Pax Transhumanity: Juan R, Matt W, tomchick, and Tom Mc take humanity to THE NEXT LEVEL!

I have not played Transhumanity before. Like @Matt_W I’ll need a couple of days to get comfortable with the rules, but should be set after that!!

Any teaching notes will be appreciated, but don’t feel forced to type them, I’m ok to jumping into the deep end.

Edit: since this is an Eklund game (although not Phil’s) we should probably agree on a specific ruleset? Living rules, printed rules…?Is there any significant difference in this case?)

The ruleset I have been working with are pretty much the printed rules. And can be downloaded here:

This is the link form ION games.

I have to warn you I am watching:

So I will be sure to win this.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve played twice. I don’t think I won either time. At this point, it’s like chess for me: I know how the pieces move, but heck if I know how to actually win.

I should probably watch that video…

-Tom

You won against me and Steiner, didn’t you?

Sweet, that means I’m batting five hundred, to use soccer terminology!

-Tom

Sorry to mention this but it still annoys the ever living shit out of me that Eklund assumes when writing his rulebooks that all his players are men. My daughter couldn’t stop rolling her eyes when we learned the rules to Megafauna together. I’ll get over it, but it’s just so 1955.

For what it’s worth, Pax Transhumanity isn’t Phil Eklund, it’s his son, Matt. I get the sense the younger Eklund is more, uh, progressive than his father.

-Tom

EDIT: Heh, I just noticed there’s a credit for the Pax Transhumanity footnotes. Which is roughly half the rules book. They’re credited to “Phil Eklund”.

Yeah, I started reading the footnotes, then noped out. :)

OK, I’ve read the rules and watched the beginning of the Heavy Cardboard video. I just need to watch a couple of rounds of a playthrough to get a feel for gameflow and I’ll be ready to get the future rolling!

@Tom_Mc, is the setup file in the Google Drive folder? And can you include a copy of the Vassal module as well?

I thought the files were in there but I looked this morning and it was pretty empty. I’ve copied the module the setup log and the pdf of the rules from the site there now.

This is interesting. I’m almost glad to be going last because there is a lot out there right now with so many possibilities. I don’t get first scoop on anything but I console my self with the fact that I can then start to react and have that help shape an overall plan. Small things I’m trying to keep in mind, four of the victory conditions are tied to one of the spheres being dominant plus we will all be(for most conditions) scoring VPs for our hidden sphere as well. That means we want to look at establishing companies and solving problems in those spheres. But, typical of pax games there are some other funky end conditions that can pop up.

Just sort of thinking out loud here.

I uploaded my hidden sphere selection since I guess it doesn’t matter what order we do that in. I added a 4 digit file counter at the beginning of my logfile. I’ve found when I run Vassal games that it helps with ordering everything and it sorts nicely in the file window.

Reminder to others: make sure you step through the log file to the end before starting your own log file.

I don’t know if this is any help, but I went through my notes and basically wrote out how I would teach the game from the notes. But without having the game components to reference while I’m “talking”, I don’t know how helpful it is. And I’m not sure anyone wants to read an enormous wall of text, especially since it’s incomplete (I didn’t explain the player actions or game end yet) and since people can’t ask questions if I muddle something.

But if it’s any help, have at it:

And if anyone wants me to further break down the player actions or game end, let me know. I’ll probably add them at some point anyway, just since I started, so I might as well finish.

-Tom

Uh, I confess I wasn’t paying attention when this turned into a VASSAL game. I thought we were just playing on the forum. I’m going to need some time to figure out how to get VASSAL to work since I’ve only used it once, and I think I lasted two or three turns. I’ll make a point to figure it out before the weekend.

-Tom

I don’t think it would be a huge problem if you want to ignore vassal and just dictate turns here from screenshots

I would much rather do that if it doesn’t mess us up. The only complication is dealing me a Hidden Sphere card. I’ll just suck it up and install VASSAL anyway, but if I don’t have to use it, all the better!

-Tom

I think we can probably do this through forum posts and having myself or someone else update the vassal logs and posting the board here. The only funny thing is the hidden sphere. I’d be ok if you went to your set physical set and drew two random cards and picked the sphere from that. I don’t know how to completely mitigate the chance of picking a card that shows up in the game elsewhere but I don’t think the impact on the game would be significant for our purposes.

Pax Transhumanity forum game: Juan Raigada, Matt W, Tom Chick, and Tom MC take humanity to THE NEXT LEVEL!

Down, or up?

I’m fine with this too. I tend to trust people not to cheat, and the hidden sphere is the only hidden information in the game.

Well one potential end of the game is a small scale nuclear war with extreme factionalism in the aftermath, so it remains to be seen :)

Are we gonna start this up then?

I think we are just about there. @Juan_Raigada might still be ironing out some of the rules there so if there are any questions hopefully we can help clarify. Juan will be up first and we don’t have his sphere yet either. Juan, are you comfortable submitting that over vassal? If not we can work something else out there too. Just remember the game is mostly about solving problems and getting companies. This is done by commercializing the ideas with the appropriate impacts. The big thing to watch for is viability.