Game: Thurn and Taxis - Power and Glory

Thread: Re: Rules Clarification: Discarding a route

Colorado_Jeff — 2008-07-09T18:34:34+00:00

I wondered that too. I received an answer from Jay at Rio Grande Games that the horses are discarded as well. See the following thread:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/162367

Thread: Rules Clarification: Discarding a route

cgmoren — 2008-07-09T16:50:50+00:00

If you discard a route in TTPG, do you have to discard any horses you've played in front of your carriage as well as any city cards, or do the horses remain? We couldn't find anything in the rules, and we can imagine interpreting the basic rules either way.

Thread: Re: Question on Length of the Route and Bonus tile for that

SteveK2 — 2008-06-10T07:06:07+00:00

madhujith wrote:
The rules state that there should at least as many cards as there are the number of horses so the following scenario happens:

This isn't correct.

To close a route, you must have played at least as many horses as city cards.

If you have a completed route of city cards, you may need to play additional cards face down (as horses) to have enough horses to declare.

Only the face-up city cards count for bonus chits.

Thread: Question on Length of the Route and Bonus tile for that

madhujith — 2008-06-10T06:26:10+00:00

Hi All,

I recently received the T&T:Power & Glory and played it a couple of times, and had this small doubt in my mind:

The rules state that there should at least as many cards as there are the number of horses so the following scenario happens:

1. I have 5 horses (2 by default and another card kept face down with 3 more horses), but I have 6 cards in the route and decide to close the route. Do I get the bonus for the length of route 5 or the bonus for 6 card route?

2. I have already placed 7 cards in my route, but haven't placed as many horses (it it still at the basic 2), should I now start adding cards face down to increase the number of horses to match 7 before I can close the route??

Thanks for your help,

Madhu

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the_spy — 2008-03-12T08:15:39+00:00

Thread: Re: Card Discard at Route Scoring

mevans444 — 2008-03-06T22:14:19+00:00

Apparently, I've been playing the game wrong. I missed the rule that said you can keep up to 3 cards in your hand. I've been playing it that we had to discard all our extra cards!

Thread: Re: Card Discard at Route Scoring

tool — 2008-03-01T00:41:45+00:00

I'm not sure what you mean by "all extra cards." If you mean cards in one's hand in excess of three, then yes, you do it here just as in the original game.

Thread: Card Discard at Route Scoring

mevans444 — 2008-02-29T23:30:30+00:00

Neither the rule text nor the play example on the second page of the rules mentions the necessity of discarding all extra cards when a player scores their route. Is it assumed that this is still done under the "Basic rules in force unless otherwise mentioned" rule?

Thread: Re: How long till someone invents the multi-board version?

NrowS — 2007-11-17T03:43:02+00:00

So, any luck coming up with that multi-board version? I (rather innocently...) thought GuG would be played on both boards, with players starting off on the "old" one and gaining access to the "new" as soon as they would claim Würzburg. Guess I was wrong... :/
Still, I'll try to convince a friend of mine to bring along his Shogun cubes (62 per color) and we'll try to play multi-board, using the cubes on the northern half and mixing the horse-thing with the carriages from the first version. On second thought, maybe we'll just skip the horses the first couple of times...
Using all the cubes would be inappropriate, of course... I was thinking of borrowing 20 of each color, which is the same number of houses the original TuT contains. Game end would be determined by placing the last cube or, since the game would be longer and getting the 7 carriage could come too soon, having in mind the new game context, game end - as I was saying - could also happen when one player gets the second "all-regions" chip - wheter it is the northern or the southern one. I'm not sure if this is a good idea, i need to test it. Still, I think it is consistent enough to prevent players from neglecting one of the boards, as it will always be important to get the most points out of each of them and also battle for the regions chips.
I'll give these wacky mechanics a go as soon as I can. I promise to leave a report, so you guys can get an idea of how it went. C ya!

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scottredracecar — 2007-10-20T00:00:20+00:00

Blue dominates the free cities.

Thread: Re: A heafty price for an expansion: is it worth it?

anglotiger — 2007-09-13T22:57:38+00:00

Wow. There's a lot of negativity here. I feel compelled to try to balance out the negative slant that's being put on this game (in this thread - it still ranks 7.4 overall a the time of writing).

First of all, this barely qualifies as an expansion. It's really a new version. If the decision had been made to include the post offices in the box instead of making you reuse the ones from the first game (which I shall choose to look at as an eco-friendly move, although I may be deluding myself), it would be a full, standalone game.

I get the impression that the game designer(s) were sitting around talking about all the "cool" things they could have done, with hindsight. Then they thought "the game was so popular, maybe we can make some more money off it".

