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Prismata

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amalloy:
Prismata is a really interesting game that appeared on the horizon recently, and just a couple weeks ago alpha access became available to the general public via a Kickstarter reward tier. I picked it up and have been having a great time. I don't imagine every Dominion player will love Prismata, but a lot of them seem to, and I was surprised to see nobody discussing it here.

I recommend watching the Kickstarter rules-intro video, which does a good job of explaining the mechanics, but I'll also make my own effort at summarizing the game. They used to call it MCDS, for Magic-Chess-Dominion-Starcraft, and you can really see the influence of all four of those games clearly.


* Like MtG, you're building up a board of attackers and defenders that you use to damage your opponent's board.
* But instead of constructed decks, the game starts Dominion-style, with similar starting boards and a "base set" of 11 standard units purchasable every game (analogous to Coppers, Silvers, and so on), and an additional random set of "kingdom cards" either player can buy this game.
* And there are no decks, indeed no randomness or hidden information at all: like chess, every turn can be planned ahead of time, if you can think fast enough (hint: you can't). I get the feeling that this is a turn-off for Dominion fans, which I totally get: removing the randomness is a definite trade-off that some people might not like. I wasn't sure at first, and of course I still appreciate randomness in card games, but it's also nice to have Prismata available as a choice where I am really in charge of my own destiny.
* Last, it's like Starcraft in that you're balancing economy, technology, attacking, and defending; and because you have to make tactical decisions about what units to trade for what, the timings to attack at, and stuff like that.
I'd say if you like at least two of those games, Prismata is worth at least checking out; there's a free single-player-only demo you can try if any of this sounds interesting but you don't want to immediately buy it. If any of you do decide to try it, I'd be happy to play some games with you: I'm Mountebank in game.

Titandrake:
I've heard good things about Prismata. I remember reading a blog post a while back when they decided to start working on the game full time (I am a Facebook friend of a friend of the developers and it showed up on my News Feed.)

They claimed it was the best card game in existence, which I have trouble believing, but I'm sure it's still very good, since most math PhD pursuers I know play an oddly large number of board games, meaning the makers can at least recognize quality. I've yet to hear anyone say something bad about the balance of the game, so that's a plus too.

Anyways, I'm definitely interested in trying it out, but it probably won't be until after my finals in a couple of weeks.

blueblimp:
I know the devs and was involved in some very early play-testing (back before the client even existed), so it's cool to see this picking up buzz recently. In my view, the key idea of Prismata is bringing recent game design innovations to the non-random no-hidden-information genre of Chess and Go. For example, the random kingdom mechanic injects variety into the matches and reduces the importance of memorizing openings.

eHalcyon:
Chess960 is worth mentioning as a chess variant that adds setup randomness for exactly that reason. It was invented by Bobby Fischer in 1996.

Prismata sounds interesting. I'll look into it more!

qmech:
First Google maps, and now you enticing indie game?  Why is the internet suddenly telling me to upgrade my laptop?

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