I put a lot of time and effort (and probably money) into Magic: the Gathering, and I'm not sorry about it in the least. I had a lot of fun playing Magic over the years and it has been very rewarding emotionally, intellectually, and even financially.
What I did notice though was the rash of other CCGs coming out. Collectible games are not only an accepted genre today, they are the norm. When the Card Game portion of the collectible market got saturated, Whiz Kids came out with collectible Miniatures games, slightly different then Warhammer-style miniatures games with regard to collectibility. Now there's Mageknight, Heroclix, and other such collectible minitures running around.
The next generation of collectible gaming appears to be evolving, and they're in the form of collectible board games. Theres a new game out who's name escapes me which is something of a chess variant, where pieces you use instead of Knights and Bishops are various beasts and characters out of some anime story, each with it's own movement scheme and the ability to 'flip' to a different (more powerful?) scheme at a cost.
Another example is the widely popular Pirates of the Spanish Main (aha! The post finally gets on topic!) which is basically a collectible miniature game where the "board" is the table with island pieces placed arbitrarily by the players, and the pieces are collectible boats which come on sturdy cards- you punch out the pieces and snap them together, a pretty clever mechanism. It is this game I'd like to discuss here.
Initially I looked at Pirates of the Spanish Main in a similar way that I looked at most of the other CCGs I tried out- looks interesting but why not just play Magic? However last weekend I finally learned how to play the game and watched some people play, and I thought it looked pretty fun actually. I think the lack of hidden information makes the game different enough from a CCG that it could be worth checking out. In some respects I don't like the idea of the good pieces being sold randmoly in booster packs, so if I want a particular one I have to buy it individually or trade for it somehow rather than simply choose the strategy I like with what comes in the box. But I do like the idea of customizing your team. So all in all I think this game might be worth trying. In fact, I'm seriously considering taking up Magic again so I can win packs of Pirates...
What do you think? Has anybody here played this game?
- Seth
Yeah, I read those right after I posted. I get the feeling those people are blaming the game for not being something the game doesn't intend to be in the first place. Of course they're allowed to not like it, but they could try and loko at it for what it is rather then discounting it for what it's not.
But maybe they're right, maybe it's not fun. Looks fun enough to me though, I'll probably give it a try- though not to the extent that I played Magic.
- Seth