Stately Play Decathlon 2022!

Yes, Table 5 isn’t moving at all. At this rate, it will be December until we finish.

Full rules can be found here: https://images.zmangames.com/filer_public/ce/89/ce890bfd-227e-4249-a52a-976bc5f20d19/en_gaia_rulebook_lo.pdf

Here’s how final scoring works:

Final Scoring Tiles

For each final scoring tile on the scoring board, players gain VP based on progress on the corresponding ranking track:

The highest-ranked player gains 18 VP.
The second-highest gains 12 VP.
The third-highest gains 6 VP.

In case of a tie, for each tied player, add the VP for the highest remaining rank. Divide the total points evenly among those players.

Example: Two players share the highest rank: they add the VP for the highest and second-highest ranks together and divide them evenly (18+12=30 VP; each of them gains 15 VP).

The six final scoring tiles are: (each game will have two of these)

  1. Owns the most structures that are part of federations (the Lost Planet’s mine counts as a structure).
  2. Owns the most structures (the Lost Planet’s mine counts as a structure).
  3. Colonized the most different planet types (including Gaia Planets and the Lost Planet).
  4. Colonized the most Gaia Planets.
  5. Colonized in the most space sector tiles (at least 1 structure per sector, including the Lost Planet).
  6. Built the most satellites. (The Ivits’ space stations count as satellites.)

Research Scoring

For each level 3, 4, and 5 you have reached or passed on the research board, gain 4 VP (e.g., at level 5 in “Navigation,” you gain 4+4+4=12 VP).

Resource Scoring

Gain 1 VP for every 3 credits, knowledge, or ore you have (in any combination).

Winner

The player with the most VP wins the game. In case of a tie, the tied players share the victory.

On your specific questions:

You can spend 3 Q.I.C. (Quantum Intelligence Cubes aka “green cubes”) as an Action (uses a turn) to “rescore” a Federation token - you get the points and any resources a second time.

The purple planets are “Transdim Planets”. They cannot be built on. However, you can transform a Transdim Planet into a Gaia Planet using a Gaia Project.

Thanks for the update @Caradog, @JaneHatke, and @Notsew12345

I hadn’t thought about mentioning it until now, since most of the players have been in past Decathlons, but to be clear the general expectation is that you check if it’s your turn every day.

Obviously that’s not always possible, but it’s an unspoken agreement on SP and in most async groups that you try to take a turn daily.

I usually go a step further and suggest players use a private message thread to “ping” each other in case notifications aren’t working, etc. and so that players who might have an extended absence can notify the others in advance.

@Notsew12345 - please feel free to reach out here if you aren’t sure how to get notifications from Stately Play, or on your device from the app, etc.

As always, let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help facilitate!

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Table complete! Good game all!

First completed game, just picked something with tech. But these Nevlas are amazing - I just got such a huge power income and kept going and going and going.

Each Gaia planet I colonized on last turn was worth 7 (4 for round, 3 from tech) and I exploded into 5 mines. That then allowed me to take most structures and most satellites.

Fun and better than terra mystica I reckon

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Oooo… and I got the cool little lost planet!

impressive score. agreed on “fun and better than Terra Mystica”.
and i like TM and have played it a lot.

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Good game!

I don’t get this game at all. I’m surprised I was that close to second. :slight_smile:

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Great game!

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It hasn’t clicked with me at all, and I want to like the game. Equally surprised to be second :smirk:

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Table 7 is all wrapped up. You guys still had a lot of gold available. Couldn’t do anything with it?

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Firstly, I’d like to congratulate myself on behalf of myself scoring nearly 1st place in a game in which I had no idea what in the actual fuck I was doing.

Secondly, or kind of a 1a… there’s gold in this game?

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Congrats @irishdomer08!

Part of the problem with the game is the presentation of information in the game. I have to play a game with the rulebook pdf open in a browser. There is an added challenge in that on BGG when you read strategy discussions, they only speak in code. So you have to read the strategy in the code, look at the PDF to decode, and then look in the game to see if you can match the pictures of things with things in the PDF rulebook.

So while I know what this means now, something like: AC + RL + m - is not super helpful when you have to decode all of that, and then even when you figure out that AC = Academy, have to figure out what that looks like in the game, and the steps to building one. Which is not always intuitive.

There is the added problem that sometimes if you want to click on something to see what it will do, like picking a tile, if you touch it, you take it, so there is no way to just view it by like holding it.

That all said, the more I read about individual faction strategies as I play more, the more I like the game. It is a rather short game in rounds I think, and my current belief is that your first 2 rounds setup are very pivotal to your success. But the game is absolutely growing on me.

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Lol. The yellow resource. I call it gold. I’d imagine if I bothered to look at the rules again they have some appropriately science fiction-y name for it like intergalactic credits or something

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I do not envy any developer the task of presenting all the information in either this or Terra Mystica. Digidiced games tend to have rough edges and I’m not always a fan of their presentation but they certainly manage to cram all the information you need to find onto the screen…somewhere…

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My guess is that there is some sort of misguided expectation that people who buy the digital app, have played the board game in person.

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A big advantage the app does have is automatically highlighting the types of actions you can do, as well as presenting the different options you might have to pay for building when you do that.

Opening your faction board can also be helpful, once you understand the iconography (always a learning curve in any complex game) you can see the impact of the various buildings.

What the app can’t really show you, of course, is why to do/build those things. :slight_smile:

Bringing that back around to the “gold” (Credits :stuck_out_tongue: ) discussion - as with most economic games, one simple strategy tip is to try to (roughly) balance your economy. Having all those Credits left likely means too much of an emphasis on Trading Stations vs Mines, or at least not trying to maintain a similar level of Ore income to Credit income.

In terms of balance, of course the challenge with this game is that you’ve got Ore, Credits, Knowledge, Power, and QIC to manage - but the general premise still holds that if you aren’t producing enough of one or more of these, you are going to struggle.

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There was some discussion about Power in one of the other threads too but perhaps it’s worth repeating the synopsis here as well - unless you leave the hints on, the app allows you to regularly make the “rookie mistake” of burning Power instead of spending it.

The short version of this is:

  1. Power at level III is spent and then recycles to level I
  2. Power at level II can be BURNED at 2:1

Technically, you are actually “burning” one Power at level II to move another Power from level II to level III, and then it can be spent.

The key thing here is that burning is a destructive process - you lose that Power and have to make an effort to get more Power. Whereas spending and recycling can be repeated over and over with the same “supply” of Power.

All of which is a concern because spending Power is a key way to do other things in the game like generating some extra resources, forming Federations, etc., etc.

That said, at least in Terra Mystica, burning some power early can be an advantage. I don’t know Gaia Project well enough to know if that’s the case and if any of the races can take advantage of early mana burn, but it has its place.

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Oh, yes, to be clear there definitely is a time and place to burn - but one of the consequences of the limitations of being an app is that it’s far too easy to burn without consciously realizing that’s what you are doing… until it’s Round 5 and you suddenly realize you have no Power left! :stuck_out_tongue: