[GDS] July 2011 "Neighborhoods" feedback request on mechanics

I would very much appreciate your feedback since a game based on this mechanic will be shown at Essen, at the Inventors workshop. What I learned during this month’s challenge is that for the life of me I cannot write comprehensible rules.

This request for feedback is about the mechanics. (Somehow they seemed easy to explain face to face)

Each player has a bag of tile that he tries to place to score the most points before game ends. Tiles are split in neighborhoods and placing all tiles from a neighborhood is a big deal. Also some tiles are more valuable than others.

Players get a mix of resources every time (but will ignore this part). The mix of resource is about 20% random -80% driven by player.

After getting resources players take turns to draw one property tile from the bag. If they have the resources required they have two options
a.1. Spend resources and place the property in the neighborhood
a.2. Place the property face down to the right of the resource board in the Pipeline (to be used in the next round). Why would you do this? Because this saves resources and increases the likelihood to get more desirable tiles (higher value, complete neighborhood) before the game ends. Complete a neighborhood is a great strategy but you need to draw from 50 tiles the 10 that you need.

If a property is placed on the board another tile can be drawn from the bag, and can repeat the options above.

If and only if a property drawn cannot be placed on the board due to lack of resources there are two options

b.1 Put the property on the Market. Each property placed on the Market will score 1 point at the end of the game. This is one strategy that sets the tempo of the game. If in every round you can place one or more resources on the board and one on the market with 50 tiles the game will last <25 rounds.
b.2 Place the property in the Pipeline face down.

Use the Pipeline
c. 1 Players that have properties in the Pipeline, count them, return them to the bag and draw an equal number of tiles. Players can (but don’t have to) place all properties they have resources for on the board. Properties not placed on the board stay in the Pipeline face down and will be use in the following turns.
One other strategy is to complete several neighborhoods. With plenty of time (say 40 rounds) there is a high likelihood that you will finalize these (draw tiles while having resources). However achieving this in 25 rounds or less is very unlikely unless you build the Pipeline. For example after ten rounds you can have 10 tiles in the Pipeline that will allow you to draw 10 tiles from the bag at once. There are good chances that you can complete the target neighborhood before somebody finishes the game.

If you think of it, this is a bit of a reversed Dominion. Instead of building a deck you have to get rid of a a bag of tiles, but in a smart way that scores most points.

What do you think of it? Have you seen something similar?

Thank you