Notes from Sixty-fifth Playtest

Dan "Wolf Bait" Grayson pulls a tie out of nowhere

This game continues to surprise us. Dan, living up to his playtest nickname, went out gathering and found every wolf in the game all right around the village, and got himself killed 3 times. But with those 3 deaths came 3 extra secret goals, which he somehow accomplished with only 4 disks collected, and those goals translated into a surprise win in a tight 4 player game.

Of course Kris, bitter at being caught by surprise, figured out how Lester could use his Copy Cat goal to score a single point from one of Dan's goals, bringing up the need for a tie break rule.

Other fixes: We found a printing error on the deer tile, the "to hit" number was 12 instead of 10. I should make note of the number you need to roll to escape a deadly animal on the player aids. I might even consider putting "draw 2, keep 1" on the goal cards. I also want to add a graphic to remind players that arrows and spears should be flipped over when used. I also want to re-think the disk and player colors. The orange and red score cubes are too close in color, and the green disks look like player colors. I want to use white for the exploration disks, and green for a player color if possible, then I can use black for village value, village, and tar pits.

I might do some more tweaking of the equipment. I'm thinking about adding a 5th pouch so that the last player has the option of getting one, should all the players before him pick one up. But that brings up another issue. My playtest team's "group think" is currently that pouch + spear is the best opening equipment choice. And this may well be true, a pouch makes gathering much easier, buying you more time to wait for the village demand to be right. The spear, while not the best odds to hit, works against a large variety of animals. And if the character does die you get another 3 points worth of equipment (more than the 1 the spear cost) and a choice of a new goal.

What I'm considering is raising the cost of the spear to 2 points, and lowering the atlatl down to 3. That still keeps spear+atlatl beyond the starting equipment allotment, but leaves it a viable strategy. But I'll have to look at what the new viable openings would be. Maybe it would be best if players were given fewer starting options to encourage people to have to go back for more equipment rather than play out the game with their initial choices.