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I'm a huge fan of this odd but wonderful game - hard to believe it's 11 years old now. Join me in racing dog sleds across the Alaskan snow. |
last update: October 30, 2004 | |||
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House Rules & Other Stuff Another out-of-print classic from Alan Moon (the designer of Elfenland, Union Pacific & Ticket To Ride), Mush is a racing game with some very interesting choices. However, the rules for avalanches as written cause a severe endgame problem. Greg Aleknevicus corresponded with Alan himself for an answer to the problem. According to Alan, better ways to handle them are:
As well, avalanches may ONLY be played on your turn (not another player's turn. Greg's solution for his group was as follows: We play with the original rules but avalanches cannot be moved or removed. This prevents a (spiteful) player from playing ridiculous numbers of avalanches on people. Late Breaking News! Greg read this page and wanted to add some more to the discussion... thanks, Greg! Thought I'd mention that my group now plays Mush without the avalanches at all. I think they're an interesting idea and really WANT to like them but it just seems that they don't work all that well in practice. We've tried a couple slightly different variations but none of them seemed any better. The biggest problem is that they punish the front runners and encourage other players to sit in a city, collecting tokens and trying to prevent the leaders from winning. This means that no one wants to be the first to start the final leg of the race, hardly what you expect from a race game! Without them there's a real incentive to get going and the game both plays smoother and "feels" more accurate. Kurt Adam had spoken with Alan before Mush appeared and shared this information with rec.games.board. I need to get Alan to give me the details of the original mechanism for this game that he told me about a few years ago. This was originally designed to have a card deck for the actions rather than just paying for them. This eliminated the end game avalanche-fest since there were only a few avalanches in the deck. I don't have many more details than that since it was only a passing mention about two years ago, but it sounded like it would answer at least some of the problems. Finally, Andy Merritt suggested some house rules for the game. (1) Generally only play with 3 boards rather than the full 5 or 4. This shortens the game without hurting game play significantly In order to allow more variety of board when using 3 boards, always use the Nome and Anchorage boards, but use any of the other 3 boards in between. If not using the Central board in the middle then make up a copy of the Central board's weather chart and use this for the middle board.<BR> (2) The main problem with the game we found was that as soon as a player got significantly into the lead or was about to finish the other players would immediately pick on that player stuffing them up, allowing the others to catch up, whereupon the same thing would happen again. The reason this was possible was that you could sit in a town getting action points back relatively quickly and spend them to stuff the leader only to get more action points next turn and recover much more quickly than the now stuffed up leader. Now picking on the leader a bit is good, it just needs toning down, so I added the following rule: While in a town you may not spent action points to hurt another player. You may still spend action points to force the weather roll to be redone. I'm not a fan of Andy's first rule (I like the five board game), OTOH, I think the second rule (no spending action points to another player while in town) is wonderful. We use it every time we play. Rules Questions The following Q & A is from issue #3 of The Color of the Wind newsletter. Q: Who can play Action Points to move an avalanche? A: You may only place, move, or remove an avalanche during your turn. When it is not your turn, you can only spend Action Points to force a Reroll or to reduce an opponent's Dog Dice. Q: If a player receives the Early Riser Bonus and rolls the die to move onto a Rough Terrain space or through an Avalanche and fails, can he move during his regular turn? A: Yes. Q: If a player rolls the die and fails to move onto a Rough Terrain space or through an Avalanche and loses the rest of his movement, may he roll the die for the Press Bonus? A: No, his turn is over. Q: Can a player pay chips to Pass An Opponent and then end his turn in the same wilderness space as an opponent? A: No. Two players can never occupy the same wilderness space. Q: A player wants to move through a Rough Terrain space and the space is occupied by another player. Does the player have to pay Action Chips to Pass An Opponent before he rolls to see if he can move onto the Rough Terrain space? A: No. He can roll the die to see if he can move onto the Rough Terrain space first. Q: A player wants to move through several Rough Terrain spaces and the first space is occupied by another player. The player pays the Action Chips to Pass An Opponent, rolls to enter the first Rough Terrain space and succeeds, then rolls to enter the second Rough Terrain space and fails. What happens? A: The player must move back to the space he began the turn in and his turn is over. Departures Here's three reviews of Mush for those with a need to read. Boardgame Geek entry for Mush The Game Cabinet from Mike Clifford The Game Report from Peter Sarrett Spielmagazijn from Ronald Hoekstra | ||
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