Exhibit, and Gamesmiths tonight

A note on Exhibit - I think it's pretty stable, I haven't changed anything significant in a while. A few things I may not have mentioned that I've been using are...

* Powers from tiles do not come into effect until you display an exhibit, and then only the power on top of the stack counts for anything. This makes you choose one power over another (tool vs weapon vs extra vp from art).

* You earn a new die from the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th exhibits you display, for a maximum of 6 dice. For the first exhibit you get only the power from the tile. I like the rate at which dice enter the game, and I also like the difference between many small sets vs fewer larger sets this way.

* I'm zeroing in on a staging order and tile specifics for the Purple auction. I think I may try to go back to 2 4-tile stages (keeping the last tile the VP one) for easier setup and more variety game-to-game.

* Consolation prize = extra bid token seems to be working out nicely.

A few new things I might like to try:

* Reduce the value of the Art tile to 2vp (from 3vp) - 1 vp doesn't seem like enough, but it's possible that 3vp is too much. It feels disappointing to make a set of all Art vs splitting it up into several smaller sets. That becomes less of an issue if the bonus is smaller.

* If there are tiles in the discard pile, award a tile to 2nd highest bid (without going over) as well. If that turns out to be good, then I could even shorted the game a tad by starting with 2 tiles up in the first (or each!) auction. Should the Purple auction work like this too?

I will probably NOT get a game of this in a Gamesmiths tonight. It's David/Eskue's turn with their game Shadow Ops. After that I hope to get a test of my new cooperative experiment, The Untouchables. I'm skeptical that it's any good, but I'm very curious to see how it feels and if it even works at all.