AAR: First Contact 2035

After Action Report (AAR)

If you haven’t met me in person, I’m a Brit, living in the US. It was a complete coincidence that when I had booked my vacation to visit friends and family back in old Blighty, the dates just so happened to coincide with the second run of the massive, 200 person megagame First Contact in London on 5/27. I PROMISE it was a coincidence!

I had spoken with many of the megagame folks in the UK before online but never met any of them in person so I was excited to meet all these infamous faces and voices I was so familiar with from our small megagame world. Also, a friend of mine from the US moved over to the south coast of England last year so I used this as an excuse to hang out with him for the day (further to help me rationalize this with my family who I was ditching for the day).

First Contact:2023

First contact is a Watch-the-skies style game where most people are playing as leaders of the Earth’s nations, attempting to deal with domestic issues, whilst Aliens appear over the skies. Meanwhile, there are corporations and scientists, all with their own desires, interacting with the nations in various ways. The designers have done an amazing job of making it feel like its own game whilst they acknowledge the WTS influence.

I was given the title of President of Israel and my friend Lance was my Interior minister, tasked with interacting with the corps and scientists. We had another two teammates: our military commander Tom and our foreign affairs minister Zach who we hadn’t met before but who knew each other. None of my teammates had played before but all 3 of them were amazing to work with and really got stuck in.

Early game

One of the strongest aspects of First Contact is how much there is in the briefing document. There is so much to do and so many avenues to take, I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be very concerned with what the aliens were up to. In a nutshell, our brief said be wary of Saudi Arabia, buddy up with the US and do everything you can to undermine Iran. Outside of that we had the option of vying for the Olympic games bid (which we mostly ignored), assert dominance in the region, don’t let anyone underestimate us, and try to get a seat on the UN security council. That last objective really spoke to us and we spent a significant amount of time schmoozing with the 5 main members of the UN to get the 3 votes we needed to get in. Russia were mostly friendly but there were always caveats to working with them and we decided that we just wouldn’t tell the US if we did make any deals with Russia. China were pretty dismissive of us so we decided to ignore them. The US were very supportive of us and we were pretty confident we’d have their vote. We were also fairly confident we had the French vote as they seemed supportive. And we were confident the Brits would support us too (good friends of a good friend).

Lance being schmoozed by one of the corporations. Image curtesy of Very Large Huge Games.

There were also whispers and rumors of Aliens but because we had no early game involvement with them, we (read I) decided that our stance was that aliens didn’t exist. So any conversation we had where someone mentioned them, we just shot them down immediately saying they weren’t real and they were just on drugs or the ”aliens” were just weirdos wearing masks etc. (I basically kept this up the whole game, even when I was approached by aliens later on in the day).

Lance worked hard to get us the ability to travel to space which we thought was a good basis for any late game alien shenanigans. Also, we were a nation who had Nukes but our our policy was that we must never confirm nor deny if we had them. We also figured being able to get Nukes into space might come in handy later on.

Zach did a great job undermining Iranian efforts on the military map, specifically by using agents to infiltrate and cause havoc turn after turn. I think it was turn three that he destroyed a national monument, severely crippling their GDP. We were also getting information that the Iranians had got their hands on a Nuke (which they weren’t supposed to have). I believe we immediately ran to teacher (the US) and told them what we’d learned.

Mid game

Once we were confident we’d get the votes in the UN, one of the chaps from the UN leadership gave us a invitation ticket to their next session to state our case. Tom, our foreign affairs guy, wrote up his pitch for presentation (bastion of democracy, middle East stronghold, cultural/religious capital of the world etc.). Once he’d given his speech, he was dismissed and they deliberated.

The next turn, we were informed that we did not get the votes required. I was devastated. We had worked so hard to get the votes we needed and thought we had a pretty good case. My next challenge involed working out who had betrayed us and the UN members were EXTREMELY cagy about this (rightfully so). Supposedly, votes in the UN were public knowledge but this was an exception so wasn’t recorded anywhere (weird game rule?). Eventually, after speaking with several people, I realized that only the US voted yes and the others all abstained.

Me chewing out the untrustworthy French after their betrayal. Image curtesy of Very Large Huge Games.

