Notes from Forty-fourth Playtest

Click to Enlarge

Eddy (playing white) pulled off his first win! It was close though, came down to the last few actions where he sealed his area majority bonuse even after Kris pulled ahead in regular play points. I had a few bad rolls at inopportune times and lost momentum. Dan likewise got stuck between a couple bad options, and chose the one that got him killed carrying loaded pouch.

Today's Experiments

Village values: 1-2-3-4-4
Everyone's convinced that the low bottom value has a negative impact on Gatherer tile sales. I don't think it actually comes up that often that selling a second tile of the same type makes much difference. But I did notice that there was less pressure to sell because the values were lower, and there were more spots at the highest slot, which meant there wasn't the clear and obvious "it's at 5, sell now!"

End result was it didn't have the intended effect, and Hunt won the highest score again.

Pouch doesn't get discarded
This helped bring them into play by justifying the high cost (4 points), but they're still really expensive and risky too, 6 points is a lot for a Pouch + Torch, more even than Atlatl + Spear is now.

To Try Next

Village: 2-2-3-3-4 (Kris' suggestion)
Since the numbers are so small, one point either way makes a meaningful difference. The hope is that this opens up more opportunities to sell even when things are a ways down the track, but still provides that driving incentive of a single highest value spot. But at the same time maybe it'll be a bit more turn order friendly with the values not going as low. Right now if you get stuck with the same type of tiles as other players, and they sell first, you're hosed. These numbers hopefully provide more opportunities to sell. Even if meat and hide are at the 2 and 3 spots near the bottom, you can still get decent points.

Pouch costs 3, and is not discarded when emptied. My theory is we can increase Gather scores by providing better Gather equipment. There will be new opening turn options, Pouch+Club, Pouch+Spear, even Pouch+Arrow if you're feeling like gambling. But my hope is that Pouch+Torch is still expensive enough that everybody doesn't play them both all the time again.