Strange Assembly – Episode 052 – Refrigerator (Part 4)

Discuss here, or on our forums.

The Basics

The general gameflow of Eminent Domain is defined by role selection:

-          Survey to find planets;

-          Colonize or Conquer those planets (which are worth VP);  and

-          Produce/Trade for VP chits; while

-          Your options skew towards being better at doing the sorts of actions you’ve taken before.

While this is going on, you can Research to get better cards in your deck.  Every time you select a role, a card for that role goes into your deck, thus pushing you further in that direction.  Victory points are scored for Trading, having planets, and for higher-level Research cards.

Gameplay

Everyone starts with a deck of 10 cards (basically two of each role), and there are a stack of each of the five role cards in the middle of the table.  A player gets to do two things on his turn: (1) play a card from hand for the action on that card; and then (2) select a role, play that card (adding it permanently to your deck) and act accordingly.  Each other player can either follow the role selection, and get a lesser version of the role’s effect, or can dissent and draw a card.  At the end of each turn you can discard what you want from your hand and then draw back up to a full hand.

Each player starts with one uncontrolled (face-down) planet.  Planets can be conquered or colonized (flipped face up), and each planet as two values for how much it takes to acquire the planet via Warfare power or colonists (some are even, some are easier to colonize, some are easier to conquer).

The actions and role effect of the Colonize and Warfare cards are closely linked.  Playing a Colonize card as an action lets you put the card under one of your uncontrolled planets, or lets you gain control of a planet where you already have the minimum number of colonists.  Choosing Colonize as a role lets you gain control of a full planet or put the Colonize card you just gained, and as many other Colonize cards as you want, under the planet.  Following lets you cram as many Colonize cards under planets as you want, but never lets you take control of a planet.  Warfare works in a similar fashion, except instead of putting the cards under the planet, you gain ships (the game has little plastic models for these), and then you can conquer any of your uncontrolled planets (so Colonize has the advantage of getting cards out of your deck for right now, while Warfare has the advantage of target flexibility).

Of course, you only start with one planet, so there has to be a way to access more.  That’s where the Survey role comes in (the Survey card’s action is to draw two cards).  The original surveyor and anyone who follows each plays some number of Survey role cards from hand, and gets to look at that many minus one planets (the selector gets to look at an extra planet).  This means that you cannot meaningfully follow a Survey role unless you have at least two Survey cards in hand.  Each player who surveyed gets to select one of the planets he looked at and place it face-down in front of him, to be later colonized or conquered.

Having planets is the basic way of getting VP in Eminent Domain, so everyone is going to be either colonizing or conquering, and then surveying to find more planets.  But there are two other options.  First, you can Produce/Trade.  This is one card with two role/action options – every time you play it or select it, you are only using one half, and the other part has no effect.  Most planets have a spot on the card for some sort of resource.  Producing means taking a wooden cylinder and putting it on the planet.  Trading means giving that cylinder back in exchange for a VP.  Playing the Produce/Trade card as an action lets you produce or trade with exactly one of your planets.  Selecting it as a role lets you produce or trade (as applicable to what you selected) for every Produce/Trade card you play from hand – and lets everyone who follows Produce/Trade based on the number of cards he or she can play.

Finally, a player can Research (the action on Research lets you strip unwanted cards from hand).  Researching is the only way to put better cards in your deck, as opposed to just adding a greater number of the same five cards.  Selecting Research as a role lets you grab a technology card from a separate stack and add it to your deck.  Which cards you can grab depends on how many Research cards you play from hand (this works for those who follow the role as well; the only advantage to having selected Research is that you get the new role card you just grabbed to add to your total) and on what sort of planets you have – more advanced technologies required more than one planet of the same type (e.g., Utopian, Advanced, Metallic).  The basic technology cards are straightforward enhancements on the standard cards – each has a superior version of the ability and has a second role icon.  So an enhanced version of Survey might let you draw three cards as an action, have a survey icon (so it can be played to enhance the Survey role), and have a colonize icon (so it can be stuffed under a planet as a colonist).  Higher level technologies (which require at least 5 Research cards and at least two planets of the same type) have funkier effects, and are worth VP.

