But it is at least just a restructuring bankruptcy, according to the article “The company will continue.”

Haba is/was an excellent company. Sure, all their games were for (very) young children, but my kids learned to count playing Monster Speziale, and it wasn’t just a roll and move. You could roll and move either clockwise or counterclockwise, which is more decisions than Monopoly, but a number that a kid could handle. Roll die (which I think was 1-2-3 only) and then tap the spaces one direction … does that work? No …. tap the spaces the other direction …. does that work? (You’d also have to determine if you wanted to add or lose the number of slices of pizza on the landing space).

Similarly, Highly Suspect is like a mini-Ricochet Robots, a spatial puzzle where you tilt the board and all the pawns slide to the end of the row (of the little maze like city) and you are trying to get the cop to catch the robbers, but you only get one or two tilts to move them. So, a great idea pared down to something small children can handle.

I remember my mother commenting that Candyland (etc) drove her crazy when I was a child, so any game a 3-5 year old likes that you can tolerate is a win. One that actually inspires kids to learn how to do some math (or thinking about what a board position will be after a move) is a blessing.

Whenever I start up Slay the Spire (via Steam) I’m reminded that there is a Slay the Spire boardgame on Kickstarter. I see posts for it on r/slaythespire. I’ve played 4,000 hours of Slay the Spire, it’s fair to say I like it. I own ~200 boardgames (and have bought and sold ~5x that). So, automatic pledge, right?

Nope.

Apart from my natural reticence with Kickstarter, or the fact that tie-in games are usually bad, there is the simple fact that this game crosses mediums (which, come to think of it, tie-in games automatically do). I think I’ve danced around this issue before, but I’ve also been playing a bunch of Ozymandias (alternating that and StS), and it cemented some of my thoughts on this, so I felt like it might be interesting to discuss.

Lets assume, arguendo, that the Slay the Spire board game developers are honest, competent, hard working and have a ton of board game experience. (For all I know this is true, but that is certainly not the case on many Kickstarter projects). It doesn’t really matter: My goals with StS and boardgames are different.

Slay the Spire is a small exercise in optimization and risk management. Certainly many Eurogames (particularly J.A.S.E. games) exemplify that. So let’s even grant that they can turn this into a decent board game. But when I’m playing Slay the Spire (in steam), I’m getting a fundamentally solitaire experience at my own pace. I normally don’t play too carefully, and many average ~20 minutes (playing at A20, Act I is ~10 minutes, Act II is ~20 and III/IV is ~30-40). I can play slower to improve my win rate, but StS is essentially “Television” for me. Its a (mostly) mindless few hours instead of watching netflix. It’s not a competitive experience, and its not a particularly social experience.

Board games are primarily competitive and social, for me. They are relaxing, but not in the same category of “Television/Netflix.” I have different motiviations between boardgames and computer games, so even a perfect replica of Slay the Spire in board game format might bomb for me.

But what is lost in the board game format of StS (I’m assuming, not having followed it closely):

First, All the computer moderation. Slay the Spire is a deckbuilder (to be sure) but also a roguelike, and part of the joy is having 10+ modifications (via relics). But I don’t have to do anything, I can just click and play, and its handled. In a boardgame, these get overwhelming. In a competitive board game, losing because I forgot Player B has Relic Q (when each of my opponents has ~5 relics)? Ugh. (I now see that the Slay the Spire is a co-op, but it would be the same thing if we lost because we lost track of some modifier….)

A super-fiddly game is made better by an automated moderator that plays the fiddle.

Even Ozymandias (which is basically a board game) takes full advantage of the computer to handle persnickety math, shows you numerical differences in your choices and smooths things out. Calculating and resolving all the battles in 5 seconds instead of minutes of dice rolling, with no mistakes. (It could be done faster, but the computer gives time to see it).

Second, downtime. In the computer games, I take as long or as little time as I want. I get a 100% return on my time. In Slay the Spire or (theoretical) Ozymandias board game, I have downtime. Even if they aren’t fixed fun games (where the fun is divided up between players) strictly speaking, there’s some loss. Ozymandias would take a huge hit unless it managed to do a simultaneous selection.

None of that is to say that these games might not work, but the switching between mediums might mean they work in a way that is very different than what made them addictive as a computer game. (The same way the Sandman, for example, had to rework the 24/7 episode (the one in the diner) because what works in a 20 page comic you can read in 5 minutes does not work as an hour of television).

I suspect the most likely result of the Slay the Spire boardgame will be something like Thunderstone … not a bad game, but one of those games you play a few times and move on from. (Again, that’s not a knock. In the past if I got 5 plays from a board game, I considered that a reasonable purchase, but my standards are higher now).

Of course, it is certainly possible that the mold the developers are aiming for is more Gloomhaven campaign, or an epic four hour adventure. All those would be fine; but again a big change from a pringles like solitaire where I just play after dinner until I’m bored or tired.

I would certainly play the Slay the Spire Boardgame … it might be that what they end up with is satisfying as a board game. But if that is the case, it will scratch a very different itch than the computer game. And given how many board games I have, that’s not an itch I need felt the need to back.

Update — If you are new here from r/slaythespire, I have a number of StS related posts.

• Too Many Words about StS Strategy (Part I and Part II)
• Applying a Psychology Training to Improve at StS and Results

(Further thoughts on Across the Obelisk that weren’t in my review).

Is it literally impossible to win Across the Obelisk on your first play? (Or, more realistically, can an experienced player start a new campaign with no XP and win?) I suspect a great player could, but apart from not having unlocked various cards, the characters are literally weaker. After each (failed) run I’ve got XP that I can spend to boost characters. More damage, more HP, more resistances. An extra mana on the first turn (and mana is saved). And I just unlocked a new equipment type (pets).

Hades really leaned on this, but in Hades it made sense. When you “died”, you were simple returned to the Hell you were trying to escape. You were still you. You retained your knowledge and skills! Slay the Spire doesn’t really have meta-scaling. You have your knowledge (and the in game events do imply you are being reincarnated with some of it), but you start each run with the same deck and one random gift. It’s like Nethack in that the only scaling is that you’ve gotten better at the game.

Old school arcade games were difficult because the designer didn’t want people to play too long on a quarter, but didn’t want game over to be a few seconds. Perhaps the new dynamic is “I want people to feel like they are getting better, even if they aren’t.”

Just a thought.

This article, yada yada yada. See Part I for disclaimer. This covers the basic thoughts for each character, it is not intended to be “card by card complete” or cover all possibilities. Also, while I discuss strategies and archetypes, these are intended as a “Discussion” or suggestions, not as a crutch or exhaustive list. They are just archetypes. For the most part I am not going to get into too many relics in this discussion.

One more definition — A naked pick is picking a card that doesn’t do anything for you yet. (Like taking a Limit Break which doubles your strength bonus, when you as of yet have no way to get a strength bonus). Since this violates the “focus on the near term,” taking a card that is a dead load for the near future and potentially the game indicates that the card has tremendous upside.

And I realize I didn’t really talk about density as clearly as I could. It hurts that there are interrelated concepts, but one idea that a “dense” deck also has is the ability to dump all of its mana into Attack or Defend (as desired). As I mentioned, if you only have strikes or defends (and a five card hand) you will be able to spend three mana on either, but not both. (You may want to split it up, but if you want to go all the way with either, you can’t). If you have only two cost cards, you can (with three mana) only spend two mana. If you have one “attack two” and one “defend two” then its fine that you can’t necessarily play both, because you’ll play the one that matters (and then a one cost card to round it up). Iron Wave gives you attack and defense, but poor ones. Still, with an Iron Wave and two strikes and defends, you have some flexibility. “X cost” cards also let you dump as much as desired into them (with the caveat that it has to be the last card played, mostly).

Also — Something I didn’t mention in the prior article. Sometimes you pick a card knowing that is often dead-weight, but that really helps out in specific fights. Cards may solve a problem. I’ll try to note problems and the counters.

Ironclad

The basic deck is 5x Strikes and 5x Defends. Barely serviceable cards that you should (in general) despise. Ironclad’s bonus card is Bash, which provides two vulnerable and his artifact (Burning Blood) is your healing (at 6 HP/combat). Combined with a nice maximum health, this makes Ironclad a forgiving character. In the early game you block only insofar as you didn’t get any damage, effectively trading HP for murder. Ironclad’s card pool is loaded with big hits — grabbing a quick two-energy front-loaded damage (ideally Carnage) will get you through early Act I. Vulnerable means your attack this turn (and next turn) do 50% more damage, so even with just the starting deck Ironclad can deal out 44 damage in two turns (Bash+Strike/3x strikes) if you draw Bash in your opening hand.

One of Ironclads early problems is the embarrassment of front-loaded damage riches. There are so many decent 2-energy damage cards, you’ll be tempted to load up. But (with only three energy) they’ll simply block each other. (One reason why Ironclad was such a popular “Swap Boss Relic” option for Neow’s gift … Ironclad can exploit the fourth energy, although now with so many damage interactions the original healing relic is also more valuable).

Back before I started tracking, I would often die in late Act I because I’d rely on the healing, get a bit low, hit a bit of bad variance or a rough hallway fight (Gremlin Gang, Slime Gang), and then either die outright or be poorly placed for the boss fight, missing an upgrade or two, and then poof. The classic death spiral. Ironclad can’t totally ignore defense. The healing is a boon, not a crutch.

