Louis Schieferdecker
United States
Florida
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All the cards in the game fit the progression of difficulty and need for additional dice as you move up the rows except for the Pawn broker; it is out of place, too hard to acquire and needs fixing. The Laborer, a 1st row card, is acquired by having 15 or more pips. This allows for several combinations of high dice rolls to acquire this card. For example, a 4, 5 and 6 will take the card, so will two 6's and a 3. The Merchant in the 2nd row is acquired by a roll of 20 or more. In the same way as the laborer, this is possible to gain by several different combinations of high dice rolls like 4, 5, 5, 6, or 6, 6, 6, 2 or even 6, 6, 4, 4. The Pawn Broker, a 3rd row card, does not follow the same idea of the previous cards. It requires a roll of 30. Being in the 3rd row it should require 5 dice to acquire it. The problem with this is that it requires a dice roll of five 6's. While that is possible to get with five dice it makes no sense for several reasons; first off the goal of this style of card is allow one to acquire a card without having a set of one number. It would do this if it was a 4th row card, however it is not. Secondly, the pawnbroker allows the player to bring in a die with a value of 4. Another card in the same row, the Knight, allows you to bring in a value 5 die, however it only requires the player to have a set of five of any number, where the pawn broker requires it to be all sixes; therefore making the pawnbroker harder to get. The card requiring the roll of 30 explains why it is so rarely bought when one is actually in the 3rd row and more frequently bought at game end when one has more dice and can easily take the card when no other dice cards are available. It makes far more since for the Pawn Broker to be able to be acquired by a roll of 25 therefore fitting the pattern of the previous types of card acquisition as well as putting it in its place behind the Knight in difficulty instead of ahead of it.
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Tom Lehmann
United States
Palo Alto
California
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The row indicates the *minimum* number of dice to get a card, not the *average* difficulty of getting a card given some number of dice.
Yes, with exactly five dice, the Knight is easier to get than the Pawnbroker. However, with more than five dice, the Pawnbroker is much easier to get than the Knight (and trivial with the aid of the Serving Maid or Astronomer).
A requirement of 25 would make this card far too easy to get, devaluing the Astronomer (to go for N of a kind cards). It would encourage players to simply go for sheer dice, instead of stopping to possibly buy a manipulator (and many players feel the game is already tilted too far in favor of just going for dice).
I think your proposed change would make the game less interesting and less balanced.
The pattern at row 3 is different than earlier rows because the context of row 3 is different -- some players may have already acquired dice manipulators. Looking at the just the card requirements in isolation is a misleading way to look at them.
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