Special Edition Change-Tile 6

[shakeszoola]

Hi All,

There may be more changes (besides new expansion tiles) with the special edition vs 2019 edition. But I'm not sure if I see any, so if anyone notices any other changes to the base game please let me know.

The main point of this forum is to take a look at the new tile 6 that got nerfed in the special edition. The new tile reads as:

Once per turn, you may spend 2 worker tokens to immediately take a building (beige) tile from any of the six depots on the game board (except the central black depot) and place it on an empty key space in the bottom right of your player board.

Is there any plans to add this in? Is this something we, as a community, would want to add in? It seems that it does lie in the middle of 1st edition & 2019 edition.

Not saying these should be added, but wanted to also get thoughts on the "2nd expansion" new tiles. I found them a bit interesting.

27: Turn order track (Yellow) --> Your turn order marker is always placed on top when stacked with other players.
28: Workers --> You can buy 2 workers from the supply at any time at the cost of 1 silver coin.
Crane (Black Market) --> When placed it triggers the effect of any building (It also counts as a building of your choice at end game which can give you an extra 4 points).
Geese (Black Market) --> When placed you get 2 points for geese + points for 1 other animal. When other animals are placed, you get 2 extra points from geese. Also, triggers for #7 & #24 tiles (Which wow, the possibility of getting 20 pts at end game).

[sunnypsyop]

Knowledge tile 6 is severely broken. This is the reason why I prefer to play the original edition. I saw with the kickstarter re-release,they nerfed it. Any chance of it being fixed?

[jackg_tor]

I don't play that much anymore but I'd be in favor of any change that gets rid of tile 6 from the second edition. As others have said in this and other forums, the tile is badly overpowered.

[Pistol Star]

About the special edition's Yellow Tile 6:
I've never played with the special edition yellow tile 6, but I think it's new ability is greatly underpowered and super boring.
It's so sad to see the "Buy from anywhere with 2 silverlings ability" to leave the game entirely. It's such a shame.
I found this original ability of buying from anywhere for 2 silverlings to be very interesting, unique, fun, greatly balanced and quite strong.
It "was" a tile, which can be extremely powerful (also in later stages of the game), but it can also be not so strong in other games/spots.
This is one of the two changes that I dislike in the special edition. Of course I love, that they heavily improved Yellow 6 from utterly broken and game deciding to helplessly underpowered, but why, why, why did Stefan Feld not go back to the perfect original ability is mindboggling to me.
It's so funny, that he changed a great and fun ability to first make it utterly broken and unfun, only to then proceed to turn it to utterly weak and boring

I didn't play a whole lot with the 4 new tiles, but I think I can roughly estimate their value's.
Both yellow tiles #27 and #28 are (way) above average yellow tiles for me and are (very) useful at nearly any phase.
I also can see, that both these tiles will often end up in the hands of the 2nd player, which I absolutely love, as it greatly helps to balance the game even further.
The abilities of these two tiles are unique. I love that. I find especially #27 to be a very good design.
I personally find #28 to be a bit too strong and too easy to use effectively. It might ruin the fun a bit, as decisions will be much easier with this tile.
I see it a bit similar to the 2019 Yellow tile 6, as it makes the game especially too easy in later stages, even though it's by far not as strong.
I kind of wished, that Tile 28 would be a black market tile though. 6 Yellow tiles in the black market are definitely too few in my opinion.
7 would be in my opinion a great number of black market yellow tiles.
Especially concerning, that there are now 9 animals in the black market deck and that new animal tile (geese) is super powerful.
I found going for 6 animals in the base game was on average already a bit stronger compared to 6 yellows.
This is now even more severely unbalanced, which is a shame.
Both players can only potentially finish 6 yellows, if 2+ black market yellows show up during the game.
This is especially concerning on board 3, as there is a giant size 6 yellow region on this board, which is a quite mandatory region to finish.

Even though I heavily dislike the new Yellow Tile 6, #27 and #28 are welcoming new additions.
So I see these 3 tiles as an overall improvement, but there was still way more room for improvement in my opinion.

Going for animals is now greatly buffed, because of these amazing geese. I find that to be probably a slight deterioration, as it pushes players
even further into a quite mandatory animal focus. This was already to some extent an existing issue, because of Yellow Tile 24 (4 points per animals). It's such a disaster when this tile shows up, when one player fully ignored animals to this point.
Now, that there are 2 super strong black market tiles greatly benefiting animals, it becomes too mandatory in my eyes to play for animals to at least some extent.
The first player will heavily benefit from this new tile being in the deck. The 2nd player however also benefits from 9 black market animals being in the deck, which helps both players to way easier finish 6 quite good animal tiles.
The geese are on most boards extremely strong. Just think about how powerful geese are on size 4 to size 6 pastures in 2 player games, but also in other player counts. Especially for 2 player games it's definitely one of the strongest tiles available.
It can even be a really good tile for the 2nd size 3 pasture, if you play on a board with two size 3 pastures.
It's in a 2-player game usually easy to get 3 matching animals in the first pasture, but very hard to get the same result in your 2nd pasture.

