I didn’t think it’d be possible, but this Ogame thing is really quite addictive.  I’ve been playing for a bit over a week now (10 days, actually), and I’ve worked my way up to a solidly established Homeworld (which I dubbed ‘Darkfall’) and two colony planets (Firestorm and Hammerstrike).  I’ve actually got a colony ship en route to arrive at a potential fourth planet in about six hours.  This is actually my second attempt to gain a fourth planet, the first of which failed in the last 15 minutes as someone arrived there just before I did (it was a 10-hour trip one-way, so the colony ship had to turn around and come 10 hours back home again). 

My strategy thus far has been simple – keep as low of a profile as possible, spend resources as fast as possible, and spread myself out around the galaxy as much as possible.  Fortunately, I’m under what’s called ‘newbie protection,’ which means that more advanced players who have been at the game longer than I can’t attack me until I level up quite a bit more.  Likewise, I can’t attack players newer than me (beyond a certain level).  I’ve primarily spent most of my time sending cargo ships out to ‘attack’ inactive players who haven’t logged in for at least seven days, some of which have been away for 28 days or more.  Some of these folks are about to have their accounts deleted anyway, so I can safely raid their stuff while they’re gone without fear of retaliation.  Soon enough, though, I’ll have to start building fleets and become a bit more active in the local battles and wars in order to continue surviving.  Newbie protection doesn’t last forever, you know.

It helps to enter this game with an alliance already in place.  A bunch of guys from my Halo clan have been playing Ogame for several months now, so most of them are already firmly entrenched and well-established.  My first few days in the game saw care packages coming in from several different players and planets.  The extra resources were instrumental in allowing me to gain a lot of ground in a very short amount of time.  This has also allowed me to establish a pretty solid foothold so that I can share some of my resources around to newer players, as well.  As an alliance, TTL works very well together and the goal is for us to become one of the highest ranked alliances in the game (at least on our server).  We’ve even managed to pull players from other Halo clans into our Ogame alliance, thus making us even stronger.

Ogame is pretty cool for what amounts to little more than a glorified Excel spreadsheet.  There’s no animations (aside from the countdown clocks), no super-fancy graphics, no wicked cool sounds.  It’s simply a slow and plodding game of resource management and colony development.  It’s amazingly complex and requires a certain amount of strategy to be able to manage your development.  I like the fact that there is no luck, no chance involved.  Everything is very mathematical and formulaic, and therefore outcomes are relatively easy to predict. 

Feel free to give the game a try, and if you decide you want to register and need an alliance to ally with, declare yourself over at TTL’s Ogame Alliance Hall for a pass to our private strategy forum.  Tell them Demag0gue sent you.

Once upon a time, I was a registered member of the US Chess Federation.  I competed on a fairly regular basis – half a dozen tournaments a year – and was a regular attender to the weekly practices.  One of the perks of being a USCF member is an annual subscription to Chess Life, the monthly periodical.  In addition to all the good articles and how-to’s, along with updating member rankings, this magazine carried ads for all sorts of cool chess merchandise, most of which a high school kid with no job could only drool over. 

One issue, though, pushed me over the edge to beg for some money from my folks.  What got my attention was an ad for a chess variant called Doubles Chess – an 8-sided board with four sets of pieces, set so 2-4 players could battle it out for each other’s kings on the same board at the same time.¹ It was an amazing concept, and I was eager to try it out.

I really don’t remember how I badgered the money out of my folks, but they were gracious enough to give me the money to order this novelty.  From the moment I pulled it out of the box, I was in awe – I’d never seen anything so cool.  It took me quite some time to figure out how the pieces moved.  After all, having double the number of columns and rows that meet at a point in the middle of the board proved to be somewhat problematic.  Plus, the armies across from each other actually had to work together to checkmate the other two kings.  But in the end I found it to be relatively straightforward.

Of course, I took it to the very next chess meeting with me, showed it to the rest of my team.  Everyone was interested, and a few even agreed to try playing it with me.  In the end, though, a group of four playing Doubles Chess together inevitably fell off to just one – me.  It was too difficult, they said, too hard to figure out and learn.  The strangeness of it all made it less fun for them, I guess.

I tried a couple of times after to generate some interest in the game, and I even pulled it out a couple of times during my college years.  The novelty of it always drew a small crowd initially, but something about those eight sides and four armies made everyone go cross-eyed and the interest was short-lived. I still love the idea; I still think it’s one of the coolest things to come out of the chess world.  But it’s hard to play chess by oneself and harder still to play Doubles Chess alone.  Perhaps one day I’ll find three brave compatriots who are willing to sit down and learn the game with me.  In some ways, it’s taking chess to a whole new level and seeing it in a completely different way.

For now, though, that frontier is still empty and lonely.  Few ‘old schoolers’ are willing to brave it, and few who are still fresh to the game are ready for the added complexity of Doubles.

I think I’ll pull that board out again tonight, dust it off, pull the pieces out of their little plastic bags, and set it up.  If nothing else, it’s pretty to look at.

1. Though, the set I own has a more modern-looking board with a better color scheme.[back]

Chess is the game of kings and champions.  It is an elegant game, devoid of chance, dependent only on mental prowess and strategy.  It is a complicated game, involving thousands of possible solutions to capture the opponent’s King.  It is a game that I love.

One of the advantages of now having my brother living so close to me is that we have again taken up this wonderful pastime.  I’d almost forgotten just how much I love playing chess.  In high school we were both among those ‘geeks’ on the chess team – we met once a week as a group to play and learn and hone our strategies.¹ Several times a year we would travel around the state for various tournaments.² It was fun just to be able to see different schools, make new friends, and socialize along the way. 

I haven’t really played much in recent years, though.  Chess is a game that seems to have fallen out of favor.  There aren’t many people who even know how to play, let alone understand and appreciate the nuances and intricacies of the game.  It is the ultimate strategy game, one that I hope to now be able to improve on. 

I have a feeling that chess is going to become a weekly ritual for my brother and me.  Any other chess players out there?

1. By the way, all those stereotypes you hear about the chess team at your local high school?  They simply aren’t true.[back]
2. I think my best rating was somewhere around a 914, which isn’t great but isn’t horrible, either.[back]