Having been a game guru in the past, I fully understand how Arena games get configured, so my post is not about that.
My question here though is, why did the gurus opt for two player?
I normally play this game with friends in an online group and we usually have four or five people in a game. With this player count, there are two viable strategies that have emerged. One strategy is to play "wide", getting sets for high scoring gold medals, usually with some emphasis on yellow so that this is affordable. The other strategy is to play "tall" on red and green, relying on colonies and statues to give you the green and yellow points you need to sustain the engine, although if you get a deep reservoir of one color, cards are cheap enough that you don't need high income.
Playing Arena this season, something I've noticed is that the deep blue/red strategy is difficult, if not impossible, to run. As somebody who plays wide, what I'm finding is that if somebody starts taking blue/red from the discard, I have to match their moves in order to have the card I need for gold medals to score. While I have lost games, I've not lost to anyone going red/blue because I'm effectively forced to shut them down.
This gets to the core of my question here in that I feel like a two player game of Hadara does not have the same strategic space as at higher player counts. The "tall" strategies can't work when your discard piles are not deep enough to build up a given color. I'm curious what the game gurus are thinking by choosing the 2P over even a 3P game.
My question here though is, why did the gurus opt for two player?
I normally play this game with friends in an online group and we usually have four or five people in a game. With this player count, there are two viable strategies that have emerged. One strategy is to play "wide", getting sets for high scoring gold medals, usually with some emphasis on yellow so that this is affordable. The other strategy is to play "tall" on red and green, relying on colonies and statues to give you the green and yellow points you need to sustain the engine, although if you get a deep reservoir of one color, cards are cheap enough that you don't need high income.
Playing Arena this season, something I've noticed is that the deep blue/red strategy is difficult, if not impossible, to run. As somebody who plays wide, what I'm finding is that if somebody starts taking blue/red from the discard, I have to match their moves in order to have the card I need for gold medals to score. While I have lost games, I've not lost to anyone going red/blue because I'm effectively forced to shut them down.
This gets to the core of my question here in that I feel like a two player game of Hadara does not have the same strategic space as at higher player counts. The "tall" strategies can't work when your discard piles are not deep enough to build up a given color. I'm curious what the game gurus are thinking by choosing the 2P over even a 3P game.