Board Game Arena

Want to love this game - I love the mechanic of it, but a couple of observations that make the game less fun:

It feels a bit like any player who gets reputation to 3 or 5 has an easy win?

And a couple of games have seemed to be about crossing the finish line fastest, so the game becomes about timing things so you get to 39 then make a huge move to jump over 40 furthest.

Any strategies that mitigate against this? Any other games that are similar to this but with slightly less frantic mechanics with the reputation and win condition?

Hi, I can't say for sure if what I'm saying is entirely correct, but I'll put my opinions on your questions here, as I have felt similarly while playing.

1. Reputation. It's very strong. But honestly, you can win without it. I have won a game where my opponent had 5/turn rep and I had 1/turn rep, you just have to "work harder" at the win. Ignoring reputation entirely is a possible winning strategy, but you need to do a more complicated strategy for sure. You can scale pretty strongly by getting a really good set of locations. Having a set of cards that gets early recruits allows you to get a lot of early locations, then having those locations generate more recruits, while also then trying to go for bracelets lets you get points as quickly as reputation.

2. This definitely is a game about going to the end goal very quickly. I don't feel like this is a problem, just something that you have to be aware of when getting closer to the end of the game. Knowing how many points your opponent could get on any given turn (from available locations, trades, card plays, reputation) is very important in knowing how many turns you have left. Maximizing the cards you can get on the board early, then maximizing using them on the last 2 rounds for locations, is quite strong.

For both of these issues, I'd recommend playing the game a bit more aware of what your opponent wants to do and trying to deny it. It slows you down, sure, but it slows down the game as a whole a bit more too, giving you those extra turns to make the game not go so fast. Also denying your opponent stops them from scaling reputation too fast, so it seems like focusing a bit more on this aspect of the game might help with the things you're not liking.

There's a lot to this game, though. It's certainly more than just reputation, and "speed" can come from so many places that there's always some interesting decisions. Hope this helps you out.

I just played a game that is a very good example of where you just ignore reputation after getting on the one that gives you 1 point:

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=412647971

46 points in 11 rounds is crazy good. Of course, stars really aligned in this one for me, but if I did not think much and was set in "reputation is the god", I would've played differently and it would've been a mistake.

Another example of a game with no reputation:
https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=412655896
You can see here that my first move is to block my opponent from getting a double reputation generator, but I never play the card

You have to take into consideration a lot of details, the artifacts played and the face of the boat will have a huge impact on the strategy to be put in place.
Reputation will tend to dominate other strategies on the A side of the boat only if a player has a very good start. it forces players to compete on this aspect of the game. On the other hand, side B makes the silver bracelet strategy super strong as well. And everything is still balanced by the artifacts.

We worked a lot on balancing this game internally, and we're really happy with the end result!

I suspect Reputation is a prototypical noob tube, a strategy that seems overpowered until people get better at playing the others. I also suspect its stronger in the default beginner set up.

BGA games last an average of 14 turns which means 3 Reputation secured on turns 1+2 has an expected return of a whopping 4.00 VP per Reputation with no additional action commitments. The thing is I've ended games in as few as 10, which would reduce the return to just 2.66 VP per Reputation... and that's the best rate you'll be getting as any later Reputation will be even worse.

BGA games are still mostly playing Side A ships, whose inefficient baseline trade of 2 Bracelets for 1 Recruit exists mostly to facilitate other strategies. Side B ships have a baseline of 1 Bracelet for 1 VP, but also have the option to spend a net 2 Bracelets to get ALL trading columns. Just one Trading Land purchase can turn a Bracelet Viking play/trigger into like one of the other Viking play/triggers but better, and with two its getting comparable or better returns to Reputation depending on game length.

BGA games are still mostly playing without Artifacts, which reward exploring early and often while discarding played cards to do so. Silver Coin is the only Artifact that aligns with the core Reputation strategy of getting 2 Harps down in a column, then triggering that column as often as possible with as many played cards as possible.

I just finished a game in just 8 turns

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=412688413

But yeah, 14 turns is definitely very long game. A game of 2 very good players will probably have 10-12 turns with average probably being slightly below 11 if not lower.

Oh right I forgot that Artifacts in addition to not aligning with a Reputation strategy make it easier to win in fewer turns, by giving bonus Assets (Coin), actions (Helmet, Weathervane), or improved turn opportunities (Cauldron, Mead Cup, Golden Bracelet).

I have checked my 15 games, they took 12-14 rounds to finish with an average of 13 rounds.
From the game results, the player with higher points gained by reputation as a bit higher chance of winning. But it is not significant.
https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=423303255
Like this game, points gained by reputation 13 vs 30 but the one with 30 points (and 360 ELO) lost. I think it's more about the different dynamics of each game, and that makes this game interesting.

For finishing speed, that's the core of this game!
I regard this game as a quick engine building then engine selling game. Whoever builds the best engine then sells everything and just reaching 40 points is the winner.
Selling too early gets a tough late game and selling too slow cannot catch up with other. Timing (and luck) is the key.

Yeah, I don't find reputation OP by any stretch.
If anything is OP IMHO it is cheap quests that gives +1 card every time you do a trade 1.

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=419642536
https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=418100941

Both without artefacts.

The less experienced/skilled the players are, the better reputation becomes because the game will take longer to finish, thus giving you more turns from which to benefit from reputation.

Reputation is only strong if you can push it early. Advancing on reputation in the mid and late game has minimal benefit because you might only gain extra points for 1-4 turns.

The bracelet + land powers strategy can be incredibly powerful as can juggling lands and recruits for victory points etc. Which strategy to take is very situational. You won't have much success if you attempt to win with reputation all the time, at least not against good players.