Mechanics Needing More Than 2 Players (official expansions)

[loganmann1]

There are many mechanics presented across the various expansions that have been released by HiG/RGG.  They range in styles of play (ie Tower is aggressive, bridges are strategic) and everyone has their preferences.  For this question I’d ask if preferences could be set aside (you can bash the catapult in plenty of other threads).  Also, I’m asking this by mechanic instead of by expansion because so many expansions can be broken apart into separate parts.

My question is…1) Which mechanics among the officially released expansions really work best (even require) more than 2 players to be effective?

(I've started a separate thread for this same discussion concerning fan made expansions)

I ask this question  1) coming from a background of generally 2 player games and when there are more its usually newbies or younger kids who can’t focus on too many strategies at once and 2) having heard so many comments about the bazaars and Count needing more the 2 to work well (I’ve yet to play either) and my own opinion that the Dragon, King, Scout, and cults just don’t seem to work well when I try them 2 player.  My thought and hope is that this discussion might be a helpful resource for helping people choose expansions and mechanics that will work well for their groups.

So what are your thoughts?

[CKorfmann]

The majority of my experience is with more than two players, but I have played a few two player games.  When I first got the game, I got the base set, King, and P&D.  I played it a few times with my wife and decided that the dragon was really ineffective with only two players.  There was one time my wife managed to make me eat myself with the dragon, but every other time we were able to steer it away from endangering ourselves. 

Having had that experience, I avoided the dragon in two player games afterwards.  I really haven't noticed any other mechanics that I found to be too disappointing with only two, but again, my two-player experience is limited.

[Scott]

Infiltrating the other player's city with your meeple is potentially useless with just two players. Most of the times I've seen it happen, neither player gained the advantage and the city was completed with both players receiving equal points; might as well not score at all then. If that doesn't happen, the city sometimes goes completely unfinished with almost all meeples ending up inside it.

[Tobias]

Infiltrating the other player's city with your meeple is potentially useless with just two players. Most of the times I've seen it happen, neither player gained the advantage and the city was completed with both players receiving equal points; might as well not score at all then. If that doesn't happen, the city sometimes goes completely unfinished with almost all meeples ending up inside it.

If you are in the lead you should almost always try to score as much points as the other from his/hers cities. If you are not in the lead you should obviously try to not give away points.

[loganmann1]

I understand both arguments about taking trying to steal a city but then getting a tie.  I think a big part of that depends on the players.  Passive players never do this anyway.  Agressive players do it at all costs.  The benefits can appear to negate each other but as Tobias said...those in the lead want to stay there (by tying someone else you make sure to maintain your lead) and those behind don't want to fall any more behind.

So I can see both sides.

You also have to factor in that in each game the opportunities for scoring are also going to vary.  If I can claim a cloister that will get me 9 points my opponent doesn't have or get into their city and tie them for a 20 point city they'll get otherwise...by tying you are keeping the gap between your scores smaller, no matter what that score might be.

[MrBlu]

We generally infiltrate a city using the Big Meeple so we take all the points.

We also don't like to use The Tower with just two people.

Here, we tend to just use the base set, add Inns & Cathedrals, most of the tiles from that 12 tile set, and then other things as we like.  We'll use the bridges, but not the tiles from that set.  Sometimes we'll use the builder, but nothing else.

For us with two players, we don't want to use lots of tiles and none of the "attack" stuff.