High Frontier 62
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My usual High Frontier opponent returns for another crack at the game, this time with a Core/0/1/2 competitive game. The Full Monty, an aspiration for my 2025 game playing. Feels good to have this accomplished, despite all the mistakes we made, as detailed below.
We played the Quick Start version, where players start with 0 Aqua, draw 12 cards on the first cycle, then sell back for 1 each before starting the second cycle. This worked great on our previous game, but in this game, the patent decks started with really bad cards, and didn’t get any better. Neither of us had viable rockets at the end of the Quick Start round.
This was supposed to be a full, 7 cycle game, but due to miscommunication, it only went 60 turns. Towards the end I was really wondering why my strategy failed so miserably, as I’ve played enough to have a decent feel for how the timing works. But I kept coming up short, and my strategy was predicated on the 12 turns we didn’t play! I think I would have lost regardless, but not by nearly as much.
In any case, I did get done what I wanted, which was to promote a Bernal. In this case, Cancer Hospital, which I homed at the L5s as denoted on the card. Other than that, I only colonized Ceres, which is ridiculously lame with respect to my usual game.
We also made some serious mistakes. We forgot to pull supports after the quick start and didn’t remember that until halfway through the game. I forgot to get my income from having a anchored home Bernal, which cost me 20-30 aqua, at least.
On the positive side, we cranked through the whole game in less than 5 hours. Although it would have been a bit more than 5 had we done the last cycle as we should have. That’s still a pretty good pace for this game, especially with the Bernals.
For the next game, we’re going to use Quick Start and the usual amount of 9 Aqua, just to speed things up a bit in the early game. It should not affect the balance of the game.
For myself, I think for the next quick start game I’m going to focus on the fastest viable stack and not try to optimize it too early. Any stack which can colonize at mass 9 is pretty good, and even mass 13 is workable. Optimizing too early risks Budget Cuts and other setbacks such as Pad Explosions. Better to get something out there as early as possible.
Here is AW’s state at the end of the game, where my Bernels anchored and parked at L5 are not shown:
