Musings on… Amun-Re (#32)

Edited By David Fair
March 24, 2006

Welcome to Musings On..., which is a moderated discussion group in which a bunch of well known, dedicated gamers discuss and debate different games and topics regarding games.  In this particular article, they discuss the Reiner Knizia game Amun-Re.

David Fair:

Knizia is such a prolific designer that it is hard to describe a game as “one of Knizia’s finest”, yet that is often how I feel about Amun-Re, it is one of his best, and yet it is fairly unloved in the gaming world, at least as far as Knizia games go.

In this game the key mechanism that is repeated throughout, in multiple places and ways is the payment of money in forced steps: 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, etc. Each raised bid costs a forced amount more than what the current bidder has to pay that it makes it a tough proposition to properly evaluate the value of a property.

Then you move to buying resources. There are three kinds: Cards, Farmers, and Stones. Each of them cost more and more the more of them you buy. Again, it makes evaluating your purchases difficult, as you want to make sure your investments payoff in money or victory points: Deliciously tense money management.

Finally, there is the blind-bidding for extra resources, known as the offering. You have a choice here: Steal money and lose a resource, offer just one gold coin and get one resource, or offer more and try for 2 or 3 resources. It gets very difficult to determine the optimal offering as you have to try to guess what each opponent will do and how that will affect what you should offer. Finally, the mechanism of rewarding the farmers (and on scoring rounds, the temples) based on the value of the total offering, can really throw those calculations out of whack.

Mark Jackson:

I’ll keep it short. While I’m a fan of a number of Knizia games (Medici, Lord of the Rings, Clash of the Gladiators, Attacke, etc.), there are a number of his games that I either refuse to play again and/or will do my best to avoid.

Interestingly, they tend to be some of his most “popular” work. Euphrat & Tigris is a game I respect but don’t particularly like… while Taj Mahal is a collection of interesting ideas & mechanisms that collapses when one or more players go head to head. (In fact, I think Taj has a great deal in common with Twilight Imperium in this regard: the player who manages to avoid conflict - by his own decisions and/or the capricious whims of the other players - will win.)

But we were talking about Amun-Re. OK, I’ll keep it simple. After two plays of the game, I think it combines the worst features of E&T (dependence on proper “draws” for your strategy to work) with the worst features of Taj Mahal (don’t ever get in a battle with another player). I can see how this could be interesting to others, but both playings have left me cold.

Shannon Appelcline:

Amun-Re is a great Knizia auction game that I almost never play because it leaves me entirely cold.

On the great side: the combination of auctions is interesting, and the main auction method with the quadratic bid increases and the need to jump between different auction items encourages a lot of very interesting decisions. Combining that with a resource management game is entirely cool, and makes me wish that Knizia did more resource-management/development, a genre that he’s mainly avoided.

But ...

The game feels very dry to me. The auctions are pretty repetitive and it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of variance between them. Compare that to Ra or Beowulf, whose auctions instead each feel very different because there’s so much variability in what you could be buying. And the logistics of the game are *very* logistical. There’s a lot of counting and recounting and calculating and figuring which personally tends to put me off a game. I also think the time is a bit long for what the game does. If it fit into Ra’s 45 minutes instead of Amun-Re’s hour and a half I’d be a lot more likely to play it.

So, I do think it’s a good game, but not one that interests me personally. I’m willing to play it, but I pretty actively avoid it if there’s anything else available.

Tom Vasel:

On the other hand, I really enjoy Amun Re, and consider it to be one of Knizia’s best games - certainly the most underrated.

Shannon said..."The auctions are pretty repetitive and it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of variance between them.”

I agree that there isn’t much variance between the auctions, but they are so critical to the game that I find them utterly fascinating. Another game that uses similar mechanics is Vegas Showdown, but I found the auctions there to be slightly less tense - it was almost a letdown after playing Amun Re.

David Fair:

There is so much going on that the game could have become a brain-burner, but there never seems to be a problem with that in the games I am in.

