Tuesday 6th September

DaveB wrote:

paulyg wrote:Secret Hitler just arrived... so I'll be bringing that down tonight for some after Dead of Winter action

Been wanting to try that, definitely up for it assuming DoW doesn't finish too late!

The components are really nice - proper wooden desk signs for the president and chancellor!

JohnQ wrote:Ok Dale - that's great, have you played before? There is one track that is better for new players is the only reason for asking.

Thunder Alley works fine with 4 or 5 if anyone else is interested.

John

I've played a couple of times though it was a while ago. Sure it'll come back to me.

paulyg wrote:Secret Hitler just arrived...

Same. It's very nicely produced too; and did you notice the little 'design your own Hitler' sticker book? The one with the picture of a certain US presidential hopeful...

Sadly, I don't think I'll make it down tonight; game looks super though, can't wait to give it some plays with you lot.

Jamie wrote:

paulyg wrote:Secret Hitler just arrived...

Same. It's very nicely produced too; and did you notice the little 'design your own Hitler' sticker book? The one with the picture of a certain US presidential hopeful...

Sadly, I don't think I'll make it down tonight; game looks super though, can't wait to give it some plays with you lot.

How was it?

Enjoyed Long Night, although I'm not sure adding *everything* in was the best choice in retrospect - as it was we completed the objective but no-one managed their individual objectives - I was close (one more turn would have done it). Not realising til halfway through the game some of the traitor cards were scenario specific kind of knackered things too Sorry, PaulyG!

Shame we didn't get a chance to try Secret Hitler - maybe next time!

DaveB wrote:Enjoyed Long Night, although I'm not sure adding *everything* in was the best choice in retrospect - as it was we completed the objective but no-one managed their individual objectives - I was close (one more turn would have done it). Not realising til halfway through the game some of the traitor cards were scenario specific kind of knackered things too Sorry, PaulyG!

Shame we didn't get a chance to try Secret Hitler - maybe next time!

I agree, it could have been just the particular objective but it felt that we didn't have enough rounds to do anything other then the 2nd and 3rd objectives. I really liked the additions to the base game though! Definitely want to play more.

Thinking about Mare Nostrum, why do we keep our resources secret?

When we take resources each round, technically we all know what the others get as it's printed on the board. The only one that has to be secret is the legendary resources, which makes them more valuable if noone knows what you have.

We should have known (if we'd bothered to work it out) how much money Rich had and should have known how many of my coins we could allow him to take. You could all have taken them first if you'd realised that he was going to win otherwise. If I'd thought it through it would actually have been a great move on my part as you would all have been forced to take my coins and I could have picked my resources early.

It's just very difficult to track who's in a winning position atm.

paulyg wrote:How was it?

I really enjoyed it Paul; though, first game and I think we may have gotten one or two things wrong*, and didn't really have a good grasp of the game's strategies etc. It certainly left me wanting more though...

I like how there are only 6 liberal policies, and so, as they get enacted, there are fewer in the draw pile (maybe only 1 or 2); therefor, easier for a fascist president to draw 2 fascist policies and 1 liberal, which he can discard and pass the 2 fascist policies to the chancellor.

Looking forwards to playing more!

* One of the things we got wrong, was after a special election (an executive power where the president selects any new president), the president token returns to normal order of play (clockwise from the original president).

Lizzy wrote:Thinking about Mare Nostrum, why do we keep our resources secret?

I was wondering this as we were playing. The number of resources each player has is trackable and could probably be played open to avoid surprise endings like last night. You only need to have them hidden for legendary goods, as you say, and when deciding which goods to offer for trade but this could be done with face down resources rather than behind screens. I wouldn't have got away with collecting so many coins if anyone had noticed how many I'd already collected at the start of the round, so it felt like a cheap way to win. But perhaps they tested the game with open resources and found it slowed things down too much with players constantly checking what everyone had available.

I can see the game getting more aggressive as players get more experienced, pre-emptively attacking to stop a presumed leader (even more than we did with Karl already!).

Lizzy wrote:Thinking about Mare Nostrum, why do we keep our resources secret?

When we take resources each round, technically we all know what the others get as it's printed on the board. The only one that has to be secret is the legendary resources, which makes them more valuable if noone knows what you have.

We should have known (if we'd bothered to work it out) how much money Rich had and should have known how many of my coins we could allow him to take. You could all have taken them first if you'd realised that he was going to win otherwise. If I'd thought it through it would actually have been a great move on my part as you would all have been forced to take my coins and I could have picked my resources early.

It's just very difficult to track who's in a winning position atm.

Yeah, I think the screens are just there mostly to stop the game getting bogged down in everyone counting all the resources that everyone else has every turn. Having said that, I definitely think there is more strategy to trade than we have played so far.

This BGG thread seems relevant

Yeah, when I won last week it was mostly because they didn't realise how many different resources I already had. If they'd noticed, they could easily have stopped me winning. They just had to figure out which resources they couldn't let me have.

You're right that the game would probably drag if everyone could see what people had.

I think people don't attack much because they don't know who's winning. In hindsight, Kes was getting too many resources so I should have tried to take some off him. I was just concentrating on getting more cities and temples to get more money, but I was way off getting to 12.

This BGG thread seems relevant[/quote]

Yeah, there are some good points here. I guess it's one of those games like Web of Spies where you have to teach, not just the rules, but how to play so that the game balances. I guess we just haven't enough experience yet to know quite what that is!

Lizzy wrote:Yeah, when I won last week it was mostly because they didn't realise how many different resources I already had. If they'd noticed, they could easily have stopped me winning. They just had to figure out which resources they couldn't let me have.

You're right that the game would probably drag if everyone could see what people had.

I think people don't attack much because they don't know who's winning. In hindsight, Kes was getting too many resources so I should have tried to take some off him. I was just concentrating on getting more cities and temples to get more money, but I was way off getting to 12.

I think it just suffers from there being a lot to think about when you're new to it, and several paths to victory. Certainly in my plays so far I have just been concentrating on what I want to do (unsuccessfully the first time and successfully the second). When I got my pyramids win on Sunday, people did immediately realise that they should have noticed that I'd got the hanging gardens and kept back two coins so only needed to get 9 from income / trading. It's just a lot to think about when you're learning rules as well.

I think playing it a bit it would become clearer what you need to keep an eye on - you can't let Greece expand unchecked into territories with potential to build more cities and temples as they start with a strong coin position. It is also easier than you might think for a power to get to 4 capital/legendary cities from what I can see. They look far apart but some of those sea spaces are BIG!

Lizzy wrote:Yeah, there are some good points here. I guess it's one of those games like Web of Spies where you have to teach, not just the rules, but how to play so that the game balances. I guess we just haven't enough experience yet to know quite what that is!

Exactly!

The other thing with hiding resources is that it's possible to carry coins over to the next round (and resources if you have the ability).

Middle ground would be to reveal everything you generate and maybe announce how many total you generated, then behind the screen. People would to track stored resources but would be harder to grab 12 in a round without someone noticing
How's that?

Yeah, that could work. Rather than just taking them all at once we could dish them out so it's clear who gets what.

Isn't the point that you can get tell from the map? How many Caravans and Cities/markets that the player has control of?

Aneurin wrote:Isn't the point that you can get tell from the map? How many Caravans and Cities/markets that the player has control of?

Yeah, you can, but it would be annoying to wait for someone to count them up. I think being clear when giving them out is a good compromise. Screen still keeps hidden anything you kept from a previous round.