My gaming group played Colosseum last week for the first time, with 5 people.  It took about 3 hours, including the rules.  We figure it would take around 1-1/2 hours if we played it again.  We really liked our first playing!

We quickly decided that we would play the trading round as open trading.  We also had all our chits and stadia in plain view (per our understanding of the rules), so it was pretty easy to see who’d be interested in trading what.

This kept the aspect of trading, which I think is a key part of the game, but it cut down on the time dramatically.  Most trading rounds went a minute or two.  Trading was always interesting as you quickly tried to improve your position before one of the others traded away what you wanted.  Trading also offered a way to broker deals that would steal top performers from the apparent leader :-)

Money was never a problem for anyone except the time I built twice, including a 25gp stadium, and I didn’t have the 8gp to bid.  However, I used my 4gp to sweeten a trade, and so it still worked out.

We didn’t play the intense auction variant, and that meant trading was more important (as you suggested).  Notice the disclaimer in the rules: “This variant place[s] a premium on players managing their money more carefully to give themselves a better chance to win multiple biddings in the turn.”

I agree, if you play intense auctions, trading isn’t as interesting.

Personally, I think we had more fun without this variant, and based on your comments, I think you would too :-) With more cash, the game is more about managing time and events rather than gold.

My five player game (with standard rules) also took 2.5 hours, but it was everyone’s first game.

We had fairly open trading, with the stipulation that the “effect” of trading always occurred in turn order.  So, even though I and another person collected three warriors in the first trading phase, I was awarded the star performer because had we done things in order I would have had my 3 tiles “first”.

One thing the intense auction variant would do is decrease the penalty on the leader.  While I played well, I was trying to build up completed performances for the +5 bonus each round.  I ended up the leader for all four rounds and got all four podiums.  Unfortunately, while the +12 bonus from podiums was nice, I couldn’t keep up with the weight of losing two tiles per round (one of which was stolen and thus not my choice).  While I did manage to beat the player who stole most of my tiles (and thus all my star performers) by a couple of points, I also ended up two points behind the winner since I had to make due with only a medium-sized performance in session V.

With intense auctions, there would be so many more tiles floating around I would have been far better off in the later rounds.  (Particularly since I had piles of money from all my quality performances.) Thus, intense auctions make “catching the leader” harder than the standard game.  This can up the “randomness” that initial distribution can install.  (I had two “matching” performances to start the game...)

Diane, the first time I played Colosseum, we used the original rules.  We found what others, including Eric Martin, have reported:  that money was too plentiful and that the auctions were uninteresting because everyone was afraid to play defense (lest their opponent back away and they lose their one auction for the turn).  Trading has increased importance here, but I don’t find it much fun, as everything is calculable and there seems no scope for clever or innovative deals.  On the other hand, it does provide the game its only direct interaction.

I think open trading would have helped reduce the time in our last game, but only a bit.  One problem is the table size.  In my previous three-player game, we played on a small table and everyone could easily see their opponent’s tiles.  The last game was on a big table, where you had no chance to see anyone but your neighbor and even that was tough.  Still, even on a small table, you can’t be sure of your opponent’s future building plans, so it still takes time to establish what she’s willing to offer.  You could come up with visual ways of making this easier (by physically organizing your tiles), but so far, I really haven’t enjoyed the trading part of this game enough to fight to save it--and I usually love negotiation games.

The business about using trading to deprive another player of Star Performers is a perfect illustration of my problems with the phase.  It can be ridiculously easy to do (find two players with enough tiles, where one of them doesn’t need them--it happened a couple of times in our last game), so why bother going through all the trouble of winning auctions that give you this advantage?  Trading just seems to detract from the auction phase and in this game, I find that the more interesting aspect.

By the way, the only reason I didn’t enjoy my last game (other than the overly long duration) was that I was an idiot.  Based on my three-player game experience, I was convinced that there would be no problem winning two auctions in the first round, but a second’s thought would have shown me just how big a pickle I was getting myself into.  The two games are different:  you start with two more tiles with three and the auctions probably won’t be quite as contested.  Normally, I love games where money is tight and it’s one of the reasons I’ll only play with intense auctions.  In this case, I played badly and suffered the consequences, but that doesn’t reflect on the design or the variant at all.

I like Colosseum as well.  It may take a while to work out the optimal way of playing it, but I think it’s worth tinkering with.  Hopefully, the other members of my group will feel the same way and show patience with the game until we can get it right.

Matt, my experience has been that those additional tiles you have with intense auctions are rarely useful.  This does add to the “looseness” of the game, but doesn’t really detract from things.  I’ve yet to see a wire-to-wire victory in an intense auctions game.

