by xipuloxx
UnknownParkerBrother wrote:
xipuloxx wrote:
And it's not just the first game. I still don't remember what the market does, for example! It just seems to me that individual player reference sheets would have been a sensible thing to include. Since they're not included, printing out one from BGG is a no-brainer for me.
Oh come on. It's printed on your player board, the game already has a reference sheet for everyone included.
The iconography in this game is drop dead easy. Your market has a blue or green tile, and an arrow towards you. Blue or green coming towards me? It's pretty obvious that means take a blue or green tile.
Even the yellow tiles are similarly obvious almost every time, there's only one or two tops that you need the manual for. And we always publicly discuss the new bonus tiles that come out each round - "Ok, the new bonus tiles are: When placing a building, you can place it one lower or higher than your dice, and extra points for animal tiles at game end".
Once you understand three simple symbols, every tile in the game is easy to understand without a reference:
Arrow towards you = take.
Arrow away from you = spend/use/place etc.
Colon : = when, ie when you sell take 2 bucks, when you ship, take 2 areas, and so on.
Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you with my stupidity, but I really didn't find the iconography so transparent.
To be honest, since I printed out a player aid from the beginning, I haven't paid much attention to the player boards. I just looked at them, went "whaa...?" and used the player aids from that point on.
To be fair, though, i do understand the reason for using icons rather than text, and they probably are easy enough to understand if you make the effort. But the player aids have everything in one convenient place, including scoring.