Excluding Prelude corps

[skyz0r]

Yeah, what i'm saying is that you will hear higher skilled players complain because they lose to factors outside of their control.

It's a better experience for the overall population because they have a higher chance to take down higher ELO players.

Two sides to this argument. Personally, I find it frustrating losing to more frequent absurd setups and they just happen more frequently with prelude corps. Each to their own

[wicab]

Not having prelude corps also mean having more chance to get trash corpos against someone with normal or good corpos, so shouldn't this have impact on the variance as well ?
Also, you are talking about corpos, but it is the same with cards, with insane combos at the start that you cannot counter.
It happens to loose against someone that is inferior ti you, that's part of the game, the game as some luck-based gameplay and we should play withbit instead of reducing it to maths only

[Yahyra]

There are a plethora of zero variance games. Chess is right there, if you want to play it. Magnus and Hikaru have shown us creativity, mastery, dominance etc. in those kinds of games.

I am terrible at chess and, most important to this discussion (of opinions, in my opinion), I do not enjoy the experience of playing chess very much.

I enjoy playing games with some variance, but not as much variance as say 'Can't stop' or 'Yahztee', but not zero like Chess.

My preference (again, purely opinion, personal) is 2 player Terraforming Mars, with prelude cards, but without prelude corporations, is a very fun game experience I enjoy very much. There's still plenty of variance; it is, however, very rarely that I think the variance is such that I am not able to determine victory or defeat via my strategic decisions.

When we play with prelude corporations, sometimes the high roll potential, or just general strength, of Point Luna and/or Cheung Shing Mars, provide a game experience where I feel that my strategic decisions are pointless.

I am aware my BGA ELO TM rating is nowhere near the top were many of you who are posting opinions, both in line and against mine, are. I understand that say an 850 ELO player, statistically, can perhaps more often than not snatch victory from a player rated 333 who 'high rolls Point Luna' in a 2p TM game. If I were interested in playing that format (i.e. prelude corps added) I would; I am not so I do not. I do not doubt some people have fun in that format, and there is a certain skill expression in overcoming a huge advantage in corporations. I do not enjoy that experience so given BGA has the option of hosting games without prelude corps, I continue to 'vote with my feet' and prefer to play those games.

This reminds me of the pages long forum posts we have had debating whether TM 2p, 3p, 4p is more fun or less fun, more skill expressive or less.

It is swell we have so many stats now (thanks again those who scrape them and present them); regardless... opinions will be opinions. Thanks for sharing yours, and reading mine (if you got this far).