What I consider worth reading during the week and did not want to link separately, collected here and uncommented.
Archive 31. January 2016
Hoplomachus: Origins has had me in its grip with its solo trials for a few days now. These are less of a full solo game and more like small scenarios with the challenge to break them - to find a solution by combining gladiators, tactics, and moves that can reliably defeat the scenario. Very quick to play and the AI for the opponents is surprisingly effective despite its very low complexity. It's quite fun and can be played quickly in between other things.
"We are the people!" came to the table for the first time with Juliana yesterday. As with my first solo round, however, only for the first decade, because that already shows all aspects of the game for the first learning, but does not immediately overwhelm you with the full program. With this game, I hope that Juliana's interest remains, because it is really very well made. It is essentially a mix of resource management with a bit of area control mixed in and - for the East - a good dose of State of Siege. Both sides play very differently, the West plays an economic development game with integrated attacks on the East with ideology and standard of living, the East is constantly fighting for survival and trying to put out all the fires, so in principle classic scarcity management. The West wins through the dissolution of the East, the East only has to survive until the end to win. From these very asymmetrical approaches and goals, a exciting tug-of-war between the two German states then results. The whole thing seasoned with a historical theme. Very cool.