Notes from Seventh Playtest

Playtest with 2 people ran 1 hour (including setup, conversation, & scoring) and we completed 22 rounds.

General Thoughts
There's still a ways to go in fine tuning this game, but if there's one thing that's going really right it's that the game tells a story. There was that bear that sat next to the village and killed two of Kris' hunters, then later took out one of mine. Or that time I found an exploit in the movement rules with the bow, and ran halfway across the board to shoot a second bird. And that one lynch-pin space Kris stole to prevent two large territories from combining.

What we tested...

Bow comes with one arrow

The bow is definitely better, but still feels a little weak and is definitely disposable. Maybe it should be 4/2 in addition to this change?

Animal damage doesn't carry over

One less component is definitely nice, setup time is <5 minutes. It may have happened once where damage carrying over could have effected the game. There was a nasty bear right next to the village which killed both of us which may have died eventually. But it's worth it to get rid of the extra pieces.

Poaching & Stealing

These are the rules that allow players to take 2 tiles in one turn. If there are 2 face down plants at the start of the turn, and a gatherer is able to carry them, both can be taken. If there are 2 face down small animals (bird, squirrel, rabbit) a hunter may attempt to poach them both. Failure of memory or hunting switches the player into "exploration" mode.

This rule certainly came into play, and there are some tricky exploits with the bow's 1 tile range + free movement after a kill, that will need to be explained in the rules. It wasn't decisive, but could have been. When we try losing the turn track and trading tiles for equipment 1:1 this will likely have a large impact.

To clarify / add to rules:

• Gatherers sell 1 tile at a time (this helps balance hunt vs. gather points).
• Flush fore sale equipment if there are 4 of same item

Additional notes:

• Agreed that Pouch is over-powered. Two possible solutions:
1. Increase the number of pouches in the equipment deck, but discard them once you sell what's inside.
2. Allow gatherers to collect two types of plant at a time by default.
• Meat & Hide are still getting stuck at the bottom, so Gather is out scoring Hunt (even though I killed a large excess of animals!)