The "elephant" strategy rears its ugly head...

About 10 years ago, I could honestly say that Reiner Knizia's classic Euro Taj Mahal was my absolute favourite game.  It had everything I wanted - simple tough choices, fascinating and highly unique game play, and multiple paths to victory.  If you haven't tried it, you really should - it's a fascinating card/board game of chicken and bluff that rivals anything put out today.  Unfortunately, after an uncountable number of games, it became obvious that an experienced player could win over newbies every time by simply taking all the elephant cards and winning the elephant tile most rounds.  Frustratingly, this became something that always needed to be explained every time new people played and the game lost a little bit of its sheen.

Fast-forward to this summer and we've played a bunch of games of Hawaii, a fantastic Euro with a bit more depth than Taj Mahal.  Unfortunately, in the last couple games one player has decided to try the 'red price token' strategy.  If you aren't familiar with Hawaii, almost every turn you grab a price token and a whole bunch of them are red.  One can purchase tiles in the game which award bonus points every time a player takes a red price token and these bonuses are most certainly cumulative.  By the end of my last game, my parter was earning 7 points every time he grabbed a red price token and he ended up winning handily.  The gap in the previous game was even wider.  Sigh. 

Of course, this is manageable if all the players are onboard. Much like how everyone can't let one player grab the elephant tile every time in Taj, the players can't let one player grab red price token tiles every round in Hawaii.  I suppose it isn't broken, but the last thing I wanna do in a game like Hawaii (where turns are intentionally very limited) is waste a turn blocking an opponent's play.  It's like wasting trains in Ticket To Ride to block someone's route.  I hate that.

Having said all that, Hawaii is still quite an excellent game (as is Taj Mahal).  Now it just requires a discussion during the rules explanation about the "elephant" in the room...