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'Amun Re' by Reiner Knizia
Kendall arrives at Dicken's house looking like a man who needs a beer. "I'm very tired" is Kendall's reply to Dicken's observation that Kendall has a similar appearance to that of a horse about to be transported to a glue factory. As the amber nectar passes Kendall's lips almost immediately he perks up and passes a cheeky comment about Dicken's 1000 point lead in the fantasy cricket. It is a sign of the pace of modern life that Kendall needs to be invigorated by alcohol and a brief period of fantasising about what we could do if we made it big with our games ensues. Rejuvenated by our dreams we welcome Spiller to this evening's entertainment and he announces that his music booking website has just received it's 500,000th 'hit'. Congratulations all round and off we go with our second playing of 'Amun Re' - we have interspersed recent weeks with game testing our own games and feel that we had better play 'Amun Re' again before the rules flit moth-like from the empty closets of our brains.
This recent offering from the games meister impressed us on the first outing and we are eager to see if it stands up to a genuine competitive outing where we know the rules and are not soft peddling as we tease out the game play. Dicken believes that he has seen a strategy and quietly looks to buy power cards early in order to set up some long term objectives. The basic idea of the game is that you bid for 'provinces' in Egypt, build pyramids and also farm the land. Buying power cards allows you to do a number of things such as build more cheaply and gain bonuses in farming and on annual income. The level of income from farming is determined by a sacrifice to Amun Re and there is scope for tactical play at this stage depending on what power cards you have in your hand.
There is point scoring at the end of the 'Old' Kingdom and then at game end i.e. the end of the 'New' Kingdom. You may have already spotted that there has actually been a tie in with the game theme and the game mechanics - for once we are actually referring to the elements of the game by their names and not just to their colour or points value - this is a long awaited day, when a strategy game rises above the pure maths that lie silken below it's surface and the players start to feel the 'mood' of the game. We have waited a long time for Reiner to manage this and are duly impressed because the game also works well.
There are a number of choices to be made because, like the best strategy games, you can't afford to do everything that you want to all at one go, especially when you need to bid high to get a province that fits in with your end game strategy e.g. bonus points for having all your provinces on one side of the Nile or all of them adjacent to the banks of the Nile etc.
Dicken has spoiled the fun for the other two on the very first turn by reducing the sacrifice to Amun Re to zero so that farm income is also zero but his province will not starve! he has a bonus card worth 8 gold in times of famine and Dicken plays it out with that smug smile on his face that Kendall and Spiller have come to know and hate so well. Dicken is hailed as a tall poppy immediately and is therafter given not an inch when it comes to momentary losses of concentration. Does the phrase " You took your fingers off it" sound familiar? It does to Dicken.
Nevertheless, the game progresses a pace ( it should take three players about 75 minutes to finish a game) with Kendall bemoaning his poor selection of power cards, regularly cashing them in for one gold apiece. Spiller is coming up on the rails but has got the idea of scoring points for complete sets of pyramids all wrong and his placement only nets him 3 bonus points. Dicken reveals two bonus cards that he has saved from the early stages of the game and scores 6 points for province positioning. Now the other two realise why he bid so tenaciously for Thebes when he could have had Berenike so cheaply.
Dicken wins by just a point from Spiller with Kendall trailing 10 behind, hands covered in straw and mud from hastily erected pyramids! All agree that this is a good game and are keen to try with four players (Malcolm are you reading this?). The components are of the usual high standard that we expect of Rio Grande and I am sure that this game we get a lot of outings.
The evening ends with coffee and strangely enough much talk of the high cost of decent three piece suites - are we getting old?
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