Game Review Redux: E.T.I.: Estimated Time to Invasion
By W. Eric Martin
January 18, 2008
Publisher: Eye-Level Entertainment
Designers: Matthew and Mark Anticole
Players: 3-6
Ages: 12+
Playing Time: 60-120 minutes
Rules Language: English
Version: Production copy
Times Played: Three, twice with six players and once with four
In case you couldn’t tell from the title of this game, E.T.I.: Estimated Time to Invasion presents us poor humans with a bunch of aliens who plan to invade Earth. Shaking our fists at the alien scum might be a good first step in the minds of some people, but a more positive approach to the defense of humanity can be taken by the game’s players, who happen to run research organizations that will work to create defense projects.
Now despite our common goal—keeping the aliens off our planet—we’re not really working together. I don’t care whether you die under a barrage of lasers as long as I survive. More importantly, I want to survive with more fame than any other player in order to rule the headlines, bask in the love of survivors, and win the game.
At the same time, however, one of the players is secretly working with the aliens to help their dire plot. (I think they’ve promised to hand over Australia to the traitor as a thank you gift.) This player will work on defense projects alongside the rest of us, but when the time is ripe, he’ll reveal his slimy nature and try to doom us all. What a jerk.
Readin’, Writin’ and Research
The defense projects come in eight flavors and five different tech levels. At the start of the game, one fewer projects than the number of players is revealed and we take turns putting a claim marker on one of them to represent what we hope to complete.
Why would we choose one project over another? Three reasons: defense, fame, and (possibly) an attribute upgrade. The defense value (assuming we claim this project) makes us more likely to survive an alien attack; fame (assuming we live) thrusts us in the public eye and helps us win; and the attributes help us work towards our goal of victory. Atributes come in four types—Staffing, Creativity, Security, Analysis—and players start the game at the basic level in each of them with three upgrades to spend as they wish. When you claim a project that depicts one or more attributes, you boost them on your personal gameboard.
Each turn, players each choose an action from three options: (1) conduct research, (2) submit findings, and (3) switch projects. Let’s take each in turn:
- Conduct research: Choose this option, and you’re dealt three or more research cards (with the exact number based on your Staffing). Research cards have either a number (10-50) a multiplier (x0, x2, x3) or an alien attack (in one of four flavors).
Unless you have an elevated Analysis attribute, you can’t look at the research cards you receive, but simply line them up in your data vault. If your Analysis is pumped, then you can peek at some number of cards, which will help when you want to…
- Submit findings: To claim a project, you need to collect a certain number of research points. Since you have only 14 spaces in your data vault, you can cash in at most 14 cards, although you can choose to cash in earlier. When you submit findings, either you discard the cards face-down for 10 points each—think of this as publishing results in some obscure periodical—or you turn them face-up and see what the research brings.
First, you look at any alien threats that snuck into your pile. Unless you have immunity to a threat—something granted by your standing in the Security attribute—the threat takes out the highest number card to the right of it in your research queue. After resolving threats, you add up the research points, with multipliers affecting the number or multiplier to its immediate left. Thus (10 40 x3) gives you 130 points while (10 x3 40 gives you 70 points and (x3 10 40) only 50 points. Your Creativity attribute gives you opportunities to swap adjacent cards when submitting face-up research, which can be a real boon.
If you have enough points to claim the project you’re working on, super! Grab it and place it in your top secret vault (which gives a bonus to your defense) or your public vault (which helps your fame). Flip over a new project at the end of the round and start working on something new.
If you don’t have enough points, bank them and start researching once again.
If you’re on a project that someone else claims, you’re hosed. You have to dump your currrent research and possibly some banked points, then choose another project to work on. To avoid this, you might want to…
- Switch projects: If you’re about to be scooped on a project, you can switch rather than fight, but you’re still penalized, most likely being forced to dump some of your stored research points. Ideally, you’ll never play this card.
Turn, Alien, Turn
Once projects start being claimed, an event card will be played at the start of most rounds. The current start player has the role of ISSA President in case of a vote or some other decision; he leads the proceedings, times the debate period when players negotiate during votes, and breaks all ties. The Presidency rotates each round.
You can play a short, medium or long game, with the length determining how many projects must be claimed before the alien lover can reveal himself. Once this happens, the A.L. transfers his attribute scores onto a similar alien gameboard, and those attributes will determine how many rounds the humans have before the attack, how tricky he can be with his attack, which special attacks the alien has, and how much base brutality he has (0-25 points).
A.L. claims the project he was working on, and he also nabs whichever projects the humans don’t complete in the remaining rounds, boosting his attributes accordingly.
The invasion is quick and dirty: Two to four research cards, depending on the length of the game, are dealt face-down against each human player. Based on the alien’s Intel strength (formerly Creativity), he can look at some number of cards and move some around, trying to hit players with the largest defense totals with the most firepower. For each two projects in his vaults, he can add another research card to an attack force. Each human has an endgame power, and those now come into play, providing extra defense, moving an attack card to strike another human instead of you (sorry, pal!), and so on.
