One of the biggest recent hits in tabletop strategy, Scythe is coming to PC, and is now in early access via Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/71856...l_Edition/
It's a deeply thematic, but also fairly brainy take on the 4x genre. There's no hidden information, which is almost a given for a tabletop experience, but there is a lot of 'engine-building', of the sort T-Hawk I think enjoys. The game plays out over a map with fixed starting locations for each of its factions (up to 7 with an expansion), representing a heavily fictionalized Eastern Europe circa 1920. Each pseudohistorical faction has distinct abilities, that have a pretty strong effect on the game, and there is further customisation through the set of actions available to each, distributed to players as an 'action mat', independently of faction choice.
There aren't that many things you can do and you can do only two things on your turn: one of move, trade for resources, produce from your tiles, bolster your military strength; and another of upgrading your actions to make them cheaper and punchier, deploying units (mechs!) to the map, concurrently unlocking further abilities of your faction, building buildings which establish map control and also improve your actions, and finally "recruiting", which is another form of upgrading with the added benefit of giving you a yield when any of your neighbours takes a particular action. So a set of 8 actions, split into groups of 4 and paired -- exactly how they are paired is what differentiates one action mat from another. The game is all about coming up with elaborate chains of actions: "I'll move-upgrade to take control of wheat-producing tile, and make recruiting cheaper, then on the next turn I produce-recruit to actually get that wheat and use it to pay for the recruit". Ok, that's not an elaborate chain, now imagine it consisting of four or more links, where some links have such strong effect as "double the movement speed of your units" or "open a permanent teleport from a tile (your choice) to 6 others (pre-defined) on the map".
To make things even more fun, successful completion of actions brings you closer to victory, all based around stars -- deploy all your mechs and you get a star, complete all your upgrades, and you get a star, etc. As soon as someone gets their 6th star the game is immediately over, and we count up the score. Stars themselves are points, so are tiles you control, resources and money. Exactly how many points everything is worth is dependant on your 'popularity', which you can earn through some actions. Popularity allows for an explicit tall vs wide trade-off in the game -- albeit of course the more stuff you have, the more the popularity multiplier is worth to you.
The game is pretty quick and the map is nice and crowded even at low player counts. It is very much a 'finesse' game: bridge-like, rather than go-like or chess-like. There are somewhat too many moving pieces to my liking, and when you just start playing the pace is clunky. However, as you figure out how to string actions together it smooths right up, whilst giving you a nice feeling of satisfaction of having learned the ropes. The greatest achievement of the game is that it does not drag, once people have built up their engines, the ending is quick and punchy. I think the RB crowd will enjoy.
I haven't played the port, but and won't have the ability to for a while, but interested in hearing feedback on it. Should be out of early access by autumn, they say.
It's a deeply thematic, but also fairly brainy take on the 4x genre. There's no hidden information, which is almost a given for a tabletop experience, but there is a lot of 'engine-building', of the sort T-Hawk I think enjoys. The game plays out over a map with fixed starting locations for each of its factions (up to 7 with an expansion), representing a heavily fictionalized Eastern Europe circa 1920. Each pseudohistorical faction has distinct abilities, that have a pretty strong effect on the game, and there is further customisation through the set of actions available to each, distributed to players as an 'action mat', independently of faction choice.
There aren't that many things you can do and you can do only two things on your turn: one of move, trade for resources, produce from your tiles, bolster your military strength; and another of upgrading your actions to make them cheaper and punchier, deploying units (mechs!) to the map, concurrently unlocking further abilities of your faction, building buildings which establish map control and also improve your actions, and finally "recruiting", which is another form of upgrading with the added benefit of giving you a yield when any of your neighbours takes a particular action. So a set of 8 actions, split into groups of 4 and paired -- exactly how they are paired is what differentiates one action mat from another. The game is all about coming up with elaborate chains of actions: "I'll move-upgrade to take control of wheat-producing tile, and make recruiting cheaper, then on the next turn I produce-recruit to actually get that wheat and use it to pay for the recruit". Ok, that's not an elaborate chain, now imagine it consisting of four or more links, where some links have such strong effect as "double the movement speed of your units" or "open a permanent teleport from a tile (your choice) to 6 others (pre-defined) on the map".
To make things even more fun, successful completion of actions brings you closer to victory, all based around stars -- deploy all your mechs and you get a star, complete all your upgrades, and you get a star, etc. As soon as someone gets their 6th star the game is immediately over, and we count up the score. Stars themselves are points, so are tiles you control, resources and money. Exactly how many points everything is worth is dependant on your 'popularity', which you can earn through some actions. Popularity allows for an explicit tall vs wide trade-off in the game -- albeit of course the more stuff you have, the more the popularity multiplier is worth to you.
The game is pretty quick and the map is nice and crowded even at low player counts. It is very much a 'finesse' game: bridge-like, rather than go-like or chess-like. There are somewhat too many moving pieces to my liking, and when you just start playing the pace is clunky. However, as you figure out how to string actions together it smooths right up, whilst giving you a nice feeling of satisfaction of having learned the ropes. The greatest achievement of the game is that it does not drag, once people have built up their engines, the ending is quick and punchy. I think the RB crowd will enjoy.
I haven't played the port, but and won't have the ability to for a while, but interested in hearing feedback on it. Should be out of early access by autumn, they say.
I really need to get of my ass and find a board game group in my new hometown...
