Game: Alien City

Thread: Re: Alien City Review

russ — 2008-06-03T04:10:00+00:00

themore5@earthlink wrote:
2-player trick taking game called Pond. I have played this several times and consider it the best 2-player trick taking game out there. He should post the rules here so that others may enjoy this great game...
Sounds intriguing. I see Pond has a BGG article, and you have posted the rules. Thanks, it looks interesting.

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Skotte — 2008-06-03T00:16:03+00:00

Alien City with 3 players (Black, White & Grey)

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maka — 2008-03-17T14:43:29+00:00

The road network highlighted on this finished game

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maka — 2008-03-17T14:42:23+00:00

And finished game using a piecepack set plus a 3HOUSE icehouse set.

Thread: Re: Alien City Review

themore5@earthlink — 2007-04-09T02:47:43+00:00

Thanks for the review.

I have downloaded and read the rules to this, and it seems like it should be fun. Now I'll have to set it up and give it a try...

By the way, Michael Schoessow once posted the rules (not here- I think it was on spielfrieks, but I could be wrong) to a 2-player trick taking game called Pond. I have played this several times and consider it the best 2-player trick taking game out there. He should post the rules here so that others may enjoy this great game...

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NateStraight — 2007-01-28T17:43:51+00:00

My custom Alien City set, game overview

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NateStraight — 2007-01-28T17:42:27+00:00

My custom Alien City set, up close

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NateStraight — 2007-01-28T17:41:33+00:00

My custom Alien City set, being taken out of the box

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NateStraight — 2007-01-28T17:40:51+00:00

My custom Alien City set, in the little box it fits in

Thread: Removing assymetry, providing direction

NateStraight — 2007-01-26T22:06:00+00:00

Ahh... Alien City.

Two things strike me as a bit odd after playing the game a number of times, the assymetry between the piece distribution (although it usually doesn't matter, but it could, given the distribution of the red and blue tiles) and the way that the first few turns (at least) of the game are pretty boring (especially given how tight the latter half of the game tends to be).

Here's a variant that does one simple thing that pretty much removes both of those things: start the game with a red and a blue tower already on the board. I think the way that I would prefer to do this is by using the numbers on the piecepack tiles. Just stick a blue tower on the blue "1" tile somewhere, and a red tower on the red "1" tile somewhere, probably opposite the suit symbol.

That's it. Enjoy.

Thread: Re: Alien City Review

jeep — 2007-01-24T01:28:42+00:00

Actually, a friend of mine recently suggested the same thing. He suggested a finer level of handicapping by having certain colors have more customers. (It seems like a lot of work.) I guess great minds think alike. I don't know why I overlooked it. Unfortunately, I don't have a willing opponent to try this out, yet. I'll see who I can find.

-JEEP

Thread: Re: Alien City Review

NateStraight — 2007-01-24T00:01:31+00:00

Maybe you could handicap by allowing the weaker player to either:

a) count "customers" up to 3, 4, etc spaces away from their towers

b) claim up to 4, 5, etc towers instead of their normal 3 towers

Just some ideas. It might be too big of an advantage, though.

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Denton — 2006-10-22T12:03:09+00:00

Thread: Re: Alien City Review

molnar — 2006-10-05T17:28:19+00:00

Jeep-
This is a really nice review. I'd love to try this out. I'm going to have to see what else you've written now.

David

Thread: Alien City Review

jeep — 2006-06-11T19:26:40+00:00

Several years ago, I was playing in an ante league of Magic: The Gathering and I had an epiphany. During one game, I "tapped my Stone Giant to give my Royal Assassin flying in response to [my opponent] casting Earthquake." After the game there was a lot of discussion about the play and my epiphany came when said spectator was describing the situation… "[The Stone Giant] noticed an Earthquake was imminent, so the he grabbed his buddy the Royal Assassin and threw him in the air. He landed on the Diabolic Machine, but the trauma from the fall was too much and he died anyway…" I realized then, that I tend to abstract even heavily themed games. Lately, I've been trying to immerse myself into the theme of games that I play. In Alien City, you are competing against your opponent to be the best builder of the… umm... Alien City. OK, yeah, the game is pretty abstract and even trying to focus on theme; I can't get myself to think of this game as themed. If you need a strong theme, you might find it difficult to get into this game, and you might as well stop reading now. You won't like this game. However, if you like deep abstract games, then keep reading to find out more about a nice brain burner.

Alien City is a two player abstract strategy game by Michael Schoessow played using a piecepack and part of an Icehouse set. This game alone makes the purchase of a piecepack (or spending the time to make your own) worthwhile. The rules are a little complex at first, but it doesn't take long to pick up the game. To make up the game board, you randomly lay out the piecepack tiles, suit side up. Each player is given three coins of each suit and 7 large Icehouse pyramids and three small pyramids. During your turn, you may build a dome (place a coin) or build a tower (place a large pyramid) on the board. I won't go into the details of how you place them, however it's important to know that you must ensure that the road network (the spaces without towers or domes) is never split in two. In addition to building each turn, you may ALSO claim control of a tower by placing one of your small pyramids on an unclaimed tower (it doesn't matter if you placed it or if your opponent did). However, you can only claim three towers in the entire game. At the end of the game, each tower you claim scores points based on how close it is to the next closest tower of the same color and how many structures of a different color are within two steps to it.

During the game, you need to make the difficult decisions of where you will build structures… will you try to prevent your opponent from having any good placements? Or is it better to build and claim a tower that you think you can defend? Or should you try to reduce the points of your opponent's claimed towers? If you are lucky, you can accomplish two of these at once. Perhaps I shouldn't say "lucky," since this is a game of pure skill, but you get the point.

I recall a quote I have heard about Draughts (Checkers): "In Chess, every three or four moves, you get a crucial move. In draughts, EVERY move is the crucial move." That is, Checkers is very unforgiving to mistakes. Between skilled players, ANY mistake will cause you to lose. I don't know what to call this scale, but on that scale, I think Alien City starts out with some pretty random moves, but in half a dozen moves, the road network starts to develop and at that point, any mistake is likely to cause you to lose the game if you are playing against an equally skilled player.

There is pretty much no body of knowledge that exists for the game. Personally, I like that because it means I can easily find an opponent of comparable skill. Speaking of which, if you are playing someone who is not comparable in skill, I do not know how you would handicap the game. Perhaps the best system would be to give points to the weaker player. How many? Good question. If you figure out a good handicap system, please let me know.

Alien City is a real brain burner and it is definitely a little mathy. If you don't like counting and multiplying, then run from this game. If you enjoy min-maxing, then you'll probably enjoy this game a lot.

Contents and Production Value: This is not a commercial game. You provide your own components. If you have a nice piecepack and nice Icehouse set, the components are awesome. You can print out the rules from the piecepack wiki: http://www.ludism.org/ppwiki/AlienCity

-JEEP
P.S. One way to reduce the amount of math needed is to play it online. This definitely plays well online and almost as well across the board.

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Striton — 2005-11-13T19:29:42+00:00

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