Recommended number of players

[ExaltedAngel]

Disclaimer: this is just my opinion and I would like to hear from some top players if they agree (I'm a decent player but no expert).

The lobby while creating a game states "This game is best played with 4 players". I'm talking about the base game without expansion. Even if this is just my opinion, I'm pretty convinced that 4p is the worst player count to play with. 2p can be weird since it drastically changes the game, but as in most games, it's the setup that better suits competitive play so it at least have its niche no matter what. But even from a multiplayer point of view, 3p is so much interesting than 4p. First and foremost, cards get to wheel more in 3p, and this rewards the players who are better at drafting. Considered that draft is the core mechanic of the game, makes sense to make it as important as possbile. Then also the lower density on the board make choices more meaningful and less frequently "forced". Not to mention that in 4p there is a greater impact of randomness due to other players’ choices.

This said, who decided what is the best player count to write there and may it be changed if there is a general agreement among top players?

[09217395]

Thanks ExaltedAngel for raising this interesting observation. I believe it worth discussion and I could provide some of my own statistics for reference.

As a bunny kingdom lover, I agreed that 2p rules makes it a quite different game because you can discard cards which will not happen in 3p+ games. For 3p & 4p games, I share the same feeling that 4p would increase the randomness of the game and lower my winning possibility. Therefore personally I prefer 3p games rather than 4p if we are playing arena games.

When it comes to statistics, I have done a quick calculation and here is my win rate for 2p, 3p & 4p games (so far total 497 games on BGA):
2p Game: 45/46 = 97.8%
3p Game: 272/349 = 77.9%
4p Game: 80/102 = 78.4%
Surprisingly, playing 4p didn't lower my win rate. It shares the similar 80% win rate for 3p & 4p games but as there are one more player for 4p games, logically seems 80% win rate for 4p game is harder than 3p game. Am I benefited from the increased randomness of 4p games? Hard to tell. I could only say that randomness are always in the game even in 2p & 3p games.

Another point worth discussion is the definition of best play with. As an arena competitor I personally prefer 3p games as the reason ExaltedAngel & I said on above. However as a board game lover if I would like to play with friends I probably prefer 4p for base game and even 5p for sky expansions. I think it quite depends on what I am playing for.

What's the others/designer thought? Love to know.

[ExaltedAngel]

Hey, sorry for late reply. I appreciate your data and I share your surprise in seeing your winrate being the same in 3p and 4p.

What I think we might be missing there is that the sample, beside being smaller for 4p games, hence less reliable which is already something, might be composed differently. Iirc current arena setting is 3p and there you might be finding a bit more competitive opponents in average. Also in non-arena games you are probably playing with additional settings and/or expansions that might benefit you even more since some of the other players may be not used to play with them.

Last but not least, I think 4p tends to benefit a bit strategies that are not based on "one great fief" than 3p and looking at your stats you seem to play a lot for parchment cards rather than the big fief like most low/average players do in every game.

If all of these are actually true, we have to note that they all are things about other players playing worse in ur 4p games rather than you playing better and I think this makes sense, since your skill is probably on the same very high level on all variants.



Anyways, back to the core of the thread, asking about the definition of "best play with" is very interesting, but I disagree with you on the part where you say that you would prefer 4 or 5p when playng with friends. Sure, more friends is more fun, but the game itself is still better as 3p to me.

Would be cool to have more opinions from other players and ofc I would love to have opinions from designer/developers as well, but I fear we might be asking for too much.

[Nivallium]

In my opinion, I don’t think it makes sense to state that "This game is best played with 2, 3 or 4 players"... Keep in mind the regular recommandation was set for IRL games with real cards, a board game and maybe some bbq and alcohol!
So this statement depends on many subjective criteria and parameters mainly dependings on preferred people gameplay (e.g. fun with some irl friends and beers, serious game, more or less draft and so on).
Actually, each set up is quite different. As you said 2p gameplay is totally different by mechanism and personnaly i don’t like it at all, but that’s a personal/subjective judgement. 3p is my preferred format for the reason you listed, but again, it’s subjective. 4p game is not less good, it’s just totally different. Of course the gameplay is not as drastically different as it is 2player games but the top tier card ranking is totally changed relatively to 3p gameplay and beside this, the picking strategy is totally different (rather better safe than sorry).
So it’s a bit like saying ”hey the best format to play chess is classical chess!". Magnus Carlsen won’t agree and actually it’s totally subjective

[ColeGreen]

Bgg says best with 4. Bgg has way more input than you will get here.

Note it says recommended number of players, not most competitive number of players.