I have heard some players say that the game is all about pyramids. I think they haven’t tried enough other strategies. I have won games (and lost them) with building one pyramid (or less!) per region. There is no perfect strategy, I feel, and that helps make the game replayable.

PS. In case anyone hasn’t read it yet, you should check out Joe Gola’s Infamous Amun-Re Session Report on the Geek . It is one of the best things ever posted to the Geek. Period. Amun-Re can also be played online.

Tom Vasel:

I really enjoy the fact that Amun Re is almost two separate games - with actions in the first influencing the second. The middle of the game is almost a “restart”, and I’ve seen many players come from far behind in the first half of the game to win the game. Amun Re is a game that certainly rewards long range planning, and is certainly one of the best examples of this type of game that I’ve seen

Jason Little:

I agree with Shannon on many counts, regarding Amun-Re. While I enjoy the triangular sequence repeated through the game, so you really have to think long and hard about the incremental value of gaining 1 additional item (or bid spot for a location), ultimately the game lacks a vague, indefinable “zing” that pulls everything together.>

The first half scoring can be fairly low, to the point that one very good score by a player can be hard to overcome. I think the biggest problem I have is not having a clear way to “get back into” a game of Amun-Re if the first half was particularly tough.

Using location bidding as a means to target the current leader can have disastrous results by finding yourself out of much-needed cash and perhaps in territories that don’t benefit you as well as they would benefit your opponent. Further, your ability to catch up may be heavily dependent on Power Card draws, which may be completely out of your control (by virtue of having locations w/low Card draw maximums or the luck of the draw once you acquire Power Cards).

But despite this, I still enjoy Amun-Re quite a bit. I like the decisions, I like the bidding, I like the light construction/development, and I really like the halfpoint “reset” and scoring phase. But for a game that has very few actual turns and active participation by individual players, I feel that the impact of decision making is a bit too varied… If I can’t get my first choice location (due to cash or incompatibility with PC bonus scoring), then all the other locations may be equally unappealing, turning the bid into an arbitrary, rather than calculated exercise.

Thomas Cabelzero:

Amun-Re is probably my third-favorite Knizia game, behind only Taj Mahal and E&T. I don’t really think of it as an “auction game”, though. I tend to think of Amun-Re as Knizia’s “Puerto Rico”. Why? Because a player’s objective is to construct an efficient economic engine that will eventually be converted to victory points, just like PR. Although the auctions are important, failing to win the province you really want is rarely game-breaking. I find the auction for provinces somewhat reminiscent of another Knizia game--Colossal Arena (former Titan: The Arena). It’s often beneficial to offer a “head-fake” bet on a province you don’t really want to draw attention away from the province you DO want. However, because money is so tight in the game, this can be a risky ploy. The “sacrifice” is one of Knizia’s most interesting mechanics, IMO. Trying to second guess which direction your opponents will drive the bid is one of my favorite decisions in Eurogaming. I look forward to many more plays of Amun-Re, and can’t really understand why it remains so unloved by so many gamers.

Jason Little:

I’m glad Thomas mentioned the offering/sacrifice part of Amun-Re. I agree that this is a great game element, which I’m surprised hasn’t crept into more games. There’s an interesting blend of bluffing, personal risk/reward and attempting to read the other players’ intentions. In fact, I often find this the most interesting part of the game.

Unfortunately, I think that one player’s sacrifice often becomes meaningless within a certain turn. I dislike games where no matter what decision you make, the outcome would be the same. While it doesn’t happen too frequently, there have been several games of Amun-Re where an individual sacrifice was irrelevant, given the money in hand or play by your opponents. Such as the case (based on the contributions of others) when no amount I donated would have earned me a privilege, or no matter how little I offered (or stole), the net donation was high enough to put the payout in the top tier…

It’s this sort of result that bothers me so much with Ra: the point where my decision is rendered moot. In Amun-Re, a game where there are few decisions to be made overall (it is a fairly short game), having even one of your decisions rendered meaningless is pretty severe. (in Ra, it’s the decision I make to draw instead of invoke Ra, but end up invoking Ra anyway—rendering a good 1/4 or so of my decisions in the game meaningless).

