Supercharged: light, quick racing

 

I got my Kickstarter copy last week and the game has taken over my workbench since then.  I played probably 10 games, all solo.  My quick reaction at this point:  This is a light, quick-playing game with some engaging bits.  I liked it.  Quick disclaimer, Jim Dietz was instrumental in getting CFR published for which I will always be grateful.

Light, Quick-Playing

Racing games have a habit of being long or being racing games in theme only.  I applaud designers Mike Clifford and Mike Siggins for coming up with a quick play game that feels like racing.  I admit that people looking for deeper decision making may not enjoy this game.  But I also think that there is a bigger decision space here than might be apparent at first.

It is tempting to think that your only decision is which of your cars to 7 spaces and which to move 6.  But more often the decision is really IF you want to move all of that speed or not.  Slipstreams make a huge difference in this game and shorting yourself a couple spaces this move to set up a slipstream is probably worth it.  Or maybe you should move fewer spaces to create a blocking situation for some cars right behind you that have yet to move this turn.  Or maybe I want to move a little less because it means that a car that moves up behind me later in the turn will be in a curve and not eligible for a slip next turn.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not the thinkiest game.  But after a couple plays you can find ways to be thinkier with your moves.

Engaging Bits

There are some specific design elements I really enjoyed with this game.  The grid position assignment was very well done.  Faster teams will be randomly assigned to grid spots 1-4 and then mixed in with the next tier of teams for spots 5-11 and so on.  I think this works really well as there is a level of randomization within constraints.

I love that you can reconfigure the track.  Although I get that this is mostly cosmetic.  The reality is that the track only matters to the degree that you can change the order and quantity of straight spaces versus curve spaces.  If you are going to use all of the pieces every track, there are really only so many variations you can create.  And yet, it’s fun to do.

This is not an overly produced game but I really like the design esthetic of the 1930s era cars and the added bit of rationale when cars get bounced from races is great.  (Yes, drivers got sick ALL the time during races back then.)

Rougher Bits

As with any game there are things I did not like as much.  In my first handful of plays I noticed the track was REALLY clogged up in the back during turns 1 and 2 after the starting procedure.  If the random determination of who went first was mostly backmarkers you ended up with a LOT of spun cars because there was literally nowhere for them to go.  Recovering from a spin requires a pull from the Action Deck and can mean that car is done for the race.  Lots of spun cars means you churn through the Action Deck which means more and more Events.  Events can be random one time bonuses but can also mean random retirements.  While I saw this happen more in early turns before the field naturally spreads out, I would typically cycle through the Action Deck about 3 times per race.  I get that a lot of retirements is very thematic, but when I saw the French team lose both cars that were 1-2 in the race a turn from the finish line it just felt bad.  This would have been a table-flipper if it were competitive.

So, I came up with a couple ideas, one of which I REALLY like.  First a little background. 

Every game you control two different teams.  Each turn, 1 card for each team is shuffled together with cards for all of the other teams and that random draw determines who moves in which order.  This very random turn order is what I think is the cause of more mayhem than I enjoy.

My Supercharged House Rule

At the beginning of the turn, each player puts one of their team’s cards facedown into the “moves first” pile and the other facedown into the “moves second” pile.  Randomly assign half of the privateer teams to each pile.  When the two piles are complete, shuffle each, and then place the “moves first” pile on top of the “moves second” pile.  The cards are then drawn from this combined pile. 

If one of your teams has had both cars removed from the race, continue to play both cards because that hides which pile you put your remaining team in.

This ends up doing several things I enjoy.

First it helps solve track congestion issues.  If I see that one of my cars has a lot of traffic in front of it that I want to try to avoid, I can put that team’s card in the “move second” pile.  Maybe things will have cleared out.  I felt like this played out the way I’d hoped.  But it also had another impact I did not anticipate.  Because fewer cars got stuck in situations where they had no options and had to spin, I churned through the Action Deck less.  Now I’m shuffling only once per game not three times.  That means a LOT fewer random events knocking out drivers for no real reason… especially late in the game.

This rule also adds a decision to every turn that was not there before.  Sometimes it seems relatively obvious that I should make one of my teams go first and the other go second.  But often I saw myself considering both teams for different reasons.  And then you are put in a situation to maybe prioritize one team over the other or start trying to anticipate the other players’ choices here.

I’m sure this modification is not for everyone, but if you are looking for more decisions and less random give it a try.

Solo

A few words about Supercharged as a solitaire experience.  Supercharged solo is not set up to be competitive.  You aren’t racing against the game.  You are just running the system to see what happens.  I actually enjoy that kind of solo experience but I realize that will not be best for everyone.

I also decided that I’d rather play this game solo with the 4-player rules than the solo rules in the box.  I think the game is easy enough to play multi-handed.  There is not a TON of player interaction in your decision making.  And it’s easy enough to anticipate what a Team might decide to do based only on their situation and not trying to anticipate other Teams’ moves.  This also means you get to play with the Tactics cards which provide more decisions to make and keeps more cars from spinning out.  The Great Maneuver card is often a get out of jail free card when you would otherwise be stuck spinning.

To Sum Up

A light, quick racing game with enough flavor to feel like racing.  The lighter level of decision grit keeps the game light and quick but your satisfaction with that will vary.  I recommend my turn order modification.  I also recommend playing 4-handed solitaire and not the solo rules in the game.  It honestly gives you a better flavor of the game.

Game Review: Motorsport Manager Mobile 2

I know that a lot of you are F1 fans or racing fans in general and specifically fans of racing games, so let me tell you about Motorsport Manager Mobile 2.

As the name suggests, this is not a racing sim.  This about setting up your team.  I admit that this did not sound like the most interesting thing to me but it was pretty well recommended and racing so I gave it a try and have now played it for 40+ hours since downloading it less than a month ago.  It has become my go to iPad game.

And there are races, but you spend a good bit of time between races tinkering with your cars, managing drivers, hiring engineers, and lining up sponsors.  In line with current F1 rules, your team is composed of two cars and two drivers.

You also have 3 engineers.  Each engineer has a race performance rating that helps you on race day in some obscure way.  They also have a handful of ratings that help you build new parts and design next year's car -- we'll talk about cars later.

Interestingly I've seen engineers get old and their skills will deteriorate -- forcing you to replace them.

Each driver has 6 different stats with both a current rating and max potential in each.  Every so often you get an extra point to spend increasing a driver's stat closer to their max.  Drivers can also accumulate buffs and debuffs throughout the season.

Drivers can be hired and fired.  You negotiate with drivers so you aren't sure what a driver will cost when start negotiations and you might not be able to afford them after all.  After your first season you can also start a driver development program where talent develops and you can pick one at the end of the year to sign to your roster.

Car development is a big part of the game.  Each car has 6 different components, two or three of which will have an outsized impact on your performance at different tracks.  Each part also has both a performance and a reliability rating.  There is a lot you can do here.  You can swap parts between cars (each car will start similar but slightly different).  You can buy parts in a marketplace -- some of which can be very expensive but can also be a lot better than what you have.  You can build new parts -- usually cheaper than buying new but takes time and the gains can be smaller.

Then, half-way through the season, you start developing next year's car.  That development is improved both by your engineers on staff as well as by dollars invested.

Right, then there are races.

You start with a qualifying period.  Then to the race.  For both you have tire choices, weather, and car set-up.  Above you can see tire selection for a qualifying heat... the track is starting to get wet so I'll probably have to switch to inters and hope I got a good time in earlier or the track dries off for a late attempt.  You can see what weather is coming up to a point so I can plan ahead a little.

Below you can see me setting up the car's aero and gear ratios for qualifying.  On this screen you can also see the track profile which can give you hints as to how to set up your car.  Interestingly, the tracks are clearly modeled after real F1 tracks... usually with slight changes: a different start location and often a slightly different city in the same country to obscure what it is copying.

During the race, you will have to manage when to pit for new tires and which tires.  You can also instruct each driver which of 3 engine setting to use right now and whether to push or hold back which has an affect on tire wear as well as performance.  Depending on your car's reliability you may have to spend some time in the pits repairing the car or performance will fall off a cliff.  Sometimes you may have to deal with safety cars or re-fueling.

Depending on which sponsor you brought to the track you can get bonus payments for your qualifying and race performance.  Sponsors can also provide one time and per race cash infusions.  Because all that stuff you did between races cost money.

And I forgot to mention your headquarters where you can spend large money to unlock new abilities or buffs.  Phew.

Conclusion

I highly recommend.

One reason I like it is that it scratches similar itches as fantasy sports and legacy games.  I used to spend a lot of time on fantasy football but gave that up a couple years ago.  And my league had a lot of legacy elements with player development and cash and draft picks carrying over from year to year to year.  MMM2 is a fantasy/legacy game I can play much more frequently than Pandemic Legacy.

I'm currently wrapping up my 7th season in MMM2.  When you start the game you get a basic car and a couple crap drivers and can't even build most of the car parts -- in fact several are spec anyways.  Year 3 I won that league and got promoted to the next tier.  Some rules had changed (re-fueling, fewer spec parts, more races) but my drivers and sponsors and engineers carried over.  Year 6 my team won that league and I got bumped up to the top league.  No more re-fueling, no spec parts, even more races.  But again, continuity -- both drivers were ones I brought up through driver development programs.

