Octopus Overlords

Chrisoc13 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 06, 2019 12:58 pm Well we've played this quite a bit lately, and I have to say it has been a hit. My wife REALLY loves it. Not terribly surprising, she loves worker placement games and the theme is nicely attached here and we both enjoy Jurassic Park a lot so I thought it would go over well.

If anyone's interested I do occasionally write reviews for games on BGG, and I wrote a review for Dinogenics and posted it on BGG.

Also I noticed the Secret Cabal put a review for it out, so congrats on getting some attention from the popular podcasts!

Zarathud wrote: ↑Fri Feb 08, 2019 9:23 pm Maybe a publisher will want to help out with a second edition printing.

MonkeyFinger wrote: ↑Sun Feb 10, 2019 1:44 pm Quick question... trying to set up some place to start a two player game of this and wondering if it and all its bits will fit on a standard card table that's 33" square? Need to borrow one and wanted to check with y'all first. Thanks!

Lordnine wrote: ↑Sun Feb 10, 2019 2:51 pm

MonkeyFinger wrote: ↑Sun Feb 10, 2019 1:44 pm Quick question... trying to set up some place to start a two player game of this and wondering if it and all its bits will fit on a standard card table that's 33" square? Need to borrow one and wanted to check with y'all first. Thanks!

You should be able to do two players on that but may need to keep some of the bits on the game board itself. You wont have much luck with higher player counts though. The game board is 20x26 and the player boards are 9.5 x 12.5.

Moat_Man wrote: ↑Tue Feb 12, 2019 11:59 am They are playing the game live on the Dice Tower right now.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:14 am I don't want to get down on the game but we tried the two player game last weekend and I'm not so sure it works so well two players. I don't think we really felt the scarcity of actions for the worker placement that brings up the competition or even chess like approach to the game. I suspect the dynamic gets much better with three, and then drops again slightly with 4 as you open up spots on the board, and then a lot better with five, where not only is there a scarcity of placement but you have four people changing that scarcity.

That said, there's still lots to like from the initial quality of component wow, to a relatively easy to understand rule set even when there is a lot going on that just makes sense. I'm sure we'll get to bring out again for three players (on the day that they decide it's not Terraforming Mars day), but I don't see it coming back to the table on two player gaming day.

Also I like that you broke from the mold and didn't make getting extra workers part the competitive dynamic. I have found games like Agricola or Stone Age or Alien Frontiers, etc... to almost entirely about the best method and timing for grabbing extra meeple placement tokens.

Scandals are easy to get rid of and big carnivores are worth a lot of points and reputation. Players that embrace this will really fight over the goat farm, the uplink, outsourcing and the agency.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Wed Feb 13, 2019 4:45 pm ...or going with herbivores, then making an effort to acquire each and every goat, which then lives peacefully in a meadow behind the park.

Goat hoarding is back.

Component Limitations
Dinosaurs are limited to the number of wooden meeples in the game box. There are six of each type of standard dinosaur and twelve mutants. All other components are considered unlimited.

LordMortis wrote:

Scandals are easy to get rid of and big carnivores are worth a lot of points and reputation. Players that embrace this will really fight over the goat farm, the uplink, outsourcing and the agency.

That's all de-emphasized in the two player and I think the scarcity of those actions, most especially related to the need to acquire scandal tokens and then get rid of them, looks like it is at the heart of the kind of things I would enjoy but they simply don't exist in the two player format. Scandal tokens were a non factor as there was no need to acquire them. However, I can see easily in a three player game where there are still covered actions but you have to wait through two people to get the action you want and they're emptying the auction house and Site A fills immediately every round, scandal would become the feature it looks like it should be. In a five player, I assume desperate times are going to happen quite a bit. The two player, not so much. Our limited experience was that you rarely needed to spend a coin on using an already used action (forgetting the name)) and competing for player order was a wholly unnecessary. We did not feel the urgency of needing to take specific actions to stay competitive.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Fri Mar 29, 2019 7:30 pmNoooo!