In addition to being worth VP and being involved in the Produce/Trade VP engine, planets also sometimes have role icons on them.  This means that every time you count how many of that card you have, you get to add one in – a Survey icon will let you look at an extra planet, a Research icon will let you get better tech, a Produce/Trade icon will let you do one additional Produce/Trade, and a Warfare or Colonize icon counts towards what you need to control a new planet.

As noted above, each time a player selects a role, he adds one of those role cards to his deck (note: you can select a role even if no cards are left for that role, and there’s a little board to put the role cards on that has the full text of each card).  When two of the decks have run out, the game ends (additional turns are taken if necessary so that everyone got the same number of turns).  Most VP (from planets, trading, and research) wins.

Thoughts/Opinions/Judgments

Eminent Domain is, to me, much more of a role selection game than a deckbuilding game.  The primary strategic decisions are about selecting your role, trying to avoid letting others effectively feed off of your role, and being able to make meaningful plays off of their roles (one of the strongest plays you can make in the game is just being able to follow a Warfare/Colonize and drop 3-5 cards at once).

Yes, this game is also clearly a deckbuilder too.  But the primary deck alterations are simply adding more copies of the cards you already have (plus using Research to strip some of those same cards back out).  This simply does not have the same feel that I associate with a deckbuilding game, that my deck is not just changing, but adding more and more better and better cards to it.  More significantly, as far as which mechanic is the focus of the game, the deckbuilding aspect is more of a side effect of the role selection, rather than a distinct decision.  Eminent Domain is like Dominion only to the extent that any random area control game is like any other random area control game.

The exception to the prior paragraph is Research, which does add plain old better cards to your deck, and this addition is the specific purpose of the role.  I personally gunned for Research in playing Eminent Domain, and it did not let me down as a strategy (plus I probably enjoyed the game more for it).

Even though we at Strange Assembly have done the “Eminent Domain v. Core Worlds” bit, those games don’t play alike, and I don’t see them as competing for collection space.   Indeed, I don’t really see Eminent Domain as occupying the same sort of space as any of the other deckbuilding games out there.  It feels much more like Race for the Galaxy, IMHO, although even that comparison is relatively loose (I have not played Glory to Rome, so I cannot comment on that angle).

The Produce/Trade route seems weak.  You can’t Produce/Trade until you’ve colonized or conquered planets, which you can’t do until you’ve scouted planets, and you can’t do any of this as efficiently unless you’ve researched new cards.  Plus, your own deck is inevitably filled with lots of non-Produce/Trade cards.  So it seems really tough to get anything done on the Produce/Trade front before two of the other stacks run out and the game ends.

I wish this had come with something in the box interior so that you had an option other than throwing everything into a pile and then sorting it out next time.

I think I’ve opined before that Eminent Domain covers all the bases of a 4X game, but I think I want to back away from that opinion.  Eminent Domain superficially touches on the basic aspects of a 4X game – you have to find new planets, develop new technology, can settle new planets, can gain resources from them, and you can conquer stuff.  But you’re not building up in the same way and, probably more importantly, you’re limited to conquering neutral foes, rather than savaging other players.  Not this this is a bad or good thing about the game, just an observation on the feel.

At its core, Eminent Domain is a clever role selection game with a stripped-down engine and novel use of new concepts like deckbuilding (even if you don’t like the game, I think you have to give Jaffee props for integrating the two mechanics so smoothly).  I liked it, found it to have a reasonable mix of luck and tactical decisions, and found the overall mechanics worked well (although, as discussed above, we did not think that the Produce/Trade role was balanced).  And the rest of our group liked it more than that.  I think that where it fell short of exciting for me was that you just didn’t get to build up enough as the game went on – over the course of the game you get your engine running more smoothly, but it doesn’t get that much more powerful.

