I recommend the game, but I’d recommend getting it with the Merry Men expansion and this house rule. If you have the expansion, the order you enter also helps with claiming bounties. And best of all, it makes actual contraband much more valuable, since your legal goods may not end up counting towards the king/queen bonus. It incentivizes bringing in multiple legal goods, to lock out other goods, which in turn incentivizes bribing the guard to check another player’s bag (maybe you are ok with someone going first, IF they don’t secretly have a chicken in their bag). Or you could bribe to at least get through before a rival. This means that players aren’t just bribing the guard to get through, they may want to bribe him to get through FIRST, to lock down the market. All other goods just get added to your cart like contraband (meaning they are cashed out at the end of the game). Only one player can add a given legal good to his market per turn, the first person get a product past the sheriff can add it. Our group added a house rule that, IMO, greatly improves the game. What the game needs, badly, is for players with legal goods to have a reason to bribe guards. What that ultimately boils down to, is that you aren’t incentivized to make bribes, or consider them when you check bags. Most “creative” bribes are junk because players can lie, and it basically has to be assumed that they are. It’s REALLY risky for the sheriff to check bags, and the payoff isn’t that spectacular. The game is fun for awhile, but, with the base game, the biggest problem is that the games major selling point, bribing the sherif, isnt really all that fleshed out. This game is definitely good for a laugh, often the sneakiest players win, but it is wholly possible to win by being 100% truthful the whole game :) Once the Sheriff accepts a bribe the agreement is binding, as in he can not accept your bribe to not check your bag and then decide to check it regardless. To top it off other players are allowed to interfere with bribes of their own to thwart your efforts. This is where the fun comes in, players are allowed to bribe the sheriff, trying to make them look the other way so you can successfully smuggle in contraband, or bribe the sheriff to bait him into checking your perfectly honest goods. But this is not without risk for the Sheriff, if he decides to open a bag he can not backtrack, and if you have been truthful about what you brought in, he has to compensate you for your "trouble". The risk is that the sheriff can decide to check your bag of goods, confiscating any contraband you might have and imposing a fine. You declare what you're bringing to the sheriff truthfully or not (you may lie about what type of goods you have, but not the number of cards). You're all taking turns being the Sheriff, while the others are merchants trying to bring their goods(cards, regular and/or contraband) into Nottingham.
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