No Monsters Allowed: The Tall Tails Win |
Sat, 19 October 2013 11:41 |
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skoormit | | Lieutenant | Messages: 665
Registered: July 2008 Location: Alabama | |
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By unanimous vote, the Tall Tails (played by Trader) have won No Monsters Allowed.
Many thanks to all the players for a very engaging game with a quick pace.
Many thanks also to XAPBob for initial game setup.
Post your notes, thoughts, and musings on the game here.
What we need's a few good taters.Report message to a moderator
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Re: No Monsters Allowed: The Tall Tails Win |
Sat, 19 October 2013 20:55 |
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trader | | Crewman 1st Class | Messages: 21
Registered: September 2012 Location: Toronto | |
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Thanks guys, good game. Skoormit, a fascinating set up, nothing like anything I have played before. I see some of the regulars have signed up for a rematch, I am interested too.
I generally consider Stars to be roughly 50% diplomacy, 25% resource management, and 25% fleet operations. If I understand Skoormit's intention correctly, by doing away with diplomacy, and strictly limiting resource parameters, he hoped to create a game which would focus on the fleet fighting component. That did become much more important, but in my view this also had the unintended consequence of magnifying the significance of starting positions.
The initial draw always shapes the early strategic decisions, but normally a bit of bad luck can be mitigated with skilful diplomacy. In fact, I've seen players with weak opening positions get an excellent start because they are spurred to make an effective early alliance. In NMA there was no opportunity to make such counters. I know we went through a lot of galaxies to try to find something fair, but I can't see that the Zemmels, Tomasoids or Fricken had much of a chance right out of the gate.
With the Fricken HW just 259 ly from my own, there was never a shadow of doubt about how to proceed. Hemmed in as he was, 262 ly from McClellan and 360 ly from Neon, the poor guy was screwed. All I had to do is kill him, then the next two would be very vulnerable, though admittedly the early exit of the Tomosoids simplified things greatly for me. After I had absorbed those three, it would have needed full cooperation from the remaining players to stop me.
So my conclusion is that for the no diplomacy/limited resource scenario, a reasonably level playing field at the start is essential. I know galaxy shaping and HW moving in Stars is tedious, but I've attached an example of a galaxy shape which should even things up if the HWs can be well placed.
Trader Mags
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Re: No Monsters Allowed: The Tall Tails Win |
Wed, 23 October 2013 02:52 |
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XAPBob | | Lt. Commander | Messages: 957
Registered: August 2012 | |
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Do you have a linux box?
Else I can just set mine off to do a big pile of gens...
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