Things we played wrong in Terra Mystica

[robertdd]

6 things we played wrong:

1. The arrows on the player board I asked about (underneath the priest and the worker, in the area where it tells you how you can always use power) are not indicating that you get them. They are just another exchange you may do. So you may exchange a priest for a worker at any time, and a worker for a gold. This is important also in end game scoring, where you are instructed to exchange all resources to coins as step 1. On your turn you can do as many conversions as you want, before or after taking your action.

2. You may gain less power than all under two circumstances:
1. You do not have to gain more power than you need to move all power to bowl 3 (this actually would have made a (small) difference for me in the last game.
2. You can't go negative on the VP track.
In these two cases you may, as a third alternative to either "take all" or "take none", take exactly as much as you can.

3. You do not have to use all spades in a single area when using a transform and build action. Usually you have to, but there is a special exception: if you gain two or more spades (not buying them with workers, but actually gaining them through spending 6 power on the bottom of the board, for instance) and you only need one to transform a piece of terrain into your home terrain, you may use the other one on a second hex (but you may not build a dwelling there!) I interpret this as: if you can't split them, you don't have to waste them or use them somewhere that's not optimal to avoid wasting them.

4. The town tile with the four elements and 8vp lets you advance one step in each of the element tracks, not one of your choice like the Bonus Card (Bonus Cards are the Puerto Rico role cards)

5. If one of the structures is a sanctuary you only need three directly adjacent structures to found a town. This is what the symbol means we couldn't figure out. This also means a sanctuary just gets you a priest, not a priest per town!

6. The mermaid town tile does not "interrupt" indirect adjacency. Nothing does. You may trace indirect adjacency across river hexes without any restrictions (other than your shipping value, of course).

I think it is clear we have to asterisk that win of Rod's...

[waylander]

Good to know... nothing major. Although you are right about the *... I probably would have won by a larger margin!

[vicr]

I actually did the simulation and it turns out that Witches were far ahead with those rules. I just can’t remember who played those…?

Fmi (For my information?), can you terraform a tile to something else than your terrain of predilection? i.e. can you use your “extra” spade to terraform to an intermediary terrain which you may or may not terraform again to build a dwelling on another turn?

Anyway it was a lot of fun to play the way we did and I look forward to playing again.

[bankrupt]

Robert,

My apologies. Your item 6 is correct. I clearly had the Mermaid's town rule wrong. How much difference would that have made for you?

I don't think we played six things wrong. Some never came into play at all and some we did correctly although you may not have realized it.

From this I have learned that with rules as long and detailed as TM's it is not possible for me to play correctly the first time in an environment as noisy as is typical at Triple Play. It also takes longer to explain all those details than some players are willing to wait to begin actual play. After a few plays of a game I can sort the rules that are necessary to know at the beginning from those that can be added later. Not easy to do before the first play of a new game. At my home we have a new house rule: The first play of a new game doesn't count. No bragging rights.

Thanks for deciphering the symbol under the sanctuary. I've spent many more hours with TM and had not discerned that symbol's meaning. We did play that priest gain wrong. I recall that it did affect you at least once.

I did explain the exchange you mention in paragraph 1. There was, to me at least, so much other noise and confusion that I'm amazed we did as well as we did given the large number of rules in TM.

I'm going to re-read some rules before commenting on your item 2.1. I did mention 2.2, not going into negative VP's. We never got near that condition.

So far as I know we did play your item 3 correctly every time. I'm not sure your restatement is accurate. I'll think about it.

Your item 4 is correct. I did not know that at the time. I don't know if that affected anyone's choice of favor tiles.

[waylander]

Rick I thought you did a fine job explaining the game. It was loud, but I got everything you said. I never worry about getting every rule correct the first play thru.

Story of another game we played wrong the first time thru...Ave Caesar. We played one way and loved the game! Played and played it for a few weeks in a row. Finally someone said we were doing something wrong. So we changed...it made the game less fun. The excitement in racing around the track was gone... the solution: Play the game we wanted and the way it was most fun for us! That may not be the solution for TM... but just illustrates that having fun is more important sometimes.


I had a great time playing Terra Mystica and I am looking forward to getting a chance to play it again. I will pick it up when it hits the states...and play it correctly! So thank for teaching us a great new game!

[bankrupt]

I think we finished the guts of the town budget process this week so I will probably be there on the 5th and bring Terra Mystica.

Any interest in Medina, Stephenson's Rocket, or other older euros?