Version 3.01

Version 3.01 played very well - but several minor niggles and one major one.

The major one was that it went on far to long - it clocked in at about 3 hours or close to a 5 player game of Eclipse that was going on behind us.  And while that can be a good length for a game (see eclipse) not in this case - it needs to be quick and chaotic.

The problem was the game end was caused by running out of trees and at the end of the game there was so little space that people were building heads - getting them kicked over - and no progress towards game end was being made.  In the end we added a "40 vps and over" rule to end the game.

The minor niggles were that the mix on the action cards were not quite right, that villages were fiddly and made people defensive, that the placement rules for stone heads did not quite work, that the points for holding stone heads at the end of the game was simply to much, and that going first in the last turn really sucks.
 
I'm not going to try and tackle all of these - but as always - perhaps to much in a single go.  As always - the "tweak only one thing" rule seems not to apply because I don't think I've got the base game right (which given I've been working on this since Feb 2011 is a little worrying).

The game end thing is simple enough - once a stone head is built it is not removed (there goes another rule that's existed in every version) - however only the player that built it gets to score it.  This might have swung things the other way - a 5 player game might now lost about 4 to 5 turns.

I've set fixed amounts for holding stone heads at the end of the game - with more points in a game with more players.

I'm not sure it bothered the players - but village annoyed me.  They are buy far the most fiddly part of the game - and they slowed down the chaos and action to much.  I've been mulling this over for a while and in 3.02 I've removed villages.  The pool mechanic still exits - but now it's just an abstract number on your player track - and won't go down.  If you have all your men on the board it costs you one man to raise your pool by one - so if your already at your maximum men it's two men gets you one with a fixed maximum.  So the good bit of villages - if you've got knocked down it's quicker getting back up then expanding is still there but hopefully the faff and the messing about is gone.

This meant a lot of other things needed fixing like RongaRonga cards that fired off destroying a village or defending a village.  So I took the opportunity to drop the quantity of movement cards and add in some Ronga Ronga cards that you can play after winning any fight but all they do is take a VP of people doing better then you (unlike the rest which give you a VP and a steal a vp of someone doing better then you.).

It feels like I added in villages as a solution that sort of worked to stop people simply building a massive legion- however when I added in build cards that rendered them a little obsolete and it's taken a while for that feed through.  I suspect this is a case of getting the fundamentals correct before you try and smooth things out.


Two Ideas.....

Defensive cards that provide more of a kick to make attacking a little more dangerous (one card - discard two other cards for 3 hearts).....
Shaman's - reward for taking very low power build cards that allow you to modify your build/pick order one if you want in a subsequent turn (are VP's still the best thing for controlling who moves first?)

One big question

Does the game now end to quickly?  Are indestructible stone heads a good thing - so should a stone head still be kickable over - but once built kicked over leave an empty space?