Once you get past the early game, Ironclad tropes that often work include:

Strength Scaling — Other classes can do this, but Ironclad has numerous ways. New players are enamored of Demon Form (indeed, at low ascensions its an auto-win for me), but the high cost make that suitable for slow fights only. A simple Spot Weakness or semi-scaling like an Inflame or two) is often good enough to handle scaling in Act II. Card coordination (via Headbutt) to re-use a Spot Weakness (or start this and re-use Limit Breaks) can lead to obscene strength. Any “doubling” card can lead to geometric scaling which is why if I lack any strength, I’m still tempted to take a naked Limit Break at the end of Act I, since a single later pick can turn into tremendous upside. With the recent patch, Rupture could be close to Demon Form, because Ironclad has a number of cards that cause damage (such as Combust), and then you also get strength . (Toss in Self-forming Clay and you have the damage synergy archetype). If you have a strength scaling deck, the typical problem is that is is slow (if you are hunting for a specific card, or draw your Limit Break before you have strength) and — particularly in Act III you can be hit very quickly for 40+ damage. You’ll need defense.

The “Infinite” combo — When the opponent is vulnerable, Drop Kick does damage, recovers the mana played and draws a card. It totally replaces itself (a “cantrip”). With a small enough deck, you can draw your entire deck into your hand, then cycle two drop kicks back and forth forever. Especially for slow fights like Champ that give you time to build up, you can take the time to shrink your deck by exhausting cards with Burning Pact or True Grit over a few turns, and then go infinite. (A Flash of Steel doesn’t hurt here, either). “Infinites” have problems with Time Eater and the Heart (who blocks all damage past a certain point on a turn, and has the Beat of Death for each card play) but often you can fall into a real (or semi-) infinite when using exhaust synergies. Infinite Combos are very vulnerable to status being added to the deck, so Evolve/Firebreathing as a counter is reasonable (especially since they don’t take up any space once played).

Exhaust Synergies — Exhausting bad cards is its own reward. You’d like to totally remove them in the shop, but getting rid of a relatively weak card in combat for a long fight is fine. Even better when exhausting a card provides a tangible reward. Compare uncommon power Feel No Pain to Metalicize. If you exhaust one card a turn, they both provide 3 (4 if upgraded) block. But with Corruption the Ironclad can exhaust all his skills the turn he draws them, for free, and provide bonus block. Even without the ability to retain block (see below), a few FNPs may provide 30+ block a turn (particularly against the heart if you can Sever Soul to exhaust the trash the heart gives you). MVP Relic for this is Dead Branch, exhaust, get replacement cards with some of them free! Corruption + Dead Branch is a meme for a reason.

(Sidebar — For a while I had a fear of Dead Branch giving me random bad cards that would clog my deck. I suggest you ignore it, as I learned to. Because the second time through the deck isn’t nearly as important as the first and even without corruption the weight of the misses is more than compensated by the great cards you’ll get. Paul Graham called the Stock Market “Mr. Market” because it would just say “Would you like to Buy X?” and you can always say no. Often Mr. Market offers you trash. “Would you like to buy Pets.com?” but sometimes he offers gold. “Would you like to buy this grossly underpriced commodity?”

The number of times that Dead Branch has a run into a cakewalk — even lacking Corruption — is high, and I don’t recall many fights where it trashed my deck. Obviously with a Runic Pyramid you have to be careful. I’ve bought Dead Branch as a nearly naked artifact, having only my Ascender’s Bane, and then built around it to good effect with all the characters. (That may be overdoing it, but it shows that its possible, even without corruption. With Corruption its gross).

Exhaust strategies are fairly robust, once they get going. But they are slow. Also, since you exhaust cards their is a psychological temptation to take “so-so” cards (because you can exhaust them) and your variance grows…

Status Synergy — Evolve draws extra cards for Status, Fire Breathing does damage per status. and then you load up on Wild Strikes, take Mark of Pain, Reckless Charge, use Second Wind to get rid of them all to block. (Everyone like Immolate already, so that’s just a good pick, but this makes it better). This isn’t great and has the typical variance kills, because your deck might clog before you setup.

Block Scaling — Blockade (or the Calipers) let you save block between turns. Feel No Pain can easily net you a metric ton of block. Entrench lets you double it. Headbutt lets you then put Entrench back on the top of the deck. Slay the Spire limits you to 999 block, but that’s good enough. (Body Slam does damage equal to your block, but is often not necessary if you can get to hundreds of block. Normally you need it when you have decent blocking that doesn’t carry over, then you use Body Slam/Juggernaut as extra, necessary, damage). You can also toss in Juggernaut to do damage each time you gained block, but again that is not necessary.

Take it then Dish It — Eat some damage setting up your strength scaling, then Reaper later end to recover your lost health. A Feed early in the run to meta-scale your Max HP helps, because you can’t recover from lethal damage. Duel Wield or Exhaust to play multiple Reapers (or just having multiples). This is the only type of deck you can really buy brimstone with, in my experience. Brimstone gives you and your enemies strength each turn. It took me many tries to beat the heart using Brimstone and this strategy, but it usually makes it fairly easy to get to the heart….

Of course, for any given archetype you may mix and match. If you have great block scaling, you don’t need anything. If you have great strength scaling you won’t need to block for long, etc.

The Silent

Silent adds Survivor and Neutralize to her basic deck and draws two extra cards on the first turn. She is much more into counter-punching than Ironclad. Weak isn’t great at the start, but gets better as the run goes on (as it knocks of 25% of the damage and that will grow. The Neutralize saves you ~30 damage against the heart if you’ve upgraded it and hit on T2, assuming you weren’t intangible). Silent has a number of reasonable zero cost cards (like Backstab for front-loaded damage), but still likely wants at least one early big hit card, like Predator, Riddle with Holes or Skewer, or Dash (which also does significant defense). Jorbs had a discussion where he points out that Dash is much better than two Iron Waves, because its density makes it more efficient). You also will need a heavy hitter card against Lagavulin, because many Silent 0 and 1 cost cards lose significant value with even a single strength loss.

The card that is now a near auto-grab is Blade Dance. 12 damage for 1 mana is already excellent (better than Ironclad common attacks!), but the list of relics that Shiv gets bonuses (or greatly improves) by itself is amazing — Kunai, Shuriken, Pen Nib, Nunchaku, Ink Bottle, Ornamental Fan, Dead Branch. (There are others, any strength bonus is great). There are a fights where the 4 tempo to play it are a penalty (Time Eater, the Heart) but by then you may have gotten an Accuracy (or some of those relics) and /or you may have a backup scaling and simply not play the Blade Dance during those fights. An additional use of Shivs is to draw them and then Calculated Gamble them away, trading a mediocre later draw to speed through your deck the first time.

Silent — having less damage than Ironclad — has to take more damage to beat the first boss and must also worry more about the Goblin Nob fight. Many of Silent’s better cards are skills, which trigger Nob’s rage. Poison scaling and defense will usually make the Guardian the easiest first boss (Silent is well placed to simply defend and not attack on any given turn), although doing enough damage to avoid the eating the first Fierce Bash may be a problem.

Silent also has decent card control with Well-Laid Plans to hold a card for the right moment. While Ironclad does have some touchy scaling (Limit Break wants to be last), the Nightmare card can scale whatever card you want, assuming you get them into the same hand.

Silent has the following Archetypes, and typically mixes one of the offensive types with one of the defensive types.

The Shiv Deck — As mentioned above. Finisher and Accuracy (and Phantasmal Killer to double damage) add punch. Ironically, Infinite Blades (a shiv a turn) isn’t a must add. I used to auto-grab it, but there are enough opponents who have thorns or punish tempo that now I consider it more carefully.

The Poison Deck — An early Poison Stab, Deadly Poison or Bouncing Flask can help against the first boss, because they are decent damage even if you only hit them every four turns or so. If you can hit them every three turns (or get out a Noxious Fume) you are scaling hopefully fast enough for Act I. Two decent poison cards are good scaling for Act II, and once you add in a Catalyst or two you can suddenly kill almost anything (if you draw them in the right order and survive). Typically the easiest wins for Silent are those with solid poison and defense to survive. Double Catalyst+ ends fights. (Catalyst is an acceptable naked draw, given the amount of poison commons and uncommons).

The Dex Deck –Stack a few Footworks (Feetwork?), and even plain old defends are large. Dodge and Roll provides block for multiple turns, Blur to carry over block. Cloak and Dagger for block + some small attack (and Shiv synergy). Escape Plan will hit more often than not (particularly if you remove strikes for Poison or Blade Dance) and is free. Even very slow scaling

The Intangible Deck –Any character can get Apparitions from the Council of Ghosts event in Act II, but with Wraith Form (and Nightmare) Silent can load up on Intangible Turns. Which is not to say that you need more. But a dozen+ turns of intangible are usually enough with even the most limited damage production. But Silent can (more so than other characters) use even the three turns that are more routine. Silent has discard for tossing unimproved Apparitions (which are Ethereal) to save them for a later turn. Silent has Burst to double the value of each Apparition, and Well Laid Plans to get the cards in the same hand. Nightmare copies cards (effectively quadrupling them!). Six intangible is usually enough defense against the Heart, although you’ll need block for the multi-attack turns and if you can’t avoid the Dexterity loss from Wraith Form that will be a problem (along with the beat of death).

The Shuffler — The deck uses Acrobatics, Prepared, Backflips, Tools of the Trade and Calculated Gambles to race the deck (discarding curses and trashes, but sometimes also Reflex and Tactician for extra cards/mana). The Shuffler shrinks the deck by skipping over the parts that don’t matter. After Image can provide solid block and free cards (Slice or Deflect) show great value. Sneaky Strike is free-ish once you get a Tools of the Trade in play. (And is a decent early pick before hand, to provide a decent punch to Nob or Lagavulin).

The Defect

Disclaimer — My win rate with defect is something like 30% of the other two classes. And its not that I’m dying late game. I just don’t have a handle on him.