I was really pissed off and so told the French and the Brits what I thought of them (as captured nicely by the above picture).
For the French, there was some bull about how we were supposed to be friendly with Saudi Arabia (which we were) and I think someone was talking bad about us behind our backs. I bounced between the French and the Saudis several times to guarantee our vote next time we pushed.

For the Brits, the deal was if we joined the commonwealth, they’d give us a yes. So we did (the ramifications I’m still not sure about).

The Russians were also ready to give us a yes if we funded a project of theirs. And although we didn’t “need” their vote, we decided better off playing it safe by buying their vote too. They also expected us to vote with them once we were in but we decided that we’d worry about that when/if it happened.

Annoyingly, not long after securing the votes for the second time, there was some nonsense about a new UN rule about a rotating member position. They had decided that rather than accept new members, they would have a “guest” member each session and it basically took the wind out of our sails. We decided it was time to drop our UN push but I never forgot the betrayals.

There was also a really interesting storyline involving Ethiopia and Egypt whereby Ethiopia were attempting to build a dam and we heard that the consequences of the dam would be hugely detrimental to Egypt, cause massive instability in the region, and produce many refugees. So somehow we had to get the two countries to work together on alternative solutions. By the time we had gotten involved, the 2 countries were at a standstill, both refusing to budge and basically pissed off at each other. We felt like brokers of peace so we invested heavily in a terraforming project for Ethiopia using our funding and scientists so they would not have to build the dam. In the end, it all worked out really nicely and we were instrumental in this. Of course, none of this hit the news headlines.

There was also a really funny side story where I kept turning up to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation meetings. Control would announce for all members to meet in the lobby and I’d turn up (not being a member). My argument was that we had a significant Muslim population and it was in the best interests of everyone there for me to be part of those conversations. Sadly, I was kicked out.

In another storyline, there were a faction of scientists who wanted us to invest in a rocket/habitat that would help us leave Earth for good. With the betrayals and the history of Israel (very biblical to leave for the promised land), we thought this might be a good option for us . After several conversations with the scientists, we negotiated that there be enough space for any Israelis who wanted to go and a huge section of our land. Our demand was that we could take the entire Temple Mount with us (which apparently they were OK with because the French were already planning on taking the Eiffel tower with them!). We also thought that’d be a good slap in the face to the Islamic community after their standoffish actions.

Late game

For us, the beginning of the late game was heralded by the Iranians nuking a US embassy in a neighboring territory. The US begged us to get involved and at the time we weren’t quite prepared to get stuck in (though we did up our DEFCON level as a precaution). Eventually, after a fairly sizable financial investment by the US, we agreed to have our agents infiltrate Iran to be the “eyes on the ground” for Iranian targets. This basically ensured success for the US and they sent a Nuke which hit the heart of Iranian territory.

After that, the UN called all the nuke-wielding national leaders to a summit where they asked for aggressions to cease. Everyone mostly agreed and went on their merry way. After the betrayals from earlier and the fact that it was Iran, I made no such promise. Besides, I wasn’t supposed to admit to having nukes.

After the exchange of Nukes between the US and Iran. Image curtesy of Very Large Huge Games.

I think it was the next turn that we launched our ground offensive into Iran. My favorite part of the day was when our US contact Chris ran over and asked us to stop immediately. Obviously, they’d come up with some kind of peace compromise behind closed doors and we were ruining it very publicly. It was particularly funny because the previous turn he worked so hard to get us to help their offensive and suddenly the US had a change of heart.

Prior to this, Zach, our military commander, had worked out a deal with the Turks where we would both work together on this offensive and they pulled the trigger together. Annoyingly, the Saudis stepped in and waylaid the Turks, forcing us to go in alone. After this, I think Zach had a couple of bad dice rolls and was forced to retreat so we could recoup our strength back home.

I used this strategic retreat to tell Chris from the US that I was listening to his excellent advise and valued the alliance blah blah blah (all the while still taking his handouts). The Iranians had captured some of our soldiers in the exchange and were demanding a public apology for their return. We decided that the soldiers had known the risks so we were willing to let them die. Nevertheless, I told them I would make the apology during the next news briefing.