Strange Assembly - Episode 051 – Refrigerator (Part 3)

You can discuss this episode here, or on our forums.

Strange Assembly – Episode 050 – Refrigerator (Part 2)

This episode can be discussed here or on our forums.

You may have noticed that this is Update #12 again.  I managed to skip 11 in my numbering, so I’m correcting that here (and last week’s updated has been re-labeled as #11).

Note: there’s no “whole environment” chi-square standardised residual value this week, as I’m re-evaluating what calculation to display there.

Make the Cut Rate Rankings
1) Crab – 27%
2) Lion – 24%
3) Phoenix – 23%
4) Dragon – 23%
5) Scorpion – 22%
6) Mantis – 21%
AVERAGE – 20%
7) Unicorn – 20%
8 ) Spider – 12%
9) Crane – 11%

Strange Assembly – Episode 049 – Refrigerator (Part 1)

You can discuss this episode here, or on our forums, or provide your feedback via e-mail.

Oh, and since it’s basically already out, I’m giving myself permission to use Embers of War cards for this deck.

Dragon Kensai has done well on the tournament scene, but (like most decks) you’ll lose a lot by dropping rares left and right.  Indeed, if you go take a look at my EE Dragon Kensai deck, you’ll see that it contained 29! rares and promos.  The Weapons, in particular, are hard hit – every single one is a rare or promo (or is in Forgotten Legacy), and until Embers of War you really had no chance of filling the Weapon slots with semi-competent cards.  So, let’s see what we can make of this.

Starting Cards - Not a lot of choice here.  Foothills Keep will be the Stronghold.  Border Keep XP is much better for you than regular Border Keep – for non-honor decks I tend to think it should be the default choice, but an attachment-heavy deck really wants the ability to send attachments back if it gets flooded, or go digging for them if there’s a drought (the ability to use BKXP is one of the many reasons to grab FL).  On the other hand, with such intensive gold costs, plain or Bamboo Harvesters is the way to go.

Foothills Keep
Border Keep (Experienced)
Bamboo Harvesters

Personalities: Kensai decks tend to be relatively light on Personalities.  And that’s good, because we’re going to run out of Personalities right quick.  We’ll use every single non-terrible (e.g., not Mirumoto Gobashi) Dragon Clan non-rare Kensai, plus Yamazaki.  That gives us 19, which is a reasonable place to be.  Best of all, this is almost exactly the Personality list we’d want to play anyway.  Masatane (a promo) isn’t available, but the new Mirumoto Kouzei is quite fine, and the Dragon Clan Champion will serve as the last slot.

3x Mirumoto Houken
3x Mirumoto Kojinrue
3x Mirumoto Kouzei
3x Mirumoto Reiyu
3x Mirumoto Yumaru
3x Yamazaki
1x Mirumoto Shikei

Holdings: Kensai can’t go light on Holdings, and I’m a fan of Small Farm to really up that Holding count (although, remember, Small Farm does not count as a real Holding when figuring out the minimum number you need to avoid gold screw).  Part of the Holding selection is easy, as your straight-up gold generation is all common or fixed – Gold Mine, Small Farm, and Prosperous Village.  Terrains can really hose Kensai, and Akodo’s Grave is available, so that’s also an option.  But basically everything else you’d want out of your Holdings is gone.  All of the utility Holdings that are of interest – Chugo Seido, Travelling Peddler, Temples of Gisei Toshi – are rares.  And Kensai decks get good mileage out of some 4G Holdings – with only a few in the deck, they effectively don’t cost any more on T1. Unfortunately, both of the favored ones – Recruitment Officer and Heavy Infantry Dojo – are promos.  And the options for replacements after that are less than compelling – Rugashi Bazaar is really the only option (unless you count Remote Village, which is nothing but gold but at least can come out off of a Gold Mine later on).  Luckily, Forgotten Legacy provides us with another potential option in Ageless Shrine (just remember that Ageless will only straighten the Personality, and your guys are a lot worse when their Weapons are bowed).  For now, let’s go with our Akodo’s Grave meta, plus Rugashi Bazaar in the four-spot (with the legality of Den of Iniquity, there should be a lot more dishonor to meta against anyway).

