Amun-Re

Welcome to Replayable, where we go to depth on our favorite tabletop games that keep us coming back again and again. I'm the start player Todd, and today I'm joined by David and Greg. For our fifteenth episode, we mark the third game by a favorite designer, Reiner Canizia, and a return to Ancient Egypt. Of course I'm talking about the classic auction game, Amun-Re. It was originally released in 2003 by Hans Imgluck with artwork by Franz Vohlwinkel.

The twentieth anniversary edition was recently published by Ellicat Games with artwork by Vincent Dutre. Are you guys ready to gnash your teeth and rend your garments? I'm ready, let's do this. Yeah, I've got a good offering here. Excellent. So, Amun-Re is an auction and development game that spans two ages, the Old Kingdom and the New Kingdom. An age is three rounds and begins with a fierce auction for provinces. Each province is unique, with some offering more benefits than others.

After the auction, players buy cards, hire farmers, and add stones to their tombs. Three stones in the same province are converted into a pyramid. Players then decide how much gold they want to sacrifice to Amun-Re. The player who gives the most receives the most gifts, while others may choose to steal instead. The total value of all offerings, less thefts, determines how much income will be earned before the next round.

At the end of the Old Kingdom, a scoring phase occurs and then the board is reset, with the exception of the pyramids and stones. Those remain and affect the value of provinces for the New Kingdom. I think it's safe to say that we have a love-hate relationship with this game. I don't think that's true at all. My opening comment is this. Perfect game, no notes. Thanks for listening to Replayable this week. All right. So this week I'm joined by Greg.

Yeah. So it's a game that is due for some redevelopment and no, it's a good game. It's a good game. I think it shows its age though. All right. Well, then let's just jump right into that because I actually don't think it needs redevelopment. Aside with Dave on this one, I think it's pretty good as it stands. So what are the things that you think could be improved upon? Well, do you want to get right into that? Let's do it. I mean, sure. Why not?

I think the latest edition, the 20th anniversary edition, it goes into it a little bit. There's just something wrong that doesn't work quite right with, well, in the original game, they call it the power cards. They don't feel balanced. And in our latest play, I really feel like a lot of players were feeling that. It doesn't mean that it completely destroys the game. It's just it influences games to the degree that you can be kept out of the game by the power cards.

I think they made a couple small steps towards fixing that in the latest edition. They added more cards so you get more schemes at the start of the game. There's a whole extra scheme included in the game. That's the end of era victory point cards. But I don't know. I feel like this game needs a draft or something for those cards, some way or a marketplace, some way to allow people to really get what they want rather than take shot at in the dark every single time.

Well, and that's how modern games do it. Is there would be a market or there would be a draft or there would be different locations on the board where you can draw different kinds of cards? Yeah. Maybe you have a scheme deck and a favorite deck. Then it becomes a different game. Well, but it doesn't. I don't think I think it would add a little level of complexity to the game and make it more like modern games. And like I said, it's perfect for its time. It's a great game.

Just I feel like there's a way to fix this. I can fix it. I really can. I think that agony of decision and being up to the card draw is part of the game. Like you may do with what you have and your strategy is going to have to adapt to the things at your disposal. And sometimes the cards are going to go your way and you're going to get a victory point card or a scheme that you can successfully complete. Because other times you're going to draw one that's that you're already drawing dead.

But you were investing in the opportunity to try to draw it. So I think if they were to divide it into schemes and everything else, then all of our first card buys would be to drain the scheme deck. Maybe maybe. So that was our first meta when playing the game is that he who draws the schemes wins the game.

And I think we've been discovering more recently that what they call now the harvest cards are maybe a little bit stronger than if I can start generating better income based on the cards that I draw, then I hold my destiny a little bit more in my own hands. But then it's a maybe. Yeah. But I don't even know that that's about necessarily getting better income.

When I get those cards, I see it as, OK, I can invest less or I can go get that desert province and not worry about whether we get camels or not. I see those as a way to manage investment more than I see them as like a way to maximize income. Absolutely. In fact, we made a comment on that last night on how we were by our auction bids. We were balancing the game as a player driven balance.

If I think somebody has an eight card that's going to give you eight gold for a province, then I'm going to try to make them pay a little more for Dachla than they want to pay for Dachla, which is the one that gives you 10 bucks when it comes with it. Ten gold. I showed you I had an eight card and you said you're out. I'm not letting you take Dachla. Well that's exactly it. So we we balance that out. I don't want someone to get that who's holding that eight card.

But I like what you're saying, Greg, because it starts to influence the values of the provinces, which any good auction game does is the bid lots start to change in value to the different values to the different players. Right. I remember distinctively last night, Greg was sitting there and trying to guess which schemes we were each holding to try to gauge what we might be willing to pay for something, which was the right way of thinking. In my case, I happened to not have been holding any.

So yeah, it was like I couldn't draw one to save my life. It seemed it felt like a little bit of a dead end or a red herring, though, to try to go down that route, because the reality was the cards I was holding were more important than any meta I might be trying to do to interfere with you. Right. And so I wasn't really involved in those options because I wanted to be on the other side of the river. Right.

Right. And Dave, to your point about auctions and we were player applied balance, generally speaking, I feel that's true of every auction. Any game that has an auction, it's like an easy mechanic to throw in there that allows the players to balance what may be otherwise perceived as overpowered combinations. Yeah, that's fine. You think you're going to do that? Well, I'm going to make you pay dearly for it.

Right. Although I think in this game, trying to understand where that balance is might be a little difficult when the game we played most recently right away. There was a certain province that was really bad for you because you were the only camel trader. Right. And so being able to see that, like, what if we stick, Todd, with that or and you seeing it saying, I need a partner, I need somebody else who's going to be stealing from the sacrifice. I need someone else to get that.

So that's affecting how you're moving your bids around. And the way we play, at least the table talk that you're throwing out there. Right. Like I think that was Sawu, right? Yes. If I ended up with Sawu, then I was going to have two camel provinces after two rounds in the Old Kingdom. And everybody else would have been giving to the moon and those camels were never going to pay their cash to me, which made ended up making me pay more for another province.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it was maybe it was Dominar or something like that. Yeah, it was Dominar, which ended up paying out really well in points for you. Right. But I paid like 10 for it, which I didn't want to spend 10 on anything. But it forced you to end up going to Sawu and join me in the camel club. But in that situation, 10 for Dominar was cheaper than zero for Sawu. Right. Because you wouldn't have gotten the income out of Sawu because we were all giving so heavily at the sacrifice.

It turned to some points for you. It was that just identifying Sawu was OK, not bad for four of us and really bad for you. And so you go into the auction with that in mind. Like, how am I going to make sure everybody pays high for what they get and I don't get Sawu? So you're you're faced with a puzzle coming into the auction, which is something that I absolutely love about it. Yeah. And that's the game, right? It's it's determining those dynamics.

Yeah. And imagine if you had some knowledge of what car or what schemes other people are actually going for. They had to buy it from an open market. I'll get off that. I can definitely see it's a different game if it has that. It would be. I think it would be it would be another fun game. Well, I agree that the cards are, you know, the facet and the diamond, that it's you know, it's the little scratch on the bumper of the game. Yeah. I don't.