Other classes have scaling. The Defect is scaling … sometimes. Defect wins fights by pressing the “End Turn” button after getting setup. Adding orb slots and focus (even just a bit of each, say one Capacitor+ and one Defragment+) then splitting slots between Lightning and Frost is 15 damage and 12 block a turn. More focus and slots provides full block every turn.

Defect suffers the problem of scaling — spending time setting up. Taking ~10 a fight getting setup wears you down over the act. I win much less with Defect than Ironclad or Silent, and looking up my notes, I see — “no healing,” “not enough fast defense,” “too aggressive in pathing,” and then there’s the “never saw enough scaling.”

Capacitor deserves mention as the only card that adds orb slots (Inserter — a homage to my beloved Factorio — and Runic Cylinder relics also provide them). If you see a Capacitor, its a near automatic take (even on floor 1). The runs you skip it and then never see it again will haunt you. Orb slots do have a downside if you want to play and evoke orbs quickly, but its fairly limited in application.

As with orb slots, “Too much focus” is a phrase rarely uttered. Consume is a reasonable early card (early Act I is the time when ‘less slots’ is usually a plus). Biased Cognition (with no way to remove the “lose one focus a turn”) is still a great card, and its existence makes Core Surge (one artifact charge, to hopefully counter the downside of Biased Cog) and Orange Pellets strong selections, even if you have no immediate use for the artifact. (Typically you skip the Biased Cog until you are setup and then the fight is over before the downside really kicks in. And if you you eventually get driven to zero focus, you probably were losing the fight earlier without it).

You don’t need orb slots, you can pump focus and that works (but that also takes card draws). Similarly, you don’t need focus if you have plenty of (full slots). But getting both has a multiplicative effect (there’s that “doubling” again!). But there are also some oddball plays, although rare. Hyperbeam is a powerful card that costs focus, and Plasma Orbs provide mana and aren’t affected by focus loss. (Even worried about Focus Loss, Hyperbeam and Biased Cog are still worth taking, as they end fights).

Apart from focus/slot scaling, Defect has still more. Loop triggers your first orb multiple times. A great pick because for one card and one mana you get double or triple value out of one orb for the rest of the fight. Echo Form doubles your first card play (the second one doubles your first two card plays). Creative AI is long fight scaling in a can, because the “one power a turn” you get will (eventually) give you other forms of scaling. Amplify doubles powers. Scaling, Scaling, Scaling.

Which can overwhelm the deck and then you die because of a lack of front loaded block. My last run was an early Runic Pyramid, Consume+, sustain with a Self-Repair (heal 7 at the end of combat), and access to Frost and Darkness orbs. Easy boss at Act I, grab a mana relic, and then boom, dead after the first 4 hallway fights when I drew no block against a 24 point attack on Turn 1. Boot Sequence blocks when you are most likely to need it, even though it slows the time to get to your good cards by a draw. As always, there’s a balance.

In reading the above, I suspect that my problem may be the following — I am too focused on the future and not on the next five floors, so I should focus on that and not scaling. And literally after I wrote that sentence, I won by getting — massive scaling. (I also got healing in an early Bird-Faced Urn (heal 2 HP per power) and a Creative AI (one power a turn), so once I set up my frost orbs and focus, I could fully heal). Even then it was touchy, because I decided (rightly or not) to lose half my maximum HP to take the apparitions, which made fights easy when they appeared early and near lethal when they didn’t. (I actually would have lost to Shield and Spear, but I had gotten the Lizard’s Tail, which saves you from dying once). So the lesson is — I don’t know. Sometimes you just get lucky.

The Defect Archetypes

The Thunderer — Lots of lightning orbs. Electrodynamics to handle multiple enemies. Static Discharge to add or cycle the orbs. A lot of my early (pre-ascension) victories used this, but as I increased the difficulty this was too fragile. (Thunder Strike as scaling isn’t really necessary, either, unless you have no focus). But I’ve found it more reliable to …

Mr. Freeze — … load up on Frost Orbs. Any archetype can suffer a bad hit on the first (few) turns, but frost orbs at least limit the damage to that time. You’ll need a way to damage your opponents, but with enough block, cycling through your front loaded damage may be fine (albeit slow), or you can have a single lightning (or darkness) orb.

The Cheapskate — Lots of free cards, some card draw and an All For One to grab the free cards back. Often you back into this with OK cards that help with the relics you’ve got (FTL with Shuriken, a Recycle to thin out a deck) and then get the offer. Hologram — already a reasonable pick to get back a Boot Sequence you don’t need on T1 or a Go for the Eyes for weakness — can be used to redo the All for One.

All The Powers — As mentioned above, Creative AI gets one power a turn. With Heatsinks, those get you cards. With Storm they get you lightning orbs (with Mummified Hand you get discounts). And the powers will get you more stuff. The obvious downside is Awakened One (who gets stronger with each power you play) but with some careful restraint you can setup and scale faster than she can, then wait for her to die before resuming. (And sometimes your combo just goes off, you play 20+ powers, don’t care that she scales, and wins).

The Multi-Darkness — Usually mixed with Frost orbs, you simply sit and wait for a darkness orb to get big, then dual- or multi-cast it (or even single cast).

I’m sure I’m forgetting stuff, but this is already nearly four-thousand words long.

Advice for Watcher — Take some overly powerful cards, do math, make sure you don’t get stuck in Wrath form on a turn you’ll die, win!

Next Time in Part III — The Many Deaths the Spire has to offer!

This article covers my (evolving) thoughts about the Slay the Spire videogame. There are (much) better players than me (many can be found on r/slaythespire or on twitch). I’ve watched hundreds of hours of Jorbs (Youtube, Twitch) who is currently tied for the world championship at A20 heart kills. You could get better advice by watching him for a long time and osmosis. But that requires, you know, hundreds of hours. (While there are other good streamers playing, Jorbs’ entire vibe reminds me of my graduate school boardgaming club, so he’s my personal favorite).

I normally play at Ascension 15, because while I can win at Ascension 20 it’s an admittedly rare event and I like having a win rate in the double digits. (With my recent improvement I may up the level a bit). Also, I don’t normally play Watcher that much, which means that there may be some watcher-specific exceptions I don’t mention (and my watcher advice is less trustworthy). I play with the goal of “Killing the Heart.”

As always, I assume you are familiar with the basic mechanisms, rules, etc. Many of these examples will use numbers appropriate for Ascension 15 (enemies values vary based on Ascension Level).

Definitions and concepts

Deck — Often when I say deck, I mean “All your cards plus all your relics and the current potions.” Just assume the latter part.

Position — Deck plus current state (hit points, number on relics that count, etc). “Positioning” means trying to win the fight and also get all of your relics “set up” for the next fight.

Front-loaded damage — “How much damage can I do without setting up a particular combination?” There’s no exact measure of this, but a decent proxy is “How much damage could I do if I played all of my attack cards once?”. Also called “Fast” damage. Front-Loaded block is similar, but just for blocking. Improving your front loaded damage is generally first thing you want to do at the game. There is also front-loaded block.

Scaling damage — “How much damage can I do once I get my combos set up?” If you only have front loaded damage, when you go through your deck a second time, you can only double how much damage you’ve done. After Act I, this isn’t fast enough (typically) to kill the elites and bosses unless you have great scaling block, which lets you chip away slowly. Front loaded damage grows linearly. You do roughly X damage per unit time (turn or deck cycles). Scaling damage grows faster (sometimes only a little faster, sometimes much). The most obvious form of scaling for each character is Strength (Ironclad), Poison (Silent), Orb Slots/Focus (Defect). Typically to improve your scaling damage you are not playing some fast damage in order to setup your scaling.

Meta-scaling — Something that doesn’t scale in this fight, but makes your position better across multiple fights. Things like Feed (which improves Max HP if it strikes the killing blow).

Semi-scaling — A small one-time bump. Inflame (with +2 strength) is semi-scaling. It makes all of your attacks going forward bigger (which is nice) but it will never scale again. (Again, this is my own coinage, but I wanted to be able to differentiate between cards like Inflame and cards like Spot Weakness, which boosts strength and may do so multiple times.

All Out Attack (AOA) — An attack card that damages all enemies (useful for hallway fights that have multiple enemies, or elites that have minions). For some reason this appears to be called “AOE” often, but my blog, my acronym.

Variance — You could have a “good” draw (all the cards in the right order) or a “bad” one. You will hit some good and bad events, relics, etc. Consider the very first fight you might have versus a cultist as Ironclad. Basically, you need to do 50 damage and he attacks for 0,6,11,16, etc. If you get a good draw, you’ll bash+strike (17 damage on T1), 2x strike and defend (18 damage, take 1) on Turn 2, and then on T3, you can either hit for 18 (and kill) or defend x2, strike (6 damage, take 1) and then kill the next turn. You have ended the fight losing 1-2 damage. The worst possible opening is to draw all of your defends on T1, when they are useless. If you draw only strikes (not even your Bash! Its your bottom card) on T2 you do 18 damage and take 6. You will likely take 15+ damage for this fight.

“High-rolling” — “Getting lucky.” Jorb’s speak (and maybe twitch speak). When someone says “Maybe I just have to high-roll this next encounter” they mean “I need something good to happen, therefore I assume it will happen.” Usually this means hitting a good event, getting a good reward, having a great draw for a combat, etc. Bridge players should be familiar with this. Once your deck gets solid you worry about low-rolling (what if the one key card I need is the bottom card of my deck? what is the worst possible elite fight I can face)) Similar to a bridge “safety play.”

Density — If front loaded damage is “how much damage can I do once through the deck” density is that damage divided by number of cards. A “dense” deck is better because you are reducing variance, and on any given turn you will be more likely to be able to have the right cards for what you want to do.