If played with a brisk pace, this isn’t that big a deal, as it’s part of the acceptable chaos factor in shorter games for my tastes—but in games of Amun-Re that drag into the 90 minute range, it’s frustrating, especially coupled with the difficulty in coming back from a poor start in the game.

Larry Levy:

Amun-Re is an excellent game. What I like most about it are its individual innovations and how tightly interwoven all the game elements are in the final package.

The innovation that stands out the most is the auction mechanic, which I consider the best one I’ve ever encountered. The simultaneous auction for different items borrows heavily from Evo, but Knizia improves it in two significant ways. The use of the triangular sequence of bids is excellent, as it increases the pain with each successive bid. No incremental bidding in this game! The other improvement is forcing players to move to another property if their bid is raised by an opponent. Taken together, this means you have to judge what you want to bid for and how much to bid right off the bat and a miscalculation can be costly. This raises the tension of the auction tremendously, as well as accelerating the auction process (as opposed to the “+1” bidding you see in so many other auction games). Plus, you still have the great time saver of auctioning all those items at the same time, as was featured in Evo. It’s a great system, works extremely well, and makes the auctions one of the high points of every game.

There are other notable aspects to the game. The sacrifice is an interesting application of blind bidding, with a good deal of information to guide your bid. You can still get lucky or unlucky with this, but it seems much more palatable than most blind bidding systems. Using the triangular number series for all the item purchases is another good idea, making your buying decisions more difficult. Knizia puts in enough scoring elements to make things interesting, but not so many as to overwhelm. Finally, there’s the two halves of the game, where the second part of the game maintains the pyramids, but nothing else. In essence, the players are seeding the board during the first half for the game’s second half, providing a unique setup for every game and making the valuation decisions different and that much more interesting. It’s a very clever idea and still a unique one, as far as I can tell.

Shannon Appelcline:

Good point on the sacrifice, Jay. This type of group play doesn’t get seen a lot in board games. I think it’s an interesting variant of the Olsen’s Paradox found in Bruno Faidutti’s Terra. You have to off-balance personal good v. group good. Do you hope that other people invested in the same way as you take the brunt of the cost, or do you instead offset your personal good for the group’s well-being?

However, the additional prizes awarded to top sacrificers perhaps offset some of this, and make the decision a little easier.

Erik Arneson:

This has been a fascinating discussion. And after reading most of the comments so far, it’s clear that I have to give Amun-Re another chance. My first two plays left me with a decidedly ho-hum feeling about the game. Although the second was less ho-hum than the first.

Larry Levy:

I find the game hangs together very well. The theme is maintained pretty well throughout the design. In fact, I think Amun-Re makes better use of the Egyptian theme than any of Knizia’s many other Egypt-themed games (I’m sorry, but there’s very little of Egypt in Ra for me). The buying decisions are something of a puzzle, but the optimization isn’t supremely difficult, so the game usually moves along briskly enough. The game really is all about optimizing your available cash, but there are so many outside elements (the player interference in the auctions, the cards, the uncertainty of the sacrifice) that it isn’t in the least bit dry and good judgment is more important than number crunching.

I’ve occasionally seen players hosed by bad card draws, but for the most part, you’re usually able to adjust to the cards you get. I consider this a very acceptable luck factor in the design and the variety of the cards adds greatly to my enjoyment of the game. I feel those who say that the game is luck-driven due to the cards you receive really don’t understand the underpinnings of the game at all.

Like most of Knizia’s better games, Amun-Re is wonderfully designed and developed. All the values seem right and there’s really no fat in the design. It’s one of Knizia’s best efforts and the last of his games that I really feel is an essential part of my collection. Like Thomas, I also consider it my third favorite of his games, behind only Stephenson’s Rocket and E&T. I rank it an 8, and really should give it an 8.5 rating, since it’s one of my favorite 8’s. It’s a game I’ll always play and will frequently suggest.