It actually feels a little too, you know, it's it's part of what makes it Amun-Re. I mean, flaw in the sense of like a flawed diamond is still a beautiful thing. It's just the flaw is part of its personality. Yeah. So but I still think we're going to talk about luck a little more in depth, but I still think the better player is going to win regardless of the cards that you're dealt most of the time.

There are some times when we played last night, Al Drew, pretty much nothing but outbid in same province and bid blockade, which is just putting the game on hard mode for Al. And I think he made a few other mistakes, but it really buried him. And he drew no harvest cards, no maybe a builder card once, no scheme cards. He got some farmer cards, too. But yeah, not no, no extra income, just some free builders or free farmers here and there. Right.

And he employed those, you know, bid blockades and outbid in same province. It made it a lot of fun, you know, and we laughed a lot. And it was really great. He used them really well, but he was not able to turn those into points. Greg, didn't you end up paying 28 for a province in the in the new kingdom? I paid 21 for Sawu in the in the new 21 age. So he bid 10 and put a bid blocker on 15. Yeah, I wanted those pyramids.

Good, good old Sawu, the little province nobody wanted in the first epoch goes for 21 in the second epoch. Well, honestly, it satisfied two of my my scheme cards. I needed it in the end. I don't know if I think Thebes was the one that really bit me in that in that era. Well, and Dave was in the same place with Barya and Dakhla, right? He needed one of them in that new kingdom, and it didn't matter which. Yeah, right. Whichever one I could get for cheaper satisfies two of my scheme cards. Right.

So you ended up getting Barya for zero and I ended up getting whatever it was. I think it was Ed Fu for zero. No, it was Amarna. I think that it was Amarna for zero, which ended up being another temple. And that leads into a little bit of my defense of the cards and how it can make the game feel so swingy, how you can mitigate that card draw. The strategy really is see all of your cards early or as many as you can early.

So if you're in the late game trying to top deck that scheme card that you happen to buy the provinces that fit, then you're you're making it a luck driven game and you're going to feel frustrated when it doesn't work out or overly elated when it does work out.

But you really have to go in and that first epoch, just get as many cards as you can, spend your gifts on cards if possible, buy at least two cards if possible, and then you plan the rest of your game according to what you draw in the beginning.

And I think a little experience shows that the cards are a little more balanced than we think that if you're getting all harvest instead of scheme, you can use that to your advantage, especially in the second epoch and use those harvest cards to turn into good money. Yeah. But on the other hand, you already mentioned the situation with Al trying too many of the bid control cards.

And I know in the second epoch, I had a great strategy for what I wanted to do as far as scheme cards and trying to get pyramids. But in the end, I couldn't draw a builder card for my life, even though Todd to my right, you know, draw, I think drew like five of them in the second. I drew three of them in a row. Yeah. Yeah. So and it's just so I mean, I like you said, I shouldn't be trying to draw that card. I should be OK if I don't draw that card.

But seeing other people get what you need and them complaining about it is always and winning the game. But I mean, for me, those build cards were worthless because I was so poor. So I was not endeavoring to follow a build strategy and I'm drawing the cards I don't want. And clearly you had the most money coming out of the old kingdom out of any of us. And you would have obviously benefited greatly from having everybody was I think everybody but you is rich and right. We were all into the 30s.

Everybody had more than me. That's true. But I think you were on top. I wasn't. I think I had 32 and Paul had 36. And it doesn't matter. It was we are and then the fact that we remember it so vividly and granted, you know, we played it also a week ago. And yeah, this was a different game. We played a very different game. We did. Yeah. So that was that was the 20th anniversary edition. And when we get the versions, we can talk about how that one is different. I was going to save this for luck.

But there are sometimes I feel like this game could be renamed Amun-Re because there's just so much so much frustration when you're drawing the cards and you're hoping for one thing you get completely the opposite. And then you're just gritting your teeth and trying to figure out how am I going to make this work? In the meantime, someone else looks like they are sailing through. I think that's the game. I agree.

I agree that sometimes your card draw is going to put the game on easy mode and sometimes it's going to put it on hard mode. There are some games where your card draw is just you cannot win the game based on the cards you drew and some games where sorry, guys, I drew just the right card. So yeah, that's going to happen in a 20 plus year old game, I suppose. And if the play if the play time is short enough, that's OK. Look at our play last night.

I was swearing like a sailor in every card I drew because I was just so upset with the card that I drew. I heard some foul language coming from your end of the table, Todd. Oh, yeah. And who came in first and second? We're like, these cards are terrible. Oh, by the way, I just won the game. Well, you won the game. Right. And you were second. We were not far behind. Yeah. But then again, neither of you was the perceived leader. So nobody was trying to. That's right. Chop you down.

While I was going for most on a side, I was very vocal about not letting Greg get most on a side. I know. I was sneaking up and trying to get in there. Well, we like table talk in our games, so we do. People don't like that. We do. Absolutely. But let's let's talk about how that happened, because I wasn't trying to make Greg pay more. I literally didn't have the bankroll to do that in case I got caught. I needed to pay small amounts of money in the New Kingdom.

So I was not going to bid falsely to try to jump somebody and get caught by having to spend more than I could afford. I think at least in our group meta. And this is something I'm interested in hearing your opinion on. Are there set strategies that you can try in this game? And I'll throw out a couple of examples like our farmers and pyramids, a strategy that you can go for because you're spending money on farmers to get the income and you can afford more builds.

Whereas thieving and temples might be an alternative strategy to pursue. Is it that clear? Well, I don't think so. I think there are some things that are maybe a little bit synergistic and a little bit incompatible like temples and camels, because if you have temples, you want that sacrifice track to go up to the top. But if you have camels, you want it to stay at the bottom. So we do start to get some emerging alliances. Like we were talking about earlier is that you were a camel trader.

So you were stealing at the sacrifice and you needed a partner who's going to steal at the sacrifice with you to keep that track under control. But I don't think there's strategy paths like we would see in Great Western Trail or something like a builder versus a rancher or something like that. It's not a point salad that much.

I mean, there's a few different locations, ways you get points, but it's pretty limited that you can't just abandon all pyramids and go for cards or farmers aren't going to make you money, make you points unless you draw the power card that goes with it. So I don't really see any emerging strategy paths. I think it's just kind of bobbing and weaving with the game as it goes along.

Yeah, I go into the game sometimes with like a mindset of this game, I'm going to try to be really tight with my money. I'm not going to bet big on anything. I'm going to try to get other people to do the big bids. I'm going to get things cheap. But I think you really have to be flexible on that. And your first province often kind of determines which way you're really going. Even if I went into the game with one mindset, I win Memphis in the first round.

Well, maybe I'm in the farmer now and now I need to give good to the contributions because I want to be fighting for pyramids. But I do think it starts to devolve in that direction. If you have one or two players that are in the desert provinces with camels and, you know, others that have more of farmer heavy strategy, you divide into two camps at that point.

And I think that the game is more fun when you break that up, when you force a farmer to get a desert province or or vice versa, you know, because then everybody has kind of conflicted interests. I agree with Dave for the most part. There's a little bit of like angling that you can try to do. But the auction is where everything is determined. Sometimes you just can't get what you want because somebody else wants it to or wants it more.

