sitnaltax

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I'm a board game player and designer in the Cleveland area. My BGG designer page is here: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/13025/rob-herman

	3,435 reputation	bio	website	boardgamegeek.com/user/…	visits	member for	8 months
1528 badges		location	Cleveland		seen	May 14 at 23:27

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27 Comments

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Feb 21	comment	Can you use Throne Room to Mine a Copper to a Gold? It's also important that the Silver is gained and trashed for several Dark Ages cards like Forager, Graverobber, and Rogue.
Feb 2	comment	Do you get 2 coins from Xenophon for yellow cards put into play by Halicarnassus/Solomon? Thank you. I am pretty confident. If the rest of the rulebook were written in the very formal, precise language typical of, say, M:tG or wargames, I might take pause, but in this case I think the intent is clear and the end result the one that makes the most sense.
Feb 2	comment	Do you get 2 coins from Xenophon for yellow cards put into play by Halicarnassus/Solomon? No way. You are ignoring a giant flag that Solomon and Halicarnassus are supposed to be the same: they use identical icons. The different word choice in the manuals is unfortunate, but the game doesn't otherwise have a concept of "put into play without building" and there is no need to introduce one.
Jan 29	comment	Processioning a Madman Correct. Of course, if there were an Action card that cost 1--Poor House, or some other Action card that cost 1 because Bridge or Highway had reduced its cost--you would gain it.
Jan 16	comment	When trying to quickly end the game, is it better to skip building cities? I agree that you will probably have 4 cities even in a rush strategy. I decide to rush based on the results of the first 2-3 turns, rather than a priori; maybe you get an unhelpful coins roll when you could really wanted workers on turn 2, so I take a development I can afford and just go from there. It would be strange not to toss 3 workers at city #4 at some point there; trying for the fifth is what I'm arguing against.
Jan 13	comment	Poker texas holdem combinations: tie or not tie? @user8067: There is no hand composed of five of a color. However, this answer omits five of a suit, which is a flush, and ranks above a straight and below a full house.
Jan 13	comment	Poker texas holdem combinations: tie or not tie? The hand with cards of a same suit is called a flush. The original questions referred to matching colors; this is misleading because matching only colors (as opposed to suits) is not a valid hand in any standard poker game.
Jan 13	comment	Poker texas holdem combinations: tie or not tie? 1. You forgot flushes! 2. It's possible for multiple players to share the same 4-of-a-kind or 3-of-a-kind in single-deck games with shared cards, like Texas Hold'em.
Jan 8	comment	Will a developer fix a (small) broken mechanic, or should I fix it before the submission process begins? Here's an example, based on my own published game ( boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/107834/montana ). As sent to the publisher, the game included Straights and Flushes of length 3 and 4, but no short Straight Flushes. The game was balanced fine, since those hands are rare, but in playtesting, the players kept asking "where are the short straight flushes?" So the developer added them and that seems to satisfy people's sense of symmetry.
Jan 8	comment	Will a developer fix a (small) broken mechanic, or should I fix it before the submission process begins? I would say it's the point at which you are no longer convinced that the proposed change is an improvement at all. To use your Catan example in the OP: The game would be incomplete and need improvement without the devo cards. But perhaps a developer tweaked the distribution. Maybe there were originally fewer Soldier cards, but the developers felt that the power cards drew too much of the game's focus, so more were added to water down the big specials and VPs. Maybe some playtesters liked the powerful devo cards, but the developers felt the game would appeal to more players without them.
Dec 19	comment	Buying houses and selling hotels in a housing shortage This seems to be a different (although related) question. This one has to do especially with timing of purchases and the meaning of an auction if you are getting the houses through selling, not buying.
Dec 11	comment	Spawn rules for the Overlord Monsters do die quickly in 2E. They have scenario-by-scenario rules for where they can spawn--often at the entrance or an exit--so from the OP's description, it sounds like 1E.
Dec 1	comment	Secret Mission Axis and Allies The first round of marriage?
Nov 20	comment	Can I decide not to use all the power of a plant in Power Grid? Consider the case where there's enough to resupply anyway (presumably there's at least some because your opponent is using it this round, and possibly other opponents too). Burning it from your plants allows you to drain the resource from the market rather than just keeping it out of the supply.
Nov 16	comment	Dominion: How to Deal With a Board Filled With Terminal Actions Hardly a downside at all. It's difficult to have so many Golds that adding a Silver makes your deck worse, and if that were the case you should have started greening long ago. In a Colony game, Jack means you're explicitly choosing a run-out-the-Provinces strategy over a (you hope) too-slow Colony/Platinum strategy.
Nov 12	comment	Are the Goons un-fun? The effect of every attack is magnified hugely in 6-player Dominion. Goons, as do most attacks, points toward a slower game. Combine that with the fact that 6-player Dominion is naturally pretty slow and it's a bad combination, but I lay the blame more on the 6-player game than the Goons.
Nov 11	comment	Do you need spare actions available to play Throne Room? I agree. Notice that when the rulebook writers had a second chance in writing the similar card King's Court, they did it better: "This does not use up any extra Actions you were allowed to play due to cards like Worker's Village - King's Court itself uses up one Action and that is it."
Nov 10	comment	What Talisman expansions give a PvE end goal? For those who aren't familiar: PvP is Player vs. Player; PvE is Player vs. Environment.
Nov 4	comment	What are good general strategies for Tigris & Euphrates? Good point. I have summarized my favorite items from the linked article.
Oct 30	comment	What should I consider when selecting a Prize to take with my Tournament? Agreed on all points. Half-related anecdote: I used Trusty Steed's 4 Silvers option once when my opponent tried to pivot into a late-game KC/Saboteur strategy. I don't think it was necessary that game, but if my opponent had been faster those Silvers would have been a nice buffer.