Efficiency — How much damage can you do per mana spent on damage? (OR how much block do you get per mana spent blocking). Scaling damage is often very mana efficient, but slower than a comparable front-loaded card. If you drop a Noxious Fumes, your opponent will take triangular damage (1+2+3+4+…) with no further expenditure.

Conversion — On some turns you don’t get attacked, so you want to sink as much mana as possible into damage dealing (or setting up scaling, etc). Other turns you’ll want to block for as much as possible. If you have the wrong cards (due to variance) you may not be able to convert any mana to attack or defense. A basic deck (with only strikes and defends) will not be able to convert all three of its mana to attack every turn. If you had a card “2 Mana for 12 Damage” that is two strikes, but its denser and also means that (when you draw it) you are much more likely to be able to convert all your mana to damage that turn (and other turns).

Coordination — Some cards require being in your hand at the right time (or in the right order). I’ll call this “coordination.” (There appears to be no standard phrase for this). Watcher (who holds some cards) starts with a bit of coordination, but most decks don’t start with any.

(Density, Efficiency and Conversion are all related, but slightly different. I’m not sure my thoughts on these are clear, but I wanted to define them in case I use them).

Sustain –Another word for Healing. I’ll try to use Healing, but “sustain” appears to be a common phrase in the community.

Why Slay the Spire is addicting. Its not something you notice at first, but the enemies you face in the Spire challenge your deck in multiple ways. There aren’t nearly as many enemies as in (say) Nethack, but each Elite and Boss comes at you in a different way. (Even the later hallways fights). To take a concrete example from Act III — the Giant Head gives you a few turns of relative peace, then starts hitting hard every turn, starting at over 50% of your base health and ramping up from there. He (?) takes 520 points of damage to kill. You simply can’t defeat him without scaling (counting intangible as scaling block). AOA is no better than regular attack.

Compare to The Reptomancer. Her ~200 HP doesn’t need nearly as much scaling, but her minions are going to hit for significant, life ending damage on Turn 2. ~25 points of AOA by the end of Turn 2 are a god send. If not, you’ll need ~60 points of very fast damage or lots of block. The Nemesis is a coordination problem. Some turns damage is nigh-useless. (You can often beat it with scaling block but if your deck is well coordinated, the Nemesis is easy).

Some deck builds plow through one and die to the other. A good deck can reasonably handle either (and some bad luck, as well). Jorbs (in one of his videos I can’t remember) called these various ways the game challenges the deck “orthogonal.” You don’t just need “more” of one strategy to beat both of them. You need different combinations.

General Guidelines

A good deal of getting better at Slay the Spire is just knowing the game. If you know all the possible enemies (and their attack patterns), rewards, events, then you will do much better. Most of really high level play is thinking “well, what is coming up that I am weak against?” and “what events might I see, and do I want them or hallway fights?”

Take as many elite fights as you think you can. They provide relics (and improved card rewards). Also, hallway fights get harder as you go further in the act, but Elites don’t. They are also more predictable (fewer options you can face and they are generally more scripted than hallway fights).

Hit Points are insurance against bad variance. But like any insurance there are good and bad deals. If you have a rest then a boss, being able to model the fight in your head tells you whether you need to rest. What you have (etc) tells roughly how the fight will go. If you are 99% likely to win the fight, then resting is a waste if you could have upgraded (or grabbed the key). If you are only 10% likely to win the fight (but 60% with more HP), resting is great.

Floors are a finite resource. Don’t waste them. Ideally, every floor makes you stronger:

• Hallway fights offer card rewards. Don’t automatically take them, but you’ll need to see a good number of cards to get offered those that improve your deck. Hallway fights also offer potions (sometimes). Especially in the first three floors of an Act, the hallway fights are “easier.” (But each Act ramps up the difficulty).
• Elites provide a relic as well as the same rewards a hallway fight can. (And the card rewards are more likely rare cards). But they are difficult. Particularly in Act I an Elite will average 30+ damage against a deck with just a starting relic and a card or two.
• Campfires let you heal or upgrade a card. In a perfect world, you’ll not need to heal and will upgrade a great card. But often you need to heal either to survive or to take an extra elite fight.
• Shops let you buy better stuff and/or remove a card from your deck. If you’ve played Dominion (or any deckbuilder) you’ll know that removing a starting card is incredibly powerful, improving density and reducing variance.
• Treasures (chests) provide relics.
• The end of act boss will give you a rare card and a boss relic (although not at Act III).
• Note that to get to the heart you must sacrifice one chest, one campfire and take a ‘super’ elite (who will get either metalicize, strength or regeneration).

Focus on the near term. Can you handle all the potential next elite fights (or most dangerous next elite?) Make your deck ‘good enough’ to deal with it, then turn your gaze to the next problem (the boss, etc).

Good Enough is good enough. Sometimes a weakness can be fixed with a single card, maybe two. Turning a “Good enough” into a strength often weakens other aspects. Adding a scaling card means you’ll draw one less card of some other category that turn. There are lots of areas you’ll need to improve –front loaded damage, front loaded block, all out attack, scaling damage, scaling block, healing, card draw, and mana to pay for all your new cards (Few decks need all, almost no deck needs all equally). Sometimes what’s “good enough” in one Act needs to be buffed again in further acts.

If you have a weakness, the right potion gives you more time to find a card/relic that fixes it. Before I would use potions whenever they seemed to apply, but now … if a potion fixes a key weakness, I hold it until I’m desperate fight or the end of act boss. If the potion is a strength I already have, I’m willing to let it go depending on how much health it saves me and how likely I am to get another potion soon, especially if I am already full.

Skipping cards is not a bad option! Adding a card necessarily increases variance. Take a deck with a nice balance of front-loaded damage, block, scaling damage & block, healing, card draw, etc, and then double it. Still the same balance, but the variance goes way up. (Any Race for the Galaxy Fans will remember the number of explore powers grows in each expansion in the first arc, to help compensate for the increased variance). Card removal is also very good.

Be flexible! I mention archetypes below but when a reward happens, examine what you have and see if there are good/bad interactions. You can’t force the game to give you what you want, so you’ll have to make do. (This is also the “good enough” mantra).

If you are losing, take risks! Hope to high roll, etc. If you are winning, then solidify your position, consider defending against low-rolling, etc.

Of course much of the above advice depends on being able to evaluate your position. Slay the Spire strategy is an evaluation problem. Being able to model (in an intuitive way) the likely outcomes of a deck versus a specific elite fight (average HP loss, variance, etc) is hard. Better players do this much better, and that is hard to teach. You’ll learn by being wildly over- and under-optimistic. This guide can’t really help with that. Only experience can.

The (Basic) Plan

No Plan survives contact with The Spire. Good cards can be bad in the right situation. Vice versa. There are no hard and fast 100% rules. But there are guidelines. Here’s the basic flowchart, focusing on the early game.

1. You need more front loaded damage. That’s your first weakness to fix. Even early hallway opponents take 50 damage or so to kill. Act I Elite fights take 90+ damage to kill and will deal real damage. Your starting deck does ~18/turn (if you don’t defend and draw smooth). Not enough. In particular, you need a plan to deal with Gremlin Nob who scales his damage for every skill you play (punishing defensive cards). A potion can be a big part of this, particularly if you need to hit an elite on floor 6.
2. You’ll want some all out attack, particularly before Act II (where two of the elites and many of the hall way fights have multiple targets). But good AOA should be grabbed as early as it shows up, because its also front-loaded damage and the Sentinels elite fight is possible on Act I.
3. Don’t just grab every single damage card you see. You want efficient cards. If you take five “slightly better strikes” then your deck will bloat and you’ll need to take more cards to block and scale just to be equal. Your variance will shoot through the roof during Act II, and you will die, and your parents will mourn you.
4. Campfires — Upgrade key cards as possible. Rest if you are likely to die before the next campfire.
5. Once you have a steady enough source of damage, start improving defense. Ideally this is after Nob. You can start in the middle of Act I, because the early hallway fights in Act II can hit for 20 points on the first turn. Its common to have enough damage to take out the first Boss, get a mediocre card and relic, and then get slammed right away in the first few floors of Act II and be on the ropes heading into your elite fight — a downward spiral that requires a high-roll or you die.
6. As soon as you can, start removing cards (unless there are better options of course). As I mentioned in a comment on an earlier thread, when I win it seems like I have (on average) removed at least half of the starting strikes and defends from my deck. This reduces variance and improves density (etc).
7. You need to be able to deal with the first Boss. Obviously which boss you face will determine how much front loaded damage versus block and scaling.
8. By the end of Act I you should have a vague idea of what your decks strengths and weakness are, and an idea as to which relics/cards/etc “fill in the gaps.” (Your Boss Relic and Rare Card will further define your deck). By the end of Act II you’ll need almost certainly need scaling (either scaling damage or block) to deal with the Boss (and later enemies). Your deck may have an archetype … you shouldn’t force it into those, but as in Chess (or any game), if you recognize a position you will probably play it better. There are plenty of “weird” wins, but — at least for me personally — being able to say “My deck is an X type” lets me easily make the jump to “And when I’ve played X types before, I need to do A/B/C to win”.
9. In Act II you must pick up scaling (if you don’t already have it, or have some insane front-loaded damage) and generally improve for the Act II Boss. But other weaknesses will become apparent and must be address. (Defect often needs healing by Act II).
10. By this point you have probably added enough cards that you’ll need some card draw and/or searching to get to key power(s) or any lynch-pin cards you have. Again, you don’t want to overdo it, like the Dominion Village Idiot (the deck that adds a bunch of cantrip card draws, but has nothing really important to do with any of the cards drawn). In Act I you often play your deck a few times (especially in Elite fights) but now in Act II the second time through your deck isn’t nearly as important as the first time. You might get lucky and get all your setup cards on Turn 1, but if you low roll then being able to cycle through the deck the first time is very important.
11. Act III is more of the same — now hallway fights can hit for 40 and the Elites are tougher, but you should have powered up to compensate. Scaling block (and being able to draw and play more cards than you could in earlier acts) really come into play.
12. As you have more combos and items, specific circumstances likely dominate general advice. But you fix weaknesses, try to push strengths. Even by the beginning of Act II you’ll (hopefully) have relic combos, so now you are trying to find things that really work well with multiple cards (or across multiple aspects of your deck). The Elites/Boss can still kill you, but now is also the time to figure out how you are going to deal with Act IV (The Shield and Spear and the Heart). If you are doing well you may have “locked in” your potions for the heart fight. If not, you’ll have to use them to survive.
13. Also in Act III you’ll need to pick up any keys you’ve missed.
14. Finally, beat the Act III boss, then go onto Act IV. Last chance store for that key missing item or potion.