Anyway, the result was a version of the game (not an expansion) that differs from the original in some interesting ways. I played it for the first time last night with three friends. Being a big fan of the original game, I was a little leery of this supposed expansion. I had visions of the utterly dreadful expansion "Seafarers of Catan", which added virtually nothing to the original except a bunch of extra time separating the parts after the game.

When I saw it was a standalone game, using just the wooden post offices from the original game, I breathed a sigh of relief. Easy to set up and separate. As someone who plays the original game a lot (it's the only 2-player game that I can get my gf to play and she loves it enough that she asks to play at least twice when we do play), I was starting to burn out a little, as much as I am a fan. The rules of this new version are just enough different that it makes for a fun variant on the theme.

If there's one thing I prefer about the original, it's (as Richard says) that you always have to be wary of not being able to add to a run. In this version, you can just add more horses to your carriage, which is a bit of a loss (for me). Still, the weakest point of the original game - the carriage upgrade - is gone. For me, it's just a mechanism for someone who wants to bring a premature end to the game, with continual use of the Cartwright. Some people might argue that it's good to have more than one way to end the game, and I would agree but for the fact that the carriage upgrade was a really poor way to do it, and usually, in my experience, is the route taken by someone who is far behind to end the game quickly and move on to something else. Where's the fun in that?

I really like the free cities - that adds a nice new wrinkle (that I spotted the importance of and exploited well, getting 3 of the 4 points available) and I think it's nice to have a completely different board, to change things up. I like the fact that there are more coloured regions to fill in, to get the "all regions" points and that the large region in the game is split into two portions, making it much harder to fill in all of the region on a single run.

Overall, I prefer the original, but not by a large margin. That's probably because I like the danger of losing a run for nothing, which can almost always be avoided in the new version. I'm glad the carts are gone, and I really prefer the new board.

It's certainly not an "expansion" in my eyes and far better than some here give it credit for. So my recommendation would be to go ahead and give it a try for yourself, rather than be put off by others who have posted here. Make up your own mind...

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Orcoteuthis — 2007-09-03T22:25:10+00:00

Can you tell who's gonna win?

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Orcoteuthis — 2007-09-03T22:24:04+00:00

Early game

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matthew.marquand — 2007-08-11T20:32:54+00:00

Purple Passion

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matthew.marquand — 2007-08-11T20:31:54+00:00

It's not easy being green

Thread: Re: Any plans for an OLD WEST USA expansion?

Bilben04 — 2007-07-31T15:23:49+00:00

I am a big fan of TuT, but I have found it often difficult to get my fellow Americans to play with me. The theme is too obscure for them and they often have difficulty trying to pronounce the German city names (a lot of "Give me that green card over there."). However, once they've played it, they really like it. So a game based on stagecoach routes in the American West in the 19th century with similar mechanics to TuT would be a great thing from my perspective.

Thread: Re: Any plans for an OLD WEST USA expansion?

T-Boy67 — 2007-07-31T14:48:27+00:00

Perhaps "Wells Fargo"

Wells Fargo is very proprietary of their name.

A local bar (in the UK) was called Wells Fargo and got ordered to change the name or face legal action.

Thread: Re: looking for English rules

JaMark — 2007-07-30T23:08:52+00:00

I have translated the rules from German to English. It might include poor translations, but I'm sure it's understandable. I have uploaded it to 'files' on the game site, but it may take a while before it appears, as it has to be approved first.

/JaMark

Thread: A quick game with short routes

jlebak — 2007-07-10T01:17:19+00:00

My wife and I sat down with our son to play this game on July 4th. My wife had won the two previous sessions of this game, despite protests that she didn't know how to play. Would she be able to keep her unblemished record? Read on to find out!

During the game, we all focused on short routes. We used up all the five and six route bonuses, but no one scored a seven or eight length route. Lots of regional bonuses got scored though. We were all very even on houses all the way through. Rarely did anyone administrate until the last few turns, when we were all administrating to try to get the one or two remaining cities that we needed. Other people have pointed out this particular issue with the game too, and this was the first time that I really felt like we were forced into it.

During the last several turns we all had two remaining houses and each were left with widely separated cities to try to finish our route. I had a route in front of me that would finish the game but needed to play horses to score it. My wife, who was the last player, had two cities in her route but needed to play a city that she didn't have and a horse card to finish her route. She drew the top card off the deck for horses, and it turned out to be Bremen, the one city that could give her a valid route and allow her to score her route. She played Bremen and a horse to go out and leave the rest of us hanging.

I won the game with 18 points to my son's 13 and my wife's 10. If my son had been allowed to score his final route, he would have collected the second bonus for all provinces plus two more points for placing houses, for a total of 20. The final score, though, didn't reflect the tension in the game as we all competed to get rid of our houses first. This was the first game with the expansion where I felt we came close to the sense of racing that I recall from the base game. It does feel like the expansion takes longer to play, and as I said we did come to a point where we all felt forced to administrate. However, in the base game I've always felt forced to keep up the sequence of increasingly longer routes, and I have found it refreshing to have other options in this set. I think we might be able to remove the need for the 'forced administration' at the end by administrating early to get longer routes, and I'll try this in the next couple games.

