Speed-Tikal
July 14th, 2004Last night we played four-player Tikal with the following Wolfgang Kramer variant I found at (the awesome) [Spotlight On Games]:
Provide a one-minute sand timer and 4×6 chips (in the four player colors). Each player receives the six chips in his color. As soon as the active player places his tile, the timer is started. If a player runs out of time, he turns in a chip and flips it again for another minute, etc. At the end of the game, any remaining chips are worth three points.
We used my G8 timer and, apart from the usual unintuitive setup hassles, it worked perfectly.
The game itself was good, but was far too hectic at this speed. We finished in just over an hour – double our normal speed. It was so intense that my friend and I had sharp words when he started a conversation with the others during my turn! This is not what our games nights are about. We’ll use the timer next time, but two, or two and a half minutes, per turn and one minute per played chip sounds sensible.
I have also warmed to the advanced auction version after this game. I always felt the auctions were a bit pointless in previous plays, but in this basic game, the winner and second placed player (me) drew many more temple and treasure hexes.
July 14th, 2004 at 17:05
I don’t like artificial time constraints and someone would have to be very seriously slow for me to even consider it. Tikal itself I’ve never really found a problem in terms of downtime (and I would recommend the ‘auction’ variant which seems to be quite common in games these days). Yes there are a couple of turns when someone needs to think a bit longer than normal but it doesn’t happen all the time. The only game I’ve ever really had a problem with is it’s ‘sister’ game Java – this was brain overload for my group, not just on the occassional turn but for every move. It got banished to the loft after one play, not necessarily because it was a bad game, we just didn’t find it fun.
July 16th, 2004 at 12:39
My group’s more impatient and rowdy than yours. It’s like having four Steves around the table at once!
I’d recommend a timer for more analytical games. It’s just a question of getting the timing right. They can add a lot of fun and angst to otherwise slow games.