Played the
Attack! with Expansion last Thursday at Shannon's. Six player game with
the additions of Pick and Mike (one of Shannon's aquaintances). The
expansion adds quite a few new rules to make the game more wargamy and
complex. There are now ship markers so you can control specific seas
and oceans and do commerce raiding. There are technology cards and
political cards. There are also four government types (Communist,
Democracy, Monarchy, Fascist) which affect political actions and
victory conditions. Oil is now a separate resource used to pay for
actions during your turn.
I thought it was more fun and interesting. Perhaps with such a large
map you need a couple more players since Pick and I never fought
anyone. I won the game without ever getting into a fight by
diplomatically taking over countries, though it did require overall
above average rolling for three turns and some lucky card breaks.
Otherwise I probably would have come in second or third. The game ended
with some neutrals still in play, which the Communist and Democratic
players need, so I think it was a good length (everyone got three turns
except Pick).
The more I play with Van Horn the more I think that Chris is not a fun
boardgame player. In this game he complained about several things which
on the surface may have screwed him a bit but the rest of us didn't see
anything really wrong. First, he changed seats so that everyone was
next to their starting location. Whoah, now Shannon was before him and
a war quickly started, with Shannon at an advantage for going first.
Screwed? I think he should have picked a country where he sat initially
and second probably talked to Shannon and establish some sort of treaty
before Shannon went and politically took a bunch of territories near
him.
|
Then there was
the "I don't know the rules" which got him a couple of times. If you
want to take the game seriously, read the rules before hand and get
your questions cleared up. Unfortunately he asked a question and we
answered incorrectly (probably we were answering a different question),
which hurt him a bit. But he still did ok in the game.
Then there was the complaint that I won without fighting. Well, that
can happen when you have political rules. I wasn't really trying to win
and if Chris Allen had taken that one Communist territory (he failed
rolling a six on 2d6 like three times in a row) that would have
curtailed my political expansion enough that I wouldn't have won.
I have my own complaints about the other players. Mike was erratic.
Shannon is too much of a schemer. Van Horn complains too much. Chris
Allen is a spoil sport loser. Pick is also a schemer, though less
obvious than Shannon. I guess I like playing with Woo, Fulton, Donald,
and Sweet more because they seem to play for fun. We want to win but at
the end of the game the losers don't feel bad about losing. With the
rest of the group it just seems like "wow, you guys take winning way
too seriously".
|