Thread: Re: Adapt Your Power to Gain Further Glories

schuwa — 2007-07-05T16:47:22+00:00

Thanks for the mention in your review! I was pleasantly surprised to see my name pop up toward the end. Kind of sur-real.

Nice review. I like the strategy section that you have incorporated and I think it really sums up how to transition from the original T&T to P&G nicely. Keep up the good work.

Thread: Re: Adapt Your Power to Gain Further Glories

tonetonitonyrussell — 2007-07-04T13:33:49+00:00

Correct!!

Thread: Re: Adapt Your Power to Gain Further Glories

Tsaar — 2007-07-04T11:44:18+00:00

tonetonitonyrussell wrote:

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Did some game called Horse and Hound fall out of production or something over at Rio Grande? Surely he's a leftover from some other game. Where'd this dude come from, blowing away at his little horn? I want a fox chit!

It was already part of the TuT-expansion offered by Spielbox (2006/5), together with a set of letters.

Nice review, thanks.

Thread: Re: Adapt Your Power to Gain Further Glories

ferox83 — 2007-07-04T09:52:32+00:00

Bee Gees - How Deep is Your Love. =))

Thread: Adapt Your Power to Gain Further Glories

tonetonitonyrussell — 2007-07-04T04:16:02+00:00

The Moment that You Wander Far from Me. Like a lot of people, I scoured the boards looking for new information, sneak peeks, and the release date for Thurn and Taxis: Power and Glory. But when it came out, my excitement for TT had cooled somewhat, and my group was playing it less; so I waited. Then, some holiday or another--AKA excuse to buy games--came along, and, finding nothing else I really wanted at the time, purchased TTPG; and then it sat in the closet for two months.

Well, tonight I decided to break that bright blue box out and give it a try. Surprisingly, my gaming group was happy to see me bring out TT and were intrigued by the new expansion. After a hard-fought session, we had several observations about the game, and I think that in light of previous reviews here on the Geek, this game deserves another look--and s perhaps even another chance.

As with all of my reviews/session reports, I will incorporate the words to one of my favorite songs throughout my post. If you reply first with the correct band and song name, I will reward you with a small tip for your efforts.

I Really Need to Learn. The most important question about an expansion is: What is different?

The Board
Well, the first thing you will notice is the board itself. The game moves geographically north towards Belgium, Holland, and Northern Germany.

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Image submitted by PaYa Hanák.

Roads twist and wind a lot more, and I find that they are less easy to follow than the TT board. Cities also seem to have less roads in and out. Berlin is a notable exception.

Free Cities
You will also notice the addition of free cities (such as Frankfurt in the image above). Free cities are represented in a gold color. These cities, as seen in the image above, carry a 1-pt. Bonus to the first person that places a postal station in the city. As free cities are NOT apart of any province, you should know the advantages and disadvantages their presence brings into the game.

My Most Bestest Strategerie Notes:
* While they do not carry a provincial color, they do count as a color. Thus, during scoring, when you choose to place one station in each different province in your route, you may place a station in one of your free cities in addition to the stations you will place in your route's provinces.
* However, when placing all of your stations in one color (one province), you may not place a station in a free city.
* If you catch them early enough in the game, the 1-pt. Bonus associated with these tiles can be very useful, since you will notice that your strategy will change between TT and TTPG.
* Finally, free cities are a great way to speed the game up (more about this later), since they allow you to get rid of your stations. However, keep in mind that you do not have enough stations for all of the cities on the board; thus, if you play too many free cities, you may end up in a situation where you cannot gain the bonuses you want in the provinces.

The Cards
One reason your strategy will have to change with this game is that the carriage system is gone and with them the Cartwright, although you will see a picture of him as a tribute on the board. Instead of building bigger and better carriages, in this game you are adding horses to your carriage. Each player begins the game with a carriage card that has two horses.

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Image submitted by Duane Abrames.

As your route lengthens so must your number of horses. Thus your number of horses must be greater than or equal to the number of cities in your route.

As you draw cards, in counter distinction to TT, you will notice that TTPG's cards are double-sided. One side of the card displaythe standard city image and name. Unlike TT, however, in the upper left hand corner of the card, one finds 1-3 horseshoes. These horseshoes represent the number of horses on the other side of the card.

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Image submitted by Duane Abrames.

On your turn, when you play a card, you may decide to play your card as a horse(s) card, which you add to your carriage (which already includes 2 horses) or to your route.

