Carnegie

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Welcome to replayable, where we go into depth on our favorite tabletop games that keep us coming back again and again. I'm the Start Player Todd, and today I am joined by Paul For our 29th episode, we will be discussing the popular industrial revolution era game Carnegie. It was designed by Xavier Georges and released by Quinnet Games in 2022. Are you ready to crush your competition, i.e. me? I'm ready to be a philanthropist. Oh, that sounds so nice and generous of you, right?

But first, I have to get the money, so yes, I'll crush you. [laughs] Carnegie is a board game for one to four players, inspired by the life of Andrew Carnegie, as you might expect. Players manage a company, and in so doing, have to construct a network, invest in technology, and then engage in philanthropy to become the most successful business magnet. The game is played over 20 rounds using a unique action selection mechanism.

The goal is to balance business growth with charitable contributions gaining the most points from both. So, what are the necessary ingredients for an industry-themed game, do you think? Oh, wow. Well, growth would be number one. OK. I'm wondering if a map is needed, or even if money is needed. Honestly, I haven't given this much thought. I think you need a map.

I mean, if I think about other games that utilize it, and you can always find exceptions, but I feel like a map is usually involved, if not always. And yeah, money. I think money is important. And supply chain. I think for an industry-themed game, I would really want some kind of logistical or supply chain mechanism. OK. So supply chain mechanism. In Carnegie, we're not really harvesting or acquiring base-level goods and refining them. We're not, but we are growing our income. Yeah, that's true.

Like through the R&D and then through those little sliders. And you could say that the workers or employees you send on missions when they return to the company, that's a supply chain mechanism. Yeah, OK. I like it. So let's talk about money. Does this have the worst money in a game ever? I mean, it's a step up from monopoly money. True. True. OK. So there is one worse. It's not paper money. It's little cardboard counters, which I don't know. I've played the game so many times.

I don't even think about it anymore. All right. But I mean, obviously poker chips or iron clays, those are S tier, right? I mean, if money is going to be public information. Yeah, I think the thing about this game is you're never going to have over 25, right? You're going to fluctuate between like five and 25 money in hand. And that's probably why they made the decision to make them cardboard counters. OK. Interesting. Now, 25, because that's the cost of your fifth philanthropic project. Right.

And generally you're not even going to get close to that until the end of the game when your income is close to 15 plus. Right. OK. I would agree with that. You know, at the time of this recording, which is towards the end of May in 2024, this game is ranked pretty highly, right? It's overall it's number 103 on board game geek. And it is the 69th ranked strategy game. Why do you think it is so popular? What does it do well? Yeah, I think it does a lot of things well.

It's certainly a strategy game. It's it's a gamers game. It's very fine tuned. I was reading that it was put out on beta on board game arena for players to play before it was ever printed. Oh, they made a lot of design changes, such as the initial draft of departments. That's that's a new design based on some of the play data they collected on BGA.

So I think it's very polished in how it interweaves the four different kinds of actions, human resources, management, construction, research and development. So right, you know, you have to human resources is assigning employees to your different departments. And then management is setting up that supply chain we talked about. So you can get income from different regions. Construction is how you grow your company by doing these projects all over the board.

And additionally, how you can gain a lot of points at the end of the game. And that R&D unlocks your ability to do construction and your ability to get those special one time income bonuses. And they all interweave together very well, agreed. And human resources was interesting because it's not just staffing your offices, but you have a certain number of movement points to get your workers from the lobby to the different locations in the building.

And I thought that was a pretty interesting puzzle because you start recognizing that some of the office locations are so remote that if you were to build there, you might send someone there and then just leave them and be one of those places that you would never want them to go back. Right. Or never send somebody there and you just build that department for the prestige of it. Or never send somebody there.

Right. Exactly. The deputy department. Or you build the elevator, which allows you to basically create a second lobby in your building, right? Right. The second lobby is the way to do that. But the game only has 20 turns, right? Oh, usually there's just not enough time to make use of that second lobby, especially at this deep cost of two extra cubes. Is that what it costs to get that one in there? Yeah. It's whatever the normal department costs plus two more cubes. Because it's a new lobby.

And is that exactly? Is that like the bottom row of buildings? I mean, are there more than one that has such an added cost to it? Or is that the only one? No. Lobby is the only one with an additional cube cost. Got it. Okay. The other departments have costs of money to basically train or stand up people in those departments, but you never do that with the lobby.

