http://playful-tom.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] playful-tom.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] shannon_a 2009-02-06 02:29 am (UTC)

I like RA and play it a lot. I really like the way the bag works in the 5-player game (where there are exactly as many RA tiles over three rounds as there are RA spaces in play on the RA track, unlike in the 3 or 4 player games where there are extra RA tiles in the bag). This seems to have the best end-game tension and makes the earlier game decisions whether or not to end a round without all RA tiles appearing much more meaningful.

Unfortunately, I prefer RA with 3 or 4 players, as I feel that the "strategy space" in RA just isn't large enough for 5 players (one player goes for Pharaohs in a big way, one player goes all-out for Monuments, one player goes for lands and floods, one player tries a mixed strategy, and the fifth player does ... what???). (And, yeah, I know that this is simplifying matters a bit -- in actual play no one actually goes for "pure" strategies -- but each player usually does have an emphasis of some sort.)

So, we mostly play RA with 3 or 4 players using a slight "exact Ras" setup variant, where we place 3 Ra tiles each on the (2 or 1) unused spaces of the RA track. This seems, for our tastes, the best of both worlds. Your mileage may vary.

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