Thursday, September 16, 2010

In which we plays Blackbeard, me lads.

Something else we played at Nick's last weekend was Blackbeard (GMT's new edition). Danni easily beat Nick and me, storming ahead in notoriety and booty after sacking Portobello. This is a fun game, though poor Nick spent most of the game scanning the rules for us. He was effectively a full-time GM so it's hardly surprising he came in last.

I have the 1st edition and used to play it solo quite a bit (back in my lonely bachelor days). A couple of things that struck me about the 2nd edition - first, dumping the hexes is no great loss. It always felt a bit anomalous cruising around the hex-grid with no regard for wind direction. Second, the cards are considerably simplified (and prettied up). However there's a cost - a lot of complexity is offloaded onto the huge player reference card.

Let's face it, Blackbeard is all about the chrome. In fact there's hardly a game there at all - it's all chrome. So not a satisfying collection of graceful interlocking mechanisms. More a chaotic pile of historical accidents. Like a roleplaying game, it's all about imaginative immersion.

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