Arcs has 4 suits of cards. The 7 aggression cards together have 15 actions, the construction and mobilization suits have 19 actions, and the administration suit has 20 actions. The average number of actions per card is thus 2.6, and the average number of actions in a hand of cards is 15.6. However, to play all of those 15 actions, you would need to be the lead player in every round, or be able to surpass the lead player. If you have to pivot or copy, you only get 1 action per card, or 6 for the whole hand.

If, as the starting player, you lead with a low card, let's say a 2 with 4 action pips on it, the other players are likely to be able to surpass that. However, you still come out ahead: The cards higher than 2 have fewer action pips, so even the players that surpass you only get 2 or 3 actions to your 4. If you lead with a high card, you get fewer actions, but it becomes more likely that other players can't surpass you, and only get 1 action from a copy or pivot play. Declaring an ambition messes up this action advantage of the lead player: As declaring an ambition reduces the value of your lead card to 0, you can be surpassed even with a 1. If you use a 6 with 2 actions to declare the Empath ambition, other players can surpass you with cards having 4 actions and actually get more actions than you do. The higher the card you use to declare your ambition, the more costly in terms of action economy that becomes.

One might be tempted to think that a hand full of high cards is good in Arcs, but high cards have the lowest number of action pips. The best hand is thus actually a mix, where you have high cards with which you can surpass and get initiative, but also low cards that allow you to play a lot of actions. If you have a hand full of low cards, you might get lucky when another player declares an ambition and you can always surpass a 0. But you should also seriously consider seizing the initiative. If you would be reduced to pivot or copy every round and only get 6 actions per chapter, sacrificing a card costs you only 1 action, and then playing a low card gives you 3 or 4 actions.

Getting a lot of actions only helps you if you can actually use them. If you were the starting player of the first chapter and lead with a 1 in construction, getting 4 build or repair actions, you'd find that you can probably only build 1 starport and 2 ships, leaving the last action unusable. This is where the use of resources in the prelude step becomes very important: If in the above situation you had a fuel resource, you could first move a ship into an empty sector and have far more options to build.

A typical problem with a "bad hand" is having too many cards of the same suit. There are diminishing returns when doing the same type of actions several rounds in a row. If you influenced in the previous round, you would often be much better off with a secure action than with more influence. Being aware of such things helps you to identify the cards in your hand that are likely to not bring you much of an advantage. While many players shy away from sacrificing a card to seize initiative, you have to consider how good or bad the card you sacrifice actually is. Sometimes the advantage of becoming the lead player is well worth the sacrifice of a bad card.

Gaining an additional action card is extremely strong in Arcs (see my previous post). At the very least it would allow you to sacrifice a card and seize initiative without suffering the disadvantage of not being able to play in the 6th round. But it can also easily lead to situation where you are the only player left with card(s) in hand, you become the lead player by default, and get all the actions on the cards you play without your opponents getting even one.

In summary, being aware of the action economy is very important in Arcs. Getting more actions than your opponents is generally good. There is true skill in knowing when to sacrifice a card to seize initiative, and when it is better to hold onto all of your cards.

Competitive board games are best when all players have a similar level of knowledge of the game. While all 4 players of my game of Arcs were playing this for the first time, two players had only read the rules. I had studies the rules in more detail, as it was me was explaining them at the table, and had looked at some playthrough videos to see the rules in practice. And the last player was the only one who had a large experience with previous games from the same designer, like Roots. That experience showed, and by the end of the second chapter, he was leading with 16 points, while I just had half that, 8 points. With victory for a 4-player game happening at 27 points, I didn't think I still had a chance. But I underestimated how volatile Arcs is.

I started the third chapter being the only one who had captives on his player board, and managed to declare the Tyrant ambition, meaning this chapter those captives were counting for victory points. But the leading player had already scored Tycoon and Keeper in chapter 2, was still way ahead in the resources to win those, and managed to declare both of those ambitions, so he looked very much as if he would win. But I had a "Union" card from the previous chapter, which allowed me to reclaim a played action card, thus getting one more action that chapter. And then I managed to secure another "Union" card. And the Call to Action Vox card, which allowed me to draw yet another action card. So by the end of the 6th round of chapter 3, everybody else was out of cards, while I still had 3 cards in hand.

That proved to be absolutely devastating. Normally in Arcs, the lead player already has a big advantage in the action economy, while the other players often can get only 1 action that turn, unless they can surpass with a higher card of the same suit. But with 3 extra cards I had 3 turns in which I not only was by default the lead player, I also was the only one getting any actions at all. So I used the 3 cards to attack the leading player and raid him. Arcs allows you to steal another player's resources and cards. I had some luck in completely dismantling his defending ships with a good roll of the dice, and the raid dice roll also came out well for me. So I was able to steal enough resources and cards from him to have the lead for both the Tycoon and Keeper ambitions.

So at the end of chapter 3, I was leading in all three of the declared ambitions. As victory points go up with the chapter, that was already 15 victory points. But I also had 4 cities built, which gave another +2 victory points per won ambition, bringing my score for chapter 3 up to 21 points! With the 8 points I had from the previous two chapters, that got me to 29 points, way ahead of everybody else and above the 27-point threshold for victory. While we had taken 30 minutes to explain the rules, and 2.5 hours to play 3 chapters, that still meant that we finished the game in time before the store closed.

