A little late, but here it is.
We ended the year with a two player games night, as others needed to attend to christmas preparations. It was just Shemp and I .
Dungeon Twister
I hadn't realized it, but Shemp had never played Dungeon Twister. Way back in 2007 DT was played this a couple of times, but apparently he wasn't at either session. Since no one present seemed to particularly like the game back then, I had relegated it to something I played outside of WAGS and never suggested it. Glad I brought it, because Shemp wanted to try it out and seemed to quite enjoy it!
I haven't ever handicapped my play against inexperienced players, though sometimes I think I should to avoid turning opponents off from the game. Luckily, Shemp is a very good player and I didn't really have to. There was an blunder made in the first few turns where he allowed me to get my goblin out unopposed, but after that the game was quite competitive... I did win but the score was close (maybe I would have lost if my goblin hadn't made it!). The game was unusually combat heavy, and both of us made good use of the rotation gears, speed potions, etc. All in all, it was a lot of fun and I'm very happy to have a willing opponent at WAGS! (as an aside, this continues to be one of my favorite games. I purchased the Prison set just to get the solo rules, which I had heard very good things about. I'm sorry to say that it has fallen flat with me. Buyer beware! I received Earth Reborn by the same designer over Christmas, and I'm very much looking forward to giving that a try. It looks very ambitious)
Carcassonne: The City
We played a quick game of Carc: The City afterwards. The game was characterized by ridiculously long corridors of city, caused by both of us lining up the purple buildings with the soldiers on the walls. In the end, the city walls didn't come anywhere close to closing and the game ended due to lack of tiles. I won this game as well because I paid more attention to the "farmers" (what are they in the City?), but Shemp's loooong lines of purple buildings gave him huge points as well.
Mr. Jack
When me and Shemp have a two player session, Mr. Jack always makes an appearance. We continue to find it difficult to win as Jack, but it's fun giving it a shot. The light side won on both occasions (once as me, once as Shemp).
Showing posts with label Mr. Jack. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mr. Jack. Show all posts
Saturday, January 01, 2011
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Let me guess, you're in the light (Macao, Mr. Jack x3)
It was just Shemp and I this week. I brought a bag of two player compatible games, and ultimately we decided to give Macao another go and revisit Mr. Jack.
Macao
Surely this would be the session where I would manage to break Shemp's 100% win streak, right? Wrong. It was close, though. I had many delivery doublers, and a fantastic card that allowed me to get an additional cube in each colour I drew that round (powerful near the end when everyone else is just drawing 1 cube). My downfall was an inability to connect city spaces, because otherwise I felt like I was doing ok. I lost by 2 points or so, meaning it was tense even through end-game scoring.
The flow of the game was odd: Some numbers weren't coming up so we both were navigating with windroses that had a number of empty spaces. Conversely, this led to turns with large numbers of cubes (we saw a couple of occasions where full player boards were emptied in a single turn).
This is a great game for 2!
Mr. Jack
We played three sessions. In each case, the player playing the cops won, but a few were pretty close. One game was aborted early as Shemp, playing Mr. Jack, moved all but one piece in the light. I remarked sarcastically "Let me guess, you're in the light" and then he slapped his forehead. He answered that he was in the dark. Having been bused so early, we aborted and started again.
Mr. Jack is consistently enjoyable as a two player game. It seems much harder to win as Mr. Jack, but the chase is still a lot of fun!
Macao
Surely this would be the session where I would manage to break Shemp's 100% win streak, right? Wrong. It was close, though. I had many delivery doublers, and a fantastic card that allowed me to get an additional cube in each colour I drew that round (powerful near the end when everyone else is just drawing 1 cube). My downfall was an inability to connect city spaces, because otherwise I felt like I was doing ok. I lost by 2 points or so, meaning it was tense even through end-game scoring.
The flow of the game was odd: Some numbers weren't coming up so we both were navigating with windroses that had a number of empty spaces. Conversely, this led to turns with large numbers of cubes (we saw a couple of occasions where full player boards were emptied in a single turn).
This is a great game for 2!
Mr. Jack
We played three sessions. In each case, the player playing the cops won, but a few were pretty close. One game was aborted early as Shemp, playing Mr. Jack, moved all but one piece in the light. I remarked sarcastically "Let me guess, you're in the light" and then he slapped his forehead. He answered that he was in the dark. Having been bused so early, we aborted and started again.
