Version 3.02 play test

Got a chance to play test version 3.02 over the weekend – and the response was very positive and generally good.  Two people had played before – and liked the new slimmed down version while the one totally new player grabbed the rules very quickly.

In fact I need a few more play tests with this general format – and then design might be finished and it’s onto tweaking.

That’s not to say there are no issues…..

a)      Not enough warriors available to people – needs to be slightly more.

b)      Game end still drags out a little bit

c)      Action cards still not exciting – and more men almost always seems a more sensible choice.

d)      Not enough incentive to attack. 

e)      Going last on the last turn is really useful – which makes leading at the start of the last turn a bad thing

f)        Going first tends to mean sitting there and not doing a lot – which is a subset of “not enough incentive to attack”

That aside it played quickly – it was fun – and by the end of it the island was covered in stone heads and we had total collapse as we fought over the last tree……

The design process recently has been very much a stripping out of things – and a realisation that what I wanted was chaotic unpredictable violence produced by a simple system.

So for 3.03 we end up with an oddly long list of changes – even after a really good play test.  Hope to have 3.03 ready for this weekend and Manorcon although sadly the breaker of games won't be there - so it is a lot less important.

1)      Change game end condition to 3 or less trees from the current no trees left.

2)      Increase the number of men on build cards – from 2 3 5 to 3 4 5.  Narrowing the comparative advantage of ‘lots of men’ over ‘small men’

3)      Change the number of action cards from 3 4 6 to 2 4 6 – increasing the comparative value of ‘lots of cards’ over ‘small cards’

4)      Change the way “fishing boats” and “hidden pathways” work so they can be combined into unfair ways to allow you to move people around a lot.  Remove ‘get a wiggle on’ cards as they just don’t do enough.

5)      Make all of the rongaronga cards reward taking an unfinished stone head as well as something else. 

That won’t tackle all of the above problems – specifically it leaves…..

c) Action cards still not exciting

d) Not enough incentive to attack.

e) Going last on last turn is really useful

I’ve got ideas for those but… I’m trying to avoid making to many changes in one go.  And I’m also trying to avoid adding in new ideas and concepts because the current version run rather sleekly and previous attempts to fix those – aka renown – slowed things down a lot…..