by KnittelMan
Schaden wrote:
alanrmoon wrote:
KnittelMan wrote:
So this is a question for when you get the tunnels in the haunted wastelands area based on a specific employee, the financier. It says all the cards you play the first time on a tunnel route must have pickaxes, and the financier allows you to pay 2 coins for every missing train card you have, which also gives you a bonus if you are the first person to build there.
We had a player exploit this a bit.. so for example, you need 4 pickaxe symbols to get 10 coins for. Route. He would not have any cards and just pay 8 coins, to cover the 4 missing cards, and make it his own color. Ultimately banking him 6 coins without having to do anything and being able to lay down 4 trains..
And he could do this on longer ones as well. The rules never stated for his employee that he has to play a minimum amount of cards, or any.. and the rules for tunnels don’t say anything about not being able to use employee powers etc. just that the cards played must have pickaxes, but he didn’t need any cards.. so ultimately it just felt very OP.
Did we miss a specific rule somewhere to fix this? This employee was retired after this game, but still, just made that whole mechanism seem a bit broke.
We had a player exploit this a bit.. so for example, you need 4 pickaxe symbols to get 10 coins for. Route. He would not have any cards and just pay 8 coins, to cover the 4 missing cards, and make it his own color. Ultimately banking him 6 coins without having to do anything and being able to lay down 4 trains..
And he could do this on longer ones as well. The rules never stated for his employee that he has to play a minimum amount of cards, or any.. and the rules for tunnels don’t say anything about not being able to use employee powers etc. just that the cards played must have pickaxes, but he didn’t need any cards.. so ultimately it just felt very OP.
Did we miss a specific rule somewhere to fix this? This employee was retired after this game, but still, just made that whole mechanism seem a bit broke.
The Financier has been changed in the errata. The errata will appear soon. The new rule is that the Financier can only be used to reduce the number of cards when claiming a route by 1 or 2 cards (paying $2 or $4).
Thanks for sharing, Alan. I’m by no means a designer but the Financier card struck me as the most salient balance issue with our campaign. I think it might be too strong with the errata given it can speed the game up pretty significantly for the player holding it if they use it aggressively, [o] it’s still net-neutral for claiming your company’s 2-train routes once you have the upgraded bonus card (and potentially while giving you other bonuses from events/large cities/frontier mechanics) and it’s still a pretty big help for Haunted Wastes and Florida’s mechanics.[/o]. Curious if there was any thought to limit it even further to only allow a 1-card reduction at most? Or increase the cost even more if it’s used as a 2-card reduction.
We’ll keep in mind it can be used a maximum of 2 times. The player takes it is gonna be someone who didn’t do that well the previous game. If they don’t take it that’s on them.