Mr. Jack is consistently enjoyable as a two player game. It seems much harder to win as Mr. Jack, but the chase is still a lot of fun!
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Two is company (Steam x2, Mr. Jack x2, Carcassonne: The City)
We had an unusual two player session this week... just me and Shemp could make it. Other than wargames, my collection is fairly light on two player games, but we did get a chance to play a few games that don't often see the light of day.
Steam: St. Lucia
I bought this Bezier Games expansion map mostly for the single player side (which I like a lot). It's a bit strange because every single space gets a cube at the start of the game, and absolutely no coloured cities exist until somebody urbanizes. IT makes for a map that changes substantially between plays and is quite wide open with opportunity in the first half (though it does get tight before the game ends). Surprisingly, I did get to play the St. Lucia side once before with Luch on New Year's day. In that game, we pretty much had each started on one end of the island and worked down towards the middle. Not so with Shemp. I payed for first player privileges and after I had established my link he immediately built off of it. Unsurprisingly, our relationship was poisonous to both of us. I kept hold of the first player action and urbanized all the towns in the south using up all the coloured cities in the process and ensuring my track was in the way for all his deliveries.
(I'll note that we got a rule wrong... we played that the first player had the option to keep paying to go first until he passed or the 2nd player took the initiative special action. The correct rule is that turn order alternates... much more forgiving on player 2).
Shemp had a great deal of trouble getting in the black with this setup, and in the end I won fairly handily. This was all around a live and learn type of experience for both of us... I'm sure we would play very differently next time. All in all, it's a good two player board that I can see playing again.
Steam: Jamaica
Jamaica is a curious board. It's a small map, and relatively symmetrical. There are just two coloured cities in the middle and a handful of towns on either end. The game does not have a set number of rounds, and instead ends once all goods are exhausted. It didn't take us long to figure out that this was going to be a very barren board very quick. Barren board = brutal game. The only thing that could have made it more difficult is if they introduced terrain that cost more than usual to cross. Oh, yeah. They did that. The middle is mountainous, and those add +3 to track costs.
I urbanized both ends of the board, placing my track so that Shemp would hopefully be forced to ship through my links. Both our debts were spiraling out of control because building our infrastructure was expensive and long deliveries were hard to find. Most of the game was spent making sad 1-3 link deliveries. I faced bankruptcy on numerous occasion, with my income and VPs at -10/0 respectively. At one point, I had t spend 19 dollars (!!!) to develop 4 links of track to keep me from having zero delivering potential for the rest of the game (I had to rebuild 2 sections of track on mountain spaces). Luckily, I managed to scrape together enough points to get me by. Only near the end of the game did we start approaching solvency. If memory serves, Shemp won by a point and our scores were 0 and -1. Good times.
We made the assumption that using a two player map meant that the goods growth placeholders started with only 2 goods cubes (since that's what the rules state for 3 players). Considering the impact it had on the game, it's possible it should have been three. I posted a question on BGG... we'll see.
Mr. Jack
Shemp had never played this game before. It's one of the few two player games (that aren't wargames) that I've bothered to hold on to, because I liked it enough to keep even if it gets played rarely.
I played first as Jack, and almost managed to win. It came down to the last round, where Shemp discovered who I was (the cop) and was *just* able to catch me in time.
Shemp tried his hand at Jack next, and did much better than most in their first play. On the first few rounds, I managed to eliminate all but three suspects, but he successfully eluded further narrowing for quite a while. I believe I caught him in the 7th round, which was approximately 3 rounds more than any other first timer I've seen.
Although it's tough to play Jack, this is a very fun game that hits the right note between ease of play and strategy, luck and control. Good game.
Carcassonne: The City
We ended the evening with a oldie. Carcassonne: The City gets very little play in our group, and I've considered trading it away because of that on many occasions. However, I do like it and... it's just such a nice package! I haven't been able to bring myself to do it. Yet.
I went far too aggressive on "farmers" (I know, wrong terminology for this set, but I can't remember what they actually use). I was short meeples throughout the game and missed out on the guard's scoring opportunities in the end. It was a competitive game, with just a few points separating us, but Shemp did win.
As we were packing up The City, we realized we had played much later than we usually do (12:15am!). Whatever, it was fun.