Well, and sometimes like we were talking about in brass, it's just keep your mind open and go where the game is telling you to go based on the cards you draw. Yeah. And you're like, wow, I can just take marna for zero while you guys are all paying six and ten for, you know, a little bit provinces. So the game, you know, sometimes you just follow the wind. I should have taken a marna for zero instead of saw for 21. You're right. It's a big difference.

Well, it had a temple that would have made that got four points that would have made up for the card that I wouldn't have scored. Yeah. Well, also, I may have won the game if you would have taken a temple from Todd, but I don't want to dwell on that. I'll get upset. Oh, no, let's let's go. I mean, and maybe it's this group meta that we don't value temples enough. I mean, there are three provinces that have them right. Dom and her Ed Fu and Amarna.

And those provinces really weren't hotly contested in either of the last two games, really. No. So I don't know if it's a blind spot we have or if we're focusing on more cards because each of those provinces only allow you to buy one card. So we think, well, gee, especially early, I want, you know, doc, let's you draw two or Abydos, let you draw four. And we're valuing card purchasing ability higher than temples. I think perhaps our meta, we are undervaluing the power of temples.

Clearly last night, 20 of my points came from temples. Yeah, I think a lot of that comes from a long, long dry spell of temples actually not being worth much where we weren't contributing. You know, the three was a rare occurrence in a lot of our games for a while. Last night's game, though, was the first high economy game that I've seen probably in five years from this group.

I mean, we only play this a few times a year at this point, but still, it's been a long time since we've seen the kind of offerings that we saw last night. And when that happens, those temples are extremely valuable. I mean, four points is a big plus. Well, because of that, I definitely was valuing temples last night because I saw right away. I mean, we were all given at the sacrifice like we just signed our first NBA contracts.

And I feel like I started it was like a game of quantitative easing is the first time I gave 12 and everybody's like, whoa, 12. What are you crazy? And then after that, everyone's dropping 10, 11. I couldn't afford to do that anymore. Yeah, but we took the camels out of the game in a hurry.

But that follows my personal understanding of the game because I remember the first, I don't know, 10 plays more plays where I would never give more than like three at the offering because I was just always broke, just constantly broke. And I can't even finish a pyramid and I can't give anything at the offering. And now we're coming to an auction again. I'll take whatever's free. But when I started focusing my game, especially that first epoch points don't even matter.

Get yourself somewhere between seven and 12 points in the first epoch. It's all about getting yourself close to 40 gold coming out of that first epoch. Yeah. Well, I mean, we also are a little bit, I think in the first two rounds, conservative in the bidding. I mean, you start the game with 20 bucks, but even for Memphis, I only paid six bucks. Nobody wanted to pay 10 for it. So I think that was part of it, too. I went into the game wanting to spend money in the market, not on provinces.

And apparently other people did, too. And then it boiled over into, well, maybe I'll also do it in the offerings. Let's see how that game goes. And I managed to be first in offerings for the, I think, two of the three rounds in the first age. The first two until I gave 12 because I was so scared of how big you were given on the first two.

Then I had to come out strong because that 12 I knew would give me three gifts, which will give me another pyramid, which gives me most on a side and also will churn out some good money for my farmers. Yeah. Tied you with me on that side. Yes, that's right. So let's spend a little bit of time about best way to get your economy started. Is it farmers? Is it spending on provinces? And I realized the auction has a lot to do with that.

I really tried to focus on saving money for farmers more than stones or cards to start just because I wanted to be able to have an income stream. And sometimes what you end up with doesn't allow it, but what are your thoughts about planning to start an economy? Well, I think each province can be evaluated based on what sort of income that province can bring. So a province like Dakla comes with 12 gold and none other gold the rest of the time you own it.

So if you buy that in the first of three rounds, that's going to give you four gold per round. It was what it'll average out. Or something like the one that just plain pays eight gold no matter what. Maraniki. Maraniki. That's going to pay 24 if you get it in the first round. So I'm constantly evaluating from here to the end of the epoch, how much is this going to pay me? Also counting in how much do I have to invest in it? Whether I'm buying farmers in the market or turning gifts into farmers.

And that's a pretty straightforward calculation on all of those, all the information. I also think in this game, you don't know until the game starts what order the provinces are going to be auctioned off in. I've come out. It's completely random. And if all of those have farmers, well, you know what? Everybody's going to want to have farmers. Everybody's going to be invested in making the farmers pay out.

It's much more likely in that game that maybe one person is going to steal just because they don't have the money to donate and they'd rather, you know, they're not worried about gifts. But in last night's game, I think because there was only one desert province in the first round, it set the tone for that whole epoch in that we were given big because we all had farmers that we wanted to pay out. Right.

Well, and then the decision between giving like even giving one, does that make sense for a gift when that gift is worth? It's worth one, right? It's a one dollar thing that you just bought. Another way of looking at it is if you already spent this spot. Right. Right. Because I could have made three dollars instead. So I think the difference.

So if you're looking at buying your fourth brick on a pyramid, you know, you're starting to build your second pyramid, that fourth brick cost you four bucks going from six to ten. So, yeah, I agree that, you know, even looking at like that, it's a wash at best. But if you've already bought four bricks and you're really trying to catch up, you know what? That one dollar gift is huge. It's pacing. Right. So I think it's situational. There are times that, yeah, it's not worth it.

If all you're going to do is grab a card because you are digging for, you know, hoping to get a scheme. Yeah. And I think you pointed that out, Greg, because it talks to the magical mathematical like wonder of Kinesia is the fact that instead of stealing three dollars, I pay one dollar. That gift pretty much cost four, like you said, which is the same as buying a fourth of something in the market. It gets kind of bending my brain a little bit on how balanced that is. So sorry, I hesitated there.

But yeah, so if I want to buy, say I want five bricks or five farmers, I could buy four farmers and then now I'm paying one for that fifth farmer. Getting it in the gift is actually a discount. Right. Because you're paying one for a five dollar farmer otherwise. Yeah. I never noticed that one dollar offering to give yourself one item is the exact same as your fourth item had you bought it in the market. So now we need to go play again. Awesome. With that, I hadn't thought of that.

Yeah, because I was in the second epoch, especially I was trying to catch up from a deficit because I bought a province in the second round. And that was very heavy on my mind is like, how do I catch up in just getting most on one side or building more sets? How do I make up this difference? And so yeah, I was doing those calculations of like, well, a fourth brick is this much. And it was definitely feeling like, yeah, even a dollar for a single gift is very much worth it at that point.

But early in the game, when you're trying to save a scrimp and save every dollar, I agree with you. It's you need to be mindful of the fact that it's actually costing you four bucks. Right. Right. Yeah. We dove right into the weeds pretty quickly on this, but we didn't really give it a drone level view as far as you mentioned agony of decision in your intro there somewhere.

And I feel like this is the first game that I ever employed the term agony of decision and it being a good thing is that every decision you make in this game, almost every decision you make in this game, it's so hard. One more, one less. And it's so satisfying that way. And when we've got five people who are fluent in this game and we sit down and play it together, to me, it's just one of my favorite board gaming experiences to be in that situation.

