[This review originally written in 2003 -- Brian]


Reviewers wonder (or hear) "How often should I play something before I comment?" Well, a reader of mine should know my preferred answer "The dedicated reviewer owes it to the reader to have glanced at the game for several seconds, and possibly even learned the rules." I normally perform the Herculean task of playing the game. But not always. Some games are so phenomenally bad, the stench drives away fun. A game or two and I know if I like it. Let the reader beware, opinions change; but giving a synopsis of the rules and describing what works (and what doesn't) should provide a guideline for people who have a reasonable idea of what I like and what they like.

I'm stumped by Amun-Re. I've played four times, and have no idea if I like the game. Most games don't get four outings unless I like them (and many games I like don't get played much more). I've pondered Amun Re, discussed it, dissected it, and tried to figure out what caused the lingering aftertaste that makes me dislike it. At a certain level, I want to dislike it. I played it the fourth time intending to keep an eye on "The hound that didn't bark that night". The dog didn't bark, but I still missed it. I think I'll wind up playing it again, but if a game starts up and it's full, I feel a twinge of relief. All of this is a roundabout way of saying: it doesn't work for me.

Just the briefest of mechanics: There are two epochs, with three turns in each. The board has fifteen regions, each of which is different, having up to two temples (but usually none), a number of spaces for farmers, allowing the purchase of a number of cards, sometimes providing guaranteed income (or income during droughts). Each round, one region is turned up per player and they are all auctioned. The auction evokes Evo, as players go around the table and bid on the regions until each player has their own. But two changes add tension. The auctions don't increase by one: the bids are (0,1,3,6,10,15,21,...) and if you are outbid, you must bid in a different region.

Once each player gets their region, then players take their turn buying stones, farmers and cards. Stones build pyramids, which produce victory points. Farmers provide income, and cards do a variety of things. Regions limit what their owners can purchase, money can be tight and costs don't go up linearly. Three of a kind cost 6, Four cost 10, (etc.) so players tend to purchase a little bit of everything [It's cheaper to build two farmers, cards and stones than to build four of a single kind]. Then comes the "Offering to Amun-Re" Each player secretly pays some cash, then all reveal. The total value determines how much each farmer is worth (Good sacrifices yield good harvests). Whoever offers the most gets three items (stones, farmers, cards) as a reward, second place gets two, everyone else gets one. Players can also steal from the offering, which lowers the total (obviously) and earns them money, but not much. Then players collect money based on their farmers and the offering level (with some regions producing bonus income, as mentioned before).

After three rounds, you score. Pyramids score one point each, Each set of pyramids (one per region) scores points, the region on each side of the nile with most pyramids scores points. Bonus cards provide points if your provinces meet certain requirements, such as having all of your provinces are on one side of the nile / on the north or south part of the board / adjacent ot the nile." Temples (which are part of a few regions) earn VPs based on the final offering level. After scoring, everything but pyramids are taken off the board, and the regions are re-auctioned over three more rounds. The final scoring also takes money into account.

Amun Re looks good. Nice bits, especially the pyramids. No complaints. The basic idea of the game works well. The fact that you can't bid on the same region if outbid, coupled with the painful increase in costs, turns a "clever little" system (in Evo) into a brutal one. The offerings to Amun Re have a silent, everyone pays auction; but everyone gets something; and having the total determine how much farmers are worth adds another dimension.

There are two obvious weaknesses. The "Building" aspect of the game seems very simple. Perhaps I'm playing it wrong, but most players buy one or two of everything. The diseconomies of scale strongly encourage it. Not a deathblow, but some players agonize over their decision, and I don't think there's much there. Secondly, the cards that can be bought vary wildly. The card that lets players adjust the offering seems much less useful than the card that lets players get extra income or victory points. And the cards that break the rules during auctions are very powerful. But so far that's just a pet peeve. But the victory point cards cause a weird dynamic: suppose a player gets the "All your regions must be on one side of the board" VP Card, which I also have. We may both now be fighting over a single region (or two). Different incentives mean we value the region differently.

Now, this parallels another Knizia in Egypt game, Ra. If a disaster shows up, some people don't care, and others care greatly. I point out that "The luck of the draw is huge" in Ra. But there are differences that make this worse in Amun Re. The fact that there are only six auctions (as compared around 50 in Ra) magnifies each auction. More over, the incentives are hidden. In Ra, players know that the tiles up for auction are very worthwhile for some and not others and can gauge that before the auction, but this isn't true in Amun Re. Coupled with the fact that getting outbid forces a player to pick another region means that players may have no realistic way of knowing what a region will go for before making a crucial bid.

