Seth Jaffee
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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A quick question for all you board game afficionados... I'm going to rattle off three quick game descriptions, and I'd like to know if any of them sound appealing to you, and why or why not. You can think of it like a survey if you like. If you're an avid reader who takes in every article on the Geek then you might recognize the first one ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/20941).
1. All For One - The four famous Royal Musketeers and 2 Cardinal's Agents move around Paris doing missions for the King or the Cardinal. Players are not tied to any particular character, but can use any character on their turn in order to complete the objectives of the mission cards in their hand. Missions involve picking up and delivering Plot Tokens from around the board, and fighting duels.
Light strategy - Pickup/Deliver, 3-5 players, 45-90 minutes
2. Terra Prime - Explore and colonize the space surrounding the Terra Prime outpost at the edge of the galaxy, protect the colonies from hostile aliens, and harvest the resources they produce. Players score points by placing colonies, delivering resources to Terra Prime, and driving off hostile aliens. The values of colonies and resources increase the farther away from Terra Prime you get, but so do the dangers of exploration and the likelyhood of alien attack. Earth consumes the harvested resources at a steady rate, and the value of each resource fluctuates depending on how much Earth has in supply.
Light strategy - Resource management, 3-5 players, 90 minutes
3. Hot and Fresh - Pizza delivery is a fast and furious business! Faster deliveries mean bigger tips, but there are traffic laws to consider. Traffic lights change as time goes on, so plan your route carefully. You can push your luck with the cops, but the more you break the law the more likely you'll get busted.
Light strategy - Routeplanning, 3-5 players, 60 minutes
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Andrew Adey
United Kingdom
Wolverhampton
West Midlands
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Hi.
In order: yes, YES!, and no.
All the best!
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Mike Siggins
England
Cambridge
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I would happily play them all, whether I liked them would partly depend on how different they are from previous similar games. Yeah, I know, tough crowd!
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J (RBG)
Canada
Slave Lake
AB
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Yes to all 3. The 2nd is most interesting, the 3rd the least. I'm a little concerned about the possible necessity of constantly stifling your lefthand opponent's options in the 1st game. And I wish they supported 2 players.
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Seth Jaffee
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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rootbeer wrote: I wish they supported 2 players.
Hmm... well, strictly speaking, I suppose they could. All For One could really be 2-6 players, but I imagine it would bee too boring with only 2 and too chaotic with 6. There's no reason they all couldn't be played with 2 though.
Thanks everyone for the input!
- Seth
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Luke Morris
Japan
Nagoya
Aichi
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All For One sounds the best to me!
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Ben .
United Kingdom
Unspecified
Surrey
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First impressions:
1) Like the sound of this - the setting seems new and the theme grabs me. Was mildly disappointed to learn that in playing I wouldn't be playing the part of a single musketeer, which would help get into the theme even more, but this is the most appealing of these three themes to me.
2) Sounds great, but..... sounds like it's been done before, if you know what I mean - a game like this could easily be thematic, but I'd need some new mechanics to help sell it to me as a whole.
3) Not so keen on this one. Again, however, I wouldn't turn it down simply based on the theme - the routefinding aspect in particular sounds like it could link to some clever, mechanics, but it'd need to be a good game with some original ideas to draw me in beyond the theme.
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Robert Washington
United States
Unspecified
New York
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sedjtroll wrote: A quick question for all you board game afficionados... I'm going to rattle off three quick game descriptions, and I'd like to know if any of them sound appealing to you, and why or why not. You can think of it like a survey if you like. If you're an avid reader who takes in every article on the Geek then you might recognize the first one ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/20941). 1. All For One - Light strategy - Pickup/Deliver, 3-5 players, 45-90 minutes 2. Terra prime - Light strategy - Resource management, 3-5 players, 90 minutes 3. Hot and Fresh - Light strategy - Routeplanning, 3-5 players, 60 minutes
On a scale of 1 - 10, 10 highest/most interested, I'd rate them 8, 6, 5, though I have to admit, specific mechanics would be an issue. The first is a theme not used that much in boardgaming, the second would need strong/unique mechanics to make it reasonably different from the many trading/merchant game out there, and the 3rd is not that interesting as a theme but might have some intriguing mechanics.
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Mark L.
United States
Traverse City
Michigan
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1. Sounds promising. Would there be instances where 2 or more musketeers/cardinals are needed at the same time to complete a mission?
2. As someone else mentioned, it sounds as though it's been done before, but this sounds very interesting, I would certainly give it a whirl.
3. So-so, and I'm having a very hard time visualizing the mechanics ...
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Seth Jaffee
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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LudesFactor wrote:
1. Sounds promising. Would there be instances where 2 or more musketeers/cardinals are needed at the same time to complete a mission?
Yes, some missions require 2 characters at the the same place - they are Duels (or meetings).
Quote: 2. As someone else mentioned, it sounds as though it's been done before, but this sounds very interesting, I would certainly give it a whirl.
This one is sort of a mishmash of mechanics that are similar to those in other games - you build colonies, and your colonies produce resources, but anyone can pick up any resources. Picking up resources from someone else's colony gives them a VP (sorta like using someone else's building in Caylus I guess), you deliver resources to the outpost and they go on a Cargo Ship (not at all like the shipping phase of Puerto Rico, outside of the resources on a ship similarity). When the Cargo ship fills up, the goods get sent to Earth, where they fill up supply & demand tracks - which in turn tell you how much the goods are worth (similar to the resource market in Power Grid). The more Blue earth has on hand, the less VPs you get for delivering it because it's not in demand. Then you can buy ship upgrades to move fartherper turn, or hold more resources, or have etter chances vs alien attacks, stuff like that.
