Outer Rim Game Review

Our gaming group was lucky to find a copy of Fantasy Flight's newest Star Wars game Outer Rim at our FLGS last week.  The much hyped game has you play as one of the better known Bounty Hunters or smugglers in Star Wars lore as they gain fame and fortune by completing jobs and moving cargo.
 
Characters start the game with one of two basic ships, and either a job to complete or some cargo to deliver.  Each player turn has three sections to it.  In the first section, they can move to a new location, heal,  or gain some credits at their current location.  Then players can turn in any bounties or cargo, buy items from the shop area or trade items with other players at their location.  The shop area contains gear that enhance players, crew that help out, and jobs and cargo for players to complete and sell.  Then players can do an encounter at their location, either meeting with contacts, doing a job encounter, or a location encounter.

The full board

The encounters are somewhat similar to the way FFG did their Fallout game, with cards giving tests to pass based on character attributes.  Tests use two dice, with a critical needing to be rolled to pass. If your character has a tested attribute (Strength, Tactics, Knowledge etc etc) its easier to pass with either a hit or a critical.  Combat works in a similar fashion, with each player rolling dice equal to their combat strength against their opponents dice.  There were only 6 dice included, but we pretty quickly had attributes up to 7 or 8 in value, so FFG probably should ship a few more with the game.

Your player tableau, Bossk in a HWK-290

The game overall is enjoyable.  You jet around and pull heists, find bounties to capture and upgrade your gear.  It takes a little time to get your machine rolling (especially with bounties, since you need to investigate characters first).  Player interaction is a little low, but you can make trades and ask for promises and credits from anywhere on the board.  I was able to extract a favor from another player in return for not stopping them from buying a ship on my turn, which was a fun way of politicing.  Attacking other players is possible, but its limited so its an area that's not really explored in the game.  If you've enjoyed most of FFG's other offerings, this game fits in nicely for a fun time with plenty of memories.

The only aspect that felt not very pivotal was the different faction patrols.  There are encounters with them, and having your reputation up with factions makes it easier to move around.  But overall since the patrols don't do a lot of movement and at neutral reputation just stop your movement they play a very minor role.  If there was more to their movement or more patrols going I think it would make that aspect a bit better.

Economics of the Undead Book Review

Economics is one of the tougher sciences to get started with studying.  Many of the basics are dry, and the further you go the more complicated it feels.   Many books have tried in the past t help ease the pain, like Freakonomics and The Undercover Economist.  They do a good job, and I;ve found them entertaining.  However, Economics of the Undead: Zombies, Vampires and the Dismal Science! examines many basic economic ideas with an appealing twist.  The Undead have been a lens to examine humans for centuries now. and this collection of essays does a good job introducing a lot of good economics thought in a relatable pop way.  One of the better essays uses the the trope of Vampire Boys and the girls that love them to explain suppland and demand, and hit more advanced topics like discount rate. Another uses Zombie Insurance to look at the risk factors that having insurance can create.  A later essay takes a bit of a tongue cheek approach to voter registration, as how the dead always turn out to vote.  Overall just about every essay was entertaining and gave a good look at some economic ways of thinking.  I would definitely recommend this book for fans of the Undead, as well as anyone looking to get some basic grasps of economic theory.

Keyforge AoA pre release event Results and Thoughts

Thursday was the launch of the new Age of Ascension set for Keyforge. My FLGS scheduled a sealed event for that evening.  This was my first organized play event for Keyforge so I was a little nervous. It didn't help that I hadn't played regularly in a bit more than a month.  But the crowd was friendly and the decks we all got seemed to be in roughly similar power levels. I opened The One who sadly Believes in Sadness.  Its quite different from my best two Call of the Archons decks. The board state is much more pronounced and there is much less pure aember generation. Stormcrawler was an MVP all night helping slow down decks while Tantadin was effective at emptying one opponents archive through our game. I will need a reminder for my Grovekeeper to remember to actually do his ability as well. I do however have to get a bit better with Exhume and not finished with you, and when to pull them. I was also a little disappointed by just how vulnerable Duskwitch is.  Her ability is very good, but she was pretty easy to remove it felt like.

Overall I like the deck, but I ended up just 1-2 on the evening. The first game was tight and I was up 2 keys to 1 with a good board state and a chance to reap and win the following turn. However my opponent played Martin Generosity and Key Abduction to generate a ton of aember and essentially 2 keys. The second game I won pretty handily. My opponent ran out of gas after a quick early key and I was able to keep his board pretty barren through some fights and Natures call. The last game my opponent had a good shadow thief deck and just kept stealing aember. I couldn't get down to my pixies either to help protect myself. Also I kept trying to ping his Bad Penny's back to his hand and get Tezmal to lock them there but it never worked out right.I think with a little more experience this deck would be a very fun one to play, and can time itself correctly to have a huge oppressive board.  The event was a ton of fun and hopefully Ill get to do some more here in the near future.