Amun-Re - 16 September 2015

James and Stu at David's for a return to Amun-Re.

The Old Kingdom had James doing everything he could to keep the sacrifice phase low to support his caravan income alive. Stu meanwhile used his massive farm income to make large offerings and claim the 3 item bonus. David avoided the extremes and was able to collect the second place bonus for minimal payment.

The first half completed with us each gaining the same temple set bonus, but by building for the "most pyramid" bonuses David and Stu pulled away from James. David managed to complete a bonus card for three extra points. However as with many of these games, the first scoring is only a small part of the whole picture.

Moving into the New Kingdom, James built up a massive income, while David struggled to make any money as he was less successful than James at holding down the sacrifice offers. Stu collected a large number of cheap build power cards and was able to use them to develop several large pyramid complexes.

James' purchasing power really told as we added up the final scores. Before the final money bonus, James and David were tied on 41 with Stu on 40. Then James revealed his loadsamoney wad and the final score was James 47, David 45, Stu 42. A really close and enjoyable game.

Footnote: I went back to the rules to check a few things afterwards and discovered a few things we weren't doing right. You can discard a power card at any time in exchange for a gold. Useful especially when you realise you aren't going to make the bonus cards work. The 8 income card is placed onto a province and replaces that province's income for this round. We should also be stricter on when cards can be played (something we realised part way through), although it is a shame the cards don't have that information on them. Finally (and crucially) you can't play more than one power card of a particular type in a phase. In other words you can only play one cheap build card each round, and during the scoring phase you can't use more than one of each type of bonus card.

Amun Re - 19th February 2014

We tried Amun Re with 3. It's a great little game, but I think it plays better with 4 or 5. Andy had a bit of a brain-melt with the scoring system, and didn't bother with building pyramids in the first half of the game. I acquired a load of scoring bonus chits in the first half of the game and was very lucky to make a number of them stick at the end of the game.

David 52, James 40, Andy 20

Amun-Re - 26th June 2013

Forgot to blog this one at the time. I managed to get Amun-Re out for another go and it's really neat little game. It has a great bidding mechanism, elements of luck and lots of different ways to score. Let's try to play this one more than once a year?

Scores: David 44, Kieron 39, Andy 35, James 31 and Orhan 29

Amun-Re - 24th May 2012

Just 4 this evening for an outing of a game we have not played for years (and never in my case).  What a clever game Amun-Re is with a really neat, quick bidding system and plenty to think about, lots of possible strategies, but a straightforward game at heart.  Players bid for control of a territory and gain income from farmers they place after buying farmers, power cards (element of luck) and stones which convert to pyramids.  There are 2 scoring rounds (old kingdom and new kingdom) where players score points for pyramids (and sets of pyramids) and positions of their territories (e.g. all in upper Nile, all along the Nile) if they have the correct power cards.  At the end of the game, quite a few points can be scored for having the most money, but second and third places also score so this is not really a game decider.  The tactic to win seemed to be to get the most pyramids.  I did this and romped home with 42 points, Deej's winning streak was ended as he finished 2nd on 38 pipping Orhan on 37 and James was last again on 31.  Once again my victory was hollowed by shouts of "there's too much luck in this game" but I can take it, after all it is becoming a Rivals tradition!  One more for the light side Stu!