My Most Bestest Strategerie Notes:
* Being able to play cards as horses tends to be a nice advantage, since if you don't have a card you can play on your route in your hand, you are not completely at a loss, and since you have to make your horses equal to your route, this is not always disadvantageous.
* The number of horses cards that you can add to your carriage is 6.
* Much of the speed of your game will be determined by how effectively you control your horses to cities ratios.
* Pay attention to the horseshoes! Each city has three cards: a 1 horseshoe, 2, and 3. You must pay attention to the cards your opponents are playing because if they place one of the cities you are looking for in their horses pile, it will be placed face down, and you will wonder why your card is not coming up, perhaps injuring your score in the process. Remember three chances per card.

Province and Route Bonuses.
You will quickly notice that most of the provincial bonuses in TTPG are split color ones. Whereas these were a bit of a hassle in TT, they are the name of the game in TTPG. In addition, the Preussen province, while it has only one color (light gray), is literally split in two. Thus, it adds an interesting challenge to the game.

My Most Bestest Strategerie Notes:
* Since most of the provinces require two colors to score bonuses, you must be patient in TTPG. The game really caters to longer routes, and this is reflected in the route bonuses in the lower left hand corner of the game. Whereas TT hands out bonuses for 5, 6, and 7 routes, TTPG adds bonus points for 8 routes as well.
* The advantage to all of the split provinces is that long routes often yield prime placement opportunities for stations in several different colors. The Outside Baiern bonus of TT is replaced with a province bonus that is similar: one must have a station in each color province.

The Horse
Admittedly, at first glance, the horse looks cool. What could that do? you ask intrigued.

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Image submitted by Monica Rehaug.

It's a place marker. Yep, that's it. S/he who goes left is the standard bearer of the mighty horse. Nice gimmick and all; I mean, maybe I would have liked to have had something like this with TT, but I've really never had a problem remembering who went first or last for that matter, but that's what it's for.

Did some game called Horse and Hound fall out of production or something over at Rio Grande? Surely he's a leftover from some other game. Where'd this dude come from, blowing away at his little horn? I want a fox chit!

Living in a World...Breaking Us Down. Different components demand a different game. Perhaps the biggest drawback to this game is the lack of the "Final Carriage Effect." Joshua Noe's review and the posts that follow it do a great job at looking at this issue. (See "A heafty price for an expansion: is it worth it?" http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/168446.) I was a big fan in TT of speeding the game up (or, rarely, slowing it down) by use of the carriages, but this expansion simply does not have that feature. Thus, you will have to change your focus.

My Most Bestest Strategerie Notes:
* Routes are slightly harder to make, but come with less risk, since you can always play to your horses.
* Focusing on just "dumping" houses and getting longer routes is no longer effective.
* With the knowledge that each city has three cards, blocking is more of an option, especially in a 4-player game.
* The board provides fewer ways out of cities or much more inconvenient byways. As a result, cities and routes seem to come less easily.

On a Summer Breeze. I welcome a new challenge, and this expansion adds some nice elements to the game, while, admittedly, taking away from some of the ways I really prefer to play its predecessor. That being said, however, with some more gameplay, I can really see myself liking this expansion. It offers lots of early game decisions: go for free cities? long routes? isolated cites? And it offers possibilities for blocking other players and/or making their lives just a little more difficult. I give it a 7.5/10.

In conclusion, I want to thank PaYa, Duane, and Monica for their images. I hate when people gank my images and don't give me credit. Their contributions are helpful to this review, so if you have a moment, give them a thumbs-up, will ya?

I would love to hear from those of you that enjoy this game, your strategies, etc. While you work on that, I'll be over in the corner cutting out a paper fox for this guy on the horse.

Thread: Re: A heafty price for an expansion: is it worth it?

cuzzle — 2007-07-03T05:19:17+00:00

Ick. Absolutely worst expansion to any game I have played. It added nothing to the original while taking away the ONLY element of risk and enjoyment (that of pressing your luck for a longer route). I haven't tried to play the original rules on the new map so maybe at least that will be salvaged.

Thread: Re: Picking up random cards instead of using the administrat

jlebak — 2007-07-01T22:53:45+00:00

I guess I look at the administrator somewhat differently. If I don't like any of the six face-up cards, I would rather have one pick out of the next six rather than two unknown cards. The effect on my opponent seems to be more or less random: I can't prove this, but it feels like the person downstream says "Drat!" just about as many times as "Yes!" when I administrate. I still try to avoid using the administrator because of the inefficiency: I'd rather play or draw two cards than administrate.

I am certainly willing to draw the top card if it's got more horseshoes (or just as many) compared to other cards out there. But I'm not afraid to administrate, or just to go with a short route that gets rid of some houses, if a city I can use hasn't come up.

Thread: Re: A heafty price for an expansion: is it worth it?

Jonathan Degann — 2007-06-28T16:12:23+00:00

My one playing was disappointing. The need to end the game by placing all houses along with the way the board is broken up (I think there are fewer locations) made the game really drag at the end. We considered eliminating 3 houses if we were to play again.

