Wargaming round-up

Most of my hobby time over the last few weeks has been spent on wargames rather than RPGs.  I've rediscovered my usual poor form at Race for the Galaxy, dabbled in War Machine and had a first tilt at Rex.

The less said about Race for the Galaxy the better.  I remain bad at picking starting strategy and prone to making poor choices in the development turns.  More positively, after watching a bit of War Machine I understand the mechanics well enough to translate my existing understanding of tactics to the game, although I've yet to play anyone decent.  (My first game had my opponent wanting to cave after the first turn!)

Fantasy Flight Games' Rex deserves a bit more depth.  Our game was effectively ruined by two problems.  Firstly, FFG had included a small sheet of errata that wasn't discovered until after the game had been called as a draw.  One of the changes would have greatly altered the tempo of the game, the other ruled out a combination of abilities that one alliance built their game on.  The other issue was that one player - let's call her "Patsy" decided that her strategy would be just boosting someone else's game, effectively making for a 1 v 1 v 1 v 1 v 2 game before Rex's shifting alliances were taken into account.  In a game that's built around backstabbing and diplomatic turns, this was a massive negative play experience.  It's not that Patsy and her master were able to dominate the board - actually, my unstable entente was closer to winning.  My gripe is that Patsy could have won if she'd been prepared to change sides.  She didn't, and so the game dragged on.

If you're thinking about trying Rex... I don't know.  As a pure war game it's not particularly interesting and there are many better options.  As a diplomatic game, you need to have the right group to make it work.