Steam: St. Lucia
I bought this Bezier Games expansion map mostly for the single player side (which I like a lot). It's a bit strange because every single space gets a cube at the start of the game, and absolutely no coloured cities exist until somebody urbanizes. IT makes for a map that changes substantially between plays and is quite wide open with opportunity in the first half (though it does get tight before the game ends). Surprisingly, I did get to play the St. Lucia side once before with Luch on New Year's day. In that game, we pretty much had each started on one end of the island and worked down towards the middle. Not so with Shemp. I payed for first player privileges and after I had established my link he immediately built off of it. Unsurprisingly, our relationship was poisonous to both of us. I kept hold of the first player action and urbanized all the towns in the south using up all the coloured cities in the process and ensuring my track was in the way for all his deliveries.
(I'll note that we got a rule wrong... we played that the first player had the option to keep paying to go first until he passed or the 2nd player took the initiative special action. The correct rule is that turn order alternates... much more forgiving on player 2).
Shemp had a great deal of trouble getting in the black with this setup, and in the end I won fairly handily. This was all around a live and learn type of experience for both of us... I'm sure we would play very differently next time. All in all, it's a good two player board that I can see playing again.
Steam: Jamaica
Jamaica is a curious board. It's a small map, and relatively symmetrical. There are just two coloured cities in the middle and a handful of towns on either end. The game does not have a set number of rounds, and instead ends once all goods are exhausted. It didn't take us long to figure out that this was going to be a very barren board very quick. Barren board = brutal game. The only thing that could have made it more difficult is if they introduced terrain that cost more than usual to cross. Oh, yeah. They did that. The middle is mountainous, and those add +3 to track costs.
I urbanized both ends of the board, placing my track so that Shemp would hopefully be forced to ship through my links. Both our debts were spiraling out of control because building our infrastructure was expensive and long deliveries were hard to find. Most of the game was spent making sad 1-3 link deliveries. I faced bankruptcy on numerous occasion, with my income and VPs at -10/0 respectively. At one point, I had t spend 19 dollars (!!!) to develop 4 links of track to keep me from having zero delivering potential for the rest of the game (I had to rebuild 2 sections of track on mountain spaces). Luckily, I managed to scrape together enough points to get me by. Only near the end of the game did we start approaching solvency. If memory serves, Shemp won by a point and our scores were 0 and -1. Good times.
We made the assumption that using a two player map meant that the goods growth placeholders started with only 2 goods cubes (since that's what the rules state for 3 players). Considering the impact it had on the game, it's possible it should have been three. I posted a question on BGG... we'll see.
Mr. Jack
Shemp had never played this game before. It's one of the few two player games (that aren't wargames) that I've bothered to hold on to, because I liked it enough to keep even if it gets played rarely.
I played first as Jack, and almost managed to win. It came down to the last round, where Shemp discovered who I was (the cop) and was *just* able to catch me in time.
Shemp tried his hand at Jack next, and did much better than most in their first play. On the first few rounds, I managed to eliminate all but three suspects, but he successfully eluded further narrowing for quite a while. I believe I caught him in the 7th round, which was approximately 3 rounds more than any other first timer I've seen.
Although it's tough to play Jack, this is a very fun game that hits the right note between ease of play and strategy, luck and control. Good game.
Carcassonne: The City
We ended the evening with a oldie. Carcassonne: The City gets very little play in our group, and I've considered trading it away because of that on many occasions. However, I do like it and... it's just such a nice package! I haven't been able to bring myself to do it. Yet.
I went far too aggressive on "farmers" (I know, wrong terminology for this set, but I can't remember what they actually use). I was short meeples throughout the game and missed out on the guard's scoring opportunities in the end. It was a competitive game, with just a few points separating us, but Shemp did win.
As we were packing up The City, we realized we had played much later than we usually do (12:15am!). Whatever, it was fun.
Labels:
Carcassonne: The City,
Mr. Jack,
Steam,
Steam: Jamaica,
Steam: St. Lucia
Thursday, June 07, 2007
A Toronto Area Math Trade Tribute Session (Mr. Jack/ LOTR: Confrontation, Clue: The Great Museum Caper, Palazzo)
I recently participated in a Toronto Area Math trade. First off, i'd like to thank Willy the Snitch and Belash for organizing it, and for all the participants for making it a successful trade.
I wound up with quite a few traded games, and decided to make this evening my opportunity to give a few a whirl.