Everyone completely understands what they're trying to do. Maybe some people are getting hosed or whatever, but every auction, every sacrifice, everything, it's an intense level. And I just don't see that in as many other games. Yeah. Well, I mean, and I think the auctions is the key is the way these auctions are formatted. The fact that it's a constrained bid, you have to go up by a, you know, a triangular number, a certain amount, a triangular number, right.

And that you can't bid on the same auction if you get outbid. Right. You have to go somewhere else. And I think things like make it really hard because it's like, I really want to get this for six, but if I bid six and somebody bids 10, even if I was willing to spend 15, I couldn't come back. You know, so it makes it a really challenge. I mean, that's how I ended up paying 21 for Sawu is I managed to get kicked out twice from other auctions. Yeah. That province auction can be so satisfying.

There's times where I feel like, wow, we just played a great game. Oh wait, that was just the first province auction. Now we have to like build stuff. It in itself is like almost a complete game that could fit in the auction trilogy. Yeah. And my comment about Amun-Re also applies.

Like Schadenfreude is definitely a component of this game because if I think about two games ago, the one that Greg won, one of my proudest moments was when I had bid like, I don't know, 10 bucks for Abu and Paul just sat there and like, he was crestfallen because he was like, oh, I really wanted that. Oh, I just, I don't think I can spend 15 for it.

And just hearing the conflict he's going through because he was now getting priced out of something that he really needed for his strategy was so glorious for me. Yeah. Or in the sacrifice, like, oh, sorry. Oh yes.

Well, also the flip side of that in auctions, when you like stress over bidding, what you're bidding, you, you set down your bid, you bid something that's a little uncomfortable for you and the next person goes, yeah, I wasn't even interested in that and just pay zero for something else. And she's like, oh, you could have gotten it. All right. I was just saying in the sacrifice where like, oh, I'm sorry. Did the waters not come in for all of your farmers because I stole from your ventral God?

I'm sorry. I made your farmers not produce money. Yeah. That is very satisfying. The story I was thinking of was two games ago, Greg and I are neck and neck. We are literally tied and I think Paul had given the most. So Paul got three gifts, but Greg was closer in starting order and we'll talk about the differences between it. Greg got two gifts and I got one and we were literally neck and neck. I lost by a point. So one extra dollar in the donation plate could have made a difference.

That was Greg enjoying my misery. Oh yeah. Well, it had happened multiple times that came to where I bid six to your five and you know, it was your six to my six and then you were closer in turn order. Yeah. But those are the rules. Well, and that's something we'll talk about when we talk about the 20th anniversary edition is the fact that turn orders, it's not just a clockwise around the table. Right. Shall we get started on the prompts then?

Sure. The first one we have is weight and complexity. So on a scale of one to five, no decimals, how would you rate the weight or complexity of Amun-Re? Dave, why don't you get us started? I think this is about a three because the rules overhead is fairly simple. You kind of move from there's only three different things you can buy. There's a few different auctions that can be explained.

This game can be taught, I think pretty quickly, but being able to bend the game toward your will, then that starts to increase the complexity a little bit is to like I was talking about earlier when I couldn't make a Providence churn money. Well now I'm thinking, oh, I could give $2 and get one gift and earn so much money or I can give $12 and actually earn more money because my farmers are paying more.

Something like that when you start to see all the different interrelated things going on and how you can start to influence that, I think that bumps it up a little bit. Yes. Greg, what do you have for weight or complexity? I also put it at a three. I feel like it's a generous three. There's some nuance to this game and I feel like both the auctions, well, the Providence auctions and the silent auction that is the offerings phase do take a while to grasp and kind of see the depth to it.

And compared to the point salad games of today, I don't think this feels like a very straightforward game as far as the actual mechanics of it and teaching of it. So it's a three, but barely. I had never thought of it being a public auction and a private auction. I really like your description because it's totally apropos, right? And when I was rating it for weight or complexity, I thought modern art is probably a one because it's just five or six different types of auctions.

And so you just have to understand how those work. And it's so straightforward. And this one isn't too far down the line. I consider this to be like an auction adjacent game because yes, the auction is a big piece of it, but you also need to understand how the set collection piece works, right? Or building the engine. And so I had it as a two. Greg, if you say it's a generous three or it's a heavy two, I mean, I feel like we're close to saying the same thing. In my book, I had it down as a two.

So strategy, let's talk about strategy here because I know that we've talked about luck and there's no fixed strategy, but how would you rate it on a scale of one to five, Greg? I put this as a two. It's a very tactical game. You have to be flexible in everything you do. You get a little bit of long-term strategy and prioritize your bids from the cards you get. If you're getting harvest cards, it means you can value certain provinces more than others. And same thing if you get scheme cards.

Well, then you have to make sure that you're trying to reach those schemes, earn points. But even that, it's like the game's telling you which way to go. It's not something that is a strategy that you can set out to do from the start. And you really have to just react to what the other players are doing and how they're valuing things. All right. Yeah, I'm on the fence here with this. I mean, I think it's a three. I hear Greg's reasoning there on it being a two.

But when I think of the strategy as just getting points, then yeah, it's a two because you build pyramids, you either go for sets, you go for most on a side, you go for your cards, try to have some money at the end. That's a two. But when I think of the strategy is how am I going to earn money and turn that money into points, then that starts to get a little deeper for me as to how I can, you know, the alliances I need to build, reading the other players, all of that.

I think that starts to make it a little heavier for me. Yeah, I will agree with one of you. I'm agreeing with Dave. I had it down as a three. Partially, it's because this game is really opaque to me. And I think, Greg, you mentioned the emerging temporary alliances. I think that's a key component of it, and that ratchets up the difficulty for me, because when we talked about doing what the game is telling you to do in brass, that makes sense because the cards are telling you what to do.

But in this, it's like the players are telling you what to do. It's the cards I buy or don't buy really aren't telling me which way I should be going, or especially if I can't draw a victory point card. But it's what can I get for the provinces? What can I afford? And then what does that do for my strategy? And because there are a couple of levels to that calculation for me, it's still a three. Maybe with more practice, it would be more streamlined, but I'm not there yet. That's fair.

Yeah, I mean, it's close for me too, because I do see what you guys are saying about the auctions especially where there's multiple layers of depth to those auctions and how you can try to manipulate other players. So maybe only calling it a two is my shortcoming. I don't know. You have a good mind for the game, so it may be more familiarity with it. So then luck. How much do you think luck plays a factor? On a scale of one to five, no decimals.

And I'll just jump in here and say, I also had this as a three, and I don't know if this is my take on our group's meta that we think cards have undue influence on it. Because when you think about it, at least in the base game, the only place where cards come into it are when you're buying cards or taking them as gifts. And then also when you're drawing the sequence of provinces that are going to be put up for auction.

So in the New Kingdom epoch of two games ago, we drew four provinces in a line and basically meant that a couple of strategy cards or some of those schemes were going to be unachievable because you were going to not be able to have them all on a side or something like that just based on what was going to be remaining. And that was luck. Luck canceled out a couple of schemes for that game. So for me, that's a three. What do you guys have it as? I put it as a three as well.

I had originally been thinking it was almost a four, but Dave and I had a conversation about this yesterday where he pointed out that if you're not getting the cards, it's up to you to change the game so that if you don't have those cards, that means somebody else probably does. So don't let them get the provinces they need to complete those or make them pay high for them. And I hadn't really been thinking about that level of it. So I think that there is another layer.

