Manorcon & Version 3.03

I headed to Manorcon this weekend and had a really nice time.  Managed to play  ninja legend of the scorpion clan a hidden movement game - which was good as I was tempted to buy that and now I'm not.

I've got fairly strong opinion about hidden movement games - and while this is no Innsmouth escape it had it's issues.  A lack of feedback for the guards - and very high stakes combat being my two.  One mistake saw one of the infiltrators dead - he went from fine to dead in one go.  It makes me want to work on 'Kill Him You Fools!' which is where my game designing started.

But I had a 3 person play test of giant stone head.  My opinion was.....

1) The action deck is just not very exciting - and needs a wider variaty of cards.
2) The number of men for three players is a little low.
3) The simplified hiden pathways a) was simplier and b) made them more useful.

The play tester provided three bits of feedback...

1) They like the whole resources being used up mechanic
2) They thought the 'pool' mechanic was overly complicated and fiddly (which surprised me since it's about 100 times better then the village one).
3) The action deck was a bit bland

I want to think on there feedback - but the same idea has been cropping up time and time again for me - the action deck needs spicing up.

So that's going to be changes for next version.

Ideas for cards.......

Invite the Neighbours - pick another player if they attack you steal 2 VP's from them.
Big Damn Hero - either an attack or a defence but only for a big man
Got Lost  - Two attackers retreat
Cowards - Two defenders retreat
Ambush  - two hearts but only when defending a terrain heart
  
Other ideas.
Cancel a card
Redirect an attack to an adjacent hex.
Kill a big man before the fight resolves
A random defence card so even holding a single card you could have a big defensive boost.

But I'm not sure about how to implement those so I'll leave them out for now. 

Some form of peace card is good - and this is much simpler then the original one.
Boosting big men in a flexible way is handy.
Retreating two men is useful but less useful then killing two men - it feels like it should be somewhere in the middle.........
And a big boost for defending terrain hearts will make them feel a riskier target to attack.

The five above should introduce enough new stuff for now.