Tofu card and game variants added

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DrKarotte
Posts: 279
Joined: 22 September 2015, 23:42

Tofu card and game variants added

Post by DrKarotte »

Good news for all chefs on BGA: You can now choose all the Stir Fry 18 game variants from the official rulebook plus two additional point goals suggested on the BGA forum.

The variants are:

Close the Kitchen Variant: This is a scoring variant. After the first player reaches
the points goal or higher, each other player may take 1 turn. The highest score at the end of these turns wins. Identical scores lead to a tie (which means that this variant is not the best choice for tournaments).

Empty Pantry Variant - Players do NOT draw a card after cooking! Note that this has been changed over the rulebook (in accordance with the publisher, of course): the official variant says that players do not draw at the beginning of their turns instead. This would have some extreme effects on the gameplay and surely be far more than a “slight variant”: You are in fact eliminated if you run out of cards, which can happen very easily and even won’t be avoidable in certain cases. Taste tests are a great risk. On the other hand, the players will be probably forced to bluff with a single card on hand often. I am sure that just slowing down the game a little bit was the original idea of this variant.

Bullseye Chef Variant - Players must score EXACTLY to win! This means, if you have too many points, you will have to loose some. This is the favorite variant of the game’s inventor.
The final scoring for this variant is adapted as follows, if needed: Players who finish with too many points get the difference substracted from the point goal (e.g. finishing with 67 points in a standard game leads to a final score of 33 points). Here too, a little change has been added for the BGA online adaption: Even if it is possible to loose points, it is not easy and depending on the situation it may even become impossible. So a bullseye game ends automatically when all players at the table have collected more points than set up, with the player with the most points after re-calculation being the winner.

We also have added two points variants: Besides the standard game (50 points) and the Master Chef variant (200 points), you can also play to 100 and 150 points now.

That’s still not all: As a special bonus we have also added a promo card: Tofu. Tofu serves as protein source, but of vegetable origin. Thus the card combines elements of protein and vegetables. Like the other protein cards, you can discard it alone to draw a card (in this case just 1). You can also use the card as wildcard to replace any vegetable when discarding a pair (everything which is not noodle, protein or soy sauce is considered as vegetable). Of course, you can also cook the tofu, but beware: if you cook it together with one of the three protein cards in the game, you will loose 5 points! As the game should stay “Stir Fry 18”, one card is removed randomly from the deck before adding the tofu. The identity of the card is kept secret.

The best thing is that you can combine all these variants. As “Empty Pantry” and “Bullseye Chef” may result in a much longer game I’d like to suggest to try these with the original 50 point goal first.

Have fun, and good cooking!
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DrKarotte
Posts: 279
Joined: 22 September 2015, 23:42

Re: Tofu card and game variants added

Post by DrKarotte »

Update

The “emergency stop” for bullseye variant has been revised.

Why do we need this at all? As loosing points is not a single decision but depends on the whole situation (without a player discarding there cannot be a taste test), the the game could just go on forever, or it could get stuck when players stop discarding and cooking in certain situations.

As before the game ends immediately when all players have collected more points than set up. There is another situation which wasn’t covered yet: All players have more points than a “critical value”, but at least one player has less than the score goal, with the critical value being the score goal minus 3. The value is “critical” because you cannot reach the goal exactly anymore (unless you loose points) as the minimum score of a stir fry is 4 points. In this situation a single player could block the game, as he is not forced to cook or to discard (in fact none of the two options makes sense for him anymore, so we shouldn’t accuse him...; take this situation: his opponents have 51 and 52 points, he has 49 and will get 53 with a minimum dish and then be the last). To prevent this, the game now detects this situation and starts a counter. If in a total of 4 complete rounds no change to the situation happens, the game ends. Change means: a player with less points than the score goal cooks (he might have too many points after that; players who already have too many points are ignored), or at least one player manages to loose points and now has less than the critical value.

This situation should be quite rare, but it should not be possible that anyone has to quit a running game because another player blocks it.

Notes:
  • When the game is ended automatically, the score is adjusted as usual (in the example given above the players would get 49, 48 and 47 points).
  • If the game ends by “emergency mode”, a draw is possible.
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DrKarotte
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Joined: 22 September 2015, 23:42

Re: Tofu card and game variants added

Post by DrKarotte »

Added table setup info below the player hands - might be useful when playing turn based or many games at the same time ;)
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GDC
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Joined: 03 April 2013, 23:02

Re: Tofu card and game variants added

Post by GDC »

DrKarotte wrote: 21 September 2019, 09:01 Added table setup info below the player hands - might be useful when playing turn based or many games at the same time ;)
Thanks a lot for all your work on this great game.

Hope the "close the kitchen" bug will be fixed soon ;)
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DrKarotte
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Re: Tofu card and game variants added

Post by DrKarotte »

Finally I manage to add my 2 cents to this "bug".

First of all, if something is wrong, then it's the rules. I have seen that you have the game inventor on your side (who has never contacted me on this matter, by the way), but personally I am not convinced.

SF18 in general is not a game of equal turns. In close games the starting player clearly has an advantage (and a turn more). You could complain about this, too.

In the example of a close game with the starting player hitting 50+ points first, with "close the kitchen" the game in fact becomes a game of equal turns.

I think the "spirit" of the variant is that you can never be sure to win by just reaching the points goal. With equal turns as you suggest, the last player can finish the game without the others having another turn. To be honest, this might be fair, but also a bit boring.

Finally, if we play with equal turns we would have to mark the starting player.

Post-final word: SF18 is just a quick fun game. It is apparently not intended to have a perfect balance...
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GDC
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Re: Tofu card and game variants added

Post by GDC »

Thanks for your answer on this matter.
I strongly disagree and think while quick and fun, SF18 is a very strategic game that requires an equal amount of rounds for each player to be "fair".
Why not implement both options ?
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