The Beauty of Favored Ground.

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One game that does this really well is Ra. All of the players start roughly equal, but the auctions put people in different situations almost immediately. I love those moments when you know you can bid 3 for a big lot, because you're the only one who won't be losing points because of the disaster tiles.

This is a great article.

Great article and mechanic discussion.

Great article and good articulation of what "favored ground" means. I really enjoy that aspect in games as well.

San Il Defanso wrote: One game that does this really well is Ra. All of the players start roughly equal, but the auctions put people in different situations almost immediately. I love those moments when you know you can bid 3 for a big lot, because you're the only one who won't be losing points because of the disaster tiles.

This is a great article.

Funny you should mention Ra, as I just played Tuesday night and had a similar moment come up. One tile on the track, it was worth five points to me and none to anyone else. I called the auction immediately and so would get last bid. The other four players looked at each other trying to figure out who would squander a bid in order to keep me from getting it, and I had a broad array of bids to choose from. One of them could bid me up at the risk of me letting them have a single tile at a high price, or I could grab it for a bid of 3. A fair amount of debate ensued, deciding whether to prevent me from having it, push me a little in hopes of making me pay, or just let me have a valuable single tile on the cheap.

In this particular case their downside was more about opportunity loss, but the concept stands. This kind of game-within-the-game makes plays crunchier, and in Ra, Knizia showed that he could do it.

S.

I've often thought about this exact principle in relation to Ra, but I've never had a word for it until now. Always nice when an article is able to articulate something like that.

You see some of this in El Grande too. There are lots of times when you think long and hard about taking an iffy strategy card just so someone else won't get it.

Great article! Just picked up a copy of No Thanks off Amazon. There was no shipping charge on that game today. 9.99+tax period.