The "elephant" strategy rears its ugly head...

About 10 years ago, I could honestly say that Reiner Knizia's classic Euro Taj Mahal was my absolute favourite game.  It had everything I wanted - simple tough choices, fascinating and highly unique game play, and multiple paths to victory.  If you haven't tried it, you really should - it's a fascinating card/board game of chicken and bluff that rivals anything put out today.  Unfortunately, after an uncountable number of games, it became obvious that an experienced player could win over newbies every time by simply taking all the elephant cards and winning the elephant tile most rounds.  Frustratingly, this became something that always needed to be explained every time new people played and the game lost a little bit of its sheen.

Fast-forward to this summer and we've played a bunch of games of Hawaii, a fantastic Euro with a bit more depth than Taj Mahal.  Unfortunately, in the last couple games one player has decided to try the 'red price token' strategy.  If you aren't familiar with Hawaii, almost every turn you grab a price token and a whole bunch of them are red.  One can purchase tiles in the game which award bonus points every time a player takes a red price token and these bonuses are most certainly cumulative.  By the end of my last game, my parter was earning 7 points every time he grabbed a red price token and he ended up winning handily.  The gap in the previous game was even wider.  Sigh. 

Of course, this is manageable if all the players are onboard. Much like how everyone can't let one player grab the elephant tile every time in Taj, the players can't let one player grab red price token tiles every round in Hawaii.  I suppose it isn't broken, but the last thing I wanna do in a game like Hawaii (where turns are intentionally very limited) is waste a turn blocking an opponent's play.  It's like wasting trains in Ticket To Ride to block someone's route.  I hate that.

Having said all that, Hawaii is still quite an excellent game (as is Taj Mahal).  Now it just requires a discussion during the rules explanation about the "elephant" in the room...

Take one for the team....

Played and won a couple of games this past week, Taj Mahal and Oasis, and I seem to have won for the same reason. Now bear in mind, these are two very great but very different games. However, each game has a surefire winning strategy if no one steps up to stop you. It is also fairly obvious in both games when someone has taken the lead.

In Taj Mahal, the elephant/province tile strategy seems a sure thing as does holding on to the +2 card as long as possible. I actually try to mention both of these approaches to beginners upon their first play. In my game this week, one player took the lead quickly with province tile after province tile until finally the players caught on and messed them up. Unfortunately for them, I was holding the +2 card for most of the game and ended up winning by a fair amount. As the scoring is open for the game, it is fairly easy to see who is winning. But to stop someone, one must make a concerted effort to ignore their own strategy for a turn to take away from their opponent.

In Oasis, same thing happened. Every turn you take an offer of certain items and I kept taking the camels. No one else was collecting them and so they didn't really want to take the camel offers. So I got most of them and had a clear win. Again, fairly obvious what I was trying to do and that it was winning but noone stepped up to waste a turn to stop me.

The 'take down the leader' problem is common in most competitive games but is more pronounced in these two because you really have to forego your own strategy to stop the player in the lead. And that means it's up to someone to actually step up and waste their turn. And usually everyone waits for another player to do it and, well, they all lose. It can be a little frustrating but I don't think it makes these games broken. It's just something that needs to be mentioned very early on.