by Vanish
Great 9 player game last night. I as Psilon wound up sitting next to Klackon. We has an "understanding" because MoO Races gotta stick together ... right? :D All three official alliances were formed by round 7 and we didn't like our chances with any of them. In the end it was their undoing and I crushed the enemies with 51 points. Klackon was second with ~36 and the alliances were 33, 31 and 28.Review of play as Psilon Technocracy ... I really got the experience I was looking for. Hydran is probably my favorite alien race, I just LOVE tech. On start, my focus was science Science SCIENCE. I skipped researching and passed early on turn 1 to make sure I had choice pick of turn 2 tech, and that really paid off, giving me improved hull, advanced robotics and graviton pulse all in one action. I pushed against aliens to get a couple good science systems. The other players saw me holding only 4 systems mid-game and underestimated just how well I was doing. Laying low in most aspects of the game, and a blunder of a battle against an ancient homeworld, allowed me to continue to tech up while fighting occurred between others. I was able to fill up all three research tracks by the end of round 8. By the time the other players figured things out, it was too late and I was able to configure my ships to combat most anything.
If the other players would have kicked me when I was down ... I wouldn't have been able to come back from it. I was totally maxing the limits of my materials just to keep alive, let alone push. That's a great balance!
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My Klackon neighbors, and hopefully Ian will comment, had a very different game. They amassed a great amount of materials in the beginning and used it to conquer ancients, but were fairly irrelevant militarily by the end of the game. Another fun balance! They were only able to score so well by taking advantage of a pile of ancients landlocked between us, being reduced to holding 3 systems by the end of the game.
My opinion was that those materials should have been spent harassing a neighbor early, but I can understand caution when playing a new race.