Thread: Re: City Landmark Names

potts_games — 2007-06-17T14:47:27+00:00

Mik,

Thanks for the information and the links, I will have to check those out this afternoon as I watch the US Open. Maybe someone else can help on the remaining cities.

On a personal note, my wife and I spent a day and a half in Copenhagen last year before we embarked on our cruise. From what little we saw it looks like a great city. We look forward to returning in the future and spending more time exploring Denmark and all of Europe.

Thanks for the help,

Mike

Thread: Re: City Landmark Names

Great Dane — 2007-06-17T08:45:48+00:00

You are not misssing anything as they didn't include this information in the expansion.

I don't know many of the buildings/structures, but here are the ones that I know. Maybe we can someone else to fill in the blanks?

Berlin: the "Brandenburger Tor" Gate
http://www.berlin-landmarks.com/brandenburg_gate.html

Cölln: the Dome
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6lner_Dom

Hamburg: Saint Michaels church
http://www.polonia-hamburg.de/images/Fotos/Michael.jpg

Kassel: the "Hecules" monument
http://oregonstate.edu/groups/germanstudents/album/Originals...

Lübeck: the "Holstentor" Gate
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holstentor

Würzburg: the Residence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%BCrzburg_Residence

Thread: Re: Bonus Points for 5, 6, 7, 8 City Routes

caradoc — 2007-06-17T03:28:34+00:00

Mike - I have the same problem!!!

My wife's favourite quote "Don't you get sick of losing?"

I don't know what it is I do/don't do!!

Cheers.

Giles.

Thread: City Landmark Names

potts_games — 2007-06-17T03:22:22+00:00

In the original game there was a rules supplement that included a list of the city landmarks (on the back page) shown on the board. I found no such supplement in the Power and Glory box, was there supposed to be one, or can any tell me the name of the landmarks?

Just curious,

Mike

Thread: Re: Bonus Points for 5, 6, 7, 8 City Routes

potts_games — 2007-06-17T03:01:51+00:00

Giles,

Thanks for the input.

My wife and I really enjoy the game, and it is quickly becoming one of our favorites. Now, if I can only figure out how to beat her.

Mike

Thread: Re: Bonus Points for 5, 6, 7, 8 City Routes

caradoc — 2007-06-17T02:22:51+00:00

Mike, I believe a player can collect more than one of each - there are 5 '8' chits in the For Power and Glory expansion for example.

In the Thurn and Taxis rules it states (under the 'Collection Bonus Tiles Long Routes' section):

Note: a player may, in the course of the game, collect several bonus tiles of the same number

These rules do not change with the expansion.

Cheers.

Hope that helps!

Giles.

PS: I hope you enjoy this game as much as my wife and I do!

Thread: Bonus Points for 5, 6, 7, 8 City Routes

potts_games — 2007-06-17T01:21:51+00:00

My wife and I have been playing with a rule that each player can only collect one of each of the route chips for 5, 6, 7, and 8 length routes. Is this correct, or can a player claim more of each "length"?

Thanks,

Mike

Thread: Interesting addition to a liked game

todi — 2007-06-03T02:29:26+00:00

I had enjoyed Thurn & Taxis so much ever since it came out. Most of our plays were only 2 player sessions with the wife, but the game was great and after I read somewhere that Alan Moon loved playing it with his wife, we were elated. So when the expansion came out I was keen to get. It came yesterday and I immediately got it out for a 2 player session with the wife. The game essentially plays the same as the original, but the ability to complete routes based on a flexible carriage strength is really clever. Instead of trying to increase the carriage strength as in the original, the focus now is to get rid of all the house by placing them on cities not placed before. There was also a race for the free cities early on, and the new 5 point token on a 8 route meant that we both concentrated on longer routes in the beginning. Strategically, the game offers a choice of going for longer routes across regions to place more houses on the board, and get the larger point tokens. Or you can opt for smaller routes and finish off provinces early. The main difference with the original in terms of game play is this flexibility in approach There seemed to be a streamlined predictability in the original where we constantly had to upgrade carriages and then go for longer routes. Overall a welcome addition to our personal game shelf. Though it may not be worth the cost if you have not enjoyed the original much and played it enough and need a change. PS: I lost the game badly!

Thread: Re: A heafty price for an expansion: is it worth it?

Oni no board — 2007-06-01T03:11:43+00:00

This game left me flat also. Many of the things that made the game great IMO was replaced with a mechanic that actually made the game sub par. Like the OP, the only thing I liked was the city states.

There have been some who said that you could play with the old rules using the new board. In order to balance out the "horse shoe" mechanic, the designers made connections to each city harder. I believe playing with the old rules will increase the frustration level and actually make the game less fun.

