Daniel Jacobsen
Faroe Islands
Tórshavn
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We played a 6 player game that lasted around 5 hours, including rules explanation and a lot of time spent reading honder cards. I expect we shall be able to reduce playing time to 4 hours on our next play. One player (Rome) had never played before, while the other players had played approximately 1 to 4 times before. We played with 3 victory conditions: pyramids (requiring a set of 13 resources/tax), 5 wonders or 3 roles. However, we removed 8 random honders rather than heroes, which led to the pyramids being removed. This was a mistake, but did not lessen the gaming experience.
Jostling for positions
For the first few rounds, everyone focused on extending their influence and building infrastructure. Yes, it was rather boring. Unfortunately for Carthage, Atlantis got to Mauretania first, leaving Carthage with Phasania to get additional resource types. Carthage then built a couple of legions and took Mauretania from Atlantis. This turned out to be a foolhardy act of agression, as Atlantis had built a large navy and promptly invaded Numidia, occupying both caravans and the market there. This allowed Atlantis to build a Kraken on the next turn, but he was polite enough to withdraw this occupation force as a gesture of good will. Soon after, Carthage built a navy of its own for some projection power.
On other fronts, there were a few skirmishes here and there, but mostly players spent their resources on growth and infrastructure.
Tension builds
After the initial embarassing 'Atlantean incident', as it was called in the official press release, Carthage was apparently not regarded as much of a threat by the other powers, who began to tremble instead at the frightening growth of Rome - lots of legions, lots of resources and a couple of Titans thrown (pun not intended) in for good measure. Greece and Egypt went for cities, temples and fortresses, preferring not to fight anyone at all - thinking inside the box, so to speak. Babylon also expanded pacifistically (which until now was not a real word). This level of pacifism is probably not optimal, except when everybody is doing it. Towards the end of the game, however, Babylon saw the great threat posed by Greece - now with 3 honders, from generating a lot of tax, and finally invaded. This resulted in the biggest battle of the game, wherein 2 Mythical creatures and 4 legions were destroyed - a terrible waste of life one might call it, or quality entertainment, depending on ones point of view -
where after Egypt simply marched, or more precisely: sailed in and took over Asia, the former battleground.
Carthage took Cyrenaica from Egypt to cut him down to size a bit, even though this cost him a Behemoth and Egypt ended up with 2 reinflatable bluebirds (or 'Phoenixes', as the Pyramid people who walk funny like to call them). Peace was made then, as Egypt could get enough tax anyway and didn't seem to miss the papyrus so much. And, as everyone knows, those Pharaos have no stomach for war.
Rome almost won by obtaining 3 roles, but through some joint efforts by the UN (Unhappy Neighbors) never quite managed this. However, it seemed clear that Rome would win eventually with a such a large (although yellow, which isn't really very intimidating color wise) army and a lot of resources. Atlantis invaded southern italy with a Kraken and a legion, but they were soon booted back out, Atlantis actually withdrawing the Kraken in order to keep it alive before a pile of Roman legions arrived (they had more trouble not stepping on each other's toes than killing the poor lone Atlantean, who apparently was very close to the end of his tour of duty, poor bastard).
Egypt also slowly grew dangerous, generating 7 tax per turn, also having colonized Creta with both a city and a temple. Baal and Vulcan started to get picked more and more, as players vied for those precious cities and also for general retaliation bliss.
Trading blows
Carthage, not really having been taken seriously until now, was suddenly seen to emerge from obscurity with 4 honders (Circe, Artemis and Helen of Troy, in addition to Hannibal). Circe and Artemis really boosted the Carthaginian economy, while Helen of Troy was taken as a defensive measure against the expected agression following the building of the 4th honder. And indeed, the other players - failing to acknowledge Carthage as the rightful ruler of the world, which they ought to have done at this point - managed to coerce Rome into an invasion of Carthage, with no less than five legions. Even Helen of Troy was unable to resist this uncivilized behavior, and Rome occupied both caravans around Carthage. He even managed to kick another Atlantean invasion out of northern italy in the same round, such was
his immense military might at this point.
However - and oh, what a however it was - in what turned out to be a fateful final trade, Rome decided to trade 2 resources. Even in its malaised state, Carthage had generated 7 resources and 1 tax, plus an additional resource from Artemis. Putting out the tax and one duplicate resource, the tax was of course picked up quickly by either Greece or Egypt, allowing Carthage to acquire two additional unique resources. And voila - or 'vupti' as we say in Denmark and also sometimes in certain self-ruled subdomains of thereof - Carthage won the game.
After this shocking conclusion, I'm pleased to report that all players are back in reasonable mental health at this point in time.
