![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
We played Dirk Henn's Atlantic Star last night with Kate and Alai. It's a set collection game with a ocean cruise theme. Each round you decide to take a card or play a set. The card choice of one of four face-up cards, with rising prices the further 'up the chain' they are. You can also pay to sweep all the cards. There's a conversion of the values of the cards into victory points depending on where you place your completed set on a grid and the score of that particular set (a cruise).
I found the game extremely frustrating, with each round's play essentially unimportant to me until it became my turn, as the other players' actions (choosing cards and sweeping the cards) meant that I couldn't really plan on having any given card available to me. The additional restriction of a varying hand-size limit depending on which cruise you were attempting combined with sometimes painful randomness of the cards coming up just left me cold.
As you can see from the scores, I did abysmally and that certainly coloured my feelings about the game. It's hard to be objective as I didn't ever feel I had a chance to win. The game play seemed to be continuous rounds of disappointment as needed cards disappeared and draws failed to provide the needed replacements.
Final scores: Alai 54, Sam 46, Kate 35 and Myles 18, and that with Alai managing to confuse one cruise for another and being forced into a cost-ineffective incomplete set for one of the cruises.
I found the game extremely frustrating, with each round's play essentially unimportant to me until it became my turn, as the other players' actions (choosing cards and sweeping the cards) meant that I couldn't really plan on having any given card available to me. The additional restriction of a varying hand-size limit depending on which cruise you were attempting combined with sometimes painful randomness of the cards coming up just left me cold.
As you can see from the scores, I did abysmally and that certainly coloured my feelings about the game. It's hard to be objective as I didn't ever feel I had a chance to win. The game play seemed to be continuous rounds of disappointment as needed cards disappeared and draws failed to provide the needed replacements.
Final scores: Alai 54, Sam 46, Kate 35 and Myles 18, and that with Alai managing to confuse one cruise for another and being forced into a cost-ineffective incomplete set for one of the cruises.