Pathing

Here’s an great act one path. Three easy hallway fights (to get damage and a potion), an event or two, a campfire to upgrade (or rest), an elite fight, an event, the chest, a rest, an elite fight, a rest, an elite fight, a store (to spend all that money) a rest and then a boss. I’m always looking for campfires and elites, and sometimes stores.

Upgrades are your friend. Need front loaded damage? Upgrade a damage card. Need block? Upgrade a block card. Your variance is never hurt. And by the late part of the act, Elites are often better than hallway fights. Late Act hallway fights may hit for more than elites. They get tougher as the act goes on (and you see more of them). A floor 6 Nob and a Floor 14 Nob hit for the same. A floor 14 hallway fight is more dangerous than a floor 6 hallway fight (and before you hit it, you are less likely to guess what will be there). And of course you want the Elite rewards.

So I simply look for the most campfires and elites. The hard questions are: should I take the super-elite now? Is your deck ready for it? I try to take the super elite as soon as my deck feels like ahead of average, because leaving the super elite for Act III forces you on pathing that may be terrible. Question marks are more random and could still be fights, but could also be a chest or event or store. Events are generally slightly better for you than not (“Spin the Wheel” is 66% good, 33% bad, strictly by outcomes. That’s typical), but can be bad. Hallway fights are more consistent. A lot of whether you want a late hallway fight is “Is your deck ready for the boss?” If not, a hallway fight is a necessary risk to get a good card reward and/or potion. The “Fight vs Question Mark” is definitely an area where knowing all the possible outcomes (and technical details like which events can show up where) and a good evaluation function help.

Coming In Part II, discussion of the main characters, typical deck strategies, and another few thousand words!

One of the most unusual bridge books I’ve read is Kim Frazer’s Gaining the Mental Edge at Bridge. Unlike the vast majority of bridge books, there is practically no advice on bridge. This is all about “how to think” (a topic that I love enough to have a category in this blog for). Bridge forms the majority of the examples here, but apart from that these articles would not be out of place in any coaching symposium.

Kim was an international caliber shooter who took up bridge and later represented Australia in International events, so she has definitely “walked the walk” in two separate sports. There are chapters on focus, positive mindsets, mental preparation, rehearsal, match preparation & fitness, relaxation, goal setting and tracking.

The book itself was interesting — I don’t think much of it will come as a surprise but having it all done in a nicely packaged book (and providing references to sports journals, etc for more information) is good. I’ve started to try and build up a routine for the playing of bridge hands (still more forgotten than observed) so as to reduce the number of stupid errors. In fact, the first night (on BBO) I did it, I think I played well and then I went and forgot to look at the checklist this week, didn’t use it, and had a large number of errors. (The checklist is just a routine to do at the start of each hand …. say “Focus” to start the routine, note the board information (dealer,/vulnerability) count the HCP, decide on my opening bid (should it pass to me), and my likely continuations, responses.

I normally do this (in some shape) on most hands, but not in a formalized way. But (as per the book) I wrote out a checklist and used it, to good results (the times I remembered).

While thinking about this training, I realized that I could run a quick experiment on the chapter on goal setting and tracking using … Slay the Spire. I mean, while this book is aimed at Bridge it is not specifically for it, and right now my StS play is much more prevalent. (And is a solitaire game). Consider it a training run.

So — what are my goals? I’d like to improve my win rate (a win defined as “Beating the corrupt heart at ascension 15” (which is what I normally play at). There is a “Victory?” where you win without getting to the heart, but I consider that a loss. It means I’ve forgotten to claim one of the three keys required to unlock the fourth act.

Control Data

Anyway, the first part of goal setting was to set a record keeping standard. I decided to review the last 50 runs I had for each of the three main characters I played (I do not particularly enjoy playing Watcher, so I rarely do). Fortunately StS keeps a record of runs, so I pulled out some basic information (like which floor I died on) and put them into an excel spreadsheet.

Here are the stats:

Died during….	Character — Ironclad	Character — Silent	Character — Defect
Act I (Exordium)	10	7	3
First Boss	6	7	6
Act II (The City)	11	16	21
Second Boss	3	3	5
Act III (The Beyond)	3	3	5
Third Boss	2	4	1
Act IV Elites	1	1	3
The Corrupt Heart	3	4	4
Victory!	11	5	2
Checksum	50	50	50

It struck me as odd that the Second Boss and Act III numbers matched, but I doubled checked and its just a coincidence.

First thought — I won at a 12% rate, which was lower than I thought (I would have guessed I won at a 20% rate overall), but perhaps I am just deluding myself. I do think I had some bad luck (a certainly have a better than 4% win rate as defect!) so I would expect over the next 150 games to improve the rate in any case. The book states that I should set a goal that seems difficult but achievable. Let’s try for a 25% win rate overall (doubling the control).

I also need to build a checklist for the game, so I did. (Commentary in Italics)

• Start of Act
  • Examine the floor layout, pick likely path and alternates if I get good/back luck.
  • Note who is the end of act Boss!
  • (Act I only) Decide on Neow’s gift (a special bonus you get at game start), re-evaluate
• Checklist for each fight/event
  • Upon revealing the enemies, decide on how dangerous this fight will be (win easily, win but take significant damage, likely die, etc).
  • Note relics that I have that may have an interaction
  • Set out my goal for the fight is (Not just winning while taking as little damage as possible, do I want to set up relic counts for the next fight, etc).
  • Decide on general fight strategy …. if I will likely be using a potion(s) (In general the fight strategy will be set by how my deck is built and not change much from floor to floor, but I wanted to explicitly call out this step).
  • Per Turn Checklist:
    • Examine hand, enemy action (if varied)
    • Is my luck good/bad enough to change strategy? (Maybe I’m getting killed an need to drink a potion or assume a good draw next turn….or maybe things have gone well so I can shift from “just win the fight” to “win the fight and set up my relics counts”)
    • Determine candidate plays, pick one (may iterate if plays draw cards).
  • (For events this is basically the same, but simplified since the fight is “picking which event outcome to take”)
• Post fight analysis
  • Did I accurately judge the fight? Did I miss anything that I could have done better?
• Post-fight rewards
  • Examine offered rewards
  • State how each option affects my deck. Do I need it to cover a weakness (a specific enemy/elite), or to solve a general problem (front loaded damage/scaling damage/blocking).
  • Double check for good/bad interactions. Look at your deck and relics when deciding!
  • Decide which is best and take it (or skip).
  • Determine a rough “State of the game” (my ‘equity’ in the game). (Don’t need an exact number, but has it gone up or down).
  • Adjust strategy based on state of game. Pick next floor.
• Post-game analysis.
  • Record tracking information
  • Write up a quick summary as to why I think I won/lost
  • Think of at least one positive and one “need to improve”

Again, I probably did a lot of this automatically, but there are a few things I’m calling out to myself — Making sure to double check potions and relics (because forgetting to use them is a big mistake).

Things to track:

I’ll track everything as before, but also keep track of my mistakes and notes. (For the above, I didn’t show it but I also noted which enemy I died to).

“Oops” Mistakes — Playing too quickly (if I make a move I want to “take back” then that’s a mistake. You can quit a fight and restart, but I’ll only do that if I make an actual misclick. I’ve been somewhat casual about that, but the real goal of this is to slow down and think more — which is the one skill that translates directly to bridge). In order to make this more “Apples to Apples” I’ll divide this by # of floors which isn’t an exact measure since not all floors can have them, but is at least reasonable.

Why did I lose — For my losses, I will categorize them as follows. I’ve decided to assign points to each category, with a total of 10 points.

1. Too Aggressive — Taking an upgrade when I should have rested, and in general not respecting that.
2. Too Passive — The downside of that is not recognizing when I’m poorly placed and need to be taking more short term risks to be able to face the next boss, etc. Note that I think I can be too passive and aggressive in the same game (obviously at different times).
3. Gross Oversights — I missed something and it got me (missed a relic interaction, etc). I’d really like this number to be low … that’s the point of the checklist. These are things that get me killed or a huge chunk of HP.
4. Math mistakes — Sometimes you have to just run the numbers.
5. Bad micromanagement of fights — Small errors in fights that cost a HP here and there, missing subtle interactions.
6. Bad Luck — Sometimes you just don’t get offered great cards, you bottom deck the fights, etc. Things that are outside my control. In theory there should only be points in this category on half (or less) of my games, but sometimes you just lose without doing anything wrong. (Negative Points means I had good luck and wasted it), so if I assign less than 10 points, I’ll dump the rest here.

When I win I will assign a “Good luck” score, how much was it just destined (because I got great cards/relics, etc).

As I normally do, I will rotate characters (Ironclad, then Silent, then Defect), just to match the controls.

