Letters from Sag -- Firefly at the May Getaway

The evenings are when the bigger, more narrative games come...

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ubarose wrote: After playing many times myself, I agree that the race for the money scenario is the best way to play the game.

We usually default to the starting scenario, which I think is a download, which is enough money to "pay off your ship" with some solid contracts along the way.

I always played race too after a few games. Good post.

ubarose wrote: Although we recently played a scenario from one of the expansions that was a lot of fun. I can’t remember it exactly, but everyone starts with a warrant on them, and you have to do crime jobs to win. It really switched up player’s tried and true strategies and added a lot of tension, as well as fun to the game.

I heard about this one recently and sounds interesting for just the reason you mention -- it presses you to step outside of your comfort zone, and that's very valuable in gaming. I haven't gotten the opportunity to try it.

Granted, Firefly tends to move you out of your comfort zone whether you like it or not because you need to adapt to what is available at whatever space port you stop at. In the game above I was neck-deep in gunners without even trying, in spite of looking to run a broader, more crew-heavy session. That didn't pan out, and with just four or five crew was more or less a flying arsenal that could shoot my way out of anything. Not at all what I had intended.

All that said, the one place you still have heavy control in Firefly is what jobs you choose to pick up. That scenario puts you on the wrong side of the law from the get-go, so dancing around illegal stuff isn't worth much, if anything.

I still like this game in spite of half a dozen good long plays in. But I understand that "winning" is a bit of a second priority in the game, as more of your emotional energy is burned on your current job, just trying to close the current deal so you can start looking at other things. Winning the whole game is too far down the road to capture much of your attention.

I mean, the other place you have control is that by midgame you have an extreme amount of perfect information about where to buy exactly what you need if people have been sifting through decks at all since it's all open info.

"At its heart, Firefly is a pick-up and deliver game where about half of the card draws are designed to make something go wrong."

Nailed it!

Though I would argue that there are ways to plan ahead for the tragedies yet to come. It takes time to prepare, and it is a race game (adventure game/pick-up and deliver game) so it takes some restraint to prepare properly. It's also a push-your-luck game when you are deciding how much time to put into preparations.

It's the disasters that hit you right from the start that really hurt.

+1 to the play for cash (the one with the choice of when to end going to the players who have achieved the cash level, with unfinished jobs counting against you).

I play with my kids, mostly, and they tend to be fairly risk averse (although I'm trying to improve this). This means that the scenarios in which you have to pull off a string of crime jobs - which, in reality, are just like other crime jobs in the game anyway - tend to look unachievable to them. The more open world scenario, which gives them the chance to be a bit more cautious, is what they enjoy. Of course, what I do, is go nuts with trying to pull off Niska jobs as a counterpoint, so it's a tortoise and hare type deal. Glorious victory or utter ruin.

No love for the scavenger hunt scenario?