Dog Park - New Tricks

We just got our package today with the New Tricks expansion to Dog Park.  Of the four lots offered on eBay, I picked this one because it included a Kickstarter special pack with stickers, postcards, a little pack of 7 wild dogs that all sound like pups the designers have known personally, and limited-edition wooden tokens for resources and dog walkers, and an 8-space board for one player to use as their kennel.

The New Tricks pack adds a whole new deck of dogs, including mixed breeds who count for both breeds. There is a fold-out row of 8 spaces to put the new Trick cards, so that each breed can access a trick and they are shuffled to start each game.  There are new forecast cards, new Location cards and expanded location modifiers including cardboard pieces that completely cover the dog park space with its new effects.

We will be testing it out over the weekend, but for now, here is Anne's dog Dory next to the matching Dog Park card.  As a mix of cairn terrier and chihuahua, Dory is a "toxirn", which is the least cute dog breed name I've ever heard.  Couldn't they call these chi-cairns or cairn-huas or something?  Most other mixes have cute names...

5/16 update: The tricks really overcomplicate the game.  We forgot the training entirely half the time.  And with the expanded strip for Trick cards moving the auto walker's dogs to the far end of the board, all those things were out of focal range.  I had to pick up all the Trick cards and read them to myself or Anne.  And we could barely tell the colors of the dogs the Auto Walker had, so it was hard to plan for the Breed Expert rewards.

So, while the expansion would appeal to gamers who thought the base game was too "basic", it makes the whole game area unusably large.  We do enjoy the new cards, with the mixed breeds.  And the expansions to the Location cards were a big boost, especialy the ones where you can trade reputation for resources.  The new Objective and Forecast cards were also good.

I have been trying to think of a way to keep some of those expansions but skip the tricks.  With two players, it might work that when you put the trainer on a dog you draw a trick card and keep it by your kennel, instead of four feet away.  You couldn't keep it under the dog card because of the tokens that would slide off every time you try to look at it.  But maybe all your trained dogs would have access to those tricks, rather than sorting out the breeds.  

This morning I am thinking you would draw two trick cards when using the trainer and keep one next to your kennel, with a maximum of two tricks per game, usable by all trained dogs.  

Or we could keep the dogs that have abilities other than Trick, so the ones with Selection, Walking (etc) powers could stay in the deck.  I wonder if any of those would be mixed breeds.  If not, then it's just extra dogs.

The game borders on overwhelming for Anne, always looking all over for whatever little bit she might be missing.  We really should take a deep breath at the start of each phase, find our dogs whose powers are relevant, and go through the steps slowly.  I try to take breaks to read some of the blurbs at the bottom of the cards to help us both relax, but the tiny tiny text loses a bit of the charm.

It was interesting (and a bit sad) to find that our tired eyes have a limit to how large a game surface is comfortable.

May 18 update: It turns out that my idea on streamlining the tricks works very nicely for a two player game.  Don't set up the track for the trick cards, just keep the Tricks deck in a convenient spot.  When you train a dog, choose the top two cards from the Tricks deck, keep one and put the other one back.  On each turn you can use either trick, if you have a dog in the kennel/leads as required for the trick.  After two playthroughs, I would say that you have to trade in a trick card after you use it, since Anne had a trick where at the end of every selection phase she earned the cost of any dog in her kennel, which could be 2 or 3 resources.  That was a bit much.

But by taking a breath at the start of each new phase to check the forecast and any dogs that will have an effect in that phase, then starting the phase, we had two reasonably relaxed games.  Don't fret over some detail you missed on you previous move, since you can't fix it anyway.  I think this version of the game is our favorite.  I can't see stripping out the tricks entirely, and without the trick cards, having the mixed breeds is not nearly as helpful -- any dog that only has Trick effects will have nothing.