Rules for Thought #48 – Gold Bonus “Availability”

[Ben]

Curious to hear some opinions on this.  Should bonus gold be “available”?

-Additional/modified gold that is recorded in the tally cannot be stolen or removed from a home island by any means. The original treasure token that modification was applied to may be stolen or parleyed normally.

–Exception: If all players agree to use treasure tokens to record additional gold, they may also agree to treat those extra coins as standard treasure that can be stolen or parleyed.

I generally play with the exception. +2’s appear from outside the game in the form of a new 2 coin on the HI, and are treated as normal coins that can be used/stolen/etc.

Seems like a decent list of potential pros and cons to each side. Extra gold available for fort building is nice, especially to keep a higher value original coin on your HI where it might be safer.  More small-value coins that can be given up in HI raids or Parley/Trade Route is interesting – the overall value of what an opponent might get will be smaller on average. (ex: choosing from a 5 and 4 vs 5,4,2,2,1)

As for the bonus abilities themselves, they hold power either way – useful for building forts and possibly driving down the value of coins given up via Parley, but using the standard rule, their contributions are immutable profit and can’t be messed with.  I think I just prefer the more fluid and dynamic nature of allowing all gold in the game to be treated equally.  Lack of finality in a crazy endgame is sometimes what makes this game fun and memorable.

-The physical, printed value of a treasure token never changes.

This is good to revisit. So a 5 doesn’t become a 6 via a +1 ability. 5 stays the same, +1 appears separately.  Definitely have botched that in the past, but not for quite some time I think. (and hope haha)

[Woelf]

The PC sets up the replacement or addition of pieces as an option, just to keep things more accessible to booster/draft games or players in general with smaller collections, where enough extra pieces might not be available.

 

I have always liked the idea of replacing coins with the modified values, especially with the +1 or +2 abilities, and maybe even using the max (physical) value of 7 as a hard upper limit.

Being able to flood your home island with a bunch of loose 1s and 2s weakens the HI-Raiders too much, unless you allow them to choose what they take, or they’re allowed to make change up to some value (like combining enough low coins to max out at the 7 again).

[Ben]

Being able to flood your home island with a bunch of loose 1s and 2s weakens the HI-Raiders too much, unless you allow them to choose what they take, or they’re allowed to make change up to some value (like combining enough low coins to max out at the 7 again).

My preference with HI Raiders is to make their choice random. (usually by splaying out the coins quickly, then assigning a d6 roll or double roll to coins 1-6 from left to right – feels less gamey than having the loser shuffle a certain way or the raider potentially being able to pick out a scratched coin back or get a coin they spied with Cassandra/etc.)

I have played some games where they can choose what they take, but that can get overly swingy in the endgame and I think it can make them too powerful.  Though, I’m mostly biased after seeing how it can directly affect results in the 11 player game I played.

[Woelf]

Doing it randomly is probably the most fair way, although it does still give better odds of getting low stuff if that’s what the majority of the coins on the island are.

I also agree that it can get extremely swingy if the player can always choose.  One player gaining even a single 6 or a 7 while another loses the same is a 12/14-point change, which can drastically affect the end result.

 

I wonder if a semi-selective option would be viable?

One way would be to let the home island player pick out and set aside a certain number/percentage of coins that are safe (1 for every 5 total, maybe?), then the raider can pick from what’s left.  They won’t get the best, but should still get something decent.

Another way would be to automatically set aside the highest and lowest-value coins (all 1s, 2s, 6s, and 7s maybe?) then let the raider either choose or randomly pull from what’s left.  If there wasn’t enough on the island to have any leftovers after pulling those values out, the selection is made from everything instead.

[Author]

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