From what I have seen in those YouTube playthroughs, these events of one player making a huge amount of points in a single chapter aren't uncommon. I had never seen anybody do or suggest to do it with my particular strategy to accumulating several extra actions, but that isn't the only way a big score is possible. And while I see how these big swings make for interesting stories, I am not sure whether they are the best game design. I'm not saying I played badly, as I managed to see an opportunity and grab it, but still my win felt somewhat luck-based. I got lucky that so many cards turned up that allowed to get extra actions. And because none of us knew how strong those extra actions were, and everybody was busy with whatever he was planning, I was able to grab those three extra actions. I'm fine with a player succeeding a good move in a game, but I would argue that the ability to make 21 points in a good move out of 27 needed for victory, or 78% of victory in a single chapter, is a bit much. And that isn't even the maximum, I would have made 30 points if I had already built my 5th city.

So this is Arcs in a nutshell. Two chapters spent everybody maneuvering into position, and then an unexpected big win by one player who didn't even look as if he was ahead. Arcs is very much a tactical game, not a strategic one. You might think one player is winning after 2 hours, and then in the last 30 minutes another player swings the game. The game is swingy and unpredictable, and some people will love the game for that. The more strategically minded careful planners might not be so enthusiastic. The people I played with, including me, thought that it was an interesting experience, but none of us were raring to go for a rematch. I assume that if you play Arcs a lot with the same people, it somewhat stabilizes, as players learn to see things coming and preventing others from those big wins. But with one board game night per week with changing players, that is not the reality I live in.

Arcs, one of the hottest games this year on the BGG hotness list, doesn't follow this trend. Just the opposite. In many ways it resembles much older games, like Risk, in that a players progress to victory can become rather obvious, and the other players can band together and stop that leading player by destroying his fleet, raiding his planets, and stealing his cards. Arcs actually has a rule about what happens if a player gets completely wiped off the board. That obviously doesn't sit well with people who think the original Scrabble is too competitive. And thus there are YouTube videos on "why Arcs isn't for you", and BGG reviews calling Arcs "mean".

I much prefer board games that have a good amount of player interaction, whether that is cooperative or competitive. Sitting around the same table, players are naturally more polite to each other, even in competitive situations. The toxicity, fed by anonymity and distance, of certain multiplayer online games isn't present in board games. Being in conflict with each other over a game situation while staying civil around the same table is good, it teaches us a lot about reasonable conflict resolution. There is an evolutionary aspect to games as tools to teach us about real world situations in safety, which is why even animals play.

Conflict and competition is part of the real world. Most of us are lucky enough to not have personally experienced armed conflict and war. But even if you are just working in a perfectly harmonious company culture, you can find yourself in a situation where both you and a colleague applied for the same supervisor position, and one of you is going to "win", while the other "loses". Helicopter parents trying to bring children up without ever letting them come into contact with any risk or any conflict aren't really doing their children a favor. Learning how to deal with risk, learning how to handle conflict is an important part of life. I wouldn't want to eliminate all competitiveness from board games, I think we would be losing something in the process.

I would agree that Arcs isn't a board game for everybody. It is not a casual game. While it doesn't have the most complex rules, it has enormous depth. You can't win the game once and then apply the same strategy in the next game: The combination of unpredictable randomness from cards and dice with even more unpredictable actions from other players strongly impacting you makes it necessary to constantly think on your feet and adjust. And that for 2 to 3 hours, or more if people are playing slowly. Arcs also isn't a game in which a first time player is going to do well against more experienced opponents. But for me there is something special about that sort of game, just like with Dune: Imperium: I love to reach the point after a few games where I feel that now I am playing competently, even if I am not winning.

Our experience last year was that when arriving with a car an hour before the convention opened, it was very hard to still find a parking space anywhere. So this year we came in the afternoon of the day before and stayed at a hotel, which wasn't cheap due to the 200,000 visitors of the convention driving up the prices during that period. That turned out to be a lot more relaxing, and very easy for the parking. I hope that if I book a hotel even earlier for next year, I'll be able to get a better price, and stay two nights. We did the convention this time with only a lunch break, but were exhausted by mid-afternoon and left. If I had a hotel room booked for two nights, I could take more breaks for comfort and spread out my visit over two days. I hope it won't be that full next year, because the huge crowd made it very hard to interact with the exhibitors and get some explanation of games.

The different versions of Dune: Imperium are different enough so as to require different strategies. For example in the first base game, rushing to get your Swordmaster is a very good strategy. In Dune: Imperium Uprising the same strategy would be much less good: Getting to the sandworms early is a lot more important than getting the Swordmaster early, as the added reward from the sandworms is higher than the added reward from a third agent; it could also be argued that getting to the High Council before the Swordmaster is a better strategy in Uprising, due to the higher importance of deckbuilding in that version of the game.

Due to only the first game and the first expansion being available in Dune: Imperium Digital, these are the two versions that I played the most. And of course over time one learns for example which cards are really good, so that the next time they turn up you know to pounce on them. But that knowledge is obviously useless if you play Uprising, where all the cards are different. However, the specifics are not the only thing one learns when playing; one also learns concepts, and how the different parts of the game interact with each other. For example, regarding the Swordmaster, I learned that getting the Swordmaster means revealing one card less, as 3 agents use 3 of your 5 cards before the reveal turn. Thus, while the 3rd agent in itself is very good, there is a price to pay with regard to the amount of persuasion available to buy new cards. And that remains true regardless of which incarnation of Dune: Imperium I am playing, and is the root of my insight about the High Council being potentially better in Uprising.