Right. I'm thinking about when you set them up, when you set up the display of tiles, like at the bottom, and I think the elevator or the second lobby is one of them, there is one tile in each of the four categories. So the four action types, you know, there are offices that align to each of them, but there's one that has a different colored border. Yeah. It's kind of purple and it signifies a persistent effect. Yeah. Oh, is that what it does? So it's not an extra cost.

It's just a persistent effect. Right. Like one of them is, I think, called communications. And every time you do a donation, it's cheaper for you for the rest of the game. Yes, it is. Right. Another one is a research development writer, where every time you increase your transportation, it's cheaper for the rest of the game. Yes. And then the final one is an HR helper, I think, or no. Right. Where if you build the office, you get to automatically staff it from a worker in your lobby.

Yeah. Okay, I was worried that there was an asterisk on our last game. If those persistent offices had additional costs associated with them, because I know that I had at least two of those, right? I had the one for R&D being cheaper in the regions and also the HR one. And I don't remember paying extra for those, but neither one of those was an extra lobby. Let me pull up the rule book just to make sure. It's okay. It doesn't change where I finished the game. So don't worry about it.

Okay. So like we talked about, there's the new lobby, which is the HR building, property management, which is the department you used exceptionally well last time, right, is a management building. Whenever you build a department, because you build new departments during the management action, that's when property management triggers and allows you to move somebody there for free. Okay. All right.

And then the D persistent effect is called telegraph operators, which makes your researching of transportation cheaper for the rest of the game. I love that the name is actually period appropriate to write telegraph operators, because that was a thing. All right. So let's talk about that action selection mechanism. So the way that you even build the grid, right, the matrix of how the actions are going to progress, that's variable, right?

And what I mean is the order in which the regions get selected. Right. I think I don't remember the count, but there's like seven tiles with front and back. And you have picked four of them. So it's supposed to be completely random. How many of each region is going to be on the map? It could be as few as two and as many as five, I believe. Wow. How many times a particular region gets an income phase? Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Okay. And then so you select those four tiles in the sides and you stack them up, and then you bracket them with the action selections, right? And we've gone through and named them off already. And then when it's your turn, you get to basically place a gear on the one that you are selecting, and then everyone gets to follow you. It's not like, say, race for the galaxy where the person who selects it gets a privilege. You just get the benefit of going first, that round.

Then everyone gets to follow you. And then when you're done, you move its counter forward so that the number of times that action gets selected theoretically is capped at five. Although at the end of the game, you can choose to use it again. You'll just have to advance another marker. The next one down, one space as the game comes to conclusion. Right. It's not really capped, but every action has five incomes assigned.

And then if you take that action more than five times, you're stealing an income from another action on the board. And when you do that, you get the income based on the one you stole or... Right. Right. So if you've completed all of the HR actions, then the next time you take HR, you're going to trigger a move of the management marker. Right. Which does the income, that's the next step under management. Right. So how do you like that setup and that action selection mechanism?

Because as far as I can recall, I've never seen anything like it in a game. It took some time to get used to it. I mean, I think that is the central aspect of playing the game well, is predicting when and in what order the incomes are going to be taken. Because to actually make income, you need to have one of your employees in the region of the income that you're taking.

So if somebody takes an action, let's say in the West, and you don't have any employees in the West, wah wah, you don't get an income. So I really like how the game forces players to... Let me back up a second. The game is very heads down for the most part. You're just making your own company. There are races to be first to build somewhere. There's certainly a race to be first to take a juicy donation. Right.

But this mechanic of only allowing you to take income, if you have prepared an employee in the place where the next action is being taken, makes you look up and try and predict what all of your opponents are going to do. So you can get the right employees in the right place. Because certainly for the first half of the game, you don't have enough employees to go around. You have to make some hard decisions about which regions to put them in agreed.

In fact, when you said this game was very heads down, I was going to say, but a big part of it is understanding where your opponents want to go, and then hopefully getting someone into that region just ahead of them. So that you can have that opportunity for income. Yeah, I guess it's more I could say the rest of the game is heads down. But the whole action selection determining where income comes from forces everybody to play heads up if they want to do well. Right.

And it also means you can't just play this game while the first time. It's going to take a few plays before you get it. Well, yeah, and I think I'm still waiting. And we've had several attempts, or I've had several attempts. You understood it well, I think, to begin with. And then you just continued to dominate until at least a let, until maybe the last two plays. Well, you know, let's talk about how we got this game into our group. It was a secret Santa gift.

