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A: "Poor Impulse control."
Let's get this out of the way up front: I've written a lot about how much I love Carl Chudyk's Innovation. Here's the opening section of my review of that game:
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Playing Carl Chudyk's Innovation is like arriving at an airport in a country where you don't speak the language. Surrounded by strangeness, you scan the area for comforting touchstones and familiar elements: the iconic representation of men and women indicating bathrooms; the profile of a suitcase directing you to the baggage claim area; the running man on an exit sign. Those elements calm you, they center you – then you exit the airport and find yourself lost in a linguistic sea.
Initially you'll think that playing Innovation will be a breeze as the rules are brief and relatively clear; then you run across the glossary and FAQ that's the same length as the rules; then you notice that each of the 105 cards in the game has a unique special power, in addition to three icons (of which there are six types); then when you actually start playing the game, you realize that you're drowning in information and possibilities and nothing makes any sense and that winning feeling that enveloped you because you were doing all these cool card tricks vanishes once you realize that you've scored no points and have no sense of what to do next.
Yes, I also like Chudyk's Glory to Rome and have enjoyed my few plays of his FlowerFall and Rootword, but if I had to select a single desert island game from my collection, Innovation would be the one. Innovation is the game that I took home to meet mother, the one I chose to bear my children. As a result, I was primed to like Impulse from the get-go because I expected weirdness and intricate tactical gameplay and that feeling of wandering in a land unknown.Initially you'll think that playing Innovation will be a breeze as the rules are brief and relatively clear; then you run across the glossary and FAQ that's the same length as the rules; then you notice that each of the 105 cards in the game has a unique special power, in addition to three icons (of which there are six types); then when you actually start playing the game, you realize that you're drowning in information and possibilities and nothing makes any sense and that winning feeling that enveloped you because you were doing all these cool card tricks vanishes once you realize that you've scored no points and have no sense of what to do next.
So far, so good.
Ryan Davis teaches me how to play Impulse at BGG.CON 2013
I've played Impulse three times to date — twice with two and once with three — on a prerelease version purchased from Asmadi Games, and the game has lived up to my expectation of an unusual playing experience that overwhelms you with choices and leaves you puzzled about where to head next.
In brief, Impulse feels like Innovation as filtered through the mind of Stefan Feld, then simmered in the cold depths of outer space. The playing area is a Catan-ish layout of cards, with a sector core at center and face-down cards in other locations; each card has six "edges", with each edge bearing half of a docking port. (Rectangular cards with six edges? Yes, yes, yes — just pretend they're hexagons and everything will be okay. Hexagons are lousy to shuffle, though, so rectangular cards it is.) Players start the game with two transport ships in the center of their home region — with players being spaced as equally as possible on the far corners around the playing area — and one cruiser on their home docking port closest to the sector core.
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Starting set-up with two players
Players try to be the first to score twenty points, with points scored by occupying docking ports in the sector core with a cruiser, occupying the core with transport ships, winning a battle, destroying an opponent's ship, and trading in resources. Collect point #20 and you win immediately.
Each player starts with a hand of five cards, with each card having one of ten actions. (This is the Feldian aspect of the game, although this number is streamlined from the thirteen actions in the original submission, according to Asmadi's Chris Cieslik.) To finish set-up, you add the card representing your home region to your hand, then place a card of your choice down instead, thereby determining the power of that region. Each time you move a cruiser through an unexplored region — a cruiser moves from its current port to any port on the two adjacent cards — or move a cruiser onto an unexplored region, you explore that space by adding that card to your hand, then laying down a card of your choice. Thus, over time — not much time admittedly as the game is quick — you customize nearby space to feature actions of your choosing. Whenever one or more of your transports ends its movement in a region, you take the action located there.
