I have too many games and not enough time to play them repeatedly. In fact, its very rare that I ever get in multiple playings of a game at one sitting - the exception being when I see my sister and we play a few face to face games of Blokus or Ingenious. At any rate, the problem this causes is that I often play games where I am either completely unfamiliar with the rules, or at least don't remember them all. Case in point - my latest playings of Descent. After the playings, I like to review the rules if the game is complex. In re-reading the rules I found that I had (again) forgotten to collect threat tokens (as the overlord) when surges are rolled (two surges = 1 threat token). Not only that, but the last two times we've played, we played with the monsters at an easier level than we should have (we used the card for the number of heroes, not number of players).
Descent is not alone - I always feel like I'm forgetting some rule. Sometimes, its an important rule, sometimes its some side case or a tie-breaking condition. How do some people keep all the rules straight?
3 comments:
Crap, I have played descent about 5 or 6 times with a group of friends. We have never collected threat tokens when surges are rolled...
About the only way I keep them straight is not to play games that have too many rules. Especially unintuitive rules. I know that leaves off many big complex ones (Descent), but there's still the Friedrich's of the world. :)
i hear ya, charles. typically takes at least one or two plays of a game before i get things down. i usually do a dry, solo run of a game (typically a partial play) before i get it to the table with a group.
i think some of these new rules you found would have made the game much more enjoyable and tense. as it was, i felt like our group was merely slowed down by the monsters.
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