Reply To: RAZED – FATE OF A GALAXY: Feedback and discussion thread

[captainventanusParticipant 4936xp 1]

Even in its very early state this is very appealing and intriguing as it does feel very much like its own thing with a fresh approach to the basic mechanics. At least from what I know. For me even at this stage it captures more of my interest and imagination than Stargrave ever did.

So naturally I jumped straight in without reading the opening pages and thought, ‘this looks very much like Star Wars’ ;). It is, at the same time the grittiness of the pictures gives it a very different atmosphere. I get the desire to capture that feel, but this has already more to it and can stand on its own legs. Trying to make it fit might bring its own issues like balancing out ‘Force’ users.

All the imagery in the rulebook immediately creates immersion which in part certainly sells this. Even if this is supposed to be miniature agnostic and clutter free hence streamlined part of me would like to have its own miniatures based on the images, card decks and poker chips as kismet tokens. Sure, Legion miniatures work perfectly, but where to get a variety of appropriate dogs?

At the same time all the pages and placeholder images/texts make it a bit harder to follow the basics than probably intended. The game overview at the outset is good and immediately sets up the framework, wish others would do this more. For Beta testing it would be good though to have a rules summary/the tables on a few pages to print off. The core mechanics take a moment to understand, but should be pretty intuitive from then on.

Card mechanic – I get the options this brings in principle but have never particularly liked using it in practice. The only game I semi-regularly play with it is Too the Strongest where it is so intrinsic to the game. Perhaps my general prejudice is just based on the aesthetics of having cards in play – maybe if the cards used for sets of different themed symbols, I’d not even think about it. Here though using the suits for different types of actions as well as the ability to use cards in a universal manner for some things, albeit at greater cost, sounds really good so far. Has the potential for very tactical gameplay and in a PvP context brings uncertainty into play too.

In the absence of a few full profiles, it’s hard to the relative strengths, problems etc. so can’t comment much on that yet. It’s also a bit difficult to imagine how large the teams are supposed to be.

The only element that had me wondering was the question of movement – I get the using the two card sides as a streamlined measure (though with those distances what is the gaming area supposed to be?). That perhaps puts too much of a limit on the ability of a wide range of unit types to move. Maybe that is intentional. Maybe using different activation values provides some variance or maybe there could be modifiers using multiple card lengths.

Look forward to more.