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The ten possible actions, with each card having its own version of the action
Each card is one of four colors — red, blue, yellow or green — and of size 1, 2 or 3, as indicated by the icons on the left-hand side of the card. Build lets you create new spaceships, while Command lets you move them and Sabotage lets you destroy ships owned by others. Mine converts cards into minerals, which you can then use to boost actions or Refine into points. Trade converts cards directly into points, while Draw lets you pull out a piece of paper and capture your opponent's puzzled look of concentration in charcoal for permanent display in your game room. Plan saves an action for future use, while Research lets you save an action for repeated future use and Execute might give you a different action each time.
The heart of the game is the impulse, a series of cards that dictates actions available to all players. At the start of each turn, you add a card to the end of the impulse, which starts empty. You then optionally take one of the two techs available on your player board; all players start with one identical tech and one unique to their race. (Research lets you place a different action in one of your two tech slots, which can be good or bad depending on whether you know what you're doing!) You then optionally use all of the impulse actions in order. If you have four or more cards in your Plan — which functions like a personal impulse that you build with Plan actions — you must take those actions; otherwise you choose whether to use the actions in your Plan or delay them for a later turn. To end your turn, you score points for occupying or patrolling the sector core, draw two cards, then trim the oldest card from the impulse if it contains four cards.
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One of six "Command Center" cards, each with a unique secondary tech
In case you didn't catch all of that, your action choices come when (1) adding to the impulse, (2) using one of your techs, (3-6) using the impulse, (?) using your Plan, and (?x2) landing on regions as you move about the playing area. In other words, action overload on the scale of Innovation when you have multiple dogma actions spread before you, multiple cards/possible actions in hand, and two turns that can combo these actions and resources in any number of useful ways. With so many choices before you, you can puzzle and puzzle until your puzzler is sore or you can wing it and learn from experience, which seems like the more sensible approach. So far I'm trying to take the same approach with Impulse that I did with Innovation: Do stuff without worrying too much about what's possibly the best course of action, see what happens, then learn from that and try to do better next time.
In case that wasn't enough to stagger your neurons, each card contains a boxed numeral. When you take the action on this card, you can boost this number by 1 for every two minerals (i.e. icons) that you have of the same color. If you're taking this action by moving one or more transport ships into the region containing it, you can also count each transport ship as one-half mineral of the appropriate color. Thus, if you had two red minerals and took the Mine action below, you'd try to mine two size two cards from the deck instead of one — and since all numbers and numerals are inclusive, you can mine both size one and size two cards, thereby increasing the odds of boosting even more actions down the road.
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The size of cards comes into play in multiple ways. For Sabotage, you draw cards from the top of the deck a là Wyatt Earp, with any size two or three card destroying an enemy ship on a region you also occupy or patrol. When you Trade, you score points based on the card's size. When you Draw, you keep cards (or not) often based on their size. Color restrictions come into play as well, as you can see on the Refine card above.
Icons also come into play during a battle — that is, when opposing cruisers occupy the same port. During a battle, each player secretly reinforces their ship(s) with cards from hand, then draws a card from the top of the deck. The icons on this revealed card are added to all of the icons on reinforcement cards — but only if a card matches in size and color a card in the impulse, one of that player's techs, or a card in that player's Plan — and the player with the higher total wins the battle, scoring one point for the victory and one point for each destroyed ship. In my first game, we carried out no battles, possibly because we already had too much on our minds, but I carried out one battle in my second game and one or two more in the third game. While at first glance the reinforcement details seem random — a chance element topping the randomness of the card draw — in time I imagine that it will be easier to plan for battles, while also possibly luring someone into a trap by devising your plan and techs, then maintaining a hand full of gunpowder for whoever crosses your path.
I mentioned that Impulse plays quickly — the publisher claims a playing time of fifteen minutes per player — but right now that's an extrapolation based on my experience with Innovation, the first game of which took two hours with only two players but which sped up considerably as we became familiar with the cards and learned to plan a turn or two in advance (with back-up plans B, C and D for when wrenches were tossed in our paths). Impulse will likely follow the same route, with the playing time dropping once you stop looking at your hand like random multiple choice answers on a GRE test and instead start seeing the possibilities for how to chain actions together to build a galactic empire. All in good time...
First turn of a three-player game — confusion drive engaged!
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