I've played a couple of them once. Cosmic Encounter, the new version, didn't impress me. It seemed rather random and prone to "screw you" behavior. I think the game relies heavily on people having loved previous versions, but I never played any of those, so it fell flat for me. Good production values in the new version, though. Fantasy Flight's always good for that.
Race for the Galaxy is the game that everybody loves, to the point where it's developing backlash. I played it once, and thought it was essentially San Juan, but overcomplicated and with hard-to-read cards. People who come at it from the other direction tend to express the opinion that San Juan is just a dumbed-down version of Race.
I'd never even heard of Domaine before you mentioned it. I'm assuming you don't mean Dominion? (Which I've also played once, and thought it was OK, but I understand that the basic game is not the way to sell people on Dominion.)
Bummer on CE. RftG sounds pretty cool, though. Having not played SJ (or PR, for that matter), I probably would like it. And yeah, it's Dominion I meant (though I have the German predecessor to Domaine, and haven't played it). Dominion has such a high rating on BGG, I thought it would be killer. By basic game, do you mean there are basic and advanced games laid out in the original rules? Or do you mean with the Intrigue expansion?
My understanding of Dominion is rather limited, but I get the impression that it plays like a collectible card game, without the "collectible" part. For beginners, it's recommended to play with a subset of the cards, so the newbies don't get too confused while learning the basic mechanics. Most of the gamers I play with are hard-core, and would most likely just drop newbies into the whole game the first time, and let us sink or swim. However, the particular time that I played Dominion, the person who brought it was not one of the hard-core, and so he followed the recommendation of starting with a subset. So I recall the game as "OK, but nothing special." It's possible it would be more interesting to play again with more cards, but I haven't had the opportunity.
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Race for the Galaxy is the game that everybody loves, to the point where it's developing backlash. I played it once, and thought it was essentially San Juan, but overcomplicated and with hard-to-read cards. People who come at it from the other direction tend to express the opinion that San Juan is just a dumbed-down version of Race.
I'd never even heard of Domaine before you mentioned it. I'm assuming you don't mean Dominion? (Which I've also played once, and thought it was OK, but I understand that the basic game is not the way to sell people on Dominion.)
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So when are you going to host a game day?
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