Mr. Jack and LOTR: Confrontation
Luch and I started off by playing Mr. Jack while Bharmer and Kozure played LOTR: Confrontation. The idea was to give everyone an opportunity to play both sides, as they are asymmetrical games. In practice, it didn't work out due to the different lengths of the games. In the end, Luch and I played 3 games of Mr. Jack and one very quick game of LOTR. Bharmer and Kozure played a single game of each.
Mr. Jack was a very interesting experience. The game features 8 characters wandering the streets of whitechapel trying to find Jack the Ripper. The catch is that one of them IS Jack. Predictably, one player plays Mr. Jack and his/her goal is to escape the neighbourhood or at least avoid getting caught for 8 rounds. The other player is trying to figure out which character is Mr. Jack and then to nab him.
8 cards represent the 8 characters, and on the first round 4 of the 8 cards are placed face up. The players take turns choosing an available card and controlling that character. In the second round, the second set of 4 are revealed... and so on. The deduction mechanic revolves around light. At the end of each round, the good player asks if Mr. Jack is in the light (near a lit lamp post or beside another character). If yes, all the characters which are "in the shadows" are eliminated as suspects. If no, the opposite happens. In this way, the good character will try to eventually narrow down the suspects.
Having read the rules, I didn't understand how Mr. Jack could be prevented from winning every time. How hard could it be to simply escape the neighborhood? I was wondering if it would be a case similar to the military victory in Lord of the Rings Friends and Foes, where you simply ignore that potential victory condition because it makes the game too easy. I shouldn't have worried... winning according to ANY victory conditions as Mr. Jack is very hard.
Why? Well, first of all the card selection mechanic prevents any individual character from moving more than 4 times in the entire game. Also, since the order in which the characters are chosen varies from round to round, there is no garantee that Mr. Jack will actually get to play his own character! Most difficult (and clever) of all: the rules stipulate that Mr. Jack can only exit the board if he finished the last round "in the shadows"... problem is the starting board heavily favours gathering in the light.
Luch and I alternated as Mr. Jack in our two first games. We were both terrible in that role, getting caught rather easily by the fourth round. Lucky for me, in my second turn as the bad guy I managed to avoid detection until the end. Still, it was extremely close as Luch was forced to make a 50-50 guess on his last turn, and guessed wrong.
I had a good time. It's a rather clever game of suspect elimination and positioning, though I'd hesitate to call it a "deduction" game. It's short, with most of our games lasting between 15-25 minutes. One note regarding the components... they are of very high quality and the art is very nice, but the package as a whole is substantially undone by the fact that it's entirely inapropriate to the grim theme: who decides to make a game about catching a serial killer in such a cartoony aesthetic? Seriously, the cat and mouse search comes through very well but the Jack the Ripper theme is completely lost. Oh well, can't have everything.
Clue: The Great museum Caper
Next up, we played Clue: The Great Museume Caper. This is an old game from the early '90s which bears very little resemblance to it's namesake other than the theme. Inside one of the most enormous boxes in my collection, you'll find a 3D map of a mansion. Inside the mansion, the up to 3 players place their pawns, the owner's prized paintings and several security cameras. Meanwhile, one player plays the "thief" who runs around the mansion in secret trying to snatch as many paintings as possible without getting caught (using hidden movement). The detectives will take turns moving and asking questions like "can camera 3 see you?" "Can my pawn see you?" "Are you in the red room?" in order to locate the thief. Ultimately, the biggest clue the thief will leave is that one turn after he has stolen a painting, it is removed from the board. Thus, the detectives know roughly where the thief is, but not exactly. Can the thief slip through the detective's fingers and attempt to get another painting? Or should he bail and try to flee the mansion through an unlocked door or window?
You know what? This was a fun game. It's extremely short... short enough that every player can have a turn as the thief in the amount of time a regular game would take. Of course, the games might take longer if anyone could avoid getting caught as the thief! Of the 4 of us, one didn't get any paintings, 2 snatched one painting and I managed to get two before getting caught (though they were side by side, so it's essentially no better than the others). None of of us managed to get the minimum three paintings we needed before attempting an escape. Since there are roughly 10 paintings on the board, I was originally thinking that the fun would be in seeing if HOW MANY of the paintings the thief would steal, in pushing our luck and sneaking under the detective's noses. Now, I'd be happy just to grab the 3 and get out! I do suspect we played one rule wrong: I think that if the thief simply crosses a security camera it should be deactivated. Either way, we'll see if experience with the game leads to more thief victories.
