Love your runthroughs as always! Just a quick note that influence on a card protects it from being discarded during a rest phase. My wife and I make use of them regularly for that purpose.

@rahdo

6 ай бұрын

hmm, my reading of the rules is that it's not protecting the scroll from being discarded... it's preventing the neutral player transferring it to the guilds, which means it actually hampers you (the neutral player will transfer scrolls it finds *unless* you put your influence on them, in which case it ignores them which means you have to do it)

@ryangallagher7183

6 ай бұрын

​@@rahdo It does protect it during a rest. The rest will only trigger the existing scroll being delivered if one of the top spots (that grant 2 guild influence) is available on the right of the board (in other words that guild has no scroll cards). I don't know what your meta is like, but these spots are not available 99% of the time in my games, as they are quickly taken by players for the juicy double guild influence, resulting in the scroll being discarded instead the vast majority of the time. As for the influence mechanic, to each their own I guess. My wife and I also don't enjoy take that in games, but after 10 two player games, we love the influence mechanic, and wouldn't enjoy the game as much without it. I find we use it much more often on the right side of the board to prevent the other player translating a scroll we want, but have also made good use of it on the left side to stop a key scroll being discarded during a rest.

I only received my copy yesterday so haven't played yet but I don't think you're correct at 4:30 when you say that you get the retirment bonus if you place the final gold on another player's translator. The rules state "The owner of the Retiring Translator must tuck the Translator Card under 1 of the 4 brown Action Slots of their Player Board."

What if someone else building or delivering your influenced scroll out the influence on the resource track, and every 2 influence on a track could be spent to level up that track as w "free" action costing 2 silver or one gold on the players turn.

In both Wayfarers and Scholars, you can just take a coin from the bank, instead of your opponent paying. Then you feel clever for Reading your opponent, and you dont punish them :)

@rahdo

6 ай бұрын

taking coin from the bank is signifcantly changing the economy of the game, supercharing it with a bigger influx of capital. near the end of the game it wouldn't matter much, but at the beginning of the game, creating this new extra money out of "nowhere" would knock things out of whack and basically make the influece * too powerful i fear.

I think the influence on cards thing is a player problem not a game problem. The game isn’t forcing people to ‘attack’ opponents. Why not just protect the things that you want as I’ve seen most people do in Wayfarers. If you assume that an opponent uses the same train of thought as you do (ie that they believe it better to place influence on things you want rather than things they want) then logically it is better to protect your own interests (as they are known to you) than ‘tax’ your opponent (as there interests are only inferred). The cost of paying and extra money to get a card is the same as charging an opponent an extra money so the benefit is net neutral anyway. In worker placement you’d probably happily take that pile of wood to block an opponent from getting it, or draft a card that might be useful to them. This isn’t considered non ‘care bear’ just Influence on cards is far less mean than that as it doesn’t prevent anyone from doing anything, just makes things slightly more expensive.

@rahdo

6 ай бұрын

if you can anticipate what your opponent wants, then you know whether you need to "protect" what's important to you or not. and if you don't need to protect it, then you're literally getting zero use out of the influence bonus, and therefore playing inefficiently. if you want to play at your best you need to instead identify what your opponent needs most and put a tax on it if you don't need to protect what's important to you. otherwise, you might as well not even take the reward in the first place. as i said in the video, this is less of an issue at higher player counts because chances are _someone_ wants what you want, but in 2p, it's very easy to end up in different grooves, valuing different things.

@davidhytch2065

6 ай бұрын

@@rahdo but if you can anticipate your opponents moves then the logical assumption must be that they can anticipate your moves. So by protecting the thing you want you are preventing the, from applying the tax on you. Ergo you are getting exactly the same value out of that influence placement as if you placed it on something they wanted. There is no difference.

@mrsamtheman80

6 ай бұрын

@@rahdoEarly on, when extra resources have the biggest bang also, you have help: your opponent probably wants to complete his/her goal card, and in at least 1 of the three areas there is probably only 1 way to get there (early on at least).