Final thoughts (before starting)

Just looking at the stats was useful, because I have noticed a few things:

I play Act I too aggressively as Ironclad. Ironclad’s “schtick” is that he does a lot of damage and heals a bit after fights, and I clearly rely on that too much and end up dying in the first act (or at the first boss) much more so than other characters. My Ironclad win rate is higher (caveat for small sample size), but many of the runs are short, quick deaths.

I may be too passive with the other two characters …. For the silent/watcher (who don’t automatically heal) my play gets through Act I but am not well placed and die in Act II. I suspect I am not taking enough fast damage or all out attack.

I need to respect the Second Act more and start looking “past the first boss” when I think I have it beaten.

Let the games begin.

Update — After thinking about it (and playing a round of games while I was editing this), I think that “Bad Luck” should probably average 3. Jorbs only wins 70% of the games, so assuming that 30% are unwinnable at my level of play seems reasonable. (He’s on a higher ascension, but a better player). I’m not going to agonize over it too much (especially since it would lead to negative thinking, a “no-no” in the book.) I had a few games where things just didn’t seem to line up….

During the Steam Winter Sale I picked this up for $12 ish. This is another rogue-like (similar to Dicey Dungeons), except that your character is basically:

• A Dominion deck, plus
• A Collection of power-ups, plus
• a few stats (HP, max HP, $$, etc)

And as you “Climb the Spire” you gain new cards, trash a few old ones, and get the power ups.

Like FTL, the game isn’t impossible to beat, but it definitely takes some finesse. And while there’s no “Easy/Normal/Hard” once you finally beat the game with each character you can start trying to be the “Ascension” game with increasing levels of difficulty. I thought after 20 hours it was getting some what samey, but even Ascension Level 1 adds a fair amount.

And — you know — $12.

Rating — Suggest

As a big fan of High Frontier, one of my regrets for this years GoF is that I didn’t get to try Leaving Earth. (And in a teeth-gnashing development, Mrs. Tao played it and liked it!) Well, we had a game day last weekend, and one of our coworkers owns that as one of the games in a tiny collection (he’s more a rocketry history enthusiast). So a copy arrived!

I missed that game, too.

But we borrowed his copy and I read the rules. There’s much to like:

• The genre feels right. I could do without the entire chance that you get to Phobos and say “That’s no moon!” but hey — the 50s were days of wonder (from a Space Race perspective). And the bureaucratic nature of the space agencies …. lovely. Losing unspent budget is one of the more delicious rules I’ve encountered0.
• Graphically beautiful. ‘Nuff said.
• Like High Frontier, Leaving Earth models fighting Tsiolkovsky’s rocket equation well. There is math (that’s unavoidable) but its understandable. To run a big mission you have to expend a lot of rockets and you need stages.
• Fun research rules: For each tech you get you build a deck of three cards (without looking). Whenever you use the tech shuffle up and flip one an get a success or failure (major or minor). Rockets that fail may not fire (minor failure) or have a rapid unscheduled disassembly (major). If you drew a bad card, you can get rid of it for $5 ($25 is your yearly budget). If you drew a good card you can get rid of it for $10! Why do that…. well, if you never get rid of it, can you really be sure your rocket won’t fail when it’s the final stage of a Mars probe … where nobody is around to fix it (or after you’ve spent 5 stages getting it there?) — If your deck only has one success card, you get rid of it for free. Between $10-$25 (plus costs for parts expended in testing) you can prove a technology. Or you can just keep using it and slowly gaining confidence that the deck is all successes (but never knowing for sure). It’s a risk/reward.
• More risk/reward. Send an astronaut on a mission or not? They aren’t cheap to train (thematically correct that they aren’t free … but let’s be real, it costs millions of dollars to train them, not 20% of NASA’s yearly budget) but they all have benefits (converting specific major failures to minor failures, for example) …. but if they die that’s negative VP.
• As for the math …. The rules provide good example missions, including one involving leaving stuff behind in orbits and re-joining with it (which requires a technology). Leaving Earth’s (LE) mechanisms differ from High Frontier’s (HF), but like synchronous orbits you arrive in the same place.

So I setup a solo game and worked through an easy mission (winning) then a harder set of missions (failing).

And here’s where I started to feel the big difference. In HF, you can play a variety of missions and rules. The scenario may guide you, but it may not. In LE the missions change the game in the sense of “Well, the superpowers have decided that sending a probe to Mars is more important than a manned lunar mission, so let’s do that, boys!” but you are always working from the same (common) set of parts. Your Juno/Atlas/Soyuz/Saturn rockets stay the same from game to game.

HF forces you down different paths. A game where you build a solar sail driven raygun robonaut will naturally play out differently than your E-M buggy. It drives your mission and paths. More subtly, you can tweak your fueling and time vs fuel costs to  a much greater extent. LE does have this by combining rocket stages, but even by the third game this felt somewhat repetitive and while looking up a rules question  I stumbled on a “Book of Missions” that just laid out “Well for this mission the following stages are optimal.” (I didn’t read it, but just glanced at it).

I then tried two multiplayer games (with the TaoLing). Tense games. But I’m also less enthusiastic than I was pre-rule reading.

Firstly, a minor launch failure on your first rocket is wonderful. You chuck it for $5 and the minor failure (unlike success or major failure) does not use up the rocket. So, you are ahead of someone who has a success but pays $10 to thin out their deck to prove it. (You are up $5 and a rocket). This — coupled with the paranoia of even after 5-7 checks wondering (what if there’s a disaster lurking in the deck) makes proving out nice. I’m not sure how I feel about this. There are some catchup rules, but there’s also some snowballing. I can’t claim this is a dealbreaker (since I play HF).

Secondly, this is much more a push your luck game. Which is fine, but it’s a push your luck brain burner that’s slow. So in my last game I made a relatively low-risk play of sending up a mechanic to orbit with two capsules to earn the “Space station” mission. No, I hadn’t tested life support, but the deck is 4/6th successes, 1/6 minor failures and 1/6 major failures (I didn’t know this at the time, but I knew it was roughly 50+% success). In order to fail I had to draw two major failures (since I had the money to pay to remove the first failure, it would not be redrawn). I rolled snake eyes (1/36…actually slightly less likely because cards not dice) and so my 6 VP for first space station became negative 2VP (death) and  a bunch of time and money lost. On the other hand, I then later did a daring “Don’t test everything, let’s just have a Soviet-style run for the Moon” and risking 3 years budget on unproven rockets and I got a yahtzee. So, it balances.

BUT …. dice versus cards. If I get a bunch of bad cards, that means that other people are getting less. Compare that with HFs hazard dice. A minor point, perhaps (and HF is a longer game where everything can hinge on a roll, so that’s not a downside). You never have to make a roll in HF if you don’t want to, and any events that happen happen to everyone. They may hurt someone much more than another, but it feels linked.

I do have a few nitpicky rules which could be more thematic / better. (Surveying takes no time and is practically automatic. Rockets that fail during a suborbital phase can be recovered. Life Support is assumed for single year missions, it should really be called multi-year life support).

But what keeps coming back to my head is that even after a handful of games the missions felt predictable. “Oh, I’ve seen that before.” There only real combinatorics of the game are weight and mass. Even without the support module (or the other more complex ones) HF had more surprises after a dozen games than LE did after three. I suspect there is an optimal opening, and for the missions nobody says “Well, what patents do you have?”. And there are no faction differences.

It seems unfair to blame LE for not being High Frontier, but the heart wants what the heart wants. I like calculating space missions more than the average gamer, and I’m always on the look for solitaire games, but after 8 hours of this I’m nowhere near the same level of enthusiasm.

I am far from writing LE off — I spent a fair chunk of this weekend playing it — but it does not appear to threaten to displace HF in the long run.

Rating — Indifferent plus, I’m willing to explore it a few more times. The rest of my family is looking at acquiring a copy, so I may have an opportunity.

(This was originally published in incomplete form. I hit “publish” instead of “save.” Lots of updates since then).

I remember playing Fugger, Welser, Medici dand realizing the basic game was too … basic. (I later relayed this to Frank and he said “it wasn’t for gamers like us, that’s what the advanced game is for.”)

High Frontier isn’t exactly the same thing. You need at least one basic game to learn the mechanics. (I needed lots). Jumping straight into the advanced game is optimistic. Even adding only the support module ridiculously increases the number of moving parts. But even for slow people such as myself the basic game does seem too basic after a few plays.

It ends just after it gets going. Industrialize a second colony, you are done (or almost). After the first few games,  TaoLing and I played “longer” extended games to seven colonies, where you might get something like a claim on Sycorax, but our most recent 7 colony game took …. 40 minutes. We’ve started adding advanced modules.

The basic game is not without interest, so some thoughts.

