At phenomenal expense

Our production will now have a new special guest star

Fresh from sell out engagements in Las Vegas, Monte Carlo and the People's Community Hall, Mombasa, I bring you Frank Walsh, who takes over from Con in the previously quiescent Savasku lands in the middle of the board. It wasn't easy to get Frank on board. I had to send a whole text message. But that's how much I love my players, each and every one of them.

This isn't quite as much of an all done deal as I'd like it to be. Frank is going to have to cook up his forces and I think it's expecting too much of him to be looking to see fully worked out fleets popping up on the coming Monday. But after that we should be able to shake the dynamic up somewhat.

Con will be joining us eventually, I hope. Similar worlds to the ones he's just graciously vacated will magically appear at some edge of the map. Who's going to have new neighbours? It will be a dice roll. Mind you, the way things are going, that still gives a fifty fifty chance that Con and Eddie will be neighbours given the way that Eddie has pretty much spread over three sides of the map.

In entirely unrelated news, there will, as earlier advertised, be newer, prettier, simpler and less controversial rules on LEAVING systems. The entering systems rules will be subjected to a very minor clarification.

At the same time that these are posted, I hope to put up a summary of the current state of play in financial terms, which I need to do to inform Frank of what he's getting into, but which will be interesting for everyone, except whoever happens to have the most money and planets. Traditionally whoever has become the leader of the pack in multiplayer games hates to have this pointed out to people, so I will preface this by saying that it's a terrible burden being stronger than anyone else. Weirdly, leaders never welcome suggestions that the rest of the players lighten this burden, so none of you are to interpret me as suggesting this for a moment.

And as a fitting to cap to all of this, I will have something to say about the pestilence of the age, the Savasku. Specifically, I will be cogitating on whether there's a campaign issue arising from the fact that biomass is cheap as chips compared to everything it mirrors in the non-organic world. I don't expect to make any hard and fast ruling about it, but there's something there i want to try to tease out.

And an availability announcement; I'm going to be in TRIM (dear god have mercy) on Monday 28 May, and you will somehow have to stumble through your evening without me.