Board Game Arena

Phoxtrot wrote: ↑19 February 2024, 11:36 For me, the biggest balance problem isn't the faction in itself.
It's having 0, 1 or 2 opponents playing an adjacent color.

So I don't think that the TM auction is actually the best to balance as you are bidding without necessarily knowing how many adjacent colors will be played to each of the popular factions.

That's not how the TM auction works. First, four factions are selected, one per player. Everyone can see how many color neighbors each one has. From this information (and the score track, bonus tiles, turn order, etc) players start to bid VP on which faction they want to play. They know all of the info before bidding starts.

It would be the same in Terra Nova and tbh it is sorely needed. Just like Terra Mystica, the factions are quite unbalanced and there's typically no reason to play Water Sprites or Fakirs unless they can start with extra VP. The auction-less game is decided by faction selection, even more so than the other games in the series. This is a really great fast version of TM but it's languishing as a casual game when it could be the next craze.

I haven't played for months but I'm checking sometimes if auctions are available. I'm afraid it won't, there is not enough players anymore. It is so bad cause I'm still thinking it could be a really nice "small" very competitive game with auctions. And it could interest most of the TM /PG/AOI community which is very big! Even if you bring 5% of those communities, the game will make a revival for sure. But we need auction for that.

Agree, TM auction is needed, Standard or Quick or both. In this game some factions are stronger than the other so the first position player has advantage in selecting best faction for setup.

Throwing in my support