I had no clue this game even existed. Right. And so some erudite person who understands your gaming taste had this one selected for you. Right. I took it home. I could not. Usually, all I have to do is read the rules and I understand how to play or watch a YouTube video. Right. I did that and I was still scratching my head. So I played the solo game twice. And then I brought it over to Al's house and the three of us played. And I think at the end of that game, it finally clicked for me. Got it.

And yeah, I've been doing well ever since. Yeah. And that one was funny because so it was gifted to you as part of our group's secret Santa exchange. And it was totally underneath the group's radar. We hadn't talked about it, but I had seen, I mean, your Santa had seen that, you know, it was doing well and it hit all the right buttons. And then like the day that we were going to be getting together and doing the exchange, Greg posts to our Slack, hey, have you guys heard of Carnegie?

And I'm just like, Greg, what are you doing? And I think Dave, who they've known because I had talked about it. I remember. Yeah, I talked it over with Dave and Dave's like, oh, don't worry, you'll be able to play it whenever you want. And I was like, Dave, what are you doing? Which made me think that he was Santa. Yeah. He was knowledgeable of Santa's activities. So yeah, that's how it came into our group. And then I remember, so you mentioned playing it at Al's.

And I think I had the same reaction that you must have during your solo plays, right? It definitely wasn't clicking. But I was fascinated by the idea of those slide out tabs and how through R&D, you could slide one out to the next step and then get a new disc that you would use during the construction phase to add a network node out there in the reach or of the type specified by the slide out tab. So you have homes, cash, industry, and bridges.

And they may have more elegant names than what the icons make me think of. Yeah, it is housing, commerce. Oh, there you go. Industry. I think I got that one. Okay, good, good, good. And finally, public infrastructure. Yeah, no shot on that. Okay. But it was interesting that, you know, oh, gee, I want to get a token in New York because I needed to get the maximum network value. But the only one that's left is bridges, I mean, public infrastructure.

And it's also, that was also like the most expensive tab to research. Yes, by far, because it gives you points every income, right? Whereas the other stuff only gives you money or cubes. Or I think the third level of housing is one way to add more employees to your company. Right. Yeah, getting dudes, which I seem to recall is also one of the benefits of advancing your e-transportation technology in the east, right? Right.

And that was another interesting thing about it was that the transportation bonuses don't stack. So there was something to be said for moving the transportation to the level that you wanted that benefit and then perhaps, you know, getting a couple of incomes that benefited from that like getting more workers before you researched beyond.

Yeah. And if you got to earning points too soon, that on paper might sound good because now you're going to get points, but now you're also not building up your infrastructure fast enough. Right. Which I think makes it more interesting. Like it's another decision you have to make. Right. You know, the more we talk about it, the more I'm starting to like this game. I got much closer to understanding it, I should say, which got it. We've played it enough that I do understand it.

And yet I still have not been able to completely execute a winning strategy in this game. Well, yeah, I think that's the major failing of this game is that there is no luck. There's minimal chaos. Well, we'll get to it. Only what people want to put into it. And so it is so highly skill based that if somebody is ahead of everyone else on the curve, then they're pretty much going to win every time. Yeah. No, I agree with that. So with that in mind, I mean, the skill thing, absolutely.

But as you approach getting started, is there a preferred way to get started? Like, should I always invest to initial, you know, out of my initial movement? Should I always put two more guys in R&D and get out to a fast R&D start so that I start sliding those tabs out and increasing my revenue? Or is there a better start? What do you think? I think it depends. If we're talking about the first player, that's one thing. But what's interesting is they set the pace for everybody else.

Because the second player looks at what the first player did and thinks, okay, this probably means they're going to take action X. So I'm going to move my guys to take advantage of that. And then the third player thinks, okay, they're probably going to take these two actions. What do I want to do? Right. And so it's a waterfall. It's really interesting. So as the fourth player, you just have to react. But as the first player, I always put at least one person on construction.

I think the way to win this game is to get income. And that means getting as many discs on the map as possible as fast as you can. Right. But when you construct, that means that worker leaves the office and goes out into the field, into that region so that you can place a disc in that region. And you're going to select the disc based on the type of node you're going to occupy, whether it be commerce, industry, what have you infrastructure. Now you've got to move a worker back to that office.

So is that a priority for you on all subsequent HR selections? All the time. All the time. So yeah, I guess I think you guys asked me how I win so much. I think the actual request was tell us how to beat you. But yes, same thing. I see. And so I tried to specify, in general, the things I try to do that work out for me. So one is starting with the right department. Since I started using BG stats, I record everybody starting departments.

