Tried Out Tarrifs

["mschoessow" <mikeschoessow@...>]

Last night I played a 2-player game of Tarrifs. The other player was
Laura, a member of our regular gaming group and someone who likes
and is pretty good with abstracts. We played for two rounds.
Although it doesn't explicitly say it in the rules, we assumed that
players' dominoes were kept hidden until played. We used the Simple
Zones board layout.

My first contract took me up and down from suns to shields several
times so I knew it might be dificult to get a good score on my first
round. My route was composed of mostly 2's and 3's with one 4. It
can be a difficult choice between placing a medium-large tarrif,
such as 4, versus trading in both dominoes and losing tempo. Twice
(on subsequent turns actually) during the first round I traded in
both dominoes for new ones.

Laura's first round went better than mine. As it turned out, she had
a slightly easier contract but what helped her most was her ability
to utilize in optimal fashion several links that I had already
placed. She also managed to place only nulls, 1's and 2's when
adding to her route. She did not do any trading and neither of us
rotated any links. Laura declared her route first but I had just
completed my own the previous turn so neither of us had to add any
blank links. Her tarrif total was 26 and mine was 33.

In the second round of the game my contract looked easier than the
first one with two adjacent stops and then one space to the next,
and no long links. Laura turned out to have a similarly easy route.
Neither of us did any trading this round although there was one case
of Laura rotating a link that I had placed so there was a tarrif of
6 in the direction I was going. This turned out to hurt her in the
end though. We were both making really fast progress and at one
point Laura triumphantly told me she would be declaring her route
soon (believing that I couldn't be close yet). As it turned out
though, I had just completed my own route and was planning on taking
one last turn to rotate that darn 6 back, but after hearing her
comment I declared my route instead. As I had hoped, she needed to
use a blank link to finish her route and it of course had a tarif of
8 since my highest was 6. My tarrif total came in at 23 but Laura
still managed a 27 so she won the game with a total score of 53,
compared to my 56.

Additional comments on game play:

There was not much trading happening. One reason for this was that
neither of us could see any value in player-to-player trading. I can
think of situations where player-to-player trades would be
worthwhile in a 3- or especially a 4-player game, but with two
players it's hard to think of a situation in which both players
could be in favor of a specific trade and both feel that they
benefited themselves. Although we didn't do much rotating, that may
be because we don't know the game all that well yet.

There have been some suggestions to simplify the scoring for blank
links added at the end of a round, so they just add a fixed tarrif
instead of being determined by the other players' highest tarrifs.
When I first read this idea I agreed with it but after playing the
game I have changed my mind and now I believe the rules should be
left as they are in that regard. Game play decisions can definitely
change if the opponent has used only nulls, 1's and 2's on their
route versus the case where an opponent's route includes a high-
tarrif link.

Although I haven't yet played with more than two players, I see this
game as following the standard pattern for abstracts in which the 2-
player game is much more strategic than the multi-player versions
which are mostly tactical rather than strategic. In the case of
Tarrifs, even the 2-player version is quite tactical because of the
relatively large amount of chance in the game.

e played the game with standard 2" x 1" dominoes. By about half way
through the first round it becme obvious that there would be a
problem fitting half-dominoes on some of the tiles in crowded areas.
Myabe I'm misunderstanding something here about how dominoes are
supposed to be placed between tiles but it appears to be a problem
in some cases. We fixed it by spacing all tiles apart with 1"
clearance between adjacent tiles. This worked fine, and Laura and I
both felt that the larger spaced board looked more attractive with
the links in place.

Fun Factor:

Laura and I both liked the game quite a bit. Although it seemed to
be somewhat of a brain burner during the first round, once we had
played it a while it felt like it fell into what might be called the
advanced filler category. To me the game feels a little bit like
Transamerica, but is a better game because there is more scope for
skillful play. I definitely like Tarrifs better than Transamerica.

Rules Comments:

We found the rules easy to understand for the most part. They are
well organized. I do have a few niggles though. In the first
paragraph under Setup, it says that "tiles represent factories" but
in the next paragraph tiles are refered to as cities. This didn't
cause confusion for us but it might be good to pick one or the other.

I suggest you make clear that players keep their unplayed dominoes
face-down (assuming that's correct :-)

In the seventh line after A Turn, suggest you remove the word "may".

There's something wrong with the second sentence under PLAY.

In the second paragraph under SCORE, remove the word "to" (fifth
word from the end of the sentence).

Definitely include a detailed example figure at the end, including
an illustration of typical domino layout.


In summary, we both felt that Tarrifs is a fun game and a good
addition to the list. It's definitely on my smaller list of
piecepack keepers.


-Mike