A game of Alamaze organized and played by Hyborian War players. Can these PBM gamers (ROKers) from the Road of Kings last the long haul through what is for many of them their first game of Alamaze? This organized game is Game #7000.

For me, with a little bit of prior experience playing Alamaze under my belt, Turn #1 went smoothly. No glitches nor errors in the turn orders that I issued for the turn. The only real issue, which is the same as it always is, is whether the actual orders that I decided upon issuing will ultimately prove to be good decision.



Because I have played Alamaze before, and because in Alamaze, gaining control of population centers is critical growing a kingdom's economy, I made exploration of areas a top priority. My efforts were rewarded with the discover of two new population centers, one village and one town. Not exactly the best of starts, but it sure beats not discovering any population centers - and especially at this very early stage of the game.



I could have allocated additional resources to finding population centers on Turn #1, but I decided to make finding population centers a priority without simultaneously making it paramount above and beyond all else. In Alamaze, one's options tend to be many, even if one's available order slots always seem to be too few. How to allocate one's order slots for their kingdom in any given turn lies at the very crux of the player's decision-making process in this fantasy-based war game.



Even though Alamaze's new owner made the decision to gut the Demon Princes kingdom, by watering down the kingdom's signature characters by embracing the foolishness of word trickery to try and persuade Alamaze players that the Demon Prince characters are immortal, even though they no longer are (which is insanity in game design), nonetheless, they still remain some of the Demon Prince kingdom's best and most colorful characters to have at one's disposal to play. So, what I decided to do for Turn #1 was to begin the forward deployment of these key character assets across the map. I have to do it sometime, so rather than wait, I decided to forego other options available to me in my order options, and  begin moving these key pieces to forward deployed status.



Yeah, they're now out and about, but the real question is, "Where?" It is doubtful that any kingdom in the game starts the game with the special artifact necessary to begin slaying the immortal-through-vulnerable-to-being-killed Demon Prince characters. It's a real risk, even if for no other reason than the very early orders that a player issues in any given game of Alamaze helps to set the stage for how their kingdom either gets off on a good foot, for how their kingdom begins slipping behind (which is much to any kingdom's detriment).



But because I have chosen to dispatch one or more of my Demon Prince characters to forward deployed positions, while I could now allocate those very same resources to move to these newly discovered population centers, that would simply mean that I would end up squandering the turn orders that I issued for them on Turn #1. In Alamaze, political emissaries tend, based upon my limited experience playing Alamaze to date, to be of far more importance in the early stages of the game than they seem to be in the later stages of the game. While Demon Prince character types are, first and foremost, core political emissaries, they also possess other powers, which means that they are characters of an uber-flexible type. My biggest problem as an Alamaze player, and as a Demon Princes player particularly, is that I routinely still manage to bungle my decision-making process. Thus, I seem to remain ever-prone to making bad decisions, or the decisions that I make tend to lack a certain degree of timeliness. The truth be told, I am almost always behind the curve, with certain turn orders that I issue. Hopefully, I can begin to dig myself out of that omnipresent hole that I always dig myself into, in this particular game of Alamaze.



My kingdom customization order succeeded, and my kingdom is now enhanced compared to what it was on Turn #0, the game start position. Viewing discretion to be the better part of valor, and having played at least one game of Alamaze in the past where my Demon Princes kingdom fumbled the ball and I never ended up receiving my ESO (Early Strategic Objective), even though I have up until Turn #3 to declare what my ESO will be, I am inclined for this game to go for the Minor ESO (3 points) over the Major ESO (5 points). Why? Because from my perspective and based upon my own prior first-hand experience, obtaining a fourth Demon Prince character mid-game is the paramount ESO consideration for any Alamaze player who chooses to try their hand at playing the Demon Princes kingdom. And by pursuing a Minor ESO, a 3 point ESO award will be sufficient to enable me to claim that 4th Demon Prince, as the game reaches a more critical stage several turns down the line. But because Alamaze players have up until Turn #3, at the latest, to choose their ESO destiny, there was nothing to be gained, from my perspective, by wasting a Turn #1 order slot on something that I have two more turns to take care of. How and when one issues the turn orders that they issue can make all of the difference between having a great game of Alamaze or a poor game of Alamaze. By the time that Turn #3 rolls around, I will have increased my kingdom's influence beyond what it was at game start, which translates into me having increased flexibility. By way of turn order decisions for Turn #1, players can begin digging a hole for themselves as soon as the game starts. Which is why I consider it imperative to not rush one's ESO decision. Plus, by waiting until Turn #3 to issue the ESO order, it gives me some additional time to reconsider whether I want to try and go for a 5 point ESO award instead of a 3 point ESO award. And Alamaze is certainly a thinking man's game, if it is anything, at all.