And I find that supply chain, the one that lets you buy cubes for money is usually the department of the winner. And when it's not, it's often purchasing, which is the management department that sends an employee out for three cubes or eight bucks. Okay. And so we already talked about predicting what the actions are going to be and setting your employees up to be in the right color or region.

And then again, get as many discs out on the board as you can, which means you have to research and you have to have cubes to put those discs out. Right. And so my focus early game is certainly going to be build and R&D. And then what I like to R&D initially is housing to get to that third step so I can start getting more people into my company because that makes my decisions much easier.

Right. And I mean, most of all, it allows you to have more employees out in the field waiting for those income phases. You don't have to predict as much when you have a full company full of employees. Right. So to me, the hard parts of the game are deciding when and if to put a third guy into the HR building for more movement, I was going to ask about that, right?

And then how often to use those management actions that send people out into the field because the management action is the easiest way in the beginning to get cubes and money, most importantly cubes. I think you only need money early to stand up people and departments. So like the construction department, you have to pay three bucks, I think, to stand up every employee. So that's the only thing you really need money for. Right. The first third of the game.

But also getting cubes is difficult unless you have supply chain, then it's easy. So that's when you want to focus on management if you're really cube short. And yeah, I love when I can. If I have the extra guy, I love to put a third guy into the HR department because it guarantees I can move three guys into the construction department and still have moves left over to do other things. I thought HR was going to be the often neglected office.

But here you are saying that it was something that you actively consider putting a third guy into so you have enough movement points to get right. It's a timing thing. I want to put a third guy in their most games. It's just about when I'm able to. And it's usually somewhere halfway through the game. Yeah, I think that's beneficial. Now there is an office that gives you even more HR points. Do you find that to be very useful or not really nines enough?

Well, I think you're referring to the office titled training and partnerships. And that building is really interesting because you have to choose when you use it, whether you want to send its employee out to the field for eight bucks, or you want to get the eight movement out of them. Right. So any of these, like there's also an R&D building called Advanced Research that sends somebody out to the field to get more research.

And so I think it's really interesting to have the ability to put people out on the board during HR and research because normally people cannot do that. So if you get an apartment that allows you to put somebody into the field during the HR or the research action, that can offset the tempo of everybody else and maybe get the jump on taking an income that nobody else can take, right?

They're like the overpowered birds and wingspan that allow you to do something for another environment outside of it. So take eggs when you could be taking food, for example. Yeah, that's one way to think about it because we haven't talked about that yet, but one way to screw up everybody is to play this game destructively, where you take the action that hurts everybody else more than it hurts you. That's actually a great conversation piece is easier enough time to play destructively.

You only have 20 actions. I don't know the game well enough, honestly, but I think the game can be played in two different ways, kind of like brass. Yeah, I think just like in brass, you can either play this game cooperatively or destructively. And when I say destructively, I mean, take in an option that is not best for you, right, but has the biggest delta between your benefit and what everybody else benefits.

Another way to say is you play the game marginally where you're just comparing gains of yourself versus others, but you might not grow as much or you can play cooperatively where you're only considering how much you get and excluding what other players get. And so if you play cooperatively, you're going to have games where everybody has five donations. Everybody scores max transportation and just huge scores. But if you play destructively or marginally, the winning score might be as low as 60.

It can really get out of control. I'm reminded of you describing your wife asking to play the farming game. And that was a great, and you told her, OK, we're going to play this super cooperatively as cooperatively as we can. And even then, I think it wasn't enough by the end of it. She's like, oh, yeah, I remember why I hate this game. Exactly. It's just that it's farming. She couldn't do all she wanted to do, even while I was healthier. Right. That's pretty funny.

So if we go back and we've talked about the departments and priorities and how those can shift. Late game, you might move someone, a third person into HR. Maybe you don't need as much R&D as important as getting folks into the field and getting those final notes on the board. How does your department selection? So when you're actually doing the management option and you're able to add buildings or add offices to your building, how does that affect your game strategy over time?

Honestly, very rarely. I think after two or three departments, you have to start placing the department so far away that it almost doesn't matter which department you buy. You're not going to use it. The only reason you take it, I think, is either for the donation points or to steal it from somebody else. Unless you have built a new lobby or you have taken property management like you did last game. Right. Then that changes the whole formula.

But I think for most players, you're only going to use two or three additional departments. So then, does that change the order in which you choose your charitable donations? Like, should you rush to get the one that rewards you for having, say, multiple R&D departments? And then once you have one of those, that gives you the building path for the departments to try to take.