Obviously, I'm still learning things about this game as well. And I'll still keep it at a three because I still feel like we've definitely had games and everybody's playing at the same level. There are games that will be won by who got the right card draw at the right time or who just got blessed the whole way through with Harvest cards to make their life easy. Right. Dave, how about you? Yeah, I think it's a three. I'm actually maybe closer than you guys are to giving it a four.

But then again, I mean, we've talked about mitigating that card draw. But I think about the last two games we played, I did not see one Harvest card, the cards that you play during the Harvest phase to increase or somehow augment your income in two games. I never saw one. But then again, the first game I scored very low. Well, you always say three is a cop out. So commit. No, in this case, though, I don't think it's a four because I'm sure the cards are there.

But we'd already talked about the cards to death. I mean, you can mitigate that you play the listen to what the cards are telling you to do and try to follow that. But really, it's a player versus player game more than it's a game versus player. Well, and I think a four would mean that luck determines the outcome more often than player skill. And I think even calling it a three, I feel like that's not fair to the game in that sense.

I think it only is a three when all players are playing at the same level, which I'll say may not be an optimum level, but we're playing at the same level. Right. Fair. Yeah. And I think for our group, I feel like the first pass through the deck and maybe this is backing up what you said, Dave, about buy more cards early. That first pass is when you're going to pick up those victory point schemes, because after the first pass, we're all sitting on them. Yeah, absolutely.

So the second and third passes for the deck. And I think we had three passes last night. There weren't any victory point schemes to be found because we were holding them until they were dead and then we were turning them in for a gold. But we were trying to hold off until the deck reset before we threw them out there. So it'd be that much more unlikely to get shuffled in. All right. Theme. How much do you think the theme has been integrated with Amun-Re? Same scale, one to five. Greg?

If it hadn't been for some particularly thematic posts I've seen in the past, I probably would have given this a two. Like I don't, I didn't buy into this theme, but I feel it now. And so I give it a four now, but that's, I think that's a willful transition on my part to say I'm going to get into the idea that we're investing in making monuments in Egypt. But I'm referring of course to Joe Gola's post that I think you introduced me to Todd.

Are you referring to the best session report of all time? Yeah, I mean, I think it's easy to ignore the theme, but when you get into it and you understand how it all works, it all makes sense. Yeah. Dave, how about you? What would you have for theme? Well, like all, almost all Kinesia games, this is clearly a five when it comes to theme. I don't know if you're missing the forest for the palm trees or what it is, but it's look, the farmers are on the Nile.

You want the flood to come in to irrigate the farms. The camel traders are in the desert. We give to Amun-Ra for the floods to come in and it's those people who are getting the gifts and it's really the camel traders who are stealing from Amun-Ra and going off into other villages. And then when it all gets wiped and only the stones and pyramids remain, then new farmers have to come back in for a whole new epoch.

I mean, we kind of joked about him throwing out Gola's session report, which is a fantastic piece of writing. And if anybody who hasn't read it must immediately go out and read it. But he found the narrative in the game and every game we play, we can find those same narratives that you're broken down pyramids over there and smiting the gods and things like that. That's all in the game.

I mean, it's there if you want to see it, but you can play this very mechanically and ignore it if you want as well. Yeah. I also had it as a four with Greg. There is definitely theme here. I'm not giving it a four and it's an abstract. I really enjoy it. I love that board reset. I love the fact that what was left over from the old kingdom is now going to change the value of the provinces now that we revisit them in the new kingdom.

And something that you may not have liked or wanted in the old kingdom, hello, Mendez, may suddenly become very valuable if someone left it with a couple of pyramids on it. Yeah. The thing that I think is going to disconnect for me is in the idea that I'm not really sure who I'm playing. Am I a pharaoh? I mean, why am I bidding against other pharaohs? What is this auction that we're in? I don't understand.

That's the part of it that I don't understand that I'm just going to ignore that part and just enjoy the theme for all the other aspects of it, the growth and the cycle of everything going away and having to rebuild. That all makes sense. Right. I'm a merchant on the Mediterranean in the Renaissance era that's been transported back to 1000 BC. All right. Favorite player count. What is this game best played at? And this is a rhetorical question because the answer is, Greg? Four. No, five.

It's five. Yeah. Only player count. And this is, you have it in your show notes up above and we didn't touch on it. We consider this an only at five game that if you don't have five players, don't play it. I'm a little bit skeptical of that. I don't know. I definitely agree this three is right out, but four, I kind of like the idea of seeing how that might inform strategies based on what provinces are unavailable for that game. But that doesn't mean it's as good as it is at five.

It's just, I'm curious. Well, we played it four recently. I did not enjoy it. I did, but I won. Yeah. There are other reasons that we're going to get into shortly here as to why that also may have been the case. But I agree. I mean, five, it is amazing at five. And if you have the opportunity, then you should definitely give it a shot. Are there newer games that are in the only at five camp? I can't think of any.

I can think of a few old games, which we'll mention later when we're talking similarities. But I can't think of other games where, I mean, I guess there are games like unfathomable or, you know, sidereal confluence or something like at least five. Right. I think sidereal, we say six. But I'm trying to think of other games where five only don't even bother. Yeah. I don't think that there are a lot of publishers that are going to target that, right? No, no. These days you want one to five.

I almost feel that way about Yunnan. Yunnan is still playable at four, but I think it shines best at five as well. Yeah. Fair. Least favorite player count. And I think Greg dropped it there. At least I agree with him that three is right out for me. Did either of you have a different take on least favorite player count? I think Dave's answer is anything other than five. Yeah, two to four are all equally the worst. I don't think it plays two, does it? Or maybe the new one does.

One of them says two on the box. Yeah, the new one you can play it at two. I don't know the rules for that. OK. So, the time. So, boxes can lie and the box on this one says 60 to 90. Do we think that that is a reasonable estimation for the amount of time it takes to play? I think 90 is realistic. It's achievable, but 60 you'd have to be playing with fewer players. Right. Oh, that's true. That's probably why it goes down there because they include those lower player counts.

But I think it's an hour 45 when we play. Yeah. Yeah. In the Gola session report, he also says that it was an hour and 45. That's true. That's true. And I agree. I think I would love it more if we could get it down to 90, but an hour 45 is a good estimation. So now we're going to get to one of the more interesting discussions, I think, for this game in particular. And that is which edition is the best? You have several of them out there.

In my mind, it's a discussion between the OG version, the Hansum Gluck slash Rio Grande version from 2003, or the 20th anniversary edition that was recently released by Alley Cat Games. So do we want to talk about the differences between those two? Sure. The major differences, I mean, obviously, the artwork is completely different, completely ramped artwork, and we can talk about that. But from a game perspective, the differences are that you start the game with a starter scheme.

You get a choice from two. Everybody gets two random starter schemes and has to choose one. There's also an extra scheme in the game. So in the original game, there's, I think, five schemes. All your provinces away from the Nile or towards the Nile, north and south, east and west, and then nine farmers or seven card draw symbols. You've added in this version, if all of your provinces are adjacent to each other as an extra scheme card.

