Wagon Traders

[mjharper]

"Travelling merchants transport their goods to surrounding cities and monasteries."

That's how the wagon is described in the overview of Abbey and Mayor, and I was quite disappointed to discover that the wagon actually has nothing to do with trading at all. In fact, the only thing it does is jump to a neighbouring unoccupied city, road or cloister immediately after scoring, without having to be returned to the player's supply. While that's cool enough, it certainly didn't meet what I had imagined.

So, in rough draft, here's an idea about how to combine trade goods and wagons.

Quite simply, when a city, road or cloister containing a wagon is scored, the owner of the wagon receives bonus points equal to the number of trade goods s/he possesses, multiplied by the number of opposing players also involved in the feature.

The rationale is this: the more trade goods you have, the more powerful you are as a trader, and the more reward you will have. But you can't trade with yourself, only with other players.

Recalling that deployment of the wagon is identical to normal meeples - you can only deploy to an incomplete and unoccupied feature - that should mean that the bonus points would not kick in very often, but with skilful play, you should be able to pick up a good number by the end of the game. And the idea of multiplying the number of trade goods by the number of opposing players is that 1) you don't get the bonus if you're alone in the city/road/cloister/ and 2) the more players there are, the lower the number of trade goods you'll have on average, whereas in a two-player game, you'll have a higher number of trade goods, so the two should balance out.

Any thoughts?

[canada steve]

Interesting concept Matt and once I finally have a copy of A&M then I shall give it a spin, once I've got to grips with the normal game play that is!

Does the amount of trades you have mean the different types, as in silk, barrels, corn or the actual amount of trade counters you are holding ? Also is there a way to counteract the wgaon being placed ? I mean if you place a wagon that looks like it might score well can I open a Bargain Basement store and take all the trade away from you, or can a robber possibly jump you and steal your goods ?

Cheers

[mjharper]

Yeah by the 'amount of goods' I did mean all the trade tokens you have regardless of type.

Bargain Basements and robbers might get complicated…

But I did forget to mention what should happen if there are two wagons in a city. Hmm… I think the best approach would be if you didn't score points for an opposing player with a wagon in a city, since they are a competitor. So the formula would be

(number of trade tokens x ((number of other players in the city) - (number of of other wagons in the city)))

So, if you have 5 tokens, and there are 4 other players in the city, one of whom has a wagon in there, you score (5x(4-1))=15 points.

I think.

[Gantry]

Not having the expansion, I'm at a loss to accurately critique this, but my first thoughts are that trading implies that at least 2 parties benefit, the trader and the tradee.  Might some form of negotiation take place such that one other player is able to benefit from this as well? Just a thought.