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After the first two times playing Saint Petersburg I was left with the impression that this game had no real strategy and was never properly play tested. It was obvious to me and my friends that our only goal should be to go after aristocrats, and so the game was just full of luck. Whoever got the best aristocrats first, won. It seemed useless to purchase most of the building cards.
BUT...
It turned out I had read one of the rules wrong and we were playing incorrectly. After correcting this rule, I now think this is a great game.
This is the rule I misread: Each round has four phases. After the first three phases, unused cards are supposed to be moved to the right on whatever row they are on. After the fourth phase, unused top row cards are supposed to be moved to the bottom row. Unused bottom row cards are discarded.
My error: On every phase, I always moved unused cards to the lower row, and discarded the cards that were in the lower row. I fixed this error and now its a great game.
I hear a lot of people say this game sucks, and yet the game has a good rating on BGG. This leads me to wonder if other people are playing the game wrong also.
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They probably aren't playing it wrong. After many, many plays of St. Pete, the strategies become kind of rote, so there is not much new strategy or depth. I have played it over 50 times, and I still enjoy it, but I can see why some would not like it.
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I made the exact same mistake that you did and I thought the game was bad.
But after I played with the correct rules, I liked the game for about two plays and then thought the game was deeply flawed and really bad.
Yehuda
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And there are many suggestions here on BGG for altering the final scoring of the aristocrats so as to de-emphasize their importance.
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Around 100 plays and still loving it. If it gets stale for you acquire "The Banquet" expansion, it is quite good.
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Shade_Jon wrote: I made the exact same mistake that you did and I thought the game was bad.
But after I played with the correct rules, I liked the game for about two plays and then thought the game was deeply flawed and really bad.
Yehuda Just curious, what is it that you find flawed about the game?
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Saint Petersburg
» Forums » General
Re: Rule Misunderstanding
Let's see ... The entire balance of the game is off, as the aristocrats are just way to powerful. That reduces the valud number of strategies from three (blue, orange, or a balance) to one (orange). Two cards, the Observatory and the Mistress, are so powerful that drawing them at the beginning when others don't is basically game. Your ability to score points is essentially the luck of the draw almost the entire game. You can set up opportunities by playing with the number of cards that come out, to a certain amount, but not much. If you need two more aristocrats to win the game, and you only get duplicates, that's it. There are no choices to be made about playing workers. You buy and play them based on the number of rounds left, that's it. Easy and uninteresting calculation. And the enitre mechanic is basically repetitious, and the buildings are boring. All buildings either give money, give vp's or reduce cost, with very little exception. Essentially, the worst mechanic in Eurogames is the card draw from a deck where the power of the cards is unequal. In Amun Re and Goa, I changed the rules so that you draw two and discard one. In Settlers, the cards are pretty much equal, with the rare exception of drawing a Road Building when you can't place them. Here, the entire freaking game is card drawing. There is almost nothing to do to affect the drawing or who gets first shot at cards, and the point swing they introduce is wildly beyond the point value that you can gain due to tactical play. A few points swing in a many point game is one thing. A large swing in a game due to luck is another. Lastly, although the game is about 5-7 rounds long, the vast part of the last round is essentially meaningless, and the winner has been decided by round 3. In theory, I like the card filling mechanism. In practice, it doesn't work well enough. Should have been thrown out and reworked. Yehuda
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Shade_Jon wrote: Let's see ...
The entire balance of the game is off, as the aristocrats are just way to powerful. That reduces the valud number of strategies from three (blue, orange, or a balance) to one (orange).
Two cards, the Observatory and the Mistress, are so powerful that drawing them at the beginning when others don't is basically game.
Your ability to score points is essentially the luck of the draw almost the entire game. You can set up opportunities by playing with the number of cards that come out, to a certain amount, but not much. If you need two more aristocrats to win the game, and you only get duplicates, that's it.
There are no choices to be made about playing workers. You buy and play them based on the number of rounds left, that's it. Easy and uninteresting calculation.
And the enitre mechanic is basically repetitious, and the buildings are boring. All buildings either give money, give vp's or reduce cost, with very little exception.
Essentially, the worst mechanic in Eurogames is the card draw from a deck where the power of the cards is unequal. In Amun Re and Goa, I changed the rules so that you draw two and discard one. In Settlers, the cards are pretty much equal, with the rare exception of drawing a Road Building when you can't place them.
Here, the entire freaking game is card drawing. There is almost nothing to do to affect the drawing or who gets first shot at cards, and the point swing they introduce is wildly beyond the point value that you can gain due to tactical play. A few points swing in a many point game is one thing. A large swing in a game due to luck is another.
Lastly, although the game is about 5-7 rounds long, the vast part of the last round is essentially meaningless, and the winner has been decided by round 3.
In theory, I like the card filling mechanism. In practice, it doesn't work well enough. Should have been thrown out and reworked.
Yehuda It's nice to be able to read someone's reasons for knocking a game instead of the usual dribble of "it sucks", "waste of time", etc. Whether I agree or disagree isn't really the point, but that there are concrete reasons listed to help others form intelligent decisions.
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Shade_Jon wrote: The entire balance of the game is off, as the aristocrats are just way to powerful. That reduces the valud number of strategies from three (blue, orange, or a balance) to one (orange). From my experience a person can make a lot of money from the workers, and get a lot of victory points from the buildings, and at the same time make strategic decisions to control how many cards will be available for the next player to choose from. Sure some aristocrat cards are very powerful, but there are 6-8 of them, and every player usually gets one or two. I played a two player game where both players ended up with 9 different aristocrats, and it was the buildings that made the difference in winning the game.