Sadly, it was the end of the game and there were “more important things” for the news teams to report on but I kept a copy of my apology which I’m pleased to share with you now (I hope the Iranian leaders are reading):

After being shunned at a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and being rejected by the UN for membership consideration, we sent forces in to Iran to rescue captured Israeli citizens. We have been asked to apologize for entering Iranian territory. We are sorry we were strongarmed by the UN and allies and we are sorry that we did not stay longer in Iran. Long live Israel!

The other story line that petered out was the habitat rocket. They had expanded their scope to let every Tom, Dick and Harry onboard and prevented us from bringing along the Temple Mount so we decided this change in parameters wasn’t in our best interests.

Between that and the actions we’d been taking against Iran, we ultimately decided in the final action of the game that we would vote to stay on Earth and continue to fight for what we believed in.

From left to right: Tom (Foreign Affairs), Lance (Interior Minister), Tony (President) & Zach (Military Commander)

Post game thoughts

The day was a blast! It was a typical, chaotic mess of story, negotiation and miscommunication which I so love about Megagames. Sadly I didn’t get to go to the afterparty so I still don’t know many of the story threads and what the corporations and aliens were up to all day. But Israel, as a plucky little country, was really fun to play. We fought hard for what we believed in and were very independent. I think the more you play megagames, the more you can get out of them and the more there is to experience. As a designer, I was looking at the game through a different lense than I did when I played my first game of Watch the Skies many moons ago. In that game, I was very much along for the ride, but in First Contact, we very much drove our own stories.

I do have some mechanical critisims that I’ve shared with the designers but they’re definitely fixable and I’m excited to see what they’ll tweak going forwards. Here’s what I wrote.

1) I found the GDP system to be broken for us. We were at zero the entire game (more or less) because of things happening outside of our control. When we made an effort to raise it, something else outside of our control happened and it dropped to zero again. Therefore there was no incentive for us to raise it. As head of state, I had to work with the (minimal) resources at hand (which was fine) but for the other members of my team, it was a bit of a detriment. For example, we couldn't really work with the corps as we couldn't compete with the other countries. My interior minister kept getting quotes for equipment from the corporations that surpassed our entire GDP.

2) Because of the issues above, our commodities were also broken. At the beginning of the game, we made trades to raise our GDP but once it dropped they had very little use (outside of trading them away). It didn't really matter if they were on our board or not.

3) I had misleading information on whether the UN votes were public or not. We tried all game to get in the UN and after a vote did not go through for us, I wanted to know who did not vote for us but apparently, that sort of vote was not public? This needs clarification/refinement.

4) I wish our nuke ability wasn't a single card. In the final third of the game, we were simultaneously at Defcon 2 to protect ourselves from Iran and brokering deals with aliens who wanted a nuke. I felt if I'd given my nuke card away to the aliens, we couldn't have retaliated against Iran. i.e. is the nuke card the ability to fire nukes or does it represent a single nuke? That mechanical issue/misunderstanding meant we couldn't have the exciting "aliens with our nuke/cool alien tech storyline".

5) I didn’t like the change from WTS where the agents were controlled by the defense minister. I’d prefer if they were Head of State actions. It gives the HoS something to do when the defense guy already has lots to do. To me, it makes more sense thematically that the FBI/MI6/the Mossad reports to the top. Also, I’d say that 99% of what we were doing (and what I’ve seen in my runs of WTS) with the agents had nothing to do with the main map. It was things like disrupt supply lines or search for nukes or topple national monument or plant false documents or steal technology etc

What’s the future for the Dukes and First Contact?

Well there’s the question! I would love to run First Contact in the states, either in Louisville or Gencon. I love the ambition of a well put together, 200 person megagame but I think I’m a few years away from having the audience right now. This is only our second year of operation so I still have a lot to learn and most importantly, a lot of marketing to do before I could fill 200 spots (plus the large control team needed).

Also, it’s currently not available. I think the designers have plans to do more tweaking and package it up but they’re not there yet. Hopefully, the more interest they can get, the more priority they’ll put to the package.

For more pictures of the day, head over to https://www.verylargehugegames.com/blog/first-contact-2035-pictures-2023.