Octopus Overlords

BTW, any thoughts, afterthoughts, strategic reflections, or analytical remarks are most welcome. I'm sure everyone would benefit from your thoughts, LM. But that remark goes for everyone... including observers (if any)!

I like the swapping of the University and the Factory. I don't think I cared for gimping the corn makers on cash at the beginning, though I suppose if I had been introduced to the game that way, it might not have seemed so extreme.

As far as personal strategy goes, I should have just been saving my money for the big beige buildings and I knew it but I ignored me anyway and I also should have grabbed a tobacco factory when all of the warehouses got taken at the beginning. As far as everyone else goes, I don't have a good enough memory to say. I tried to talk a bit about my thoughts on strategy during the game.

The setup and care given to the rounds were really good and pretty much perfect once you worked the ships into the text as well as the graphics.

For new players of the next game, I'd imagine it's pretty hard to start playing the game without seeing it but that should be left to Q and EG (and to a lesser extent NC) to express if it was and how they got into the groove. Because you allow for clicking on larger pictures, I suggest new players do that until they get a feel for the all of the buildings and their points and how many spots the factories hold, etc.

Re: not seeing the game, I didn't have too much trouble keeping track of what I was doing. Where it got complicated was seeing what everyone else was doing, what they were likely to do, how well they were doing, etc. For example, I had a vague sense that things were going well for me, but I had no idea that I was winning.

Interestingly, missing getting an office worked out pretty well for me. It pushed me in the direction of having diverse production - that's a reasonable substitute for an office as a practical matter, as you're pretty much guaranteed to have something to sell, and that then led me to buy a factory, which was very lucrative. Having the factory as an independent income source was also handy in that I could then afford to ship tobacco and coffee, which can block the ships for those wanting to ship large amounts of the cheaper goods (corn, indigo), and force people to ship tobacco and coffee when they might prefer to sell them at the trading house.

There's also lots of synergy between the factory and the harbor, in that the latter also rewards diversity (since you get +1 VP per shipment, not per good, you're better off producing a lot of different goods, as you can then net 6 VP by shipping just 3 goods.

I'll have some more comments a little later today. It was a busy weekend and I need to catch up on the WW game (and a little thing called work, too).

For now, though:

I am thoroughly enamored with this game.

Thank you Grund for a masterful job of moderating. The resources, pictures, references, links, and your helpfulness made for a wonderful experience.

Congratulations El Guapo. Very well played.

We had a great group of players and the flow of the game was excellent. And, I'd like to say a very special Thank You to LordMortis who went above and beyond helping with the mechanics/basics/strategies of the game along the way!