Another concept I learned the hard way was the importance of buying cards that give you access to the various faction spaces. If you don't, due to the Seek Allies card self-destructing, the single Diplomacy card in your deck is not sufficient to even get the 4 basic victory points from having 2 influence everywhere. Now the solution to the problem varies from version to version of the game, as for example the original game has the Foldspace option, which Uprising is missing. But the awareness that I need to look out for faction access cards remains as an universally learned concept.

Why did I start this post with Dune: Imperium Digital? Because I certainly would love to have Uprising available in digital format as well. I play this as a solo game against the AI, and that speeds a game up considerably. Dune: Imperium is a game which has a lot of interesting decisions, and human players tend to have to think a bit during their turn, especially if the move the previous player made just foiled their plans. Human players around a physical board also need to do a lot of other things, like shuffling cards and moving game pieces, which the digital version does a lot faster. The overall effect is that I have played a lot more round digitally than physically. And once you play the same version of the game repeatedly, you really appreciate a different version with different leaders and different cards.

For the physical version of the game, a similar consideration applies: If you have played the original Dune: Imperium many times, with and without expansions, Uprising brings you the joy of new game mechanics, new leaders, new cards, and the resulting new strategies. If you have played neither yet, and stand in your friendly local game store in front of the two boxes, trying to decide which one to buy, things get a bit more difficult.

At the most basic and neutral level, Uprising is a more complex game. On BGG the weight of the original Dune: Imperium is just a tad over 3, while the weight of Uprising is nearly 3.5. Right there, some players might prefer the more complex game, while others prefer the lighter version. My personal experience was that I brought both games to my weekly board game night, and I was able to set up, explain, and play the original Dune: Imperium within the 3-hour window of that event, while with Uprising we didn't finish the game in time and had to stop early.

On a subjective level, I prefer the original game over Uprising. I feel the original game had more alternative viable strategies; Uprising introduces sandworms, which double the rewards of conflict, and that makes it nearly impossible to win without them. As another example, the Research Station space in the original game gave you three cards, which is great if you are trying to win by buying The Spice Must Flow cards; Uprising changed the same spot to give you only two cards, and two troops. For me, Uprising often ends up to be more often frustrating: Because there is a more obvious "best" strategy, it becomes more frustrating if you draw a hand that doesn't support that one pathway; it also makes being the last player in the round a lot more frustrating, as the spaces left at the end of the round are less viable in comparison.

While I haven't had the opportunity to actually try it, I have my doubts about the viability of the Rise of Ix expansion with the new Uprising base game. It seems to me as if Rise of Ix had been designed to "fix" certain perceived shortcomings of the original base game, and Uprising does the same in sometimes similar ways. If you introduce both the Rise of Ix dreadnoughts and the Uprising sandworms into combat, that might be too much. And the Uprising spies seem a bit feeble if you already have the Rise of Ix cards that allow you to place an agent on an already occupied space. I could, however, imagine playing Uprising with the Immortality expansion to good effect.

The one area where Uprising is superior to the original version is the 2-player game. All versions of Dune: Imperium with all possible permutations of expansions are best played with 4 players. The 3-player game is still okay, but the solo and 2-player variants are only useful for getting familiar with the game. Uprising introduces "rival" cards, which makes playing against the House Hagal AI deck a bit more interesting, but I still wouldn't call it a good 2-player game.

Overall, both Dune: Imperium and Dune: Imperium Uprising are very good board games. If you like board games with a good amount of player interaction, and interesting decision making, both of these games are great for 4-player groups. I would recommend the original for new players, while Uprising is certainly a viable alternative for experienced players.

Imagine a game with a lot of different cards, tokens, and meeples. If you would just randomly dump them all into the box of the board game, it would take quite a while to sort them and set the next game up. So, many board games at least provide cheap little plastic bags into which you can sort the game components by type. But that is just half of the equation: I frequently replace those plastic bags by little plastic boxes, because then I can put that box open next to the game board, and have the tokens more easily accessible.

I currently have a weekly game session to play Agemonia, a long narrative campaign game. And that game came with custom plastic trays, including covers, which make setup and storage very fast. Unfortunately, that is an exception, and probably financially viable only for those expensive big box games. A more typical board game box for way under $100 is more likely to just have a few cardboard dividers, and those aforementioned plastic bags for tokens. As that isn't ideal, third party companies provide improved inserts for various popular board games.

I recently bought the classic version of Dune: Imperium. And then the online shop I bought it from sent me clever advertising and offered me the new Dune: Imperium Uprising version of the game for 25% off, so I couldn't resist and bought that one as well. Both boxes come with the tokens and meeples already in plastic bags, but the cards come shrink wrapped and by default all go into the same big compartment in the box, where they will get all mixed up. Thus I bought for both versions of the game two slightly different insert solutions from Folded Space. Folded Space makes inserts out of coated foam, which you have to assemble and glue together yourself. You end up with a bunch of trays that fill up the original game box completely, which more or less prevents game components from spilling. And the trays can be set up directly for use in the game.

