Yeah it actually is pretty damn good. Dominion wishes it could be Puzzle Strike.
Basically you start with a small deck that is kind of lame, then you build it as the game goes on by buying new chips from the bank (every game has different bank chips). When you get to 10 gems in your pile, you lose, so you gotta attack the other guys, and combine -> crash over your gems to them before you explode yourself. At the end of the game you can make some crazy combos with your action chips, depending on how you build your deck. Oh and you choose from 10 different characters, they give you different starting chips.
This has a better overview of the game. Anyway, I recommend it. Here’s the link to the Puzzle Strike forums for more info.
Mentioning Sirlin’s name in a topic on FGD causes fifty million people to enter the topic and either talk about how much they want to suck his dick or how great their desire to murder him is. There are no moderates when it comes to Sirlin, apparently.
I think the dynamics going on the game are pretty interesting. I wrote an article about it here and another note about the unintentional similarities to StarCraft here.
This board game review site gave it a perfect score and called it the game of the year so far.
That review lists price as a negative, and yeah I know. There are currently two versions: a deluxe one with huge birch wood chips that you can play on your yacht with your celebrity friends, and a regular version made of poker-chip-sized MDF (think of it as synthetic wood). I’ll also tell you right now that shipping times are another problem (can’t make it fast enough…). In order to address both those problems, I’ve spent months and tens of thousands of dollars setting up a second, much bigger print run using poker-chip-sized chipboard chips. That means the price can come down a bit, that I’ll have enough inventory that things can ship immediately, and that shipping will be free within the US. That version won’t be here until December though, so the current wood and MDF versions are for a limited time only.
If you’re interested in knowing more about the game, there’s a link to the rules at the bottom of this page, and you can even see all the chips by clicking the “chip images” tab of that page. Finally, you can even try it out online, though the online version is still very early. Be aware that it does’t yet have rules enforcement, and you’re seeing pre-alpha software, but it’s still very functional. More info on that here.
That review is actually how I found about Puzzle Strike in the first place.
Now, how durable are the cardboard chips when compared to the MDF chips? Since I imagine I’m going to be shaking the chip bag quite a bit, I don’t exactly want to play with components that are going to wear out quickly.
I mean, if worse comes to worse, I definitely have more than enough money in my gaming budget to purchase the Deluxe edition.
Real birch wood is definitely tougher than chipboard. I’m pretty happy with the chipboard though, it’s the same kind of thick cardboard that components of any modern board game are made of, only even thicker. It’s actually 1/8th inch thick (same thickness as a normal poker chip), so it’s pretty strong.
The deluxe one version’s wood chips are bigger though, btw. 1.75" diameter instead of 1.45" for the current regular version (or 1.5" diameter for the future chipboard version). So the deluxe does have the biggest, toughest chips, but the 2nd printing is cheaper and still durable–there’s some options there.
Yeah price is seriously the only reason I haven’t picked this up, I may try it when the cardboard version ships for cheaper. But like I said, Flash Duel is a ton of fun (and cheap, like $15) and surprisingly complex, and I play tested yomi like 3 years ago or something and it was a lot of fun back then so thats worth checking out too
Gonna keep my eye on this hopefully the 2nd edition is closer to 35.00, but this looks really fun. I wonder if he has any thoughts about a digital version like for XBLA or a mobile phone/async kinda game, like what they are pushing for WP7.
The deluxe wood version is only going to be around for another one or two months at most, I think.
MadGaffler: Sorry, but $59 with free shipping in US is the best I can do on the December version, considering it has 350 chips, 4 pretty nice bags, custom box interior, and that it’s independent publishing. It’s been quite a struggle to get it down to that. It’s a common price for board games though, so I’m happy to be in that range, once that version is out. Carcassone has 84 “chips” (tiles) and is like $30, by comparison.
If you guys try the online version (people in the forum link I gave for it would be happy to help you), let us know how it goes. There’s also a print-and-play version, by the way, if you want to do-it-yourself with cards instead of chips.