Most memorable moment: Bharmer location is found out on the first turn by a very lucky guess by Luch! To Bharmer's credit, he still managed to elude us for quite some time after that.
Oh, and the 3D aspect of the board is purely an aesthetic choice which has no impact on the gameplay (though it has a significant impact on my game closet)
Palazzo
We finished up with a game of Palazzo. Palazzo is a small box ALEA game by Reiner Knizia, which involves building beautiful buildings in Florence (I think).
Players will, through various mechanics, attempt to build tall buildings with as amny doors and windows as possible. Buildings entirely constructed of a single material are worth more points, but are harder to build. Small buildings count against the player, so it's crucial not to bite off more than you can chew.
In my first playing of the game, I bit off more than I can chew.
Things were going well at first. I had two three storey single material palazzos going. however, I kept running out of money and I kept having to use the currency option (which gives me AND the other players money). I'm guessing that my actions kept the others afloat. Then, heading into the final rounds, I made a very unwise purchase which resulted in a minor benefit to one of my palazzos and forced me to start two more single storey palazzos (with level 5 tiles!!!). I followed this unwise move with a another similarly unwise purchase, and found myself nearing the end with several negative scoring buildings. Bharmer, on the other hand, had a very tall, very windowed, very stucco building which gave him lots of points and won him the game.
Palazzo has got a lot of the eurogames checklist covered: It's got auctions, controlled luck, set collection, short playing time, and little direct interaction. It's also got enough odd little rules (which I suspect are thrown in as balancing mechanisms), that make the game a bit of a chore to explain (such as the way monies of different currencies can be combined, or the fact that auctions turn into a simple distribution of tiles when the stack exceeds 4 tiles). Also, as Luch pointed out the board components are both uninspired AND of questionable design (why the 5 pieces if they don't scale according to the number of players?). It all comes together into a game which works and is pleasant enough, but didn't really excite me either. I think I like it better than the deeply odd Tower of babel, which I traded it for, so at least there's that. It's also approachable enough that it might make a good game to introduce players to this type of game.
I wound up with quite a few traded games, and decided to make this evening my opportunity to give a few a whirl.
Mr. Jack and LOTR: Confrontation
Luch and I started off by playing Mr. Jack while Bharmer and Kozure played LOTR: Confrontation. The idea was to give everyone an opportunity to play both sides, as they are asymmetrical games. In practice, it didn't work out due to the different lengths of the games. In the end, Luch and I played 3 games of Mr. Jack and one very quick game of LOTR. Bharmer and Kozure played a single game of each.
Mr. Jack was a very interesting experience. The game features 8 characters wandering the streets of whitechapel trying to find Jack the Ripper. The catch is that one of them IS Jack. Predictably, one player plays Mr. Jack and his/her goal is to escape the neighbourhood or at least avoid getting caught for 8 rounds. The other player is trying to figure out which character is Mr. Jack and then to nab him.
8 cards represent the 8 characters, and on the first round 4 of the 8 cards are placed face up. The players take turns choosing an available card and controlling that character. In the second round, the second set of 4 are revealed... and so on. The deduction mechanic revolves around light. At the end of each round, the good player asks if Mr. Jack is in the light (near a lit lamp post or beside another character). If yes, all the characters which are "in the shadows" are eliminated as suspects. If no, the opposite happens. In this way, the good character will try to eventually narrow down the suspects.
Having read the rules, I didn't understand how Mr. Jack could be prevented from winning every time. How hard could it be to simply escape the neighborhood? I was wondering if it would be a case similar to the military victory in Lord of the Rings Friends and Foes, where you simply ignore that potential victory condition because it makes the game too easy. I shouldn't have worried... winning according to ANY victory conditions as Mr. Jack is very hard.
Why? Well, first of all the card selection mechanic prevents any individual character from moving more than 4 times in the entire game. Also, since the order in which the characters are chosen varies from round to round, there is no garantee that Mr. Jack will actually get to play his own character! Most difficult (and clever) of all: the rules stipulate that Mr. Jack can only exit the board if he finished the last round "in the shadows"... problem is the starting board heavily favours gathering in the light.
Luch and I alternated as Mr. Jack in our two first games. We were both terrible in that role, getting caught rather easily by the fourth round. Lucky for me, in my second turn as the bad guy I managed to avoid detection until the end. Still, it was extremely close as Luch was forced to make a 50-50 guess on his last turn, and guessed wrong.
