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Tuesday, September 13, 2005

New England

posted by Mark (aka pastor guy) @ 9:06 AM  

I really had two issues with New England:
  1. I just don't like the graphic design - which is weird, because I usually go ape over the look of Goldsieber games. But the muted colors & patterns don't make me feel like I'm settling New England... they remind me that I need to go out into the yard and rake up all the dang leaves.
  2. There wasn't any "oomph" in the game. Well, maybe that isn't quite fair. There were nice "oomph-y" moments, as you had the opportunity to make clever plays and/or finally make the last piece of a plan fall in place... but overall, the order in which the cards/resources appeared either blessed or hosed your strategy and sucked the "oomph" out of the game.
Now, I'm a big fan of Alan Moon designs, which are often fraught with card order randomness, usually mitigated by some auxiliary system. In Union Pacific or Elfenland or Ticket to Ride, I find the balance of randomness & planning to be "just right". Not so much for New England, though.