I played my first session of Pharaoh on Sunday night. (For those of you who didn't notice, Andy released Pharaoh online last week as the LL holiday gift this year, in lieu of an actual mailing.) I played Pharaoh twice, each time with two players. The first game was over in about four turns, when the first player was able to quickly bum rush the center of the board and win. The second game took several turns longer, but was still over in just a few minutes. First player advantage, in Pharaoh with just two players, is very strong but not decisive. The die drives the game. I hope it plays better with three or four players, as there are far better 2-player pyramid games. Crosswalk, Infiltrate, and Blam all come to mind as similar but better. But if Pharaoh plays best with the full four, it might be in a league of its own. Would the game loop indefinitely if the players always had a fixed number of move points each turn, say 6? How about rolling 2D6 and keeping the higher roll? Or using 2D4 instead of 1D6? Andy, you should make it more explicit in the rules that captured pieces are returned to their owner's stash pad, not removed from the game as I first assumed.