This evening Phil Eklund's crowning achievement (or at least one of them) is back on the table! High Frontier 4 All is a complex, complicated, pretty long to play game, with a steep learning curve. But it's extraordinary! A "realistic space exploration in a box". Why do I love it so much? I wrote about it a few months ago on my website:
https://alexdoppelganger.com/high-frontier/
(1/2)
@GoblinQuester I love dice, but Twilight Imperium puts the players directly at odds a little too much. Not because I don't like combat or war games or any of that. A good 30% of my library wouldn't exist if I hated war games. Actually, 30% of my writing credits might not exist if I didn't love war games.
Twilight Imperium just seems to push away from any opportunity to cooperate, even when it would be mutually advantageous.
When it's truly spread out and it's full panoply and everybody is hitting on all cylinders, it's a great game. It's just a really heavy, meaty, and sometimes not particularly creativity inspiring game.
Creative construction doesn't really play a part, and I quite like that. When I can get it.
ARCS looks like a really good modern board game which fits closer into the kind of experience I would like instead of TI. And I'm hoping to actually get to at least see part of a game of it, if not play in a game of it, at DragonCon coming up. That's on my to-do list.
In the meantime, I should probably look and see if I can get into a game of High Frontier because that looks as though it will be compelling in its own intense way.
@GoblinQuester Well, see to it at Fancy Lad! This sounds like an ideal situation.
I am aware that the game has a solo play mode, and I do love games that can be played solo. This seems like the sort of thing that would be wonderful perfection for setting up on a really large table and spending a weekend by yourself, pushing rockets through Hohmann transfer orbits with joyous abandon.
I would much rather play this than Twilight Imperium, I'm not going to lie. The kind of combat that would fall out of the combat module to be truly primo. But I am that kind of nerd.
It's very possible that High Frontier has the most beautiful game board that I've ever seen in my life. Absolutely stunning. All sorts of orbital mechanics expressed in a very singular way. I love it.
The obvious problem is there's no way that I would find anybody who wants to play this game with me anywhere I go. No one is nearly as obsessed with orbital mechanics and rocket design. This is a sad fact of life.
Closed out the gaming year with an all-day game of High Frontier 3. Ran out of time to bring it to a full conclusion, but my terraforming comets were 4 turns away from reaching Venus, so I feel pretty good about it. #boardgame #highfrontier
On edge of the void, en route to Pluto, the warm comfort of Mars and the Belt seems oh so far away. But it is only here, far from the rolling babble of the inners, that we will at last stand witness the true song of the stars, and discover the gospel of 21 centimeters that shall change humanity forever! #HighFrontier
