Tip: OT: Bruce Geryk's other choice

[onomastikon]

Hello everyone, it's been some time since I played Dominions, for a number of reasons, but it and the community still have a fond place in my heart.

I shamelessly plugged Dominions over at the GC2 forums after the Brad and the other fine people at Stardock included press releases of the launch of Dominions3 and posted quite prominent links to Shrapnel on their site. Now, in a sort of crypto-plug, I'd like to ask your advice about something which Dominions vet Bruce Geryk loved,

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/...er/review.html

a tiny but excellent niche game from a niche designer which came out 5 years ago. In many ways, I think it can be compared favorably to the Dominions series, and might fill a niche here. I would like your opinion, since I think that game could be truly great, but wonder how it goes with the pure TBS crowd.

In many ways, Star Chamber is like Dominions:
- Ostentatious lack of investment in flashy graphics and sound
- Steep learning curve
- Deep strategic choices and high levels of variability between games of identical setup
- Turns are submitted to the server and resolved simultaneously
- Hence great strategic planning, but no immediate tactical control
- Both games excel at, or, perhaps, were "made for" multiplayer

The differences are equally clear:
- Dom's pure TBS vs. SC's TBS/TCG hybrid
- Dom's Fantasy setting vs. SC's space setting
- Dom games can take weeks to complete, SC matches are usually over in less than an hour

In many other aspects, a direct comparison of similarities or differences fails to hold up. I'd be keen on your opinion. One could say that the way that the magic system in Dominions is much like the tech system in SC: one finds and harvests various magic resources in various paths (gems, slaves) in Dominions much like the way that one harvests' various tech paths (cyber, order, life, etc.) in SC, and that the magic spells are cast by having access to research in the correct areas (plus, on occasion, expending gems correspondingly), while in SC, "spells" are cast by playing cards in the right tech paths. Also, Dominions can appear deceptively easy, yet we all know how difficult it is to be good. I think this is even more true of SC; it appears very easy, but yet it seems very difficult to master. Particularly because the way that some "spells" work: in SC, complexity and variability come not in the overwhelming number of different entities and effects which one can conjur, but rather in the exceedingly subtle way these effects are combined with very tricky conditions under which the effects may or may not take place. The aspect of "Dominion" is much like the aspect of "Influence" on the SC map, and offers an exciting twist to the concept of controlling areas. Additionally, SC has various winning conditions (military, political, cultural), each of which can be sneakily achieved with enough guile. I suppose that "guile" sums up a fairly basic skill required to play both SC and Dominions well.

A lot has happened to SC since Geryk wrote his review 5 years ago. It has developed over the course of 6 expansion sets, and has developed for the better.

Has anyone ever heard of this game?
Has anyone ever tried it?
It's so obviously different from Dominions that I think it isn't much in the way of disjunctive competition, but imagine that it could be quite something of a conjunctive enhancement for many here. I'd be keen to know what you think.