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Three of us weren’t quite ready to go home yet after a game of VtES, so we cracked upon Ursuppe. I chose Yellow, because it stood out most sharply against the dark blue of the gameboard, and it was late enough that every advantage counted. A first-time player chose Red, and the third player chose Blue.
I assume I did the genes right. We have the expansion with the purple and black cubes for 5 and 6 players. Of the expansion genes, I added all of the ones that did not explicity say 5 + 6, since the rules didn’t say you couldn’t add them to a 3-player game. In my case, I only used genes from the base game, so it didn’t matter at least for me.
Player Gene Strategies:
Red: Red figured out quickly that food-gathering is strong. He started with Movement 1, then took Suction, eventually upgrading to Suction 2. His strategy was simple starvation avoidance. He picked up Ray Protection after we got nailed by the UV 6 Environment card. In the endgame, he grabbed Fast Food to maximize the usefulness of his Hoover strategy and Healing to minimize the number of amoebas who did die by starvation.
Blue: In the last game, Energy Conservation was a big hit with Blue, and he resolved to try a strategy this time that centered around that gene. He started with Energy Conservation and followed up with Tentacle, relying on being able to drift and take food with him to avoid starvation. He picked up Division Rate to further his ability to buy new amoebas, but he ended up having to drop it during a low UV turn. His amoebas were still starving a lot, so he picked up Suction 1 to give him additional food-gathering options. I used the Tentacle/Suction combo next time, so I can attest to its awesomeness. Near the endgame, Blue saw that I was pulling ahead of the pack, so he bought Struggle for Survival to whittle me down a bit, but he never had a chance to use it.
Yellow: I went with the movement-based strategy I said I’d try in my last report. I started with Streamlining. Then Movement 1, then Movement 2. By midgame, I could move any 1 space for free during the drift phase--so good! I started in first position and stayed in first position the whole game, so I was always drifting/feeding last. Whether by luck or design, my opponents’ Tentacle/Suction abilities often left my dudes with grim options for feeding. Red’s method of "Suck in Order Not to Suck" resulted in a swath of red cubes over one third of the board, so I nabbed Substitution. Substitution was pure gold--in fact, I had 2 or 3 amoebas that ate nothing but red cubes for their entire existence. Blue let slip he was going to buy Struggle for Survival, so I pre-emptively bought Escape (which synergizes fantastically with Streamlining and Movement 2). During the last turn, I lost a dude to starvation. Since I couldn’t buy it back before the game ended, I bought Intelligence to make up the point.
Result: I won with Red just 2 squares behind me. Blue had fallen behind, but was only about 2 squares behind Red at the end. Red probably lost the fewest amoebas to starvation, but he also had the fewest genes, which hurt his score in turn. I think he played conservatively with respect to UV (thus the Ray Protection), whereas Blue and I were often dumping massive amounts of BPs to low UV numbers. Of course, I was saving BPs big time via Streamlining, and Blue was gaining huge BPs by drifting with all of his amoebas virtually 100% of the time.
I wonder how much initial pole position influenced things. Theoretically not much, since nobody ever surpassed me. But I did win the last two games and started first. Next game, I will give up the first position if I get it again.
Thoughts for the future:
I enjoyed the movement-based strategy, but I definitely needed Substitution, lending support to the notion that some sort of feeding gene is critical for victory. Regardless, I was very happy with my gene combination.
Blue stated that next time he wants to couple Energy Conservation (yes, he’s now the "Energy Conservation guy") with Healing, essentially using the extra BP income to offset the increased chance of starvation by drifting. I suspect that keeping Suction or Tentacle will be necessary for this strategy. Blue also said he should have bought Struggle for Survival earlier and that that would have shut me down. It might have.
Red had no comment about future strategy (but I also forgot to solicit one). I assume he enjoyed the game? He certainly enjoyed the poop jokes!
We are getting to the point where we are optimizing feeding strategies. I think an obvious next step would be to jump in with a Struggle for Survival/Aggression strategy, if for no other reason than to shake things up a bit.
So yeah, good times!
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