Star Trek: Ascendancy

There really isn't any way to take them away though, so there is an element of inevitability to the game.

The ability to take away Ascendancy would make this a ten hour game and it also wouldn't make much sense.

I've seen 2 Conquest victories. You can wreck people if you can connect and push them. No one can win without their home world which is a big deal.

Michael Barnes wrote: There really isn't any way to take them away though, so there is an element of inevitability to the game.

The ability to take away Ascendancy would make this a ten hour game and it also wouldn't make much sense.

Thats kind of what I figured. The guy who played it is more a pure wargamer than AT player, so I see where he was coming from.

​I played my first game of Star Trek Ascendancy. Three player; I was the Federation. My two opponents didn't have the best time playing this, but I think it was due to a bad draw on their parts and a great draw on mine. My first three systems were civilizations that I was able to hegemonize easily or by a good roll. So I came right out of the gate with a lot of resource production. My opponents, on the other hand, drew virtually no civs, so no chance for hegemony. Of the first six systems drawn by the Romulan player, five had hazards, and only one of them had a civ. The Klingons had a similar barren part of the galaxy.

I realize that they could just colonize those planets, but with very little access to Culture, and the much longer time to resource generation, they were really struggling. At this point I had two Ascendancy, a couple large fleets, and in order to stave off some bitterness, I eased off progressing and just started making first contacts to try to offer them trade agreements to help with some resources. The Romulan player refused, and the Klingon player didn't get much out of it. A bit after this we called the game for time. I had three ascendancy, Romulans and Klingons had two. The Romulan player was thinking he was just getting into a position to come out strong. The Klingons had nothing going for them.

They want to try again to see if they just got fucked by a really bad draw. For my part, I really liked it, even discounting my great start. I want to try the Klingons next, since they seem kind of difficult to use.

A few questions for those that have played it:

1) Does the Federation start out strong while the other two take a while to get going?
2) How many turns usually pass before first contact? Because we went quite a while without it. And even then I just forced it for the sake of the game.
3) Because the Klingons are so combat focused, is there any point in them trying to get a trade agreement?
4) The Romulan player suggested that maybe the game really takes off at Ascendancy level 3 and 4. How true is that?

In our game, the Romulans started strong. Part of this was due to masterfully pitting the Federeation and Klingons against each other. Not with anything mechanical, mind you, this was entirely with above the table, social stuff.

The Federation seemed to get fucked over by not getting a single culture the entire game with their special ability.

The Klingons started slow, got their weapons to 3+ and started to conquer everything in sight late game, eventually winning via tiebreaker with the Romulans.

We did play with one rule wrong, that being we forgot to steal projects when taking over planets with research nodes. I think this is most advantageous to the Federation in that their faction is geared to hegemony and thus the intact capture of enemy installations. With Romulans and even more so with the Klingons, when conquering planets with military might, they are far more likely to blow that stuff up rather than capture it.

So, the Federation was a bit hamstrung in our game. Being forced to devoting resources to military through Josh Look's unmitigated aggression also sapped my ability to win.

Also, as to my poor play, you'll have to excuse me. I had had some Romulan Ale.

I think we had contact by turn three. I think the trade agreements are a huge boost in the early game when developing worlds without civs. In Disgust's example, the Klingon who was forced to colonize could really have used those extra resources to build the installations needed for growth.

The trade agreements really incentivize early contact, but that is all player dependent.

Ascendancy levels 1-2 really set up the rest of the game, which is why the tempo shifts when somebody hits 3.

Still waiting for it to arrive in the UK, some of the online shops I use don't even have a price to put up for it yet.

Supply is limited at the moment in the US, preorders have been out of stock for a while.

Gary Sax wrote: Supply is limited at the moment in the US, preorders have been out of stock for a while.

Yeah, CSI has been on backorder for several weeks.

Apparently it's been showing up in waves, as people are finding it in the shelves in stores, but all of the online vendors still haven't received any. Wondering if that shipping company bankruptcy made them split their shipments up.

The natives are getting restless:

boardgamegeek.com/thread/1652058/persona...gf9s-handling-launch

Oh man, I've been watching this and I cannot take it. On one hand, sure, Kickstarter project, get mad at GF9. But RETAIL product? Are you fucking stupid? Don't preorder a retail product from a game store and then get mad at the publisher for delays---they weren't taking money from you for on-time product. WTF?

Gotta love a good ole BGG nerd rager. I'll agree that GS9 has seemingly if not botched, at least had a bumpy release and have been pretty quiet about it. On the other hand, those proposing that brick and mortar pre orders somehow get communicated up the distribution chain just illustrate the stupidity of the average BGG poster.

Amazon has had it at full MSRP or higher for awhile now, but I see they're expecting some in tomorrow (10/13) that are at a somewhat discounted price ($90). This could be the answer to when we can expect it to hit online retailers.

FWIW, GF9 has been saying that it would be hitting stores over three weeks, this makes week 3. BGG users could stand to learn that BGG is not the hobby as a whole and publishers don't need to pay attention to their little pocket universe. However, I do think fulfilling orders should take priority over having stock for conventions. I'd hate to find out they're selling it at Essen.