by cymric
lindyhopper wrote:
- There sure were a lot of points. Seems like everything we did rained down a few points. It was hard to tell whether you were making good choices because the points just kept piling up like sand.
There is an art to it, and there are various sources which give points on different time scales. You will need to hone a sense for this by playing more in order for this shapelesness to subside.
- The dice manipulation was a good approach to dice. I liked it better than Kingdom Builder's single-card limitation on your building options. Having the "workers" to fall back on was nice.
No problem there, then.
- The thematic link for the building effects were tenuous at best. Even Dominion felt more thematic to me.
I'm going to be frank for a sec: not because I want to patronise you, but because it gets the message across the quickest :meeple:. Thematic immersion is not something which exists objectively, I'm afraid. If you have a problem with it then that is unfortunate, but not something an outsider can help with. I suspect that because of the point predominance you weren't 'feeling the theme' anymore. You wrote later that CoB was your first Feld-game, and you should know that theme means exactly shit to this author. It is always mechanics first, and theme a distant tenth. Perhaps more plays can make the subject work for you, but there are also people for whom it didn't.
- It was difficult to know what we should be focusing on. The game felt very tactical, particularly with the 'knowledge' tiles.
It is a very tactical game (mostly because the dice make it so), but as I said there are paths operating on different time scales which you can attempt to pursue, and you can create accents by focussing on various tools: for example having lots of money, or lots of special tiles. This will create an assymetry in how players aproach the game, and make it more interesting than just point grabbing.
Overall, rather meh on this one, and I'm trying to figure out whether I just need to give it more plays or put it on the trade pile.
I'd say give it some more plays. You will trade it away pretty easily, and the time it takes to play a few more games won't be an obstacle, especially since you play it with two players.
I wanted to give a Feld game a go, to see what the big deal was all about. But perhaps I'm just more of a Uwe Rosenberg, Andreas Seyfarth, Vlaada Chvatil, Friedemann Friese-sort of fan.
Can you honestly say that you have given the game an unprejudiced chance? 'Seeing what the big deal was all about' doesn't radiate enthusiasm, after all... :meeple: