Board Game Arena

schulni wrote: ↑17 June 2025, 19:22

FrankJones wrote: ↑17 June 2025, 18:47 Joost's starting hand was kind of garbage, and the first few card draws were nothing useful. I'm actually surprised this game was even close.

I would be happy to start with Credicorp, Mars U, Kelp Farming, and a cheap ocean. That's a pretty solid base to work from. Add the card that's the subject of this thread early on, plus viral enhancers, and I would say the cards were mostly on his side early on. My big advantage was early card draw and strong preludes, which are obviously powerful. I didn't feel like my hand had much direction.

You're missing a bit of the sequencing, which I think happens when you can only see one side of the replay at once. I don't think it was Joost's best game, but I do think it took some tricky navigating and baiting him into helping me end that generation was a play I was proud of, anyway.

I do give you credit for ending the game the way you did. Leaving your opponent stuck with a bunch of point cards deserves merit. I still think there were a number of highly questionable plays if not outright errors.

FrankJones wrote: ↑17 June 2025, 19:28

schulni wrote: ↑17 June 2025, 19:22

FrankJones wrote: ↑17 June 2025, 18:47 Joost's starting hand was kind of garbage, and the first few card draws were nothing useful. I'm actually surprised this game was even close.

I would be happy to start with Credicorp, Mars U, Kelp Farming, and a cheap ocean. That's a pretty solid base to work from. Add the card that's the subject of this thread early on, plus viral enhancers, and I would say the cards were mostly on his side early on. My big advantage was early card draw and strong preludes, which are obviously powerful. I didn't feel like my hand had much direction.

You're missing a bit of the sequencing, which I think happens when you can only see one side of the replay at once. I don't think it was Joost's best game, but I do think it took some tricky navigating and baiting him into helping me end that generation was a play I was proud of, anyway.

I do give you credit for ending the game the way you did. Leaving your opponent stuck with a bunch of point cards deserves merit. I still think there were a number of highly questionable plays if not outright errors.

I'm sure I made some mistakes. It's a lot easier in retrospect to see everything that happened after and question a decision. I would be curious what things you think were the most costly. I am always trying to get better.

I thought the generation with the awards was a bit odd. I thought Joost had priority to gain 2 of them, but didn't take it, setting you up to get 2 of them, which you then did not do.

But maybe I am calculating this wrong. If you needed to do steelworks, and activate both card draws, that takes 5 actions. Maybe buy one extra card in the draft? Or maybe Joost saw that you needed 5 actions to claim 2 milestones, and thus was able to delay claiming and still get 2? Now my recollection is a bit foggy.

Not playing Acquired Company was an immediate loss of 3 MC, you played it next gen. I think I would have prioritized Nitrogen-rich sooner. I likely would not have bought Release of inert gases. I think that's a trap card that generally goes unplayed. If it was meant as an endgame card for points, I think that's a lot to invest up front for a mediocre card. Mangrove is certainly better.

Regarding Joost's hand, yes, Kelp is a great card, but in games that end in 8 or 9 gens, it's not nearly as amazing as it is in the games I'm accustomed to. AMC (fitting that it was in his hand early, given the thread title, as you noted ), well, bad luck for Joost that you did not get a titanium card. If you had, you surely would have played it, since you had a good space card, and that would have been pretty rough if you got hit with it.

Mars University without any card draws ended up being rather expensive to make use of. The cheap ocean gave mediocre cards. For the most part, Joost seemed to be playing all his playable cards without a whole lot in reserve. (I watched it all the way through from both players' vantage points.)
Who wins if it goes to a tenth generation? If it did, you wouldn't need to spend 14 for the SP asteroid, or spend heavily on strip mine. But, Joost could play Greenhouses and interstellar and Ganymede. You might have won anyway; I forget what cards you still had. A discounted Inert gases. I forget what else.

Can anyone explain to me drafting and buying hackers and passing you the deadly investment loan?

It's difficult to say who wins if it goes another generation. Joost has predators with Viral; interstellar, and Ganymede. And maybe an award, though money was tight.

Should Joost have seen it coming though? There's only one reason you would buy strip mine there, and, he passed you Investment loan. You bought 3 cards, so obviously you had bought Strip mine.

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RoyalRook wrote: ↑17 June 2025, 17:00

@Frank here me winning over holy trinity of earth cat, restricted+biz net and anti grav with two animals earth office standard tech mass quantum + 7 jov tag boosted by IO WIFE TG under Vitor yesterday: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=688644740
I could have certain played even better, the important thing is that wasn't stressed at all while all the monster cards flying around, b/c I know tempo is on my side. Experience wins.

Looking at this now. Gen 1 looks good. Could make a case for putting the ocean and nuclear zone and greenery over by Noctis city, but as played, it stakes out a good spot in both of the plant-rich areas.

Gen 2: I am keeping Space station with 4 space cards already in hand. I don't understand how you had algae passed back to you; that was an odd choice by the opponent.

Gen 5: I'm taking Shuttles, same reason.

Research outpost before Olympus was a bit odd. Probably a rushed play, it looks as though you tried to cancel it but the game had already begun a new turn.

Gen 8: That's a crazy milestone swipe.

This game made a lot more sense to me than the other one I reviewed. I agree with the cards you played, though I would have gotten the two space discounts. I'm not sure exactly what this game demonstrates though. Your opponent drafted poorly, and you had great cards (partly because of the poor drafting). Your opponent ran out of cards and had to do standard projects. Your opponent was never in contention for the win. The opponent's rating isn't comparable to yours.

FrankJones wrote: ↑17 June 2025, 15:03 Much of the strategy analysis (if we can call it that) for this game seems to revolve around arguing over the value of some of the cards.
In this thread, a debate over how strong AMC is, and whether hackers is worth playing. In another thread, a debate over the moss cards.

Even if we all came to an agreement on which cards were worth what, there would still be high variance with regard to who gets dealt which cards.

To demonstrate the complexity of the game, if it is in fact a high-complexity game, maybe some top players can post games in which they won a game with bad cards by out-maneuvering the opponent.

Kind of a silly ask when I know you’ve seen me play at least a couple Challenge Mode games where I deliberately play bad cards and lines in stream and still win while completing the challenge (like gen 1 Dets, or play only even costing cards, or gen 1 cows, or play all the negative VP cards). It’s clearly a pretty complex game when I can consistently win Challenge Mode games (it’s just really hard to win them against other strong players). Are you challenging me to stream Challenge Mode sessions more often? Cuz I can do dat

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I would definitely watch streams of top players, especially with commentary.
Though, I recall watching a stream of a wingspan game by a supposed expert, and there were mistakes everywhere, starting with move 1. The player defended the errors by saying the live stream and commentary distracted him