Morgan Dontanville:

When this game first came out I couldn’t wait to get it on the table. I was fortunate in that my friend picked it up the first week and soon it was spread before us. While working our way through the rules, I pawed the cool pyramids and stacked the Chiclets. I was excited.

As the game progressed I remember thinking that there were a number of cool decisions based on the cards versus the base points you could get from the board alone. All was going well, until the end of the era. Then the restart…

Hmmm.

Ok. We get to do this all over again, eh? From the get-go this felt like a way to prevent a runaway leader problem. I was immediately reminded of card games or short fillers that have multiple rounds of the same thing over and over again. Often times these feel unnecessary. This comes off a little better as the remaining pyramids keep the second era variable for future plays, but really a random set up cutting out the first half of the game would be no different. I mean I don’t play the Spice Harvest expansion for Dune for a reason…

Then there are the cards, when you get a bunch of cards that don’t help you it reminds you that this really is just a grid and you are only scoring points for matching blocks. The advantage is that when you can use a card, you can say things like “Everybody on the left say Yeaaah-ya!” or “A shout out for my homies in the Upper Nile!” Anything to make this exciting.

For the most part I find this game to be guilty of the worst offense—being dry and boring. The only enjoyment that I had received from the game was the sacrifice. Still, on the list of great games that use blind bidding, even though Amun-Re does use it in a clever way, this one would clock in pretty low. I’m not sure why people consider it particularly unique here.

After multiple plays, to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, I came to the conclusion that there is no need for me to go back to this. Many games that I don’t like make me feel that perhaps they should be re-examined, and every year or so I’ll go back and make sure I’ve not harshly judged them, or found that my tastes have changed and I might find something new that I didn’t see before. Amun-Re has not given me the urge to do this in the least. In fact, this weekend, I just turned down playing this with people that I really like.

Shannon Appelcline:

Saying Amun-Re is ‘just standard blind bidding’ is akin to saying that any auction (your pick) is ‘just an auction’. The difference is in the details.

The reason that Amun-Re’s blind bidding stands out is because you’re creating a consensus result, not solely choosing an individual winner.

Larry Levy:

Morgan Dontanville wrote: “On the list of great games that use blind bidding, even though Amun-Re does use it in a clever way, this one would clock in pretty low. I’m not sure why people consider it particularly unique here.”

Because the principal function of the sacrifice is to determine everyone’s income that turn. This may be an element in other games, but I can’t think of any. That’s in addition to all the other things determined by the results of the bidding: the camel income, the temple scoring, and the awards for highest bids. Oh, and there’s also stealing from the temple (again, can’t think of any blind bidding game where players can bid to ADD money to their coffers). Taking all that into account, I’d say the word unique isn’t an exaggeration.

Of course, I usually dislike blind bidding, possibly as much as our editor does. But because of all the functions I mentioned above, plus the good deal of information available prior to bidding, I find it works quite well in Amun-Re. There’s still the occasional lucky “wow, I can’t believe my $2 was high bid!”, but overall, the sacrifice phase is a very strong element in the game design.

Morgan Dontanville:

Larry, undoubtedly, the universal payment system is unique, but it more or less is Adel Verpflichtet with one room and a variable consequence sytem rather than all or nothing system, dependant on the spoiler. Now I know that even as I type this it sounds like a stretch, but I find that creation is often reliant on other ideas that have come before, and much as I’d love to buy into Knizia’s fairy tale that he only plays his own games, I’m pretty sure that at some point he had observed Adel Verpflichtet or studied it’s mechanics. Knizia tends to favor a variable consequence result over Teuber’s all or nothing situations, so it would not surprise me if he decided that the system would be better served with those kind of results.

