Notes from Twenty-seventh, Twenty-eighth, and Twenty-ninth Playtests

left to right: Spencer and Bob

3 games with Spencer and Bob, who is going to be doing the art for this game!!

Rules & Component Notes

Teaching the game is always such a valuable experience. It's what really puts the rules to the test.

I started by walking through a couple sample turns. Then I backed up to the goals and worked my way forward again filling in details, finishing up by going over the equipment. Some people want to know the goals first, others are more interested in game play (I think this may be a boy/girl thing).

In the actual rules I think I'm going to write a thematic description of a few turns, then once the rules are explained go into the mechanics of those same turns with all the game play details.

Based on today's 3 games, here are some things I should clarify and/or fix:

• The bow's "safe distance" feature needs to be on the card.
• Whether an animal is deadly needs to be on the Exploration Tiles/Disks.
• The decision about which gathered plant goes in the Pouch should be made only after a second type is picked up.
• I need to be really clear about how the bonus points for Hunt or Gather prediction work. Or change the rule (more on that later).
• Instead of turning a card upside down to show it has been used (spear, bow, arrow) I should print them double sided with different text on each side (and clear visual queues which side starts up). That way you don't have to read upside down.
• I should put the tile distribution on the board, near the Village. That way everyone, not just the person who read the rules, has that information.
• The score track doesn't go high enough. Bob scored 42 Gather points in a game where each of us had one score track in the 30s.
• I don't need so many equipment cards, especially if I decide to have them discarded back to the supply. Having people fight over a limited supply, or be forced to try new strategies wouldn't be a bad thing.

Experiments

With the Village at one end, Spencer
(playing blue) explored the far side of the board.

The first two games we played were to learn the game, and start getting a feel for some of the strategies. The third game we decided to mix things up so that Spencer could try a counter strategy to the close-quarters fight for area majority.

We moved the village all the way to the top of the board (the white spaces in the photo to the right). As you can see, Bob (red) and I (yellow), battled it out near the village, while Spencer ran for the far end, which gave him exclusive access to the tiles he uncovered. The game was very tight, with Spencer winning by 3 points!

The Plan: based on the success of this test there are a couple things I want to do:

1. Make the board bigger. 
2. Make the village placement variable.

In order to make the board bigger I would move the Village onto its own 4"x10" board that is placed along the top edge, so that I could extend the exploration spaces all the way to the edge of the main board, and wrap the score track around both boards. I could also do two 10"x16" boards side-by-side, but that just seems too inelegant, even for a print on demand prototype.

Variable Village placement will help bring more variety to the game. The same strategies that work when play begins in one corner won't necessarily be as strong when it starts in the middle. I'm also really interested in trying a board with free-form spaces, like the Small World board.

Another Future Experiment

Sometimes the best ideas seem to come from mis-understandings of the rules as explained. What the person (in this case Bob) thought you meant ends up being more intuitive. Here's what I want to try:

• The Hunt or Gather prediction at the beginning of the game becomes not a prediction of which track will score the highest, but a personal goal for which side you will score higher on.

The hope is that this will create yet another situation of wanting to do what the other player's aren't. Maybe it's easier to score high in Gather, but if everybody else is doing that, and you're hunting, you'll have a scoring advantage in the Village.