These are posted over at BGG, but since I had some space to fill and megabytes to spare, here goes nothing...
"I set up the game at 11:00 or so, still waiting to play Steam but not
able to get my wife or kids into starting a game earlier in the
evening. I decided to set up my second two player game and begin play
after spending part of the evening marking up a paper copy of the rules
with grammar mistakes, etc.
This game was much different in
character than the first, mainly because the investment track stayed
within the top two rungs. Morale-crushing events simply didn't come
around and it seemed to be within each side's best interest to keep
cube values higher so their investments didn't tank. The only hiccup
involved one bankruptcy played by a card early on which was reverse
easily enough by the 'Oil Prices Falls' event - the only one that
boosts the Investment Track. Each player typically used their shares
like crazy to get shares, then try to boost their majority company. The
first turn ended with Yellow taking an early 10-8 lead, then 18-16,
then 24-21 in the third turn.
On the final turn, Green had 4
Personal Shares compared to Yellow's 1 Personal Share - since Yellow
won the right to go first on turn #3, Green elected to keep his
Personal Shares. More relatively benign events were played at the top
of the turn. Yellow was set on padding his lead, but Green laid a card
that caused remaining regional and personal investments to require one
Personal Share to play. This was a big blow to Yellow since he couldn't
easily pad his lead. Green and Yellow made investments. Yellow opted to
buy a share in one remaining bank and played an event card which added
red and yellow cubes to each Bank. Funny thing is, this event is
usually a mean one late in the game because red cubes are usually
tanked - but in this game it boosted a few of the banks that Yellow was
the majority owner in - and if you own the Bank with the highest value
then you earn another 3 VP with the Minority Owner receiving 1 VP.
Green
did not have enough events to bring down the market. Instead, he
decided to add shares in the remaining banks where he could. At the end
of the game, he made one final move to move one red cube from the
Midwest to a bank that he had majority ownership in.
At the
end of the game, the top three banks had values of $34, $33 and $25.
The last red cube was enough to put that last move to good use. By the
time it was all said and done, Green won 30-29.
A few lessons on this play:
-
I need to add some details to the rules as to what to do with discarded
cubes from events. The idea is to bleed the bag dry, but I realized
that I didn't explicitly state this.
- Some of the Event Cards need some more text on them to explain where things should go.
-
I ignored some rules that I had written - which usually means if you
didn't miss them, they weren't important enough to keep. I had
neglected to play an Event Card of a listed region for some of the
regional investment options. I think my aim was to use the Region
portion of the Event Card more, however, I think it's an unnecessary
condition to remember for these events so the rules will be amended. I
also failed to properly enforce my minimums when scoring banks for the
players and simply tallied up shares. I don't want to get rid of the
minimum dividend (cube scoring) mechanism for the banks, so I will have
to observe this next time. I'm not sure what effect in this game it
would have had in the end since most banks usually had a good
combination of cards and cubes. But since the end of the game was so
close, everything counts in large amounts.
- The game played
much differently this time - the market never tanked. It could have
easily done so if the cards were played differently, but the mechanism
to tip markets early never pulled the market down. It created a
different dynamic than what I was hoping to play against, i.e.
declining markets, red cubes being slashed, etc. The play was tentative
and revolved around making risky investments and having them pay off.
-
The Bond play in a boom market is particularly strong as it throws
yellow cubes into the bond area in turns #2 and #3. Typically, it
seemed like players would burn through their personal shares quickly
early and budget later on. It seems like in boom times, if one player
took from the bond area (the first player usually), it created a run on
the bond market which would drain players of yet more Personal Shares.
At first I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep this dynamic in there, but
I'm actually amazed at how it works. If you decide not to take the
riskier bonds, you are probably more likely to want to kill the market.
-
In two games so far, I haven't even bothered with the Reorganization
player action (trading three cards for a Personal Share). I have rarely
moved cubes between banks although it did come in handy for some
positioning in the later rounds of this game. I still want these
options in place.
- I rarely moved cubes from regions to banks.
This nullifies the effects of about a third of the event cards that
involve messing with the regional cubes. The main reason for this is
because it is cheap for players to throw in their own event cards into
whatever bank they own. The cards typically have a good spread of
values and since the majority of the cards favor yellow and red cubes
in larger amounts, it makes sense to play them. However, the cards go
away and cubes stay and the end game was decided in part by regional
cubes and permanent investments that had been made through the game.
