Quick review: Figures In the Sand
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/122323/innovation-figures-in-the-sand*alternation to base/echo rules:
- The shared dogma free draw action now will give you a figure card instead of a base/echo card, whenever available. This means that if the figure deck of your corresponding age is ran out, you are given a base/echo card of that age instead.
- Whenever someone use an achieve action to claim a standard achievement and if he/she claims it successfully, all other players will get a bonus draw immediately, just as a shared dogma bonus draw. But as the bonus draw rule altered, he/she will be drawing a figure card instead of a base/echo card, whenever available.
- Depletion rule from the echo expansion still applies, which means whenever the base cards of an age ran out, that age deck is considered empty.
Experience after some 80 - 100 real life games:
1. Managing 30 piles of cards is already annoying enough...can't imagine how do I do 40 piles after the release of the 'red' expansion...
2. Achievement plays become more essential than tech-up crazy. Figures give you achievement. Figures who don't give you achievement gives you enough thrust for board expansion and scoring possibilities. Figures who don't give you nothing can become decrees which are also a kind of achievement. 8 achievement is simply a breeze and games rarely get though age 8.
3. Sharing is more essential than domination. Sharing gives you figure cards which gives you so much more options on the board. Remember even those figures you draw are entirely useless for you, you can still use them as decrees.
4. Age 5 figures start giving you free achievements, where age 7 figures already gives you options to seal the game in one smooth motion (Rowland Smith, Darwin, Nobel, Meji, maybe Lee too). And yes, this is one of the major reason why games almost never goes though age 8, as once you got one of these bastards you can start working on a plan to seal the game right there.
5. Scoring is easier, as figure cards usually comes with bonus icons and fading figures would give you score.
6. Hand management skills become more essential. This one is more complicated: Since decreeing would require you to remove your whole hand, if you keep drawing like stupid while having no effective ways to use them up, you may end up removing a large amount of cards from your hands without scoring or board expansion. Cards which rob your opponent's hand become more handy too, say now I can first claim an achievement, and using Explosives on my opponent to get the figure card he has just drawn.
Right now this is it. 1v1 with FitS is interesting, while 2v2 with it is a carnival of massive chaos. NO don't play free for all 4 players game with this one, please.