We just finished our first Scoreboard Center Messenger game and have a lot of messenger questions.
The Big Box ZMG rules include:
CAUTION: You can only draw message tiles when your meeple and messenger are alone. If another player’s meeple or messenger is on a dark space when you land there, you do not draw a message tile.
But WikiCarPedia, footnote 1, says that this constraint is not in the original HiG rules. So, you do get a message even if another meeple or messenger is already on the same dark scoring space.
WikiCarPedia also added the phrase (and only on your turn) to the condition for when you get a message when you land on a dark space.
So, our primary question deals with the situation when a player completes a shared feature where multiple players score the points. If another player’s meeple can land on a dark space, does that other player also get a message?
Both rules are relatively clear that if placing your tile completes multiple features that allows both your meeple and your messenger to fall on dark spaces, you only get one message, not two. But if your tile completes a builder feature and that score places you on a dark square, you immediately get a message, then if on your builder second turn, or even on your message second turn you can complete a second feature that again lands you on another dark space, you do get a second message. This also means that on your initial turn, then your message turn, then your builder second turn, you could actually get three messages on your turn!
We also include a house rule when we played the game. The actual rules say that after reading your message you should place the message face down at the bottom of the stack. Our rule says that when you get a message, randomly choose a message from the face down stack, then place it in a second stack face up. After all 8 messages have been taken, turn over the stack and shuffle the messages into a new face down stack. Even our tile counter have no idea what the next message will be, except for the 8th message for each stack, and we are considering doing the shuffle after the 6th message is read!
The game was played with both rivers, Traders and Builders, Inns and Cathedrals, and the Fliers and it lasted over 2 hours. The Messages are a definite plus in our opinion!
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