My experience with this product is mixed. I found assembly less fiddly than the e-Raptor insert for Gloomhaven. But the overall experience stands and falls with the quality of the glue you are using. For the first insert I used a cheap glue, which was way too liquid, and hard to dose precisely. Inevitably the excess glue spilled into the trays. And then it turned out that even after drying, the glue remained sticky for a long time; that was really bad, because I had already put game components in the trays, and then had problems getting them unstuck from the trays without damaging them, especially the cards. I got better glue for the second insert, and this is easier to dose. But some excess glue inside the trays seems inevitable, and I'll have to dry the completed trays for several days before using them.

The positive point of the Folded Space inserts is that they are in a price range from $15 to $30, which is at the lower end of that particular market. For comparison, the Feldherr insert for Dune: Imperium doesn't need assembly, but costs €40. As the Dune: Imperium games directly from Dire Wolf cost between €50 and €55, a €40 insert seems somewhat excessive in comparison. For games without many cards, I often use the $15 Gamegenic Token Silo, but that is a generic product, and doesn't necessarily fit perfectly for every game and every box. Still, having a lid is good, and the outer tray holding the token trays can be used to roll dice in. Individual little plastic boxes from Amazon cost only around $1 per box, and can provide an even cheaper alternative. But usually I have to buy a complete set of boxes of different sizes and then pick out the ones that best fit in size for a particular game.

So, once I mastered the assembly of the Folded Space inserts and the glue problem, the final product is both pretty and useful. Set-up is sped up considerably, compared to the provided plastic bag solution with no containers for cards. As I am currently playing Dune: Imperium quite a lot, I don't regret having bought the inserts. I still wouldn't buy inserts for every game I own, just for the favorite ones.

If you look through a board game shop, or a list of crowdfunding games, you will find a huge number of games with a printed player count of 1 - 4; so they should play solo, for two players, for three players, and for four players. The reality of this is that the game will be best at only one of those player counts; if you are lucky they still kinda work at the other player counts, but it is practically impossible for any game to provide an equally great experience at all player counts.

Let's look at the reasons why games can't work at all player counts, with some examples: Tainted Grail is a complex narrative game, with a complex, puzzle-like card combat mechanic. That works quite well for low player counts, solo or two players. But for higher player counts the downtime, the time between the end of your current turn and the start of your next turn, becomes increasingly long. Maybe your whole group is low on food, and you decided all together to go to a hunting spot; so every player is doing a combat against a random wildlife creature, some of which are quite hard to kill. With 4 players that might take rather long; and as this is just resource gathering, it doesn't even add to the narrative. A lot of games are in a similar situation: The turn of any given player can be long, there is little to no interaction with other players during that turn, and thus at higher player counts people end up waiting a lot, usually getting out of the flow of the game by looking at their phones.

Familiar Tales, a much easier narrative game designed to be family-friendly, has the opposite problem. It's flow works well for 4 players; but the narrative demands all 4 characters to be in the game, and combat is balanced on that being the case. So for smaller player counts, each player has to play several characters, and there are rules on how to combine the decks if you are playing 2 characters at once. Unfortunately those rules don't work well at all, and make the game rather difficult and tedious. Again, similar things happen with other games that are well balanced for 4 players: The difficulty at other player counts isn't the same, resulting in a very different experience.

Dune: Imperium is a game with a lot of player interaction, especially the worker placement base mechanic, which prevents you from using a space that another player got to earlier. As the number of spaces on the board is fixed, this feels a lot tighter and interesting at 4 players than at 3 players, because at 3 players there is simply less competition. At 1 or 2 players there are rules for an AI/automa deck blocking a space every turn, but that is by necessity very random, and not as interesting as having to guess which space another player would take. Combat, which consists of different players sending different numbers of troops into conflict, is also feeling rather random with the AI/automa, while being much more interesting with 4 real players.

Board Game Geek, the biggest source of information for board gamers, for every game lists the official player count, but also a "community" and "best" player count decided on by poll. For example Tainted Grail is officially listed at 1 - 4 players, community would only play it at 1 - 3, and best is 1 - 2. I used that information to make a list of all my narrative campaign games, to decide which one of them I would want to play with friends in a 4-player group, and which ones would be better if I just played them with my wife at 2 players. But when I go for example to the Spiel games convention and look at a brand new game, which doesn't have much information yet on BGG, it is very hard for me by just looking at the box to decide what the real player count for a game is. The only exception to this is specific 2-player games, like this year's Spiel des Jahres Sky Team, which are more likely to be honest and not pretend that they can be played with other player counts than 2.

While the other information printed on the box, like the playing time, can be somewhat misleading too, the biggest lie printed on a board game box tends to be the player count. Be very, very careful before spending your money on a game if you personal situation makes it that you would be very disappointed if the game doesn't work well for a specific player count. If you only ever play with your spouse and end up with a game that doesn't really work for 2, or you have a larger game group and a game doesn't play well for that, you could be wasting your money.

A lot of modern games minimize the interaction between players, as well as minimizing randomness. The result is something that a lot of people seem to like: Predictability. Predictability allows for strategy, and moves that consist of executing the strategy you thought of in advance. To me that is often a bit boring, lacking excitement. Dune: Imperium has that excitement, because there is just the right balance between creating a strategy, and having to constantly change tactics within a broader strategy due to the randomness of cards, or the unpredictability of the moves of your opponents.

