Yeah, I've got it and really enjoy it - but don't play it that often because of (a) its length and (b) because I prefer playing it with 5-6 players, which can be hard to find because of (a).
I've only had a chance to do a couple of solo tries to learn the rules. I am going to take it to my FLGS tonight, as it's board game night and see if I can drum up some interest.
One thing I read over at BGG is that you can shorten the game by:
- Taking out the three Domination cards that grant APs (Omnivore, Parasitism, Intelligence, and Immigrants)
- Remove a 5th card at random.
- Take 5 random cards face down, shuffle the Ice Age card into this group and place it at the bottom of the Domination deck.
This should cut the time down by about 45 min or so. Also, using a timer might help those with Analysis Paralysis during the AP stage (funny how that also shortens to AP.)
I found an AWESOME board game timer called
The Cube. Amazing.
I really like Chad Jensen's games. Urban Sprawl is also a lot of fun, and his Combat Commander series (for wargame fans) is pure genius.
I heard a lot of people try to compare Memoir '44 with Combat Commander, though the regular wargamers say there's no comparison, CC is so much better (not that M44 is bad game by any stretch). I haven't played it or seen it, though.
I haven't played Urban Sprawl either. How does it play?
I also recently bought Earth Reborn to give a try. That is supposed to be fun.
And now that Tannhauser has a totally new set of rules I am going to bust it out again. The old rules were AWFUL but the game was just gorgeous. We like to play Dust Tactics too, but I have this game and a lot of the expansion minis just sitting around gathering dust. Thank God FFG took full control and TOTALLY rewrote the rules to use all the same game materials, but with a completely revised ruleset. Actually, not even revised.... it's totally rewritten. I downloaded the new PDF and it is much, much better.