3x Gold Mine
3x Prosperous Village
3x Small Farm
3x Akodo’s Grave
3x Rugashi Bazaar
2x Ageless Shrine

Everything Else: This is my category for Events, Regions, and Celestials.  Your first spot here is pretty easy – Ryoshun’s Guidance is the nuts.  Unfortunately, the rest of the usual suspects are rares – Alter History, Glory of the Shogun, and Imperial Gift.  There isn’t any direct replacement for any of these, so we’ll have to go looking.  And we really do want to look – our next options for Personalities are just bad, and we have quite enough Holdings, so we’d like the last three spots in the Dynasty deck to come from this category.  The Second City is mostly a free slot, so that works for one.  And, although we can’t replace the honor meta of Alter History, we can add in some dishonor meta, since Formal Apology isn’t rare.  Finally, let’s try out some new tech from Embers of War – Low Market.  Producing extra gold for our Weapons, it might help offset the loss of Near Miss.  We’ll only include one, but a second might be warranted (in place of The Second City or Formal Apology).

1x Ryoshun’s Guidance
1x The Second City
1x Formal Apology
1x Low Market

Weapons: This section is both painful and easy.  Painful because by excluding rares we lose every single Weapon we’d like to play that isn’t called Cursed Relic (luckily, Cursed Relic is the second-best Weapon).  Easy because there are so few options left.  After the Relic, the pretty obvious choices are Tsuruchi Daikyu and the new Sankaku-Yari.  The only real option is where to go after that, with the low-Force options of Maga-Yari (3F for only 2G), Satoshi’s Dual Warfans (card draw, although not when attached from the discard), or Shamsir (actually has a Battle ability).  We’ll go with the “card draw is king” option.  Under other circumstances, we might run another Weapon (or maybe even two), but our Weapon options are so bad at this point that hopefully we won’t have to.

3x Cursed Relic
3x Tsuruchi Daikyu
3x Sankaku-Yari
3x Satoshi’s Dual Warfans

Rings: Limited to non-rares, Ring of Water will be one of our few ways to move in and straighten a unit, and pretty much has to go in.  Ring of Earth is also worthwhile is a one-shot Outer Walls, or to get over province strength boosting.  Ring of Air isn’t terrible, but The Cycle of Vengeance is just better.

1x Ring of Water
1x Ring of Earth

Strategies: If we stick with 12 Weapons and 2 Rings, that means we need to slot in 26 Strategies. Some of this is a pretty easy, starting with the excellent Hundred-Fold Cut and Again! Never Beyond My Reach is one of the weaker cards in the full-bodied version of the Kensai deck (or, at least, it has been in the pre-Den of Iniquity EE environment), but a Ranged 6 Attack is more than enough for a budget deck. Retribution is one of the most important cards against other military decks, and Know No Fear is just good (although at some point you’ll certainly run into Inexorable to shut it down). A single copy each of A Game of Dice and Creating Order must also go in (yet another reason for Forgotten Legacy). This leaves 9 spots left to fill. If we had everything available, this would be 3x A Brave New World and 3x Near Miss, with three random spots left (probably Games of Will). There simply no way to replace A Brave New World and Near Miss, however. Province sleazing? Multiple free money off of one card, and it protects the attachments? We’re not getting that anywhere else. Of particular concern is move-in – the deck has lost Wyrmbone, has lost A Brave New World, can’t use the new Moving and Unmoving, and can’t even go to the backup plan of Rumors Travel because it’s also rare. But the deck really needs to have at least some move-in, even if it won’t be able to straighten the unit. The best option is probably going to be Broken Alliance (Hidden Defenses is better on defense, but we need the move-in to work on the attack as well). Although I usually lean towards three-ofs, but our remaining six slots will probably end up divided over more than two cards. Possibilities include Games of Will, Tireless Efforts, Superior Reach, The Cycle of Vengeance, Fall Back!, and (if we’re worried about defensive decks) The Snow Has Teeth. I’ve found a couple more straighten options to be handy, so we’ll want at least two of Tireless/Fall Back!/The Cycle of Vengeance. I’m not actually playtesting this thing, so we’ll grab Games of Will (Game of Sincerity is Evil, even we may lack good targets for the bow action), let’s go with the smorgasborg approach – I’ll let you test and report back.

