Game Preview: St. Petersburg Expansion

By Tom Lehmann
October 25, 2008

Publishers: Rio Grande Games / Hans im Glück (newly packaged inside the base game)
Designers: Michael Tummelhofer (base game) / Karl-Heinz Schmiel & Tom Lehmann (expansion)
Players: 2-5
Ages: 10+
Playing Time: 45-60 minutes
Release Date: October/November 2008 (in the U.S.)
Language: English/German

Rio Grande Games’ St. Petersburg Expansion is two expansions in one, containing The Banquet, designed by Karl-Heinz Schmiel and previously published in Spielbox magazine, and The New Society, designed by me.

The two expansions were designed independently, with mine being designed six months before The Banquet appeared in Spielbox. While Jay Tummelson wanted to produce an English version of The Banquet, a 12-card expansion is hard to do anything with other than offer it as a loss leader at a convention or as a magazine freebie. With The New Society containing 36 cards and a few wooden pieces, Jay could now combine both expansions into one product. For me, it’s a great honor to have my name appear on the same box as Karl-Heinz Schmiel, even if we didn’t actually do anything together! Maybe, someday…

Petersburg Players Picked a Peck of Producers

Game expansions can take many forms. Broadly speaking, there are three types, any of which can work quite well depending on the game and players’ tastes:

• Some expansions “spice up” a game by offering variety in the form of event cards or powers that break up the flow and known tradeoffs of the base game. Schmiel’s expansion is in this mold.

• Other expansions move an existing game system to a different map or setting. Many train game expansions fall in this category.

• The third approach is to “flesh out” a game by offering new options within the game’s overall framework and/or by supporting more players, which is what I did while adding a fifth player.

Strategy games are all about decisions, and in my designs I try to avoid “false” decisions. If you offer players a choice that is obvious most of the time, then you’re wasting their time and should either eliminate it (unless the “corner case” it handles leads to intense player frustration) or make it more interesting.

When I first played St. Petersburg, I thought it was a great game, other than the worker purchase decisions, which weren’t interesting enough. In my experience, during the early game players mostly just buy the worker cards in order from low cost to high. Investing in expensive Fur Traders and Ship Builders to later secure their valuable trading card upgrades just isn’t cost effective compared to buying cheaper worker cards. Combine the shifting player order in the trading card phase with the scant worker upgrades in the deck, and it’s likely that even if an upgrade does show, it’s often gone before you get a chance to take the card.

What can be done to improve this? How about a set of 9-cost workers that provide 3 income and 1 victory point? The first worker in such a set is a bit pricey, but each additional one – costing you 1 less – is a pretty good deal. At the start, do you invest in this “line” or do you buy a cheaper worker? If a 3-cost Lumberjack is available, you’ll probably still buy it, but what if the only alternative workers cost 5 or 6?

Let’s also add another Wharf to the trading card deck so that as the “premium” for upgrade rights increases (from 5-cost workers to 7-cost), there are now two, three, and four trading cards, respectively. What’s more, let’s add a 15-cost worker upgrade to the deck that provides 6 income and 2 VPs and that can be traded up to with any type of worker. Using a higher cost worker to upgrade to this card is a better deal since more of the total cost has already been paid – a sunk cost, in economist’s jargon.

Having 9-cost workers also affects players’ budgeting decisions at the end of each round as they prepare for the next worker phase. By forcing players to save more to ensure that they can buy something, the 5- to 7-cost workers become more palatable.

Now, the worker choices are tighter – but since we’re adding another set of workers, we need a replacement Czar and Carpenter (with the new worker symbol). How about changing the card to cost 3 and give 2 income (instead of costing 8 for 3 income)? With this, upgrading to any green trading card, even the 4- and 6-cost ones, pays off since the Czar’s income increases from 2 to at least 3. Would you rather buy, say, a 5-cost, 3 income Shepard or a 3-cost, 2 income Czar that upgrades to any green trading card?

