Re: [piecepack] Tariffs

[Porter235 <porter235@...>]

Mike, 
I am very happy to hear from someone looking at Tariffs. Your idea of using 
the pawns as an additional element sound like fun, please let me know if you 
give it a try.

This is one that I was working on, and hoping to enter into a competition at 
one point, but hit a couple of snags with playtesting, and I liked the idea 
enough that I wanted to get it out in the open. The primary problem that we 
found during playtesting was the amount of braindrain, time consuming, doing 
the math, that can occur on anyone's turn.

Please any and ALL suggestions are welcome. I think there is some serious 
potential here that could prove to be quite a good game for the community, 
but I am at the point that most likely way that this potential will be 
reached is with community involvement.

Speaking of which, it has been a while since I've looked at it... time for me 
to dust it off (so to speak) and take a look. 

If anyone is interested in giving it a try online using the vassal engine, I 
can try and get a domino extension done up so that we can give it a go... 
just let me know.


On Saturday 06 November 2004 9:10 pm, mschoessow wrote:
> Has anyone played Tariffs by Joonathan C. Dietrich (see Rulesets in
> Progress) yet? Without having played it yet, it appears to utilize a
> simple and elegant mechanic. It's an abtract rail game of the type
> where players race to complete secret routes over shared links (like
> Transamerica in that sense) but with an added element; dominoes are
> used as route links over a tight-packed board of tiles, and domino
> pip numbers establish tariff costs for all links in a route.
> Unplaced links may also be traded with other players. I plan to try
> the game over the Thanksgiving/Christmas holidays. For people who
> think that Transamerica is OK but a bit too light or too random,
> Tariffs might be just right.
>
> Jonathan, I noticed you don't use the pawns (not a criticism, just
> an observation) and I couldn't resist thinking of a possibility. How
> about giving each player an opportunity to place his pawn in the
> center of any tile in lieu of taking any other action that turn,
> once during the game (pawns never move once placed). Then, any
> routes running through the tile holding the pawn benefit the pawn
> owner (the pawn owner's score goes down by the tariff through that
> tile for each route through the tile). Theme-wise, you could say
> this symbolizes the pawn owner collecting an infrastructure lease
> payment or some such thing. Because players don't know just when
> another player will declare a route complete, there would be a trade-
> off between placing the pawn safely early but probably not in a
> lucrative position, versus waiting until routes look like firming up
> but maybe not having time to get it placed at all (once a route is
> declared, it would be too late to place a pawn).
>
> -Mike