[Card Game]: Light Speed, reviewed by ShannonA (4/5)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/9/9858.phtml

Shannon Appelcline's Summary:

An amazingly good game of spaceship combat. Quick, innovative, and fun.

Go to the full review for more information.

Post originally by Frank Branham at 2003-11-12 13:28:06
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I'm not sure that having a really fast player is as much of an issue as you make it.

I played several games of Lightspeed with a player that just didn't get it. He plopped down cards very quickly, without considering all of the ramifications.

The other players got maybe 3 or 4 cards out, tops.

Finaly scoring went very, very badly for the fast player, as he blew up lots of his own ships. He would always lose by a significant margin.

There is still a problem if you are the slow player in a field of 4 fast players. Or if there is a player who can actually play the game competently as a much higher speed, then he will always win. (This case should actually be true for most speed games. Speed is a skill, and you should win most of the time if you have it.)

Moo
Frank

Post originally by Andrew White at 2003-11-12 15:59:59
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Have you thought about using a 'constant time' mechanism, for example a 1 minute or even 30 second timer?

Post originally by Dave at 2003-11-12 16:34:09
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Frank,

I'm fairly confident that Shannon was not claiming that the fast player would win, but that he would dictate how satisfying the gaming experience would be.

Like yours, my experience is that a very fast player will lose, often badly. I also don't find those games as satisfying as games where all players move at a moderate speed.

It's really no different than most other games that suffer when folks make rash moves without much thought behind them. It's just that a real-time game brings out some impulse to play as fast as possible, despite the instructor's discouragement!

- d