Pax Pamir 2nd. I really liked this. Pax Pamir has always been a game I liked in theory, but was just too hard to get satisfaction out of in practice. I think the problem was the combination of the really oblique ways you could win the very limited levers the players had for actually influencing their scoring position. The faction influence points were just super-coarse and hard to come by, and you could spend long periods of the game with nothing really to do that could improve your position. 2nd Edition has made the scoring system a lot better by giving you more options and more ways to at least feeling like you’re moving forward. The game is still a bit unstable; if you’re in coalition with another player you have to be super-careful that you’re not just feeding your partner points if you don’t have a mechanism to overtake them in influence. You’ll have lots of opportunities to flip allegiances, so it’s all about retaining flexibility and keeping an eye on the points. I’ve come to feel that while I like Root a lot, the tightrope of besting on the Woodland Alliance so they don’t blow and win easily may be too narrow and require too much experience and they might need another nerfing for casual play. I have a similar feeling about Pax Pamir; the dance of coalitions way be too delicate without extensive experience with the game. I definitely found this to be the case for 1st Edition. For 2nd, not sure yet - the game certainly makes it easier to grapple with, but it’s still tricky. But a huge win for 2nd is just pace of play. Because of the complexity of 1st, the pacing often just got too bogged down, especially with 5. The much more streamlined 2nd moves along at a good clip and felt fine to me. Anyway, we’ll see how it holds up after a few more games, but I’m pretty optimistic this will deliver on the promise that always slightly eluded 1st. #bgg #boardgamegeek #boardgames #j2s #brettspiele #wehrlegig #paxpamir #colewherle https://www.instagram.com/p/BywqgsGBzkT/?igshid=hvynv0kvoz3q