3x Hundred-Fold Cut
3x Again!
3x Retribution
3x Never Beyond My Reach
3x Know No Fear
1x A Game of Dice
1x Creating Order
3x Broken Alliance
2x Games of Will
2x The Cycle of Vengeance
1x Superior Reach
1x Fall Back!

So, after that, we’re left with a decklist of:

Foothills Keep
Border Keep XP
Bamboo Harvesters

Dynasty (40):

Events/Regions/Celestials (4):
1x Ryoshun’s Guidance
1x The Second City
1x Formal Apology
1x Low Market

Holdings (17):
3x Gold Mine
3x Small Farm
3x Prosperous Village
3x Akodo’s Grave
3x Rugashi Bazaar
2x Ageless Shrine

Personalities (19):
3x Mirumoto Houken
3x Mirumoto Kojinrue
3x Mirumoto Kouzei
3x Mirumoto Reiyu
3x Mirumoto Yumaru
3x Yamazaki
1x Mirumoto Shikei

Fate (40):

Strategies (26):
3x Hundred-Fold Cut
3x Again!
3x Retribution
3x Never Beyond My Reach
3x Know No Fear
1x A Game of Dice
1x Creating Order
3x Broken Alliance
2x Games of Will
2x The Cycle of Vengeance
1x Superior Reach
1x Fall Back!

Rings (2):
1x Ring of Water
1x Ring of Earth

Weapons (12):

3x Cursed Relic
3x Tsuruchi Daikyu
3x Sankaku-Yari
3x Satoshi’s Dual Warfans

What To Add: Most of the things you might want to add are listed above, although there’s a tension – some of the most important adds are promo cards that may be a pain to get (Wyrmbone Katana, Near Miss, A Brave New World, a better 4G Holding).  The rare Weapons from Emperor Edition may not be too difficult, because they’re all reprints.  The easiest adds may be the Unique/Singular cards from Emperor Edition, as those are always easier to pick up – Glory of the Shogun (probably the most important, makes Maga-Yari stronger), Alter History, Temples of Gisei Toshi, Chugo Seido, Tetsuo, and Imperial Gift shouldn’t be difficult (Travelling Peddler still carries value, even if you only want one of it and even though its been reprinted multiple times now).

Well, that’s it for now.  <insert pithy closing here>

Story

Legend of the Five Rings is, of course, the interactive storyline CCG, so every new expansion brings not only new gameplay, but also cards affected by prior storyline tournament wins, and new information about the setting’s ongoing story. Embers of War has about a dozen credited cards, including Bayushi Tenzan, the card printed for the winner of one of the items made available by AEG in the Amber Blackburn BGG Charity Auction.

The ongoing story in Embers of War focuses on the activities of the Great Clans in the recently founded and the even-more-recently opened up to every Colonies (this mirrors the story of the Kotei season that is going on now). This includes a variety of references to the Spider and Mantis (who, along with the watchful eyes of the Dragon, had been assigned to deal with the Colonies up until this point) and how they really, really resent this turn of events. Other story points highlighted include the ongoing alliance between the Crab and Scorpion (who seem to be sharing a Dark Secret), new hostilities between the Phoenix and Lion, and attacks on the Unicorn’s overland route to the Colonies (possibly by Yodotai-affiliated bandits).

The Cards

The most exciting place for a new L5R expansion is typically the three Strongholds. Embers of War brings new ones for Spider, Lion, and Unicorn. I am most excited about the new Lion Stronghold, The Marshaling Fields, which is another option for their Scout theme. Lion Scouts have a Terrain emphasis, and I wasn’t enthused about the original Emperor arc Lion Scout Stronghold (The Golden Plains) because by automatically creating a Terrain at your battles, it didn’t give you any reason to play with actual Terrain cards. The Marshaling Fields, on the other hand, makes you want to shove a bunch of them in your deck.

