F#¢& Notre Dame

Notre Dame

Goal:

It's a game about victory points.  VPs can be gained in 3 main ways. 

1) Moving an influence marker onto certain spots on your board.
2) Moving an influence marker onto the communal/central Notre Dame location
3) Hiring towns people.

VPs can be lost by letting  a plague come to your borough (the rat track)

Mechanics:

Each player has a deck of 9 cards each corresponding to a location on the game board you can place an influence token on.  Some locations earn you money, influence or victory points.   One spot moves a carriage token which picks up a message; messages earn you VPs and some other bonus, like influence, money or rat control.  A couple locations do combinations of these things, like the park will help you earn more VP and help control rats.   The final card is the Notre Dame card, playing that lets you place a doober in ND to spend money for VP's immediately and get a share of VP later.

There are 2 actions for each player per turn, 3 turns per round and 3 rounds per game. 

A turn starts by drawing 3 cards from you personal deck.  You pick 1 then pass the other 2 to your left.  Upon receiving 2 new cards you keep 1 and pass the remainder to your left.   The first player, which rotates at the end or a turn, plays a card, allocates the influence token and gains the benefit on whatever spot he triggered.  Next player follows until it loops back around to the first player.  That player plays his 2nd card with the 3rd unplayed card underneath it (so you can't count cards) and triggers that action.  At the end of a turn, you may hire a townie that provides some kind of benefit: more influence doobers, VP's, cash, etc.  Townies have a rat upkeep associated with them, at the end of the round adjust your rat track accordingly (the hospital lowers this adjustment).  Check for plague, if the rat track exceeds 9, you must remove a doober from the board and lose 2 VPs.

Tactics

The boards spots progress differently. 

The doober, cash and VP spot are a 1-1 linear progression, in other words, 1 influence token gives 1 doober/vp/$ and 2 tokens give 2 doobers/vp/$. 

The carriage house is a 1-1 progression for moves the carriage can make; the more doobers in the house the farther it can go.   Practically speaking, as messages are claimed and become harder to get there are pretty severe diminishing returns.

The Hospital is a combo, a one shot rat reduction but a 1-1 linear progression that helps with rat upkeep.


The park is a one shot rat reduction and a 1-2 linear bonus VP adjustment.  Once you get 2 doobers in the park, anything that earns you a VP is now +1 VPs.

The hotel is a harsh progression but versatile.  You get 1$, 1 doober, or 1 rat reduction.  4 people in the hotel let you go twice.

Notre Dame removes a doober from the game but earns victory points twice.  When you place a doober in ND you can pay money and earn VPs, the more money the better the exchange rate.  At the end of a round (3 turns), each doober claims a share of victory points.  Theoretically this can be as much as 12 VP, but in practice its about 2-4 per doober.

Darren's Commentary and Rating:

There's a lot to like about this game.  Its got a limited influence mechanic that is great.  I like the card draft and the hidden 3rd card.   But it has a few problems, there are simply too many unavoidable bad moves.  For example, last week I passed David 2 spawn more doober cards in the same round, a round that he kept a spawn card himself.   David ended up with a pile of influence tokens and unable to spend them quickly enough.  Things like that happen all the time, especially with the hotel.  The hotel is a dead move most of the time, you only play the hotel because your other choice is worse.  Overall rating 8/10.   

Tips:

Managing the rat track is key.  Taking a plague is acceptable once in a while but any more than one or two times simply knee caps you.  You really can't take any plagues if your strategy involves placing tokens in Notre Dame.

Speaking of the Rat Track, don't fall for the fallacy that the hospital is worse on turn 1 than any other turn.  Yes you lose the one shot rat reduction, but the extra turn of rat upkeep makes a turn 1 hospital exactly the same as turn 2.

Getting more influence tokens is important, but its not critical to be playing from your supply.  Moving doobers from the areas you no longer care about works just fine.