Carson City

EvEvanstar4,6

This is a curious western themed worker placement game. The game features a method of action blocking where you can place your meeple in a spot someone else has claimed to have a duel with them right before resolution for the right to execute that spot. You can also place your meeples on other player's buildings to take half of that buildings production until they duel you off. The duel consists of adding up unspent guys plus gun tokens and then rolling a D6. This can feel a little random at times, but it's mitigatable randomness by focusing on getting more gun tokens. The loser of a duel gets the worker back to place again in the next round, whereas normally spent workers are lost. The worker being returned to the player, also means they get 1 extra firepower if they have another duel that round. I like a lot about this game. I love how the city expands. I like that when you build most buildings you need to place a red house token somewhere legal for it to be, which both serves to fill up the map awkwardly, but also gives players big scoring opportunities when they place buildings that want to be adjacent to houses. I like the mitigatable action blocking, although the D6 thing is a little troublesome. I also like how players can sort of hinder the leader by blocking their scoring action or by taking some of their money for themselves. Here are my problems with the game... With 3 players the game is too loose. The board grows too slowly and the action spaces feel empty. With 6 players the game is far far too tight, with few to no actions you can take other than start a duel if you aren't going very early in turn order. The Train station building from the expansion seems to be worth way too many points. I'm not sure why the job that gives you the unduelable worker goes first (or second if playing with the 0 guy) in turn order. This seems like a doubly strong ability, as you can't place the unduelable worker in a space to start a duel. The iconography on the building tiles is pretty poor. The buildings require you to read a passage in the rulebook every time a new type of one flips, and they can be hard to remember in the face of remembering all the other rules. In the second expansion they use one of the same icons from the base game to have a different meaning, which is really troublesome. The biggest problem with the game is the endgame scoring. Throughout the game there are action spots available that let you covert dollars into points at different ratios. In each of the 4 rounds, the next best conversion spot disappears. Based on the character ability tile you select, you have a different ability to hold money between rounds. Any money you can't hold and didn't spend gets turned into points at a 10:1 rate, as opposed to 2/3/4/5:1 rate. All of these conversion spots are duel-able, which means taking the spot doesn't mean that you'll necessarily get to resolve it. The only sure way to convert dollars to points is at the end of the game, you discard down to your dollars held limit at that 10:1 rate, and then you can convert the remaining money at 6:1, which isn't bad, but it is bad when you look at how different the money held skills are. Several guys in the base setup only can hold $20, whereas one can hold over $100. For me, this makes scoring a frustrating experience. :nostar: Art and components :star: Innovative mechanics :star: Handles 5 or more players :nostar: Good with different player counts :star: Low time between turns :star: Comfortable complexity :star: Re-playability :star::nostar::nostar: Enjoyment

MeMestremutenstar7,0

Rating: 3/5 Production value: 4/4 Is the game in my collection/Love to have?: 0/1

Carlosstar8,0

Mucha interacción y tiempo de duración bien acotado.