Stabcon play test

So Stabcon play test....

Only managed to get one play test in over the weekend and I'm trying to work out the feedback.

So it seemed to take a long time – about 3 hours – however we were very distracted due to the environment but that felt to long. What is odd is I don't know what caused that – previously the game has felt like a two hour game but now suddenly it's running longer again. There don't seem to be a sticking points – things bang back round to you pretty quickly.

The new rules about only being able to play 3 cards per a combat worked – there were more combats rather then a single big one, and there were times when cards would not save you. The attacker gets a bit of a choice – do they use a card which might not be needed or waste there opportunity to play it. And the combat tracker was generally well received – needs work as it was rough but it's good to have.

Managed to get some feedback from somebody who's opinion I wanted as he not only plays a lot of games but has been involved in game creation before – his response - “it's a good game – you'd never sell thousands but you'd sell a hundred.” He had no real rules comments – slight worry that the rich get richer but he felt it was very slight and balanced by the fact going later in the turn is an advantage. So I've got about the right level there. Also felt that once you were out of cards then you were a target – and while the card you got was helpful maybe it was not enough......

Some suggestions...

If you are below a certain level draw back to that level.

Draw two and pick one.

Change to discard unhelpful cards and draw new ones.

Some combination of those.

Concerns with this one are – getting more cards mid game would devalue getting a handful of cards. Would also encourage people at the start of the turn order to just burn everything out. The current rule is very simple and does not slow things down – inserting a choice (pick one or discarding one) would slow things down.

More feedback about design – which is not something I've spent a lot of time thinking about to be honest. Useful stuff like “make the bonus defensive on a hex not be in the middle but around the edge of the hex as a pattern”.

Also came up with a new card this morning +2 attack but only where there is not a heart indicator. Which is powerful but makes hearts slightly more useful.

So this time round what I want to do is......

Improve the combat tracker

Add in that one card – and remove something from the deck to make it happen.

Do some maths that looks at the number of spaces on the board vs the number of heads on cards and trys to estimate how many terms the game should run for.

And time a version of the game to see how long it takes – both in number of turns and also in time.