Thurn & Taxis

[Volker78]

Thurn & Taxis is now available as BETA, add it to your favorites here:

https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=thurnandtaxis

[pharmakon]

Amazing job. Really love the lines and circles on the map; I don't ever have a reason to look at the route cards. Haven't seen any issues so far.

[Bewileycoyote]

Thanks! One of my older favs. I’d like a visual reminder of the supporting roles. Otherwise, runs well.

[Rogue461]

Great implementation! My one wish is that it would pause and ask to confirm if you neglect to place ANY houses when you score a route. It is very easy to accidentally click the confirm button before you place any houses and no way to undo that.

[pharmakon]

1. A complaint from playing last night with my game group that I agreed with: Shifting the cards to fill up holes after a city card is drawn before a new card appears is bad. The order of the city cards in the display isn't important so there's no need to sort them, and people taking two city cards sometimes find the second city card moving from beneath their mouse. More than once people were lumbered with a card they didn't want, and there's no way to take it back (because the next card is revealed, there shouldn't be a way to take it back.)

2. People also said that not having any representation of the helpers was confusing, and it did make it a little more difficult to explain the game. It's funny because I always thought it was a waste of space on the board, but people wanted it. I might implement it as having the four pictures of the helpers displayed, explaining them on mouseover, and graying them out after they can't be used anymore. So nothing that has to be interacted with - purely a deterministic indicator. It could be neat to make them highlight in some way when their name is moused over in the command/message bar, just to cement the fact that a mention of e.g. the Cartwright there is the same as the picture.

3. People wanted an explicit indication of what VP chits were left in the stacks. I've played the game in real life so I see them as stacks, but the other players saw them as chits. It helped that I told them that the chits were the numbers in parentheses in the tooltips, and that they counted down by one VP, but they would have preferred an indication.

Otherwise it's going over really well and more people are learning this classic. I'm also glad they could help me come up with some criticism that might improve this because I was seeing it as perfect already. These imo are all nice-to-haves, not make or break.

[57erniepyle]

I'd like to have some microhelp on the bonus tiles -- VP values and what they're for. The VP numbers on them are hard to read -- I realize they're an accurate reproduction of the physical game, but in real life they're easier to see.

Also, although I realize the rules say bonus tiles are hidden, when playing with new players, we kept them visible and that helped new players understand what was happening. An option for face up bonus tiles would be nice.

Fun game, thanks so much.

[Alexcendre]

I have never played this game in real. But after playing this beta version, I bought the Big Box version.

My only complaint is the small size of the bonus tokens.
The map is smaller than half on my 28inc screen. This is not a problem as the route is marked on the map. Very good job for this visual addition.
But even on my screen, I cannot read the number on tokens. The number 3 looks more like the letter A.

[57erniepyle]

Another idea. Let us know when the end of game is triggered. Since the starting player has a flugelhorn marker, why not sound the flugelhorn to announce that the end of turn has occurred. I know it's in the player logs, but it would be handy. And add a bit of flavor to the game.

[Gislef]

After playing 10+ games (BGA only), I'd tend to echo the above and a few more. To summarize:

1) As noted, don't shift the 6 "open" draw cards. Why do so?

2) As noted, show the helpers. The Cartwright in particular is easy to forget/hard to remember.

3) The top VP chit in the stack does show the value. But having the number on top and the remaining chits in the stack, when you hover over the stack, would be helpful.

4) Show what VP chits the other players have, and also show who has who has which. This isn't secret knowledge, is it?

5) Show the scores. It's very difficult to tell if you're close or far away from the other players, score-wise, until the end-game scoring

6) Show the current/cumulative scores, with chits and everything. BGA is very back-and-forth on this. Some games show scores, some games show current scores but don't take into account end-game "surprises". By "cumulative", I mean factor in point loss due to existing houses, too. I hate being told i've got 20 points, then discovering I've only got 10 because I've got 10 houses still not played.

7) Show when folks are on the last turn. Yeah, it appears in the far right column for summary of play. But that's it. I'm often surprised by the game just... ending, when I was first player (A) and the last player (C) completed their 7th carriage. Bad enough that I didn't get another turn: much worse that I wasn't notified B or C had completed their final turns. In a three-player ABC game, that is.

There are lots of good things about how BGA has coded T&T. Flashing the cities when you hover over a city card, and showing the existing routes by player/color, are both nice. One opponent complained it was too much information, but IMO it just summarizes what people can already see.

[mneme]

Finally got to play this here; I think there are a few issues others have had that deserve repeating, but first:

1. The display of how many cards each player has in hand is a bit obscure. I figured it out eventually, but maybe use a card symbol, not the wheel one?

2. The game is too unforgiving in terms of not letting you take things back. Of course, picking up a card can't be undone -- new info is revealed and that makes a fair undo impossible. But let players undo card plays and scoring until they finish their turn. I also think the overall score/place houses/discard mechanic could probably use some smoothing; I think it's close to the minimal number of clicks, but the way it's folded in on itself just feels awkward; I'd rather have an extra click for "claim route" vs "end turn" and then go through the "place houses and discard if needed" step, rather than having that presented to me on every turn I'm just planning on passing. For that matter, I think that it should be assumed the player wants to play the maximum number of houses every time -- have a toggle for "place on different colors" vs "place on the same colors" that can get auto-toggled as the player select houses, but automatically selects the maximum number of houses and this mechanic will be much more accessible--and also involve fewer clicks.

Re other issues:

I agree that while it's very efficient, not showing the helpers and letting you select them (or just as now select them implicitly by playing them) makes the game much harder to learn. I didn't have problem with this, but new players had a lot of trouble seeing what their options were.

No, it's an important part of the game (reducing AP and discouraging brinksmanship) to not show current scores or held chits. But yes, do have a game setup option that just shows them. And DO show how -many- hits each player has; the number of chits (but not the contents) is public information.

Yeah, having a text display that says "this is now the final round; the game will end after PLAYER's turn" would be really helpful.

I'd really rather have playing a card have a visual confirm (have the card be greyed on either side that it will fit, then click on the version I want to keep) rather than the top confirm. Should be easy to implement (just a filter on top of the basic display) and much more appealing than having to read the ordering instructions.