It's a really frustrating game

[KuronoJoucho]

It's a really frustrating game. No matter how many players are at the table, no matter how good the opponent is, as long as the opponent collects 5 different cards to steal other people's cups, you can win, as long as your luck is not as good as his, or as long as you keep getting digging or grabbing cards If there is no strategic effect, you will never be able to steal. Even if you steal from each other, it will only prolong the game time infinitely, and there is no way to guarantee a fair game in multiplayer. This should be called stealing the dog game.

[LaurieBlakeSDR]

Hello! This is Laurie, from SDR games, the publisher of Pugs in Mugs.

First I'd like to say thanks for playing our game! I can see on your profile you've played (at the time of writing this) 46 games, and won 38 of them, good job! It seems like it'd be a little hard to get that amount of wins on a game that rested mostly on luck, but I suppose it could be possible. That said, after 46 games played and so many won, I have a feeling you might be leaning towards certain strategies and making use of the cards you get well enough to give you a stronger chance to win. Maybe you've been leaning towards Stealing to achieve those victories! Either way, it seems to contradict your assertion that Pugs in Mugs is a luck-only game.

It sounds like you've been frustrated at other people stealing your pugs. Understandable! Nobody wants to lose their favourites! But, you're right, if everybody kept stealing then the game would go on forever! Nobody wants that, and as a result, we made it so that it is quite unlikely that you will be able to get all five colours at random without using the Mischief cards such as Dig or Gimme to make sure of it. You describe it as luck that they manage to steal a card, and you're right, it can be luck, but it often requires purposeful action too.

It's cheaper and easier (only needing 3 cards) to gain a Mug without stealing. This means that Stealing a mug is a fairly unlikely and inefficient way to gain Mugs. On top of that, Stealing doesn't prevent the game getting closer to victory. It's true that you can do a back-and-forth stalemate of stealing each other's card, but the quantity of mugs (and thus progress towards victory and game end) never goes down. Stealing changes who has which mug, but not how many mugs have been brought out.

More often than not, the people who focus purely on stealing do not win. However players can still do it! These are because it's fun, especially in person, to take somebody else's hard-won pug in a mug. In the many games I've played (and trust me, whether it's during development, before or after production, at conventions, with friends, or otherwise... it's a lot) I've never seen more than maybe 4 steals happen in one game, and this was mostly because people were actively aiming to steal, because they liked the reaction their friends had.

BGA doesn't give that social gratification. You don't get to laugh around the table when somebody steals someone else's mug. You don't get to act out silly grudges because "The AstroPug is my favourite AND YOU TOOK IT!" and, without that, it can seem harsher to be on the receiving end of a steal. Someone might wonder what the point of the mechanic is when, viewed purely as a mechanic alone, it serves only to lengthen the game and shoot somebody closer to the lead out of nowhere. In many ways, by not having that 4th "social" dimension, something vital to many board game experiences, it can be difficult to understand why a game was designed a certain way.

Since you've played 46 games, I feel like you've probably enjoyed Pugs in Mugs enough that you've been happy to keep playing, even with this post. I'm glad you've had enjoyment from it, and maybe winning was a part of that. Either way, I'm glad our game was able to give you that, and I hope you continue to enjoy our games in the future.
Good luck out there and have fun!

Laurie

[ludigo]

que excelente respuesta la de LaurieBlakeSDR,

[eowynmn]

Best.developer.response.ever. I think I want to go buy the irl game now

[Thomas]

BGA doesn't give that social gratification. You don't get to laugh around the table ...

By the way: Premium users can start audio chat / voice chat and then everybody can hear the other players laughing out loud.

[asaphmoo]

Frustrating? Do you mean fun?