Game: American Megafauna, 2nd Edition (Expansion Set)

Thread: Re: deluxe boxed edition

HeavyGear — 2008-09-01T16:05:18+00:00

dumpty wrote:
What are you going to do about the tents?

AMF is truly one of the greatest games with the worst production values. I am a HUGE fan, but I think it would attract a lot more players at cons if there was better eye candy.

Something like the stand-up character counters in Arkham Horror would be nice.

Thread: Re: deluxe boxed edition

Ordinaeus — 2008-05-25T21:05:09+00:00

Any news on this? Thx.

Thread: Re: deluxe boxed edition

dumpty — 2008-02-18T17:10:14+00:00

What are you going to do about the tents?

AMF is truly one of the greatest games with the worst production values. I am a HUGE fan, but I think it would attract a lot more players at cons if there was better eye candy.

Thread: Re: 5-player game issues

James Sterrett — 2008-01-29T00:13:01+00:00

See replies at: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2041858#2041858

Thread: 5-player game issues

Roja — 2008-01-28T08:57:44+00:00

Our gamegroup and me have just played American Megafauna with 5 players, thus including the Proto-Croc from the expansion set. We've only played this game before for a couple of turns with 2 people to get a feel for it, and this should be the real test for the game.
I must say that although I like the game topic and some of it's gameplay, the 5-player game didn't really seem to work.

First, in the rule book from the second edition it says that for the 4 and 5 player game, 2 cards need to be drawn per turn. Does this mean the game just has 21 turns instead of the normal 41, or do cards need to be added to compensate for the extra card drawing? We doubled the cards for the first two stacks and had all the other stacks remain the same, and in the end weren't able to finish the game. We played for 5,5 hours and almost came to the first scoring. This means that we would have finished the game if we had stuck to the original 41 cards. This would all have been fine, but if the game really had ended at that point, some of us would have had a quite boring game.
All our original archetypes had gone extinct already, some by choice to have another genotype flourish, some by force.
In the rules it only says that if your archetype goes extinct, you replace it by another genotype you already have. But in two cases someones archetype went extinct without having acquired a second genotype. We decided they could buy a random new genotype for half their genes, which resolved possible player elimination. Can someone comment on how they handled this at their group? I'm sure it must have happened in more games.

Although we were therefore able to play on, the game became quite static, limiting two players to only one tent for several turns. One was able to live in a 1 biomass biome, with the other being carnivore and feeding on that single herbivore. Openings showed up just before we decided to quit, because some people had to get home.

Can someone comment if this is typical for a 5 player game, or if this can alway be the case? It DOES seem realistic that it goes this way, but as a game it may be a little difficult. Note that I do like the game, although it might needs some tweaking. We already added some deck preparation in order to avoid a totally skewed game in which only biomes or immigrants turned up...

Feedback will be appreciated!

Thread: Re: deluxe boxed edition

cradleofmilk — 2008-01-12T13:50:03+00:00

Thanks for the reply. Turns out that I have since purchased the game and expansion.

Thread: Re: deluxe boxed edition

SpaceGamer — 2008-01-12T04:28:48+00:00

Hi - we're working on doing a Deluxe American Megafauna edition; it contains this expansion, the boxed game, and a completely revised and rewritten rulebook with better illustrations and examples to make the game easier to understand.

Thread: Re: starting marine biome in a mountain building slot?

James Sterrett — 2007-10-13T04:16:08+00:00

It goes in the mountain building slot - it's an exception. (As I understand it, uplift hadn't yet begun for the Rockies.)

Thread: Re: Quick comments

pethulhu — 2007-10-10T14:12:04+00:00

tyrel_lohr wrote:
Color matching on the cards is really screwy, with all brown shades rendered as a reddish-pink,

I wonder how something like this can happen. Printer missing some cyan ink? Not that it affects gameplay in any way, it just looks very, very strange.
Rest is nice, but could have been a bit more for the price than just 4 sheets of paper...

Thread: starting marine biome in a mountain building slot?

pethulhu — 2007-10-06T22:22:59+00:00

I realized before the first play that one of the new starting biomes in western beringia is a marine biome, while western beringia is a mountain bulding slot. The rules states that this is impossible. What to do?
Just go with it? Or exchange the two starting beringia biomes?
What do you think?

Thread: Expansion Quality

tyrel_lohr — 2007-09-04T17:05:34+00:00

The only quibble I have with the new expansion is that it isn't up to the quality standards of the original game. Color matching on the cards is really screwy, with all brown shades rendered as a reddish-pink, and the die cutter didn't do a very good job of separating the cards.

Still, despite these problems, it does look to be a good addition to the base game. I also have to agree that I like the laminated, card stock approach to the fifth player better than the non-card stock, non-laminated original sheets. I will probably scan in the original physiology sheets and print them out on card stock at some point.

Thread: deluxe boxed edition

cradleofmilk — 2007-08-15T13:28:51+00:00

Funagain lists a deluxe boxed edition as a preorder. I think that this expansion and the base game will be packaged together and possibly updated. Anyone know anything about this? I'd like to hold out for the deluxe edition in question instead of grabbing the originals.

I'm also posting this under the base game.

Thanks.

Image

loquitur — 2007-03-08T13:59:25+00:00

Some of the new cards in action, during a solitaire setup

Thread: Re: how do I know if I have the 2nd edition

nyhotep — 2007-02-16T10:47:02+00:00

The original was black & white, the 2nd edition is in colour.