For example, a good early strategy is to gather enough Solari (money) to buy your Swordmaster, because that enables you to do one more turn every round. Depending on what base game and what expansions you play, there are frequently multiple paths to get there. But you can't just decide on one of these pathways before the game even begins. It depends on where you are in the turn order, what leader you are playing, and what cards you drew. If things work out perfectly, you can buy the Swordmaster as early as the second turn, and can already use that third agent in this second turn, giving you a nice advantage over your fellow players. Ideally you start the game as second player, and hope that the first player doesn't block the space you need; then you'll be first player in the second round and can block the Swordmaster space for everybody else. But of course things can go badly, you don't draw the card you need in the second turn, somebody else gets there before you, and in the next turn your the last player to act, thus at risk of still having to wait another turn or two before you get your Swordmaster.

Another game mechanic full of tension and drama is the conflict cards, especially if the current conflict is about one or two victory points. Not only are there many different options to get troops into the fight, but the reveal turn can give a combatant more power, and then there is still the possibility to modify the outcome with intrigue cards. I had a somewhat painful experience yesterday, where twice in the game I thought I had clinched the victory points, and both times a series of card plays resulted in a draw, giving neither me nor my opponent the win. That makes for really intense rounds.

In your first game, all this appears somewhat random to you. But the more you play, and the better you get, the more you can see the influence of skill. It isn't all pure randomness. As you start with 10 cards and get 5 cards per round, you *know* which cards you'll draw in the second round as soon as you see your starting hand, and can adjust your tactics accordingly. And by buying cards with specific symbols, you can increase the probability of being able to use the spaces that have that symbol, enabling you to plan ahead for a given strategy. Your opponents might be unpredictable, but with time you'll learn what moves other players are more likely to make. You never achieve perfect foresight, but it all makes more and more sense over time. You need to watch what the other players are doing, and that to me is a lot preferable to other games, where you can basically ignore the other players on your race up the victory track.

Today I'll have friends over for our 8th session of Agemonia, out of an estimated 20 sessions to play through the whole campaign. And although this is a board game, and not a pen & paper role-playing game, there are a lot of similarities. There is no DM, and thus the story is a lot less free form and more linear and scripted. But we still get the tactical combat, story, and character progression as if we would play D&D.

Similarly, with two of the people I used to play D&D with and my wife, we are now playing other campaign board games. Currently that is Familiar Tales. That is less involved in the gameplay and character progression, but provides an app in which the story is told by professional voice actors. Agemonia has an app too, but it only serves to read some of the longer story texts, while the story that happens by discovering story points on the map isn't voiced. You could play Agemonia without the app, as the text is also available in a story book. Familiar Tales needs the app and doesn't have a book, which at least has the advantage that the box is a lot smaller and lighter.

Personally I like Agemonia more, as Familiar Tales is a bit too light on gameplay for my tastes. But both games offer maps which a group of characters can explore. There are story points on the map, so you get a role-playing-like experience of things happening due to your actions, and you having to react to those events. And both games are of the kind where you get together a group repeatedly to play through the scenarios of a campaign. Which is a marked difference from my Wednesday board game nights, where any game played is just for that one evening, and groups to play form on the spot and aren't pre-planned.

While I wouldn't say no if somebody invited me to play D&D, I am in no hurry to organize a game of my own. Organizing a game would probably mean having to play the DM, and that is a lot of work. It is also a lot of cost, especially if I would have to buy yet another edition of D&D. I think I am happy enough with the substitute experience of my campaign board games.

Among the board games I backed on Kickstarter, there are a few where I didn't just back the base game, but got some expansion with it. And quite frequently that turned out to be a mistake, especially with campaign games: An expansion just adds more content for those who have already played through the whole game, and want more. With big box campaign games sometimes needing a year or more to play through, I now own expansions where I never even opened the box.

Dune: Imperium isn't a campaign game, so expansion don't add to the length of the game, but rather to its breadth. And, unlike most other board games, Dune: Imperium now has *two* different base games; the original Dune: Imperium and the newer Dune: Imperium Uprising. There are currently two expansions, Rise of Ix and Immortality, with a third expansion, Bloodlines, just being announced. And you can play either base game alone, or with any expansion, although I am not certain that adding more than one expansion at a time will give a good result. But that still leaves 8 possible combinations of base game plus zero to one expansion. And they are all interesting variations of the same fundamental game.

Even if you just have one base game with 8 different leaders, there is a good amount of replayability. Dune: Imperium has some very good game design, where a winning strategy of your last game doesn't necessarily apply to your next game. Different leaders have different strengths, and one might be more suitable for a military victory, while another would do better with diplomacy. And then there are slightly different conditions in each game, with different conflicts to fight over, different cards available for purchase, and even different player order might make a big difference.

The need for replayability is where it makes a big difference, whether you play in real life or the digital version. In real life, I can maybe play one game of Dune: Imperium per week. Digitally, especially against the AI, games are fast and always available, so I can play several games a day. I started out playing the iOS version, and at some point I had played every one of the 8 leaders several times, and encountered them as opponents many, many times. So I switched to the Steam version, where the first expansion Rise of Ix is already available, and the variation of the rules, and the additional 6 leaders really added a lot of replayability.

I now decided to add the original Dune: Imperium and the Rise of Ix expansion to my board game collection. This is a game that I might want to play from time to time, and then it is better to not have to have it available. I haven't had the opportunity to play the game in real life again; but while I was pretty lost in my very first game, I am sure that now I would be reasonably competent for the next game. The AI in board game apps generally isn't brilliant, but the one in the Dune: Imperium app isn't horribly bad either. If you can win games against the AI in the app, you understood the game well enough to not embarrass yourself against real players.

