As many of you know we recently began selling our newest board game, Cargo Noir. We’ve been testing, playing, designing and readying this game for publication for many months and feel strongly it is one of our best – so it’s exciting to finally see it getting into the hands of others.
A core game play aspect of Cargo Noir is bidding for the right to earn cargo tokens from different ports. You work to collect either matching tokens (all the same), or different tokens (all different). It seems that many who have tried, or even worse taught, the game – have been picking up their “different” tokens randomly, not realizing that the rules explicitly state that they need to be “each of a different type“.
While this may seem like a small, even trivial difference, when you play a game with so few rules as Cargo Noir (about on par with Ticket to Ride), it is essential you play all the rules as designed and written. Otherwise things can – and often will – go horribly wrong.
While the easiest response would be to just shrug our shoulders and say, “Come-on folks, read the d**n rules!” – it’s ultimately our job to make sure that it’s clear how to play the game and it appears we didn’t emphasize this well enough. In hindsight, we should have highlighted this rule and given additional examples. We were wrong and that is our fault. We will address this in future reprints, and in an upcoming downloadable version of the rules, to make sure it is crystal clear for everyone.
So, we hope you get the chance to play Cargo Noir and judge for yourself on whether it is a game for you. And if you do, remember that when you trade in different types of Cargo, EACH Cargo token must be of a different type.
One final note: We’ve been getting complaints that some of the Cargo Noir token bags are tearing and ripping. We’ve already asked our manufacturer to remake new reinforced Token bags that will be made available free to anyone who has a torn bag. Details on how to order your free replacement bag will be posted on our website in April.
Thanks – happy gaming and smuggling,
The Days of Wonder Team
PS: In the early days of Ticket to Ride, almost the exact same thing happened. One guy rated the game really poorly on BGG, harping on how that game was totally broken. He had mistaken the word “Train Cars” for “Train Cards”, played the game for 2 turns, claiming a green route and declaring the game over (in Ticket to Ride, the game ends once you have 2 Train Cars left in reserve or less, not 2 Train Cards). We reworded the rules to prevent any further confusion; we have not had an issue since!
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