Hi folks,

Love the game, will give my 2-cents on it elsewhere. Just want to ask a question about this mechanic tho, as it does seem kinda pointless.

Given the cost involved in raising your character to the higher level of piece (forfeit a time & a lead) AND the fact that you immediately fall back down again once you purchase, AND the fact that the puzzle pieces (in a 4-5 player game at least) tend to disappear like candy (on account of them being so much better value than evidence in the early game - one time for access to +4vp tokens, special VP conditions, bonus evidence & counters plus shifting/favours/baggage????) this mechanic is almost NEVER used in our house.

There are sometimes situations where it can be useful (usually in the latter half of the game) when you need baggage quickly, but this is usually only done when the person has NO other access to baggage.

On the flip side, explaining this to new players is a pain. It's one more mechanic to manage, requiring its own hero markers next to each pile. It means that a detective: follows a lead, choses evidence or conspiracy, then chooses puzzle or dig deeper, then re-adjusts marker accordingly. The last two steps could easily have been removed for simplicity.

Am I missing something?

Cheers,

Om

It's very much worth it in a 3-player game. Not only is 1 light/dark shift embarassingly inferrior to 1 favor of your choice, but the chances of getting a kick-ass bonus on the piece that you draw goes up very noticeably. The light/dark shift pieces hardly have any bonus on them - they're rare. The favor pieces have some great ones that you gun for; the dropship pass being one of them. And the baggage pieces? Getting a bonus hit marker AND a dropship pass (or something like that, but TWO bonuses!) is quite the positive surprise!

However, when you start to up the frequency at which these pieces are being pulled, i.e. # of players, yes - the strength of the move lessens. It's quite easy and clear I think: Change your strategy when playing with new, different, and/or more players!

You should be doing that anyway!

Just my 2 cents.

Plus Raymond at least has a Light Card or two that lets you place two pieces for the price of one. If that one time and one lead turns into two of the Favor or Baggage pieces, it becomes much better.

Raymond also has that card that lets him move around the stacks, hehe.

People may also start being more careful about the conspiracy tokens. A line of three requires two leads to follow (which is not that hard) AND, the first one should not be a bend, because if it is, you can't get the fifth one into place anymore. The pieces in the higher stacks also tend to have more paths (T-junctions and 4-way-junctions).

Additionally, if you get one of those 2-for-1 pieces that are in the higher stacks and the lower stacks are already finished, you luck out. And if you have a few Jinteki or Haas tokens (Caprice and Floyd can do, especially if the right event happens early), you may want to go to the baggage stack to find the pieces that can join those groups to the conspiracy.

With all this I'm not claiming it's a super-useful ability, and in fact it's not used much. But also not a super-useless ability as you say. An easy example is if you're going to follow two leads and it's not imperative that you place two pieces (ie, not gunning for a conspiracy token), you may as well dig-deeper with the first one. A free favor beats two shifts anyday, I'd say.

Yes it does, but does it beat three actions instead of one (following lead, moving to another location, following lead instead of simply following one lead)?

Stefan said:

Thanks for the responses guys, all pretty much as I had thought. I was going to type my reply, but Stefan did it for me above.

Raymond aside, it doesn't seem like the expenditure of at least three additional time (1 to move, 1 to chase the lead and usually another 1 time to chase the next lead) is worth an upgrade to the 'chance' you will draw something. I've no doubt there are rare moments or specific characters where doing so might still be advantageous, but I put it to you that this is only so because the mechanic was added; this ability isn't really a natural progression of the conspiracy system, it feels a bit like a third wheel in my humble opinion.

That said, it's not like it's completely useless and the game isn't damaged by having it, it just struck me as an obvious place where the rules could have been culled a little, given the extreme time cost to make this happen.

Still, I guess options are options

Cheers,

Om

Well, if all you want is the conspiracy piece, then it doesn't, true.

Omnisiah said:

I was playing as Caprice, and staying mostly in the far eastern district of New Angeles. I had pretty much given up on the murder (I was playing against Floyd and Louis, both of whom were very aggressively pursuing the evidence), so I was going for as many Jinteki tokens as I could get. The political favors were easy to come by, as City Hall was close by, but the corp favors were all the way on the moon. I didn't seem to be drawing many twilight cards that gave me favors, so I started digging deeper to generate corp favors to spend on Jinteki tokens.

Just an example of when digging deeper proved helpful.

Eldil said:

Now THIS is a great idea. Getting a particular favour type DOES usually involve a lot more than just 3 time. Ok, congratulations sir, you just convinced me

I have played two games and only one person did this action once!!

I do want to play this game more!!

I've played only three player games, and it gets used quite a bit. I never do it, but the other two love digging deeper. They start tossing baggage on each other and blowing through favors right off the bat. I use this time to start placing evidence on the suspects I don't have hunches for, quickly drawing the hits off of my real targets.

Keggy said:

Agreed, get at least one piece with placing a hit token to avoid "your guys" been killed. I havent noticed that in the first game, but when first player draws place a hit bonus on a suspect, others simply puts it on the same suspect. But bad luck although i take a lot of conspiracy i have not drawn none of that and my suspect (guilt and sadly innnocent too) was killed. Dont underestimate digging deep, as i think i would use it more often in the future games ... it pays off.

And i agree that light/dark shift is not very useful, but if you want to rule about bonus points, you should not dig deep.