From Mr Kepler to Mr Biblios

Andrew had been tempted enough by Kepler 3042 to wander over this evening and try it out. As explained in the previous post, it's a non-combative space exploration game where you're managing three resources - matter, anti-matter and energy - to facilitate the spread of your culture around the galaxy. The catch is no matter how widely spread you get, your resources are on rotation, and spending them on the juicy 'secondary' actions (cheaper than the main actions) removes them from the game.

space!

I went through the rules and by 8.15 we were settled in for the long haul. But by 9.15 we were done! There are 16 rounds, but you only take a maximum of two actions in every round - usually one - and by the time we were sailing across the firmament. terraforming and whatnot, the final rounds were closing in.

tech!

We'd played it with the kind of lassez faire I imagine one doesn't see too often at NASA, and it showed in our frankly dreadful scores:

Sam 17
Andrew 15

Which was abut half the points I managed playing with Dirk when I was feverish and hallucinatory. It's not a game where you're pull off any dazzling moves, however. The grinding of gears reminded me of distant times playing Year of the Dragon - Kepler isn't as fire-fighty as that, but you certainly get the sense of progress moving in tiny increments.

And the kindest conclusion is that the jury is still out. It did give the space flavour in a digestible bite-sized chunk, and has a clever mechanic at its heart. But it lacked the combative spice of Quantum, Ascending Empires or Eclipse. And it didn't even have the vaguely-anguished, occasionally funny luck-pushing of Cosmic Run.

We packed it away pleased the hour was early enough to play Rajas of the Ganges, mine and Andrew's current favourite - or one of them. Last time Andrew blitzed me and I was out for vengeance, inasmuch as one can seek vengeance via the medium of worker-placement.

Rajas!

He began strongly but realised a few rounds in he'd build no markets in his province. Conversely I was picking up 8 coins every round, and despite some late game jiggery-pokery, overhauled him on the fame track to claim the win!

Sam is best Raja.
Andrew is second-best Raja.

We blasted through two quick games to finish - firstly Avenue, which I won by 55 points to 14. Andrew, perversely, was keen his score be the worst ever, but checking through the completed scores we saw that I'd actually managed zero before. Sorry!

Then we played Biblios! And I ate shit no less than four times, once via my very own spoon.

shit!

I usually begin Biblios confident that I'm in with a shout at least, but halfway through the game I could feel it slipping away from me. I only had one die in the bag and Andrew had stopped even bidding on anything. It was a whitewash!

Andrew 14
Sam 5

burnt

And Mr Endersby walked away as Mr Biblios. A very enjoyable evening, despite the inscrutability of Kepler!

Economy in Motion

Way back before I succumbed to the Australian 'flu I had a play-through of Kepler 3042, which - as there is talk of playing it tomorrow night - I thought I'd summarize briefly here.

main board - mostly empty

Kepler has been christened a 3X game - explore, expand, exploit, but no extermination. Instead it's a race of sorts - there are a finite amount of habitable planets in the galaxy, and you want to beat your opponents to the punch.

Your engine is an economy of three different resources: energy, matter, and anti-matter. On a given turn you choose an action to take and - usually - it means paying some of these resources. Having used some up, you'll now need to generate more; which is where the planets come in, as they produce for you. As with Scythe, you can't take the same action you took on a previous turn, and - also like Scythe - there's a potential secondary action to take as well.

individual boards - mostly busy

However! Though the secondary actions are cheaper than the main actions, there's a catch. Whereas matter, anti-matter and energy spent on a main action can be regenerated, any cubes spent on the second actions are gone forever; they fall into your Clausius Pit, never to be seen again. So while these actions are very tempting, they reduce the effectiveness of your overall economy: no matter how many planets you colonize and terraform, you'll only ever have a maximum of seven energy, seven matter, and three anti-matter cubes on rotation. The more secondary actions you take, the smaller this pool becomes and if you play too fast and loose, your productive early moves will be followed by a long fallow period.

good old FO-B50813

There are nine main actions and they revolve around constructing ships, improving the movement capacity, terraforming planets, producing resources from terraformed planets, improving your technologies or pushing yourself up the scientific and civil modernity tracks on the main board.

My tech

In each round there's an event too, but these are never punitive (albeit some players may not benefit, though you have the duration of the round to try and engineer yourself into position) and each player has an end-game goal to pursue. It felt to me like realizing these goals was more important than triggering the Baron bonus in Railways of the World - they kind of shape your plans for the whole game as they gave Dirk and I a direction to go in.

From my play-through it seems pretty dry, and the theme more stoic than dynamic: no luck-pushing, no explosions, no direct interaction beyond the - admittedly, potentially annoying - chance of someone speeding past you to colonize a planet you had your eye on. It's an engine builder where you're in a race, but there are no skid marks in space.

I would like to try it again with real opponents (and without a looming flu bug). The resource management and secondary-action at the centre of it is smart. Maybe with more of us the theme will come through as well.