Reply: Glory to Rome:: General:: Re: Tips for having experienced players play with newbs?

by ackmondual

SparkingConduit wrote:

I was invited to try a game of this last night. I had always wondered what it would be like and heard really good things about it. Halfway through the rules explanation, I knew the game was not going to go well at all. Oh, it had nothing to do with the mechanics and the game did sound quite fun. No, the problem stemmed from the fact that I knew this game would be just like Puerto Rico, in that someone who doesn't know how to play properly will just give somebody else the game through their sheer inexperience. I tried to explain this to the other players and gracefully bow out, but they assured me my fears were unfounded.

Hmmm, I try to give an overview of each game I teach b/c of this... I definitely would've said it's like PR and Race For The Galaxy b/c of the role selection, and that it offers a way to convert goods/material to VP.

BTW, reminds me of a topic I recently posted....
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/873548/do-you-have-to-pu...

SparkingConduit wrote:

Sure enough, what I was expecting came to fruition. By about 10 turns in I had already clearly lost and near the endgame no appreciable action I could take would allow me to do something without seriously helping an opponent. I just ended up helping the guy on my right win because he seemed like the nicest. They weren't entirely upset when the game was over, but I could tell that none of them was happy with how it went, either.

FWIW, ALOT of games are like that.... in PR, if you make a mistake early on, it can cost you the game already. In DOminion, if you went the wrong route, you can't go back, but still need to finish out the rest of the game. In Race, 10 rounds into the game is about endgame given games tend to last up to 11 to 17 rounds. The deal with these games is they're relatively short, so just play another one or something else.

SparkingConduit wrote:

Which brings me back to my question: is there something these guys could (and perhaps should) have done to introduce me to the game so I wouldn't have gotten to this state, or is it pretty much purely a game you can only play with those of the same skill level?

Only thing is to give strategy advice throughout. However, unlike PR (ironic how you mention the Kasporav and Chess analogy, as to me, PR was a sort of "multiplayer chess"), GtR has (alot more) luck, sometimes the cards won't go your way. I'm hoping they also give you some tips at the beginning of the game as well regarding how to approach the start (e.g. get out yellow or brown/green buildings to finish ANYTHING; grab an Craft or Arch client if you can).

It almost sounds like u played Settlers Of Catan, no1 give you any advice, and you ended up placing your initial settlements on 1 to 3 pipped numbers, and got immediately boxed in or something.

SparkingConduit wrote:

We did play with that rule. It didn't particularly help. I mean, basically it was like this: I understood what was going on, but by the time I understood why I should do it, it was fruitless to go for that strategy. Like I understood why people were doing that. Basically, if you had a sewer, you now had 2 cards in your stockpile instead of just one. That would have been nice for me because I did have a sewer, but then I never got a pair of cards again for the rest of the game.

Be adaptive... if you couldn't get 2 of the same color, then grab a Jack so you can at least follow on one role you'd want to.

Also, note that Sewer just lets you place order cards (non Jacks) into your Stockpile, instead of getting discarded to the Pool. It has nothing to do with how many goes into there.