New P500 games: Hubris and Red Dust Rebellion

Both of these look excellent.

Hubris is about the Diadochi period, where the three kingdoms descended from Alexander's empire eventually lost the initiative to the Romans. It's based on a leader system, where each leader has unique traits and/or special abilities and are the driving force behind actions. But there are restraints built in based on the size of one's court. If you have too many capable and, thus, ambitious leaders, you risk revolt or rebellion. Not enough means not being able to keep up with the Joneses.

Red Dust rebellion is kind of one aspect of the The Expanse, where Martians have decided that Earth corporations control too much of their lives. Apparently, just the theme was enough for it to make the cut (currently 508 orders), although I just got the email today.

Regardless, I have neither money nor space for more games, but those were the first thing to really catch my eye from GMT in recent months.

Red Dust Rebellion caught my eye, but it's another COIN game. Apparently they ran out of places to theme them on Earth.

I'll be honest, I took a good look at the list and didn't see anything that gripped me. So I went to Hollandspiele next to prepare for their sale. Much more fertile ground at the moment.

Just saw this today as well. The sci-fi COIN game is interesting but I stay away from COIN generally... it would take some glowing comments to get me back.

I had forgotten they had a Marc Simonitch Caesar vs. Gaul game coming out, that could be interesting too.

There's an interesting Crusader Kings PC game vibe to what they're saying about Hubris.

Yeah, that's part of why I was interested, in addition to that period of history receiving less attention than others. Why do you avoid COIN, in general?

I've only played COIN like once. I find each move way too incremental and just push pull yo-yo in practice. I felt like it was a game full of +1 here, if player 2 doesn't put -1 there player 3 will anyway. It's missing drama. But I'd try another one if I heard a bunch of good stuff, it's not like a strongly held position.

I was never super in love with COIN, although I do think Fire in the Lake is really good, but what sealed it for me was a game of A Distant Plain. I went a whole propaganda phase with always being 2nd pick. So only limited ops, or maybe if the other person was nice I got to do a full op. I mean, why play a game where you can't... play it?!

I insta-cancelled all my COIN preorders right after that game. I was done. I don't get the appeal of the system and why everything is shoehorned into it. What do you guys like about it?

Somewhat related, I also no longer preorder any wargames. I decided I would stop paying to be a beta tester.

I p500d Unconditional Surrender: The Western Campaigns. A dirt cheap subset of that game that uses maps that will fit onto a human sized table and has scenarios playable in a single session sounds relevant to my interests. I got a cheap used copy of the full game a while back but haven't dug into it yet. It is going to require setting up a table in our spare room to set it up on, and cleaning that room out/rearranging it is a project I haven't gotten around to yet lol. A friend of mine has expressed interest in playing USE, and this seems like a great intro to the full game for us.

I'm also definitely in for the final Space Empires 4x expansion, even though I definitely don't need even more weird stuff to bolt onto that game.

@Gary and ratpfink: Sounds perfectly reasonable. I tend to enjoy that push-pull dynamic, especially if the game has enough of it to really paint a different picture each game. However, keep in mind that I've only played two of them: Falling Sky (which I've been trying to get in a trade forever) and Gandhi, both of which have factions/goals that are different enough to genuinely create different playing experiences, but which are also easily best at 4 players. I've never heard anything negative about Fire on the Lake and have also mostly heard positive stuff about Andean Abyss, which is why I'm a fan of the system, albeit not a dedicated one.

COIN in Spaaaaaaaace!

I really liked Andean Abyss. I have that and Fire in the Lake (and maybe one other?). Both are really hard to get played both for time/learning commitment and also setting.

I've generally stayed away from the treadmill of COIN releases but having the game in a setting that's a little less sensitive is an attractive option to me. I'll definitely keep an eye on it.

Damn, that's some good card art.

GMT is getting a lot savvier about its card art. They produce a lot of fun off-brand sci fi art for their newer games. There's honestly just great pleasure for me in non-branded sci-fi art; we are surrounded by sci-fi but generally only from a few key brands.

And they're uh transitioning out Rodger MacGowan clip art and boy is it time.

ChristopherMD wrote: Damn, that's some good card art.

Very 1994 in their execution. SpaceCorp did the same thing, hiding nice art in small boxes on the card. These cards do have a body of text that requires more space but the concept is the same. They might have done better to zoom in a smaller details in the images and to make the box size (and aspect ratio) vary by card when space is available.