I wrote in my Cyclades review that my first play went strangely, one early battle basically decided the whole round before the rest of the table had much say in it, and the guy who owned the copy told me that was uncommon, worth trying again to see if it held up. I did try again, and it did hold up better the second time through, genuinely evened out, real back and forth. What I left out of that review, because it wasn’t really about the game itself, was what happened when I brought my own copy to Denny’s place a few weeks later and tried to get three other people excited about it the same way I’d gotten excited.
I’d built it up a little, I’ll admit that now. Told them about the bidding system, the way you’re not fighting over territory directly but bidding for the gods who let you fight over territory, made it sound like the smartest thing I’d played in months, which at the time it kind of was. First game, though, with three people who’d never touched it before, the exact strange thing I’d already experienced once happened again, one early confrontation, over almost before it started, decided who was going to have a real shot at winning and who wasn’t, and it happened inside the first fifteen minutes. Nine minutes of actual meaningful play before the outcome was more or less locked for two of the three people at the table.
Nobody said anything mean about it. That’s almost worse, honestly, people being polite about a game night that clearly didn’t land the way I’d promised it would. We finished the round out of obligation more than enthusiasm, and I could feel the energy at the table doing that thing where everyone’s still technically playing but nobody’s really invested anymore. Denny caught my eye at one point with a look that said, without saying it, that I’d oversold this one.
I don’t think the game’s actually broken, my second solo experience with it proved that to me before I even brought it to Denny’s, but I do think I made a mistake as a teacher and as an evangelist both. I’d built a narrative around one great experience and skipped the part where I should’ve warned everyone that the bidding-and-combat system has real variance in it, that a rough early roll of the dice on who bids for what can occasionally flatten a game before it gets going. I’ve started doing that now, warning people upfront about a game’s actual failure modes instead of only its highlights, even when it makes my pitch less exciting in the moment. It’s a smaller sell. It’s also an honest one, and I’d rather have three people mildly interested going in than three people quietly disappointed coming out.