Now, if you eliminate trading with intense auctions, I can see a catch the leader problem, if only because the leader will have the most money as well as the podiums.  Judicious drafting of his tiles should help, but the players might also have to be smart in the order in which they nominate the auctions--pick the one that old moneybags has the most interest in first, to keep him from interfering in the rest of that player’s picks.  It might be an issue, but the only way to find out is to play that way.

I have no problem with catch-the-leader mechanisms, but I didn’t care for the way it worked with trading in Colosseum.  It’s very easy and close to automatic for trailing players to swap tiles which help them both, while the leader looks on helplessly.  This is just a product of the auction mechanism, where you’re undoubtedly picking up tiles you don’t need each turn (and which probably are of some value to another player).  This kind of trading takes no cleverness and IMO is only frustrating for the leader.  If that turns out to be the only way to catch the leader in this game, I might wind up lowering my rating of it quite a bit.  However, I think it can be done even without trading.

If Burger Joint is the prototype I think it is, it’s good stuff. Kudos to Joe & Jay for putting this one in print!

Not to hijack Larry’s column, but I’m working with Joe on a preview of Burger Joint. Not sure when it will run since I’d like to include artwork, which might not be complete at this time.

Cool beans!  Hijack away, Eric--this is a very worthy cause!

Larry,

The game hasn’t changed too much - though there are no longer any dice… B^)

Having finally gotten a copy of Notre Dame in hand, I had to wait over a week to get it to the table. Tonight, I was able to try a quick two player game, and I am very happy with what I see. The tension between trying to advance your production of prestige (and the money and influence needed to get the prestige) and the suppression of plague-carrying rats is excellent and well-tuned.

The components are the only thing that I have any sort of complaint about. The boards are, of course, innovative and well-done. Everything is fairly easy to figure out from the iconography on the cards and the board. My problem? The poor consistency of the colors: purple ranges from lavender to near-black and red is also orange. If you play with colorblind or color-challenged players, there are going to be some problems. I do and I am trying to decide whether I am going to have to do some repainting or not.

Still, this is a quibble, and ultimately solvable - I have certainly seen worse in more expensive games (Railroad Tycoon immediately springs to mind). I still have to give the game high marks and see it getting a lot of play at my birthday gaming weekend next month.

I played my first Colosseum and Notre Dame at Michicon this Saturday and ordered them both during the Boulder Saturday night special!

They were both three player, but I’d like to chime in on the above topics and maybe start one.

In Colosseum, the trading didn’t seem to drag too badly.  We pretty much separated what we had to keep and what we were willing to trade and that streamlined it.  Occasionally, we tempted someone into trading something that they were “saving,” but it had to be a good deal.

The one somewhat jarring note was the auction.  I don’t understand why the markets are only refilled after the auctioneer changes.

I fully agree that the colors aren’t a bit useful for colorblind people in Notre Dame.  But the icons are nice and would be great if they were a little bigger.

Scott Russell wrote: “The one somewhat jarring note was the auction.  I don’t understand why the markets are only refilled after the auctioneer changes.”

This rule prevents the lottery feel that sometimes occurs in Power Grid, where a player puts a power plant up for auction that he hopes someone else will purchase in order to see what comes up in place of that plant or to let another plant fall into the available market. In Colosseum, you see everything that you can put up for auction.

But all the other players still get to play lottery.  So essentially, it’s penalizing turn order to a certain extent and I don’t see any inherent advantage in going early in the turn order.  Am I missing something there?  (Based on my vast experience of one play. :) )

Maybe I just like the auction system so well in Power Grid that I don’t see any drawbacks. :) The opening bid might be passed around, so it’s not like the opener can put up junk or he’ll get stuck with it anyway.

Scott, this to me is yet another advantage of the Intense Auctions variant.  The player going first with the standard rules is indeed at a disadvantage, since he won’t get to see any future markets.  On the other hand, if the markets did replenish after every purchase, the first player could deliberately auction off markets that his opponents are interested in, and they’d be in the same pickle.  With Intense Auctions, this problem is greatly minimized.

The problem is the same in Power Grid with regard to the first player.  Except it really isn’t a problem, since it’s part of the deliberate disadvantages the game assigns to the leader (that’s why he goes first during the auctions, rather than last as in most of the other phases).  But this handicapping doesn’t apply to Colosseum, so it becomes an issue.

Actually, the bigger problem with the auctions in PG is that if the available factories are mediocre, players are often afraid to initiate an auction for fear that the replacement card might be a juicy one that could get auctioned off next (and he won’t be able to bid).  A popular variant that partially solves that problem is to reveal the next card that will come into play, but not make it part of either market.

I just read the intense auctions version and think that I’ll like it better!  Can’t wait for Boulder to come through! :)