I've had my copy of New World ever since it was released in the UK... never played it... until this evening! As such was quite impressed, the surveyors certainly make it interesting. However, there's a few things in it that the rules don't make very clear, indeed, in some cases don't even mention.
I just got this for my birthday and have only played it 3 times. The first time with 5 people and twice since then with just 2 people. It plays fairly fast. There are more tiles than a basic game of Carc but it plays faster - I believe because of the surveyor mechanic. You are looking more for quick scores with surveyors instead of battling for some large city or trying to complete a cloister, etc. The quick play actually makes it a good warm-up game for us.
Can anyone answer any of the following please:
1) The start/scoreboard is 10 tiles wide, so we played the game so that the entire gameworld stays within that 10 tile width up the table (East to West). It works but not sure if we were correct?
2) Given the above constraint - Roads and Towns that stop at 'Worlds End' can not be scored as complete, and only as incomplete at game end if meeples are still on them?
We noticed that the rules did not limit the placing of tiles to the north or south, nor could it really be assumed since there is no mention and no examples. So we've been playing that you can place tiles freely. If there is a north/south boundary you could easily play tiles defensively on other players’ features that force the feature to the edge of the world. An open road segment or city segment placed smartly on an opponent’s feature would stop him from completing the feature. Also, you would have to consider that the northern-most and southern-most rows of tiles inbounds would be useless to deploy a farmer (cloister) as you couldn’t complete the feature out of bounds. These would all be conditions placed on the game which are not intended as the rules are written.
3) What happens if a surveyor should move forward but no tiles have been placed that far ahead?
The rules are a little fuzzy regarding when the settlers left behind are removed. It first states that “whenever the eastern-most surveyor is moved” you remove the lagging settlers. But what happens if the surveyors cannot move? Fortunately, there is this clarifying sentence which answers the question indirectly: “A player may place a settler on a just-placed tile in columns “east” of the surveyors, but it is dangerous as such a settler (not a trapper) will be removed immediately after the next scoring!” This indicates that the removal of settlers is not necessarily tied to the movement of the surveyor and that the settlers are removed on a scoring, whether or not the surveyors can move. It does seem hasty that this wasn't resolved more clearly in the rules prior to publishing.
We have reasoned that if you only remove followers when surveyors are moved you could easily break the game by laying tiles only to the north and south – and to the east – literally around and behind the scoreboard. Since it cannot be the intent of the game to thwart the surveyor mechanic it holds that settlers are to be removed on a scoring even if the surveyor cannot move.
And an observation - With two players the scoreboard is far to small... I went round it three or four times!! You really need and extra counter to take care or 0+, 50+, 100+... etc
The scoring was fairly high in all three games I played with the markers going around the board at least three times. We did find it cumbersome having to lay the marker meeple first on his back, then on his side, then on his feet again to indicate what lap he was on. I'll probably resort to using my d6 method on the scoring track for future games. In Carc we use d6’s for our scoring markers. Each color has its own d6 on the track. We start the game with the 6 side up. When we complete the first lap we flip it to the 1 side up – indicating we have one lap completed, and so on for each lap. Works perfectly.
Here's a screenshot of the surveyor rules.
