Letters from Sag -- Tomb at the May Getaway

Stephen (who is from Mississippi, hence the nickname) was a...

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I remember the first time I played Tomb. It was the year it came out and I was at a two-player game day for a local gaming group. I was the odd-person out when I arrived and so someone got Tomb out for a three-person game. It was also the last time I played Tomb and the last time, until today, that I've ever seen it played or mentioned. I've occasionally wondered about the game since it seemingly disappeared off the face of the Earth. I recall thinking there was some interesting aspects to it, but ultimately it was a little wonky and nothing to get too excited about. It's unfortunate it takes a diehard to bring an undercooked game to life - congrats to those of you who know those people. Tomb is like a KS game ahead of its time.

I really enjoyed reading that, thank you Sag.

Great insights on a mostly overlooked game.

Oh man, please tell me there is another piece of artwork that reveals Sorscha to be an old man with a van dyke beard Or one of those youthful body but old hag face witch chicks from Beastmaster!

jason10mm wrote: Oh man, please tell me there is another piece of artwork that reveals Sorscha to be an old man with a van dyke beard Or one of those youthful body but old hag face witch chicks from Beastmaster!

Yeah, at some point while playing I found myself saying, "I prefer women that have a head" which sounds a little dirty, but actually isn't.

Nice read! I'd be interested to see your friend's Tomb card list. At one point I wanted to make a free deck builder out of the cards in the game, and messed with it at one point but dropped it after it seemed like it wasn't going anywhere.

Then I started a "re-make", but ultimately changed it so much that it only resembles Tomb now in its combat structure. I'm pitching THAT game at Origins this week. So who knows, perhaps the bones of Tomb will be re-animated.

Tomb was really popular at the local game club, for about a month or two. I think people were hoping that it would be 'Descent 1.0 + Runebound*, done right'. That turned out not to be the case.

My experience with it was this: I went into the club, and there was a six-player game going on. I asked a few questions about it, and someone said, "Please take my place." I did. It turns out six players are about two or three too many, and I spent the next couple of hours doing pretty close to nothing.

In the end, I thought there was a good game trying to get out, but due to lack of skill and desire I wasn't going to be the one to fix it.

* My Runebound 1.0 experience was that it would always attract a foursome, and player #4 was hosed.

My group has figured out that games like Tomb, and Merchant of Venus, and Formula D can be played with dual turns, especially with that many players. You can have the guy across from you taking his turn as you take yours, and the result is that you're pretty much either prepping, turning, or posting for most of the game. There's a knack to making sure you don't get out ahead of someone, but short of two players' positions being on top of each other you can make it work without too much coordination.

This is where I get a little confused over "slow play" comments, because most games with slow play can be parallelized without too much trouble, and because the people complaining about it are usually pretty sharp and pretty experienced at gaming. I can't imagine ours is the only group figuring this out, or the only group capable of making it work.

I think four is plenty for Tomb, an academic argument because I don't think it gets played much anywhere anymore. Apparently it had a solid following, but it's ten years old now.