Notes from Playtest One Hundred and Nineteen

Two player game at the end, scores within one point

What we tried

Moved the Bow costs back up to 5, left the damage down at 1. Arrows moved back down to 0.
As with the last test, Sling costs 2, does 2 damage.

Seasons: Summer and Fall don't give out free extra goals.

One event per season instead of two (mixed into a pile of 6 plants and animals). Three events along the western edge of the board.

• Spring: not leaving empty space next to the village.
• Summer: two spaces at the edge.
• Fall: collected the same number of plants as animals

Notes

The board at the end of Spring. We failed at the shared goal.
Dan, playing white, has almost accomplished the Summer goal.

Summer goal of claiming two edge spaces we both accomplished at the end of spring or early summer, it was too easy. I want to try 3 points for 3 edge spaces, and 1 point for two.

Fall - I was off by one so got the alternative prize of two points. Players should only score one for not fully accomplishing the goal (this one is good and hard!). Players should only have reveal their tiles if they are scoring points, that way players who do score points are the only ones that have to show un-scores tiles, which is very undesirable, especially it it's a plant.

Events are fun! Here's Cornucopia breaking hard for the active player.
The other player scored 2 points less, but the marketplace has to be just
like this.

I did something mean as a player. I think it backfired, but I hadn't seen it done before. I used an event to drop a resource (meat) to the bottom after selling my own tiles, because I knew he wanted to score that resource (a boar). This would likely only ever be done in a two player game.

Neither of us got even a single extra goal. We both accomplished our goals, and I won by a single point.

The players took about 90 minutes.

To try next

Paint the base of the miniatures red and green to tell them apart.

Put a compass rose on the board.

The weapons are good like this for a while. See my recent analysis.

Maybe one of the seasons should give out a goal? Two seasons giving them was too many. Only getting a goal by dying in the summer and fall does stop the strategy of trying to die at the start of the game, which is good.

One event per season was enough I think, considering that we blazed trails to the corners and edges to unlock the events on the board. That might be harder with more players, but I do plan to add new Gatherer equipment Moccasins to increase movement.

When spending events in the marketplace, the game should allow you to declare that you are using any number of them, and then mix and match the order you manipulate resources from any cards you play.