Gold Train redux
A couple of months ago I wrote about Gold Train, a game-in-a-bag that didn't seem to work so well with two players. narya and I played, and the winner seemed to be the person who drew the gold mines first; nothing else really mattered.
Yesterday a larger group of us played a 5-player game. It was much more developed: there were two clear phases, "before the mines run out" (when nobody has any labor because it's all running off into the mines) and "after the mines run out" (when nobody needs labor, so it's really cheap to acquire). With five people it was impossible to hold on to valuable mines for any length of time, since somebody would draw the "explode a mine" token before your turn came up again, with the result that the game ran on forever and people were perpetually cash-starved.
I think the right number of players must be exactly four, but this isn't going to wind up really high on my list any time soon. fredrickegerman likened it to Kings & Things, which is probably all-around a better game.
Yesterday a larger group of us played a 5-player game. It was much more developed: there were two clear phases, "before the mines run out" (when nobody has any labor because it's all running off into the mines) and "after the mines run out" (when nobody needs labor, so it's really cheap to acquire). With five people it was impossible to hold on to valuable mines for any length of time, since somebody would draw the "explode a mine" token before your turn came up again, with the result that the game ran on forever and people were perpetually cash-starved.
I think the right number of players must be exactly four, but this isn't going to wind up really high on my list any time soon. fredrickegerman likened it to Kings & Things, which is probably all-around a better game.