Richard Garfield, the Bunny Kingdom universe, and that absolutely gorgeous artwork… on paper, this is exactly the kind of game I should enjoy. And I do like a lot of things about it: the ideas are clever, the gameplay feels pleasant, and the overall concept is really appealing.
But after 3 games, I can't shake the feeling that the final scoring is extremely dependent on the card draw. Sometimes I get completely crushed, sometimes I crush my opponent, and I often don't feel like I had much control over the difference.
I decided to look at the BGA results from the last 24 hours with AI, just to see if my impression was completely wrong.
Out of 280 games:
• Average winning margin: 53.5 points
• Median winning margin: 46 points
• 13.2% of games had a margin of over 100 points
• Only 13.6% were decided by 10 points or less
Obviously, this doesn't prove that the game is unbalanced. Player skill and the mix of experienced/new players are huge factors. But the numbers did reinforce my feeling that the game has a very high variance in its results.
So I'm curious: what do you think?
Do you feel that you have meaningful control over the game once you've played a few games? Or do you also sometimes feel that the draw simply gives one player the tools to explode while leaving the other struggling to build anything?
I really wanted to love this game. I wish I liked it more.
But after 3 games, I can't shake the feeling that the final scoring is extremely dependent on the card draw. Sometimes I get completely crushed, sometimes I crush my opponent, and I often don't feel like I had much control over the difference.
I decided to look at the BGA results from the last 24 hours with AI, just to see if my impression was completely wrong.
Out of 280 games:
• Average winning margin: 53.5 points
• Median winning margin: 46 points
• 13.2% of games had a margin of over 100 points
• Only 13.6% were decided by 10 points or less
Obviously, this doesn't prove that the game is unbalanced. Player skill and the mix of experienced/new players are huge factors. But the numbers did reinforce my feeling that the game has a very high variance in its results.
So I'm curious: what do you think?
Do you feel that you have meaningful control over the game once you've played a few games? Or do you also sometimes feel that the draw simply gives one player the tools to explode while leaving the other struggling to build anything?
I really wanted to love this game. I wish I liked it more.