Tournament objectives - do they wreck consume-produce ?

[danielvictor]

Played a few tournament games.Had fun,but do the objectives make consume-produce unviable ? One time,I exhausted the Vps but still finished well behind. The game was balanced without the objectives.What do people think ?

[cowboy_dan]

Definitely not. It can be tough to win if you completely ignore the goals, and some combinations of goals sync better with certain strategies, but Produce/Consume can still be a winner.

[KP1024]

Objectives don't wreck consume/produce, but other cards in the expansions do. There are some sick military strategies, rushes, prestige plays, etc. (depending on expansion level) that are often far more powerful than consume/produce.

[hiei]

The new Uplifts from Xeno Invation are quite strong Vp wise, and weak card wise. Goals balance them out making consume rush strategies less powerful and requiring them to be a bit less no brainer, but they still work pretty well.

There are still ways to win at least one of the goals when you consume, usually you can get the support goal by skipping a consume turn or by having a leftover production world (specially if your opponent doesnt have production worlds). A good strat for skipping consume is to go for diversified economy for its production power and then switch to consume once you make sure you won the support goal. Terraforming defenders can be used as a whole consume engine, using only a good for 4 points and the rest for contributions or for its defence power. On the other hand, Anti Xeno League can be used to get military from all those non military worlds you might use in consume strategies and use them to gain the military goal as well. And the imperium engine usually supports cards that provide nice military options with rare worlds and consume powers for them while still providing you lots of cards in consume.

There is also the possibility of using your low military in cheesy strategies where you just wait for your opponent to fail defending twice and you just win by raw points thanks to consume. If the xenos wins, there is no goals. Ironically, Terraforming defenders works wonders here since you can still decide to defend whenever your opponent manages to do so and you can repair any damaged world whenever you are unable (or you dont want) to defend.

Without objectives the game gets very degenerate imo. Unless you grab the strongest military worlds ever, usually the game ends with a side, or both sides, rushing uplift worlds with consume powers and consuming for 6 points using only 2 goods. If both players get one of those at the same time, the game might just last 2 more turns.

[Obsequious Vole]

To some extent, yes, but not totally. It's rare that an all-out produce consume strategy is the best way to go, but it can be effective as a hybrid strategy (in combination with e.g. early settle spam).

EDIT:

Having looked at the game in question, you played a very solid produce/consume game that would've defeated a lot of players in a lot of games. I think the outcome of that game was a lot to do with your opponent drawing excellent cards throughout.

(You could've made it a little closer with one or two different plays - e.g. using a prestige point for x3 - but sometimes Rebel Freedom Fighters is pretty much unstoppable)