Labels

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Notes from Ninety-second, Ninety-third, and Ninety-fourth playtests

End of a 3 player game

Playtest Ninety-two

What we tried

  • New! What were once simply tar pits are now (yet to be named) events/animals/items that you can encounter as a free action
  • limit 4 goals
  • hunger cube gained when fail to find something to hunt or gather, but didn't die

Notes

The black disks were placed close to the village and most got flipped over early in the game to little effect. The four goal limit seems reasonable. The rules are still not settled about the hunger cube, some confusion about when you get one.

Conclusion

The black disks need to be moved further from the village if they are going to work as intended, to break stalemates by disrupting the market mid-game. It's good that I had a playtester who simply ran around flipping them over to show that this was a problem. Another player, looking at what they did, decided to avoid them entirely.

The points on the goals are too high, they are determining the winner, making it so that you have to seek out death on order to get at least 3 or 4 of them, because if you wait to die incidentally you won't have time to accomplish your goals.

I think the hunger cube is a definite improvement, but need to simplify it. I'll also make a spot where it goes on the player aids (A.K.A. the back of the goal cards).

played outdoors on the patio

Playtest Ninety-three

What we tried

  • black disks at least 3 spaces from the village

Notes

A two player game this time, with a player who missed the first play with the new event/animal black disks.

Conclusion

Goals certainly won the day again, those will need adjustment. I screwed up and missed one when we cut our game short, but still swung the win having four goals compared to one.

The black disks worked perfectly. They kept the supply/demand track moving, and provided fun surprises. I killed a woolly mammoth!

With both goals and black disks now requiring players to add up the trade value of their equipment, I need to define that term in the rules, and it would help if the back side of a half-used spear/arrows card had its value on it.

black disks nearly opposite to the way tar pits were 

Playtest Ninety-four

What we tried

  • black disks at least 4 spaces from a central village.
  • your hunger cube is claimed any time you don't claim a space or die

Notes

Wow, we had some really bad dice rolling this game. One thing this game really highlights sometimes is people's stubbornness, attempting the same thing over and over again piling up character deaths, going beyond maxing out their goals.

The black disks continue to play a fun role in the mid to late game.

The end of this game had the biggest rules hiccup it's run into in a while. A detail of one of the goals is in the rule book, but not on the card (some goals don't require that you score the animal/plant, but you can't have lost it by dying - a game can't rely on people's memory of events). This misunderstanding led to a change in strategy and ended in a tie game that otherwise may not have been, there's no way to know. 

Conclusion

Negative black disks are lame. I'm going to replace them with more supply/demand track disruption, and a better Potlatch Ceremony.

There doesn't seem to be any harm in collecting a hunger cube when you hunt and miss. I've always said the worst thing that can happen in this game is when you go hunting, miss, but don't die.

Next step is definitely to revisit the points that goals award, and expand the text on the cards.


No comments:

Post a Comment