Here is the complete interview (as seen in the Planets Newsletter), this month we talked to Azzazzello - Enjoy!

PN: Tell us a little about yourself.

A:  By day I am a business analyst / developer / business process guy at a major company and outside of work I invest in real estate, start up companies.  I really like to learn new things and that is one of the reason I really enjoy planets - you really never stop learning here.

PN: When did you first start playing?

A:  I first started playing VGAP in high school 20 years ago and played it for about a year.  At that time we played it as shareware version and never really experienced the game at its full potential - although I did write back in a day an add-on called supernova and made a whooping $75 on it (it was more to learn programming and to see if I could break planets file format than anything else).  

PN: What's your favorite race and why?

A: Lizards and Birds.  In general I prefer cloaking races as they suit my play style.  I prefer to play with finesse rather than brute strength - crafty and sneaky.  

PN: What do you build on first three turns with them (or your general opening strategy)?

A: It will depend on race / game type but most likely my first 3 builds would be LDSF, LDSF, some type of medium warship like Resolute, LCC, or something along those lines.

PN: How many games do you play at the same time?

A: Not more than 4 at any given time - quality tends to suffer with any more than that. 

PN: What types of games do you like playing most?

A: Super Melee, they suit my aggressive, expansionist play and you get action from turn one.   I also really enjoy Campaign games as I like the complexity of additional tools added to the game.

PN: What's your most memorable game, and what made it so interesting? (link or id number)

A: Several stand in my mind.

In that game I played Lizards and burned through my economy very early to knock out McKone very early on.  This left me exposed and Furey playing (another lizard) next to me pounced on me.  He ended up winning a sector and played a brilliant game - I had to put together a collation of other races just to stay alive.

Name a memorable friend and/or a memorable foe, and what made them stand out.

PN: Give an example of excellent tactics you've used or seen (w/ details so readers can view it, if possible).

A: http://planets.nu/#/sector/127413- turn 56 VCRs.

PN: What do you think is the most important skill for a Planets player to succeed?

A: Will to win and willingness to learn.

PN: Describe the process you use to make a turn.

A: 1. Watch VCRs - that tells me if the turn went as planned, better or worse.

2. Read messages and practice diplomacy

3. Use Big Beefer tax assistant to do all native taxes (I use mostly chunk method)

4. Use Idle Ship indicator to highlight all ships needing orders and go through each ship (manually selecting it from map view) in the area to give orders.   

5. Do planets build / colonist taxing 

6. Review SB and queue more ships.

PN: What is your favorite thing about Panets Nu?

A: Web based, play anywhere from any computer.  Great community of mature players.

PN: Is there anything else you would like to add?

A: Joshua thank you for re-making planets.

Thank you to Azzazzello! 

You can view Azzazzello's profile here.