Alamaze Appreciation

[VballMichael]

Just got my bill yesterday, paid it today and started thinking a little about Alamaze.
I think I have been playing about 2 years, have now played all positions (though some are still in progress) and really enjoy this game.
Don't get me wrong; there have been irritants and, like some other players, I have occasionally vented on the Forum and nearly rage-quit.
But overall, this game rocks and I really enjoy seeing my turns come in on Mon, Tues, Fri and Sat.
I am truly looking forward to a new variant, not because I need it, but because it will add some nice nuance.

At the end of the day, I really think luck ends up being one of the biggest factors in winning or placing on the podium.
In the games I have won, I was pretty much left alone in the early game to develop and execute my plans. Good luck plus good planning.
Then take the recent game where LD and I just beat each other up (anon game) so that neither of us made the podium. Just bad luck.
Obviously, one has to take advantage of the times one is left alone to build up and then attack and that is where experience and skill help .

Anyway, thanks to Rick and all of the players who volunteer time and energy to making this a great experience.

And no, Rick did not pay me or give me a free setup to say all this.

Vball Michael

PS
I have played the Underworld twice now, and I can confidently state that I stink at that position.

[Ry Vor]

Thanks for taking the time, VBM. 

Speaking of appreciation, of course we would not have gotten Alamaze back without both the permission of Phil's wife Polly, and without really hard, dedicated work from Cipher to get everything back up and running and teaching me how to run games in Clipper.  Now with what Mike has done, games are running like clockwork, and between his coding, and order checking / validation routine, and what Frost Lord has provided for player aids, I think its fair to say Alamaze has never run more reliably or easily for the players.  We're also running it at about 25% of the previous fees, and lower than anyone else in PBEM.

We're proud that we have now started more than 140 Alamaze games in 27 months.  I am not sure another PBEM has started 10 in that time.  I see all the incessant ads for Game of War, Forge of Empires, etc, those "free" games.  World of Warcraft came out within a month of Fall of Rome.  There's just no way to put those games in our category.  Not to be too disparaging, but if you can play WoW for more than a couple months without being bored to tears, you have a lot more, what's the word I'm looking for, single mindedness? (to be nice) than me.   We have players playing Alamaze for 20 years or more.  That's as big a tribute as we could hope for.

As VBM mentioned, some players, generally our most competitive, can sometimes "rage-quit".  Spats on the forum never turn out well.  While yes, most of us have dreams of winning a 12 or 15 player game when the game begins, like every NFL fan imagines their team winning the Super Bowl next year, I think the players that enjoy Alamaze the most just enjoy playing a part in "the movie" that is any campaign.  It is difficult to win a game, and a lot of determination and effort.  Is that bad?  Doesn't seem so.  The players that are immersed in a game, do the diplomacy, give themselves time to think instead of doing last hour turns, tend to have better results.  And even those players playing for 20 years, seem to learn something each time.  Speaking of which, I appreciate the candidness of some of our best players (Jumpingfist is coming to mind, but he's not the only one) are willing to share some of their secrets here on the forum.  And he can tell you, he and I have had some issues, but we have resolved them, and there was no rage-quit.  We know there were some bumps with the conversion to java, but I don't think anyone would want to go backward, anymore than initially players wondered about playing again on the original map, but we've had no requests for that.  It's fine to be very passionate, and determined, but try to resist any "season ending" reaction to a bad result.  It's sort of like life.