Excellent video, as always, Jon! Thanks for wanting Twisty Tracks so much that you ordered it from Poland! The Rio Grande Games version does use the more challenging board only. However, I did change it to make it a more positive experience: instead of a -10 point penalty for reaching a station that has no more point spaces, you simply score 0 points for doing that. I then increased the amounts of points you receive for reaching every station. So, mathematically, it has the same effect, but psychologically, it is quite different, due to loss aversion. My playtesters overwhelmingly preferred it that way!
I really like your adding some details of how your own games played out. Sprinkling a bit of that in both brings the games alive and illustrates some of the scenarios that can happen.
GM&O sounds like it solves the one problem I have with auctions, unknown valuations. I'm so bad at evaluating a fair price. Knowing the general baseline value of what I'm bidding on helps.
That is an interesting point I hadn't thought about here. You know exactly how many points you will get for your bid in this game and that is pretty unusual for auctions in general as well as train games specifically. I was told that as a rule of thumb you generally want to be getting 1 victory point for every 3 money you spend, though money is worth nothing at the end of the game so timing things out to overspend for that last point or two is pretty key for winning.
8:40 I also have only played it once - but I enjoyed it! Yeah, I think one reason as to why the game doesn’t have that much AP is because there are only 5 things to consider: (1) First off, you can only take 1 of 4 of the tile and token combinations; yes, you could use a nature token to take other combinations of them or switch the tokens up, but I am saying this in general. (2) You look at how the animals score, which animals are out there, and which animals you are able to put down. (3) You look at your Cascadia region, what regions you can expand - and what tile(s) can best help you expand the regions, as well as how best to expand the region/which way to turn the tile. (4) You look at your opponents, to see which regions they are working on, to see whether you have a chance to catch them in the regions. (5) You need to consider whether it would be worth it to use your nature token(s) versus holding onto them ‘till the end of the game, in which you would get 1 point each for them, and if to use them, in what way to use it/them. That is it. As simple as can be, especially in comparison to a heavy Euro!
Hi Jon. Love the video and love Twisty Tracks. Would you have any leads as to where to find the Polish Jedzie pociąg z daleka, please? It seems to be out of print but knowing where you bought it would be a starting point. I already own Twisty Tracks but I like the Polish design. Thanks.
Cascadia and Calico are both very good. I think Calico is more of a brain board because it has that contained board where cascadia is much more open. Both are super easy to play but hard to score everything you want to. Tile laying is just so satisfying!!
I think our taste shifted to the same games at similar time. I fall in love in Cube Rails. I am looking fwd to your summary on those. In Poland it's harder to find those old ones but I want to try most of those now. I have also now buying most of Hollandspiel title's. If you want interesting mechanics that's definitely company to fallow up. I was familiar with them through Guilty Land which I think you need to try.
On Twisty Tracks. I have Polish version for quite a while. It's good game and I played it with my daughter. It's great game that family can enjoy. Only issue was with initial production as it was not perfectly fitting it which was frustrating for children. But except that it's amazing. Nasza Księgarnia which is polish publisher use a lot of books title's/ themes and using children book/song as a title was great marketing but probably only for our market. I like Twisty Tracks. I would say mechanically it's closest to Tsuro with some additional scoring instead of pushing out of bound.
@@JonGetsGames The first printing of the game had frames the locked completely and were slightly too small when filled with all the tiles. I had to use an Xacto to shave off a tiny bit from the inside of the frames.
I did check it out, thanks for the recommendation. After watching videos I don't think the game is grabbing me enough to back it, but it does look like a neat game I wouldn't mind trying at some point.
I built my list mostly off this "series" listing on BGG: boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/18979/series-cube-rails . I went through and wrote down a list of the ones that interested me in a spreadsheet, and I've been tracking which I've played using the same spreadsheet.