Again, this is a point of interest to me. It almost seems like a waste
to expend a card for the sake of moving a cube, but the cube tends to
stay in place and if conditions change, it is very difficult to back
out of that investment. I thought about scaling back the cube values on
the event cards, but I really like the distribution that is on there
now and it makes deciding short/long term that much harder to judge.
- Game clocked in at one hour from set up to shut down. I can live with that.
In
short, the game is progressing well. I still have to try this game with
the wife and I doubt I will try this out with my 7 and 10 year old kids
simply because I think there's a lot going on.
I am pretty
pleased with the way this game plays so far. There are moments near the
beginning and middle game where shares are flying and most of the moves
have high short term benefit - almost to the point of feeling
worthless. However, there are a number of options on any given play
that compound and gain worth regardless of the worth of the
investments.
Next play tomorrow night with a simulated three
person game - or if I can convince the wife to help out, I'd much
rather have her input on things. She is savvy on the mood and feel of a
game and she usually articulates any nagging suspicions I may have."
* * * *
"Well, managed to start a three player game tonight and the game turned into a bloodbath and wrapped up in 45 minutes or so.
The
first turn was incredibly cordial and Green was able to get a jump on
Yellow and Red and go up 10/9/7 thanks to owning a bank all by himself
and having a minority share in the biggest producer. The Investment
Track stayed at the top and the Stability Track was close to the next
level.
Next turn Yellow and Red attempted to outmaneuver Green
and began bringing values down. Green drew a 'Credit Swap' event that
allowed him to move up to five permanent shares to any bank he owned so
he moved them to a bank in the Plains - these were all red and the
value of assets started dropping. This was brought about by Yellow
calling shenanigans and dropping an 'Overnight Bail Out' card which
caught Green by surprise. Before long everybody was piling on and
dropping the Investment Track lower. Red played a card that allowed
everybody to remove one share from every bank and Green was last in
turn order, so the Plains bank was left with 6 Red Cubes with negative
value and no other owners. Green countered by dropping event cards to
hurt banks in the Midwest and Northeast and tried to put in enough
cards to shift the bank's assets above -$5 at the end of the match.
Unfortunately, another event card was played that brought cube values
to $1/-$1/$-2 and the final value for Red's solo bank was at the cutoff
for the final bankruptcy. The market slipped to the lowest level.
At
this point, the game was originally designed to cut off the moment the
third bankruptcy happened. I changed the rule (and it is uploaded to
the site) so that scoring is done at the end of the turn of the final
bankruptcy or the fourth turn. Green was in the process of bolstering
up other Banks to get a final 3 VP. It felt unfair to not allow this VP
scoring for the highest bank especially since once the market hits the
lowest rung, all bets are off and the game is virtually over as there
are yellow and red cubes strewn all over the board. With the change in
the rule, Green won by 2 VP over Yellow. Red limped in last 6 VP
behind. No one played bonds and again there were few regional
investments done.
The game advanced quickly. I liked having the
players clobbering each other and it was death by a thousand cuts
towards the end. I imagine this will probably turn some people off to
the game, but it is an incentive for people to work together. I did end
up playing this game as a bunch of jerks pitted against each other.
Maybe a friendly group of gamers would be a lot nicer to each other.
There
were definitely some interesting card combinations coming up that would
have surprised players in real life. The drawing of negative regional
cubes was great, but having the guy they were aimed at turn around and
group those all into one shared bank by everybody with the intention to
eventually pull out was even better - but then the third owner deciding
to play a card that allowed people to pull out so that the original
target was screwed based on the original turn order? Just plain awesome
- even if it did send the game on a quicker spiral. At that point I
figure most gamers would just go into attack mode - and rightfully so.
Other
changes involved some cosmetic changes to make the cards easier to
read. The bank card is much more easy to read and the event card cubes
at the top of the card are now the same size as the 1 cm cubes. It
requires fanning the cards out more, but since you are reading text for
the events anyways, I didn't see this as an impediment.
and
The
cards will be spruced up with images and backgrounds, but for now I am
trying to get the effects down pat. I did change text on some of the
cards mostly to clarify events, but I did decide to make the 'Market
Crash' events drop the Investment Track down by at least one rung and
possibly two rungs. These cards were not drawing consistently enough to
match the urgency on the title - and the game is all about trying to
avoid a bubble. If it unbalances the game too much, I'll change it back.
Next
up is seeing if I can get the wife to play. I'd also like to get Steam
on the table in the worst way, but I feel like this might be easier to
explain. Who knows. If I can't get her on board, I will take the next
step and try to simulate a four person game. My sense is that things
could get entirely too chaotic - and I haven't figured out a way around
this if this happens."
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