Thread: Re: A heafty price for an expansion: is it worth it?

schuwa — 2007-05-31T13:13:27+00:00

JohnRayJr wrote:
I like both the tension of long routes and the ability to end the game by grabbing the 7th carriage that are in the original.

Me too, my friend. Me too.

Thread: Re: A heafty price for an expansion: is it worth it?

Werbaer — 2007-05-31T08:16:18+00:00

[ImageID=http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/202832]
To include an image from BGG, use (without the extra spaces):
[ ImageID=202832 ]

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Thread: Re: A heafty price for an expansion: is it worth it?

JohnRayJr — 2007-05-31T07:45:31+00:00

Great review. You've steered me clear of "For Power and Glory." I like both the tension of long routes and the ability to end the game by grabbing the 7th carriage that are in the original.

I'll spend my $25 on Notre Dame.

Thread: Re: A heafty price for an expansion: is it worth it?

joedogboy — 2007-05-31T04:41:00+00:00

The short answer is "Yes".
A $25 expansion for a $32 game seems like a lot, but this is a very well designed expansion. Also, if you look at it as $57 for both the game and the expansion, it's still in the same price range as many other games.

While the option of adding carriages makes it very unlikely that a player would have to discard a route in progress, it allows players to take greater risks, and adds options and even some hard choices - "should I use that card for the key city, or the three horses I need to play the route?"

Some players will also like using these rules, regardless of any perception of easier play. After all, many people enjoy a more casual game.

You can also play using the regular rules, and the new map - which may keep the game fresh for those who play it frequently.

All told, I think the Power and Glory expansion adds enough to the basic game to be worthwhile.

With a set of houses, it could even be sold for the same price as the basic game (as are the various Ticket to Ride sets).

Thread: A heafty price for an expansion: is it worth it?

schuwa — 2007-05-30T18:09:34+00:00

Expansions fall into one of three categories: (1) They add a tremendous amount to the game without re-inventing the wheel, but just adding a few spokes or (2) They completely re-invent the game, in the sense that not only the rules are different, but so are the components or (3) The company seems to just be fishing for money, and people compare this to a bad movie sequel. So essentially, the decision to buy a expansion can be more difficult than buying a brand new game. I will try and help you determine which category this following game falls into, in order to help you make that purchasing decision.

Title: Thurn & Taxis: Power & Glory

Overview: As in the original, players represent different postal companies vying to be the best, gaining points as one does so. Whomever has the most points, wins.

Components: Here is where the primary cost of most expansions come in. A few extra cards or counter can make it an inexpensive expansion. However, this expansion uses a new board, new instruction manual, new victory point counters, and new cards.

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The only thing the expansion uses from the original game are the wooden houses. In that sense, the game is fairly expensive: $24.95 MSRP. That’s not to say the components are bad. The cities on the map are well-drawn with unique, real life buildings, similar to the original. The chits and cards are all familiar if you’ve played the original. The only additional change is a set of carriage cards, of which there are 4, and will be explained under mechanics.

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Overall, a nice set of pieces, but a complete set of pieces; ususual for an expansion.

Mechanics: I’m going to assume that you are familiar with the original rules. The rules are nearly the same with a few twists.

1. Twist #1: The carriage length Each city card has a unique back to it showing horses (see below picture). When you play a card, you may play it face up (as you normally would in the original) or face down next to your carriage (see above picture). When you score a city, you must have at least any many horses in your carriage as there are city cards in the sequence that you are scoring. For example: if you are scoring a 5 city sequence, you need 5 horses to score it. This is a fairly interesting mechanic in that some cities which you may not need have 3 horses on them to use. The downside is that you almost never use the special ability to “change all 6 face up cards” since at least one card will have either a city or a high number of horses…both are appealing. In addition, there is significant drop in the tension of making a long route. Before, if you didn’t have a card that added to the route, you had to start over. Now, if you don’t have a card, you simply add a horse or 3. My vote: Bad rule change

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2. Twist #2: Free Cities There are certain cities that are free provinces not part of a colored section. You can score up to 1 of these per score (assuming you take the “1 in each color” score), regardless of how many are in your sequence. The first person to put a house on that free city, gets a point chip for that city. This is a nice twist because it encourages one to take “1 in each color” rather than “all in one color”, thus luring you away from the victory via the “complete a colored section” route. True: you can take “all in one color” score with this, but that would be the ONLY city scored, so it sort of eliminates that as a possibility from a practical stand point. Thus, another road to victory opens up with this rule change. My vote: Good rule change

3. Twist #3: Game End There are no carriage houses, as in the first game. The game ends when a person runs out of houses. This eliminates a route to victory whereby one might try to win by being the first to a 7 city sequence in the original. Thus, My vote: Bad rule change.

