shinjuku

Playtest #18

Tue 25 Sept 2018

Participants: AdamB, ??, ??, ??

Overview

• Testing:
  • New players
  • Hachiko Expansion without neutral track around Shibuya

Components

• 18”x20” board with Map of Tokyo
• 72 Ward cards
• 8/7/6 stores per player for 2/3/4-player
• 16/13/10 track per player for 2/3/4-player
• 3/2/2 dept stores per player for 2/3/4-player
• 60 Customer tokens:
  • 19 ◯, 16 ⤫, 14 △, 11 ⭒

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 matching card and a matching customer, upgrade a store to a dept store
• Lure: Pay a card, lure customers from that ward. If Hachiko is there, then it doesn’t cost a card, but you must end in Shibuya.
• Expand: Pay any 1 card to build 1 track; pay 3 cards to build 2 connected track
• Income: draw up to 5 cards, or draw 1 card if you already have 5 cards. Taking this action ends your turn.

Department Stores

When a department store is built, it triggers a burst of new customers: 4/4/3 customers for 2/3/4-player game.

Final turn

When last customer is placed, that player finishes their turn and then everyone (incl the person who drew the last customer) takes one additional turn.

Comments

Shinjuku + Tokyo -> Beast Mode!

No “emergency wild” is still painful. The 5-card wards aren’t obviously good to new players.

@15 tokens left, felt too long

Player stuck with 5 cards, but no wilds @ 2 shops + dept store. Really stuck because no track in late game - spent it all in early game).

New players don’t know that rail is sparse, and sad to have no actions later in game.

Comment: action to draw => ends turn is sad. Maybe draw 1 each turn?

Did not finish, but scores were normalish. Did not explain endgame scoring to players, so just used each customer = 1 VP.

Hachiko was fun.

Suggestions/Actions

For next playtest:

• Create starter game (with fewer customers) for teaching and first-time players. Easier scoring.
• Create strategy guide for players.