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I have to respectfully disagree. Yes nobles are important but they are not the only way to win. I have witnessed players who will take an aggressive build/run out the clock strategy. They amass many points through building while giving their opponents less time to collect the nobles they need to obtain enough of a bonus to surpass the lead that has been built up with a Blue strategy. The observatory increases in power as you increase the number of players, in a two player game it is hardly a game breaker and I occasionally pass on an observatory. However, in a 4 player game it is much more valuable as you have fewer oppotunities to collect the nobles you need. Oh well I love the game and you think it blows. Game On!
Last edited on 2006-05-15 16:53:01 CST (Total Number of Edits: 1)
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Shade_Jon wrote: The entire balance of the game is off, as the aristocrats are just way to powerful. That reduces the valud number of strategies from three (blue, orange, or a balance) to one (orange). I disagree with this statement and a number of others in Yehuda's post. True, St. Petersburg can be played on auto-pilot, but you'll generally lose against someone who knows what they're doing. You don't automatically want to buy every worker no matter which round you're in, and the buildings can provide a balance to the aristocrat bonus depending on when they're purchased and how many rounds the game lasts. The value of aristocrats and buildings, as well as the pace of the game, changes greatly from 2 to 3 to 4 players, so what works in one game won't necessarily work with fewer or more opponents. This isn't to say that everyone will like the game. If you find it boring, I can't convince you otherwise -- but I do think there's more to it than Yehuda found in his few playings.
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I've seen people win playing a "blue" strategy.
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Quote: ...and the buildings are boring. All buildings either give money, give vp's or reduce cost, with very little exception. How can Yehuda make a statement like this? The Observatory caertainly doesn't fit this mold, but then he dislikes that building too. The Observatory is NOT boring, and doesn't give money or VPs, but you don't like that one either. What exactly would you like to see the buildings do? After all, they are just buildings. How exciting are buildings in real life? By the way, I am just playing devil's advocate here. I really don't care if someone enjoys or hates this game. However, I happen to like the game quite a bit. I just found Yehuda's comments interesting....
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Everyone:
Many people disagree with me and claim that they have seen a blue strategy work. I certainly can't say otherwise. Perhaps I am a victim of the style of the game club in which I play, except that I have also played this game online and at BGG.con. I have never seen any win except for one player out aristocratting another.
That doesn't mean that nobody bought any blue cards, only that those buys were trivial and uninteresting. The game eventually devolved into who could acquire the most aristocrats, and despite finessing the number of revealed cards and having grabbed some earlier, the answer was "the luckiest". And that was that, every time I played.
For pity's sake, if this is not your experience, then by all means enjoy the game. The last thing I want to do is to convince someone who likes a game as to why they shouldn't.
Bryan: As far as buildings being uninteresting, I had the same experience playing Citadels. Both games lack color, as far as I am concerned. I would like the buildings to be more like Magic, Puerto Rico, San Juan, and so on, each with its own unique special ability. I'm just spoiled, I guess.
I noted that there are some very few exceptions in St Pete, as there are a few exceptions in Citadels (the purple buildings). Just not enough.
Yehuda
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That's cool. You made your point well Yehuda. Everyone has different tastes and reasons why they may like or dislike different games. There's no right or wrong when it comes to opinion. Hey, that's why they make vanilla and chocolate!
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The buildings could have been interesting, despite that they don't have special effects. The basic buildings consist of expensive ones with better payoff rate, and cheaper ones with good discount potential (for duplicates). The upgrade buildings give various mixes of Gold and VP, useful for different stages of the game.
But the problem is that, they are insignificant. Whatever little margin you get from a well-timed expesnive big building, or great stacked discounts from small buidlings, or the good-value upgrade buildings, are easily overshadowed by the big difference aristocrats can make. The buildings could have made some interesting differences, but because such small edge is easily dwarfed by the aristocrats, the buildings seem generic and boring.
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I still don't see a problem. In our games, the Aristocrat totals are usually pretty even, and then it comes down who utilized the buildings most efficiently. Heck, the last game we played, I had the most Aristocrats and wound up tied for first with the player who had the fewest. (Though I won the tiebreaker because I had a dollar left, while he was broke.)
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I have to say I find some of this surprising. Agreed, the nobles are powerful, but I won the last game in spite of being behind in nobles, largely due to picking up some cheap Customs Houses late in the game, putting me out of striking range by the end. (And I passed on the Observatory both times, letting my opponents take it.)
Also, while the Mistress is very powerful, paying for her early enough to make her earn her keep often keeps you from being able to purchase workers, and actually puts you behind.
There are also ways to influence the luck of the draw. A lot of manipulation of the stack goes on in our games, in terms of buying cards (or taking them in hand), not because you want them, but to increase the number of cards in the next phase. (Or leaving cards there to decrease the number of cards in the next phase.) Since you know who picks first in any phase, this can have a great influence on the game.
I can understand someone not liking it, certainly, but I think the game has a number of subtleties that, while they don't abolish the luck factor, do a lot to temper it. It's definitely not a pure strategy game, but it is one where knowing how to capitalize on the situation is at least as important as luck, and probably more so.
Carmilla
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Posted Mon May 15, 2006 4:50 pm