The Unicorn received The Ki-Rin’s Path (the name for the aforementioned overland route to the Colonies), which supports their Tactician theme. Unicorn Tacticians, unlike the rest of their themes, are a mix of Infantry and Cavalry Personalities. Ki-Rin’s Path let’s you go back to having an all Cavalry force when you want it, with some extra Force to boot. It may also enable Tactician “Superfriends” decks, playing lots of out-of-Clan Tacticians and turning them into Cavalry.

Finally, the Spider’s Commanders theme received The Plain of Glass, which represents a new secret hideout in the Colonies. The original Spider Commander box (Keep of the Dead) incentivized loading one Personality up to take advantage of the Conqueror keyword and the Stronghold’s Battle ability. The Plain of Glass, on the other hand, pushes you towards spreading the Follower love a little bit by letting you Conquer with two different units each attack. The ability to attach Followers as a Battle action is also not to be underestimated.

In addition to the Strongholds, each starter deck has the usual fixed Personality, and a new feature with Embers of War, a fixed item as well. For the Lion and Unicorn starters, these are Experienced versions of the Clans’ Celestial Swords, powerful artifacts that we haven’t seen cards of in quite some time. The Spider starter deck features an Experienced version of the Ancestral Sword of Hantei, the ancestral blade of the original Rokugani ruling dynasty.

Embers of War features of a couple of cycles of Personalities of note. First are the Sensei, one for each Clan, whose mechanics provide global boosts for their player or for the Personalities around them (the Sensei are all uncommons). Second is the appearance of the first batch of the Seven Sohei, a collection of story-selected Monks with Clan tie-ins (the Sohei are rares, but they are Unique and shouldn’t be tough to get).

Additionally, Embers of War has stacks of Focus Effects, aimed to encouraging duels to involve more focusing, instead of just striking to get it over with.

Other cards that have generated buzz are The Snow Has Teeth (meta against several different passive defense deck tactics), Inexorable (an anti-Reaction Reaction that is a weakened version of the old power card Fall On Your Knees), Low Market (a Region that generates Gold to pay for attachments), The Heir’s Wrath (an expensive but powerful Unique Strategy that lets you destroy a unit as a Limited action), and Games of Will (a meta effect that stops Force penalties and the popular Games of Sincerity). Inexorable is the only one of these that is a non-Unique rare.

The Clans

The Crab have had the strongest tournament performance so far in Emperor Edition, and pick up some nice support in Embers of War. Although their strongest theme (Scouts) comes up largely empty-handed, their second-best theme so far – Berserkers – brings home quite the haul. In addition to the obligatory Crab Clan Berserker Personality (Hida Bakishi), they also get Sakti, an Unaligned Berserker who will go in basically any Berserker deck. The Hida also receive Splintered Weapon, which has decent stats and the powerful ability to destroy any card without attachments. All of these Berserker cards are non-rare, although the excellent-for-Berserkers Strategy Power of Strength is rare. A fan favorite for Crab from Embers of War is likely to be Kaiu Onizuka, the newest Topaz Champion.

The Crane, on the other hand, have had poor tournament performance of late, and will be looking for a pick-me-up from Embers of War. It is, however, unclear whether they’ll get enough of one. The Crane’s best additions are probably to its Scout deck, which sees a couple of good new Personalities, including the Daidoji daimyo, Akeha (daughter of the very popular Daidoji Kikaze).

