Captain's Chair, solo captain level

I've been playing this a bit solo the last week or so, I find Koloth's deck pretty intriguing. I've run into a brick wall with Sela bot, though, she crushed me again in this game. She just buys so much stuff as she fights you for locations! The game would have been a loss by 6 if I had gotten another utilize, but as it was I lost by 20+.

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Star Trek: Captain's Chair, 2 players

A bare bones TTS mod for Captain's Chair came out so I can finally play it 2p instead of just solo with my physical copy, it's a little dense for my partner.

It's still an interesting one, a bit of a hard recommend because of its up-front complexity on cards and long, chunky early games before you reach deck and card familiarity. Playing the two player game did show its good side besides length. The neutral zone, away team, and ship area control subgame makes a huge difference in the game and mostly solves the multiplayer solitaire accusation leveled at Imperium, even if that's one I don't completely share. There are a lot of points at stake and it's hard to imagine anyone ignoring the opponent and winning. I think that means that the delta in game quality between solo and 2p is much bigger in Captain's Chair than it is for Imperium, with 2p being much better and more full featured in Captain's Chair despite the pretty good bot cards.

I would say, by and large, it's not actually that hard to choose between Imperium and this now that I've played both. If you like sorting through often 3+ hard choices per card and threading the play of a huge number of cards a turn, Captain's Chair is your game. Unfortunately it comes at the expense of a lot of undesirable reading, complexity, and confusion with every card that you get since you have to parse all of its options. Forget just picking up a deck for the first time, it's going to be dense. On the other hand, if you like to make the deck go brrr in a deckbuilding game, trimming it as much as possible and doing the classic deckbuilder thing with simpler individual card plays, Imperium is the way to go. I like them both and am willing to buy into both.

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Captain's Chair, solo

Let's just say this is not a battle between my first play as Koloth and captain level Shran bot that will go down with either of us covered in glory.

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Voidfall, 3 players

A friend and I have been hankering for a Voidfall game and we convinced somebody who had played it once and needed a touch of teaching to come along.

In truth, competitive version Voidfall has a ton to offer; it really is the better game in this box. I like co-op Voidfall a lot but once you play a bit of the competitive game it's obvious how much of a bolt-on it is. Voidfall rules without co-op by themselves are relatively streamlined. It was a pleasure to play.

It's hard to believe the general consensus is that no one feels the presence of other players at the table in Voidfall, instead feeling it is such a bloodless game. I feel like everyone must only play one pip aggression scenarios. We played a two pip game here in deference to our new player, but I wish we had played three or four. It's my belief that three or better yet four pip Voidfall is the real game in the box. It makes you balance the threat of your neighbor, checking their comparative advantage in battle, against the robust economic systems you leverage. Because we played two pip here, we ended up clashing by the end of cycle two, which is a little late for that tension to enter the game and mainly occured around a central system or two which I grabbed. In retrospect, I pulled back from going full military and just went... 1/2-3/4 military and that lost me the game. I had an opportunity to get advanced shields and I did not, and that may have helped make up some fo the difference between myself in 2nd place and the first place player who played a completely inward focused game and won by about 20 points. I could have easily invaded him but it wasn't completely clear how much I would have won pointswise and I definitely would have lost a lot of ships; if I had advanced shields the losses would have been minor.

Anyway, top tier game.

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Voidfall, solo medium

It has been some time since I got this one out. I've been playing a lot of the team's other card games Imperium and Captain's Chair. I like those other games a lot, but this is the superior game solo and multiplayer. It isn't even that much longer a game if you are experienced, this solo game took me 1:45 or so absent setup, which is obviously sizeable. The physical design is so thoughtful once you surmount the learning curve; everything about its iconography is meant to ease and speed play among experienced players vs. being intended to teach new players.

I lost 174-163 as Thegwyn B, it has been a long time since I lost on medium. I made some bad choices in terms of agendas, picking for actions I needed rather than scoring synergy, so I ended without much scoring scaling while still leaving a safe haven undone and a rift intact. Probably a little rusty.

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Captain's Chair, solo Shran

Fake picture Shran still has enough Jeffrey Combs to please me. I love that the base game has a Combs character with a deck.

Shran is pretty fun. The cargo deck buys/synergy is quite an odd advantage to have because it's a weird deck.

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Captain's Chair, solo vs. Sisko bot

Quick concrete recommendation on how to play this game as I close in on 10 solo plays: definitely play with the advanced side of the boards once you're even halfway comfortable with a captain. The advanced side doesn't really add almost any extra complexity but opens up your options. You have to have at least one mission complete to win, realistically. If you don't finish a mission, you can't do any of the track scoring, which is basically necessary. The basic side only has one all or nothing mission. That limits your options and can put you in a bit of a jam depending on how the offer plays out. By having the three options, it relieves any pressure and lets you respond to what is available a little more fluidly.

I'd even recommend it if you're playing like low-level bots or novice players and the like otherwise in a difficulty sense. It's just a better game.

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Star Trek Captain's Chair, solo vs. Shran bot

Churning through solo games of this, almost all of them bang on 1 1/2 hours for solo play. Nice full but still concise timeframe for a solo game, but I know some people like their solo games to be ultra short... which, coming from a wargame background, I can't relate to. I like my solo games to have an actual arc or there isn't much point for me. They don't have to be narrative but they need some sort of progression and escalation before ending. My general taste in multiplayer games also leans this way.

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Star Trek: Captain's Chair, solo vs. Koloth bot

An odd beast, still trying to form my opinions on this one coming in as a big Imperium fan. It's a strange combination of shorter and more streamlined, with a lot of phases and restrictions cut out, while also being more complex by having a huge number of options to trigger on every card. It'll take a minute for me to figure out if this is a net positive. It's still fun; in this game I found out Picard's deck wants to keep Riker out as duty officer to keep bringing Enterprise back to your hand when it gets chased off. I feel like not simplifying Imperium for this wide release to a big IP is not a choice I would have made, but I'm happy I live in this version of the world since I like complex games.

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Captain's Chair, solo

This finally showed up yesterday, so I got my first solo game in vs. the aggressive Koloth bot at Commander level.

I don't have any real conclusions, obviously. A good caveat is that I am a huge Imperium and Voidfall sicko, so these designers' ethos gets me. I also am not a big believer in the common trope about their games that they're multiplayer solitaire---Voidfall can be pretty pvp conflictual imho given the tech splay and Imperium has aggressive cardplay in most decks along with winning being pretty conditional on careful tableau denial with moderately experienced players.

Anyway, this game is... a lot. I agree with Dan Thurot's review that Captain's Chair is distinctly NOT simpler than Imperium. I think it might be a shorter game than Imperium, but the dizzying multifunction cards put me on the back foot a bit even as someone with 75+ plays of Imperium which has a similar core engine. There are so many different ways to play any card, with so much text compared to Imperium. I think what that text and complexity is buying, and I need more play to know if this is true, is trying to open up bigger strategy spaces for each deck and reducing further the "this toy deck does X, watch it go!" determinism. This combines with the duty officer concept, where only one person tagged crew member can provide their ongoing special power at a time. I played the "simple" Picard deck, which is oriented toward a simple ally buy deck... but it has duty officers and card options oriented toward fighting (Worf), income and cycling (Riker), deck thinning and science tracks (Data), etc, allowing those directions. It'll be interesting to see if making cards SO multifunctional and packed is worth the complexity... I'll keep posting on it!

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