• This is a race game. Only one action a turn, but also space travel in addition. If you start your trip a turn or two earlier that can be a big advantage because its hard (but not impossible) to make up time later on.
• One rule I was taught wrong is that you can’t bid if you have three (non-crew) cards in hand. It turns out you can bid if you have less than four (so, three is OK).
• My big mistake in my early games: buying random cards, then trying to make something work. Most cards are good for something, but trying to figure out what is hard.
• In general, Robonauts before Refineries. Makes sense — Robonauts prospect. Yes, you can use your ISRU 4 crew but here’s the list of ISRU 4 sites inside of Jupiter: Mars (10 gravity, ugh), Ceres (a good target, although 6 gravity probably means you’ll need your crew) and eight inconvenient size-one sites (which aren’t near anything). It’s not a great list. Even an ISRU of 3 opens up a lot of options.
• If you only looked at the asteroid belt for your first mission, you’d probably be right. (For your first game narrowing your decision space is a good idea). If you are playing to seven (or some higher number depending on # of players, which isn’t a variant) you can start looking at Jupiter’s moons or even more distant.
• Remember — the map represents delta-v. Sites on opposite sides of the board but in the same belt are surprisingly close (in terms of number of burns and turns). You can run from Lutetia (a 3M-3 hydration site) to Hertha (ditto) for two burns in a single turn (via Sol-Jupiter L1 burn). Think of the board as “energy bands.”
• There is no “C” class refinery, FYI. Type D and S sites are much rare (in the basic games) so those cards are slightly less useful.
• Weight matters, but less with good fuel efficiency. A nice rule of thumb I found on BGG states “Your wet mass/dry mass ratio will need to be roughly equal to your fuel single-burn fuel consumption (or better).” So if you have the Metastable Helium thruster (5 Mass, 5 Net Thrust * 1 fuel per burn), then your wet mass doesn’t have to much exceed your dry mass, so you can get a heavy robonaut and refinery and still go tooling around for 4 water. But if you get the Mirror Steamer (0 Mass, 3 Net Thrust * 4 Fuel per burn, Solar, Push) you are going to have real trouble if your dry mass gets above three-ish, so you’ll probably need two trips. Bid up the 1 fuel/burn cards.
• Getting your first factory ASAP is a big deal. It provides:
  • 8 free water for refueling. Even if your robonaut and refinery can’t be built, you can take a turn to refuel and send your (now light) rocket back to LEO to pick them back up instead of having to re-boost and refuel the rocket.
  • ET production. Not only are the black side of cards better (much, much better), you get a card out there a few years in advance, save the cost of re-boosting, etc.  ET producing a robonaut to prospect for your second factory (using your on-site thruster) is a big deal. If you have a robonaut and refinery of the type you just colonized, it’s probably a winner. (With both for Vs, aim for Vesta, which at size six means you can’t fail the prospecting roll, and only has a half landing burn. Getting both Ms aim for Lutetia then Hertha, for a 75% chance of a claim. Ds and Ss

Common planning pitfalls to avoid:

1. Can you land? Remember, your net thrust must exceed the sites size. Some ways to get around this (if your main thruster isn’t good enough).
   • Afterburning.
   • Size games. Take everything, drop a part in orbit to lower a size class (increasing net thrust). Leave the first part on the site,take off, pick up the last part. (Dropping off and picking up is a free action, but you can’t pick up in the middle of a move).
   • Use your crew to land. It costs no fuel (if there isn’t a lander burn). Vesta and Ceres with their half lander burns are reasonable. (If you have to pay a full lander burn, your main crew’s rocket may be prohibitively expensive).
2. Will you be able to take off? (This mainly applies to aerobraking). You can easily trap yourself if you use your crew to go someplace like the moon. (If you can’t take off, you can turn your crew into a colonist and get some VP).
3. Do you have enough fuel? Seems obvious, but don’t forget fuel for afterburns. Size tricks may cost you some fuel as well
   • Consider Demos (or some other high hydration site) for a turn or two of refueling. Particularly if you have a low ISRU, you can get a lot of fuel that way. Seeing a ‘pit stop’ at the (already busted) Demos to refuel was my first “aha” moment.
4. Do you have the ISRU rating to prospect the site (or refuel)? (Even after ten games I’ve still just said, “Oh, I’ll go there” and then realized my robonaut couldn’t cut it because I was so focused on fuel/thrust/etc.

Sites of Interest

The training book’s guide is good and worth reading for your first few games. Some thoughts:

Planets are Hard. You can go for Mercury (North Pole) or Mars but you’ll need 11 thrust (or aerobraking rolls). But those are basically one way trips unless you can build a factory. For those, you’ll need a crew with a 10 Net thrust and afterburn. You could also just send down a robonaut and refinery, but the advantage of getting your first factory is basically negated because you can’t really ET produce or use the factory to refuel unless you have a powerful crew rocket. On the other hand, these can be a guaranteed second factory.

The moon is easier, but you’ll need a good ISRU.

Ceres is a sure thing with four hydration, requires only 7 thrust (usually within the reach of a basic game crew) and only a half burn. Depending on your thruster you may need to stop at Demos. Vesta is also a sure thing but slightly farther away and requires an ISRU of 2. (To compensate, its a V world, which is likely to score better and will have a few refineries that can be ET produced there).

Thrusters

In the basic game the most important thing is Fuel per burn, because lower means you can go farther. High thrust is nice (because that lets you land on more places, or maybe get there a turn or two earlier) but you often get around that by taking your crew and using it (assuming no lander burns, or maybe a half burn). In the advanced game the worse rockets are balanced by needing more supports, or worse rad-hardness, but in the basic game? Nope.

If you ordered thrusters by FPB in the basic game, you’d be close to right. (Ignoring the solar sails, because 0 net thrust is a problem).

Key is [#Mass, Thrust * Fuel per Burn (After Burn cost, Class), P = Push, S = Solar]. I’m not going to worry too much about the advanced (black) side because you won’t for your first games.

In rough order of worst to best:

Photon Heliogyro / Photon Kite Sail [0M, 0*0 (-,C) Solar] — Basically the same. Not really useful in the basic game (said the guy who almost never goes inside the earth orbit]. You could use these to get maybe a free burn if you are a small light ship, so perhaps I shouldn’t discount this.

Mirror Steamer [0M, 3*4(2,D) SP] — Zero mass, but 4 fpb. Ugh. The one thing that’s nice is that you could boost this with a robonaut and leave really early, take a pot shot at Demos and refuel. But the problem is that the mass savings from boosting are (in the basic game) a one time savings. You’ll be paying for fuel the rest of the game. Also, this can’t land too many places.

Ablative Plate [4M, 2*2(1,V) P] — Two fpb isn’t bad, but nothing else is great. High mass, low thrust. If you get the black side you get a mass reduction and a thrust increase, but its nothing to write home about. You’ll almost certainly need to take your crew to land anywhere. The rare case where low fpb isn’t great.

Cermet NERVA [2M, 7*4(1,S)] — OK, terrible Fuel per Burn (fpb), but the 7 thrust means you can land on Ceres or Vesta (which are sure things], but you are likely making two trips. If you can flip this you lose one thrust (but can afterburn) but your fpb drops to 2, which makes this pretty good.

Hall Effect [2M, 3*2(-,C)P] — No afterburn and a low thrust means you’ll need your crew, but otherwise good.

Mass Driver [5M, 4*3(-,M)P, Dirt] –This is heavy, 3 fpb isn’t great, but being a dirt thruster compensates. You can always grab 10 fuel anywhere (dirt rockets refuel at ten and ignores ISRU rating!) so you really only need to pay to get to Demos and then jaunt out. If you flip this over you go to 3M 2*0.5, which basically means you never run out of fuel, but you’ll need another rocket to land most places.

De Laval Nozzle [4M, 5*2(2,M)P] — Decent thrust, decent fpb. Can even land on Ceres or Vesta (often taking two trips).

Ponderomotive VASIMR [3M, 3*1(1,V)P] — Compare with the mirror steamer. You pay 3 more mass, but you save so much fpb.

Metastable Helium [5M, 5*1(1,V)] — The king of rockets. Yes, its heavy. But 1 fpb rules. If you flip it over you’ll drop some mass and your fpb goes to a ridiculous 1/3rd, but even unflipped its a workhorse in the asteroid belt. With 5 thrust (maybe 4 or 3 due to weight) you can often make a hohmann pivot every turn and gain a lot of time. And you save time by taking your robo+refinery in one trip. Letting this go cheaply is a mistake.

Robonauts

Buggys let you get a re-roll or multiple sites (on a planet), so that’s nice. Missiles have a built in thruster (Uusually with terrible fpb, but in this case you save an auction and a part, so you could buy this and start scooting around early to make a bunch of pot shot claims and then buy/send a refinery later). And Rayguns let you go for multiple sites from orbit. Unlike thrusters (in the basic game) there’s lots of differences between robonauts.

There are a few different ‘classses’ of robonauts:

• The 4 fpb missile. These are good to grab as a first card if you can launch and run to Demos (etc) to refuel and go get a claim, planning on getting a thruster and refinery later.
• The rayguns. These let you hit a bunch of asteroids at once.
• The oddballs (including buggies).

A quick note of sites: C are common, M aren’t common, but there are a few good targets. There are many S targets but they tend to have lower hydration (often zero). V and

[#Mass, type-ISRU (Type) ]

In alphabetical order:

Cat Fusion Z-pinch Torch — 3M, Buggy-2 (D).  Decent mass, decent ISRU.  Turns into a higher mass ISRU 0 Missile.

Explosive Gas Dynamic Laser — 3M, Raygun-2 (S). Improves to 2M Ray-0

Flywheel Tractor — 2M, Buggy-3 (S).  Improves to 1M Buggy-1.

Free Electron Laser — 5M Raygun-1 (S). Don’t let the 5 mass worry you (I mean, unless you have a 3-4 fpb thruster). If you get the Free Electron Laser you may want to go to the Karin cluster and hope to get one of Karin-a, b or c. That’s a 50/50 shot in one turn (you can raygun produce without going onto the hazard roll). If you get the claim you can ET produce this (as the Wakefield E-beam Missile with a quite decent 4*2(2) dirt rocket, but it becomes a Missile-1.

Kuck Mosquito — 1M Missile-3, 10 * 8(2) (V). The Mosquito pairs nicely with Ablative Plate or other low net thrust thruster, in that you only use this for the landing. You save weight on crew, its mass is low. If you happen to build it on a V planet, you can ET produce the Ablative Laser, which is a 3 * 1(3, push) Missile 2 with no mass. No raygun, but it can hop around quickly.

