Wednesday 7 November 2007

Amyitis - an ancient Babylonian disease Jimmy cant catch

Jimmy had played this before and admitted to coming last in the only game he had played. This did not fill me with any confidence as despite Jimmy's numerous faults (the sole subject of 8 or 9 other blogs and forums) failing to understanding how he can win, is not one of them. I very much expected Jimmy to grab a strategy and thrash us all. He didn't, Jimmy came dead last again. Luke won by long stretch and Harry got second place just ahead of Oliver in third.

The game is the latest in a long line of games recently that offer potential victory through investment in an infrastructure, an investment that Jimmy and Harry both made, but like so many of the games before it, Amyitis concludes before that expensive infrastructure truly pays out. There are several things I am unsure of, such as the benefits of building a level 3 garden when levels 1 and 2 have lower costs and only minor differences in rewards. The gardener (??) cards as a result of the building issue seemed incredibly underpowered. Though this may change with further plays. I loved the mechanism for choosing actions which had 4 sets of 3 cards randomly assigned from a slightly larger deck. Each time sets were different and there was an incremental cost in choosing a second action and third action from the same set, this was VERY elegant.

So far Ystari have had an amazing record in producing SUPERB games, Amyitis is no exception. How good it is, will as ever, only be decided by multiple plays so given the crop of new releases and the size of everyone's game cupboard, NBGers will probably only get a fair evaluation after another 3 years. Amyitis doesn't set the world alight but it is a solid game with good mechanics that will no doubt get on the NBG table regularly.

No comments: