Board Game Arena

A lot of good players come back to the Tokaido scene once arena has begun and the competition is keen . This game is easy to pick up with relaxing theme, at the same time have subtle depth that you can dig into if you want to become competitive.

the options for this game is highly debatable that which set of optional rule (or no optional rule) is the 'best' in terms of allowing more viable strategies, be more enjoyable, take less game to determine player's strength (in other words less random), and options that is turned on will also affect the balancing on inn/panorama/souvenirs/hot spring/farm/village/temple.

Available options:

Base game/Expansion

Initiation
A simplified version with no Travelers and everyone starting with 7 coins.

Return Trip
Instead of starting on the left side of the board, players move right to left.

Gastronomy
The first person arriving at an Inn draws one less card, only drawing one card per player.

Preparations
When leaving the starting Inn, the last player gains two coins, the next gains one coin, the fourth and fifth players each lose a coin.

Crossroads
This expansion adds a second option at each location (other than the Inns) to choose from when stopping.

New Encounters
This adds 4 new encounters to the possibilities when on the 'Encounters' space.

Current option: Preparations only, 2/3/4/5 players

Base game/expansion is two very different game, and personally I prefer the base game for now as it seems more 'pure' and balanced

Would like to know what do you guys think on the current set up

For 4 players I would keep base game, but remove Preparations and add Gastronomy instead.

However, in my opinion most competitive variant which could be seasonally switched with above mentioned variant is 2-player game with Crossroads expansion.

I would really like to see a poll here to determine it.

I don't like preparations either, since the ones hurt the most are already (in my opinion) among the weakest e.g. Hiroshige, Sasayakko and Satsuki.
The gastronomy rules makes for a more strategic game which I like.

I think the number of players should be kept at 4. As of right now, the tournament system should be enough for the 2p sympathizers.

I don't like preparation either in a way that the 1st player is too weak - there's not much benefit of going first. I think the best seats without preparation are 2nd and 3rd given the map layout (without preparation) already, now 3rd seat is even stronger. Another way to put it is that the 1st player has 3 coins less than the 4th player - that's too much for the 1st player to catch up

The ideas seems to be fine but the preparation .. seems to be very weak

I agree with the idea of adding gastronomy, and I also think the number of players should be kept as 4.
Regarding preparations, I don't find the necessity of it to be removed, since the last player to start has a disadvantage and is understandable that they get more money. But I also agree with the others that the first player is too weak.

Preparations is definitely overcompensating. A 3 coin delta makes no sense bc that is what you get at the money stop which is the most sought after spot. It works okay for 2p bc the delta is smaller but in 4p i think a 1 coin bonus for player 4 would be most even...so better not to use this option at all.

Preparations for 4p - for any character that doesn't start with enough coin for the village to be a decent move, -1 coin to be able to make the 1st friend is ok. but occasionally the first two characters to move both want to shop and even a 3rd out gets to make the friend and that possibility makes the -1 coin a little less ideal.
Last out almost always has the temple as the first available space. It is the least desirable type of spot for all but Hirotada. In most days the temple is skipped for a preferred spot. BUT if you look at the number of spaces per day the 1st village and the temple are part of the 5th move section of day 1, so while it is a lackluster move compared to friend or village it isn't worthless.
For a 4p game I think +1 coin for last out is the only alteration prep needs to make, but it is not my decision to make.
(I typically do not select the option)

I think it would be very interesting to see the correlational of starting position and finishing position over the course of the 1st arena season.
I think that would say a lot about how balanced or unbalanced the option is.

I took a survey in the group "Tokaido Friends".
The results are posted on this website ↓
https://caninski.wixsite.com/tokaido/po ... o-settings

The survey clearly tells that many people dislike the setting "Preparations only" and prefer more with the Gastronomy on.

The opinions regarding "Preparations" is written on the website, but let me share it here too.
・Kills the logic of the number of pieces at the start of the game because ultimately what is marked on the character becomes false
・Definitely overcompensating
・I don't like preparation in a way that the 1st player is too weak - there's not much benefit of going first.
・Preparations is kind of required though somewhat unbalanced, but it is also not totally fair without them, especially for the last player.

Reference: https://boardgamearena.com/group?id=280 ... ion=recent

Totally agree with the cons of preparation. it tries to improve the balancing but in the end it makes the game more unbalanced. For Gastronomy, I think it weaken the souvenirs a lot by reducing available coin that each player has after each inn, and may make the rich character even stronger.

I'll elaborate further:

strength of the souvenirs depend on the total gold available in the game, because the more coins players have, then each buying action is more valuable

with preparation on, 4th player gets +2, 3rd player get +1, and first player get -1, meaning that it is adding 2 coin to the economy of the game. This can explain why souvenirs strategy is dominating in Arena now and it is hard to win if you don't have any souvenirs in a high tier game.

If preparation is removed, (so no optional rule at all), then souvenirs should become slightly weaker and balance the game a little.

If Gastronomy is added with preparation removed, on average each player will spend 1~2 more coins (estimate) on meal for the whole game, meaning 4-8 coins are removed in the economy. (assuming that nobody skips meal) This weaken the souvenirs too much imo. It will makes the souvenirs action more luck based because it's all about who can get the cheaper snack souvenir and artistic souvenir. Having two sets of souvenirs also become much harder to achieve competitively.