Quintessential Martin Wallace. I really didn't like his designs in the beginning but when they started to click they did so with a vengeance. There aren't anything like his designs; they are analogous to an acquired taste - unconventional, rough-edged, and definitely not for everyone, but once I started liking his games he quickly rose to become one of my favourite designers. He's like the antithesis of Stonemaier Games.
Soooo... it's more realistic than most economic games. You make a plan and then crazy stuff happens in the market which may make you wealthy or may make you grumpy. ;)
There is a bit of a crossover to the BBC television series Poldark with this game. I’m a fan. The uncertainty of the market and the almost blind speculation of where there might be valuable ore underground adds a welcome bit of reality in my opinion.
This sounds like a proving ground for a lot of the mechanisms that made it into Auztralia. The randomness of the market is realistic but I can see how it would be frustrating for people that think they can plan everything out.
Hmmm this really is not a party game in any way. There's a bit of luck to the game, I'll give you that but you always know the price at the start of the round and you should never overbid on a blind area. If you hoard cubes for a late sell, then you're never going to score as well as you can on the first round, but equally you leave to leave enough money for yourself to mine and bid the following round. Despite the luck in the game there is quite a bit of skill involved in it, especially in the timing of your actions and your auctions. Judging all these factors is a highly skilled thing that I'm not sure comes across in your review.
Hey Chris - those things you're selling for £1 are pronounced "past ies" not "paste ies" - rhymes with video nasties. They're meat pies, not exotic dancer accessories. Enjoyed the review though.
Thanks Chris, great review. I appreciate more of these economic games reviews, they're by far my favourite style but I haven't found one that speaks to me since probably Pipeline. Still no idea if I'll like this game, it's such a strange mix of economics with randomness with mitigation with hidden information, it'll really depend how the first game or 2 shakes out
I appreciate that you are essentially gambling on the market, but I would like it if it were more of an *educated* gamble. That would allow a bit more strategy. As it is, you could out strategize your opponents by a mile, but still lose to a blind die roll. Commodity markets *can* be like that to a certain extent, especially historically, but not to the extreme that an informed investor wouldn't be able to make an educated guess on where the market was *probably* going. There should be room to get hosed by chance factors outside your control, but that degree of unpredictability shouldn't characterize the entire market every turn. Just a single layer of mechanical control to mitigate the die rolls could bump this one up for me quite a bit. Maybe have something cause a + or - modifyer to the next die roll just to give a hint of where the prices are likely to fall. I hate the idea of having strategy in one area of the game only to be fundamentally reliant on another part that is completely and utterly random. As far as the land auction, a high degree of unknown actually makes a lot more sense. 19th-century mineral exploration might almost as well have relied on dowsing rods and astrology half the time. And, assuming the player peeks, you at least have a bit of social deduction/bluff reading going on to help make your decisions. If they don't, and it's just blind bidding, at least you have the option to sit out. You can't pass on the market roll.
Martin Wallace explains that this is the way the various markets worked at this time. For example, the price of copper elsewhere would randomly affect the price in Cornwall, and there was no way to predict these fluctuations. I`ve played the original a lot; it's one of my favourite games, and the luck is mitigated to such a degree that the better players will usually win.
You can mitigate the randomness of copper. Tin is stable. If you don't want the randomness of copper bid strong for mines you see that have more tin. You can make money buy starting auctions and losing them (you get half the money and it doesn't cost you action points), you can eat up other players money and actions by starting an auction and losing. If you have copper and the price is low then just sit on that copper (don't mine it to sell it) until the prices go up. If it's the last round and copper still didn't go up to a decent amount then you can decide to or not to mine and sell it, and you will know at that stage that no one else got an advantage over you with copper during the game. There is also a +/- at the start and end of the tin and copper prices.
As he says in the video, the cost of mining out a copper or tin is the number of water cubes currently in the mine, so getting rid of them increases your profit margin
Cornwall is one of those areas of the British Isles with a high degree of local identity. It's not to the degree of Wales which is its own country, but the Cornish do have their own Celtic language and unique culture. I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the locals saw themselves as different altogether from the English, even just jokingly. Of course, I am from the Republic of Texas, so maybe I just see things differently. (No, I'm not a cessationist, It's just a running family joke with the rest of the Union. For me anyway.)
@@zirkvandenberg3304 Sorry, just a jocular Cornish-nationalist remark. There's a distinct Cornish language and ethnic identity, and a few people there might bristle at being called "part of England" much as the Welsh or Scots might do. But indeed, I think you'd have to travel a long way to find someone who'd actually take offence at Chris' characterisation, I just thought it would be funny to show mock-offense.