This in no way invalidates the system. I think that for me it is without question the most fun part of the game, and would go so far as to say the only fun part of the game. I’m looking forward to the point in which he uses it for another game.

Larry Levy:

I avoid Adel whenever I can, so I may not remember all the details of the design. But isn’t the system in that game just standard blind bidding (or actually, blind selection)? Blind bidding has got to be ancient and may date back to the Egyptians themselves (it’s probably what caused their civilization to fall)! So whether or not Knizia plays other designers’ games at night with a flashlight under his blanket, the blind bidding in Amun-Re can’t be linked to any other designer; it’s just a standard (and overused, IMO) part of every designer’s toolkit. The fact that he actually came up with a blind bidding system that yields to analysis, is reasonably fair, is truly necessary, and is fun to use is the thing that impresses me.

Morgan Dontanville:

I’ve been trying to figure out why that system didn’t feel new to me, even though when I compare it to other blind bidding modulations it is in and of itself. I mean I get why I was thinking AV, but after going back through the rules it really was a stretch. I was thinking about stealing from the cash register in the Auction Hall, but only one person can win the auction in that system and only one person can steal, so my memory sucks. All in all, I was wrong. Certainly not the first time, and it won’t be the last.

It did get me thinking of why the bidding seemed clever, but not as strikingly original as it should be. As a blind bidding system, I really can’t think of anything else like it (which is why I said, after much thought, that it was unique in the second post). I think that the cleverness lies in its efficiency.

What struck me about the game is that this is also working as a simultaneous action system determining a single stock. As a stock mechanism, it is one of the oldest systems there are. If we look at this pay out as a mutual investment in a single stock it feels very common. The stock is in the farmers and players are investors in the farming market using a fixed commodity – gold. The value of gold never changes rather this becomes a simple majority game awarding the biggest hoarders.

Looking back at Knizia’s 1996 release Palmyra you will see that whenever you take your turn you play from your hand of cards +/- 3 on each individual track to determine what the payout is. It seems like a reasonable extrapolation that Amun-Re’s system came from this. But to create only one payout rather than the three in Palmyra you would need to have incentive not to get the pay out (which there is in Amun-Re). Now, adapt this to a simultaneous action rather than a turn-based system.

The bidding part of it really is straightforward. You are just bidding potential gold points for the goods available. This is more or less your standard blind bidding system. Now the brilliance of the design is that he has the consequence of a high bid in addition to points. As usual with Knizia he forces people to have different motivations toward bidding, making something useful for one, yet making it useless for another. Bidding up the value of the farmers when you have none means that you are playing poorly. But, this also means that you miss out on most of the goodies. So farmers want it high, but do they have the gold to profit from both?

To me it is the addition of the stock element that makes this system fun. Canning both systems into one card flip is even better. But I don’t find either system to be original in and of themselves. The uniqueness is in the amalgam of the two.

This is why I was never blown away by the design, I was used to seeing it. What I hadn’t realized until now, though, is that they are seamlessly intertwined. This system is the beating heart in an otherwise cold Gollum. I am looking forward to seeing this module ported into another design.

Larry Levy:

I’m sure Knizia drew from several of his past designs when creating Amun-Re, just like all designers do. But the starting point for the game, according to what I’ve read, was Ra. Evidently, the original design for Ra included board play which was affected by the auctions. The game was more elaborate and much longer. Knizia pared it down to just the auctions, but then (as he so often does) took the original design and went in another direction. The eventual output of that was Amun-Re. I’m very glad he did that, as I feel blah about Ra, but I always say “yay” for Amun-Re!

Musings On… is a roundhouse forum discussion on games and topics related to gaming. if you are interested in participating in future discussions, please email David Fair at dafair followed by the at sign and gmail.com.

© 2006 Rick Thornquist

---

Comments:

You must register with BGN in order to comment. Registration is free!