Yeah, I usually only spend early money on the charitable donations for getting to railroad level transportation in all four regions, which everybody wants to do anyway. Right. Or the two points for every housing and commerce project because that's pretty easy to get to 12 on. Especially if you're putting three housing out to grow your company. Right.

You know, all the other ones, I would rather save my money for building up my economy, getting additional construction projects out, paying to stand up people. And then late game, start spending my money on donations. So it can happen where you get like three donations in the first half of the game. Right. And you just skip them all or you skip two of them. Oof. Because you know, you're going to be guaranteed four at the end. So I think most games I just plan on doing five donations.

One in the beginning and then the four at the very end. Oh my gosh, you just rocked my world. I never thought about there were four guaranteed ones at the end. And you're only going to get up to five usually. Like you might get six, but because I was always buying those things when I could. If I had the money and I figured I would just worry about more money afterwards, but I wanted to make sure I got the project I most wanted in that moment.

Yeah. I mean, when early game, you have to decide whether you're taking money or cubes. And cubes are just necessary right to grow your company. I was going to say that in our last game, I was making cubes easily. And it was a result of which sides of the, you know, the slide outs I had chosen. I think I had selected three B sides and an A side. And so with little effort, I think I was making two or three cubes every time there was an income, which meant I was swimming in cubes.

I was doing a good job of anticipating the regions on that front. Let's talk about the ability to choose which side of those slide out tabs. And is there a preference? Is there an actual starting strategy or are you just doing it for game variation? Well, the B side has more discs on it. The A side has less discs and more points. And then the B side has more discs. And then the ability to make terrible donations max out at 15 instead of 12.

And so just for the more discs, I always pick the B side of either commerce or housing because it's a low R&D way to get more discs on the board. Oh, see now that's just your strategy right there. Yeah, sometimes I pick the B side on both housing and commerce just because I want to have maximum ability to get to small towns and small towns and then out to San Francisco. Exactly. Okay, we may need to get at least one more play of this so I can exploit all of these.

All of these nuggets of information and wisdom. All right, any others that we want to share before we move on to the prompts? No, I think we covered it. Nice. Well done us. Okay, so then let's move on to the prompts. Wait in complexity on Board Game Geek Scale of one to five. Again, no decimals here. How would you rate the complexity of Carnegie? So for me, I rated a three. We talked about all their interlocking systems and it's really hard to learn.

But I feel like once you learn all these interlocking systems, it makes sense. What's the word we used in the Donald X podcast? Oh, it wasn't resonance. Was it? Yeah, I think it was. You will say it is. Let's go. At least for me, it makes sense that all of these things lead to the other and tie together. And the theme actually helps them make sense and helps me remember what they mean and why they're there. What I really wanted to say was that the theme informs how the design works.

And so it's even though there's complexity that the theme for me lowers the complexity to a three. Okay. And I am on the opposite side of that. Like it's not yet intuitive for me or it doesn't resonate with me in that fashion yet. So for me, I had it as a four that there's a lot to balance there. And there is a good chance if you miss an important observation like where the next player is likely to go that your engine can stall and that happened to me in our last game.

Like I was cruising for the first like two thirds and then I got to a point where where I had sent workers was more concerned with network building, but they weren't generating income for me. And suddenly I got caught up and I had a spell where I was not really being productive while you and Greg were able to pull ahead.

Yeah, I vaguely recall, I think you missed an income and then you caught us flat footed, but we were able to use the bonus action disc, which in a four player, everybody has it to do something else. Right. And that put us in a position to make everybody else flat or the other two players flat footed.

Right. And when you said I caught you flat footed, it was only because I had used my token the round before to do an HR action and move my guys so that I was set up to take whatever it was, construction or something like that. So then when I did it, you both were like, oh, well, now we're going to do HR with our tokens and set up so that on your moves, you were able to do the things you wanted to do. And the rest of us were flat footed. Yes. And then there was Dave who was just flat footed.

Regardless of my turn four, he had tried it now. Right. Okay. So strategy, how much opportunity is there for strategy and long term planning in this game? What would you say there? So I think it's a three. You know, there's a ton of strategy and your early departments, your mission location, your construction placements, your donations, they all matter hugely. However, other players can and should get in your way and force you to pivot and change direction.

So if everybody's friendly, I guess in a cooperative game, there's a huge amount of strategy, but the more other players get in your way, the more tactical this game becomes. Interesting. Now I had it as a four. I mean, going all the way back to the thing you said about choosing which sides of the research plot tabs to use, there's a lot of planning that can go into this.