Dragon is another Clan that has been riding high on the tourney scene, with two different high level decks in the Weapon-platform Kensai and honor-running with the sharp-eyed Kitsuki. The Kensai get another few great options, with the high-Force Mirumoto Kouzei and the versatile Strategy Moving and Unmoving, which can serve as send-home or move-in. Embers of War also has a couple of new Weapons, including the nice Sankaku-Yari and the decent Shamsir. Moving and Unmoving is the only Rare among these, which is most relevant with regards to the Weapons, as it has been tough to field a good set of Emperor-legal Weapons without a lot of rares and promos. The Kitsuki also have some decent additions, headlined by the Experienced version of Kitsuki Daisuke, who draws a card whenever he wins a duel (and also continues to have great flavor text).

Lion have also been able to field two strong tournament decks, one with their Ancestor-focused honor theme and one an amalgam of their Paragon and Tactician themes (mostly a Paragon deck with a splash of Tacticians to activate the card draw on Eternal Victory Dojo). The Lion options in Embers of War are noteworthy for the Ikoma takeover of the set, as the relatively small (by Lion standards) family grabs four of their Personality slots in the expansion, including not only the expected Scouts but also a couple of Paragons (including the new Ikoma daimyo).

The Mantis’s greatest tournament success so far has come from using the Kalani’s Landing Stronghold to generate tons of cash, and this deck picked up a nice option in the extortionist Yoritomo Kanaye. Indeed, all of the Mantis themes picked up something or another, with the Tsuruchi Scouts grabbing the most Personalities (3). Movie geeks are sure to enjoy the Spell Incite the Phantoms, which includes a lethal rabbit-related shout-out to Monty Python.

The Phoenix assortment in Embers of war is headlined by the new Master of Fire, Isawa Koiso, who is sexy in more ways than one. Another Fire Shugenja, Isawa Mina, should also help out their successful Library of Rebirth decks, as there are a lot of attachments in good military decks these days. The card draw of Broken Cipher won’t hurt either. The other themes get something too, as Inquisitor decks (well, the non-rocket ones, anyway) will be glad to add another honor-gaining ability in the form of Asako Megu, the Shiba get the nasty Yojimbo Assemble (another “destroy something without attachments” effects), and Henshin get the situational but hyper-powerful-when-it-works Riddle of Rebirth.

Scorpion have spent Emperor Edition so far in the unusual (for recent years, anyway) of having the overwhelming majority of their tournament participation coming from military, rather than dishonor decks. This is likely to change with the release of the Embers of War pre-release promo, Den of Iniquity. But Scorpion dishonor also gets fodder from Embers itself, including the fantastic experienced version of Soshi Yoshihara. And, not to be left behind, the Scorpion military decks each pick up a (rare) Strategy that will provide a boost – Yojimbo Assemble for the Paragons and Help From The Shadows for Ninja. Bayushi Tenzan is pretty great too.

Although not as poorly performing as the Crane, the Spider have also lagged in tournament performance, and most of their decks don’t look to get much of a pick-me-up. The headline Spider card is the new version of the Shadow Dragon, who is worth every penny of that 20 Gold Cost. Along with Help From The Shadows, he could assist the Goju Ninja deck have a little more success with actual Ninja. The Spider Sohei, arguably the best deck Spider has going, picks up the Kensai cards discussed earlier, plus a decent Personality in Sugihara.

Finally, the Unicorn look to continue at a moderate pace, with their themes picking up some decent cards, but nothing explosive – unless they can rip multiple Two Fronts in time to make a last stand impossible for the opponent (Crane Scouts can aim for this too). Battle Maidens add Utaku Lishan (Reactions are much better tempo than Battle actions) and You Are Not Worthy to destroy almost any attachment. The Tacticians get another nice use-at-home Personality in Moto Isul, while the Commanders can use Flanking Unit for even more province sleazing. And Moto Rani could be a standout performer for the Priests of Death.

That’s it for this look at Embers of War – which I imagine will become the bonfires of war soon enough.

Promotional consideration was provided in the form of review material.

