Board Game Arena

I barely see the upsides to play with more characters.
If they split at different floors, then it's like playing solo.
Yet if they stay at the same floor, the guard would move faster.
And the worst thing is, if ANYONE goes down to 0 stealth and get caught again, the whole team lose.
The only upside i know is makeup kit.

Thoughts?

In my experience, playing with 2-3 characters is definitely easier than playing solo. Splitting to different floors is best to minimize guard movement. There are several benefits to playing with multiple characters:

1) By going in parallel on different floors, you don't experience the downside to carrying loot on every floor. If you play solo, you crack one floor and then have the penalty of loot to carry to other floors, which causes you to trigger detector and other inconveniences as all the loot cards have. For instance, when you play solo, getting tiara or mirror as the first loot is almost always a death trap if you are playing with 1-3 stealth. If you play with multiple characters, then each person exploring their floor doesn't have loot. If one character gets a bad loot, you can swap floors or trade loot to make things easier.
2) You can maximize character abilities across different floors; for instance, on a floor where there are narrow walls or an inconveniently placed deadbolt, Acrobat would be great. On a floor where you have a lot of corners from walls, you might want Hawk. On a floor where you have a lot of trigger tiles, Hacker would be great. If you have Rook, you can have them on the easiest floor (usually floor 1) and help other characters move on other floors.
3) You can help each other out; one character can trigger an alarm to prevent another character from being reached by the guard.
4) You can swap floors based on your respective locations. I have had games where based on a guard position and tiles, it made sense for player on upper floor to take a walkway/secret duct down to the lower floor, while the stairs on the lower floor reach to a position on upper floor that needs to be explored. You just get a lot more options with more characters to optimize your turns.

So generally, I find 2 characters to be easier than 1. 3 can be easier than 2, but it can be harder in scenarios where first floor is very difficult and/or you don't find stairs until one of the last tiles, as then there is a good chance that players on first floor will get seen by the guard and then have to stall for a long time while waiting for exploration on the upper floors. 4 is usually more difficult than 2 or 3 because of the inevitability of 2 characters being on same floor.

3 players can be really hard in floor 1 where the guard move 6 between your turns.

When playing solo, to avoid 1) with one player, you want in my experience to goes to floor 3, peek most of the tile, add dices to most of the safes, go back to floor 1 and crack the safe, then crack safe in floor 2, then crack safe in floor 3, then escape.
That reduce the drawback of having mirror first since you already added lots of dices, you just have to roll.

raspberryoolong wrote: ↑31 August 2022, 02:36 If you play solo, you crack one floor and then have the penalty of loot to carry to other floors, which causes you to trigger detector and other inconveniences as all the loot cards have.

I think it depends on which loot you get. Some of them don't effect single characters, like e. g. "You have to be present on the safe tile when the safe is cracked".

what if u get gold bar in solo?
Or is that loot removed?

nccc wrote: ↑03 September 2022, 13:42 what if u get gold bar in solo?
Or is that loot removed?

Yes, that loot is removed. Gold bar doesn't come up in solo. And Cigma, I think you are talking about the keycard; you are right that there are some loot that don't affect solo play, like the gemstone.

Keycard is a loot item hence why it has a "punishment"/downside to it.

nccc wrote: ↑31 August 2022, 00:50 I barely see the upsides to play with more characters.
If they split at different floors, then it's like playing solo.
Yet if they stay at the same floor, the guard would move faster.
And the worst thing is, if ANYONE goes down to 0 stealth and get caught again, the whole team lose.
The only upside i know is makeup kit.

Thoughts?

4 isn't harder per say but generally requires a lot more team work and general knowledge of the game to succeed as you will have less leeway to make mistakes and sometimes there is just nothing that can be done to avoid losing a stealth. The main luck element is usually associated with finding the stairs early on enough, however if a player is for example the advanced hawk or even better the advanced acrobat then this can be mitigated.

I find that two player is usually the easiest, with 3 player not being too much more difficult. However I wouldn't recommend a 4 player to anyone who hasn't played a load of games already. (This is all for the bank job, I imagine office job would be harder with 4, as for Fort Knox I'm not sure, heavily depends on which floor has the two stairs and safes I guess).