively little effort. Despite the heavyness of the game, I do think this speaks to how clean the rules are. I originally thought the game might be too long to play with other people and while I still do think that about the co-op game beyond 2 players, the competitive game is surprisingly swift and I could see being enjoyable, even with 4.

On the topic of Mindclash's house style, I really appreciate their commitment to building out the lore of their universes. I'll admit I've only skimmed the pages of background fluff they've put out but the care and consideration they put into world building comes through despite being a cold and analytical euro in play. Their efforts makes a lot of the game feel thematic even if you're probably not actively engaging with the theme while working through your turns. My opinion of the game has only risen with each play and I haven't even started exploring some of the later scenarios and more complex houses.

Glad to hear all this as I have a copy kickstarted. I really like Mindclash's previous work.

Only the one play for me, part of that 3p competitive match.

I enjoyed it enough to want to try again. It was quite exhausting as it is a very dense and demanding game to play, although I felt like I was having enough light-bulb moments toward the end to have a reasonable line of sight into the strategic levers of the design. I'll be better prepared for the next time!

There is something almost Lacerda-esque in that you need to sequence the order of actions to be able to accomplish your core goal, but this then leads to sub-optimal/inefficient plays elsewhere as there are severe constraints on just how much you can accomplish.

For example, I made a big push to grab territory in the final round. In order to do this I needed to play two conflict actions (one of my four card plays plus a bonus picked up along the way, which I had to plan for. I realise in hindsight that if I had been a bit more careful I could have opened this up to three). But I had to first raise a fleet - which needs a different card play beforehand - and to have active ships waiting to deploy before even that with yet another card - and to have resources in place to do all of this before I even began. So my whole round was swallowed up building to this one big push (that turned out to be almost game-winning and probably would have won the day if I had turned left instead of right with my targets); however the by-product was having to do a bunch of other things that I either didn't really need or which were firing off in the wrong order for me to take best advantage off. And all of this was based around deterministic combat outcomes so it very much involves figuring out precisely what you need rather than going big enough and putting some trust in the odds going your way. Plus it was all at the cost of doing other things that needed to be considered and balanced before pushing ahead.

I'm a little on the fence about just how tight everything is, especially with such a vast array of options. Going back to the Lacerda comparison, at least with Vital the options may be layered but they are few and clear whereas Voidfall felt almost overwhelmingly dense at times. This is not necessarily a negative though, as it will likely be better for longevity despite being a very big bump to climb over in the beginning.

As for the theme, I don't know anything about the backstory but I liked that it seems similar to Dune with various factions of Humanity developing divergent socio-technological paths rather than a jumble of space-animals who are designated as military-focused because they have kitty-claws or whatever. It allows for some rational synergy in the tech trees and the desire to struggle over the same colonisable systems.

So a reserved recommendation I suppose - I don't think it's the kind of game where you can go in with any illusions as to what you are about to get into, and if you want to be at the party then you will most likely enjoy the tunes.

mezike wrote: I don't think it's the kind of game where you can go in with any illusions as to what you are about to get into, and if you want to be at the party then you will most likely enjoy the tunes.

I completely agree with this characterization.

I've come to think a few things about strategy in this game in the solo/coop context. I think I really, really like this game with what Mezike said above in mind. I'm not sure the following would hold in multiplayer competitive necessarily which is much more unpredictable.

a) I think having some sort of defensive military tech---even if you're going econ for most of your points---is crucial if it is anywhere on the offer. Even if you're going to win all the combats and have carefully calculated enemy counterattack strength and kept on board corruption low, it is a huge own goal in solo/co-op to consistently lose ships via attrition in this game to voidborne skirmishes. You can't afford it, there are too few opportunities to reinforce. Something like shields, dreadnaughts or carriers for salvo defense, or having enough sector defenses is essential to keep forward momentum.

b) I think getting one sector to 6 population/3 production dials is also essential because of the safe haven rules. The safe havens are a bit of clumsy solo/co-op rule that makes an economic equivalent of the voidborne rifts the enemy gets points for if you haven't completed construction of by the end of the game. Even if you're going military, I think you have to boost one of your sector to 6/3 ideally by cycle 2, so you can finish one of the safe havens. I'm not sure if it's necessary to win the game to close at least one of the rifts, by contrast, though it may be. So even if you're going econ you may have to beeline for a rift to prevent the 30 point punch at the end of the game.

Overall, I find myself going military or flex almost every game. It's something about my instincts in this sort of game, something 4x psychological for me. It's like, once you get the force to conquer your 3rd or 4th system, which you're going to want to do even as a tall econ empire so you have spaces for production guilds, I can't stop myself from pushing for the rifts with what I've built up to do that.

Gary Sax and I played another co-op game of this on the weekend. This time we both picked medium complexity houses and it's amazing how small subtle changes to the cards and house powers can completely upend your intuition on how to play the game. Despite it's heft, the asymmetry is quite economical rule wise in terms of what it changes to the effect it has on how you play.

It's also interesting to see how despite some pretty clear signposting on how to play a faction in a given way, there's a lot of expressiveness and room for your personal preferences to come through in the game. For example, Gary Sax feels that military techs are required to do well with most factions but I like economy and scored a reasonable score without a single offensive or defensive tech on the board.

I think the design on the faction you used, Nervo, is a creative partial inversion of the entire game.

We taught Not Sure this game. I still think it's an excellent design but for a niche audience and you gotta know if you're in the pocket for it. I've become more and more confident about that review of it I posted.

The thing that I think has emerged to me that is a good amendment to that review is that I think you should either play 3 or 4 pip aggressive maps or play coop. Besides learning games (co-op introduces complexity and jaggedness), I don't see the point of competitive Voidfall on unaggressive maps. For our learning game with Not Sure we played a one pip aggression competitive game, which did a good job for a learning game and I'd recommend it if you don't want to go through the (pretty good) tutorial scenario, but is in an awkward place for a real game. For me as a gamer american, I don't know what/who the one pip aggression competitive game is for. It's way too predictable without a potential opponent on your borders or the AI cards flipping up messing up your rhythm and plans.