OK, the 4-year-old was able to get up to five tiles' worth of rules before, well, getting bored with playing the game, which happens surprisingly often with her. After one game with adults and one with kids, I can definitely say this fits more with kids--or possibly with non-Eurogamers, but that's hard to tell as my non-Eurogaming family tends not to accept anything that isn't perfectly normal. /sigh The Eurogamers in my game group did find it, well, a bit more luck-based than we tend to like.
Although I enjoy sitting down to play a full game of Piña Pirata (until someone gets 4 tiles), I think it's going to shine more as a game that fills a specific niche: the ultimate filler game. When I first read the rules and saw the two modes, Cruise Mode and Adventure Mode, I assumed that Cruise mode was added later as a super-casual version of the game. When the secret history was posted and I learned that Cruise Mode was the original way to play the game and that Adventure Mode was the one that was tacked on, I was surprised. But now it makes more sense to me.
As a person who only enjoys what most people call "filler" games and isn't really interested in 5-hour games, I don't see Dominion and its ilk as "filler". For me those games are the main event. Piña Pirata is actually a filler game, and it has several advantages over many games that others label "filler".
• It has virtually no setup time.
• Each hand takes only 5 minutes to play.
• People can easily join or drop out between hands.
• You can stop after any number of hands, or even in the middle of a hand.
• It has virtually no teardown time.
I don't know about you, but when my gaming group (which also prefers heavier fare) gets together, they tend to filter in over the course of a half-hour or so. This is the perfect game to play while people are arriving. They can just join in as they arrive and once everyone is there, the game ends. Likewise it's a great restaurant game (as mentioned in the secret history). Start playing after you order. Stop playing when your food arrives. There is no way I'm going to be able to do that with Dominion or Kingdom Builder.
Piña Pirata definitely has a strong luck factor, but it's hands-down more strategic and more fun than any other game I know that fits the above criteria. Although some rules increase the luck factor, most decrease it by giving you more meaningful decisions to make. The fact that there definitely is strategy is what keeps the game interesting for me and why I'd rather play it than most other ultra-light games (like Uno, etc.).
