Don't know how it plays, but it is freaking adorable. That's worth a thumb's up from me.
AoI: Minnesota was playtested 5 times for 4-players and 3 times for 3-players. However, it has not yet been playtested for 5-players. During the playtesting process I found it a lot easier to tweak the map by pasting over stuff. My intention was to re-design the map after playtesting, but I too fell in love with the crayola prototype.
My favorite aspect of the map is the timing of iron. Some players want the iron demand to be full and other players want it to be empty. For example, players focusing on Ships have to make sure that they have enough of their own iron cubes available to flip their Ships. They want the iron demand to be full, otherwise they lose their iron cubes to the iron demand. On the other hand, some players love to see the iron demand empty for they can make a small fortune with a well-timed Iron Works build.
During the early playtests, any coal on a Coal Mine was free for the owner. This made the Coal Mines of Illinois solid gold. Players would forfeit an action in order to build a single Coal Mine. Later tweaks reduced the coal payouts and the owner advantage.
The Northern and Southern sections of the map have only 2 connection points. If players hesitate to connect Duluth to Saint Paul, the coal pinch can get very expensive in the North. I have seen games in which no one has wanted to make the railway connection for it takes 2 actions to do so and the other players would also benefit.
Thanks for the thumbs. I'm already thinking about a new AoI map that would cover an even larger area and also would require more crayons.
Edit: Looking at the map closer, it appears to be quite different.
The great thing about this site is that BGG users can view an early version of AoI: Minnesota and then compare it to the published version. Having a top game designer like Martin Wallace further develop my map was pretty awesome. I agree that Martin's version is impressive.
If you can convince others to play the early version, you may find it an interesting alternative. I happen to like variety, so having two versions of a map is quite appealing to me.
