Misterboy wrote:
The players thought they were playing a game that they understood, which turned out to be completely wrong. I warned them, but the seemingly simple mechanisms of the game led these battle hardened gamers to assume they knew what they were doing.
As the Green player in question, I beg to disagree with your interpretation of my motivations. Like all games I play for the first time, I *never* expect to win, and like the Pink player, I had zero expectations going in. While it's true that the game presented a number of different mechanisms that I had passing familiarity with, I didn't take that to mean that I had it all figured out, as the outcome clearly shows! I though it was abundantly clear that myself and the Pink player were playing by the seat of our pants, and that we lost because we'd never played the game before. We did not know because we could not have known. Just because a game shares aspects with with others by no means means that it plays the same, and Hornet is a prime example. It's as Hanlon's Razor states, never attribute to malice what could more easily be attributed to stupidity :P
What I don't appreciate is being cast as the smug veteran who was thrown from my high horse in a befittingly karmic manner. If I really passed judgement on games I didn't understand at first, I reckon I wouldn't enjoy the large amount of games that I do, and I certainly wouldn't think that Hornet is a surprisingly well made piece of design that I'd love to play again, because that is very much the case.
I agree with Pink in that, while losing certainly isn't fun, it's not one we sweat over. I think what caused what you interpreted to be ill-will was the realization that, due to our collective lack of foresight (forgetfulness on your part, unfamiliarity on ours), we'd kneecapped ourselves partway through the game to an unrecoverable situation. I don't mind learning that a game requires a specific method of play to reign in runaway leaders, a lot of really great games have that aspect to them. It's just frustrating to learn it the hard way, as you've had lots of opportunity to experience when I've taught games and flailed ineffectually through the teaching :P.
Luckily, Hornet is a short enough game it wasn't something to get upset over. It really is a spare, interactively fascinating game, and now that I *know* what kind of game it is I can really dig into it the next time we play (and not have to make educated guesses that may or may not be correct).