Current mood:	exhausted
Current music:	John Spillane, "Passage West" on Miriam (of which ferry see mention here, ibid!)
Entry tags:	ameritrash, boardgames, origins, saturdays

Origins of being knackered
Saturday afternoon boardgaming!  Origins!

And barely even "after" noon -- Brian was here right about 12.  (*bleer*  I need to re-reboot my sleep cycle.)  Perhaps because we'd been going lengthy and crunchy enough of a Tuesday evening, we ended up *really* lengthy and crunchy for our longer session -- Origins, from the chap who brought the world American Megafauna.  In gaming terms, "American" is the operative word -- this is crunch, chrome, and gloss by the Dulux tinfull.  I think a "Civ-lite" comparison was made at one point, but "Civ-ostensibly-perhaps-slightly-shorter-but-significantly-more-complex" would be a little closer to the truth (if less snappy).

Started setting up around one.  Were just about started by two, once the initial few "no idea what's happening here" false starts were over.  Though more of them to come:  I think I made a real mess of the "brain area" and the "innovation track" play at the start, and fell a bit behind as a result;  Roman launched early into Era 2, and then realized all the Era 1 stuff that he still needed to do, and now couldn't.  Meanwhile Brian got hit by a large dose of "what, did most of Africa just turn desert?" However, we all seemed to muddle through somehow, and by the time we were all in Era 2, we reckoned we'd got ahead of the "wau, didn't see *that* subsystem coming!" factor, and were starting to get seriously into the card-auctions.

End of game position at 8pm:



An assortment of cards:



rest of set

We didn't score this one, as we hadn't quite finished Era 2, much less the last, though Roman reckoned he was just about ready to go for that. It looked like on development cards Roman was well ahead, enough to dominate other scoring factors, and I was bringing up the rear.  Might have changed around on Era 3, but who knows how long that would have taken.

So a bit of a loss-leader for another all-day session to actually stand a chance of getting it finished!  (Since the expansion set seems to just add an extra Era, I suppose one could just play the first two, though, with entering Era 3 as a end condition.)  I felt it seemed a bit too random for all that "weight"; the card draws are one thing, but some crucial parts of the development tree is only accessible via random "domestication" rolls.  Would have benefitted from a crib sheet making the dependencies more explicit, as Brian pointed out: what tracks go how high in each era; which advances have multiple routes, and which just one; which you can "catch up" in later Eras ift you're lagging, and which not; etc.  (Wouldn't be in the least surprised if BGG already has one of these, mind you.)