#noriagame

Noria. Continuing to really enjoy this one. Games at either end of my personal difficulty spectrum (games that are easy for me to master, of games that I find opaque) usually lose my interest before too long. This one works for me though, despite the fact that I seem to be terrible at it. I don’t know if it’s the colorful and nicely-drawn setting, or the fact that while I continue to kinda suck I at least feel like I’m making progress towards understanding, or that I find the dynamics interesting (a lot of tension between specialization and flexibility, the jockeying over scoring, and some interesting cooperative-competitive dynamics); but I’ve continued to find this quite engaging, much moreso than is typical for me with this kind of higher-end logistical euro. Anyway, should be landing in US retail soon, check it out. Tip: I’d recommend skipping directly to the “advanced” setup, except use the default prices for extra action discs. I actually found laying out the islands in a circle (we just placed them around the outside of the board) easier to deal with than the more chaotic basic game setup. I also think it’s hard to screw up your initial dial setup too much, so having everyone lay them out as per the advanced rules gives a little more variety and you aren’t going to hose yourself, at least not with the default disc pricing. #bgg #boardgamegeek #boardgames #strongholdgames #pegasusspiele #noriagame

Playing some more Noria. Still really enjoying, but wow, I have to upgrade my heuristics - I continue to do terribly at this (after winning my first game comfortably 😄). It’s actually a rather different game from what it looks like on the surface, a multiplayer solitaire, weird action-restriction, tableaux builder. It’s got much more intense competition over resources and VPs and table control, and you really need to be responsive to the other players in a way that you often don’t have to be in contemporary designs. It’s a bit think-y but most of the obvious AP traps pretty much come out in the wash; because of the way the dials work the big decisions about how to pace and space your action chits and strategic choices about specialization vs diversification pretty much dominate over strictly tactical concerns of action execution or dial management, so spend your time thinking about the right things (although there is still some resource management of your production pipeline). Anyway, fun and meaty game, and I think I converted Kim after this outing 😀 #bgg #boardgamegeek #boardgames #pegasusspiele #noriagame

Another run at Noria. Although it’s a bit outside of my usual gaming zone, I’ve enjoyed this. The central mechanism are these multilevel dials that rotate at different rates and control your action selection based on what’s in the third or so of the dial that faces you. This sort of very abstract action constraint is typically a red flag for me - I am decidedly not a fan of Feld or Gerdts games generally, where this sort of arbitrary constraint is common - but I like this. The dials are nowhere near as restrictive as a rondel (say), and you have a lot of flexibility in building up you dial, making choices about how many of which actions to put where, as well as some ability to make adjustments; it’s almost more reminiscent of Tzolk’in, although somewhat distantly. There are interesting tensions between specialization and diversity, and the way that the VP rewards are determined has an interesting cooperative/competitive tension (also: not a point salad game!). Plus, the worldbuilding is OK; like Blur Moon, it might be fun to see a companion game in the same world. I don’t know if it’ll ultimately have legs, but it’s a nice design I think just because there isn’t a ton of variability, but interesting and pretty clean for what it is I think. #bgg #boardgames #boardgamegeek #strongholdgames #pegasusspiele #noriagame