(online) boardgaming?

[Amelia]

Heh, i'm completely screwing up in St Petersburg... I hope i can catch up soon...

[sooooo]

Really 15 points? You can only buy 5 points per round, so for 15 points you would have had to spend 10 rubels per round for the last three rounds. It's rarely useful to do this outside of the last round, as normally you can do something better with 10 rubels that generates more points over the course of the rest of the game.

And since you'll get one point per 10 rubels in the end, it's effectively only 4 points per round you have missed, if that's any consolation.

Oh, then I've been completely misplaying it! At least it only cost me 1 rubel.

[T-hawk]

Just by comparison, in the second-to-last round, you can buy a Firehouse for 10 or 11 rubles to get 6 VP (3 this round 3 next round), a better conversion than using the pub. Occasionally, using the pub in the second-to-last round is worthwhile, if there are no available buildings or you want to spend just a little bit of extra money.

Our St. Petersburg game (sooooo, DavidCorperial, Kylearan, and myself) is almost over. I think Kylearan is going to take it on the strength of 9 nobles to no more than 6 for everyone else. The key turning point was when an Observatory landed to Kylearan in round 4, letting him run away with that category and nobody else could keep up.

[Kylearan]

Our St. Petersburg game (sooooo, DavidCorperial, Kylearan, and myself) is almost over. I think Kylearan is going to take it on the strength of 9 nobles to no more than 6 for everyone else.

Actually I'll only have 8 different nobles (got one twice), but if my calculations are correct this should still suffice to win me the game. Or so I hope.

The key turning point was when an Observatory landed to Kylearan in round 4, letting him run away with that category and nobody else could keep up.

DavidCorperial got one too, but he used it on upgrade cards. I don't know exactly what cards he got, but IMHO using it on upgrade cards is only useful if you have more than one noble twice and desperately need an upgrade noble to replace one of them. Apart from that, there are way too many upgrade cards in the deck which are only useful in certain, specific circumstances.

And while there's no doubt that an observatory is a strong card, it's by no means necessary to win. In this game, I also had some bad luck (I got a lot of expensive nobles in the beginning and no cheap ones, nearly breaking my economy), but I also benefited from the fact that the two least experienced players got seated behind me (no offense meant!).

I still wonder how the game would have went if T-hawk wouldn't have taken that expensive 20 points blue card in the beginning.

[T-hawk]

Actually I'll only have 8 different nobles (got one twice), but if my calculations are correct this should still suffice to win me the game. Or so I hope.

There's no mystery left - the last scoring phase is over and the hands are empty enough that we all know the noble counts, so you will win.

And while there's no doubt that an observatory is a strong card, it's by no means necessary to win.

But you also got it at the best time, round 3 or 4. From playing the PC game, I've come to dislike the observatory too early. 6 cost is a very big setback so early with no direct payback, and the observatory will fill your hand with more nobles than you can afford to buy. And if it comes late, that's just 1 or 2 extra nobles. But you and David hit it in the sweet spot.

I still wonder how the game would have went if T-hawk wouldn't have taken that expensive 20 points blue card in the beginning.

Not that much. It never made me short on hand space, and thanks to the Harbor upgrade, I had enough money to play the big card just a few turns later. The difference was that you would have taken some blue card in round one, to open up a noble slot for yourself, then I would have done the same thing (if I understood the card movement and turn order as I do now.) Of course, there's chaos effects downstream from there - the observatories probably land at a different time to different players - but my expensive blue card didn't really have much direct effect.

[Amelia]

I took that expensive 20 points blue card in the beginning... it's still in my hand

[Kylearan]

There's no mystery left - the last scoring phase is over and the hands are empty enough that we all know the noble counts, so you will win.

Ah, but there is one mystery left: You could surprise me with a huge amount of Rubles for a lot of points per 10 Rubles at the end - my lead will only be small, and I will have <10 Rubles myself. Not likely, but possible.

But you also got it at the best time, round 3 or 4. From playing the PC game, I've come to dislike the observatory too early. 6 cost is a very big setback so early with no direct payback

Well, you can always put the observatory in your hand first if it comes too early. But even an observatory on turn one could come in handy - maybe you can use it to take an additional green card, to put you ahead in the economy. I'm still not sure this is worth it though, it's not often that I get a T1 observatory to try this.

@DavidCorperial: I'm not sure if you've realized this, but the game will be over after the current phase. Buying that blue upgrade card won't do anything for you; you would only get its effect in the next blue phase, which we will no longer reach. The only thing one can do in this last phase is to buy upgrade nobles if you have a noble twice (or want to denay one to another player), and empty your hand to avoid the -5 scoring penalty.

There *is* one upgrade noble, but I'm the only one with a double noble - and I don't have the money for the upgrade.

[Kylearan]

Our game of St. Petersburg is over! Here's the final tally:

Kylearan: 78 pts.
T-hawk: 71 pts.
DavidCorperial: 61 pts.
sooooo: 53 pts.

Thanks all for a fun game! I discovered that you can watch a replay of the game with money and hand cards visible for all players, nice.

I've won, but I'm not too proud of that because I was the only one who had played the game before (and over a dozen times at that).

It looks like sooooo underestimated (or didn't know about) the importance of the number of different nobles. I guess he would play differently next game.

[T-hawk]

Yeah, the difference was that I missed that noble in round one. That would be 7 more bonus points and I'd win on the money tiebreaker, all else being equal.

So is there a next game?

Let's be careful about the signup order next time. It looks like the players play in order of joining, which gave us an awkward turn order of UK-US-Germany-US that only managed 1-2 turns per day. It could go faster with better time zone alignment, I think.

[sooooo]

Yes, I would like to play it again - I think I have a better idea about strategy this time. It seems very important to work out how many new cards will come in the next round and from your place in the turn order how many cards you will get. There were a few turns where I messed that up by not taking a card into hand and hence not getting the opportunity to buy something I wanted.