Re: Fwd: Good Portsmanship contest results

["Clark D. Rodeffer" <clark@...>]

--- In piecepack@yahoogroups.com, "Ron Hale-Evans" <rwhe@...> wrote:
>>> In our game, for various reasons, the Queen
>>> hardly moved at all. Imagine if the King never
>>> moved in El Grande -- it would be a static,
>>> anticlimactic disaster for all players. [...]

>> I agree. In the next version of the rules, I
>> plan to test the idea that moving the queen is
>> not optional, that she must move to a new
>> province if a crown tile is taken. After all,
>> no one says, "No," to the queen.

> Well, the main problem in our game was that the
> majority of the Queen's tiles got built into
> the board at the beginning of the game and
> therefore couldn't be used! Ouch!

Ah-ha! So perhaps a limit on the number of tiles in a given suit in
the initial setup might help as well. This is another thing for me to
test. Similarly, I can see how an over abundance of arms tiles (and
especially the null arms tile) in the initial layout could lead to
weird situations where there are lots of low-payoff provinces that
have no hope of being replaced. But then again, thinking of the
Canadian economy, maybe that fits the theme?

> Doesn't the King move pretty much every turn in
> El Grande?

Often, but not every turn, at least not in a game with fewer than 5
players. Reviewing the El Grande cards, there's only one stack 4 card
(Royal Advisor) plus the only stack 5 card (The King) that allow a
player to move the king. The Royal Advisor card can move him (or
prevent him from moving) one region in any direction, and The King
card can move him (or prevent him from moving) anywhere. I'd estimate
that preventing the king's movement happens less than half of the time
the card is taken, but it does happen.

> One of the best suggestions from the playtesters
> was that the Queen should move _every_ turn, and
> that instead of drawing a Crowns tile to
> determine minimum distance to move, you should
> roll the Crowns die. What do you think?

I'll have to think about this a bit, but at least some aspect of the
Queen's movement (whether or not to move at all, distance, path to
take, and/or who moves her) should be left to player choice. In the
dice-rolling suggestion you cite, who gets to choose the path for the
Queen's movement? High bidder? Last player?

>> I admit that long-winded rules are one of my
>> weaknesses. I'd love to chat with you and/or
>> anyone else who played the game about suggestions
>> on how the rules can be made more succinct, yet
>> get everything across. A player aid card would
>> almost certainly help, but doing something like
>> that in Markdown would be a challenge. Thoughts
>> or suggestions?

> Well, more noters later. You don't have to have
> the rules in Markdown any more, but for the
> contest, you could have included a separate file
> or two, preferably with graphics for the suits,
> such as the face of a coin.

Right! I can use either VASSAL or probably easier, the JCD piecepack
font to dress this up a bit.

Since this particular sub-thread has gotten kind of specific, should
we take it off-list?

Clark