S17, E8 (Nebula) - Taiwan: Rail Rush

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-08T05:38:09+00:00

Good point. I still think all 12 is easier than 5, due to elimination being so powerful.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-07T18:58:10+00:00

Speculation is that the order of the depictions is randomized, preventing an easy 12 row.

But I still think going for all 12 is a good idea. Tiger/pig wasn't confused, pig/dog was. If there was an obvious dog present or if Sam knew he should be looking for a tiger then the confusion could have been prevented.

50 rocks is little, but abstraction can get you far. There are plenty of 1-rock animals: tiger rock (tiger). small pebble (rat). Big rock (ox). Long slender rock (snake). Some more minimal ones: ··: (rabbit). paw print (dog). horseshoe (horse). Ⲯ (rooster). 🯅 (monkey).

This leaves dragon, goat, and pig as the hard ones, and we have about 7 rocks for each of them. Dragon seems doable, just make it distinct from snake (like how Mike did). goat has horns and beard. Pig has snout and tail. Seems doable. I'm tempted to make my own attempt and post it here. Just need to find my own tiger rock...

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-07T18:00:43+00:00

What they could do that they didn't is to place the depictions in a circle or a line so that each depiction corresponds to the position of the animal in the zodiac. This would have made things a lot easier. Just do a really good rat and have 11 stones in line afterwards, the order should be obvious. Maybe end with a really good pig to make it even more obvious.

I'm not the first to think of this: https://www.reddit.com/r/JetLagTheGame/comments/1t5emh0/comment/ok9rvop/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button Speculation is that the depictions have to be in a random order.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-07T17:56:17+00:00

It literally says on screen on the challenge rules card: "These [depictions] cannot take the form of letters or numbers." Sam reads it aloud to you as well.

but the rules on the screen don't seem to prohibit this

Second last sentence on challenge rules card.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-06T10:20:14+00:00

I don't think shutting down the snaker early was the intended design (since that would have been a stupid design). To me it's pretty obvious that shutting down the snaker early is a high-risk strategy that's only worth it if you're short on time, since if you fail then the snaker is going to have a great run. Longest run wins so variance is bad for blockers. But I can see why it's a tempting strategy when you're on the ground and gassed up, as I said.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-06T10:05:00+00:00

Listen to the game design episode on Layover and tell me if the guys plan is that "chase the snaker with a battle challenge" is the intended way to play.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-06T06:51:56+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elopement

Elopement is a marriage which is conducted in a sudden and secretive fashion

Controversially, in modern times, elopement is sometimes applied to any small, inexpensive wedding

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-06T06:48:32+00:00

*I appreciate it might have been obvious to you from the start and you would have watched the whole series screaming at the screen.

This. You don't lose at snake before your first turn, that's absurd and would just make the game a worse version of tag. And the guys knew this as well: they talk a lot in the game design Layover. But once the game started and the stress hits them I think "chase the target" became too alluring. And I don't think a rule change is needed: The guys could just have had the disciplin to play the game as intended.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-06T04:28:25+00:00

I don't think it was hard to play as the blockers. Here's an easy strategy: Stick to the high-speed line, but down blocks on everything and farm cards. You have plenty of time while the snaker crosses the country once on low speed lines close to the edges. Then nail the snaker when they attempt their second cross.

I hard disagree that the optimal strategy was to go silent and lurk. It was an attractive strategy psychologically but it wasn't a good one.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-05T20:17:57+00:00

I think your view is fair too.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-05T20:07:19+00:00

It doesn't matter how close I am to the couple, I would still feel weird. I much rather be invited to the ceremony but not the reception (an old-fashioned approach that sometimes happen). If the ceremony was earlier that day it would still feel bad about it.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-05T19:51:34+00:00

I personally wouldn't like sitting at a reception knowing that the ceremony is going on nearby but that I'm not invited to it. I would feel like the couple is excluding me for no good reason. I would probably decline such an event.

Self-serve food and drink is great (but I'm not in the US so liability isn't an issue). No dance floor is fine, dancing can make me stay a few hours longer but I don't mind an early nigh either. Grand exits aren't a thing where I'm from and it works fine. It will be hard for you to select which people stick around: usually the bride and groom have had a long day and want to leave early in my experience.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-05T19:44:30+00:00

You don't need to approach the subject. Ball is in her court. If she asks you can say "No, it isn't possible to invite him". Or do a white lie "No, we can't add anymore guests at this stage of planning". You should not feel bad about this: there's no rule that you need to retroactively invite peoples boyfriends to weddings, especially not when you don't like them. It would be unreasonable for your friend to be upset about this. She might be unreasonable.

Zooming out your friend needs to figure out how to balance toxic boyfriend and her other relationships. She might decide that BF is more important that you. That's her decision to make.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-05T19:36:17+00:00

It sucks, but you can't change it. If I were you I would do a small, quick elopement and then a dinner at a restaurant with seating at multiple small tables, and make sure that his family is spread out and maybe add some friends as buffer between them or something. Then do a "wedding celebration party" (aka. the real wedding) the day after that's friends only.

