This game has the normal setup where you're dealt four tiles and they are placed in ascending order from top-left to bottom-right. Or you can play with Michael's setup where you get the tiles one at a time and place them where you want. The second seems worse than just the normal setup, as it's just giving you a chance to make a bad choice without any way to figure out it's a bad choice. Like getting tiles in the order 20, 10, 4, 1. You're probably going to screw yourself over and not only have a non-optimal 4 on the top-left but also the "well, I'm definitely going to have to replace that" 1 in the next spot.
But the normal setup isn't that great, either, because sometimes you just get unlucky and get duplicates of the same numbers. That's hobbling you right at the start of the game, making you try to dig yourself out of the hole while the other players are cruising along.
What I want is "Jason's setup", which is like normal setup only it will not give you duplicate tiles. I know that's how I'd play it if I were playing it at a real table. Sure, there's still some bad luck you can get, but this at least makes it not terrible.
And if you wanted to go further down that route, any of your original four that is one within one number off can be returned for a replacement. So if you got 1, 8, 9, 14, you could return either the 8 or the 9 (or just automate it by returning the lowest - 8 in this case - number). That'd feel more like an even playing field.
And yeah, this game is heavily about luck. But that's why it's even more important to not feel like you're done for at the very beginning of the game. Sure, in rare cases (and with the right opponents making poor choices), you can come back from it. But in general it's a bit of a downer.
But the normal setup isn't that great, either, because sometimes you just get unlucky and get duplicates of the same numbers. That's hobbling you right at the start of the game, making you try to dig yourself out of the hole while the other players are cruising along.
What I want is "Jason's setup", which is like normal setup only it will not give you duplicate tiles. I know that's how I'd play it if I were playing it at a real table. Sure, there's still some bad luck you can get, but this at least makes it not terrible.
And if you wanted to go further down that route, any of your original four that is one within one number off can be returned for a replacement. So if you got 1, 8, 9, 14, you could return either the 8 or the 9 (or just automate it by returning the lowest - 8 in this case - number). That'd feel more like an even playing field.
And yeah, this game is heavily about luck. But that's why it's even more important to not feel like you're done for at the very beginning of the game. Sure, in rare cases (and with the right opponents making poor choices), you can come back from it. But in general it's a bit of a downer.