I don't know if they made any other balance changes to the cards, but just that adds extra cards to the game. And I think is an interesting change. The other big change they made is player order. Player order is random. And then at the end of each round, your player order for the next round is determined by who made the highest offering.

So instead of it just going clockwise from the single person that made the highest offering, it goes from most to least is your new player order and ties keep the same order. So I think that's a great change. I think I like that. Yeah, because player order matters in any auction game. In many auction games, going late is good.

But in this auction game, you know, when I used to play the game where I'm going to try to get something for cheap, so maybe I bid three on this province and then I get out bid and I'm like, oh, dang. Now I think I've come around to first time out of the shoot. And unless I'm going to try to push everybody's auctions up, but first time out of the shoot, I'm going to bid the appropriate amount on a province. And if you're going to try to take it from me, you can overpay for it.

Right. And for those reasons, I'm not as fond of it because it sets you up for the rich to get richer because the person who gave the most is in all likelihood doing so because they've got the farmers, they're going to get more money. Same thing with the person that comes in second, it's probably more financially beneficial. But now they get first choice of province. And that means the people that either gave least or stole are going last. You know, they don't get second shot at the province.

I feel like it's more regimented and I see where it's more in consonance with modern gaming. But I don't know, there's something nice about being after the person that gives the most, even if I had to steal because now I at least have a shot at it. I don't know. Yeah, I really like the idea that you're the master of your own fate. So if you contribute a lot, you're going to maintain player order.

And there are times when it's good to be early in player order, there are times when it's good to be later in player order. I mean, I think at Amun-Re, it's generally better to be earlier. But then again, sometimes I like to see what other people are interested in those auctions before I put my first bid in. Right. Yeah, I'm not sold on it entirely. I think it's kind of nice to have that setting the turn order. There's definitely been games.

I remember a game we played a month ago where I sat to Greg's left and he was the big... Greg's usually the big giver. He's a very giving person. When did that happen? I don't know. I used to be stingy. Yeah. You're often giving the most and getting the three gifts. So sitting to your left, I was pretty much just went second the entire game and didn't really have much control over that unless I was going to out give you. Yeah. Right.

So we'll come back to the turn order and its repercussions when we talk expansions. Let's talk artwork for a second. So they came out with new artwork, it's highly saturated colors, whereas the original version from 2003 is a lot more functional. Thoughts there? Did the artwork change your thoughts about which version edges the other out? You know, not in this one. The new artwork's fine. It looks good on the table.

I'm not excited about it as I am say like the Roxley version of brass or something like that. It's fine. I think some of the cards, they've just got a big picture on the card and very small up in the corner is the iconography for what this card does, which is it's not really hard to read, but it's not as easy to read as the old cards. So I'm going to plead get off my lawn on this one. And I like my old RGG edition. Yeah, I agree. I'm in favor of the OG version on this one.

By the way, I may prefer the original version of the game, but we have the luxury of being able to choose which version we want to play. If my only choice is we're playing the 20th anniversary edition or not playing Amun-Re at all, then the currently available edition is great. And you can always strip out as much of the chrome as you want or leave it in. That's up to you. How about you, Greg? Yeah, I don't have a strong preference. I would be happy to play either version.

They're both very functional and they do the job. The newer one is more brightly colored and all that. To me, that's not a huge thing or a huge benefit to the game. So yeah, I'm really on the fence, but I would be happy to play either. I probably would edge out the old version just because I tend to prefer the readability of the board a little more. All right. Yeah. So then expansions. And the only expansions to this game are the modules that were included in the 20th anniversary edition.

So we don't necessarily have to go through and describe them all, but it's worth noting that we played with all of them, at least the ones that support five players. And what are your thoughts about what they brought to the game? More. More? More. More of everything. I mean, really, that sums it up. It's more stuff to consider in the value of the provinces, more cards to add to the deck. I mean, it's just more.

You know, I think it brings it in line with more modern gaming where there are more outs to get points. If you're not getting points on the side, you can get points another way, either by building your own tomb. I think they're interesting, but I don't think the game needs it. Right? Yeah. I'm definitely going to invoke Goo's razor on this one. Goo being my BGG moniker. But expansions that just add more, I don't need them in my life. I don't need just more things going on in a game.

I like the distillation of a tight game. I've been reading somehow just coming across a lot of talk about the Dune Imperium expansions. Those to me are just more going on, more stuff that dilutes the base game. That was the impression I was starting to get from the new expansions is that it's kind of taken away some of that juicy tension that I'm here for the game, that we're not in the same kind of competition because you're just going to go build your temple now or something like that.

It becomes a different kind of game that I would rather go play a different game designed to do that rather than layer this kind of stuff onto that tight, small, almond ring. But does that then open up more strategy? For example, the afterlife expansion. Instead of building pyramids, you can build a tomb and you can invest in your own personal tomb that you're going to build over two epochs.

And if you're doing that, you're probably not competing on the board as much for pyramids and stuff, which means that it's going to be easier for somebody else to get those points. But Todd and I were neck and neck at the very end with him with his fully completed tomb and me with most on a side on both sides. Right. And you etched me out by a point. I didn't like that. The other thing that... No, I'm fine. Look, I didn't like losing by a point.

I admit it, but you played a better game and that's fine. The thing I didn't like was it allowed me to not have to compete. I had this easy out that all I had to do is buying these tiles and it was reflected in the auctions because there was only one auction in the entire game that went to 15. Everybody else paid no more than 10 for the entire game. And then we went back to the original version last night and we saw bids going up of 21.

We saw lots of 15s because we have to compete, we're forced to, and that's what I'm looking for in this game. I'm not looking for a, that's OK, you have an out that's just as good and is going to score you an equivalent number of points. If I want to play that game, I've got lots of modern ones that do it, but I don't want that from Amun-Re.

Yeah. Well, and two things on that tomb expansion specifically is it's a big conversation in the OG guild that having player boards or having your own player area and Amun-Re is the kind of game where our player area is shared. It's the board. But adding that tomb, now you've got your own little side player area, so it becomes a little more heads down over here.

But the other thing is too, is it also added an element of what we were complaining about the card draw because I drew some of those tomb tiles and my first two were like plus one point and you guys were like getting a farmer, getting some gold. Like what? I don't want one point in the beginning of the game that does nothing for me. So I invested a lot of money for one point, whereas I forget what somebody got a card. Yeah, money and a gift.

Yeah. An extra gift, a card, all these different things you could be getting. And the first two that I drew were that one point. I feel like this is like an outbid in St. Providence card. Like here's another place in the game where I can just draw crappy stuff and have more to complain about. All right. Most recognizable comparison, highest ranking game that reminds you of Amun-Re. I went kind of far field on this one. It's a little bit of a stretch, but I went with Indonesia. Oh, nice.

Mainly because of the idea that you're trying to build up an economy. Your personal wealth really matters a lot. And at some point in the game, whatever you built in the first era of the game in the next era might belong to somebody else. So you can't get too attached to it. You've really got to focus on your personal economy and just doing well in each era on its own. Right. I like it. Yeah, I kind of punted on a little bit. I'm going to say the Kinesia auction trilogy.