@rahdo

6 ай бұрын

@@davidhytch2065 that's assuming that players get an equal amount of opportunities to apply influence on a regular schedule, but that's not the case in this game. if i apply "protection" to myself against a potential tax that you might levy against me in the future, and then you never get the opportunity to apply that tax against me before I collect the card in question, then i have squandered an influence resource trying to protect myself from a danger than never came. since that's a gamble with no guaranteed payoff, it's a weaker move than instead applying a tax to you, which has a much higher guaranteed ROI.

@davidhytch2065

6 ай бұрын

@@rahdo for a defensive influence action to make a return the opponent has to not have had an opportunity to influence it themselves and you have to actually gain that card. For an offensive influence action to give a return the opponent has to not have had the opportunity to influence it and they have to actually gain that card. I’m still not seeing a differentiation in value, but we are talking about lots of ifs bits and maybes. You have far better things to be doing with your time than grading messages with me and I’m. It trying to argue you into liking something you don’t, that’s why there are so many games, right? I really do appreciate the replies though it is an interesting debate and I was intrigued by the theory that always attacking is better. Feel free to not respond but out of curiosity was the dislike of the mechanism only for the scroll cards or also for the ownership of translator cards?

I agree the influence is a bit annoying, but, also only playing 2p, I don't find it that big a deal to lose one coin if I need a card with the opponent's influence marker on it. I also can't be bothered to sit there for 5 minutes and work out what my opponent needs most! I'm a bit bemused that it's such a big thing for you! I just shrug it off honestly.

@rahdo

6 ай бұрын

well at least we agree it's annoying, and honestly, i just don't need annoyances in the games we keep! :)

Had an idea for a carebear rule: scrolls you have influenced cost one less silver to bring to the guild. It will upset the economy of the game having all that extra silver floating around. Would have to playtest it a few times.

@rahdo

6 ай бұрын

yeah, i reckon anything that generates the value of a full coin (or gold) out of nowhere is just infusing more into the economy and feels maybe too strong. maybe something like "when you recruit, spend an influence to pick a deck and look through the deck to find a card you like, then reshuffle"?

Hate seeing influence tokens being a common theme in this series and used in the same way, wish they had come up with a different idea for their use here.

I understand your concern with influence, but to me, it makes the South Tigris games incredibly interactive in otherwise typical optimisation euro games, which is somewhat rare. I haven't played Scholars enough to have a firm opinion, but in Wayfarers, at some point, it's possible to generate so much income (if you play well, which I don't) that influence's impact is somewhat minor after 2-ish rests (I think? I don't consider myself an expert). In Scholars, the income from resting is much more trickier given you don't necessarily gain all the income you "invested" in. Maybe that makes influence more impactful for the whole game duration. Food for thoughts.

@rahdo

6 ай бұрын

oh yeah, i can totally see the value of design for folks who want to get in each other's business! :) i just reckon it would be nice if the rules for them were "when collecting influence, either a) apply them to a scroll somewhere to protect what you want or tax someone else (existing rule), or b) place it on your player board and once you've collected 3, trade them in for a coin (or something like that)". no reason to remove their current function, would just be nice to have an alternate carebear function :)

@masterbridgemaster1

6 ай бұрын

Or just take the "tax" from the supply, instead of from the other player (this works well in Wayfarers, as well).@@rahdo

@rahdo

6 ай бұрын

yeah, but that's making the action SIGNIFICANTLY more powerful by briging new money into the economy, rather than just moving existing money around. i think that would significantly unbalance the early game when coins are hard to come by

@GORYOUN

6 ай бұрын

I hear what you say about the influence “problem”. Your suggestions about collecting influence and trading them in for some benefit sound good in the 2 player game. There should be an official 2 player rule variant and Sam & Shem should be in the best place to do that after all their play testing. On a similar note re 2 player and take that “dick” moves, I only ever play Castles of Burgundy 2 player (with my wife). We nearly always automatically focus on moves / actions which generate more points for each of us rather than taking tiles that prevent the other player gaining points. For example If a 4 pig animal tile was available to allow my wife to complete an area of 3/4 pig tiles, I would usually not bother pick it up if I didn’t actually need it myself. I would focus on, trying to complete a big set of ship or building tiles or whatever instead. This is by far our most played game and it is the playing the game that is more enjoyable than the actual winning (except the time when I first taught my wife the game and I only beat her for the first time at the 7th attempt)

I didn't hate the influence thing as much as in wayfarers, but it is still very annoying.