1) Where can I buy Gene Pool?

Gene Pool will be reprinted in October. You can reserve a copy at http://tinyurl.com/genepool and will be contacted when copies are available. There are also a few people trading copies at BoardGameGeek.

2) Will there be more copies published beyond this limited edition?

Maybe. The best option would be having Gene Pool picked up by a larger publisher; if you are an interested publisher, please let us know. Otherwise, it will depend on the sales and reviews from this limited edition. If you would like to be notified of any future news about Gene Pool, please email games@goadrich.com and I will add you to a mailing list.

3) What if my Gene Research card can be found in the sequence at the beginning of my turn? Can I claim it now?

No. You must first choose an action, and then you can claim completed Gene Research cards.

4) I keep losing. Any strategy hints?

While there is some chaos present in the game, here are a few things you can do to try and plan ahead:

Watch your opponent's moves in the Sequence

Every action taken by your opponent will give you some information as to where in the sequence they are concentrating their attention. As you make your own changes, you can work to disrupt their plans by affecting the same areas, or avoid them and work in different areas.

Know when to draw cards

Drawing Base Pair or Gene Research cards sets you back a turn but will give you more options on future turns. The best time to choose this action is immediately after your opponent completes a Gene Research card. This way they will not have any vested information in the sequence and are starting fresh with a new goal. Another good time to draw cards is if your opponent chooses to draw cards.

Learn the patterns in Gene Research cards

1 year Gene Research cards have the following distribution: 3 with 3 A/T - 1 G/C, 2 with 2 A/T - 2 G/C, and 3 with 1 A/T - 3 G/C. As the game nears the 9 year goal, you will have more information about which cards are left in play and possibly in your opponent's hand. 2 year Gene Research cards all have the common subsequence CTA or its inverse complement TAG. If you're working on a 1 year card and your opponent on a 2 year card, you can try to prevent the appearance of this subsequence.

Know when to insert, delete or mutate

Insertions, deletions and mutations will cost you a base pair card from your hand, yet can be more powerful than inversions in two ways. First, to transform AT into TA takes two inversion actions (inverting each card separately) while you can achieve the same TA transformation with only one insertion action. Second, as mentioned above, certain Gene Research cards require at least 3 of a certain base pair to be present in the sequence. A well-timed insertion, deletion or mutation action can skew the sequence in your favor, forcing your opponent to draw a base pair card if they have none available to restore the possibility of completing their Gene Research.

5) Are there any variants for the rules?

For a slightly longer game, we suggest playing three rounds and tracking the margin of victory between rounds to determine the ultimate winner.

6) I like Gene Pool, are there any other games you'd recommend?

Sure! Some players of Gene Pool have also liked games such as Amazing Labyrinth and Ricochet Robot. Also, I have created a solitaire puzzle based on protein regulatory networks for the piecepack game system called Cell Management.

7) Do you accept game submissions?

Sorry, we are not accepting any outside game submissions, but good luck with your game designs.