Sound is fine for me. Thanks a lot for doing this. Even if I'm not playing in the WSOB it's fascinating to hear someone who has studied a game in depth. I hope you also get something from it. I've realized that having to explain my reasoning out loud does make me realize new things. Good luck becoming the first 3 ring bearer (or more!)
At times I'll actually narrate my turns out loud and my reasoning (depending on the game) it tips my hand to my opponents but it can align my thoughts if I'm struggling
11a (20 pointer) was a "nerfed" version of a building from the Rails To The North expansion, which was released between 1st and 2nd editions of GWT. The RTTN expansion had the same big building, removing only 1 hazard, but worth 25vp. The oddball 12a/12b were kind of fillins for Rails To The North, which was the first appearance of the 2x draw/discard tokens. Those 2x tokens got merged into 2nd edition, but the other main RTTN mechanic (houses) was skipped, leaving a half-used set of features. Also 6b (copy adjacent) was heavily nerfed in 2nd edition. In 1st edition you were allowed to copy your own 4/4/4 (10b) and needless to say scoring 8/8/8 is pretty broken.
Interesting video and very helpful, especially about the initial setup and NB positioning. I'm curious what your opinion is on the early game in GWT (4p specifically) and the "engine building". There seems to be a distinct tempo advantage that arises, mostly among players competing for workers early. So much so that I feel that one player can almost lose the game early by being behind on this tempo, or from refusing to slot themselves into one of the remaining "available/unclaimed strategies". For example, if two players are competing for a specific worker type, but one is slightly behind either on rondel pacing or number of workers, that player has a sizable disadvantage. Much of the game feels like seizing what is presented to you at the time, especially with the worker market. I noticed this in your commentary play-through at the Finals on your channel here, where you seemed to be almost treading water for a few laps, but it helped that none of the others players managed to really get off the ground entirely so to speak due to the heavy taxation, which kept you and yellow player in the game. Anyway, curious if you have any thoughts about these interactions in general.
Broadly, jockeying for that position is one of the key questions early game. If it wasn't we'd all drop a building, pick up a cow to beef up our deck, etc. Instead, you see folks do things like grab money turn 1, deliver t2, buy double workers t3 in some games. It's a part of the strategy as much as anything else. This is where paying attention not only to how many of each type of worker are available but what is coming up makes a big difference - it's not a huge deal for us to be in the same strategy if there are sufficient workers to support it. In fact, with engineers, we might wind up helping each other just enough for the competition to be offset!
To finish my thoughts, you're right that tempo is key - but if you notice you're off tempo what do you do to offset it? Focus on developing your general game plan? Skip an important action to break the cycle? Drop an inefficient building location just to slow down your opponents?
@@phoenicksgaming Thanks for the thoughts! If you're playing builders, it seems like you have much more control over the other players' tempo, after a certain point at least. With engineers, it feels somewhat easy to control your own, provided you're not fighting too heavily for identical station tiles. Cowboys (full at least) have felt, while the most straight-forward on paper, that I have the least impact generally over the other players, and often their ability to slow me down or push their own agendas tend to scale better than the cow purchasing ability, even if it's a poorer money->points ratio in some cases. Just my limited experience at least... Ending the game quickly notwithstanding, how often do you get sidetracked and drop additional buildings or push your train heavily on cowboys? Or really any strategy, having to offshoot for low action efficiency relative to your workers.
@PhasinG37 I rarely push trains in a cowboy strategy. My goal as cowboys is usually to go shopping a lot, and cowboys already make your cows cheap so money usually isn't too much of a concern. I often find that a narrow focus is best, so be very choosy in your dalliances
There's two engineer approaches - grab every station master and get rid of all your engineers, or get between 2-3 station masters and try to drive the engineer all the way to the end. Many people make the mistake of trying both
I rewatched this recently, and I've been playing on BGA, and I feel like I just don't get this game. There's definitely a huge amount of skill to this game, because some games I'll like double second places score, and sometimes I am super struggling to keep up, and it's not clear to me why yet. This is a really good basic strategy primer that covers all the main points, but there's so much interaction going on that's super hard to evaluate by just looking at the board. Guess I'll have to just keep playing!
It's a tough one for sure, actually part of why I fell in love with it. I thought I was good when I picked it up and I was very wrong! I assume you're generally focusing on a main strategy and picking up money when possible?
Yes, very generally. When I smash the game, I think it's pretty much only when my opponents don't really know what they are doing. If I have decent opponents whatever they are picking to do always seems to be slightly better than whatever I'm doing, even if I had position to pick the strategy I wanted and thought I was in what seemed would be the strongest. It's probably just mistakes against people that actually know what they are doing.
@brainofjikir I'm sure you'll learn more in time. If you send me your bga username I can take a quick look at a game and offer a few comments if you like
@@phoenicksgaming Thought I responded earlier, but maybe because I linked to a game directly it got filtered out. FruitPebble is my BGA name. I played a game a couple days ago where I took a second and felt behind basically the whole time and wasn't sure where I went largely wrong. If I remember correctly I was first seat too.
