On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 4:18 PM, Joseph Peterson <jeepeterson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> (I think a green star blocks [Fools Mate], as well > > How? I can't see it. If one star is green, and either the other star or the ship is blue, then after he builds his r1, you can trade your ship to red (as you must) but you won't be stuck - you can still grow, and then trade or move out. You'll be in a weird cramped position, but not dead, and maybe less so than the other guy. > >> (Red 1, Blue 2, Green ship) So really it just means some >> options I >> didn't think were very good are instead really >> obviously terrible. > > I'm curious about your viable openings. There are 57 first player builds that make it past my first cut. 19 each in Banker, Goldilocks, Fortress. > I didn't really count - just remembered concluding there weren't very many. It depends what you mean by viable of course. Let's see if I can reconstruct my thinking - note this is for the first builder in a second-builder-plays-first game and I'm dropping any I think are clearly inferior, not that you couldn't play them successfully, but I wouldn't pick them in a game I really wanted to win against a strong opponent: Looking only at colors, as first player I'm going to want three different ones and one must be blue and one must be green. If the third is yellow, then the fools mate just discussed demands that the green is a star. A red ship seems obviously poor, so let's drop that. A blue ship is considerably more debateable, but I'd still put it firmly on the side of not-as-good, so drop that too. That leaves just GB-Y and RB-G in various size combos. So that's the two viable options I got. Since I don't want a b1 star it's really 2 options each for Banker and Goldilocks, and 4 for Fortress. I guess by this logic the only color combo that works in first-builder-goes-first but not here is BY-G, but back when I was thinking this through the first time, that was my preferred start, so it seemed like a more significant loss. These days I like RB-G significantly better than GB-Y, and Banker marginally more than Goldilocks. I don't like Fortress at all, but note that I come to this opinion entirely from ignorance: I never play Fortress. For that matter I don't play second-builder-plays-first, so none of this analysis is actually from experience. Hmm, I really must play some second-builder-plays-first games; just since my last email in this thread I've been re-convincing myself that it's maybe broken. Or at least that I see a tactic for second builder I want to play until I see why it isn't crushing.