Interesting read, guys.  Some comments: 1) I’m decidedly in the Pro camp with Amun-Re; I think it’s a great design.  However, I’ve lately been finding myself with a little less love, and I think Jason has put words to my ill-defined feelings: “I think the biggest problem I have is not having a clear way to “get back intoâ€? a game of Amun-Re if the first half was particularly tough.” I think he’s right. 2) Larry, my second-favorite game of Knizia’s is also Stephenson’s Rocket (and it also happens to be my second favorite game, overall).  I rarely find people willing to play it, though.  If we ever meet up, let’s play! For those interested in where “triangular progression” or “triangular numbers” gets its name:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangular_numbers joe Posted by Joe Casadonte on Mar 25, 2006 at 09:59 AM | #

My opinion of Amun-Re has grown with every play since David taught it to me.  I can’t relate to how people can find a game with so many interlocking relationships boring.  It keeps my head swimming through-out the game. Posted by Thomas Pancoast on Mar 25, 2006 at 10:19 AM | #

That’s funny, I’ve always found it relatively easy to catch up in Amun-Re, Joe.  Maybe it’s because I like taking provinces that allow me to choose cards.  It isn’t uncommon to pick scoring cards that won’t help you in the first half, but which you can plan for in the second half.  Consequently, the second half scores are usually much higher.  Also, those who score poorly in the first half often enter the second half with a nice bank account, giving them a leg up, at least at first.  Being in last during the first half by no means eliminates you, as long as you’ve been preparing for the second half. By the way, I question whether Amun-Re is underrated.  It won the DSP, barely missed out on the IGA by one vote (Age of Steam won, so it was good either way), and is ranked 34th on the Geek with a 7.7 average rating.  I am a little surprised that some well-known gamers don’t care for it, but no game has universal love.  Besides, it also has the greatest session report of all time! Posted by Larry Levy on Mar 25, 2006 at 10:23 AM | #

I’m with Larry. In the games that I’ve played (five face-to-face, as many online), players score two or three times as many points in the second epoch as they do in the first, and so trailing at the half is not really a big deal. In fact, I’ve overcome a fifteen-point point deficit to win the game. What’s far more significant is how much money and how many power cards you have going into second epoch. Being in first after the first scoring doesn’t mean much if you’re on skid row. I would also argue Jason’s suggestion that a player’s limited influence over the sacrifice (sometimes limited to nothing) is a flaw of the game. Players can influence the economy, but they can’t control it, and I think that’s appropriate. If you’re hoping to have a low sacrifice and every other player is so farmer-invested that a four-harvest is a lock, the underlying problem isn’t that the sacrifice isn’t a meaningful decision, the problem is that there WERE meaningful decisions and you blew them by choosing to swim against the tide. Amun-Re is very much about reading the table with respect to the economy, and so the game is generally won and lost on decisions made based on estimations of whether one’s opponents are inclined to drive up the flood or keep it down to a trickle. Posted by Joe Gola on Mar 25, 2006 at 06:03 PM | #

I should have been a little clearer: I was thinking in terms of money, too, not VPs.  If you enter the second half with little money (and without a huge lead in VPs), it’s tough to recover.  Then it’s a matter of hoping the provinces you’re left with allow you to buy enough cards that you will line up just perfectly with the provinces you’re left with.  Not a fun half a game to play. Posted by Joe Casadonte on Mar 27, 2006 at 09:44 AM | #

Joe wrote: “If you enter the second half with little money (and without a huge lead in VPs), it’s tough to recover.” I try to refrain from giving advice during rules explanations, but some games call for a single line of advice so that new players don’t get plastered. In Blokus, for example, I say, “Try to occupy the center because you can always play pieces in the corner later.” Amun-Re calls for a “don’t spend all your money without being able to make more” warning. This doesn’t always help—heck, even I find myself short of cash sometimes—but hopefully someone won’t blow all their gold on pyramids in the first round, then twiddle their thumbs for the next hour. Posted by W. Eric Martin on Mar 27, 2006 at 12:07 PM | #

< Back Home