Make the Cut Rankings
1) Crab – 27%
2) Lion – 25%
3) Dragon – 23%
4) Phoenix – 23%
5) Mantis – 20%
6) Scorpion – 20%
AVERAGE – 20%
7) Unicorn – 20%
8 ) Spider – 12%
9) Crane – 10%

                Colossal Arena is a quick, betting-based card game for 2-5 players (the box says 40-60 minutes, but this is one of the rare games I’ve played that always seems to take less than the estimate on the box).  Colossal Arena was first released 15 years ago, with its most recent version being a Fantasy Flight Games Silverline release, which has the highest production values of those versions.  The FFG release goes for only around $25 MSRP.  Although Colossal Arena isn’t fantastic, I have found it to be a game that (1) family and non-gamers are actually interested in playing more than once and (2) so am I.  I’m always glad to pick up more games that meet those criteria, so consider this purchase a rousing success.  And even other gamers in my group have found it entertaining.

Colossal Arena is a card game by the ever-prolific Renier Knizia.  Like many Knizia games, Colossal Arena features a solid core mechanic with a pasted-on theme (Arena was originally skinned as a horse-racing game called Grand National Derby).  Despite the non-mainstream theme and mechanics (giant monsters battling in a betting/commodity manipulation game), my family members took to playing it quickly (and were more interested in replay than I was), which I think says something about the elegance of the central mechanic.

Like I said, Colossal Arena features a variety of monsters/fantasy characters fighting it out – starting with eight contestants and whittling it down to three by the end of the game, with one contestant being eliminated each round, reality-show style.  Combatants include an angel, a demon, a dragon, a cyclops, a wizard, an amazon archer, and other fantasy staples.

The core mechanic is playing combat cards for the remaining contestants (a combat card played for a contestant supersedes whatever the prior value was), with a round ending whenever every contestant has a combat value for that round and there is a definitive loser (so you keep on going if there is a tie for last place) – the loser is then eliminated.  Everyone starts from scratch for the next round, and play continues until three contestants are left (the game also ends if the central deck runs out of cards).  While this is going on, players are also placing their five betting tokens on various contestants (other than one high-value secret bet per player, everyone knows where the bets go).  The earlier you place your bet, the more it is worth.  The winner is whoever had the most cash riding on the three contestants who survive (or more than three, if the deck runs out).

The deck primarily consists of 11 cards for each contestant in the game (there are 12 total, but only 8 are used each time), numbered from 0 to 11.  A contestant’s cards can only be played to support that particular contestant.  Playing a combat card for a contestant also lets you activate that contestants special power – but only if you are the contestant’s “backer” (the player who has the most cash riding on the contestant at that point in time).  Powers include moving bets around, drawing cards, interfering with other players’ hands, removing cards from play, and a variety of other things.  There are also 11 spectator cards, also numbered from 0 to 11, that can be played on any contestant.

Each player must play a card every turn, whether the player wants to or not.  Cards for eliminated contestants can be discarded.  A player’s hand refreshes at the end of that player’s turn.

Obviously, each player’s basic objective will be to keep that player’s bets alive, while knocking out other players.  Especially as rounds go on, strategy moves away from just playing high value cards on your favored contestants and low values on opponents’ and towards trying to control how many spots are left so that the round ends on your turn.  For example, I’ve found one of the strongest special abilities to belong to the Ettin, who lets you play another card right away, potentially ending the round before your opponents were ready for it to (with their valuable bets going away, of course). Complicating all this, especially near the end of the game, is that you just might end up with a hand full of cards that you don’t really want to play, and so you need to minimize the damage that your compulsory play does.

Play is more controlled with only two players.  With four, it’s very hard to maneuver things so that your opponents won’t have good plays or ways to end the round on terms unfavorable to you.  With two players, it’s possible to have more deliberate chess matches over multiple moves as each player tries to force the other into making a play that lets the first player conclude the round by dropping a low card onto an “enemy” contestant (or a high card on a friendly one).

All told, Colossal Arena is not a game I’m ever going to get really excited about bringing out.  But it is a decent game that my family will be interested in me bringing to the table, and that’s a huge plus.  And the other gamers in my group liked it as well.  So, especially at the low price point, I think it’s worth giving Colossal Arena a shot.