New Judges are always welcome (and wanted) to run their own Explorer games. Contact us at explorer-judge@lists.sourceforge.net for details.
The game started with nine teams and six of them were still active (to some extent) when turn 40 came around. This game exposed the importance of team strategy over individual tactics. Some teams, like the Smurfs, understood this concept very well while others, like the Keyboards, just were unfortunate enough to start next to some fast starting, expansive races.
Team Smurf took control of the game around turn 15 and looked unbeatable until
the Soft Drinks all but eliminated Grandpa Smurf with only five turns left in
the game. Turns out that the Soft Drinks had played into the Smurfs' master plan.
While Grandpa was getting hammered, Hefty and Jokey were busy marching through
Cola’s core worlds and harboring a resurrection fleet of colonists for Grandpa.
After the battle was done, Grandpa was sitting pretty on Cola's old home world
and the game was won for the Smurfs.
1. Smurfs - all three players active, 12 homeworlds 2. DA_ORKS - all three players active, 3 homeworlds 3. Trinity - two active players, 6 homeworlds 4. Soft Drinks - two active players, 4 homeworlds 5. Highlanders - one active player, 1 homeworld these other races are listed in inverse order of extinction 6. Simpsons 7. Warbirds 8. Castaways 9. Keyboards
The game started with seven teams and finished with only two teams actively submitting orders. One team, the Elves, were effectively elminated by turn eight. I mention this because as much as anything else this probably decided the outcome of the game.
On turn 5, DareDevil (one of the Comicbook Heros) captured the home world of the Wood Elves and on turn 7, he managed to captured the home world of the High Elves. At the same time the third member of the Elves was being attacked by the Smurfs and Nuts. Some early diplomacy between the Heros and Nuts and the Heros and Smurfs gave DareDevil a chance to develop the worlds he had captured from the Elves while the rest of the galaxy battled. This and the fact that both of the other members of the Heros suffered some initial defeats early on led the Heros to implement a hammer and anvil type strategy. DareDevil built up technology and fleets to attack with and the other members of the Heros built up their defenses for the other races to break their fleets against. This strategy worked fairly well as at one point the Heros were in possession of every home world in the galaxy.
With eight lead changes in this game there was much more to it than just how
the Heros performed. The Alphas were a thorn in the side of both the Heros
and Smurfs. The Alphas had actually captured the home world of Deadpool
(another race of the Comicbook Heros) and threatened to eliminate him from the
game altogether. The Smurfs were in a position early on to dominate the game
but their failure to win a clean victory over the Alphas prevented them from
keeping pace with the other races. Another interesting note about the Smurfs
is that they had treaties, at one point or another, with most of the active
races in the game. What is interesting about this is that none of these
treaties were ever honored to completion. If they were not broken by the
Smurfs (which some were) then they were broken by the other party to the
dismay of the Smurfs. The Nuts were the most balanced of any of the teams.
They were in position to challenge the Heros for control of the galaxy until
DareDevil terminated his treaty with them early and attacked them while they
were still building technology to combat him.
1. Comicbook Heros - all three players active, 20 homeworlds 2. Nuts - one active player, 1 homeworld 3. Babylon_5 4. The Smurfs 4. Alphas 6. Alcoholics 7. The Elves
This game started with seven teams of three and when it ended elements of five of the starting teams were still submitting orders. What was interesting about this game was that at one point, there was no team that had all three members in possession of a home world.
The game started out fast and furious (as these team games seem to do). By turn three the Examiners (of the Eye Tyrants) were forced to abandon their home area by Prince of the X-Lovers (of Carmen Electra) team. Within the next few turns others followed as the teams of Highlanders and Schizophrenics laid waste to those around them.
By turn 10 the Schizophrenics had taken the lead (seemingly to stay). They gained this position primarily (but not solely) due to the quick elimination of two members of the X-Lovers team. By turn 13 (game not even half over yet) four of the original teams were down to one active race a piece.
Throughout this whole period of turbulence, ElderOrb of the Eye Tyrants kept quiet, made peace with the major warring races, put together a supporting alliance of single race teams, and built up an industrial and technological base that was just simply frightening. Around turn 20, the Eye Tyrants crusade against the Schizophrenics began, primarily spearheaded by Prince and Laibach (of BlackFrancais). With me, myself, and i (of the Schizophrenic team) being kept preoccupied by his allies, ElderOrb was free to concentrate on removing the last of the Highlander and Beta teams and resurrecting his teammate in exile. When the game ended, only the Eye Tyrants had all three of there team members in possesions of home worlds and Elder Orb had a power ranking that was at least four times greater than the next most powerful race.
1. Eye Tyrants - all three players active, 10 home worlds 2. Black Francais - two active players, 5 home worlds 3. X-Lovers (of Carmen Electra) - two active players, 4 home worlds 4. Schizophrenics - two active players, 2 home worlds 5. Betas 6. Highlanders 7. The Elves
This was the first ever Galaxy Explorer tutorial game. The main point of this special interest tournament was to bring as many new players into the Galaxy Explorer orbit as possible.
Hence, the teams consisted of two players each - a tutor (a battle hardened Galaxy Explorer veteran) and a pupil (a hopeful novice or aspiring apprentice).
The game started with 8 teams in a galaxy of size 196. Every race started with a lonely but fully developed home world, to give them time to practise not only battle skills, but also development acumen.
By the end of the game only two teams (Empire and Corleone) retained two active players and really pretended to the overall victory.
At turn 40 Noghri, the leader of Empire, took two home worlds. One of them belonged to Free_Radicals, and the other one has seen four rulers - first its unhappy original owner, then Noghri, then Vito Corleone, and then again Noghri.
At the same time Vito Corleone narrowly missed the only remaining home world of Mandalorians, an already detached player of team Empire, while Mike Corleone lost one of his four home worlds to Mordor, the only surviving and until very end extremely passive member of the team Forces_of_Evil that lost his partner early in the game.
The final team standings looked as follows:
1. Empire - 2 active players, 8 home worlds 2. Corleone - 2 active players, 6 home worlds 3. Forces_of_evil - 1 active player, 2 home worlds 4. Scapegoats 5. TeapotDomeScandal 6. Team_07 7. Team_06 8. Chaos
The full archive of the Judge reports for this game is available
for download here (442 KB). Its publishing has
been consented to by all players of Academy1 who unanimously decided not
to object to this last wish of the Judge.
Team game Crescent started on June 12, 2003 at galaxy@edorf.net .
The plan was to run this fierce battle of 4 three-player teams for 40 (or less) turns with much higher than usual partial bombing conversion percentages (0.35 and 0.65 instead of the traditional 0.10 and 0.35).
On top of that, each player started with a very powerful and fully developed planetary system. In order to add more mystery to the opening, the race names and their Hall of Fame status, as well as team names and their composition were not revealed by the Judge.
Among the most prominent new features undergoing field test in this game was cargo trade at planets and asteroids, as well as the XML report format introduced as of the new game engine version 2.9.
As expected, the game ended early. By turn 22, the team Triumvirate (Caesar, Crassus, Pompeius) established Pax Romana by totally eliminating all other teams (Cannon-Fodder, Fiction, and finally SpaceWizards) in a classy sequence of peace treaties and backstabs.