I had a good time. It's a rather clever game of suspect elimination and positioning, though I'd hesitate to call it a "deduction" game. It's short, with most of our games lasting between 15-25 minutes. One note regarding the components... they are of very high quality and the art is very nice, but the package as a whole is substantially undone by the fact that it's entirely inapropriate to the grim theme: who decides to make a game about catching a serial killer in such a cartoony aesthetic? Seriously, the cat and mouse search comes through very well but the Jack the Ripper theme is completely lost. Oh well, can't have everything.
Clue: The Great museum Caper
Next up, we played Clue: The Great Museume Caper. This is an old game from the early '90s which bears very little resemblance to it's namesake other than the theme. Inside one of the most enormous boxes in my collection, you'll find a 3D map of a mansion. Inside the mansion, the up to 3 players place their pawns, the owner's prized paintings and several security cameras. Meanwhile, one player plays the "thief" who runs around the mansion in secret trying to snatch as many paintings as possible without getting caught (using hidden movement). The detectives will take turns moving and asking questions like "can camera 3 see you?" "Can my pawn see you?" "Are you in the red room?" in order to locate the thief. Ultimately, the biggest clue the thief will leave is that one turn after he has stolen a painting, it is removed from the board. Thus, the detectives know roughly where the thief is, but not exactly. Can the thief slip through the detective's fingers and attempt to get another painting? Or should he bail and try to flee the mansion through an unlocked door or window?
You know what? This was a fun game. It's extremely short... short enough that every player can have a turn as the thief in the amount of time a regular game would take. Of course, the games might take longer if anyone could avoid getting caught as the thief! Of the 4 of us, one didn't get any paintings, 2 snatched one painting and I managed to get two before getting caught (though they were side by side, so it's essentially no better than the others). None of of us managed to get the minimum three paintings we needed before attempting an escape. Since there are roughly 10 paintings on the board, I was originally thinking that the fun would be in seeing if HOW MANY of the paintings the thief would steal, in pushing our luck and sneaking under the detective's noses. Now, I'd be happy just to grab the 3 and get out! I do suspect we played one rule wrong: I think that if the thief simply crosses a security camera it should be deactivated. Either way, we'll see if experience with the game leads to more thief victories.
Most memorable moment: Bharmer location is found out on the first turn by a very lucky guess by Luch! To Bharmer's credit, he still managed to elude us for quite some time after that.
Oh, and the 3D aspect of the board is purely an aesthetic choice which has no impact on the gameplay (though it has a significant impact on my game closet)
Palazzo
We finished up with a game of Palazzo. Palazzo is a small box ALEA game by Reiner Knizia, which involves building beautiful buildings in Florence (I think).
Players will, through various mechanics, attempt to build tall buildings with as amny doors and windows as possible. Buildings entirely constructed of a single material are worth more points, but are harder to build. Small buildings count against the player, so it's crucial not to bite off more than you can chew.
In my first playing of the game, I bit off more than I can chew.
Things were going well at first. I had two three storey single material palazzos going. however, I kept running out of money and I kept having to use the currency option (which gives me AND the other players money). I'm guessing that my actions kept the others afloat. Then, heading into the final rounds, I made a very unwise purchase which resulted in a minor benefit to one of my palazzos and forced me to start two more single storey palazzos (with level 5 tiles!!!). I followed this unwise move with a another similarly unwise purchase, and found myself nearing the end with several negative scoring buildings. Bharmer, on the other hand, had a very tall, very windowed, very stucco building which gave him lots of points and won him the game.
Palazzo has got a lot of the eurogames checklist covered: It's got auctions, controlled luck, set collection, short playing time, and little direct interaction. It's also got enough odd little rules (which I suspect are thrown in as balancing mechanisms), that make the game a bit of a chore to explain (such as the way monies of different currencies can be combined, or the fact that auctions turn into a simple distribution of tiles when the stack exceeds 4 tiles). Also, as Luch pointed out the board components are both uninspired AND of questionable design (why the 5 pieces if they don't scale according to the number of players?). It all comes together into a game which works and is pleasant enough, but didn't really excite me either. I think I like it better than the deeply odd Tower of babel, which I traded it for, so at least there's that. It's also approachable enough that it might make a good game to introduce players to this type of game.
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