And I'm going to leave it as a four, but I do recognize what you're saying that in a game amongst equally skilled people, you should also be forcing someone to react and not just stick to a strategy. So for you, I can understand it being a three. For me, it'll stay a four. Yeah, you're not wrong. I think it's terrible. All right. Well, here's one that we're probably going to agree upon. And I'm going to go ahead and jump in luck.

How much do you think luck plays a factor, same scale of one to five? And for me, it's just a flat out one. There's no chaos in the game other than which offices get removed at the start of the game. So this becomes a function of do we describe luck as being as benefiting from a decision or an incorrect decision made from another player? Right. I agree. It's a one. The only luck is the initial seating order after that. It's all multiplayer decision making.

That's the chaos origin is just multiplayer gaming. Right. Well, and then which offices get removed at the start of the game? Because that's true. That changes things a little bit. I think on our last game, the one that allows you to buy cubes, that was one of the ones that got selected. And so there was only one to be had, which. Correct. And because I was last, I got the only one. Right. You were last in turn order, so you got to go first in selection of the initial draft. The initial draft.

Right. Okay. So theme, how much do you think the theme has been integrated with this game? Same scale. For me, it's a two. I think it's integrated well, and it helps me remember the rules. But it's completely unimportant to the gameplay and something I never think about. Right. I had it as a three for two reasons. The first one, like if we say that it starts out at a one. Okay. Plus one point for building out your HQ building and adding offices and having to use HR to staff them.

Okay. That felt good. That felt realistic and understandable. And then the second one being, I really did feel like I was building a commercial empire across the country and then using my wealth to be philanthropic. Now the philanthropic projects, those are just Baldur Dash, right? They really don't align with being charitable. How many offices of management did I create? It shouldn't be a charity.

But the idea that you were donating money and that became more impressive the more you gave, which was based on how many prior projects you had. The the magic reason is that you're educating all those people. You're employing it. Oh, okay. Sure. That's a three. So favorite player account. What do you think it's best played at? Like we talked about, it's always 20 turns. And so I prefer playing this at four players for maximum uncertainty since it is a luckless game.

Also, four players gives every player the action choice tile, which I think adds more chaos. So that's my pick. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. I had three, but it was only for playing time considerations. But I guess if you have the same number of turns, it's really, yeah. So three player and 20 turns, two people are going to get seven first picks and one person's only getting it six. One person's not getting an equal number. Right.

So that one person is the only one who receives the action choice tile. Right. Okay. I'm going to come over to your side of the house. I now think four is better. Same number of turns either way. So it's not like you're saving time by having fewer players. A little bit, but yeah. A little bit in that the game state doesn't change as radically. So you have you're more likely to pick up and not have to reevaluate as much. But no, I agree. I think four sounds better now.

So least favorite player account. So sticking within the published range, which on this game was one to four, what did you have as your least favorite? Two player. It's just a chess match. There's pretty much no chaos. Right. I had the same thing. So two player least favorite. But then again, I haven't played it. You know, you're the one that owns the game. How's the single player? How do you how do you enjoy that? It's great for learning.

You know, you can play single player on BGA and it's a fun way to spend 30 minutes. Okay. So then actual playing time. So boxes can lie and the playing time on this one is 90 to 120. So an hour and a half to two hours. What do you think about that? Is that an accurate assessment? Yes. Extremely accurate. We have consistently been clocking our games at 30 minutes per player. Yeah. So I'm actually finding this to be an interesting prompt for us.

The last few games that we've discussed are actually pretty close to the published time. So I don't want to say across the board. I'm starting to get more confidence in the published times. But right. But compared to what I used to think about it that, oh, this only ever happens with the play testers who were experts in the game and played it, you know, 30, 40 times before it ever was released. I'm trying to feel like these estimates are pretty good. All right.

So there is an expansion to this game called departments and donations. And this looks like it is more than just a promo. Do you know anything about it? I mean, I don't believe I know nothing. Yeah. So it has four modules. It has a notepad to customize your starting resources. 16 new departments. So two of each and has new donations and then it has some optional rules, which OK, let's put it this way. If someone listening to the pod has a strong feeling about it, let us know in the comments.

But we're going to move along. Most recognizable comparison. What's the highest ranking game that reminds you of Carnegie? There's not any really. So honestly, I had to pick clans of California. OK. Your network building. You're making an economy. There's production. It's pretty recent. It's pretty well liked. So I thought there was like an obvious one. So I think it's interesting that you feel there really is it. I mean, there really isn't anyone exactly like it.

