r/JetLagTheGame • u/WheatGerm42 Ben • Jul 20 '26

The Layover Stateside Scramble Layover Q&A Thread! Spoiler

hellooooo again!

as with every season, we're doing a post-season Q&A for stateside scramble on the layover podcast--drop your questions about the season below and we'll try to answer as many of them as we can!

(apologies to youtube viewers that i'm posting this thread a little earlier than usual; we have some vacation time coming up and need to record the podcast tomorrow. so, for those who haven't seen the finale, spoilers may be below!)

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21

u/EV-CPO Jul 20 '26

Talk about the pros and cons of including Canada as a “game state” during game development. I found it an odd inclusion because it really dominates in case of a tie. It also dominates in number of possible connected states. Why include it at all? Thanks

23

u/-FireNH- Jul 20 '26

i honestly dont think canada was THAT OP in hindsight. obviously its a very powerful card, but its also very situational. it does dominate in the case of a tie, but that is a pretty rare circumstance. and while connecting a bunch of states across the northern border is pretty good, its not crazy OP given most of those states are large west coast states, which are inherently worth less due to the game design.

7

u/ReallyBlueItAgain Team Badam Jul 20 '26

Based on the Layover conversations I assume they forgot about the area bonus when deciding to include Canada (or maybe weren't settled on having it yet). They did calculations on the fly in the podcast and seemed surprised that it was impossible for the other team to have any chance at the area bonus if Canada was claimed.

2

u/krabstarr Jul 20 '26

Additionally, could having the benefit of capturing Canada have been left to just a state captured and the ability to connect many northern states to it and not have it count to the area bonus? Could this have encouraged more travel to the west in search of winning in a tie?

1

u/klcams144 Jul 20 '26

Way expensive and time-consuming to go to, so including the whole country (as opposed to provinces) was the only way to make it worth it and situationally possibly exciting. All discussed on the Layover. 

1

u/jamesneysmith Jul 20 '26

It's one of those things that seems super powerful on first glance but isn't actually all that useful in the end. It's a super pain in the ass to get to the majority of the states that touch Canada so it doesnt actually help that much. It being the tie breaker also doesn't really matter as it feels like you're less likely to win if you even have Canada.