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Commentary and processes of J C Lawrence: systems architect, contrarian, theorist, sailor, hacker, virtual world designer, linux-user, aquarist, disquisitor, cat breeder, raconteur, game designer, ludophile, bibliophile, numismatist, speculator and theologiser

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When in doubt, sink the battleship

Kublacon saw another ‘Ohana Proa playtest with a response ranging from I want to play this again, I want to play it on Monday, bring it with you on Monday! to This is good but these bits need fixing. Happily all the complaints aligned with the extant problem list. Against my better and more generous nature the current idea is to make the following sweeping changes. They analyse Okay but I’m not sure I like the resulting picture, but suspect parental bonding for this latter.

  1. Tone down kahuna:
    • 1.5x production rather than 2x.
    • When a market is delivered to an island over a player’s route that also has a kahuna on that island, the kahuna-owning player earns VPs for the delivery in addition to the moving player. This may allow VP doubling for one’s own kahuna. not sure yet (ie the models haven’t finished running)
    • Building a kahuna once both have been built teleports one of the pre-existent kahuna to the new location
  2. Rejigger kula:
    • Rework all cost relations
    • Kula do not reward VPs upon receipt, but may be immediately discarded upon receipt for VPs or fish & shells
  3. Gut proas.. Players proas increase by one every turn unless their proas are already larger than the turn count. Automatic proa increase may be refused in return for resources and players may buy ahead for standard cost. If they buy-ahead then the next free proa doesn’t affect them. This is a standard tide-that-floats-all-boats

The most interesting change here is gutting the proas. Automatic increment removes a primary concern from the game, but also adds a potentially interesting decision without affecting any of the other base structures of the game: buy ahead for this-turn advantage or hang back for this-turn resource advantage? Removal of VPs from kula receipt is a little less interesting as the primary effect is to make kula dumping (stale kula gifts to players earlier in the turn order in the second delivery round) less significant. The second order effect of adding a thin kula management layer to the kula dumpee is mostly uninteresting.

New rules and player aids are on the slip.

Updated: Pampas Railroads income/action/valuation/etc chart

I’ve updated the income/action/etc sheets I posted a while back to version 1.3 to correct the mis-labelling of the action tracks and a few other typoes. Thanks go to James Ludlow (jdludlow) and Mark Hamzy (hamzy) for catching the errors — predictably I’ve yet to be able to play with my own aid! I also posted the files to BoardGameGeek in the Pampas Railroads area as version 1.3, but they are pending approval. Meanwhile the PDF and PNG versions may be found in the normal place.

Compressed freckled waves

A productive evening:

So far the models look Okay, but I’ll probably need to adjust the Prestige Track end-point upward a bit to 37, 39 or 42 or so.

The new kula language:

There are (blue) fish and (red) shell kula items, each available in two values. Small value kula items may be enhanced to larger value kula items.

Kula token costs:

(Table here of values. In short, fish kula are 3 or 7 VPs, shell kula are 5 or 11 VPs and costs are 7 or 5 resources for low value kula (basic/beginner’s game), 17 resources for big kula, and 11 for upgrades.)

Players may only spend resources on kula if that kula item is immediately given to another player as part of a delivery (see Deliver). Enhancing a stale kula item (face down) to a larger value creates a higher value stale kula item (face down).

When a market is delivered to an island containing a market of the same colour, the moving player may give a kula item to each player with a route connected to the destination island. The kula item given may be newly purchased with fish and shells, or may be an item previously received from another player (optionally enhanced). The gifting player receives all the following:

  • 1 point on the Prestige Track for giving the kula item
  • 1 point on the Prestige Track if it was a large kula item
  • 1 point on the Prestige Track if the kula item was just bought with fish and shells for this gift
  • 1 point on the Prestige Track if giving the kula item to a player with a kahuna on the destination island

The player receiving the kula item receives half the value of the kula item as victory points rounded down, or full value if their kahuna was present on the destination island. They also receive one victory point for each kula item they already possess.

Upon receipt of a kula item, the recipient may immediately give a kula of the opposite type in return to the giver and may spend fish and shells to buy a kula for this purpose. In this case the player reciprocally giving the kula receives:

  • 1 point on the Prestige Track for giving the kula item
  • 1 point on the Prestige Track if their gift was more valuable than the gift they were given
  • 1 point on the Prestige Track if the kula item was just bought with fish and shells for this gift
  • 1 point on the Prestige Track if giving the kula item to a player with a kahuna on the destination island

and the new recipient receives:

  • 1 point on the Prestige Track for receiving a kula in response to their gift
  • 1 point on the Prestige Track if it was a large kula item
  • half the value of the kula item as victory points rounded down, or full value if their kahuna was present on the destination island

At the end of each turn old face down kula items are discarded back to the supply and new kula items rot and are turned face down (see Rot).

Crushed origami cuts

A few things I like here:

Shovel the muck first, then polish the brass

A quick outing of Muck & Brass at the last hour of the gamesday last night. After ~14 hours of gaming and it being the wee hours of the morning we did not play well and it really didn’t get a good or fair showing as a game. Which was all fine as that wasn’t the point. It was nice to watch the exercise while having other people make most of the game decisions. More importantly I got my first reasonably external look at the game.

Being in a rush I completely forgot to teach that new companies build a track as they open, which would have changed a lot. I also simplified the London rules down to London must be the most valuable location on the board which added some nice tension and was simpler. A few rules holes were found by the ever inquisitive Michael Van Biesbrouck (mlvanbie), which was appreciated. eg What happens to corporate treasuries for companies that don’t float? Oddly enough all my companies have always floated when I solo play so I never considered that.

Other quick notes:

Another more basic observation, and this goes back to earlier plays of Lokomotive Werks, Dutch Intercity, Wooden Shoes & Iron Monsters and Wabash Cannonball and my 18XX history is that many people don’t grok income vehicle lifecycles. Of course this concept is central to good 18XX play and for the more recent games some of this is my fault as game teacher, but there seems to be a hole there in the gaming panoply. Players seem to natively assume that everything they can buy is good and that the only difference is that some things are better than others or need to be set/combinatorial collected in order to realise their best value. The idea that some investments vary from good to bad to horrible to great depending on a game-based lifecycle appears unusual and unfamiliar. (Aside: 1825 Unit 1, 1825 Unit 2 and 1825 Unit 3 are of course entirely driven by this concept of optimised portfolio management) This probably ties to the general paucity of phase-driven games. That might be an interesting area to explore with Modern Mogul or Trade Winds.

Time to get cracking on the rules again.

Early Experience: Dutch Intercity

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