With new players, yeah, I could see that it might be. I'd probably save that rule for playing with experienced players who will know what they need and know how to quickly identify it in the deck. Those are the players that could benefit from that kind of optimization anyway.
It can be at first, but once you have some sort of a tableau built and you're actively searching for certain cards as you draw anyway, you kind of know what you're looking for, you just have to find the specific scoring objective from the list, which also seems cumbersome, but having that keeps it from dragging on and being at all subjective - instead of looking for a card with "a high growth capacity" (what does high actually mean) you're looking for one with 4 or more and you have to take the first one you get to. The whole process took maybe 30 seconds, and you're likely to only do that once or twice in a game when you really just need that 1 card to make your engine work really good. Definitely not something you're doing every turn by any means.
It is an amazing game changer and since you look for a specific place on the card even newcomers will be able to search quite fast, as yo don’t have to look at the other card content !!
This is an interesting expansion, I am not a huge-fan of "finding a card from the pile", but I am very interested in the new cards providing more user-interactions. QQ: Can I just add the new cards to the base game and play the game following the base game rules? Or are these new cards must be played with that "germination" action?
The only aspect of the expansion that allows you to do the germinate action are the seeds. You could play with all the elements of the expansion without the germinate action for the seeds without a problem! You can use the seeds to compost from the deck or your hand, to place Sprouts and Growths as well as gaining 2 soils.
The seeds do have multiple abilities beyond just germinating as max mentioned below, and I do get why it seems cumbersome or like it may drag, but it's not something you're going to do regularly because of the cost of the seeds, and when you do, it's because you really need a specific card for your engine. At first glance I was concerned with the 21 different scoring options to look for but having them so specific actually made it much more efficient. I would guess on average you might do it once or twice a game, but when you need it it's a really great option.
Once/Twice per game makes lots of sense to me now, I can see it might be a killer move to get many points in just one turn.Thanks for sharing your experiences!@@PlaytheGameHQ
Finding a specific value on a stack of cards is surprisingly easy, I do this a lot when building for LOTR LCG, the important thing is to tell the players to not look at anything else on the cards while they search, and actually another player could search for that, then other players are helping >(
The new rule about saving the sprouts for later can also be used in the base game, the designer told, it will actually balance the game!!
that tutor-like seed sounds very cumbersome
With new players, yeah, I could see that it might be. I'd probably save that rule for playing with experienced players who will know what they need and know how to quickly identify it in the deck. Those are the players that could benefit from that kind of optimization anyway.
It can be at first, but once you have some sort of a tableau built and you're actively searching for certain cards as you draw anyway, you kind of know what you're looking for, you just have to find the specific scoring objective from the list, which also seems cumbersome, but having that keeps it from dragging on and being at all subjective - instead of looking for a card with "a high growth capacity" (what does high actually mean) you're looking for one with 4 or more and you have to take the first one you get to. The whole process took maybe 30 seconds, and you're likely to only do that once or twice in a game when you really just need that 1 card to make your engine work really good. Definitely not something you're doing every turn by any means.
It is an amazing game changer and since you look for a specific place on the card even newcomers will be able to search quite fast, as yo don’t have to look at the other card content !!
This is an interesting expansion, I am not a huge-fan of "finding a card from the pile", but I am very interested in the new cards providing more user-interactions. QQ: Can I just add the new cards to the base game and play the game following the base game rules? Or are these new cards must be played with that "germination" action?
The only aspect of the expansion that allows you to do the germinate action are the seeds. You could play with all the elements of the expansion without the germinate action for the seeds without a problem! You can use the seeds to compost from the deck or your hand, to place Sprouts and Growths as well as gaining 2 soils.
The seeds do have multiple abilities beyond just germinating as max mentioned below, and I do get why it seems cumbersome or like it may drag, but it's not something you're going to do regularly because of the cost of the seeds, and when you do, it's because you really need a specific card for your engine. At first glance I was concerned with the 21 different scoring options to look for but having them so specific actually made it much more efficient. I would guess on average you might do it once or twice a game, but when you need it it's a really great option.
Once/Twice per game makes lots of sense to me now, I can see it might be a killer move to get many points in just one turn.Thanks for sharing your experiences!@@PlaytheGameHQ
Finding a specific value on a stack of cards is surprisingly easy, I do this a lot when building for LOTR LCG, the important thing is to tell the players to not look at anything else on the cards while they search, and actually another player could search for that, then other players are helping >(
A 6th player 😂 we can only fit 2 people on our table with this game.