And if I have to get specific, I'll just say Medici. OK. Now, why did you pick that one out of the trilogy? Well, Medici, it's kind of like set collection, I guess. We're moving up the track, so you're kind of focused on a certain color or a certain one. So that one felt closest, you know, closer than Raw or Modern Art. Right. Well, Modern Art, I guess, is more set collection. Right. Well, then I'll take the easy one because we left it.

None of us picked Amun-Re for this category when we did the episode on Raw, but we did discuss Amun-Re being the easy pick. So I'll go ahead and say, you know, reflexive here and choose Raw. I mean, it's Kinesia, it's Egypt, it's auctions, it's interim scoring, it's set and reset. There are a lot of similarities here. So for me, that'll be the easy one. That's good. Yeah, it's contentious bidding. It's... Yep. Yep. No, it's a great comparison. All right. So less recognizable comparison.

So a game that's not rated as highly that reminds you of Raw in some manner of respect. Dave, why don't you start us on this one? Well, Greg mentioned it earlier, but I'm going to say Yunnan. That opening auction has a similar kind of feel where that the bidding track and that you get your thing and then you build your stuff. You try to accomplish stuff with what you get. So unfortunately, Yunnan is outside of the top 750, so it qualifies for this category. Yeah, that's one of the ones...

Unfortunately. No, that's one of the episodes that we did for us because we really liked that one, or at least you guys do. Yeah. I'll keep getting that in there. I will. How about you, Greg? I chose Egesia for this. Nice. Another Egyptian themed game. It's on the Nile. You're building up pyramids and temples. And so yeah, just thematically, it feels very similar and you're going through multiple ages in that one. Each trip down the aisle is a new age.

Yeah, I mean, that one's a little bit more of a snowball and a worker placement game. So the gameplay is very different. Yeah. Similar feel as far as theme goes. I like it. Wow. For two guys who picked four for theme on this game, you're really leaning heavily into the Egyptian theme. Right? Well, for my least recognizable one, I'll move away from Egypt and I'll head out into the Pacific. I went with another Henitia game and that is Blue Lagoon.

And it's the watery love child of Amun-Re and through the desert. In Blue Lagoon, it's an area control battle that you are managing by the spread of settlers and you have to create chains of them like you would in through the desert. But you are either laying down a settler or you're establishing a village in the first stage and then there's a board reset. And what's left are the villages. And in the second phase, you can only expand from villages that you had placed during the first.

It has that idea of board reset and then trying to make something out of what happened in the previous epoch. Nice. House rules. How would you improve the game? Are there any house rules that should be applied? Like I said earlier, I'm not totally opposed to that turn order rule as borrowed from the 20th anniversary edition. But I will say we looked this up last night after tons of plays between all of us. We still had to look it up.

It is unclear in the rules that you have to buy all your power cards at once or whether you can buy them one at a time. Right. So I think we kind of on the spot made that official and it is in an errata. So I don't know if you still call that a house rule that it's been a rata that when you're purchasing cards, you buy them all at the same time and not one at a time paying the increments as you go. Agreed on all counts.

And by the way, I think I like it better saying what you're going to buy and then buying it and then living with what you did. Yeah, I think I do too. If for no other reason, game speed. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be one of those things that required a new evaluation each time. And my goal is to enhance my enjoyment through brevity. I do like some of the changes that they made in the 20th anniversary edition with again, the player order.

I actually think that having some more cards in the deck isn't a bad thing, especially having that extra set of schemes, but I don't think the game absolutely needs it. I was surprised how quickly we were getting through the deck last night. I mean, I think we got through it three times. Yeah. And I think that I'm putting this in quotes.

Part of the problem with the game is that it's really easy for people to get shut out of things because you go through the whole deck by the start of the second epoch and people are hoarding things. They're not going to see what you want to see. It's got some San Juan to it. It does. So if this game is being played at game night, then what do you want to play afterwards? What's the double feature game that goes best with it?

I really like what we did on our most recent play and we paired it up with team and co-op games because although it's not a conflict heavy game, it's a contentious auction game where we're kind of pointy elbows kind of thing. And it was kind of nice to, although we did them first to have some cuddle time as well and play some, let's all have some fun together. Right. So like Mysterium, I thought was a great pair up. Nice. All right.

So then I stuck with the Egyptian theme and I chose a game that I really enjoy and that's Valley of the Kings. It is a tableau builder, kind of like San Juan. It has a crumbling pyramid mechanism. So you have a pyramid of cards and when you buy one out of the bottom, the other ones fall down and are available to be purchased by the other players. So you have to be careful about giving something up. And then there's a great decision in there about your point cards only score if you entomb them.

But the cards with the highest point values are also your most effective cards. So you have to start dismantling your deck in order to increase your score. And that is a great balancing act that I enjoy in that game. So for me, it would be Valley of the Kings. I think I played that only once or twice. Yeah. You have to give that another play soon. I thought I hadn't played it. But when you mentioned that you got to entomb them to score them, that sounded really familiar.

And I look up and I do have a play of that game. So we should we should try that again. All right. So I was thinking, you know, this would pair up well with another auction game. I was originally thinking maybe key flower. But now, you know, what Dave said, I'm leaning more towards something lighter. And Dave, you mentioned this earlier, which I think would be a great pairing with this is QE.

I think five player auction games are a lot of fun because you have so much dynamics to the auction and a crazy game like QE where it's really off the rails. It's I think it's a great option either to warm everybody up or to to cool down. Nice. I like it. Yeah, that fits. That's a good pick. If you like fill in the blank, then you might like Amun-Re. What did you find as a mechanism or an aspect? Well, I'll take the routine ground ball here.

And if you like auctions, auctions and auctions, then this is you're going to like this. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, similar. I said if you like real estate speculation and tight auctions. Right. So auctions, auctions and auctions and real estate speculations. Yes. But I said it that way because I also had auctions, but specifically auctions with fixed bid increments, because this isn't a outbid someone by one game.

And here's where I mentioned, Yunnan, because this is where I felt like that was a great example of, OK, I'm going to outbid your nine bid by going to 12, but then the next person has to go to 15. So if you like that kind of chunky auction style, then you're going to like Amun-Re. Yeah. But I also don't forget it's got the blind auction, too. That offering phase is another auction. Yeah, it is. And I've only recently started thinking of it that way.

I'm not going to spend as much in this auction because I need to save for the other auction. You know, right. I think that's the right way to think about it. So thanks for sharing that one. All right. So if you don't like fill in the blank, then you're not going to like this. And OK, auctions, auctions, auctions. I get it. But did you have another thing that might dissuade someone?

I would say if you don't like having to win from behind where maybe you've lost it all in the first round and still have half the game to go, you might have trouble with this game. Because I know that's how I felt in some of my early plays of this game where it's like, oh, I thought I was out of the game. And then what the game has a way of balancing it out. So when everybody's playing well, you can be on top in the first epoch and people will take it down.

So Dave, did you have one for if you don't like the fill in the blank? I mean, we talked it to death already. But if you don't like being feeling at the mercy of your card draw. And I've talked about so much on how you can mitigate it and value them differently. But really, in the end, it can really feel like you're just getting punched in the jaw when you draw your card. So if you don't enjoy that feeling, you're not going to like it because this has it in spades.