It evolved.

Thread: 250 million years with the proto-croc

loquitur — 2007-02-16T05:20:52+00:00

I decided to play the new fifth player, introduced by the expansion set. The proto-crocs are mostly reptile with a dash of mammalian dentition. For this game I wanted to experience the new cards, so I stacked the deck with them before the random pick, in a proportion that would ensure they would show up in equal measure. But to be honest, I’m not so familiar with the core game that I would see a difference in play.

I laid out the five biomes of a solitaire game, and staked out a Podocarp High Forest in the mountains, feeding on conifers. It was a mistake, I think, to pick the biomes the way I had because so few had free starting requirements, immediately limiting me as to where I could migrate. Within a few turns I pumped up my size so that I could traverse long distances, just to be safe. Before long I also inhabited the southern coastal marsh lands. The marshes, however, gradually gave way to arctic char feeding grounds, which my proto-crocs were not equipped for, so I moved on. [On a side note, I can remember as a young boy going ice fishing with my dad, and one of his buddies brought along a frozen store-bought arctic char, and he tied it to my dad’s line when he wasn’t looking. Sorry …]

The end of the Triassic period flows into the Jurassic after forty million years or so. I have seen mostly changing landscapes and very little by way of anything that could offer me genetic diversity. But I do express some traits that give me certain marine and climate adaptability, a kind of godsend in the predominantly wet world. I now migrate outwards to oceans and rivers (feeding, in one case, on boney-tongued fish).

I at this point developed a new genomic offshoot, a small flying reptile with somewhat unfortunate marine requirements for feeding. Immigrants come and go, most failing to permanently invade the continent. Several Milankovich cycles swing around, drying up my wetlands and reducing my populations.

As I leave the Jurassic and enter the Cretaceous period, an extremely unfortunate series of three catastrophes strike the world (one each turn, each roughly six million years apart). The first, a plankton bloom, sequesters CO2, and greenhouse gases drop, introducing uninhabitable arctic lands and further drying up marine biomes. The second, a galactic X-Ray burst that bathes the earth, further causes radical change to the environment. And third, volcanic emissions of sulphur and CO2 then raise the greenhouse level, returning my precious water lands. Amazingly, I survive almost untouched.

The first real immigrant challenge comes by way of a large ichthyosaur, which out-competes my offshoot in the northern-most ocean. As time passes, the Mesozoic era gives way to the Cenozoic. I have survived to the Tertiary period, only 66 million years ago. There are several serious challenges by immigrants, like toothed birds that further drive my offshoot out of the rivers. But both my genetic lines are still holding on.

This is the first game in which I survived through to the end, the present day so-called Quaternary period. I have four tents of population from my two genomic lines, though I did very little ‘evolving’ during the game. My archetypal line survived almost the entire game at size 3, expressing M-P-Sex. And my only genomic offshoot, the bird, survived at size 2, expressing wings-I-M-M-S-S-P.

Thread: Quick comments

loquitur — 2007-02-16T04:55:23+00:00

The expansion is a nice little addition to American Megafauna. It comes with three sheets of new cards and tents. The cards extend the numbered line from the core game, starting at 189 and upwards. There are a handful of new biomes, catastrophes, and genotypes. Most of the new cards are newly designed DNA. I’m not so familiar with the core game that I could feel a difference in how this plays out now, but some of the DNA cards do introduce a slightly new mechanic (if you could call it that). New tool-use traits require special placement and attention, though I haven’t had the opportunity to acquire them in a game yet.

The card stock is pretty much the same as in the core game, but the new fifth player physiology sheet is laminated (I might have to do that to my other ones now). The only other item in the expansion is the rule booklet. Front to back it’s four double-sided pages, stapled. The inside first page has a few comments about the changes in the expansion, as well as errata for the regular and solitaire games. The back page has starting biome placements for shorter games. The other five pages involve an essay (with endnotes) on topics the game touches on, as well as a short philosophical argument about religion and science.

All in all, I think, a nice addition. I’ll need to play it more to get a feeling for what the changes bring to the game (other than ‘more’, which the game already had in abundance … you really only need 41 cards for the standard timeline, plus what’s on the map, ensuring new experiences each time). I’m a sucker for designer notes, and Phil Eklund has delivered again in that regard. His games are a wealth of scientific education, and this expansion is no different.

Image

loquitur — 2007-02-14T20:19:00+00:00

The new fifth player: The proto-croc

Image

loquitur — 2007-02-14T20:18:22+00:00

The contents: 3 sheets of cards and tents, 1 physiology sheet, and one booklet

Thread: Re: how do I know if I have the 2nd edition

saxophone — 2007-01-30T18:08:58+00:00

Thanks for the replies. I'll go home and take a look.

Thread: Re: how do I know if I have the 2nd edition

loquitur — 2007-01-30T18:08:00+00:00

The box certainly says 2nd edition, and so does the manual (mine has written 'Second edition July 2001' on the cover). I might be wrong about this, but I also think that the second edition has v-fold counters that stand up on the map, where the first edition didn't.

Thread: Re: how do I know if I have the 2nd edition

tool — 2007-01-30T18:04:42+00:00

If it's in a box, it's 2nd edition.

Thread: how do I know if I have the 2nd edition

saxophone — 2007-01-30T17:50:28+00:00

The subject line says it all. How do I know if I have the 2nd Edition of America Megafauna?

Image

offwater — 2006-10-21T11:32:10+00:00

Box front