Marc P
United States
Green Lake--Seattle
Washington
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Ahhh. Nothing like the smell of DIY in the morning.
Our first game using the Funkenschlag Atolla Modulis download.
The images were downloaded and printed out at work on 20# stock paper using a HP4600 laser color printer. I got 2mm poster board from the local art supply. Paper/posterboard union was achieved using 3M "77" spray and a wooden paper towel holder. The images were sealed and protected with 5 thin coats of Krylon Glossy UV protectant spray. Everything was cut out using a metal ruler, utility knife, and self-healing mat. One finger was sliced open, but no permanent damage was done. I WILL get a mounted cutter if and when I make another copy for a gift. Some of the finished pieces had corners that were a bit loose (which I identified by carefully brushing each corner with the tip of my finger). These were repaired by spraying one end of one of the used razor blades with "77" spray and tucking it under the raised flap. Then, with a paper towel, I squeezed the corner down, wiping away the excess glue.
The game debuted to murmurs of appreciation. The best praise is that we played the game without being distracted by any of the components.
We selected one of the 4p setups from the list in the instructions. I grabbed the indicated atoll tiles and fanned them in my hand. Every player selected one and placed it in turn, in any orientation, with the understanding that we needed to make a 3x3 grid due to space restrictions. Continuing clockwise, neutral tiles were selected to fill in gaps. The counter tiles were turned face down, and counters were placed randomly on all intertile city connections. When we get a bit more sophisticated with our gameplay, I think I'll make two seperate piles of counters so we can intentionally make certain connections cheap and others relatively more expensive, but still choose them from facedown piles.
Our board setup was as follows:
N-4 / D / N-9
C / I / F
G / N-5 / H
An image of the game near the end:
Anyway, it was at about this point that I knocked over a fresh cup of hot tea all over my end of the table. One tile got hit, and I was able to salvage it thanks to Jim's speediness with a towel. The rest of the tea went all over me, so I played with a soaked shirt sleeve and pant leg. This would not be the last time this happened.
I think we lucked into a pretty good board setup. The atoll tiles had a lot of really cheap areas, but there were also some cheap ways to cover a lot of distance on the board. Meaning that there was usually a cheap way and an expensive way. This meant that you were forced to do some defensive building on every turn to block off cheap ways into your region. This kept me broke, and less inclined to take a turn off building to enhance my power plant situation. OTOH, everyone else quickly got up to their 3 plants, and were making more money than me early. The other problem was that I had started with a 3 Oil/2 city plant, which proved to quite expensive to operate, EVEN THOUGH I was in last almost every turn of the game. Thus, the other players were building more cities than me AND improving their power plants. I usually avoid the tastiest regions on the board for starting position, but this is what fell to me, and I felt like I had to protect it. Dumb.
After everyone got to three power plants, the market got sucky. No one wanted to grab anything that wasn't a 4- or 5-city plant. So with the saved money, cities were built more quickly, and we sprinted into Step 2. A few turns later, Sonja made her move, building 5 cities for about 120 Electro to take her to 17, and powering 12. I could power 9 cities, Jim and Jill were at 10 and 11, respectively. It was a pretty quick game.
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Posted Wed Mar 28, 2007 9:40 pm