Board Gaming - Mottainai (Sat/Sun?)

[Merc]

Mottainai is a card game by Carl Chudyk, creator of Glory to Rome and Innovation. It's currently got a kickstarter, and as a rather nice gesture of them to get people interested, they have a print-and-play file up.

I want to see if there's interest to playing this game either on saturday evening or sunday morning (or both!), in which case I'd spend my thursday/friday evenings converting the PnP pdf to a game box for Zun Tzu.

As it took a bit of time to really wrap my head around the rules, I'd probably try to also post a quick tutorial if I have time.

It seems a neat game, and I'm a big fan of both Glory to Rome and Innovation, so I'd like to give it a playthrough if anybody else is up for it.

[Dracos]

*eyes notes for tonight, check for gaming*

Go Merc.

And may your life be less terrible.

Saturday evening works great for me.  :)

[Anastasia]

Maybe Sunday morning, if it's not like super early in the morning.

[Merc]

As an initial estimate, I was shooting for around:
- 7:30pm for Saturday (5:30 PDT / 8:30 EDT)
- 10am for Sunday (8am PDT / 11am EDT)

Those can shift depending on who wants to attend when, although I'd probably say no earlier than 9am for me sunday. Other than that, I'm flexible and was just estimating times that could best fit both east and west coast.

Sunday morning also seemed like a decent shot for getting people in Eurasia. I think 10am for me is around 6pm for Corwin and 4pm for Ebiris, as an example.

[Dracos]

Saturday is certainly doable.
Sunday is a maybe.  Gate might be down here, in which case we'll be hanging out, and likely grabbing breakfast about that time.

[Dracos]

Yarr?

[Merc]

Yarr?

Yarr.

[Dracos]

Is Saturday eve on?

Sunday is mostly not makable, but looking forward to it tomorrow if possible.

[Merc]

I'll shoot for both days, though both look to be 2-player games, with saturday being you+me, and sunday being Dune+me, as no one else has posted any interest.

[Merc]

Okay! Managed to finish that goddamn game box.

That was way more time consuming than I expected it to be.

I will probably just do in-game tutorial for anybody that wants to play.

I actually want to take a break from this and not have to try and type up a tutorial with screenshots and such.

[Merc]

Reminder:
Shooting for 7:30pm game start (central), so 7 hours from now. We will be gathering in #SR-boardgames to make sure everyone that's interested can download files/get things working/etc (hopefully).

Make sure you download the Zun Tzu application from:
http://www.zuntzu.com/

Also, if you want to look at the game box, you can download that from
http://www.mediafire.com/download/lcmnc1umf7c2s78/mottainai.ztb (Outdated, see below)

[Merc]

Found a typo, needed to reupload the game box:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/2knos67oh57pn1o/Mottainai.ztb

[Merc]

Trying to cram a quick tutorial post:

About Mottainai
Mottainai is a game by Carl Chudyk. If the name sounds familiar, you've probably played Innovation, Glory to Rome, or Red7. If you've played Glory to Rome before, you'll also be fairly familiar with the mechanics of this game, as they're fairly similar.

If the name doesn't sound familiar? Then what you need to know about him is that his games all have three core mechanics:

• Cards need to have multiple ways to be used.
• You need to pay attention to the board of the other players, as their boards have a chance of affecting your gameplay options.
• Combos. Brokenly blessed combos. The man thrives on 'everything is so broken, it's balanced'.

Oh yeah, and since it sort of matters, the theme powering this game is buddhist monks selling souvenirs. You win if you earn your temple the most money.

Learning the Game - Cards


Each card has four roles:

• Helper/Assistant (text on the left side)
• Material (text on right side & bottom)
• Value (the number on the bottom right corner)
• Completed Work (text on top, drawing, and center text)

Points are earned by creating Completed Works, Covered Sales, and Back Orders. Some Completed Works also have special abilities that grant extra points (center text).

The Completed Work is unique for each card, and there are 54 cards total in a 2-3 player game. You can increase the player count to 4-5 by adding a second deck of cards.

• Pink cards are always Clerk (Helper), Paper (Material), and have a Value of 1. There are a total of 12 pink cards.
• Green cards are always Monk (Helper), Stone (Material), and have a Value of 2. There are a total of 11 green cards.
• Grey cards are always Tailor (Helper), Cloth (Material), and have a Value of 2. There are a total of 11 grey cards.
• Orange cards are always Potter (Helper), Clay (Material), and have a Value of 3. There are a total of 10 orange cards.
• Blue cards are always Smith (Helper), Metal (Material), and have a Value of 3. There are a total of 10 blue cards.