But for me, Power Grid comes fairly close, where you're building out your network and you're able to block people by getting ahead of them in cities. You're improving your generation capabilities. You're buying things to improve your generation. There just is a lot more calculation that gets done in Power Grid than Carnegie. Yeah, Power Grid is a great pick. I don't know why I completely blanked on that. Well, I did have a backup just in case you had seized on it. Did you have a backup?

I was my backup was nuclear, but I really don't know if that game's them played it. Got it. So my backup was Barrage. I thought that one had a novel take on network building by building up the dams and controlling the flow of water. Both games feel like they are a new and novel take on industry that I hadn't experienced previously. Got it.

And for what it's worth, Dave, who was unable to join us today, had picked Hanzatutonica with route building in the idea of being in the right place when scoring was triggered. So let's recognize Wolf Comparison. What did you have for that? So this is a very strong association for me. The game is called Space Station Phoenix. And I think of it as Carnegie without a map or shared actions. Each player is building a space station, which they then have to man. Much like your company in Carnegie.

Actions are only performed by the active player. However, the game Space Station Phoenix has a diplomacy bonus where if you have invested in it, you get to take actions when other people take the action associated with your diplomacy bonus. Right. And so overall, Space Station Phoenix feels like a streamline version of Carnegie in space to be at least Carnegie in space. All right. So it's a good thing Dave wasn't here because that was also his selection and he didn't have a backup listed.

So two votes for Space Station Phoenix in absentia. I went with for us what turns to be an old chestnut has worker placement, network building and movement points. And that would be in on. But I like Carnegie a lot more burn. So house rules, do you have any ideas on how you would improve the game? I do not. I think it is a finely tuned machine. So one of the things I thought might be interesting is the concept of tech trees.

So there is there are no prerequisites for the order in which you construct buildings. You could say that there is an order to the transportation in each of the regions, right? So the regions have an order in which you can build things, but really it's just advancing along that particular track. I thought the game could be interesting if there was some combination of buildings and perhaps regional technologies that created tech trees. Interesting. Probably not going to happen, but that's okay.

So if this game is being played at game night, what do you want to play afterwards? What's the best double feature game that goes along with it? Well, I wrote this down a while back, but for me, it would be you nod. You know, like you said, it's Carnegie, but you get to trade tea on a map with employees, gifts, bribes and auctions. Yeah, absolutely. I chose Furnace. For me, a lighter game and it still has industrialist building up a company.

Only this time you're managing resources and products, but the industrial era vibe is definitely still there in Furnace. True. So what feature of the game still stands out to you and still will be in quotes because you know, this game was released in 2022. What has aged the best for you? I'm not sure, but I have to shout out to the sliding project devs. I think they're kind of neat. Yeah, that's what I had, right?

I love those slide up tabs that not only tell you how far you've progressed down a track, but they also control your resource generation. I thought that was really well done. So what feature of the game now disappoints? One may not have aged as well, and you can't say the entire game. Yeah, if I had to put a finger on it, I think it would be the timeline of how the actions define where incomes are taken.

You know, that's the central aspect of the game, and it's the reason why people who don't like the game just won't play again. Right? Okay. For me, I think it's, I think it's the theme in a way that I realized that Andrew Carnegie himself was very much a philanthropist. And while disguising the endgame bonuses as charitable donations was clever, it just felt so pasted. And I get a very puzzling feeling from that aspect of the game, but I don't get a lot of excitement from it.

It's not like, oh, hey, how I get to score a point for every guy I have stood up. You know, it's like, okay, whatever. So I prefer the, for some reason, and it's almost the same mechanism if I step back and think about it. But if you think about the awards and whatever the other scoring thing is for terraforming Mars. Oh, milestones? Yeah, the awards and milestones. If you think about it, those are close to the same thing, especially the awards.

And yet those are more exciting probably because they have different names. Well, I think the awards are exciting because they are an open question as to who's going to get them right. These donations, you lock it down early at its ears for the rest of the game. Yeah, it's like a combination, right? It's not really like the milestones in terraforming Mars because those, you can't attain until you have achieved them.

So these are open and the donations are open ended like the awards, but they are closed like the milestones, right? I can do a donation in Carnegie saying that I'm going to have the most management offices by the end of the game. I will be the only one who has it. It's closed, but it's open ended in that I still have to try to maximize my score, get at least 12 points out of it, right? And then that creates a follow on discussion of is that take us back to constructive versus destructive play.

