Carnegie

By my fifth or sixth game of the base Carnegie, the thing has not merely failed to deflate; it keeps throwing new department combinations at me. I have reached the point where I want to add the extra mince to the burger, especially the variable-setup sheet, because the base game already feels meaty enough to be worth stirring up a little further.

The heart of our games lies in how the departments link together and in the choices you make from the start. It still does not feel as though I have found one recipe to repeat; instead, every new game reveals another strategy or combination I had not made use of.

What is starting to nag at me is one specific starting department: the one that lets you send someone on a mission for 7 research. In our games, I have the impression that whoever starts with it more often ends with the better final score — perhaps every one of our winners had it. Of course, as FCM taught us, every suspiciously strong opening may have counterplay; I simply have not thought it through enough yet.

And that is ultimately the best news for me: I want to keep playing it, not to rush into confirming a theory, but to test it with a proper statistical sample. My interest remains undiminished, and Carnegie keeps giving me reasons to set up the table again.