Eric Raymond
United States
Malvern
Pennsylvania
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My gaming group plays RFTG often enough that we've developed our own slang terms for certain frequently-occurring tactics and situations. In the hope that other players may find these enjoyable and useful, here they are:
sniping
The act of choosing the +5 Explore option, as opposed to the +1 +1 Explore. So called because of its use to snipe for a single key card that you need, as popposed to generally gathering resources.
pumping
Playing nothing but alternating IV(2xVP) and V phases. A smart thing to do if you have good VP consume powers and planets or developments that will pull cards into your hand during a Produce phase. This tactic may rely on other players choosing phases II and III so you don't have to, or you may count on pumping more points per turn than anyone else can make by playing their planets and developments. There are three major variants of this:
blue pump
A pump with blue planets using Consumer Markets.
brown pump
A pump with brown planets using Mining Conglomerate and possibly Mining League.
gray pump
A pump based on gray worlds with consume powers, especially Tourist World and Galactic Trendsetters. This term is seldom used because it's unusual to win with a pure gray pump; more commonly you'll see a combination like a blue-gray pump or a brown-gray pump.
build out
To build out is to end the game by reaching the 12-card limit in your tableau. This term implies that you're doing this deliberately early in order to shut down the game before someone else's pump can outscore you.
fast build
A class of whole-game strategies that depend on building out before other players can get their own strategies in gear. This has variants:
military fast-build
This strategy relies on the combination of a military homeworld and an early Space Marines or Drop Ships to set up a situation in which every succeeding world you buy is paid for with military power rather than discards.
civilian fast-build
This strategy is much less common, and so is the term. It may start with a combination like Replicant Robots and either Mining Robots or Alien Rosetta Stone World.
studge
An opening hand that does not obviously lend itself to any particular strategy, requiring one to thrash around Exploring for a couple of rounds seeking key cards. Probably from "filboid studge" (Google for it). The emphatic form is "utter studge". In extreme cases, one might do a take on the Monty Python "spam" routine: "Studge, studge, studge, studge...Lovely studge, wonderful studge!"
consumerator
Fancifully, the elaborate mad-scientistic machine (doubtless equipped with arcing electrodes and many blinkylights) that performs point-pumping. Especially in the phrase "Fire up the consumerator!"
Other examples of usage:
"Yeah, I had New Galactic Order in my opening hand and went for a military-alien fast-build, but he beat me with a brown pump and Tourist World."
A player in a two-hand game choosing I(+5) and III might say "Snipe and settle!"
On seeing somebody with two or more blue production worlds play Consumer Markets: "Uh oh, blue pump a-comin'.
On playing your first IV(2VP) + V in a two-hand game, it is appropriate to say "Engaging consumerator...NOW!" followed by your best Star Trek sound effect.
Um, yes, since you ask, yes my gaming friends are complete geeks. And proud of it. If this surprises you, you have not been paying attention.
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Richard Dewsbery
United Kingdom
Sutton Coldfield
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eric_s_raymond wrote:
pumping
There are three major variants of this:
Don't forget the multi-coloured pump, with Diverse Economy.
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Jackson Pope
United Kingdom
Newcastle upon Tyne
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I'm liking studge and the comsumerator. They might have to be adopted on this side of the pond.
Cheers,
Jack
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Goran Topic
Japan
Kita-ku
Tokyo
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I have deep Explore and phat Explore in my games. Phat explore is not really that thematic, but it's the cash talking.
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Eric Raymond
United States
Malvern
Pennsylvania
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RDewsbery wrote:
Don't forget the multi-coloured pump, with Diverse Economy.
We haven't see this often enough to have developed slang for it. If we had, I daresay we'd probably call it a "rainbow pump" or something.
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David Etherton
United States
Carlsbad
California
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We call +5 Explore the "hail mary" (makes sense of you follow American Football at all).
I had my quickest win ever with a brown pump yesterday -- Started with Alpha Centauri, developed Investment Credits first turn, Consume+Trade second turn and leeched off my opponent's explores, then got down Mining League and Comet Zone. Brown pumped those four cards to victory.
-Dave
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Guy Srinivasan
United States
Kirkland
Washington
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eric_s_raymond wrote: fast build
A class of whole-game strategies that depend on building out before other players can get their own strategies in gear. This has variants:
We call this one the zerg rush.
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Calm Fluffy Bunnies
United States
Cambridge
Massachusetts
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We refer to IV (2xVP) as "nomnomnomnom"
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Rob Neuhaus
United States
New York
NY
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I am somewhat surprised you don't have a development fast build strategy variant in there. It can go either civilian or fairly light military, but the focus is on the developments rather than the settlements. In my local group, when two or more players build an early development that gives development bonuses (Interstellar Bank, Investment Credits, Public Works, in that order of preference), we call it "getting on the dev train." I once had a dominating win when I simply called develop every single turn. The combination of one or two of the cheap dev bonus cards with Galatic Federation is abusive, it can end games extremely quickly.
When someone gets dealt a bad starting hand, we have started using the phrase, "the only synergy these cards have is that they all suck."
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Wei-Hwa Huang
United States
San Jose
California
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We use "crank" instead of "pump," which evolved from "turning the crank".
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Eric Raymond
United States
Malvern
Pennsylvania
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grayskale wrote: We refer to IV (2xVP) as "nomnomnomnom"
Oh, Goddess -- it's LOL For The Galaxy. Run! Flee! Save yourselves!
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Wei-Hwa Huang
United States
San Jose
California
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eric_s_raymond wrote: Oh, Goddess -- it's LOL For The Galaxy. Run! Flee! Save yourselves!
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Eric Raymond
United States
Malvern
Pennsylvania
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etherton wrote: I had my quickest win ever with a brown pump yesterday -- Started with Alpha Centauri, developed Investment Credits first turn, Consume+Trade second turn and leeched off my opponent's explores, then got down Mining League and Comet Zone. Brown pumped those four cards to victory.
I won a two-hand game using a three-card brown pump once. Two brown worlds and Mining League; I actually ended up with a 5 or 6 card tableau but the others were just cheap throwaways done on my opponent's phases and didn't swing the game.
I describe this incident because I think three cards (cranking 6VP per pump cycle) is minimal. I can't think of any two-card combination that would generate more than 4VP per pump cycle (Galactic Trendsetters), and that's not really competitive.
It was my wife on the other side of the table. She couldn't figure out whether to gasp in admiration or hurl in disgust. I rather sympathized...
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Philip Goldfarb Styrt
United States
Rochester
New York
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I don't think that in the game (base at least) there is any way to get 6vp from 2 cards. But I'm not sure 6vp is totally necessary; what about 2 player advanced, as ELC or AC:
1st turn Settle/Produce (drop any world with both produce and a consume-for-VP as ELC, or GT as either AC or ELC; produce)
2nd turn and after: Consume 2x/Produce
That's 4vp/turn starting on the 2nd turn; obviously, you'd hope to have some sort of cards coming (like on op explores or something) that would let you build up your tableau more, but that's still only 7 turns (maximum) in the game (6*4=24, plus the initial priming of the pump in turn 1). Admittedly, you could lose (you'd only have a little over those 24vp) but op is going to have trouble getting enough cards down to match you in such a short span, with you refusing to play anything but Consume and Produce.
Obviously, it's even better if you can get a third card (for 6vp) down really early, but 4vp is pretty good.
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