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Originally Posted by Crothian  Anyone else have this game gathering dust in your closet? It seems to have held up really well as far as playability. Our game took 4 hours since none of us remembered anything and what we thought we knew was mostly wrong. But I doubt our next game will last half that long. |
It's a very good game. In general, as a 2 player game the invaders should win. As a 4 player game (where the invaders might not work together as well as possible) it is a bit closer. My best friend and I played a year ago and have it on google calender to play in 2017 :-)
The general secret to winning with America is to hold in the East and make sure the West never moves up more than one space per turn (and less on the fast path near the south). The it largely turns into:
A) How the big battles in the East go
B) How the South does.
Having the US retake cities is huge. The invaders need to try to stop that. In general if you get cards that show up in the south at the right time you can retake things fairly easily. The West and East are a lot harder.
As a variant you can either:
A) Give the American player one or two cards at the start of the game that he can play whenever (but only 1 per turn)
B) Let the American player draw an extra card and discard one of his choice.
We've done A a lot and 2 cards seems about right (slight US advantage maybe?) Also starting out with a laser or two makes a huge difference (I think the game suggests this) but I like the cards better.
It has the "way too random" problem going for it, and with a set of horrible rolls in the East the game can be over quite quickly.
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