I've finally gotten around to updating the rules for this game.
Feel free to comment.
Isla Margarita revisited
Thu, 04/27/2006 - 13:27
Fri, 04/28/2006 - 05:03
#1
Isla revisions
I proto'ed and solo-played an earlier version of Isla Margarita, and let me say the following about the revision:
I think you may have gone overboard with all the Princes moving around. The part I liked about the monarch moving had to do with the fact that there was only one.
However, the scoring (2vp per Prince) seems pretty interesting.
I might go as far as to suggest that if you indeed need to have a prince start at each island, you ought to remove the Crowns alltogether, or if you like the crowns (and I do), then you should only have 1 (MAYBE 2) moving dudes to collect them.
And I think they should be something other than "Princes"... I dunno what exactly to call them, but Princes seems dumb to me. No offense intended, obviously.
Oh, and I think I still like the game (I haven't tried the new rules or anything) - I'm glad you have come back to it!
Fri, 04/28/2006 - 07:01
#2
Isla Margarita revisited
After a reading of the rules & cards, I have a few questions:
1) How many players is this game designed to support? I couldn't find that anywhere in the rules.
2) Just to be clear, the only way to get new crowns is to move a prince across a bridge?
3) "Randomly assign the King Title Card to a player. That player discards 3 Coins out of the game." - Does this mean whoever starts with the King card loses 3 of his own coins from his bank? If so, I'm not clear on the reasoning for this.
4) What's the reasoning for everyone getting a random Crown at the start of the game? It sounds like it's just random starting victory points. Am I missing something?
5) In the section of your rules describing Port Building, you say "To build a bridge...." instead of "To build a port..."
Just from a reading of the rules/cards, the game sounds very interesting. Some of the elements remind me of Web of Power/China, but there are enough differences to keep it distinct. I very much like the idea of the commerce cards for secret bonus scoring and the action cards that determine play order. It sounds like they will work very well in this game.
[/u]
Fri, 04/28/2006 - 07:39
#3
Isla Margarita revisited
I think the game still sounds interesting, but I'm worried that the scoring is incredibly complicated and will make planning pretty difficult. In particular, the 24 secret scoring cards seem to be a big part of the problem. They are so varied in their effects that I don't see how you could possibly incorporate them into your planning. And, what percentage of a player's score do you think will come from cards vs from ordinary
I offered these comments when the game came up in the GDW, and I think they are probably still valid now:
Jeff wrote:
I thought (and have found that I was correct!) that balancing 12 secret goals would be tough. You have 18! Yikes! Of course these are probably imbalanced, and of course you can playtest them to make them work ok. The fact that some players will end up with more than others may be a concern; I'm not sure.
I would say from experience that goals based on the game end configuration don't really work in practice. For example, "+15 points if you end the game as the Prince". There's a sense in which you can actively pursue this, but it would mean basically spending all of your last few turns taking the Prince to guarantee that you could get the Prince at the game end. Other than this, it's a big crapshot. I understand that it's a big enough reward that it's worth pursuing, but do you really want a mechanic that encourages people to take no "real" actions for a significant portion of the game? And I think many of your goal cards will reveal themselves to be too prone to being swamped in the fluctuating nature of the game configuration. By all means try it and see, but my experience from the Disciples is that you need to make the goals as related to the game mechanics as possible, and as achieveable by standard turn actions as possible. If you can't actively work toward a goal, it's not that fair.
-Jeff
Fri, 04/28/2006 - 20:26
#5
Isla Margarita revisited
After playing Australia for the first time last night (and enjoying it rather a lot), maybe a page from that book might be helpful in Isla Margarita...
What about tieing scoring into 'finishing' an island (that is to say building the last bridge on an island)? For example, when an island's last bridge is built, players score some points based on the number of bridges they own (that connect to that island, obv), and/or maybe the amount of coin they have invested on that island. If you keep the multiple princes, the scoring could be variable and dependant on the number of princes present.
Building a Port on an island could also trigger scoring, perhaps also based on the number of bridges people own and coin on the island. The player initiating the scoring probably deserves a bonus.
By comparison, Australia has many areas, and 2 ways to score each. When a certain number of dudes are touching an area, it scores - 3vp for the player initiating, and 1 VP for each dude a player has touching that area. The other scoring is when all the locations touching an area have at least 1 dude in them, it scores the same way - 3vp for the initiator, and 1vp for each dude touching the area. The mechanics of moving the dudes around are of course very different tan your investing and card/role drafting mechanics here.
Sat, 04/29/2006 - 13:47
#6
Isla Margarita revisited
Interesting ideas. I'll have to think about that.
In play, the varied scoring cards actually work pretty well, due to their variance. At the beginning, when there are a lot of choices for cards, they let you focus in on a particular scoring strategy that you want to work towards.
While I did not do this consciencely (but can't deny that I was likely influenced by this in some way), the Prestige cards inPrince of Florence work in exactly the same way. They give you long term goals to shoot for.
As far as what percentage of your scoring the cards will account for, that sort of depend on the player, much like the percentage of shipping/building VP in Peurto Rico.
Ultimately, the cards and the ports should score the bulk of the points, say 65% between the two. Then 25% of you points come from coins. And the final 10% from the crowns.