Strategy: I’ve already covered this in mechanics, so I’ll just summarize here. You lose a route of victory pointsvia a “Race to 7 city sequence” and gain another route to victory points via Free Cities. Finally, there is a loss of tension by giving players an “out” by allowing them to add horses when the city card does not fit their sequence.

Good for kids?: Certainly. The original was a SdJ winner and this expansion follows the suit. Geography is always a good thing to teach kids, along with some German pronunciation. The addition of rules doesn’t add that much confusion to the original that if you can play the original, you can play this.

Will my non-gaming spouse/friends like it?: Again, as a SdJ winner, this game is designed for both gamers and non-gamers alike. I would argue a hearty yes, even with the addition of rules, this doesn’t make it less appealing to the non-gamer.

Does it work well for few (i.e. 2) players versus many (i.e. 3-4) players?: I think this expansion works best with all 4 people. It parallels Ticket to Ride’s end game trigger whereby when one runs out of houses (i.e. trains), that triggers the last turn, rather than having a race to 7 house sequence. It seems that playing the criterion game of keeping up with the player who has the least number of houses, but not too closely to loose valuable houses on worthless cities is best when there are more people, similar to the Power Grid mechanic. Still, it works well with 2 people, and don’t be discouraged from buying it solely for this reason.

Should I buy it?: I personally find it hard to justify buying an entire new set of components, and hence a “new game”, when I’m not really getting a new game. This is especially true when the price is almost the price of an entirely new game/system. I would rather spend that hard earned cash somewhere else. You will definitely lose some of the tension due to the horse mechanic. The addition of the Free City mechanic doesn’t quite make up for the loss of the race to 7 city sequence. Thus, unless you absolutely adore T&T, are craving for another map, and would fork out $25 for an expansion that is not a new game, I would probably skip it. And keep in mind, I absolutely love the original T&T.

Thread: Re: Free Cities

Colorado_Jeff — 2007-05-30T15:37:15+00:00

Now that you know this, I think you'll find it changes the dynamics significantly, and for the better. We've been playing this game often, and everyone enjoys it. The Power & Glory version is a bit better, for those in my play group.

Thread: Re: Free Cities

colinkun — 2007-05-30T03:42:43+00:00

Thank you. I haven't been playing with the -1 pt rule this whole time!

Thread: Re: Free Cities

Colorado_Jeff — 2007-05-30T01:02:55+00:00

Quote:
Every house that you don't put on the board is worth -1 points. You also end the game by placing all of your houses on the board.

I don't remember that rule. Where is it stated so I can check when I get home?

Page 4 of the original rules, under "Game end and scoring":

When a player has acquired a value 7 carriage or placed his last house, the round is player(sic) to the end and the game ends.

Then the scoring example shows:

The value of the highest carriage, plus the sum of the points on all his bonus tiles, minus the number of unplaced houses.

Whether or not you can voluntarily skip placing some houses to use on better routes isn't clear from the rules. It uses the word "may", but in reference to using one option or the other, that is placing all in one province, or once house in each province.

Thread: Re: Free Cities

colinkun — 2007-05-29T20:50:41+00:00

Every house that you don't put on the board is worth -1 points. You also end the game by placing all of your houses on the board.

I don't remember that rule. Where is it stated so I can check when I get home?

The other suggestions stated for placing branches in the free cities are well taken. To win the game quickly you need to place your branches. But, to score points for provinces, they are better used elsewhere.

Thread: Re: Free Cities

Colorado_Jeff — 2007-05-29T19:55:38+00:00

I'm not certain if you must play all "playable" cities in a given route, but in the Power and Glory expansion, there are 23 cities, including the four free cities, so you have to play in at least one of them to get all your houses placed.

I'll need to check the original rules when I get home to see if the placement is optional or required. (I'm at work, too!) Of course, by then, someone else will have the answer here.

Thread: Re: Free Cities

kschmidt — 2007-05-29T18:07:58+00:00

Don't have the rules in front of me.......but would a player need to put a post office in a free city if he didn't want to?? If you're second, the bonus is zero. Although getting houses out will help dwindle your supply but sometimes you need all the houses in trying to fill up many regional objectives.

Yes, yes, I know that one can play post offices in just one colored region when he scores a route, but they makes less sense when the route crosses many regional lines.

At work now, I can read the rules once more later tonight.

Thanks ahead, Kevin.

Thread: Re: Free Cities

asmiles — 2007-05-29T16:49:00+00:00

colinkun wrote:
I'm not sure I fully understand the free cities. I get the point that the first player to close a route with a free city gets to take the 1 pt chit. But, after that, does it make any sense for other players to put branches there? You could still have a route that goes through one or more of the free cities, but you would never want/need to put a branch there because it won't earn any points, right?

Every house that you don't put on the board is worth -1 points. You also end the game by placing all of your houses on the board.

So, yes, there are reasons why you would want to place your houses on these cities even if they don't directly contribute to your collecting victory point chits.

