Asteroid Mining Consortium

[FrankJones]

There's a discussion about this on Boardgamegeek. The conclusion was that it is cheap because it is situational.

This one?

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/219961 ... -as/page/1

Holy moly. FIFTEEN pages of posts in that thread!

I assume you didn't have to search a long time to find that thread

I remember when it came out! I learned a lot from reading it at the time.

[Kulikk]

It's one of the most overrated cards by general community

In a 2-player game?

I can see the attack cards being overrated in 3-player; since one person overpays to gain production, and the third player is not harmed.

In a 2-player game? Titanium Mine is an excellent card in the starting hand, right? (Or, not?)
Titanium mine costs 10 to buy and play. AMC costs 16 to buy and play, and gives the same value as titanium mine while also subtracting that same value from the opponent, and gives 1 (or more) VP.

What's the reasoning for it being overrated?

Ok, so in short:

we are looking at an expensive mineral prod card with difficult to fulfill requirement and usually completely useless tag.

Titanium mine is an ok card in opening hand mainly because it advences you towards builder is cheap so it doesn't set you back with tempo and can be played with steel from corp/preludes. The better the players are the less valuable prod cards are (since the game are higher paced and end faster) and the less likely it is for both players to have titanium prod.

To look in a little bit more detail how it works in practice: if you have a terrafrorming cards AMC is basically useless to you since it's just too expensive to develop, if you are playing an engine against an engine it's also usually bad unless you have a jovians to go with it since +1 -1 often doesn't affect the game, i.e. players are held back by the card draw and not that the have 2 titanium prod instead of 3. Basically I can see 2 situations where amc really "shines": you are an engine player playing against a faster setup which developed 1 titanium prod or 2 you are in an engine vs enging against a player with a card draw but luckloster economy.

I won't dive into how really titanium prod is worth in terms of mc or how it changes along the game but it also doesn't favor amc.

In 3p+ games amc is obviously atrocious.

[FrankJones]

It's one of the most overrated cards by general community

In a 2-player game?

I can see the attack cards being overrated in 3-player; since one person overpays to gain production, and the third player is not harmed.

In a 2-player game? Titanium Mine is an excellent card in the starting hand, right? (Or, not?)
Titanium mine costs 10 to buy and play. AMC costs 16 to buy and play, and gives the same value as titanium mine while also subtracting that same value from the opponent, and gives 1 (or more) VP.

What's the reasoning for it being overrated?

Ok, so in short:

we are looking at an expensive mineral prod card with difficult to fulfill requirement and usually completely useless tag.

Titanium mine is an ok card in opening hand mainly because it advences you towards builder is cheap so it doesn't set you back with tempo and can be played with steel from corp/preludes. The better the players are the less valuable prod cards are (since the game are higher paced and end faster) and the less likely it is for both players to have titanium prod.

To look in a little bit more detail how it works in practice: if you have a terrafrorming cards AMC is basically useless to you since it's just too expensive to develop, if you are playing an engine against an engine it's also usually bad unless you have a jovians to go with it since +1 -1 often doesn't affect the game, i.e. players are held back by the card draw and not that the have 2 titanium prod instead of 3. Basically I can see 2 situations where amc really "shines": you are an engine player playing against a faster setup which developed 1 titanium prod or 2 you are in an engine vs enging against a player with a card draw but luckloster economy.

I won't dive into how really titanium prod is worth in terms of mc or how it changes along the game but it also doesn't favor amc.

In 3p+ games amc is obviously atrocious.

Agreed on all counts.

I mean, in a 2-player game, no preludes, no colonies, where the opponent is not terraforming, meaning that a 12-gen game is likely, and I am planning to use titanium to play the powerful space events, it hurts to get hit with this in gen 1 of a 2-player game.

But, yes, the Victory point is useless early on, And only becomes valuable if generally inefficient Jovians are played. I still keep it in my opening hand (As I do all attack card in 2-player without any expansions), but there are a lot of cards I'd rather have.

Earth catapult, obviously. Mars University. Mass converter. Giant ice. Etc.

I know people hate on hackers, but I really find is brutal to get hit with it gen 1. Sometimes even gen 2. After that I generally think it's silly to play it. I try to avoid ever playing it because I likely will regret not having the energy production for a more important card.

[RoyalRook]

AMC is one of those Elo dependent card, I probably should write a whole new thread about this topic. The basic idea is this, let's say you are elo 450 and run into Kulikk or me in a game are you seriously going to try out rushing us? Probably not a good idea yeah? Alright mate, so science draw jov game is where you are going, since this requires the least amount of skill to win. If you look into the data, you can see that Point Luna has a big discrepancy between two players with large skill gap, since it has a built in Earth University mechanics. You can say that Point Luna is where top players come to die and lose their rankings.

Back to topic, AMC acts less like an engine card but more in the role of Search for Life as a cheap tag instead of it's primary point attribute. For Search you often not playing it for the 3 potential points but the cheap science tag to unlock cards like AI Central, For AMC, you often or should not play it for the extra prod, but for the cheap jov tag(comparing to its giant brothers) to unlock bigger jovs like Beam or simply laddering up to a powerful TG. Since you are not rushing against a much higher ranked opponent, you should definitely pickup AMC to increase your relatively low winning conditions. If you are below 500 just go science AND jov, it's your best chance when up against top ranked opponents.

For me personally, I rarely would look to buy or play AMC, but often cutting it in draft to farther secure my winning conditions. As you can see, I am a control, I look to dominate and snuff out my opponent's winning conditions.

P.S. @Kulikk I think In a 3p game, AMC is terrifying since the draft is much harder to control and the effect is far greater in a higher tempo 3p game IF and ONLY IF the player knows what he is doing and super disciplined with his card purchasing selections to off set the cost. The thing about 3p is that standard projects rules if you swing 6 prod albeit in titanium early, it's devastating. In 3p, it's a hard ask to pass the first 3 gen and do nothing. In 2p, it's not a thing right?

[FrankJones]

Those are reasonable points, but I do have a question:

So, let's take it as a given that TR rush is optimal. I definitely agree this is the case.

So, what happens in one player just doesn't get the cards to Terraform? It's difficult to win with standard projects against someone who has space events and optimal aerobraking, Algae and Kelp Farming and Insects.

Sometimes the drafts are bad. We've all been there, right? You look at 4 cards and they are all mediocre, meanwhile your opponent is getting one s-tier card and 3 mediocre each draft. So, you're keeping a mediocre card and passing 3 mediocre, while the opponent is getting one strong keeper and passing 3 mediocre. What do you do? Or, your opponent gets 3 strong cards, keeps one, knowing he will get back one of the other 2. Meanwhile, you get 2 strong cards and 2 junk cards. You keep one and pass one, along with the two duds. Now your opponent buys the 2 good cards, you buy the one good one. If this happens too many times, what's the plan?

It's fine to say, "A mid-Elo player cannot out-rush me in TR", but that mid-Elo player can if he gets better cards.

[RoyalRook]

Most players never play optimally while everything I do will be optimal to the best of my abilities. That's why no matter what, after 30+ moves, I will most like to win against a much lower ranked opponent. In reality, I gain tempo with each of my opponent's moves, over time this allows me to overcome pretty much everything beyond perfect jovs. Jov and jov alone are unaffected by any of my dark magics as they operate in vacuums.

Most players doesn't understand earth cat or AI anyway, but even a first time player understand how jov works and can win by playing them. It's not about winning, it's about not lose when climb the rankings especially in arena. I just don't want to lose first and foremost, I can take care of winning later.

[FrankJones]

AMC is one of those Elo dependent card, I probably should write a whole new thread about this topic. The basic idea is this, let's say you are elo 450 and run into Kulikk or me in a game are you seriously going to try out rushing us? Probably not a good idea yeah? Alright mate, so science draw jov game is where you are going, since this requires the least amount of skill to win. If you look into the data, you can see that Point Luna has a big discrepancy between two players with large skill gap, since it has a built in Earth University mechanics. You can say that Point Luna is where top players come to die and lose their rankings.

Back to topic, AMC acts less like an engine card but more in the role of Search for Life as a cheap tag instead of it's primary point attribute. For Search you often not playing it for the 3 potential points but the cheap science tag to unlock cards like AI Central, For AMC, you often or should not play it for the extra prod, but for the cheap jov tag(comparing to its giant brothers) to unlock bigger jovs like Beam or simply laddering up to a powerful TG. Since you are not rushing against a much higher ranked opponent, you should definitely pickup AMC to increase your relatively low winning conditions. If you are below 500 just go science AND jov, it's your best chance when up against top ranked opponents.

For me personally, I rarely would look to buy or play AMC, but often cutting it in draft to farther secure my winning conditions. As you can see, I am a control, I look to dominate and snuff out my opponent's winning conditions.

P.S. @Kulikk I think In a 3p game, AMC is terrifying since the draft is much harder to control and the effect is far greater in a higher tempo 3p game IF and ONLY IF the player knows what he is doing and super disciplined with his card purchasing selections to off set the cost. The thing about 3p is that standard projects rules if you swing 6 prod albeit in titanium early, it's devastating. In 3p, it's a hard ask to pass the first 3 gen and do nothing. In 2p, it's not a thing right?

You would pay 16 MC for a Jovian tag? Just to play Beam from a throium asteroid? Thus making the cost of the card 51 instead of 36?

Or to add 1 extra TR to Terraforming Ganymede?

The best way for sub-500 players to get above 500 is to play the winning strategies used by 600 Elo players, not by making bad plays.

[RoyalRook]

I would 100% play beam early bc it gives me control over both draft and heat track via dual jov and oxy bumper threat.

[RoyalRook]

I'm just thinking out loud right. I play amc then beam fund thermolist with card draw. I hold heat and just don't do anything I know the game is gonna go over ten generations. You can't pass me any jovians.I'm building econ as I scales up, Save like 80 cash with minimum card buy by Gen 10. What are you wanna do? Is it's game over, keep it simple guys. I feel like people are being too fancy. Players like aspirin just cash you out, I love playing that style.

[FrankJones]

If that's such a strong strategy (And I'm not disagreeing with you; it may well be a very strong strategy, I haven't tried it yet), doesn't that ADD extra credibility to how strong AMC is?

Because then, in addition to all the reasons you mentioned, it also gives you titanium production to pay for future space-Jovians, and deprives the opponent of Titanium that might be used to pay terraforming space events.