shinjuku

Playtest #21

Fri 5 Oct 2018

Participants: self, JeffB, AdamB

Overview

• Testing:
  • Any 3 cards = wildcard
  • Chairman expansion: Move once/turn for free
  • Kaiju expansion: Scare customers into neighboring ward - no destruction
  • Kaiju + Chairman expansion together

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

(Chairman expansion) At any time during turn, you may move your Chairman into a neighboring location.

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.
• 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.

Expansion action:

• Kaiju: Pay a card that matches Kaiju’s location to move Kaiju into neighboring space, scaring away customers.

Wildcards

Cards that match locations where you have stores (or dept stores) are wild for you.

Any three cards can be used as a wild card.

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

On first turn, you can always get a customer: 3 cards for wild to place store by customer. Place Chairman to match remaining card in hand and play that card to Lure.

Clarification: When customer should go onto space with Kaiju, the player gets to choose which neighboring ward it goes into. ISSUE: Decision possibly affected if player sees the customer type before choosing.

• Gary: ◯◯◯◯◯◯◯◯ ⤫⤫⤫⤫⤫⤫ △△ ⭒⭒⭒⭒⭒ = 11
• Jeff: ◯◯◯◯ ⤫⤫⤫⤫ △△△△ ⭒⭒⭒ = 11
• Adam: ◯◯◯ ⤫⤫⤫⤫ △△△△ ⭒⭒⭒⭒ = 11

3-way tied score. Tie resolved by player order (G wins). Older tie-breaking rules would have multiple rounds of tie-breaking between J and A since they both have 4+4+4+3.

Jeff: Chairman is great. Chaiman not needing action is good.

Adam: Kaiju great at the right moment

Gary: Kaiju used to good effect near endgame to herd customers in prep for a Lure action. Good because endgame can sometimes be Lure + no other good action.

Jeff: When draw customer @ Kaiju, move Kaiju

Gary: Having 3 cards = wild makes the “3-cards to build 2 track” action feel more expensive since those cards now have another possible use.

Suggestions/Actions

For next playtest:

• When customer is placed at Kaiju location, then the Kaiju should move (to a location chosen by current player). Customer can then be placed in that ward. This effectively adds a random movement to the Kaiju.
• Multiple Kaiju that act differently and battle (destroying stuff) when they are in the same location.