Everyone starts with five cards in their hand, and one covered card in the Task region of their board.

Learning the Game - The Board Layout
Each player gets a player board, and share a common area which consists of the Deck and discarded cards.

The area with the discarded cards is called the Floor.



Each player's board has seven regions:

• The Gallery is one of two spots where Completed Works may be built. Completed Works in this area cover Helpers. (The term Cover will be explained below)
• The Gift Shop is one of two spots where Completed Works may be built. Completed Works in this area cover Sales.
• The Task Card is where you will play a card from your hand during your turn, and determines actions you can perform. Task cards your opponents play on their turn will also determine actions you can perform.
• Helper cards grant you bonus actions when they match a task you can perform on your turn. If you have a Clerk card in your Helper area, and someone played a Clerk task (yourself or an opponent), you will be able to perform a bonus Clerk action.
• Craft Bench cards are used to support Completed Works when performing a Craft action.
• Sales are used to earn points and back orders. Sales only earn points if they are Covered, though any sale (covered or uncovered) can be used to create Back Orders (which also earn points).

The seventh region is not shown (just pick a spot to use), but serves as the Waiting Area. The Waiting Area is typically where cards are drawn to as a result of certain actions, and they are left there until you can gather them to your hand.

Turn Reference
Each player's turn consists of three phases: Morning, Noon, and Night.

During the Morning Phase, you:
1. Reduce your hand down to five cards.
2. Move the card currently in the Task area out to the Floor.
3. Perform any "In the Morning" effects from your completed works (if any). If you have multiple effects, you choose the order to perform them in.
4. Choose a new Task. (You may choose not to play any new Task, leaving the area empty)

During the Noon Phase, you:
1. Perform each opponent's task, starting clockwise from yourself.
2. Perform your own task. If you did not play any new tasks in the morning phase, you must do a Prayer action.

Remember that Helpers grant you bonus actions if you have a matching type. A Covered Helper grants you two bonus actions if you have a matching type.

During the Night Phase, you:
1. Perform "At Night" effects from your completed works (if any). You choose the order to perform them in, if you have multiple.
2. Draw all cards from your Waiting Area to your hand.

Noon - Tasks and Other Actions

• Clerks allow you to move a card from your Craft Bench area to your Sales area.
• Monks allow you to move a card from the Floor to your Helper area.
• Tailors allow you to return cards (as many as you like), and then draw up to five cards to your Waiting Area. Note that the number of cards you draw is determined such that the total cards between your hands and the waiting area is five.
• Potters allow you to move a card from the Floor to your Craft Bench area.
• Smiths allow you to complete a work from your Hand. You must reveal the necessary Support from your hand.

In addition, there are two actions that can be performed in place of those five: Craft and Prayer.

Craft actions work identical to Smith actions, except that you show the Support in your Craft Bench instead of your hand. Additionally, the Completed Work must be of the same type as the task card being substituted to perform the craft action. Example: If you are using a Clerk task as a Craft action, you could craft a Paper work.

Prayer actions make you draw one card to your Waiting Area. If at any time you cannot perform another action, you must do a Prayer action. If you did not play a task, you also perform a prayer action for that task. Note that if an opponent did not play a task, you do nothing in that case.

Glossary
Cover: Completed works in the Gallery and Gift Shop cover Helpers and Sales, respectively. A completed work covers a number of matching helpers/sales equal to its value (so a Paper work in the Gallery covers 1 Clerk helper, and a Metal work in the Gallery covers 3 Smith helpers).

Covered Sales are worth their value at the end of the game.

Covered Helpers grant two bonus actions (instead of one). Note that Helpers of each type are only considered covered if all of those Helpers are covered. Otherwise, none of them are covered. As an example, if you have four Smith helpers and only have one Metal work in the Gallery, none of them are covered.

Return: When an action says to return cards to the deck, they are placed at the bottom of the deck.

Support: When Crafting or Smithing a Completed Work, you must be able to support it. Covered Works require you to have the same number of cards as its value in your hand or craft bench as the work being built. The card being built into a covered work counts as one of those cards. Example: A Metal work requires three metal cards, one of which is itself, the other two must be present in your hand or your craft bench (depending on the type of action used).