In Turn #1, I chose to issue some standing orders for my kingdom. Specifically, I opted to issue two standing orders. As cancelling standing orders as the game progresses uses up available order slots, also, players of Alamaze should be - and remain - cognizant of try to maximize the use of their available turn orders each and every turn. Real masters of the game do this as a matter of second nature. For the rest of us, learning to master which orders to issue when will always remain one of the biggest mountains that we climb, in terms of elevating our game skill. me? I tend to pretty much suck at it, and as a result, I tend to make a lot of bad choices over the course of any given game. For some reason, I appear to be doomed to ever learn things the hard way, and likewise, I seem to be doomed to eternally learning and relearning the exact, same mistakes, over and over and over, again. There's a very real possibility that I am cursed, when it comes to playing Alamaze. Even still, one must play the cards that fate deals them.



One of the things that I hate about Alamaze is the part of the turn results which says: We issued the following commands for the turn just completed:



Why do I hate this section of the turn report? Because to the new player and the Alamaze layman alike, this section invariably tends to look like just so much numerical and letter gibberish. Acronyms and abbreviations are always an alien language in any game that they are employed in. Why? Because they're basically designed as quick references for those who already know the game - for game veterans, for example - and not for beginners.



Yeah, I've played numerous games of Alamaze before, but that doesn't mean that I have all of these order codes memorized. Just another way of many to confuse the new guy. Not everyone eats, breathes, and sleeps Alamaze, you know. This section of the Alamaze turn results report is functionally usable, meaning it has a function/purpose that can be useful, but from a user-friendliness perspectives, its akin to presenting players with hieroglyphics. Sure, by looking at it, I see it, but seeing something is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one sees - and especially at a glance.



Even now, after all of the games of Alamaze that I have played, previously, I still just shake my head at this obstacle to learning that was crafted into Alamaze's game design. If I have problems with it, still, how much worse it must be for players who have never even played the game, at all, before? As with most any obstacle that one encounters to learning how to play Alamaze, yes, it is an obstacle that can be overcome - provided newcomers to Alamaze choose to be patient enough and committed enough to bother with investing the time and the effort to overcome this obstacle.

I did choose to rename my kingdom's ruler on Turn #1. Changing one's ruler's name is an option that an Alamaze player only can avail themselves of on Turn #1. If you don't do it then, then you'll simply be out of luck for the entire game. Basically, it's a free turn order, in that it doesn't count against your order limit for orders that you issue on Turn #1, and it's aimed at providing players a way to put a personal touch on their respective kingdoms. I opted for a bit of a "Latin feel" for my ruler's new name in this particular Game #7000 epoch of Alamaze. Feel free to try and guess what I came up with.



Due to a combination of Training To Higher Level (Order #500) and my kingdom customization choices, my Demon Princes kingdom in Game #700 now has no less than three Level 4 agents heading into Turn #2. This helps bolster my kingdom's ability to increase my exploration efforts, in my bid to rapidly track down population centers in what's know as my kingdom's "starting region" (the region that your kingdom's capital starts in, as well as the region where most of a player's game assets start in).



Curiously enough, not a single other player in Game #700 bothered to make any effort, whatsoever, to try and begin working with my kingdom in this game. maybe they just don't trust me, or perhaps they just don't like me, or possibly, they might already all be plotting against me. The again, maybe most of them are brand new to the game, and have their hands full just trying to figure out what to so. Even still, not hearing from other players in war games can often set the Bells of Paranoia to ringing. If they're already plotting and scheming together, then even if they're not immediately aiming to take my kingdom out of existence, my kingdom can still be behind. Yes, even as we head into Turn #2.



I suspect, whether correctly or incorrectly, that a bunch of newcomers to Alamaze (for the most part) in Game #7000 may well fear my kingdom more than I should fear their kingdom. But with war games of this nature, where so many unknowns factor into it all, a player;s mind can quickly find itself adrift upon the Sea of Suspicion. But since I don't tend to play these kinds of games to win, that alone provides my kingdom with an edge, right out of the game. Why? Because I don't worry about losing. And in war games of this nature, psychology plays a role. One doesn't simply play against kingdoms. One also plays against other players - which means that a meta aspect attaches to Alamaze, automatically, whether you like it or not, and whether you're ready for it or not. And because war game players are always seeking to maximize their advantage and to minimize their disadvantage, human psychology becomes a theater of operations all its own in Alamaze. Sticking it to the player, so to speak, has always been a greater fun factor to me in playing PBM war games than sticking it to kingdoms and empires. The kingdoms, themselves, will never seek revenge on their own. Only the human players behind the kingdoms being player seek revenge. And revenge, of course, is ever and always usable as a functional opportunity of distraction in PBM war games.