The practical problem for me is that by playing a lot of different games with a lot of different people, players are frequently at different points on their own curve. I recently played a game of Ark Nova with a guy who said that he had already played the game around 200 times in a digital format online. A second player had played the game several times, a third player once, and me never before. Kudos to the devs of Ark Nova for including easier boards for beginners, but that didn't stop the expert from crushing the less experienced players. I liked learning the game, but as a contest of skill the exercise was futile.

In a board game that is widely played competitively, like chess, you can assume that at least in a tournament environment everybody already played a sufficient number of games to be at the flatter end of the curve. It isn't that players don't learn anymore after a hundred games, but the difference between the 100th and the 101st game is obviously smaller than the difference between the first and the second game you ever play.

This week I played my very first game of Dune: Imperium. Again not doing very well against players who had already played the games over ten times. Because I liked the game, I then started playing the digital version a bit. Theoretically I could practice the game there against an AI, or even online, and then do a lot better the next time I play it face-to-face. But while some board games exist as digital versions on Steam or mobile, that tends to be games that are a few years old and have been rather successful. Newer or smaller games don't get their own standalone software; they might make it to a virtual tabletop platform like Board Game Arena or Tabletop Simulator, but I am not a big fan of those. They tend to be fiddly, and they don't have an AI to play against for learning purposes, thus just moving the problem of being too early on the curve elsewhere.

Getting good at a board game also requires to play the same game repeatedly and without too long breaks. When I haven't played a particular board game for over a year, I have trouble remembering the rules, not to mention any advanced strategies. Board Game Geek is said to have over 125,000 board games. If I go to a weekly board game night 50 times a year, I think I'll have more fun playing 50 different games badly than playing 1 game very well. And the enjoyment of playing one game very well would depend on a number of other players also wanting to play this one game repeatedly. It might depend on your personality, but I wouldn't enjoy crushing somebody in a board game, just because I played it much more often than him.

So, yes, you can "git gud" at a board game. But playing a board game to find out who the better player is makes only sense when everybody has played the game already often enough to approach a more or less stable skill level. That is why I personally prefer cooperative board games.

Over 30 years ago, I was part of a student organization that organized once a year a long weekend in a house in the Austrian alps for first year students and older students to get together and get to know each other. At the time I frequently brought the board game Junta, because it best plays with 7 people, and outside of a large group weekend getaway it is hard to get 7 people together for a 4-hour game. But Junta is a game that is not only competitive, but also somewhat evil about it: There is a lot of negotiation, and you can't really win without betraying somebody. The game had a lot of success at these weekends, but I know of at least one case where among the players were a couple, and one of them felt an in-game betrayal was so serious, that the couple split up afterwards. It isn't always easy to separate feelings and trust from outside of the game and inside the game.

The biggest trend in making competitive games less hurtful to others was an increase of games where there was less "take that" player vs. player interaction, and more of a parallel race for victory points. It partially solved the problem of better players crushing less good players, because at least the less good player could still in repeated plays improve his personal score and feel good about it, even if better players had far more points. A huge percentage of Eurogames these days work with victory points. The more thematic American style games had a different solution: Cooperative games, with all players together playing against the game. You can win in Gloomhaven, but you can't win *against* another player, only *with* him.

The question is, if you want to make a competitive game, how do you let players interact with each other? A typical answer of those Eurogames in which you compete over victory points is that players interact with each other by competing for in game resources. There is a whole style of worker placement games, where the fundamental rule is that only a limited number of workers can be placed on a spot, so that the players who goes there first can block others. In card-based games there are often drafting mechanics, where again you drafting a card means that somebody else doesn't get it. Good players often are able to understand not only their own situation in game, but also that of the other players, and sometimes placing a worker to strategically block another player, or "hate drafting" a card so somebody else doesn't get it, is the winning move.

But there is a growing trend to make it even less likely that one player upsets another, by limiting player interaction even further. For example Wyrmspan removed some player interaction, like the competition for food dice, from its predecessor Wingspan. I played one game this year, Imperial Miners, which had gone all the way to remove *all* player interaction. There is nothing you can do in Imperial Miners that would influence another player at all. It is a "multiplayer solo" game, where playing it with other players just means you play the same game simultaneously and compare you scores, without one player being able to help or hinder another.

As some cooperative games had an alpha gamer problem, with better players telling other players what to do, the trend towards less player interaction even exists in cooperative games. Congratulations to Daybreak / e-Mission for winning the Kennerspiel des Jahres 2024 award, but the one thing I don't like about this otherwise great game is how limited the interaction between players is, with only a few cards specifically allowing you to help another player. They probably wanted to prevent alpha gamers from bossing around other players by having each player keep his hand of cards secret and building his own tableau, but if nobody makes an effort to actually cooperate you can end up with a game in which everybody does his thing completely alone. The only positive thing is that once players decide to cooperate, they'll see that it is more likely to win that way.

While consistent with modern trends, I am not absolutely certain that preventing players from "hurting" each other in game is really such a good idea. A "game", by definition, is a safer environment, which can often be useful for learning about interactions without real harm. Maybe somebody who got betrayed in Diplomacy will learn a valuable lesson about trust, and then not so easily fall for the next online scam. The real world isn't free from conflict and aggression, so learning how to deal with it in a competitive game is maybe not such a bad idea. Having no player interaction at all certainly can't be the right solution, as then what is the purpose of gathering players around a table at all, if they don't get to interact?