Note that support cards are not spent, you only need to have it.

Back Orders: At the end of the game, you must check who has the most of each type of sales made (paper/stone/cloth/clay/metal). The person who has the most of a type gets the back orders for that type. In the case of a tie, nobody gets back orders.

Back orders are cards in your hand of that type you had majority, and are worth their value in points.

Game End: The game ends either when five completed works are built in the Gallery or in the Gift Shop (but not total from both), or when the deck runs out of cards.

Scoring:
Your end game score is the total of:
1. Value of all Completed Works (in Gallery or Gift Shop)
2. Value of all Covered Sales.
3. Value of your Back Orders.
4. Points from a Completed Work's card effect (example: The Scroll grants 3 points)

[Dracos]

So thoughts:

Fun enough game, but it has a massive rule stacking problem and kinda poor card design.  I think it'd be innately hard to teach, though in person would be easier, but there's just lots of modifiers going around and every scoring card by anyone introduces a new rule.  I honestly had trouble at times with 'is this complex set of 7 actions that make up a turn valid?'

[Merc]

I've noted that I prefer Glory to Rome and Innovation. I think I'm also more critical of it.

Mottainai is really tight with action economy, so when someone does a prayer action (specifically off an empty task slot), all other players suffer for it, and unfortunately, there is no good reason NOT to do a prayer action and relying on other people's tasks to get things done besides the fact that it'd slow the game down. And that's a weak point of the game, that it relies on "Well, I can wait for someone to do what I need done." This isn't  game where you can really develop strategies, it mostly relies on (a) draw of the cards and (b) having the patience to wait on others.

Part of it might have also been inexperience with the game, but it leaves a bad first impression of the game when Denial of Action/Patience is a valid winning strategy. I don't want to play a game of chicken to see who is the first to do a non-Prayer action. I want to...well, play. So I found that a little frustrating.

I initially thought that a good houserule would be to state that you -must- play a card, but I think just allowing other players to do a prayer action off your empty task slot is sufficient to take the sting out.

I also felt that Clerk and Tailor actions were a bit on the weak side, as moreso than the other actions, they rely on the state of the other players' boards and tasks. They are extremely situational and although the Tailor card is always useful, the Clerk suffers from being an endgame card, when you have stuff in your bench and are ready to move it to the sales. Except there are also a lot of cards that move cards to the sales more easily, so if you get those, the clerk is again weakened. When your options are playing those cards or doing a prayer, there's a strong value to just not playing anything and doing a prayer, which again, slows the game. With the houserule above it might not be as bad though.

Another complaint is the lack of a clarifications/FAQ in the rulebook. I know that they intend to put one with the release, but even a simple pdf or google doc where clarifications were placed as they came up would have been useful.

Given that they are limited in space for card text, there should absolutely be an FAQ providing ruling on cards, and clarifying exceptions. Things like actions that state "Your X action" for example...does the X action include helpers? The BGG website's rule forum also notes that a previous revision of the rulebook said that card triggers start immediately when a card is built...but it's not in the latest revision and thus some cards were not clear. There were many other cards where one feels "Let me check the rules...oh...there's no clarification. Uhm...let's go with...X"

A minor peeve as well: The art of the Mask item did not make sense. It looks like the medical masks one wears to cover a cough/avoid catching a sickness. This is a game about souvenirs. Why wasn't it, I dunno, a Ninja mask?

The exceptions on rules, as Drac pointed, is also a weak point of the game:
"Sales are worth point...but only if they are covered."
"Helpers are covered...but only if all are covered."
"You do not do a completed work's action if the game ends...but only if it's not these cards."
"Uncovered sales are not worth points...but only if they do not earn you back orders."
"Craft actions are like Smith actions using the bench...but only if you use the same item."

Lastly, I don't actually think teaching this game would be that hard in person, it was just a frustration from not being able to see other people's cards to explain their options, or showing quick test rounds easily that made it seem more difficult with Zun Tzu. So in that respect I wouldn't ding it.

Its main faults are the tightness of available actions forcing this game into more of a luck than strategy game, and the lack of a singular clarifications dcument being maintained in real time as the kickstarter progressed. It also made it feel more like a playtesting bed, which encourages waiting for the final product or a second/third revision later on, if one is even interested in the game.

At the very least, I plan not to kickstart pledge it. Which is unfortunate because I -really- wanted to like it, having gone to the trouble of making a game box for it and all, but oh well.