From: cs161feu@sdcc10.ucsd.edu (Anthony Minkoff)
Newsgroups: rec.games.board.ce
Subject: Re: Two-player game
Date: 10 Nov 92 01:25:30 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego

In article <40774@sdcc12.ucsd.edu> I write:

[description of a single playtest of the two-player game]

Oops.  A couple of errors.  It was the first time we had played the
two-player version (and, to the best of my knowledge, the first time
the two-player version had ever been played), so naturally we missed
a thing or two out of the eight-page rules.  Allow me to point out
the errors before somebody else does:

>First, we had to settle a couple of contradictions in the rules.  In
>one place, the rules state that Regeneration counts as a successful
>challenge; in another, it states that it doesn't count as a
>challenge at all.  We ruled the latter.  We resolved another
>contradiction in the rules by ruling that Diplomacy tokens could
>only come from bases, not the warp.

Okay, not an error here, but I figure that as long as I've got the
rules here, I might as well give page numbers.

p. 30:  "Regenerate-- A Destiny Card can be used to free a token
from the warp of the appropriate Alien Power.  Such action does not
count as a challenge."

p. 34:  "Regeneration: The offensive player releases a token of the
card color and places it on a base of that power.  This counts as a
successful challenge."

(We used the p. 30 rule.)

p. 30:  "Diplomacy-- ...Lay such Challenge Cards face up beneath one
of your own tokens, taken from any base."

p. 34:  "Diplomacy: ...the player must take one of his tokens from
a base or the warp to mark his diplomacy cards in that system."

(Again, we used the p. 30 rule.)

>Furthermore, we ruled that certain powers could not be used in the
>two-player game.  We didn't make a list of these powers, but rather
>decided to rule on each power as it came up.  When we dealt the
>powers, on of the neutral powers received Parasite, which we decided
>to discard and replace.

Oops!  The rules do, in fact, provide such a list!  Mayfair's list
includes Delegator, which we allowed in the game (and probably
shouldn't have).  Mayfair's list does *not* include Bully, which is
one of the examples I listed of a Power that shouldn't be used.

Schizoid and Terrorist were also forbidden by Mayfair (I had
suggested that they only be usable by superpowers).

>Oh, one other thing I just remembered-- we had to rule regarding
>placement of Neutrals' tokens-- e.g., Worm's tokens at the beginning
>of the game, all Neutral tokens when a Mobius Tubes was played.  We
>decided in both of these situations to take turns placing tokens,
>one at a time.

Actually, Mayfair explicitly addresses the issue of setup in the
instances of things like the Worm (each superpower is responsible
for setting up the two hexes adjacent to his own), but does not
address the question of what happens when a Neutral gets tokens
(e.g., due to Mobius Tubes) in the middle of the game.

One other thing that I noticed we were doing "wrong" (i.e., not
according to Mayfair):  Mayfair stipulates that a successful
defensive proxy may place a Diplomacy card in the defended system.
We didn't play this, and I don't like the idea.  Diplomacy was the
major factor in the game.  I believe Diplomacy Challenges outnumbered
Card Challenges by something like 3 to 1.  If a successful defensive
proxy were allowed to place a Diplomacy card, that seems to me like
yet another incentive to avoid Card Challenges and play Diplomacy
instead.  I wouldn't want Diplomacy to dominate the game completely;
without card Challenges, it's just not Cosmic.

Tony
Newsgroups: rec.games.board.ce