Yeah. For me, I had convoluted auction evaluations. And by that, I mean, there are so many different ways or factors that go into trying to determine what a province is worth. It's the benefits that are printed on it. It's the items that have been left over from the previous era, how it might work with the other provinces you have, what you think the other players might do.

And because that is such a dynamic landscape, more so than just, OK, I noticed that Dave's been collecting whichever the artist is in modern art. There's a lot more that goes into it. And if you don't want to, I won't say if you don't want to be weighed down by it, or if you can't easily just set it aside and just say, I'm going to play chaotically and see how this works out, which is kind of what I resorted to. But if you don't like playing like that, then you may not like Amun-Re.

So you're saying if you don't like real estate speculation. Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. We need to play a choir some more and then I'll let you know. So did this game replace a previous one? Not for me. I mean, this was a new experience for me. It was kind of early in my learning to love auction games. And certainly not the first auction game I ever played, but really where I started to crave auction games. This was early enough in my gaming hobby that it made its own place.

It's hard to say it replaced something for me because this was one of the first probably 10 modern games that I owned. It came out in 03 and I probably bought it in 07 or 08, something like that. And now maybe earlier, probably 04 or 05. So it was one of my early games. So it's hard to say it replaced anything. But with that said, we were talking about earlier games that play best at five or maybe only at five. El Grande is one of those for me and also Prince's of Florence.

And so I would say this probably replaced Prince's of Florence, but that doesn't mean I don't want to play POF right now because I love that game. I knew if I let you run long enough, you'd run into it. So that's what I had down for exactly that reason was Prince's of Florence was our other must play at five game and we just don't. If we have five, we're reaching for this. Yeah. I forgot about that.

Well, this one, it's been a little maligned lately, so maybe we will bring Prince's of Florence out. But I don't think everybody likes Prince's of Florence in our group. I'm not a fan. That's an example of an auction game that I just never really liked. The auction in that game always leaves me feeling dissatisfied, which maybe is my problem, not the game's problem. So has this game since been replaced? And if so, by what?

I'll jump in and say that the answer is similar to what my answer was in our last pod, which was for Brass, and that's Age of Steam. If we're reaching for games for five players, even we're finding a map and we're playing Age of Steam first before we play this one, which is a little bit unfortunate because I have more anxiety over playing Age of Steam than I do this, but for me, I feel like it has been replaced by it. I hear what you're saying. Age of Steam feels like such a different game.

It's a different flavor. Right. But yeah, you're right. We are reaching for Age of Steam and these are kind of similar weight levels or pretty close. I'm thinking Yunnan hits the table more than Amun-Re does and it kind of scratches a similar itch. My preference is Amun-Re, but then again, if I played Amun-Re more than four times a year, I'd probably be sick of it. You know, Yunnan I could play more frequently. That's too bad. Yeah, I agree with both of you.

I think the only other game I would mention is maybe Keyflower. I know that it was definitely a while after Keyflower came out, but it was the one, it was the auction game that we were headed to for five players. Absolutely. So it definitely, I think in our gaming group, Keyflower was the go-to game over Amun-Re. Yep, I agree. So soundtrack, what music would you want to listen to while playing this game? Well I'll go first here because my answer is I feel like the game needs silence. Oh, okay.

So this one I'm actually not offering anything. I think you suggested something last night and then I didn't. Oh no, that was for Mysterium. Yes. But I mean, my brain's moving, you know, 100 miles a minute the whole time and I just feel like this could be because we like to table talk and because I'm thinking so hard at the same time, I kind of like this, the silent tension over the board. All right, but if you had to play something, what would you play, Greg?

I actually did the assignment, teacher. What I found is the soundtrack to Moon Knight, the Marvel series, has a nice Egyptian feel to it. It's actually composed by an Egyptian contemporary composer. Nice. It's a nice background. Solid, great pick. Maybe a little too active for exactly the reasons that Dave mentioned, but still it evokes the theme well. Right. I had the same starting point as I've had on previous pods, which is looking up the playlist on Melodice.

That led me to Hellenic musical instruments. And I understand that Hellenic means Greek, so I'm not staying in the right region, but Hellenic musical instruments by Petros Taboris was really in alignment with what I would think to have in the background. Dave, I agree. We often forget to do this when we're playing. So this question, I think I love the potential of it, but we forget to actually do it.

And the honorable mention would be the Total War Pharaoh soundtrack, which is a soundtrack for a video game by Ian Livingstone and Ed Watkins. Rating on BGG scale, one to 10. How do you rate Amun-Re, Greg? I put an eight, but it's probably nostalgia that's keeping it there. It should probably be a seven. All right. Dave? It was my first game I ever rated a 10, and I'm going to keep it there. It's still, despite its flaws, it is a very meaningful game to me.

I mean, I learned a lot about how to be a better gamer by studying this game and playing this game so much. And we played it a few times recently and after having not played it for a little while, and it just, it's still delivered and I still love it. Even while I'm complaining the whole time, I'm just still very happy to be playing Amun Re. So it's a 10 for me. Wow. Well, you know, you're consistent because early on you said perfect game. No notes. Done. No notes and podcasts.

So your rating is reflective of that. And for me, it's a solid seven. I don't retain enough details in my brain to make evaluating the provinces any easier. So each time I return to it, I feel like I'm behind the curve and I can be pretty mule headed when it comes to being told how I should be evaluating it. I just start throwing that out the window and figuring out I'll pay what I want to play, darn it, and save what I can to do what I think I want to do.

I think the game should be played fast and loose. And if we played that way, it could jump up to an eight. But for me, it's a seven. So last question, is it replayable? And if so, how often would you want to revisit the game? So Dave, Mr. 10, you won the bid. Yeah. And even though I say it's a 10, yeah, obviously it's replayable for me. But it's not a once a month kind of game. It's a once or twice a year kind of game for me.

And we got a few extra plays in this year because the new edition came out. But really, I'm not learning much new as we play. I don't feel like it has layers to uncover that I want to keep digging into. It's just, you know, it's like a one shot, just like I want that great fun experience. OK, let's move on. Yeah, it's like going to your favorite restaurant and you keep ordering the same thing over and over again because you know what you like. That's exactly right. Yes. That's right.

And we all know how to play. We are all fluent in the game, you know, and that extends to our extended group of players in our group. You know, so it's a great game to pull out once in a while or when we have a larger group than normal. Because usually we're at four, I think, a lot of nights. But I agree. I made the same note about one or two times a year. Yeah, this is still replayable, but it's not week after week at this point. Early on, absolutely.

It was a game I wanted to play again right after finishing it because I wanted to do better and I could see how to do better. Right. Or at least I thought I could. Yeah. And for me, it's replayable. I could play it every couple of months, but just a base game. I'm not a fan of the expansions in the new one. No, they can stay off my lawn. That's right. As Amun-Re intended. So with that, the new kingdom has come to an end. You know, for our next episode, we will be Mountebank's of bag building.

Thanks for being. Hey, thanks for being a part of this episode. I really enjoyed the conversation. I think we got a lot of good stuff here. So thanks you two. It was a lot of fun to be here. All right. Thanks guys. Thank you for listening to Replayable. Support for our podcast comes from listeners like you. You can support us at patreon.com slash replayable. Thank you for your support. You can find us online at replayable.fm, on Twitter as replayable FM, and on Instagram as replayable FM.

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