In this example: If you play the 8 of Suns on top of the Harvest, without playing the 7, then the Pawn can count as a 7. If you play the 7 of Suns, however, the Pawn must count as a 6.

Play Emu Ranchers

If anyone has any feedback, suggestions, questions, etc, I'd love to hear from you

If you still feel this way after playing both ways, I'll add it as a variant. When I decide the rules are close enough to final, I'll put them in the wiki— and then you can add the variant yourself.

The round didn't seem too short to us, so I didn't see that as a problem. But the fact that I can keep that 9 (or even worse, a crown/ace) in my hand until the end of the game to see if I get other cards of the same suit without risk feels a tad wrong…

I'll be trying it both ways to make up my mind, but maybe a variant for this alternative system could be added…

I like the pawns, but the excuse seems too random and powerful. Still, the fact you basically get your hand reduced to 5 cards if you want to keep it may make up for it…

There are several pressures not to just keep cards in your hand indefinitely. With only 6 cards in your hand, you will run out of space— especially if you're holding cards for more than one bird. You can collect a few cards further on the sequence, but frequently you'll have to jump a step or two to avoid discarding something you want.

Also, you can only pick up a discard if you play a card. If your opponent sets down something you want, you need to go ahead and play.

The latter. (You don't need to declare exactly what a Pawn's replacing when you play it. As an aside, the game plays well without the Pawns— they really are an optional extra.)

The different scoring methods for profit and loss didn't bother me that much, but I still find it faster to just subtract 18 from the total than to look for the right combination of cards to remove…

What I didn't like much was the way the round ends. In Lost Cities, there's a time pressure element in the deck running out. You have a limited number of turns in which to play all the cards, so keeping them in your hand is dangerous. There are limited ways of extending the time (by not drawing and using cards from the discard pile) but ultimately, you may end with cards in your hand you couldn't play.

Here, as you can play all the cards you want when the round ends, you don't need to be careful. Keeping cards in your hand becomes a good strategy, as you know you won't lose them, so waiting for the right ranked card is easier, as you don't feel the pressure to play the cards you do have before the round ends…

I'm curious to read your thoughts, but I want to try the game with the variant where the whole hand is discarded when the round ends…

With this rule, I discard upkeep from each bird and then come back to total up the remaining cards. Since each Ace or Crown is worth a flat rate of 5 points, I don't have to add up the profitable birds separately. So there is less calculation and memory involved.

This rule also makes several smaller cards more valuable than one big card. If I have 7,8,9, I need to discard all three and get no profit. If I have 3,5,7,8, I can discard the 3,7,8 to score 5. (I chose 18 as the target because it's the lowest number that requires at least three number cards.)

As you note, however, this rules means that profitable birds and losing birds are handled differently. In playtesting, it seemed as if the advantages were worth that complication.

It does seem to be a nice game and I'll be giving it a try :)

I wonder though, why the scoring works different when winning profit than when making a loss… Wouldn't it be simpler if when winning a profit you'd just substract 18 from the total sum? Does it really change the game a lot? I'm interested in reading your thoughts on this…