Andrew KuchlingDec 16, 2022

ENCYCLOPEDIA, by Eric Dubus and Olivier Melison, arrived last week so @MeeplePhD and I tried it out over the weekend.

You're an Enlightenment-era naturalist, collecting animals and then publishing about them to earn points.

It's basically a set-collection game, though the actions each round are driven by a randomly chosen and rolled bunch of dice. (1/4)

#tabletop #boardGames #Encyclopedia

Show threadAndrew Kuchling
It buries you in differing sets of numbers: each of the nicely illustrated animal cards bears four categories, called type 1, 2, 3, and 4. (Why not type A,B,C,D? It would mean fewer numbers to think about, after all!) To research each category, you need values of 2, 4, 7, or 10. If you want to research two type 3s and a type 1, you'll need to add all that up to get a total of 16. (2/4)
Dec 16, 2022 at 12:19amWeb
Show threadAndrew KuchlingDec 16, 2022
But publishing about animals uses different numbers, where type 4 or below requires a value of only 6, and you don't have to add them up: you can publish on anything that requires that value or lower. You're constantly adding up your target and then counting up tokens to figure out if you can actually reach it. So much arithmetic.... oof! (3/4)
Show threadAndrew KuchlingDec 16, 2022
Both Barb and I felt we didn't use our actions very efficiently. I had two unresearched animal cards at the end, which meant I wasted the dice used to collect them. Barb used her time slightly better than me, getting 232 points to my 149, but the scoring markers go up to 400, so we're far from the upper echelons. We'll have to play this game more to figure it out. (4/4)