So not all the mechanics are 100% original, but that's never the case anymore. I don't think the game as a whole resembles anything else that I know of.
Quote: 3. So-so, and I'm having a very hard time visualizing the mechanics ...
The mechanics are indeed the cool part about this one. It's about delivering pizza and breaking traffic laws. You pick up Orders at the pizza place, and they have to go to a certain location on the map. You can take more than 1 order, and you want to use an efficient route or it'll take too long and your tip will decrease (tip = VP). You want to speed and roll through stop signs to save time (and gas), but you risk getting busted.
As far as the routeplanning aspect is concerned, there are traffic lights on the main roads which change from green to yellow to red and etc. There are stop signs on the slower side roads, where the delivery spots are. So you want to take a couple orders and find an efficient route to get them delivered. Once in a while you'll want to take your route past the Gas Station to fill up on gas, because accelerating costs gas. There are 3 speeds: 1st Gear, 2nd Gear, and 3rd Gear; each relating to a different speed (approx 25, 45, and 65 mph for example). The speed limit on main streets is 2nd gear and the limit on side streets is 1st Gear.
The traffic laws are basically a press your luck mechanic. There are three levels: Infractions, Violation, and Reckless Driving. Whenever you do something that's agains the traffic laws (speed, roll through a stop sign, run a red light) you get a 'reckless' card, which has some minor annoyance on it like "Cops in your rearview! Take the next right and lose them" which could mess up your route a little. And you also roll 1d6 to see if you get busted. If the roll is less than the number of Reckelss cards you have then you're busted, so the worse you drive, the more likey you'll get caught. Depending on the severity (infraction vs violation) you get the card either before or after you roll.
Does that answer some of the mechanics questions?
- Seth
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Ron Pfeiffer
United States
Surfside Beach,
South Carolina
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Yes to all three.
Each game sounds different enough from anything that I have played on any of the three subjects that they all immediately pique my curiousity.
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Mark Reich
Australia
Western Australia
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Interest out of 10:
1. 7/10
2. 7/10
3. 9/10
Regarding 3 - I (unlike most other Geek folks it seems) am primarily into lighter, 'fun' games/themes, and this sounds like a far more interesting route planning and connection game than TtR. I like the push your luck element, and in general the mechanics sound good. However, my only concern with this game is how the players are able to interact with each other (if at all) - if it's everyone just doing their own thing (ie. a multiplayer solitaire type game) then I would quickly lose interest. In what ways can players interact with each other? An interaction mechanic more direct than incidental/unintentional route interference (a la TtR) would be a seller for me ...
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Seth Jaffee
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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Regarding Hot and Fresh:
Mark_Owen_Reich wrote: In what ways can players interact with each other? An interaction mechanic more direct than incidental/unintentional route interference (a la TtR) would be a seller for me ... Indeed, player interaction appears to be a potential hurdle with this one - players pickup orders from the same supply, and there's a way to place a Patrol Car on a street, which could make someone either choose another route or obay the law... but other than that, there isn't much interaction.
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Louise Holden
United Kingdom
Solihull
West Midlands
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2 sounds rather (but not entirely) like Merchants of Venus.
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Everyone wants to be Chad Thriftington III
United States
Oklahoma City
Oklahoma
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Hot & Fresh sounds very very interesting. I like the route planning and the ideas that traffic lights might change before you get there (I'm assuming so) In several towns stoplights are 'timed' to a paarticular speed, if you drive the speed limit, you'll hit them all green. Will this come into play?
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Dan Buterbaugh
United States
Unspecified
Pennsylvania
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Definite yes on the first two. The pizza game would have to be very well done before I'd even consider it.
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Philip Thomas
United Kingdom
Nr Hemel Hempstead
Hertfordshire
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Hmm, well they all sound interesting. Wish I had the time to play all the games out there... I wouldn't actually but these games on current info, sad to say.
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Seth Jaffee
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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Update from 3.5 years later!
All For One was sent to a publisher, but is NOT going to be published by them. I was bummed by that, but not terribly surprised. It HAS however undergone some changes, making it an all around better game I think.
Players used to have a 'secret character' that they were sort of rooting for, but that caused some confusion because players had a tendency to identify too much with that character, when you really ought to do missions with any character...
The newer version has 3 Story tracks, each 'story' with 2 'outcomes' so to speak. Each character supports 2 of the 6 possible story outcomes, and so completing a mission with a character advances 1 or both of that character's stories. Instead of having a secret character you're interested in, you have a secret set of stories (1 outcome of each story) that you want to come out on top. This helps keep people from identifying too much with 1 character, rather they can advance their end goals with several different characters.
Terra Prime is being published! Tasty Minstrel Games is a new company that is launching Terra Prime at BGG.con (with a preview at Gateway over Labor Day and at RinCon over Columbus Day. This one has changed a little from the earlier description as well - the supply and demand model is no longer like Power Grid, with the value of each resource rising and falling. Instead it's constant. I wish the supply/demand model had worked better, but in the end it was too problematic and the new way worked better.
Hot and Fresh, unfortunately, has gone nowhere since these last posts. The only thought that's significant since this thread was posted was that perhaps to add interaction, the game should not be about delivering pizza (with 1 pickup point and several delivery points), but should instead be about taxis (with multiple pickup locations). I liked the pizza theme, and am not sure about the taxi one - and in any case the game's been on the shelf for at least 3 years now.
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