Manilla is getting the Playte treatment!
National Economy does look good, English language copies are available for ~£45 shipped direct from the publisher. Tempted but can’t quite pull the trigger.
3 Likes
More info on National Economy rather than just my usual one-liners:
It’s standard worker placement where you place workers on those worker spot cards. Then you do the action. You’ve played Agricola and co, you’ve seen it before.
The twist with NatEcon is that the money supply on the “budget box” is limited and when you are extracting cash from the “budget box” you can only get it if the box has enough money. So if the action says “discard 2 cards and get $12 from the budget” you need to make sure the budget has enough. if it’s less, you can’t do the action. So the actions to get money are limited by the money supply.
The money supply is determined by how many workers are there in play from all players because you pay their wages every round and the wages all go to the “budget box” - which I guess abstracts the aggregate disposable income of society, which players then can use on worker spots. So if players keep getting new workers, the money in the budget box expands more and the worker spots that takes money from the budget box becomes more lucrative.
But then you’re a clever person and thought: hang on, if the money supply is fixed and you keep expanding the population, then the ratio skews towards money versus workers. There won’t be enough money in the supply to cover their wages (and their wages increases every round!). That’s where the buildings come in. Buildings you built using cards as payment (not money) and each has a monetary value. These buildings are personal worker spots in your own tableau. And also, you can sell them (for their monetary value) to pay the wages of your workers, which expands the money supply. Sold buildings are then placed in the middle to become common worker spots.
So the cycle keeps going. Players want to gain money and building cards to pay for wages. Players want to build buildings to gain more money and personal worker spots. And then use these workers to gain money and building cards to pay for wages.
5 Likes
This weekend’s game, postponed from the previous weekend, was a much welcome return to the table to Obsession with a solo standard-length game of the House of York taking on the Fitzherberts, an intermediate-difficulty opponent.
My initial objectives prompted a strategy of expanding my Estate facilities, especially as the Fitzherbert estate score was low throughout the game. The first season was spent building my Essentials score for the theme and flipping some of my basic activities including preparing for the upcoming village fairs, and the season ended with a tie on Essentials facilities. Luckily, both seasons two and three rewarded my Estates score and, with an added objective of acquiring the French Garden which was in the available market, I pushed towards building those features out to give me a comfortable advantage going into the final season. The game ended with me picking up a few staff to round out other objectives and, while sadly I couldn’t host some of my larger activities, the final theme of Service was another strong one for the York house. A strong final score of 163 points through meeting some great objectives was pleasing, although I couldn’t quite maximise my reputation to complete the final objective, and resulted in a very comfortable victory over the Fitzherbert’s score of 103 to 132 points, depending on how one choses to add points for buildings/monuments they acquired.
Another fabulous game with a great theme and not too complex, at least as a solo.
9 Likes
Two games of Wondrous Creatures in the book, it plays exactly how I thought it would and I love it. Incredible fun, this has real potential of making it into my top 5.
Shockingly, I lost both games! 
The first, when Maryse was dead tired, was close (8 points). The second, the following afternoon, was more emphatic (40 points).
4 Likes