Ra

[hwango]

We tried Ra this evening, though we did it with the the wacky Cthulhu variant artwork and tile names. I was pleased to see it go over reasonably well. I'd played it against the computer several times, but it's nice to finally play with people. The Cthulhu theme is pretty cool, and my only real complaint is that some of the Site and Tome tiles could be more obviously different from each other, and it might have been nice for Cultists and Altars to be labeled as such, rather than both being called "Rituals." The Egyptian theme in the original is nice enough, but it was great to hear people lamenting desperately "I need more Shoggoths!" I may not have won, but at least at the end of the game I had Shoggoth Supremacy!

Of course, the theme change means we did miss out on one tiny amusement. In the original Ra, the Tomes tiles are Civilization tiles, which are Astronomy, Religion, Art, Writing, etc. The version I've been playing against the computer tells you at the bottom of the screen what a player did for their turn, which led to the amusing status message "Cathy has exchanged a God for a Religion." Way to trade up, Cathy.

Comments

[octophobic.livejournal.com]

Rathulhu was pretty cool. Initially I wanted to collect a lot of sites but I just wasn't lucky enough to get a significant amount of them.

I think I came in last? I missed the score tally in the end.

[hwango.livejournal.com]

You tied for 3rd, so I suppose that's technically last. I think you did very well in the first 2 aeons and just didn't have a great finish. I had the opposite, with my less-than-inspiring first aeon score of -2, but a pretty good final aeon. Damon really was incredibly lucky that last turn, but he was doing quite well before that, so we were going to have a tough time catching up.

Sites (or Monuments in the original) are nifty. I think it might be easier to acquire sets of them in 3-player, but they can still be quite profitable. Altars/Cultists can be nice because you can score the same tiles multiple times, but it's a bad tile-to-points ratio compared to things like a set of 3 Sites. Shoggoths always seem to be a good bet.