Thread: Free Cities

colinkun — 2007-05-29T16:11:47+00:00

I'm not sure I fully understand the free cities. I get the point that the first player to close a route with a free city gets to take the 1 pt chit. But, after that, does it make any sense for other players to put branches there? You could still have a route that goes through one or more of the free cities, but you would never want/need to put a branch there because it won't earn any points, right?

Thread: Re: No Forced Route Discard?

Colorado_Jeff — 2007-05-17T14:00:50+00:00

I received further confirmation from Jay regarding my previous question to him, and yes, if you voluntarily discard your city cards, any horses acquired up to that point are also discarded.

Thread: Re: looking for English rules

jamesdavis — 2007-05-12T07:03:15+00:00

maybe ask the publisher im sure they would be glad to help.

Thread: looking for English rules

robbydee — 2007-05-08T13:50:09+00:00

I bought this game last week while traveling in Vienna, so the rules are in German ... I can't seem to locate a translation either here or elsewhere ... anyone know where I could get the English rules to Power and Glory?

thanks

Thread: Re: 2 player?

cull — 2007-05-02T23:51:58+00:00

I have now bought this expansion. Played 2p with my wife last night. We liked it a lot - at least as much as the original version.

(We "played nice" - no carriage dumping. :-)

Thread: Picking up random cards instead of using the administrator

joemillions — 2007-05-01T02:57:28+00:00

When I first learned the rules to the expansion, I was initially excited about the horses, as they create scope for defensive plays (you can deny your opponent an important route card by taking it, and if you don't need it for your route, use it to pull your carriage). Also, the board seemed more exciting without the obvious Lodz-Pilsen-Regensburg route that everyone needs to get to snag the all-region chit. However, recently I played a 2P Power and Glory game with a friend on his new set, and we discovered what could possibly be a big flaw in the game.

In the basic game, it is generally a bad idea to use the administrator (except when you are hunting at the end) because you only get 1 card, and you also give your opponent a bunch of new cards to look at. It usually ends up helping your opponent more than it helps you. But sometimes you HAVE to use the administrator to save your route if the cards in the tableau don't help you! This is especially true in the 2P game where the tableau doesn't change much from turn to turn.

In the Power and Glory expansion, I think it might be an effective strategy to draw 2 random cards when the 6 available cards don't help you (rather than use the administrator). The random cards might give you something nice for your route, and if not, you can use the cards to pull your carriage. You can't lose your route if you draw bad cards. By not resetting the 6 cards, you give your opponent a choice between a bunch of cards that he or she rejected on the previous turn. And of course, 2 is better than 1, right?

So back to the game where I played my friend. We BOTH used this double-random strategy. So we took turns pulling 2 random cards, both scared to open the floodgates by picking the administrator. We both used our excess cards to pull freight, and usually had to chuck a card (or two) when we laid our routes. The cards in the tableau were seldom taken.

Unfortunately, this caused the game to deteriorate into a luckfest! If we got ANY playable card, we pretty much had to put it in our routes - anything else was either discarded or used to pull the carriage. So most of the strategic decision making and planning got sucked out of the game. Whoever drew the right cards in the right order was going to win. This type of game is no fun at all!

Since then, I have not played any more double-random picker games, since most of my opponents on BSW seem to be in love with the administrator. Has anyone else experienced this effect in their games? Or am I playing a shallow strategy that can be easily countered by good players?

Thread: Re: Does it feel like a different game?

Oni no board — 2007-04-26T18:59:48+00:00

Werbaer wrote:
In original TuT, unless in a 2 player game, it was a bad move to pick up a card only to deny it to your opponents, since you did hurt yourself by doing so. In GuG, you can pick it up and use it as a horse card.

I think you still hurt yourself denying your opponent a card but having played in P&G's map, I'll agree that now it hurts your opponent much more because of the decreased number of roads connecting each city and the use of that card for its horshoes.

The next chance I get to play the game, I'll have to play more attention to my opponent(s) and try out the card denying tactic.

Thread: Re: Does it feel like a different game?

Werbaer — 2007-04-26T08:17:25+00:00

Oni no board wrote:
I didn't see why that horseshoe mechanic made it a different game. All it did was slow down the game as well as soften the blow of not being able to complete a route.
In original TuT, unless in a 2 player game, it was a bad move to pick up a card only to deny it to your opponents, since you did hurt yourself by doing so. In GuG, you can pick it up and use it as a horse card.

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quentin1 — 2007-04-18T03:26:45+00:00

Blue vs Red

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quentin1 — 2007-04-18T03:24:51+00:00

The Hand

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quentin1 — 2007-04-18T03:24:06+00:00

Rules Sheet

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Duane Abrames — 2007-04-11T23:30:32+00:00

New (useful!) Player Cards, which provide your starting 2 horses.