Playing Again!

Tuesday night I went to my friends house to play Taipan.  I brought over the newly printed Game Crafter version of Taipan and set it up.  We BSed and ate dinner for about an hour and go started around 8PM.

I blame the bad picture on the 21 year old Scotch. Mmmmm...Glenfiddich!

I had two new people who had never played (TJ and Sean), so it was good to get some fresh eyes on the game.  Right out the gate I got very lucky where I fought off 3 pirates and got two gold cargo.  This would have resulted in me earning 22 coin on the second turn of the game.  In my continued attempt to minimize the huge random swings of the game I adjusted the rules only allowing players to choose 1 cargo from any Pirate victory.

The Start of the game using the new Game Crafter set.

Over the course of the game we found several other issues that need to be addressed.  TJ got himself into a bad position where he had no money and lost most of his cargo when he got into a fight with Pirates.  We came up with a new rule that allows a player to stay in port on his turn to earn 2 coins.  I might change this to if he takes no Port Actions, he gains two coin.  This will prevent players from loosing a turn and falling behind the other players who are earning much larger amount of money.

In addition, TJ also took Rasheed which did not help his situation any.  After talking about it we have determined that his ability (Repair any two damage for free) is purely a defensive ability and playser can rarely win a game by playing all defensive.  I will be revisiting that character to change his ability in some way.

Clearly Sean and Bryan have had way too much to drink.

I had a good lead for a long while, but in the end, it was Bryan who won.   While I spent the game slowly paying off my debt, he built up his ship so that he had Max Sails and Hull.  In combination with Markus Seawell (Move into and out of Port once per turn for free), this allowed his to make big buys and massive sells and pay off his debt in the last four turns of the game.  This is a good strategy and the one I think all expert players will take, but it makes it very binary and appears to be the only correct choice.  We talked about reducing the number of Ship Upgrades from 3 to 2, but my fear with this is that it will slow the game down.  The game took 2 hours, and that is the perfect amount of time in my mind.


I think I am going to change Marcus Seawell so that he will be able to take advantage of specially marked short cuts on the Sea Map and Rasheed will become the Harbor Master allowing him to move out of Port for free, but not into port.  There where a few other issues, but nothing to major.  Some art issues on the cards, and some missing details and typos in the rules.


Cant wait to have time to make the changes and do it all again.  Maybe this weekend I will get to dive back in.   Until next time, happy gaming.