Good auction games make values difficult to evaluate. But it should not be (effectively) impossible, and I believe the VP cards can do that.

A final, and subtle, problem rests in turn order. Since "most pyramids in a region" scores so much, the second epoch sees several fights for this (usually two players on each side of the nile). The player going first is put in a bind. Turn order matters, of course, but Amun Re has a kicker: whoever makes the highest offering goes first. So a player can get the advantage of going last several turns in a row if the player to his left is gunning for high farmer output. Going last in the auction also (as mentioned above) provides a large advantage, as you can see if others want the same region before making your opening bid.

Unless you desperately want to win the offering, whether you go early or late matters on who wants to win the offering, which can be difficult to discern and impossible to control.

These flaws aren't glaring: they hide and take a while to make themselves noticed. But they are there, and they give Amun Re a much higher degree of luck than the game appears to have. As this aims to be a serious thinking game, these flaws eat away at any desire I have to play this game.

I considered sitting on this review until I've played more times. I may have a rule incorrect, which isn't unlikely since I haven't read the rules (we only had German copies to play). In fact, we did play with the rules wrong once. We just had the turn order move normally; the change to the 'correct' rule (if, in fact, that is) weakened the game. But unless I have a rule incorrect, I think that Amun Re's ratio of luck to skill is off the mark. I have played in games where I won easily or lost handily; then sat there trying to figure out why. One answer that never popped into my head: "Oh, I made this cunning / bonehead play, and some other player did that." The winning just ... happened. Now, after quite a bit of thought, I think I've uncovered some of the 'hidden' luck, but I don't feel like playing again, just to see if I'm correct.

Update November 2003

After a long delay, I finally played again. It wasn't bad, and I did OK (I tied on point but lost the tiebreaker. A win was certainly possible). In trying to come up with a valid critique, I'm left wondering: Do I hate Amun Re because I've taken a public position of disliking it? While it's possible (people wish to be seen as consistent), I hope not. In hindsight, I think it's fair to say that the decisions (what to buy, which region to get) are not as straight-forward as I thought. I do think that there are 'no brainer' decisions: always buy at least a card and a farmer, and plan on building (or adding) a set of pyramids or 3+ pyramids in one region during an epoch. Those are trivial, but deciding between 2 or 3 of an item, or when to push the bid on a region, isn't.

I still do not like the fact that the first player goes to the high bid. In my most recent game, the player to my left kept it all six turns! This had a weird effect on the other players, given me an advantage over the rest of them through no fault of my own.

A strange thought occurred to me. Distilled to the core: Amun Re focuses on three areas:

1. The auction for regions
2. Buying farmers, cards and pyramids
3. The offering to the gods.

Each of those mechanisms can be summarized: Evo-auctions, then resource management, then an "in the fist/everyone pays" auction. Are these good or bad? Well, some people hate them (particularly the 'in the fist/everyone pays'), but I don't really have strong feelings about them. The mechanics seem reasonable.

But reasonable ways of doing things may not be appropriate. More importantly: two ideas, good individually, can combine poorly. A classic example is Shantraj, a precursor to chess. On each turn you throw a die, which tells you which type of piece you can move. Why isn't this game more popular than chess? It has a gambling element (dice are very popular) and a strategic element. The answer is obvious: People who play chess like the analysis and look-ahead element, people who play highly random games don't want to analyze too much. Of course, as I write this I'm busy trying to improve my backgammon analysis. Maybe I'm wrong in this particular example, but I can certainly think of great games that wouldn't mix well. Titan mixed with Diplomacy?

The strange thought is that Amun Re's mechanisms don't clash; the core the game is about managing money and efficient investing. You spend money to get more money and victory points. Viewed in that way, the game seems well integrated. But the mechanisms combine in a way that is somewhat jarring. The first two parts promote careful analysis, and then the offering veers into a psychological guessing game.

Still, there are plenty of games I like that mix both elements, so I'm no closer to figuring out why Amun Re doesn't thrill me. It's a better game than I thought, but I'm still in the "I'll play it if other people want to" camp. Actually, I'm quite interested in the figuring out my thoughts on the game, so I'm sure I'll play it again. Solving the puzzle of my indifference attracts me as much (if not more) than playing...