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I hadn’t played Ursuppe for 7 years or more. I found out that a few of my friends in my current city used to play the game a lot, so 4 of us got together to play with the expansion.
My personal goal was to avoid choosing Struggle for Survival (SfS) and Aggression. The winner of every Ursuppe game I’d played (n=3) had those genes (or at least SfS), so I wanted to see how I would do if I chose a more pacifistic strategy.
I was Green, and I rolled first pole position. I will name the other players Red, Blue and Yellow.
Genes we bought:
Green bought Suction, Movement 1, then Tentacle. I did feel the need to buy Escape after the others noticed how far ahead I was, and started muttering about removing some of my dudes from the board. Escape was short-lived, sadly, and ended up a casualty of the dreaded UV 6 Environment card. Finally, a few turns from the end of the game, I picked up the Substitution that Yellow had dropped (see below).
Yellow started out with Substitution, then picked up Frugality (strong!), then Tentacle. He also grabbed Ray Protection and Spores, before the UV 6 forced him to discard Substitution. He might have picked up another gene near the end of the game, but I don’t think so.
Red started out with Speed, then took Struggle for Survival (as a deterrent--he had no intention of playing aggressively with it), then Movement 1. He then decided that Wolverine was his strategy and bought Healing. He ended up discarding SfS at the aforementioned UV6.
Blue also started with Speed, then picked up Division Rate, then Struggle for Survival. A UV9 caught him low on BPs, so he had to discard Speed. He picked up Life Expectancy, and then the UV6 forced him to discard Division Rate. He ended up also picking up Environmental Sensing, Intelligence and Energy Conservation. The exact sequence escapes me (otherwise I would have posted this as a turn-by-turn), but I remember he did have to discard Struggle for Survival and Intelligence.
How we sculpted these Genes into strategies:
Blue, despite having Division Rate, never put that many amoebas on the board. He also forewent buying amoebas early in the game to save up for more expensive genes. That hindered his progress on the victory track, which was good for me, but it had the added effect of causing a shortage of blue cubes around the board mid- to late-game. As for a strategy, he toyed with aggression at first--he ate three or four other amoebas with SfS before ditching it. I thought he would buy Aggression and become the militaristic amoeba, but he switched tactics. He used Intelligence and Environmental Sensing fairly cleverly to moderate the effects of UV on his high number of Mutation Points. He settled into Energy Conservation late into the game, and I think in hindsight he wishes he had discovered that sooner.
Red was pretty straightforward. At first he used his enhanced mobility (Speed + Movement) to move into areas of plentiful food. He never attacked another amoeba with SfS, only taking it as a deterrent. When he started to starve anyways (partially due to bad luck with the dice, partially because much of the board was devoid of blue), he used Healing to save his dudes. Definitely thinking outside the box! That reduced his mortality, but not enough.
Yellow ran a similar strategy to mind: don’t starve! His initial combo of Substitution + Frugality was quite strong. He would have been in the best position once the blue cubes started drying up, except that his amoebas tended to share space with Blue’s amoebas anyway. To his detriment, I might add, as two of his amoebas were attacked and eaten. When he picked up Tentacle, that only helped his food-gathering, and Spores allowed him to place new amoebas in areas that were high in food and low in predators. He regretted losing Substitution.
Green had a lot of luck with Suction + Movement 1 + Tentacle. In this game, Substitution turned out to be so, so much better in the end game. Most squares were filled with 4-6 cubes of one color, and that was it. So I ate 3 of that color, and grabbed 1 of one of the other two possible colors using Suction or Tentacle, and starvation was no longer a problem. The strength of late-game Substitution was something I hadn’t realized.
Another thing I hadn’t really thought about: I really like the Movement genes, but in hindsight, I’m realizing that genes like Suction, Tentacle and Substitution give you the advantage of increased food, but without paying an extra BP cost to roll movement dice. I think you pretty much make up the difference of the increased cost of those genes over Movement/Speed. Streamlined would change things, but none of us bought it this game. Red and Blue definitely spent a lot of points moving around (though Blue was able to mitigate that somewhat with Energy Conservation late in the game).
I ended up winning by quite a large distance. I rolled first place, which might have helped, though I started buying amoebas from the start and bought one every turn until I had all 7 out (at which point one got eaten and 2 starved). Others were hoarding BPs for expensive genes and dice rolling. I didn’t lose any more amoebas to starvation than anyone else, however.
So, what I learned this game (probably obvious things, but hey, I’ve only played this game 4 times in 13 years):
1. Buy amoebas whenever you can. I am a believer in buying one early.
2. Food-gathering genes (e.g. Suction, Tentacle) may be more BP efficient in the long run than Movement or Speed. In my next game, though, I think I’m going to shoot for Movement 2 and Streamlining, maybe with Escape thrown in if somebody gets nasty.
3. Substitution is likely better in the late game than the early game.
4. Other players doing poorly and/or having amoebas isn’t necessarily a good thing for you; try to predict if there will be shortages of certain colors in certain regions of the board.
5. What I DIDN’T learn was, “Is Attacking Others the Winning Strategy?”, mainly because only one player dabbled with it this game, and ended up going a different direction. Well, it’s another goal for next time!
We had a great time, and even though we've been playing a lot of different games lately, it wouldn't surprise me if we broke Ursuppe out again. This report as sadly amiss in that I have not recorded all of the poop jokes we made, particularly when it came time for anyone to move/feed with their #2 amoeba (snicker). Also a lot of hentai jokes, what with all of the tentacles and suction.
Hope this was helpful and/or interesting!
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Adam B.
United States
Massachusetts
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Interesting oberservations.
I've seen varied strategies work at my table. The aggressive game might seem overpowered, but at least around here it seems to be winning at about it's normal percentage ratio. I usually pursue an "efficiency" strategy (making sure my amoebas never starve) focusing on eating genes vs moving genes and it also works well. I think the least successful strategy at our table has been a movement-centric one. We seem to generally break down along those lines (Aggressive, Efficiency/Survival, and Movement), but will throw in other genes as the board and evolving game demands.
Then again, we're all pretty casual players and are laughing and cracking jokes half the time, so I highly doubt any of us are pursuing truly optimal strategy!
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Thanks for the comments! I just submitted a post for a second session we just had over the weekend. It's looking like "efficiency strategies" are indeed pretty strong.
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