Notes from Playtest One Hundred and Nine

A playtest with Lester, Kris, Ryan, and Dan. I watched and took notes.

What We Tried

Gatherer scoring experiment: score more than one plant tile together. Example: score a 1 herb and a 2 herbs as 3 herbs.

New Torch

My new idea for the torch is that it would push the deadly animal to the nearest empty space, and you get to explore the space you are on again. But, you have to roll a 7 and it costs 2.

New turn summary

6 events on the board in the far corners.

Players start out with points on the board, balanced but not the same:
Player one: 3 hunt, 1 gather
Player two: 1 hunt, 3 gather
Player three: 2 hunt, 2 gather
Player four: 4 hunt, 0 gather
Player five: 0 hunt, 4 gather

Plant distribution remains the same:
4x 2 point plants of each type
2x 1 point plants of each type

Notes

• Should make score track bigger and use ticket to ride score markers.
• Spending retries to move greater distances without being forced to do an explore.
• Is being able to collect lots of retries too much? Limit 1 or 3? Conclusion: no.
• Kris scored 24 points in on turn, combining tiles is probably broken. Two other players were able to add a one point tile to another tile and salvage what would otherwise been a low scoring sale. 
• The gatherer saving throw number on the deadly animals can be confused with what the hunter needs to roll.
• Idea: move deadly to attack others or on top of other tiles.
• Make sure the rules are clear that you can move a resource up from the top space or down from the bottom and nothing happens.
• Make use of discarded event tiles? Seasons?
• 36 tiles plus 12 events is too long, length of play is too much, and hard to get home at the end.
• New equipment to try: moccasins, move up to 4/5 spaces each turn.

Events

• Lester got the Sling event while carrying only a sling, pretty funny.
• Tall tree - not useful first turn.
• Village gossip, once collected does it go face down? Fun, both had collected berries.
• Fog - moved into corner
• Celestial Event, 3 is lots of goals!
• Potlatch - Kris pulled the Kris move and returned a zero cost arrow.
• Village on fire right after potlatch is madness, but cool. Can totally nerf a couple of the goals. 
• Club - your fathers favorite club?
• View from a bluff worked, gotta be paying attention. 
• New event idea: adds a village.
• Set a snare is crazy near end game without many tiles left. Lots of info revealed.
• Rabid beast. Wording is easily misread, have to decide if to simplify. 

What's next?

Don't allow combining of plant tiles when scoring.

Plant distribution to try:
2x 3 point plants of each type
3x 2 point plants of each type
1x 1 point plants of each type

Torch
Return cost to 1.