shinjuku

Playtest #12

Fri 14 Sept 2018

Participants: self, SverreR, JeffB, AdamB

Overview

• Testing:
  • More stores per player: 7/6/5 for 2/3/4-player
  • Build store allows you to move an existing store
  • New Action: Summon: discard N cards to place N random customers
  • Dept store costs 1 matching card + 1 matching customer
  • Can play a card during Lure to Bypass all stations in that ward.

Components

• 18”x20” board with Map of Tokyo
• 72 Ward cards
• 7/6/5 for 2/3/4-player
• 15/12/9 track for 2/3/4-player
• 2 dept stores per player
• 48 Customer tokens:
  • 15 ◯, 13 ⤫, 11 △, 9 ▢

Rules

Setup

• Deal 5 cards to each player

Turns

Place a random customer at start of turn

Each turn take 2 different actions:

• Build: Pay a card, build a store in that ward
• Upgrade: Pay a card and a customer, upgrade a store to a dept store
• Lure: Pay a card, lure customers from that ward
• Expand: Pay any 1 card to build 1 track; pay 3 cards to build 2 connected track
• Summon: Discard N cards to place N random customers
• Income: draw up to 5 cards, or draw 1 card if you already have 5 cards. Taking this action ends your turn.

Final turn

When last customer is placed, everyone takes one additional turn.

Comments

Game duration: 52 min (12:00 - 12:52)

• Sverre: ◯◯ ⤫ △△ ▢ = 4 (remove ◯ or △)
• Jeff: ◯◯ ⤫ △△ ▢▢ = 5 (remove ◯, △ or ▢)
• Adam: ◯◯ △△ ▢▢ = 4 (remove ◯, △ or ▢)
• Gary: ◯ ⤫ △△ = 2 (remove △)

Summon not very useful. Not a satisfying action to do. Would rather do things that work toward VPs.

Game is low scoring. It would be nice to add more customers (= scoring potential) without making the game much longer.

Further Discussion

JonS and EmilyR watched and gave comments at end.

Fewer wildcards made it harder to do actions at the end of the game.

More wildcards:

AB: Possibly 3 different cards = wild. Or 5 different cards.

ER: Or 3 diff colors since each card has a color associated with it.

Possibly more track.

Suggestions/Actions

For next playtest:

• Try 5 cards wild
• Different player count
• Possibly more track
• Use ⭒ instead of ▢ since they are easier to distinguish from ◯ at a distance.