Is anyone going to try to jump in ahead of time and prevent me from getting a management office? Hard to say. So did this game replace a previous game? No, no, this game was a surprise. Okay. Well, yes, it was a surprise. Wasn't on anyone's radar except for Santa's and Greg's the day that we did the exchange. I would say that for us, it replaced Russian railroads for a while, although given a choice today, I would definitely go back and play Russian railroads at Carnegie.

So has this game since been replaced? And if so, by what? For me, very much so. Space Station Phoenix has replaced Carnegie. Yeah. I would agree with that. And at the time that I went through and prepared this list, I would say that Carnegie was still pretty new and nothing had really taken its spot with Kutna Ora still waiting in the wings. Now that we've played Kutna Ora, I don't think that it occupies the same space.

That would not have replaced Carnegie, but I thought they made for a good double feature night last week. So soundtrack. What music would you want to listen to while playing Carnegie? Yeah, I don't know. I would just honestly, I would just listen to classical music, maybe some Haydn or Bach. I don't really have a strong soundtrack association. I'll let you take this one. Well, mine was also pretty vanilla. I just said pretty much anything by George Gershwin, right?

Summertime, Rhapsody in Blue, any one of those, just put on a Gershwin soundtrack and let it roll. It would work for me. A better curve. There it is. So rating on board game geeks scale of now one to ten, how would you rate Carnegie? I still haven't rated it at a seven. Okay. And on board game geeks list, that is good. Usually willing to play. And I had it down one notch. I had it as a six, which according to board game geek means okay. I'll play it if I'm in the mood.

I have my own take on the ratings. And for me, a six is it's above average. I'll play if I'm in the right mood. It could be better game if played with the right group. I think if everyone was enjoying it, it could be a better experience. Yeah, honestly, I might lower my rating. Are you going to join me at six? Eventually, I think I will. Okay. All right. But let's take a step back because that's where we are now after several plays of this game. What was its high point for you?

Was it always a seven? Was it ever higher than a seven when you were first experiencing it? No, it was not. I guess what I'm trying to say is what is the duration of enjoyment from this game before it fizzles? Yeah, I mean, you're leading the witness here. I am. But I mean, I already told you this. I really, really like this game the first few times I played it. And then I still liked it the next several times I played it.

But after about 10 games and the fact that I think Space Station Phoenix replaces it, I just don't really see myself playing Carnegie anymore. Right. So 10 games, that should be a new metric. I'm not ready to add it to a prompt, but like, what is the number of games, a number of plays you're going to get out of a game before it falls out of your rotation? Yeah, that's a great question because I mean, a lot of people I know through board game geek never get the 10 plays of the game. Right.

Yeah, it's so very true. When there are so many games out there, especially if you have, you know, a group of friends, so the library is larger than your own. And several candidates can be brought to each night. It can be hard for games to have staying power in that kind of environment. Very true. What about you? So I had it as a sex, as I said. And however many games does it have for staying power? Let's see. I would agree with that. I don't have the solo games that you have.

So I've played it six or seven times now. And I still feel like there's one or two left. You know, I've yet to win the game. So I think when I finally, it finally gels with me. And I feel like I've understood it, solved it. Yeah, at least understood it well once. I'd be willing to set it aside. So I still want to get it to the table, you know, once or twice more. Just to just to see what it feels like to have everything working in concert.

But unfortunately for me, at least according to my logged plays, I'm actually getting worse at the game. So the first three times we played, I was like second, second, second to you. And then I had like a three, four, three finish on the last three or four or last three games. I'm not getting any better with it. Which means is the game replayable? Our final question leading the witness, as you say, is Carnegie replayable? For me it was, but not anymore. Yeah, so it's a nuanced question.

And I think it's interesting that, you know, we've gotten to a place now where this game was really replayable when we were starting. And we were excited to bring it to the table. And then it ran its course. And like I said, I would go back and play it again. But I'm certainly not going to suggest it. It's an interesting story arc for Carnegie. For us, yep, within our group, absolutely. All right, any parting thoughts about this game before we move on? Just to give space station Phoenix a try.

So the next game we're going to be doing, no, I'm kidding. All right, so that'll be the final action that we select. And we know we've completely filled the charitable projects board, which we actually did on the last game. That was amazing. Yeah, that's unusual, isn't it? It is, Terry. Yeah, so for our next episode, we'll take a look at a classic that often gets overlooked. So thanks for being available today. Glad we were able to get through this and looking forward to the next one.

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