Over in the 404 variants section, Dan Bigmore made a suggestion about retaining action cards. This lead to a conversation about the merits of different types of hand and hand management from a game design perspective. I’d like to elaborate on these for today’s game design post, which will be all about different types of hands.
I played Saboteur 2 this weekend and found it one of the more tedious games I’ve ever experienced, by the halfway point I was just hoping that it would be over. It’s taken me a while to unpack why I felt that way about it, but I think I’ve got to the bottom of it: When I get to the end of a game, I like to think that I had a chance to win it.
When watching a set of new players try a game and comparing their experiences to advanced players, it seems apparent that they’re not really playing the same game. I’ve been playing a bit of Legendary Encounters: Predator recently. The experience of someone who’s worrying about deck thinning and average damage curves is having a very different experience to someone who just hits the biggest thing they can and then buys the biggest thing that they can. While one is obviously more effective in terms of winning the game, I don’t think that it’s necessarily more fun. Both seem like valid ways to enjoy the game.