But as many years of playing Hyborian War taught me, choosing to play a largely reactionary strategy means that I don't really have to tend to worry about picking enemies, because my enemies will almost always be all too willing to pick me as their enemy. And the best way that I have ever found to screw up other players' starting strategies (the ones that they tend to spend a large amount of time carefully crafting) is by dragging them into wars very early on. War, after all, no matter the war game in question, tends to be an efficient squanderer of resources. While they're off butting heads with my kingdom early own, other kinds will tend to choose to conserve a sizeable portion of their own strength, thereby resulting in my early enemies tending to set their own kingdoms up for losing the game. But if one isn't seeking to win, but to help other players lose, then this tends to be a very desirable thing. If you're trying to win the game, however, early draining of your kingdom's resources tends to translate into your kingdom growing progressively weaker, rather than stronger. I bother to explain this, at all, because other players learning this and knowing this tends to increase the conundrum that exists within them, already. In layman's terms, if you avoid my kingdom, then my kingdom grows stronger, but if you engage my country in war, your own kingdom will grow weaker - at least temporarily, if not permanently.



But this, too, is part of the meta-game, which is always the part of PBM war games where I am the most comfortable. There are always other players to be tempted, always other players that can - and will - be all too happy to turn against your kingdom. If you fight a honey badger, then even if your kingdom manages to win, your kingdom will still likely wind up wounded - and thus, vulnerable, and become prey-by-extension to threats posed by other kingdoms in the game.

Increasing the level of my kingdoms wizards was on the agenda for Turn #1 for my Demon Princes kingdom. Trying to raise all of a kingdom's wizards' power level each turn, every turn, tends to not be a realistic course of action. So, players are forced to choose. To play Alamaze successfully and at a very high level, one must improve their ability to make the right choices in a timely manner in many different areas. And because players tend to make mistakes, or to overlook a given opportunity, or to make bad choices and decisions, there's almost always room for improvement to continually hone one's skill as an Alamaze player. Me? I still pretty much suck at playing Alamaze, even after a number of prior games already under my belt. But I like to feel that I know just enough to be dangerous, just enough to toss a monkey wrench into someone else's plans. And to me, that's a sweet spot to be. No matter how difficult I make things for your kingdom, I can still improve my playing skills and knowledge of Alamaze, and become an even greater threat going forward. All that it really takes is a sufficient catalyst to motivate me to do just, exactly that.



Increasing the power levels of my kingdom's wizards opens new magic spells for me to exploit and to utilize against other kingdoms. Of course, they will be doing the same thing, also, so it's not as though it's a one-way street. And where magic is concerned, the Demon Princes kingdom is a long way from the top of the food chain. But the big dogs of magic in Alamaze require time to increase their magical power to sufficient degree to become roving terrors to other kingdoms in the game. That's just my personal, inherently-flawed take on such things, anyway. It is what I believe, currently, whether I'm right or whether I'm way out in left field and wrong. Anyone who could see my turn results for Turn #1 in Game #7000 would know that the Rite of the Magi has been performed in the Demon Princes kingdom.



Movement of groups factored heavily into my kingdom's turn orders for Turn #1. After all, searching for population centers, whether by land or by sea - or both - is a primary way of discovering population centers on the map that you don't already know about. Basically, you're playing a guessing game, as to which unexplored areas that you choose to explore. You might find a population center, or you might not. Discovering a hidden population center (in someone else's starting region) is more difficult than discovering a normal, unhidden one. A word to the wise: If you piddle around and don't make locating other population centers a priority, then you're gonna quickly find your kingdom behind the Alamaze 8-Ball, which is definitely not where you want your kingdom to be.



I could have used my Demon Prince characters to Raise Skeletons (Order #561) on Turn #1. Since some of my Demon Prince character(s) were on the move, by way of using Demonic Gate(s) (Order #351), then those particular Demon Princes could not also be Raising Skeletons in the exact, same turn. Coming to grips with all of the respective strengths and weaknesses of Alamaze's thirty-two different player kingdoms can be quite the challenge. But it is a challenge that you do not have to learn and master and memorize in a single turn or in a single game. To do that, one must continually return to the realm of Alamaze, and try again and again and again. Unless, of course, you're a superbrain.



One piece of advice from Brek that I followed this time, that he had given to all players in this game of Alamaze, was to go with the Enamor Region order (Order #470) for my kingdom's ruler on Turn #1, instead of my usual resort to the Increase Influence order (Order #480). As many times as not in my prior games of Alamaze, my political emissaries, to include my Demon Prince characters, tend to be plagued by failing in their missions to Usurp Control of population centers (Order #330). Usurp Control orders fail more times than a new player of Alamaze might, at first, imagine (and for different reasons).