The cards are then revealed and summed, and each human must throw away a defense total equal to the force of the attack. If this isn’t possible, say goodnight, Gracie, because the aliens have just toasted you! If all the humans eat it, the alien player wins; if not, humanity survives and the player with the highest fame wins. Warm up a chair on Oprah for him, assuming that she survived, too.
Invasion Aftermath
As I suggested above, a player’s choices during the game are fairly limited: research, submit, and switch—and you really don’t want to switch. There’s a lot going on in terms of cards handled and things moves and attributes tracked, but your choices are limited. Research or submit?
When you choose a project to work on, you get an extra research card each time you conduct research if you’ve already completed a project of that type—but with eight flavors of projects that rarely happens. Sure, I could switch to a project of a type that I already have, but first I have to throw away points and second that extra card probably won’t let me catch someone who’s already been mining that field. (You don’t have to throw away points if you’re switching from one project to another of the same type, but with eight flavors and only 2-5 projects showing, two of the same type are rarely on the table.)
Being left in the dust on research might be the most frustrating aspect of the game. When I complete a project or get booted from one, I need to place my claim marker on a new project or on one already claimed, but if someone’s working on a project, he’s already got some number of points on me in our race towards the research total needed and I’m unlikely to catch him. It’s a gamble since I have no control over the research cards I’m dealt and little control over their value, other than my Creativity which lets me switch a couple of cards. Thus, everyone chooses a new project; they might still be competing with someone, but at least they’re starting on even ground. As a result, you get channeled away from other players and find yourself competing against the same opponent or two again and again.
What’s the cause of this channeling? The requirement to throw away all research points when you claim a project, which forces you to start from scratch each time. I understand why you reset the data to zero—if not, someone could randomly be gifted a research haul of 50 x3 x3 x3 and score multiple projects bing bang boom on the way to victory—but fighting the same player all game isn’t ideal either. And in each game someone gets to be whipping boy, scooped on one project, then a second, falling behind in attributes and unable to land the projects.
E.T.I. isn’t a bad game, but it is heavily group dependent. If your group likes playing analytical games and exploring gaming systems to try to outwit opponents, then you’ll likely be annoyed by the simple choices offered. (Or annoyed by the slowness of other players despite the easy chocies offered.) As one player said, “It seems like too much work for the arbitrary ending. All the work you do basically comes down to the luck of the cards that are dealt against you.”
That said, in one six-player game, everyone had a blast because they were playing up the confrontation, accusing one another of deception, carrying on old feuds, and wheeling and dealing during the votes. The event cards throw fragments of randomosity into the game—draw a project from the deck and assign it to another player, the company with the most levels of top secret projects gets a free attribute boost, the company with the most fame gets a Staffing upgrade—but they also provide another avenue for deception and advancement with votes.
A vote is associated with one of the attributes, and when a vote occurs, each player has a number of votes equal to the combined tech levels of the projects they’ve completed; a project that boosts the namd attribute is worth twice as many tech levels. (Whipping boy gets hosed during the votes as well since he has little to offer.) Players then have a minute to try to buy or sell votes for banked research points, cards or completed projects. Once time is up, they cast all their votes for one person; no promises are binding, so feel free to offer the moon, then forget you said anything.
During this six-player game, everyone was loud and animated during votes with offers and counteroffers and resentment and wheedling voices. In the four-player game, by contrast, the voting was subdued with players unwilling or unable to make offers. One player had no projects through half the game, so he couldn’t do anything but scowl. While one person called the voting “the most interesting part” of the game, another said, “What really was a stinker for me were the times we had to vote and no one seemed to care about the results. It’s like the game was trying to artificially create tension that wasn’t there.”
Again, this is more a matter of playing style than anything else. In that six-player game, players were laughing at the quotes and titles on the projects and event cards. They were living out their role as potential defender of the earth and really trying to figure out who was working for the enemy. In the four-player game, with three people playing it for a second time, we seemed to be going through the motions. In that first group, I was having fun along with everyone else; in the second, I was not having fun along with everyone else. Different expectations, different results.
Perhaps the best thing I can suggest is to read my impressionistic review of E.T.I. If that description gets you jazzed about playing, then give it a try. If your only response is to ask “So how do you play the game?” then give it a miss. E.T.I. is more about the experience than the explanation, about the mood and not the mechanisms, and players who approach the game with the right spirit will have a blast.
Posted by W. Eric Martin on Jan 18, 2008 at 02:00 AM in Game Reviews, In-Depth Reviews / 1200
Comments:
You must register with BGN in order to comment. Registration is free, but if you appreciate the news, previews, reviews and other material posted on Boardgame News, please consider becoming a member to keep the info flowing to your screen!|
Eric writes: “E.T.I. is more about the experience than the explanation, about the mood and not the mechanisms ...” Uh, oh. This doesn’t bode well for me. I want a game to have game there, and not be dependent upon the mood of the players. I have a copy of E.T.I. and will try to get it to the table soon. It “reads” OK, but I fear that the luck factor of the cards may be a bit much. I’ll report back once I’ve played. Posted by Greg Schloesser on Jan 18, 2008 at 02:02 PM | #
|
Next entry: Convention Preview News: Nuremberg 2008 Update
Previous entry: Kris Hall: Alan Paull and Confucius