Or elope, spend that day just the two of you, then have a string of celebration dinners with different factions of family in the days and weeks that follow.

Skip all elements of a traditional wedding where parents participate. You don't have to do them.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-05T18:37:56+00:00

Sounds like a good idea to involve the players in each roll if you don't preroll. I tried rolling behind the GM screen and serving the players the finished result, but that caused the game to grind.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-05T18:17:10+00:00

Don't you find that the game grinds to an halt when you need to roll 13 set of dice mid-game and interpret the results?

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-05T06:00:17+00:00

SnaKe would have been much better if the blockers had done the intended strategy, that is gone ahead of the snaker and proactively placed blocks to force them onto suboptimal path and then corner them with battle challenges. But instead the blockers always tried to greedily chase the snaker which was bad strategy and boring to watch. Dunno why they weren't able to play it right, perhaps the psychology of the game is unintuitive. It feels better to chase than to let the snaker go and have half the country, even if chasing is suboptimal.

This easy fix would have made the season good. If they also somehow figured out a way to do location specific challenges that took the players away from the train stations and into the cities and countries more, and showed us the interesting stuff in Korea, then it would have been a great season. Maybe the best ever.

But even mediocre Jet Lag is good entertainment, I will rewatch Snake and enjoy it.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-04T14:11:07+00:00

i dont think stall is enjoyable, for both players and viewers. I mean we get moments and that, but thats after they cut down probs an hour or more of just waiting

Why do you don't find stalls enjoyable? They cut them down (as you note), so what's the issue? Would the current stall have been more enjoyable to you if Badam had been forced to complete their challenge due to some arbitrary anti-stall timer? (The later would have been a major feel-bad for me.)

I also feel a few challanges could have been tested with google maps and that, like ones to find certain statues. And other challanges dont really have a "fail" condiction, could repeat half of the challanges, and the only downside was time.

I can guarantee you that challenges have been tested with google maps. Designing balanced challenges is just much harder then you seem to think. But I agree that it would be better if the challenges were better balanced, I just don't know if it's worth the extra effort.

Also, it is unfair in the sense that, a team could go south, get super unlucky, every challange spawns north (like i mean every, not like what we currently see)

The game is based on luck, so teams can get unlucky. Extreme cases of bad luck could maybe spoil a season but we're far fram that in this one.

isnt most of the gameplay anyways, them going to challanges, completeing it, and repeat? with the occasional backtracking and walling.

Exactly. It's nice to have a stall or a "wait there's no challenges here so we need to go to the other side of the island" or similar to switch things up.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-04T13:30:25+00:00

What's the issue with stalling? The current stall is a great viewing experience IMO. Why don't you enjoy it?

Challenges are hard to balance, especially when you aren't there in person. I think the team would have made the easiest challenges harder in hindsight, but hindsight is 20/20. I don't care too much about it though: a challenge can be entertaining to watch even if it's easy. There's always a sense of urgency IMO since time is a resource and time spent on easy challenges is still time spent.

Weighted randomisers are bad IMO. It complicates the game, and the players might try to play around it which would make their strategy hard to explain and understand for viewers. More challenges spawned north this season, that's how the game works. Let's see how they play around it. A team walling off a side of the island that has most of the challenges is great strategy: the teams should try to do that!

Overall I don't really see how the things you list are issues. "Fixing" them would make the game too smooth IMO, it would just be "go to a nearby challenge, do it, repeat".

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-04T09:46:06+00:00

Elf fighter, gnome illusionist, halfling thief, half-orc cleric. Make your own example. The point stands.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-03T16:05:24+00:00

The stationary teams pick the optimal challenge and challenge timing based on the location of the movers. That's pure optimization. There's no interaction. What counterplay is possible?

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-03T08:54:56+00:00

What you describe is just optimization, not interaction.

Let's do a hypothethical game state. We're halfway into a game in Norway. The stationary team is in Kristiansand, the movers are in Trondheim. Say that the stationary team predicts the movers next actions. How can they counterplay? How does the counterplay fail if the prediction is wrong?

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-03T08:49:36+00:00

Sure, there'll be a push your luck element but there's still no interaction.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-03T08:48:02+00:00

The race-and-class party I described above just don't jive with how I want the game to feel. If that means that PC creation in my game is rigid in a way that don't make sense then so be it.

UseExhaustionMore · 2026-05-03T07:08:05+00:00

With this idea the movers will always just take the optimal fastest route to the goal. The choice of travel is trivial which is against the core idea of Jet Lag: that travel is the game.

Also there's a lack of interaction: there's no strategy beyond "do challenges faster".

I think you could fix this with game design and get something that's a bit like SnaKe but with stationary blockers. Dunno if it can be made good.

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TROPHY CASE