Also, props for diversity.  Plenty of women drivers and engineers.  Plenty of colored skin.  Such an easy thing to do and yet worthy of praise for actually doing it.

Three Things I Wish I Learned Earlier

Now that I've convinced you, here are three tips.

1. Be careful with your budget.  Especially the year after being promoted.  Everything costs more in that next series.  Earlier in my current season, I ran through my cash early in the season when my star driver had a motivation problem I could have solved if I had had a couple million in cash lying around.  I did not and now she's retiring at the end of the year.
2. Driver development programs are the best way to grab good drivers.  Ones that are already good are so expensive.  But In three tries I got 2 drivers who had great potential.  A couple years later they are a solid team.
3. When you build a new part.  Your base-line performance is the performance of your best current part of that type.  Your base-line reliability seems pretty static.  So, if you want to bootstrap a part and are willing to take a couple steps to do it, buy something with high performance rating and low reliability.  Then immediately build that same part and put all your engineers on reliability.  That part will have the same performance as your purchased part and probably a better reliability.

Cthulhu Wars Unboxing

Michael opens his new copy of this game and we discuss our impressions from our previous and only game play to that point.  We show off our lack of knowledge about the game and I show off my bad camera skills.

We've played the game again since.  I still like it and still feel like I don't know how to play it well.  Or maybe I just need to stop trying to play with Yellow Sign.

Many thanks to Steve Schillinger and Braddock Station Garrison for allow us to use their music.  Check them out.

Ghost Stories, Is It Bad To Be Hard?

I have a love-hate relationship with Ghost Stories.  On the one hand, its a good game.  On the other hand, IT IS SO HARD.  I bought the game years ago in cardboard and it took me many, many plays to win my first game on the easiest level.  But it doesn't get a lot of plays.

In February, I bought the iPad implementation.  I figured it would be a good game for the iPad.  Its got the draw back / feature of most pure cooperatives: its essentially a solitaire game.  I thought maybe playing it more often would allow me to win some games.  Not so much.

Above: me getting crushed.  Below: a snapshot of my leader board.  Notice, mostly me getting crushed.

A week or so after I got the game, I won 2 games in 20 attempts, on the easiest level of the game.  I basically gave up after that.  I decided that the game was just too hard.

Then, I read an interview with Ghost Stories' creator, Antoine Bauza, on Little Metal Dog Show.  The interviewer actually asks Mr. Bauza early on why he made Ghost Stories so hard and the answer is basically, yea we didn't want it to be so easy like some other cooperatives.  Then he reached out through the computer and smacked me in the face:

But to tell you the truth, the game is not so hard and when you know it well you cannot lose at all in easy mode and almost never lose in normal or nightmare mode.

...

What?  Are you kidding me?  I'm losing 90% of my easy games!  Am I doing this wrong?

So, I went to the internet -- specifically BGG's strategy forum for the game.  Wow.  I was seriously doing this wrong.

Since then, I've won 8 games in 14 tries and I seem to be getting better: 6-2 in my last 8 games.  I may even be ready to move up to whatever level is above beginner.

I think this may say more about me then the game.  I tend to like games that I can jump into quickly with some competence and enjoy.  My last instinct is to research strategies online.  I'm usually the opposite of a min-maxer.  I like my games with flavor more then ideal efficiency engines.

The other thing about Ghost Stories is that it really introduces the concept of "hard" to board games.  Normally, the difficulty of a board game is defined by your opponents, not the game itself.  And here Mr. Bauza is correct, most cooperative/solitaire games are not this hard.

And you know what?  Now that I'm competent (at easy), I'm addicted.  So maybe this hard thing is good.

Ground Floor

from an image posted by user yzemaze on Board Game Geek

I got introduced to Ground Floor Wednesday night.  That was a fun game.  Earlier that evening I noted that I am leery of many Eurogames these days.  Its not because I don't like Euros.  In fact, I often do like Euros.  But I prefer flavor with my game and most Euros are really abstract games in disguise.  So when I hear worker placement, I figure its just some abstract math engine with farms or castles on the board.  I own that game in many forms already, I don't need to play it again.  Which is a shame.  I almost never tried Stone Age because of that and I like that game.

This is a long intro to saying that Ground Floor has little wooden cubes and disks and uses a worker placement mechanic, but the mechanics' tie to the theme (building a company) is well thought out and I really enjoyed it.

It also has some other mechanics in it.  Its got a widget engine in there as well (not uncommon in worker placement) but I felt a bit of tableau building going on as well.  One aspect of the game is that you can upgrade your office space as you go and that gives you better / different capabilities.  So as the game progresses each player has very different capabilities.  Also, that tableau -- your office, is where 99% of the victory points come from.

Perhaps no higher compliment to a game than that I really wanted to play it again.  But the night was late and I had to go home but I look forward to more plays.