About a dozen (maybe a bit more) of us met at Chris's house for the inaugural meeting of the as yet un-named Suburan Exiles gamer group (possible names range from SMALL to SEGUE or even SEGA). I didn't know anyone there except for the Jedi Princess who arrived later (after getting out of work). We split up into two groups, one playing a Settlers of Catan variant (Cities and Knights, I believe), and the other playing Nautilus.
NAUTILUS:
Vitas had brought the game. He, Rob and I played the game to completion (I think it took about 2 hours to play, maybe less). Rob won with about 170 points, and Vitas came second with about 130, if my memory serves. I, however, lost with an "amazing" 33 points. I'm not sure if it's possible to score any lower in that game. I liked a lot of things about the game, and I'd play it again in a second. Nice theme, nice pieces, the rules sum up nicely on a single page (which doubles as a scorecard), but there's enough complexity to encourage strategic thinking and planning.
I developed a number of strategies (some of which may not be worth repeating), but I was unable to execute them for various reasons. Without going into all of the details (please check out the boardgamegeek link above), my take on the game is that there are two main aspects to scoring: controlling the most of each type of research station (base control), and finding the most treasures in the sea (exploring).
The base control aspect of the game is a lot like the idea of building the longest road in Settlers: the person who occupies the most of a particular type of station first wins. There is no game advantage (e.g. increased sub movement, increased sonar range) beyong the second station, so there isn't much incentive to compete for this bonus. For example, suppose an opponent occupies the two training stations on the board while you only occupy one. In order to take the lead from him, you will need to buy and submerge another training station with a residential station (at a cost of between 3 - 7 Nemos), and dedicate three researchers to those stations. The only other bonus (besides taking the lead in this category), will be 1 additional researcher movement each turn. To get the researched movement bonus without taking the lead will not cost any Nemos and only require the efforts of a single researcher. Seems like a pretty big cost for a marginal benefit. For this reason, I believe, the person who controls the most of a particular type of station does not change often during the game. Simply put, once an opponent has the lead in a particular category, it is much easier for him to maintain the lead then for other players to take it from him.
I would recommend, then, for the first 25 - 30% of the game, to concentrate solely on base control. With 5 types of stations, there should be at least one uncontested type that you can grab the majority in pretty quickly. I would put off submerging any stations until you have the first turn marker. By then, if you have amassed at least two of a station that no one else has more then one of, you can submerge the two stations (with a residential station with 3 researchers) and move one researcher into each of the deployed stations before the other players can move. Instant 3 point bonus, which will probably be uncontested. If it appears that someone else is going to try to take that lead away from you, you still have the advantage - you can occupy other stations of the same type that are already on the sea floor, and your opponent can not move more then two researches in a single turn.
Another tactic for base expansion (that Rob came up with towards the end of the game) is to purchase the other stations of that type without deploying them. This works both as a scare tactic and as a way of preventing your opponents from amassing these stations. The rules will eventually force you to discard or play these stations eventually, though.
The second element of scoring is exploration. I think I used the scanning ability more then the other players, and I'm not sure if I benefitted greatly from it. I think the main decision to be made here is whether or not you are trying to obtain Atlantis pieces. For three players, the players get 5, 2, or 1 point, based on the number (and, in case of a tie, the rank) of pieces collected. If one player has an obvious lead, I think vying for second place (with only a single point difference) is not worth the effort. In fact, even if it's a close race, I'm not sure it's worth the effort. A close race between three players would probably involve amassing at least 5 parts of atlantis. If you succeed in getting the most pieces of Atlantis, then you will get 5 points. However, with the same amount of effort, you can pick up 5 non-atlantis pieces that are worth 1 or 2 points each for a total of between 6 and 11 points (including the default point for least Atlantis pieces). Therefore, I would scan and avoid Atlantis pieces (as well as treasure chests and speed bonuses).
Take all this advice with a good heaping of salt. I did lose the game with an unbelivably low score, after all.
ZOMBIES!
The other half of the group was still playing Settlers, so we started a game of Zombies! The players were Vitas, myself, the Jedi Princess, Rob, and Esa. The JP was a zombie-killing machine, but Vitas won the game. I thought the game was pretty close for most of the time, and I still think that I could have (at least in theory) won the game if the movement roll was 3 or higher on my last turn (I rolled a 1). It's a nice, relatively quick game, it took about 30 - 45 minutes to finish.
There isn't much I could say about the strategy of this game that wouldn't be obvious. But I won't let that stop me.
I tried to keep close to the center of town at the beginning of the game, but more from necessity, as my first foray into the Zombie-infested streets left me with only one life and bullet. The other players went headed north and west (from my perspective), but these directions were soon blocked off. Figuring on having a head start towards the helipad, I headed down the last open direction (south), but then the the last tile blocked off the last unfinished street, dashing my hopes of an airbourne rescue (and subsequent victory). Meanwhile, the Jedi Princess single handedly decimated a building with 6 zombies in it, and then proceeded to repopulate the building with a card. Within two turns, she had more then a dozen kills under her belt.
At one point, I had a hospital filled with zombies completely to my own. Unfortunately I couldn't roll more then 2 movement to save my life (which was also pitifully low).
The cards provided quite a bit of confusion during the game. At least once the rules were consulted for clarification. According to the boardgame geek's site, one of the designers of the game claimed that the ambiguity may have been intentional, which surprised me. Also, I found that a few cards needed to be played at certain times (e.g. before making a movement roll, immediately after another player fights at least one zombie), and I missed some key opportunities to play cards.
It's a nice quick game with a fun theme, and I'd play it again.
Well, that's my session report. Thanks to Chris for hosting, and thanks to Vitas for introducing me to some really cool games. I look forward to playing with all of you again soon.
posted by FlyingSheep @ 2:39 PM
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