MET Steamer — 3M Missile-2 5*4(1) Push (C). This guy is a reasonable first buy. Buy, boost, fuel, go to Demos to potshot and/or refuel. By itself it can make a run at Ceres (small size for +1 thrust, afterburn for another). You’ll need another rocket to bring the refinery, but then you can ET produce the Nanobot, a zero mass Buggy-1.

Neutral Beam — 5M Raygun-2 (S). Slightly inferior to the Free Electron Laser, but this does flip over to the a 3*1/2(1) Missile.

Nuclear Drill — 2M Missile-3 5*4(1, Push) (M). Like the MET Steamer, this can be used as an early scout, planning on bring a rocket+ refinery later. This is an odd card in that the black side has a much higher mass (5), but it does become a Raygun-0 (while still having a thruster), which means you can scout a bunch of small asteroids (like the Koronis group) in one go.

Phase-Locked Diode Laser — 3M Raygun-3 (C). A very good robonaut, because there are lots of C targets, and it flips over to 0M.

Rock Splitter — 3M Buggy-4 (V). Buggy is good, but ‘4’ is bad. You could claim 2 Mars sites, I suppose. But there has to be a worst robonaut.

Solar-pumped MHD Exciplex Laser — 5M Raygun-2 (C). Doesn’t the name just roll off the tongue and fall like lead to the floor? This is another one of the 5M rayguns, and this one flips over (Quantum Cascade Laser) to a 3 mass ray-0. Ray-0 is great, and as a ‘c’ type card, this is the easiest to get.

Tungsten Resistojet — 2M 5*4(1) Missile-3 (M). Another decent “early thruster explorer.”. This flips over to a decent 4*2(1) Push missile-1.

Refineries

In the basic game, basically you just want to get one. If it matches your target, that’s nice. Mass 3 is nicer than mass four, but unless you have a bad fpb its not a huge deal.

They’ve just released 0.15 (up to 0.15.2 for some bugfixes). I’m sitting here waiting impatiently for it to download. Nuclear power, rebalanced combat, a ‘marathon’ mode (critical items take a lot more materials to build), and prebuilt settings for various styles of play….

It is a sign of good sportsmanship on my part that I didn’t skip gaming to download it yesterday (when it released), but that’s only because I’d promised that I’d teach High Frontier.

Update — It’s slower going (7 types of science instead of 4 — and purple science is no longer “stuff you get for free by killing natives”). I’ve got a horrible spaghetti maze because I haven’t been looking ahead. I should probably punt, but my goal is to use this base as a starting point for a big base, so its ok. But I do like many things:

• Flamethrowers are still good, but much more expensive. Bullets have been buffed, because they were terrible.
• Infinite science (even if some of it seems to be a bad deal, like mining productivity).
• Lots of quality of life fixes (showing oil patches underground, etc).

I need to get logistics bots for this factory. It’s not pretty. Gotta find a new copper patch, too. Have basically run out.

(Update — Fixed some typos, fleshed out thoughts, added links. Also, I don’t wish to imply that Mombasa or Jump Drive are bad. I like both. I use them because I played them during the same week).

During my time at the Gathering, I played 31 games. Eclipse, Colonists and 3 plays of High Frontier took roughly 21 hours. The remaining 26 games took about 20 hours.

I spent my first two games of High Frontier doing terribly. I earned 1VP apart from Heroism (aka “The Challenger Explosion card” aka “Pity Points”).

Suppose winning just involved earning VPs at a fixed rate (ignoring opponents). It takes about 40 VP to win High Frontier, so I would ‘win’ after four hundred hours of gameplay.

Let’s flip that around. Wins/hour. For those first two games I earned 0.0025 WPH.

Among the other games I played were Mombasa and Jump Drive. For Mombasa I earned about .7 WPH, since I generated enough VP to win in my game, which was about 1.5 hours. A nice rate. My Jump Drive rate was 4 WPH for the Gathering, slightly higher than my typical 3 wins per hour. But I taught the game twice.

So, for 10 hours of High Frontier (roughly 1/4 of my gaming time) I was arguably the least effective game-player in all of the gathering. I’d have to go to ten gatherings to eke out a single win. (I have some true anti-skill in that game. But I did eventually get a bit better). Apparently I did OK in my only game with second edition (although it left me cold), but we did the fast start, so I may have randomly gotten a good setup.

Of course Wins Per Hour is a somewhat ludicrous idea. Isn’t it? It seems obvious, but winning isn’t the problem. And we routinely praise games for being “tight” or “fast” or having a high decision density.

I was already pondering the similarities between High Frontier (the current hotness) and Factorio (the current hotness is not necessarily a singular). I mean, they both have Rockets, but there were other similarities. I’d been thinking about it (vaguely) even before Jeroen asked me to pitch Factorio to him over breakfast. One of the random thoughts I blurted out was its old school scoring. (It was a long pitch. In my defense, I had previously warned him that if he asked about Factorio he should set aside a day for my answer).

Anyway, old school scoring. Launching one rocket (aka “Winning”) gives you a score of …. one. Its like how the original pinball machines had scores like 1-2-3 for each bumper, but now you get a million points for simply launching the ball. But after you get on the scoreboard in Factorio, you can keep going.

Factorio is optimization, but you are free to decide what to optimize:

1) Speed (the speedrun: how fast can you win?)

2) Throughput (how many rockets per unit time can you get? This can be subdivided to a final sprint, ignoring the setup time, or over the lifetime of your game).

3) Size (How small a factory can you get a rocket out of. This is currently a challenge on Reddit. Yes, these rockets would take roughly one year of real time to be built, but they are ludicrously small factories).

There are others. People play without using robots (or just logistic robots, or just personal robots), or without lasers, or trains. Some play peaceful, some play Deathworld. Factorio has a victory condition, but people often ignore it. You can keep playing after you win. It’s a sandbox. You make what you want. I’m watching “The Belt Diva” on youtube, and its like watching Bob Ross. Happy little conveyer belts. She wants to build a mega base. I have no idea if she’ll launch a rocket. Does it matter?

Mombasa is not a sandbox. Neither is Jump Drive. You could argue that High Frontier isn’t a sandbox either, it has VP and end game conditions, but the standard criticism again Eklund’s games is: “Great simulations with arbitrary endgame/VPs attached.” (The latest edition of High Frontier’s scoring seems reasonable and at about the right time).

Ignore the victory conditions for High Frontier and just play with the system and it would still work. (Also true of American Mega Fauna, or other games like Seven Ages. You could just tell people to play in the best interest of their species/nation and not the actual victory conditions).

You could add self imposed conditions on your game. Only use solar sails, or “try to get out to Neptune with only basic cards,” or “Make the Kessel Run in 7 parsecs.” For any Eklund game, you could take a reasonable goal (“Expand your species,” “Become President of Mexico,” “Kessel Run”) and if you achieved it, who cared what the VPs said?

High Frontier feels like a sandbox (much like all Sierra Madre games).

Can you do that with a Euro? I suppose you could just say “I’m trying to maximize my red cubes and not VP” But that seems silly. The goal is to maximize VP.

Objectively, there’s no difference. You lose, the other players win. You may throw the game by being silly. But in a sandbox game it feels acceptable.

You might not even mess up the other players. (If you didn’t mention you had mentally altered your victory conditions, they might not even notice, assuming you chose something ‘reasonable’) We’ve already quietly accepted the premise that in a sandbox game the VPs are somewhat not the point when we criticize the poor victory conditions in otherwise good games.

We wouldn’t play a Euro similarly broken. Wouldn’t make sense.

I once knew someone who built a Magic deck with 58 islands, 1 mountain and 1 fireball. (Several of my readers should remember him). The point was to build a deck that could theoretically win (if you drew the mountain, the fireball, and then managed to play 20 lands). He’d pull this deck and lose and lose to people who often did not notice that their opponent never did anything except play islands. He was truly Andy Kaufman, CCG player.

Or perhaps Stanley Milgram.

When I’m losing a game like High Frontier (or Combat Commander, or Seven Ages, or Here I Stand), I may flounder and grasp for a way out of my situation, but I feel perfectly happy just exploring the system even though the time invested is well out of proportion to what I’d normally give to a game.

I’ve dismissed countless games after one play (or less), games I’ve won included. Games I won especially. Those tend to fail the test of time (unless everyone was new).  A game where I can beat experienced players probably isn’t that deep, or has too much luck.

Whereas games I lost repeatedly include Titan, 18xx, Magic Realm (counting dying as a loss), Chess, Go, Bridge.

Clearly, I’m not optimizing my wins per hour. Knizia has that quote….

When playing a game, the goal is to win, but it is the goal that is important, not the winning

Pretty Zen, but I get (and approve) the idea. Those guys who crushed that sub-sub-Mendoza line Magic deck and chortled and kept playing it again and again to rack up wins? Not great gamers.

But is the goal really to win? Usually, yes. When I played American Megafauna with non-existent or terribly wrong Victory Conditions, I don’t recall having less fun. In High Frontier I started out trying to win. Mainly I was trying to do something constructive. A Winning-adjacent goal.

Some play games to explore systems, but that requires a system worth exploring. Which is not to say that Mombasa or Jump Drive’s design is not deep. Just (relatively) transparent. You can argue about the best path to winning, but that path is well defined. With Combat Commander or Magic Realm or High Frontier, you aren’t sure what’s going to happen, and sometimes the joy is just in unlocking the secret or even seeing that rocket take flight. In fact, defining the direction of the path is surprisingly hard … the player that did best may be the one that lost, according to the rules. It’s like that old Supreme Court definition of pornography. You know who won when you played it. Who cares what the rules said?

Its like watching your factory grow, then deciding what you want to optimize next.