Jump Drive’s campaigns won me over

While I hadn’t actually done a lot of consideration about what the first game I learned in Florida would be, it ended up being Jump Drive via Board Game Arena. (Yes, I’ve been spending a lot of time there with so much stuff boxed up.)

I am of three minds when it comes to Jump Drive. On the one hand, I am predisposed to liking it because it reminds me of Race for the Galaxy. On the other hand, it is also a pale shadow of Race for the Galaxy. On the third hand, the solitaire campaigns proved to be a game changer for me.

(I haven’t played Roll for the Galaxy. I do expect I would love it but the opportunity just hasn’t come up)

Just about every element of Race for the Galaxy has been simplified. There is no role/action selection. Everyone just decided to either add to their tableau or draw more cards. The consume and produce phase automatically happen every time. Race for the Galaxy didn’t have tons of interaction but Jump Drive removes almost all of it.

And when I played through my first couple games, I thought it was cute and forgettable.

And I’m a proponent of ‘smaller’ versions of games, admittedly due to storage issues. I have King of the Elves and Euphrates and Tigris: Contest of Kings still in my collection rather than Elfenland and Tigris and Euphrates because they take up a fraction of the space in the closet. (Hilariously, Euphrates and Tigris takes up more table space than its parent game) 

But a physics copy of Jump Drive wouldn’t save space and if I need a lighter version of Race for the Galaxy, San Juan does the job much better. 

Then I found the solitaire campaigns.

As I understand it, they started out as a fan expansion but were so well received they were added to the expansion. There are five campaigns which have four end goals each. A campaign consists of four games (seven turns each) The goals are things like end a goal with sixty points or end a game with fifty points and a mix of four blue and brown worlds. If you can’t check a goal off, you lose the campaign.

The campaigns took my biggest issue with Jump Drive, the lack of interaction, and made it superfluous. And while I don’t mind ‘beat your own score’ solitaire games, I really like actual winning conditions. The solitaire campaigns took Jump Ship from a forgettable game for me to a game that I really enjoying and one I keep playing.

If I want a game that I’m going to play with someone else, online or in person, I’m going to find another game. But for a solitaire challenge, Jump Ship surprised me.

Pondering Universal Rule before I even play

I recently finished making a copy of Universal Rule from ButtonShy. Since it doesn't play down to two, it will be a while before I play it but I am quite curious about it.

It bills itself as a 4X game, which works if you're willing to count combat as extermination. If you house rule wiping out all of a player's planets, then exterminate would be more realized. (Really, classic 4X exterminate means colonial style genocide) But that would turn the game into pile on the first person to show weakness so maybe we don't need that much extermination.

Mechanically, it's a skinny deck Race for the Galaxy with Cosmic Encounter's combat. And that's where the rub might well be. Race for the Galaxy is one of the best games I've played and Cosmic Encounter is a multi-generational classic. 

In particular, Universal Rule and Race for the Galaxy take about the same amount of time. And if you leave the box behind, Race won't take up much space in a courier bag or backpack or the like. So Universal Rule's size advantage really just makes a difference if you're limited to your coat pocket. (Which to be fair, I sometimes have been)

I suspect that, if Universal Rule is to break into regular game rotation, the selling point will be in the combat. Since it is resource heavy, you're going to have to work your way up to attacking someone but everyone at the table gets involved and it can be worth a hefty six points. So when combat happens, it's going to be a big deal.

Universal Rule actually runs into an issue that I don't often to see in micro games, which is that the small size of the game might interfere with the complexity of the game. Adding another card as a player aide, that would solve that though and the instructions include that.

It also runs into the issue of being a micro game you'd play instead of a larger game. You wouldn't play HUE or This Town Ain't Big Enough for the 2-4 of Us instead of Carcassonne. They take about a fifth the time or less. I have to choose to play Universal Rule instead of Race and that wouldn't happen with my old Chicago crew.

At some point I need to play Universal Rule. It is a micro game that fills a non-micro game space. Can it step up?