A War of Whispers had a Kickstarter in 2018 which funded, but with only 639 backers. At the time, the Kickstarter price for the standard edition was $49, while the price for the deluxe edition was $69. It seems that today the suggested retail price for the standard edition is still $50, while the deluxe edition went up to $99. However, I was able to grab a copy of the deluxe edition for the suggested retail price of the standard. Which leads to the question of whether buying a deluxe edition of a board game is worth it.

The answer to that is, "it depends". It turns out that for this particular game, the deluxe edition is a) not very luxurious, but b) a whole lot more playable than the standard edition. A War of Whispers is an area control game, in which players don't control the 5 empires at war, but 4 shadowy secret societies that have bet on the outcome of the war. As each player can possibly control several different empires during his turn, being able to quickly see what is going on everywhere on the map is rather essential. But in the standard edition the cities, towers, and farms are just printed on the board, and that sometimes in not very visible colors; the deluxe edition has the cities, towers, and forts as plastic miniatures, which are massively more visible across the table. While the level of detail on the miniatures isn't great, looking at images of both standard and deluxe version one can clearly see the deluxe version having a much improved table presence, and better playability through that better visibility.

On the other end of the scale are products like the 3D version of Settlers of Catan. The 3D terrain isn't really adding anything to the game, in my opinion. The product isn't even available anymore, probably because very few people wanted to spend $300 for a $60 board game. A very common thing these days on crowdfunding options is the standard version having cardboard standees, while the deluxe version has plastic miniatures. That is probably important to those people who can and like to paint miniatures. But as I can't, I'm frequently better off with a color cardboard standee than with a grey miniature, in terms of table presence and visibility.

Chip Theory Games makes games in which chips the size of poker chips are frequently used, thus the name of the company. Now authentic casino poker chips are compression molded from clay, and weight about 10 grams. Many chips in games from Chip Theory Games are likewise heavy 10 gram chips (not sure how they are manufactured, might be plastic filled with metal), but standard versions of some games come with health chips that are just 4 gram plastic chips, and the deluxe upgrade is getting those as heavy 10 gram chips. Visibly there is hardly a difference, especially when viewed from a distance, but it is surprising how much of a tactile difference this upgrade makes. I also don't regret having bought plastic chips to replace cardboard chips for my copy of the board game Agemonia, even if those are just the light plastic version. And I also bought some generic metal coins for use in some games that otherwise use cardboard coins, because it just feels nicer. I backed the deluxe version of FLOE, because it contains storage solutions from Game Trayz, making the game a lot easier to set up and store.

The A War of Whispers deluxe edition also contains additional cards, bringing the deck size per empire up from 8 to 12. That is a pretty significant change to gameplay. It is another reason why I would consider the deluxe edition of the game to be the "standard", while the standard edition is just a subpar version of the game. Gameplay expansions are best sold as expansions, and not as part of a "deluxe" upgrade to a game. Fortunately more and more crowdfunding projects come with not just a choice between standard and deluxe versions, but with a wide selection of individual component upgrades, for example replacing the cardboard game board with a neoprene mat. Which is an upgrade about which I have mixed feelings: For some games a neoprene mat is a great upgrade, especially since it prevents game components gliding over the board when somebody bumps the table, and makes cards on the board easier to pick up. But I have had neoprene mats that were delivered folded instead of rolled up, and I ended up never using them, as it is extremely difficult to get the crease out.

All this to say that one has to be aware that some games exist in different versions, or with optional deluxified components. With some general experience with such components one figures out which ones are actually useful for playing the game, and which ones just increase the price for no added value.

I keep my eyes open on what is going on in board game development. I follow YouTube channels, read newsletters, hang out on Boardgamegeek, etc., so that I am aware of what the games are that are currently considered to be very good. BGG actually has a hotness list, which shows the games that are most talked about. As I am writing this, number two on that hotness list is a game called Arcs, a sci-fi strategy game. There is a lot of buzz around it, although the Kickstarter is only now being delivered, and the game won't be available in retail before autumn. I am mentioning Arcs here, because there are two versions of it, and they differ a lot in the amount of commitment required.

The basic game of Arcs takes about 30 minutes per player. This makes it perfect for my Wednesday board game nights at the friendly local games store. I can bring the game, find 3 other players on the spot, set the game up, explain it, play it, and pack it up within the 3.5 hour window of that event. Then there is a campaign version of Arcs, which takes around 30 minutes per player per act, and there are 3 acts. The campaign game uses all the rules of the basic game, and adds additional layers of rules and components on top of it. It is highly recommended by the developers to first play several games of basic Arcs, and only try the campaign game with people who have a solid grasp of the basics. The campaign game looks really cool. But I ordered only the basic game, because I would probably never play the campaign. I would need a group that plays the basic game of Arcs with me one weekend, and is willing to come back the next weekend to play the campaign version; or better several weekends, to justify the purchase of the expensive campaign expansion. I can understand the enthusiastic reviewer on Shut Up & Sit Down saying that he has been playing Arcs up to 3 times per week for the past few months and still loves it. But who has a group with whom he can play the same game 3 times per week for several months? Getting a group together once per week is a challenge, and my current Agemonia group is pausing for 3 weeks due to some people being on summer holidays.

