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Hi, Stefaan. Thanks
Hi, Stefaan. Thanks for sharing your pvicpestree. To answer your question, my two plays were with 3 and 4 players. Even though I am not an official Opinionated Gamer reviewer, I agree that it would have been nice to have played the game more before finalizing my thoughts. Unfortunately, no one that I game with was willing to play the game a second time (I even offered to play for a cash prize at one point). Do you find that more players or fewer are better? Personally, I thought that the three player game was more enjoyable than the four because there were fewer cards available in the trading phase. With 5 or 6 players, I would think that most players would have no trouble getting the cards they want most of the time, which would make the game more solitary than it already is.You note that, if you pay attention to the cards gained through caravels, you have an idea of what everyone wants. The difficulty, however, is that by the time players have more than one caravel (thus allowing you to see at least two of their seven cards), players can benefit from both a set of identical cards and a combination of distinct cards. Imagine that Tom takes a 4 and a 7 for his caravels. Does that mean he wants more 4s or 7s to complete a set, or that he doesn't want 4s or 7s because he's building a combination? I have no way of knowing. Perhaps for his first play, Tom takes another 4. Now I might want to stop him from taking any more 4s, but, by this point, the odds are good that he already has a set of 4s and is now trying to take different cards. So, again, I don't have the necessary informational make good choicesI think it is interesting that you have found that putting up high cards makes it likely you will get early trade opportunities. It seemed to me that only happened on the last two turns or so. Because 7s, 8s, and 9s only appear half as often as 1s, 2s, and 3s, people were much more likely to attempt to make sets out of low cards. So unless you gave away enough high-value cards to be Trade Master, you were often one of the last to pick with a market full of high-value cards. My strategy (which earned me one win and one second place finish), was to never trade away high value cards unless absolutely necessary. In two games, I was never the Trade Master even once.Your point on Wharehouses is also interesting. Do you play them with the stored card face up or face down? The rules do not specify, and we played face down. Face up wold certainly help the imformation-sharing issues. If I were to attempt a variant to correct the issues I had witht the the game, I think I would start by finding ways to have more face-up card play. Given the paucity of information at players' disposal, the effort of trying to remember what everyone has taken and/or deduce what everyone is seeking far outstrips the extra enjoyment I get from marginally better play. Having more open information would reduce that burden significantly.Anyway, I appreciate the countervailing pvicpestree. I always find it fascinating to hear why a game that did not work for me succeeded for someone else. Thank you.