No Cursing These Aristocrats

If we’re already supplying at least one replacement card in the form of a new Czar, then how about redoing the 18-cost, 6 income, 3 VP Mistress of Ceremonies? Like many, I believe this card is too powerful when it appears on turn one. I’ve won against it, but it’s a long, uphill slog and you have to get lucky. Let’s keep the card at a cost of 18, but instead make it 3 income and 4 VPs. That’s still quite nice, but no longer unbalancing. On the first turn, many players will now buy a Judge (cost 16, 5 income, 2 VPs) instead of the Mistress, but on later turns? To make this choice still tighter, let’s add a third Judge – but not a third Mistress – to the aristocrat deck when we expand it.

Hmm… to support five players, we mostly need more copies of the existing cards in the aristocrat deck. That’s a bit boring, though, so can we also add something new? How about two Sycophants at a cost of 1 for -1 income? You can avoid its negative income by putting it in your hand and placing it in the final round, but then you’re putting pressure on your hand capacity. That seems like an interesting trade-off.

I personally don’t think the Observatory at a cost of 6 is too cheap, but many players do, so let’s add two 8-cost replacements to tighten that decision.

I didn’t want to redo the base game with too many replacement cards – the replacement has seven total – but for those who won’t use The New Society except with five players (since its extra cards do lengthen 2-4 player games), supplying replacement cards that can be swapped into the base game or used with The Banquet expansion provides value.

Thus, instead of adding a third Observatory for five players, let’s have an 8-cost Debtor’s Prison that lets its owner go into the discard pile and take any card from it. This is quite useful as, for example, its owner doesn’t have to worry about losing a unique aristocrat to an upgrade. Let’s also add two more 11-cost Firehouses, to allow players to develop them as a line, plus a few new buildings with interesting powers.

For new trading cards, how about the Mayor, an aristocrat upgrade that produces 1 income for each blue building, or the Guild Hall, a building upgrade that gives its owner any desired mix of 4 income or VPs?

And so on. It’s not my intention to list all the new cards here, but to give a sense of how I went through each deck, trying to tighten player choices and provide them with new options, while staying within the game’s existing framework.

Russian Spirit

I titled some cards with generic names (Textile Factory, Merchant), but tried for period flavor with a historical building (Petersburg University, an offshoot of the Academy); a nod to Prokofiev’s musical fable about the Czar and a nonexistent hero (Lt. Kije); and several references to Peter the Great’s plans to modernize Russia, especially its peasant class (New Farmer, Commune, and New Society).

For the five-player game, I considered and rejected a new board (with ten card slots) or a fifth deck type. At that point, I would be redoing the entire game, not expanding it. Instead, I kept to the current rules: start with two workers per player (10), and refill to eight cards.  Eight card slots, combined with the new higher cost workers, forces players to do more hand management than in 2-4 player games, which balances the three overall extra hand slots from the fifth player.

Since the game still has only four decks, the holder of the fifth role scores 2 VPs during the worker phase, and that player is at a particular disadvantage during the first round (picking further behind, on average, in every phase), so she starts with two extra wealth.

To avoid players being in fifth place, then fourth place, then third, and so on for roles over several rounds, I made one rules change for five players: roles are now passed two places to the left after each round, which mixes up relative role positions over multiple rounds quite nicely.

Adventurous players can even combine The New Society with The Banquet, though this wasn’t a design goal. Instead, I suspect players will, depending on their mood and tastes, choose to play with one or the other, depending on whether they want some tough choices added to the existing game or greater variety and spice. Enjoy!

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Comments:

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Tom, I always appreciate the thoroughness of your articles, and the perspective you share with us all!  (Not to mention your game designs, of course!) Posted by Nathan Morse on Oct 25, 2008 at 08:11 AM | #

Sounds awesome.  I’ve been looking forward to this expansion more than any other (even more than the Race for the Galaxy expansion, actually).  It appears that it will fulfill my expectations. Posted by Mike Adams on Oct 25, 2008 at 10:56 AM | #

It’s the season of good expansions (I hope) with two solid medium-weight games getting expansions that I’m very interested in checking out… Posted by Matt J. Carlson on Oct 26, 2008 at 08:05 PM | #

Looks like a must buy for us. My second kid most favorite game is St. Petersburg and this looks like an interesting exp. Looks like my plan not to buy to many games upcoming year is going to change :) Posted by Gilad Yarnitzky on Oct 27, 2008 at 05:29 AM | #

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