Board Game Arena

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.

As long as we're making variants... I would suggest setting up with 8 tiles on the table and doing a snake draft: 2 for first player, 4 for second player, 2 for first player. At any point, a player could draw from the bag instead of taking from the table. After the starting diagonal is seeded, play continues with regular rules.

sharperhawk wrote: ↑16 September 2020, 03:43 As long as we're making variants... I would suggest setting up with 8 tiles on the table and doing a snake draft: 2 for first player, 4 for second player, 2 for first player. At any point, a player could draw from the bag instead of taking from the table. After the starting diagonal is seeded, play continues with regular rules.

That sounds fun, could it work for three or four players? (a moot point if it’s not in the official rules of course(

It might also be interesting to have no setup: start with a blank board and place anywhere you want, not just on the diagonal.

FT3 wrote: ↑28 January 2021, 17:41

sharperhawk wrote: ↑16 September 2020, 03:43 As long as we're making variants... I would suggest setting up with 8 tiles on the table and doing a snake draft: 2 for first player, 4 for second player, 2 for first player. At any point, a player could draw from the bag instead of taking from the table. After the starting diagonal is seeded, play continues with regular rules.

That sounds fun, could it work for three or four players? (a moot point if it’s not in the official rules of course(

Yes, a snake draft can work for 3,4 players, the players in the middle never get that double dip, but they do still get to avoid being left with the worst tiles. I've suggested this as a variant on BGG as I feel like it's worth looking at as an official rule. It's slightly less clunky to me than re-drawing especially if you're also replacing tiles that are 1 away (as that could lead to a sequence of draws, and even then a starting set of 1,3,6,9 would still be almost completely useless). The snake draft feels like it's easy to manage, and will probably avoid the worst extremes of set ups. I'd make it draft a single tile at a time rather than drafting a pair of tiles though as it's too big an advantage to grab two at a time, and maybe have the player who is second to draft be the first player to play

Link to the BGG suggestion:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/264076 ... 9#37490979

An alternate first player rule after the snake draft - The player who has the smallest gap between their smallest and largest tiles go first.

Really would love to try the snake draft, in two recent games my starting tiles have been 11-13-14-15 and 11-13-14-17...

Michael's setup seems like it can lead to a plainly unfair outcome. If one player draws (in order) 3,18,7,13, they're going to be a lot better than someone who draws 17,4,1,20. With the standard setup, the person who draws 17,4,1,20 has a fighting chance.

I like the drafting idea, but BGA seems to only implement "official" variants. You would need the game author to publish that as a variant if you want it implemented.

pjt33 wrote: ↑05 March 2021, 19:57 It might also be interesting to have no setup: start with a blank board and place anywhere you want, not just on the diagonal.

This seems to be rather simple and fair. I like this Idea

But of course it is not official (yet)...

cigma wrote: ↑06 February 2022, 22:00

pjt33 wrote: ↑05 March 2021, 19:57 It might also be interesting to have no setup: start with a blank board and place anywhere you want, not just on the diagonal.

This seems to be rather simple and fair. I like this Idea

But of course it is not official (yet)...

This would make the game very boring as every game would play out much more similarly

Much of the strategy comes from how you work around that initial diagonal

frogstar_A wrote: ↑22 February 2022, 00:29 This would make the game very boring as every game would play out much more similarly

Much of the strategy comes from how you work around that initial diagonal

Maybe you are right. But nevertheless I would like to try it.