prototype
Planet Mars - the First Settlement
Author: Heinz-Georg Thiemann
Year: 2006
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| A Dutch saying goes: you get infected by what you handle. This is more than true for Asia, where the bird flue takes its toll. And in Germany we also have a victim, albeit more innocent, in Heinz-Georg Thiemann, the man behind internet games store 'AllGames4you'. Completely and daily surrounded by games, he apparently got caught by the games virus and developed a game that he took to the Hippodice contest, a yearly games contest organised by the German games club that bears this name. The game was received that well, that the jury made a new category for it: Best Game To Fill A Whole Evening! Well, we like games like that! So how does it play?* |
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Introduction
The players have landed with their ships and enter an untouched world that they want to subjuge. They plant and harvest and search for resources. The surplus is sent to their far home land. But instead of plough and ox the settlers have robots and super robots available to them, as we write the year 2185 and the Terra Incognita is situated on Mars. Do not get Western like sentiments though, because in this rock-hard economic simulation only the smartest can win!
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Description of play:
Land winning. Changing the barren ground into thriving landscapes. On one hand a small part of Mars must be colonised, while at the other hand the bank account has to be filled. First players deal with limited resources and small storing capacity for the produced goods. The needed goods must be produced or paid dearly for in the Mars store. When the shop cannot supply the goods, they can be ordered from Earth, but of course this costs an astronomic amount of money. The land is only slowly being colonised and worked on, where the composition of the ground has to be taken into account, as not every of the four possible goods can be produced on each piece of land. Joining land pieces make labour easier and give extra turnover. The amount of available space however is very small and players will soon try to hinder each other. Robots are used to open up new land. As with everything else in the Mars shop these robots are priced according the laws of supply and demnd. On top of that, the robots need software when they need to produce something different than food. And to function they need energy. If the energy cannot be produced it has to be bought; the need to go to the Monopoly store for this is far from pleasant. Luckily the surplus products that are not needed can be sold to the Warehouse that pays well if a competitor needs it badly. But a surplus does not occur very often, as the development of the equipment devours resources too. The goods in an owned warehouse do not get spoiled anymore if there is sufficient capacity. With the aide of finished gems luxury goods can be traded that are either valuable or give extra actions to perform. 'Planet Mars - die erste Siedlung' is all in all a complex simulation where the goods flow is very interconnected. On the other hand the game is not complicated, but each round it requires anticipating decision making and overview.
Planet Mars - die erste Siedlung, Heinz-Georg Thiemann, 2006 - 2 to 5 players, 12 years and up, 120 minuten
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*© German text: Oliver Kühlwein - Hippodice Spieleclub - www.hippodice.de
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