...mean that the novelty of this game is wearing off?

Jut curious as my own excitement of this game was eclipsed by acquiring BattleStar Galactica - which has pretty much outshone all me new purchases the past couple of months.

Well I have yet to play it (recently got it as a birthday gift) but I find that most games/threads/topics go through spurts where there is lots of discussion and then it goes quiet until someone new gets the game and generates new interest in it. I will be one such individual once I get a chance to play it.

For me, I was really hyped about this game when it came out. Got it, shouted about it, sang its praises and played it 4 times in a couple of weeks.

Now it is on the shelf. So many rules problems and queries that are waiting on the official answer. I'm someone who likes to play it properly and am uncomfortable with interpreting it as to what I think it should be.

There is also a problem that I have with the balance of the game, and I really hope that it isnt as flawed as I currently think it is. Having played 4 games in a short period, I'm convinced that the conspiracy is far more important than anything else, and the broadcast square is totally broken. I've pretty much ignored the actual murder in all the games since it tends to be a complete lottery.

In the last game I played, the other players also hit the conspiracy early meaning it was completed on day 1 of week 2. Which means Ray's plot that he had which gives him good baggage for placing a piece of the conspiracy - well, he was screwed.

So I'm waiting on some official FAQ and some answers of what to do about the huge balance problem.

That said, the production value, flavour of the game is top notch.

Still very interested. It's just that we know the first several playthroughs will be long (made the mistake of using 4 players for the first playthrough, one of whom was already getting tired and having trouble focusing before we started), and with a 2 year old running around it hard to find adequate time to get plays in, especially those first couple of much longer plays to get us past the learning curve.

Paul Grogan said:

I disagree with this. Taking advantage of the snitch and reporter allows you make much more than an educated guess where each suspect stands.

I too would like a FAQ, for a few clarifications. There's nothing that I find game breaking, but I would like certain questions resolved.

I think it's a good idea to focus on at least two paths to collect victory points. If all you do is focus on one path and that gets blocked, then yeah, you're screwed. If I was only focusing on the murder and my suspect gets a hit placed on them, that's a huge point loss. Sure there are only so many things you can do, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't focus on a couple options.

Oops, I almost forgot about your inital post, Brian. I have to agree with about BSG. That is the multiplayer game that has been seeing the most action with my gaming group. It has even over shadowed Arkham Horror, which I didn't think any game would. While I don't think the novelty and fun of Android has worn off, there's just so much competition for table space. Now that we just added Age of Conan, I don't think I'll be able to get Android on the roster for at least another couple of weeks.

Paul Grogan said:

I doubt that there will be any game-changing FAQ that will correct the inherent balance problems in this game. FFG (or any other game company) are not in the habit of making grand sweeping rules changes after the release of a game; that would be an immediate way to piss off their customer base. They may make some small changes here and there (like correcting the ability of Broadcast Square) but never anything on the scale of what would be required to correct the problems with the conspiracy puzzle, for example.

The only thing I can think of initially is to only allow Broadcast Square to take the lowest value type of conspiracy piece rather than any.

This stops the repeatable combo of sitting on there to take a favour piece, get a favour, then next turn, use that favour to take another favour piece, etc. All the while, getting bonus goodies from placing lots of conspiracy pieces.

As for the conspiracy, having the +4 markers so that they are only applied once per player per turn. i.e - If you complete 1 or more lines, you get a +4 counter. This stops people seemingly easily getting 2 or 3 in a turn (lots of points, hence my comment on ignoring the murder).

Another possibly radical idea is to not have all of the conspiracy pieces in the game at the start. Have them added bit by bit as the game goes on. This will stop the conspiracy being all over by the start of week 2, which is how most games seem to go when players realise that its the easiest way to get points.

Paul Grogan said:

What would you need all those favors for, and using time to transmute them instead of getting the 20 vp for guilty and innocent hunch is better than a maybe on a favor run. Had plays in Android where one person was going for the favor run and stockpilled favors of a color matching that of the conspiracy. A couple of days before the end of week 2, Raymond plays a light card and turns one of the conspiracy tokens and removes all the lines to that favor. Needles to say that player who put all his time and effort into one thing, well loosed.

If the people before you have opened up so you can get more than one +4 marker then it is their problem, the conspiracy works well in its own case, that you can push fast to get the +4 and don't care about the lines or that you actually try and get the lines for a bigger output in the end but maybe opening up for people to take the +4 tokens as a fast payoff cause you now didn't plant a conspiracy, for the fast output but rather to make the line you want.. The only place where i could see other would be able to "Easy" get conspiracy +4 tokens would be in the corners, again that is the other players that also allow this.

I do agree that it is sad that the conspiracy always is over fast, but that is how people work, also in a noir setting... Where is the fastes payoff, I don't care if someone is murdered or that I need to make sure my guy A isn't the suspect, I can find dirt and blackmail for a fast payout if I stick it to the conspiracy behind it.

The problem with the conspiracy isn't that the player who is playing now and grabbing all the +4 tokens cause it was easy to get, the problem is the players before him who planted the tokens to give an easy payoff... If you plant the lines well or if you do not make it open for a player to place tokens for a +4, then you are in control.

I've lost interest. While the background and setting for the game is excellent, and a lot of work has obviously gone into it, the actual gameplay doesn't give enough back for it to be worth learning all the intricacies of the cards in order to play without being randomly screwed. It's plausible that there's a more rewarding game once you learn everything, but I don't have the time to waste getting there.

Kester said:

Then don't put all your eggs in one basket. Don't go for VP based on a single outcome. I try to come up with VP on two or three fronts. Even if someone cuts off a path, I'm still in the game.

I have to admit that BSG and the Arkham league are eating up all my board gaming time -- I hardly find the time to play the Game of Thrones lcg anymore. And Android eats up alot of time for a game, whereas we can get in multiple games of BSG in an evening. Even this week, where we're trying to get a game of Android going at the store, I may not play because as much as I want to, I want to beat the first scenario in the Arkham league even more. And I think that is making me even more rusty on the rules.

The other reason we don't play Android as much is there are some folks in our playgroup that don't like the abstract nature of the game. They'd much rather have something that points directly to a suspect, instead of figuring out which evidence type to grab and then which suspect to place it on, and some one guy just doesn't "get" the conspiracy. I still enjoy the game, but I rarely play it, and I never was a prolific posted in this section anyway.

I gotta say that I'm a tad disappointed in what I am reading here and there...

I finally got Android, spent a ton of time reading and re-reading the rules and cards, etc.

It seems awesome . Really, really good...and I am eager to get it to my gaming table, a.s.a.p.

Now I am seeing that the proverbial honeymoon wears off...and quickly at that.

The game seems so deep...how could that be?

Without playing, I cannot comment concretely, but how could the conspiracy be that overpowered, as mentioned above?

The game victory conditions seem myriad enough that all should balance out ok...and the player who did the "most" should win, in most cases.

Every game has a bit of randomness, that will help to mix it up a bit...keep everyone a little in the dark, so to speak...this game doesn't appear to have more than the average game, in that respect....whilst offering a LOT more in terms of backround, theme and depth...

What's the deal?

I, for one, won't quell my excitement, as I think the game is deep and probably needs many plays to fulfill what it is offering us.

Kalidor said:

Dont just take my word for it. Play it yourself. However, keep in mind what has been said and see if you find that yourself. It all depends on the players. If the players are not bothered about actually winning, each of them might follow a different path in the game. Two players might not bother with the conspiracy and concentrate on the murder. One player might decide to collect Jinteki tokens.

You also might not have players that like to interact with other players in terms of the game. i.e They might see their game as a solo game where they are trying to do stuff and not bother with other players. However, each player needs to be aware of each others plot cards, and everyone needs to know how other players get bad baggage. A key part of the game is not only trying to resolve your plot lines happily, but also trying to make the other players plot lines resolve badly. To do this, everyone needs to be aware of how the other players get bad baggage.

Eg: Rachels plot card "See what you can dig up" says "Rachel gains one bad baggage each time a lead is placed on a seedy location". Therefore, the other players should be trying to place leads on seedy locations when possible / convienient.

And if they do this properly, you will find that going first really hurts and going last means that you can screw up other peoples plots whilst sitting pretty on sorting your own ones out because once you've had your turn, nobody can do anything to affect your plots before they resolve (assuming you are in day 3,6, etc).

Replayability: Yes there are different cases. However, they are only minor tweaks to the game. The rest of the game is 90% the same.
The differences are that most players have 3 plots, of which only 2 are used in the game - so a little bit of variety there.
The dark / light cards. Well, you generally go through the deck in a game (if you dont you will be close to doing so), so the variety there comes in not what cards you get, but what cards are played and the order they come out in.

The different investigators all play differently though, so until someone has played all of them once, thats a different experience.

In case all the above sounds negative. The production value is awesome. The game looks awesome. The flavour in the game and on the cards is awesome, and whilst most of the people I've played with said the conspiracy and overall point system was unbalanced, people enjoyed playing the actual game for what it was.

Kalidor said:

Don't confuse complexity with depth; the game is complicated - there are lots of very fiddly rules to remember that all interact in very complicated ways. The game is *not* deep - there is very little in the way of strategic decision-making, and most of the time you will be taking whichever action is closest and easiest to do because there's not much other choice, and the game has so many random factors (and *strong* random factors at that) that can affect you that any long-term planning becomes meaningless.

I think most people get caught up in the look and theme of the game, and so it has that "wow!" factor for the first couple of plays, but after that you realise that there's not actually that much game there.

The conspiracy is massively over-powered compared to other aspects of the game. Firstly, it grants the largest VP reward for the smallest effort (then add to that the fact that those VPs are one of the only sources of "certain" VPs in the game - VPs that you have *now* rather than needing to wait and see if you receive them). Then there's the fact that each tile grants at least one, usually two forms of bonus (sometimes even three!), some of which cost a hell of a lot if you want to try and obtain them elsewhere (hits, for example). Lastly, and bizarrely probably least important of all, are the bonuses you get from the links. *Every* player benefits from the links that are formed, but at least if you're laying conspiracy tiles you get to decide which ones. If you link up the correct ones, you can have favours that are worth up to 16VPs each! In the games we played (when we used to play with the original rules) pretty much at least half of a players' points would come from favours.

Then compare this to the murder. Following up the murder, you get to place *one* chit on a suspect of your choice. This chit can range in value anywhere from -5 to +5, but most of the chits are 1s and 2s (both positive and negative). You can follow up five leads, draw a +1 very time, and then another player follows up *one* lead, draws the only +5 in the game and has achieved in 2 Time what it took you a whole two days to accomplish. Then another player draws a -5 token and places it on your suspect and has now just undone your two weeks' worth of work, again with just 2 Time. This whole system makes the murder a complete random lottery as to who scores points from it, so why would anybody spend time focusing on the murder where they *might* get *some* points when they can instead focus on the conspiracy?