I have a lot of campaign games in my collection, and even more that I backed on Kickstarter in previous years and that I am now waiting to deliver. But these days, when I see another long campaign game advertised on Kickstarter or elsewhere, I walk right past it. All of the games I bought this year are games that can be played in an evening, without an ongoing commitment. It doesn't matter how "good" a board game is, if I can't get it onto the table.

It is often said that the crowdfunding campaigns for modern board games run on FOMO, the fear of missing out. Unlike video games, of which Steam can produce an unlimited number of copies, board games tend to have print runs, and some games might only get printed in a single print run of a few thousand copies. Thus it happened to me that I heard of a board game that is supposedly great, but either I can't buy it anywhere, or I can only find it on eBay for some outrageous price that isn't worth it for me.

But curiously print runs can also work in my favor. I just ordered a board game printed 5 years ago, and I got it at such a big discount that I bought the much nicer looking deluxe edition for the previous price of the standard edition. Probably they printed too many of the deluxe version, and didn't manage to sell them. And as board games, unlike video games, take up storage space, companies are even more willing to sell you unwanted inventory at a nice discount.

That also works at a personal level. A board game collection takes up a lot of shelf space. Fortunately I now have a board game room, with a bespoke board game shelf from wall to wall, which isn't full yet. But many board gamers resell their older board games, for reasons of space, or to get some money back. If you bought a board game, played it only a few times, and it turned out to not have been the best fit for you and your group, you might well want to sell it. There are specialized shops for used board games. I just picked up a couple of older games in shop I just found, used but complete, for about half of their original price.

There is an evolution in board games, sometimes older games actually *feel* old, in spite of not having the graphics evolution of video games. But other board games age quite well. And games from let's say 5 years ago are often just forgotten due to the flood of newer games, rather than being actually outdated. With a bit of knowledge, one can sometimes find real treasures in a used games shop.

I bought another board game last week: Daybreak (English title) or e-mission (German title). I bought it, because it was nominated by the "Spiel des Jahres" jury as one of three "Kennerspiel des Jahres". That is to say that it is a bit more advanced than the more family-friendly basic games of the main award, more suitable for experienced board gamers, while still not being a really heavy game for experts. I've been buying more games of about that weight this year, because they are usually quite suitable for the board game nights in my friendly local games store, with respect to both length of time needed to explain and to play. Now Daybreak/e-mission is a game about global warming, and how to collectively overcome the challenge of climate change. And the recommendation of the award jury turned out to be a good one, it is a very nice cooperative game with good player interaction and flow. But because the theme of the game is so eco-friendly, the makers of the game decided to not use any plastic for the game. Well, no visible plastic, I'm pretty sure the cards are plastic-coated, because they are as smooth as any other game's cards. As a result, the game comes only with a few thin cardboard dividers, which do a horrible job of storing the game, especially if you transport it. There are no plastic bags to put tokens in. And annoyingly the game box is glued shut with paper stickers, which unlike plastic stickers can't be removed without falling to pieces and the broken seal remaining ugly on the box.

In the end, I bought a plastic organizer box to sort the different tokens of my ecological game. Transparent plastic boxes which can be closed for transport and used as token trays during gameplay are simply the best solution for this specific task. The open box the game came in just results in a huge mess when transporting the game, and even smaller cardboard boxes with a lid would be less convenient and more expensive than a plastic organizer "tackle box". And this isn't single use plastic, the game might stay like this in my collection for decades, and will hopefully never end up in an ocean. I'm pretty certain the decision to make this game "no plastic" has zero actual ecological impact, but just makes the default storage solution look too cheap and impractical for a 70 Euro game. Worst of all, I'm sure the makers of the game are feeling really good about their bad packaging decisions, all smug and morally superior.

Playing Dungeons & Dragons, especially in the last decade, I was frequently the DM, the dungeon master. Same principle really: A typical group to play D&D needs 1 DM and 4 - 5 players, most people just want to be players, and DMs tend to be the limiting factor. But in D&D the DM not only has a larger responsibility for the game being fun than the other players, he also has to do a lot more work. Nearly all preparatory work for a game falls on the shoulders of the DM, which also means that he is usually taking on more of the cost than the other players do. I haven't been looking for new people to play D&D with since my last group fell apart.

What I did do since moving into a new region is looking for people to play board games with. And I have been pretty successful with that. I have a regular board game night in the friendly local games store, and two other groups of people with which to play on weekends. And at first I thought that this meant that I didn't have to be the DM anymore. Most board games don't have a dungeon master or game master, and players are supposed to be equal.

But it turns out that if you meet a group of random strangers at board game night, there is a large number of people who are very willing to play with others, but they aren't quite sure what game, and they haven't prepared anything. And the games shop has a limited selection of games that people can play. If you want to see another game played, you'll have to buy it and bring it yourself. And if you bring a game, you should also already have prepared it, read the rules, and be able to explain it. I've been doing that, but somehow I feel that I am the dungeon master again. The choice is always the same: Either have a harder time finding a good group, or make finding a group easier by accepting more responsibility.

The reason I am writing this post is that Agemonia today launched their second Kickstarter. And while you can get the game from the company webshop for €179 plus shipping, the Kickstarter price is €109 plus €34 shipping. Not quite sure how much the difference ends up being, as I think the webshop price already includes VAT, and the Kickstarter does not. Personally I just pledged €35 for a box with all the new stuff. But as this is really I great board game that I can only recommend, I decided to give it some free advertising.