Tested version 2.01 over the weekend and it's safe to say - total failure.
Introducing low stakes combat meant people were terrified of high stakes combat. Which mean massive armies built up making people even more scared of high stakes combat.
The new renown from raiding rules encouraged people to pick on the weak - causing them to spirl downwards.
While at the same time renown has to tight - preventing people from building stone heads at all......
The act of sacrificing cards was both fiddly and time consuming as you tried to work out the correct ones to give away but also seemed slightly pointless because so many of the cards were so very similiar....
Actually called the game to a halt because it just was not working. You might expect that to feel rather negative but oddly not.....
Firstly there were a couple of things that did work. The new hearts = man in defence, bangs = man in attack work. Less felxibile but nobody got confused by it. People liked the "each different symbol = new card" removing diminishing returns. But the idea of renown as a resource - gained by attacking - seems solid and would drive the game play I want. I just need to work out how to implement it......
Secondly I had a bunch of other ideas I want to test - again pretty damn radical changes - so all is not lost. And if it continues to suck - well I'll just swing back to version 1.2 and implement some of the other lessons learned in that and go forwards.....
But if there is one take home lesson from this - it's remember what they said on the board game course. Make your first version, play it solo (take all the roles), and that will tell you if it is basically ok. If I'd of done that I might well have noticed the problems without wasting my friends time..... an important lesson.
Forwards to a glourious future that contains stone heads!
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