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leefreeman wrote:
Just played this game for the first time tonight -- great little game. What if ALL of the animals run out BEFORE the 6th card of a particular species is played? This happened in our game tonight. I'm not sure if it was a mistake, or if we missed a rule.
This is certainly mathematically possible, because there are 30 cards but only 25 animals (or chips in the case of Loco). However it's quite rare, and I can recall it happening only once in the many times I've played Loco and Botswana. Surely the number of scoring `chits' in Quandary is the same?
For it to happen, two things are necessary:
1. Card distribution: The two-three cards removed from the game and the final card in the hands of the last three-two players need to be all five different animals (or colours in the case of Loco).
2. Player choices: Players will have not wanted to trigger the game end earlier, despite being able to (this is more likely to happen with inexperienced players).
In the rare instance this does happen, you'll have a situation where 25 cards have been played - five of each type - and all 25 animals taken. So the next card played (26th) will trigger the game end no matter what it is, because any animal card played at this point will be the sixth and final one of that type.
You wouldn't want to add more animals to the game for this reason alone because it would disturb the careful balance of the game. I would say that in this situation, the player playing the 26th card triggering the game end gets to play that card but simply doesn't get to take an animal, and merely has the satisfaction of ending the game. It's so rare that I don't see that the rules necessarily had to mention it (although perhaps it might not have been a bad idea, to anticipate the question of the original poster).
I can only recall this ever happening in a five player game - which becomes more chaotic and is less desirable since the original game design was only for 2-4 players to begin with. In most cases in 2-4 player games - even if the card draw is such so that this is mathematically possible - if everyone is playing optimally, someone will have triggered the game end before this could happen.
Posted Sun Dec 19, 2010 8:32 am