Overall I dislike the geese for these reasons.

The crane is a very welcome tile to fix the issue of buildings being a tiny bit too weak on average.
This is especially important due to the slight buff of yellows and the great buff of animals.
The crane helps hugely on size 8 cities, but also to some good extent on size 7 cities.
Now going for the size 8 city on board 10 becomes a much more valuable strategy for the player who ends up getting the crane.
That means there are now 2 tiles that make the size 8 city a valuable strategy, instead of only 1. Yellow tile 1 is the other one. I absolutely love that.
Even on boards on which we have the option to play two size 6 cities, it's a very helpful tile and greatly improves the value of going for 12 buildings in a good number of games.
Thus it increases valuable strategic options for all players.
What I also love about this tile, is that it helps increasing tactical options. A player will usually pick it up in Round 1 of any phase.
It can create loads of extremely powerful combo options for that player to use the crane as a church or a market, sometimes even as a carpenter's workshop. That player also gets new exciting options of: Taking a Castle => Buying the Crane => Placing the Crane with a Town Hall effect to place a (previously non connected) Castle, which then let's you collect another powerful tile on a potentially very different number.
I also love how this tile is very unique. It's one of the stronger black market tiles in my opinion.

Last but not least I want to dig deep into tile 28 --> You can buy 2 workers from the supply at any time at the cost of 1 silver coin.

This is extremely powerful and very interesting, as I find it to be an especially super powerful and in this regard, rare, late game economic tile.
I don't think a player should use it's ability too often in the first 2 to 3 phases, except if they find some amazing combos with other tiles or abilities.
But during phase D and even more during Phase E, this tile just bulldozes.
A player who has a strong silverling engine will be able to very effectively use all of their extent silverlings til' the end of the game by turning their excess silverlings into workers.
This is absolutely huge. Even a player who doesn't have a great silverling engine should still very much consider taking this tile, as it is still a strong tile for them and simultaneously be probably too powerful in the hands of a different player's strong silverling engine.

Without this tile, a strong silverling engine player would often end up with a good amount of excess silverlings.
These excess silverlings of course underperform being worth 1 point each.
Especially during phase E, players need very specific numbers to collect very specific tiles and then they also need very specific numbers to place these tiles down.
On top of that, they need/wish to often sell a good amount of specific goods to boost their end game scoring, but it's not always possible to be able to both sell goods and finish all the other big projects as well.
Now they have the option to sell goods to score a good amount of points, while also freeing goods storage for potential boats, while also receiving, if they even wish so, at least 2 workers for doing so. What a fantastic deal!
Who wants to take a Take 2 workers action if they can sell goods to score points and also collect 2 workers simultaneously?

Banks now become extremely much stronger as well, which I do very welcome as well. Banks in late game are otherwise often very weak.
They can in this "new" instance be used for producing 2 silverlings, 1 silverling and 2 workers or 4 workers just like a Boarding House.
So banks are now far superior to boarding houses for the player who owns Yellow 28. This is quite insane, especially concerning that the bank for the other player is way less interesting in later stages. Thus, the player with Yellow 28 now pretty much monopolizes banks for themselves to a good extent, which is of course fantastic.
Warehouses are, for the same reasons, greatly boosted with this tile as well.

Buildings definitely needed a boost, especially after geese and 2 very strong yellow tiles entered the game.
The crane and Yellow 28 definitely heavily improve buildings to a, I believe, very balanced extent.
The famous Buildings + Yellow strategy is now very dangerous and should win way more often compared to before.

All of this closes the gap a bit to the 3 strongest colors of ships, mines and castles, which I find to be welcoming and to this extent, well balanced.
Don't get me wrong though. It is crucial for the game to keep the rarer tiles mostly (way) more powerful compared to the more common tiles.
Otherwise decisions wouldn't matter much at all, if all tiles would be similarly, or even worse, equal in strength.

Pretty much any other yellow tiles (greatly) combo with Yellow 28.