Some scattered observations
The temple of Artemis is very powerful. Helen of Troy did not work as a deterrent and does very little actually most of the time, I would suspect - at least when you are close to winning.
Atlantis is in a difficult situation, next to two strong military powers. Perhaps he should rush to expand influence as fast as possible and then build som Krakens as deterrents against his neighbors - this was the Atlantean player's opinion after the game.
Rome as a newcomer to the game played very well. He might have attacked more with his cheap legions, but did make a bold attack against Carthage. Still, Rome has so many resources near by that unless someone attacks him, he will win eventually - or so it would seem.
Greece does have the Centaur, which really is a legion-killer, so I would be very interested in seing a full-scale war between Greece and Rome at some point.
This game is very deep and we are all looking forward to playing again, having barely scratched the surface of this wonderful - or should I say, honderful - game.
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Stephen Gassett
United States
Fort Worth
Texas
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I've only played with the mythology expansion twice, both sort of rushed experiences, one game with four players and one being only three players and not using the creatures. I'd like to try it as a five or six player experience sometime to see if that dynamic changes things, but from my experience, it is very hard to keep Egypt from winning.
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Daniel Jacobsen
Faroe Islands
Tórshavn
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Apocryphile wrote: I've only played with the mythology expansion twice, both sort of rushed experiences, one game with four players and one being only three players and not using the creatures. I'd like to try it as a five or six player experience sometime to see if that dynamic changes things, but from my experience, it is very hard to keep Egypt from winning.
I've played three games now, all with 6 players. Egypt has won one of these (one was a Rome/Carthage tie, and the one describe in this report was of course a Carthaginian victory). I think Egypt may be the easiest power to win with if the other players remain passive throughout the game. But a bit of well timed aggression from the other players makes all the difference. For example, the Atlantean Kraken can usually sneak in and destroy a city or temple either in Egypt or Thebes. Also, the director of commerce must be careful so that Egypt doesn't get an easy ride to taxation heaven.
Perhaps inexperienced players typically fail to see the danger from Egypt - it looks so innocent with a few small regions and a rather 'meh' kind of mythical creature and starting hero, next to Carthage ('wow, +1 on attacking legions!') and Babylon ('wow, free expansion!?') 
A major - delicious - challenge is continually estimating the likelihoods of each opponent winning and finding appropriate measures to hinder those most likely to win. It is important however not to nuke any opponent too severely (in general, there are exceptions  ), because this may make it too easy for another player to win. Also, if you use too much energy for a particular war, you will have trouble advancing to victory. This balancing act is one of the best features of this great game. But in general, all powers - including Egypt - can be kept from winning.
All of the above is subject to revision - like I said, I've only played 3 games 
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John Clark
Australia
Canberra
ACT
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duron600 wrote:
However - and oh, what a however it was - in what turned out to be a fateful final trade, Rome decided to trade 2 resources. Even in its malaised state, Carthage had generated 7 resources and 1 tax, plus an additional resource from Artemis. Putting out the tax and one duplicate resource, the tax was of course picked up quickly by either Greece or Egypt, allowing Carthage to acquire two additional unique resources. And voila - or 'vupti' as we say in Denmark and also sometimes in certain self-ruled subdomains of thereof - Carthage won the game.
I think that you will find that as you play more games of MN, you will get better at manipulating the trading so Carthage would not have got the required resources. Remember no-one actually has to trade with Carthage - the other players can just trade amongst yourselves and then Carthage must pick up the resources he put out for trade.
However, once your group gets to that point the game really does bog down in working out all of the combinations of trades and builds to prevent one player from winning - and this will continue for turn after turn until it is impossible to stop everyone from winning on that turn and then someone plays kingmaker. That gets really tedious and is a major flaw in the game.
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Daniel Jacobsen
Faroe Islands
Tórshavn
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Quote:
I think that you will find that as you play more games of MN, you will get better at manipulating the trading so Carthage would not have got the required resources. Remember no-one actually has to trade with Carthage - the other players can just trade amongst yourselves and then Carthage must pick up the resources he put out for trade.
However, once your group gets to that point the game really does bog down in working out all of the combinations of trades and builds to prevent one player from winning - and this will continue for turn after turn until it is impossible to stop everyone from winning on that turn and then someone plays kingmaker. That gets really tedious and is a major flaw in the game.
Having played 2-3 more 5-6 player games, I completely agree. I have little interest in playing the game again. It has some great mechanics and very interesting tactics/strategy, and the cards add spice. It's just the endgame that reduces to tedious stop-the-leader calculations and debates. Perhaps the game could be saved by introducing some form of hidden missions so that it is impossible to see who is winning?
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Posted Tue Aug 10, 2010 12:26 am
