Problems
The first play-test involved six players and four stops each. That's a very stressing case for Streetcar, for two reasons.
Player-player interaction is maximised. Less of building your own track, and more of adapting others'.
Tile usage is maximised. It's by no means clear there's always enough tiles for everyone to finish.
In the playtest game, we ran out of tiles. One solution to this problem would be to use the tiles from two sets. I offer no guidance in how to separate them again afterward.
The following ad hoc rule was sufficient to save the game, and I expect it will be in most cases.
Situation: A player tries to replenish his/her hand, but is unable to do so, or can not do so completely, because all tiles are either on the board or in players' hands, i.e. none are in the box lid.
Rule: Skip the replenishment phase and continue with the next player. Thereafter, the player who was unable to replenish his/her tiles may play tiles from any player's hand.
Clarification: Note that he/she does not replenish from other hands. Rather, tiles are played from another player's hand directly onto the board.
Clarification: Note also that a player is not allowed to play from another player's hand unless he or she, personally, has attempted to replenish and failed. It is not sufficient that some other player has done so.
In some cases this may not be sufficient to allow routes to be completed. To address these cases, use the following rule.
Situation: If all tiles are on the board.
Rule: Any player who has not completed a track is eliminated from the game. Their streetcar becomes an immobile restaurant and tourist trap.
Situation: If all players are eliminated from the game due to the previous rule.
Rule: The Streetcar system of New Orleans collapses: automobile manufacturers and tyre companies win the game, all players and commuters lose.
I wouldn't expect this second case to happen at all often with experienced players.
Methods
I generated this card set by computer searching for routes that all had the same length (I used a definition which approximated the number of tiles needed, and chose that length to be quite long); and used even the inner stations, that are easy to miss when you are looking at long routes.
This restricted my possible routes to a set that was exactly the right size to make up six cards' worth. (This was a pleasant surprise and I haven't decided whether it was coincidence.) Then I rearranged the cards to minimise the possibility of two players having very similar routes.
Vague Plans
It's an early attempt, far from guaranteed, and if you try it then I'd be interested to hear how it played. A second attempt, when and if I make it, will go for shorter routes. That will give me a lot more choices and allow/force me to impose more restrictions. Perhaps I'll write a demerit function, that measures how bad my card set is, and try an annealing approach.
Other board game material is accessible from Divid Bofinger's home page.
Note: Fan supplied scenarios and variants are not sanctioned by the designer or Mayfair Games. |