A pretty much broken combo is now combo'ing Yellow 3 and 28 though.
4 and 28 is also extremely strong (as it can produce 3 workers for every sell action, if a player wishes so).
5 and 28 combo's very well as well, because selling goods is buffed so hard with yellow 28. Yellow 5 also wants to sell a lot of goods to make room for a big amount of new goods.
6 in the 2019 edition is even more broken with this combo
6 in the special edition does greatly benefit from 28, which is great.
I can see, that 6 (special edition) needs a combo with Yellow 14 or 28 to become really powerful.
8 is buffed a bit through this combo.
9 benefits a tiny bit, due to the greatly buffed banks and warehouses.
The same is true for 11, because of the vast possible combos of 28 with other yellow tiles.
13 + 28 is obviously also quite good.
14 + 28 is an anti-combo. A huge economic overkill. Both tiles are essentially doing the exact same thing.
15 + 28 is great. Both benefit greatly from selling a lot of goods.
4 points per banks and warehouses benefit greatly due to these buildings being buffed so hard.
25 + 28 is fantastic. Both benefit greatly from selling as many goods as possible.
26 is being buffed, because we will on average be able to finish more colours with the help of 28.
27 and 28 is of course also great, as we want to get ships and first player advantage to fully exploit 28.

[Pistol Star]

I would like to add, that these 4 "new tiles" were already included in the 2019 Edition. Only unfortunately not on BGA.
Here are some more expansions included in both the physical 2019 edition and the special edition, which some of you might find interesting.

Inns:
I really love to play with the Inn's. One Inn is placed next to the black market at the beginning of each new phase and these Inn's will stay there, as long as no one buys them. Even when a phase ends, the inn's won't leave the black market.
So a total of 5 Inn's will be added to the black market over the course of the game.
This means, that there are way more powerful tiles available in the black market in each game and every player can easily use all excess silverlings until the end of the game.

The inn's are like a joker colour. They can be placed in any region of any colour. But only 1 inn can be placed in each region.
The inn's have no direct effect. However, when a region with an inn is being scored, the inn increases this regions size by +1, except for size 8 regions.
A size 9 region is impossible to score.

This is fantastic for ensuring players to finish pretty much any city size, especially if the crane is also in the game.
Once the white castles buildings are also included, it is usually (super) easy to finish a size 8 city.

White Castles:

A ninth building type and by far the worst building type in the game. It uses the rolled number of the white dice (the dice which decides, in which depot a new good will be placed at the beginning of each round) as a free action (like a castle). So instead of any free action you wish for when you place a castle, you only get a specific number. That is a sixth of the production value of a normal castle and you will often not find that number to be useful. You can however manipulate this number with workers or simply take 2 Workers with this free action. I find myself often not finding a stronger move than taking 2 workers with the free action, which is a shame and boring.
It's great to have a ninth building type included to heavily increase the value of big city regions in general.
To balance this additional extreme buff on buildings, this new building "The White Castle" is imho the weakest building, but can at times be very strong. So it does increase tactical depth, which is a big plus for me. A fantastic addition to the game, even though I really hate taking this building.

Trade Routes:

The Trade Routes are great fun and increase the options for every player. But the trade routes are so insantely overpowered, that it's mandatory to work with them as much and as hard as you possibly can. Selling goods was already a strong action in the base game, but now it's just utterly broken.
There is also a good amount of luck involved with the trade routes. If you happen to be lucky to begin with the correct goods, which match your first few trade routes you have a great advantage. You might also end up getting stronger trade route abilities earlier on compared to your opponent.
That might already mean, a game is mostly decided before it even began.
Not a great fan of this expansion, even though it's great fun to play with.

Shields:

Shields are even crazier and more broken than Trade Routes. These shield abilities are soooo powerful, it's insane.
But some of these shield abilities are insanely much stronger than others and when a specific shield is in the game, it is often just a race for both players to roll well enough to obtain this ultra broken shield. Then the other player can often pretty much resign already.
I love the idea and I also like, that shields are massively overpowered and simultaneously very expensive to keep/maintain.
That's great fun, but I wished they would all be similary powerful. It's very frustrating and boring when one player got lucky enough to obtain the by far strongest shield and now has a pretty much secured win, just because of sheer luck of the dice rolls and initial turn order.

There is one shield I really hate. I find it ultra broken and unfun to play with/against.
Shield 16: As long as this shield is in your duchy, you may change on your turn the result of one of your dice to any number (and use it accordingly).

This breaks the game as hard as yellow tile 6 in the 2019 edition and also destroys the spirit of the game imo.
We play and enjoy the game for it's challenging decisions.
But with Shield 16, one plays an entirely different game of simply choosing how they want to destroy their opponent(s), while simultaneously frustrating the hell out of them.
With Shield 16 you will obviously always use the worse of your 2 dice to turn into a wild die (the other better die will nearly always be working very well in one way or another) and you can always play perfect (worst case scenario is having an excellent turn) turns with this shield, without ever having to take the two workers action. Every single turn will be a slap in the face of your opponent and they can't do anything about it.
You can simply play god and decide what you roll.
You can create insanely powerful combos, you can block opponent's dice rolls perfectly, so they will have nearly every single round disastrous turns, even if they initially rolled well I call it the god shield. It's obviously even worse in a 2 player game.