President Obama was in town Monday evening this week. I noticed when it took me 50 minutes to get to my destination Monday night. Normally my commute is 15-20 minutes. Fortunately I was finally able to arrive, and as it happened one of the other players was also delayed.
We had intended to play the new Agricola expansion: Farmers of the Moor. But with the late start and the need to parse rules we demurred, and we shifted to a known game, Primordial Soup.
Years ago someone brought the first German edition, Ursuppe, to my house a couple of times. The game club played it to generally good reviews. But I missed both sessions. Years later I have finally discovered this gem, playing it 3 times so far in 2010.
But I will add that I did not enjoy Primordial Soup as much the second time I played. On that second play we had added the 5-6 player expansion. This really burdened the game with longer waits for your turn, and a lot more gene cards to be considered. This week we played the base game with 4 players, and it really clicked well for me.
In our game I decided to seek movement advantage. I grabbed Movement 1 right away, and I did not spawn a third amoeba initially. This gave me the cash to invest in more genes more quickly. I got the gene which makes movement free, and then I upgraded to Movement 2. I found this combo amazingly good. While other players got some cool genes, I was generally able to travel on the board to wherever I needed for feeding. Inevitably I did have a few amoebas die, but I ensured my survivors were on hand to enjoy the new food source.
I pretty much had my way in our game, and the other players took note of my success. I am sure they will strive to prevent me from doing this same combo again in the future. After this game of Primordial Soup, I find myself very happy that I was able to grab a copy of this fun game off the prize table at our Game Fandango earlier this month.
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