Nuts in Color

by Bob Garvin

Updated July 31st, 2011

Nuts, art by Bob Garvin

Atlatl In Color

by Bob Garvin

of Bob Garvin Art

Notes from Forty-fourth Playtest

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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.

More Tiles for Five or More Players

Current Tiles:
2 Squirrel
2 Rabbit
2 Deer
2 Boar (deadly)
2 Wolf (deadly)
2 Bear (deadly)
4 Nuts (values: 1,2,2,2)
4 Herbs (values: 1,2,2,2)
4 Berries (values: 1,2,2,2)

24 Tiles, 12 Plants, 12 Animals, and half of those animals are deadly. Now, to add more tiles and maintain this balance...

More Tiles:

3 Squirrel

3 Rabbit

3 Deer

3 Boar (deadly)

3 Wolf (deadly)

3 Bear (deadly)

6 Nuts (values: 1,1,2,2,2,2)

6 Herbs (values: 1,1,2,2,2,2)

6 Berries (values: 1,1,2,2,2,2)

36 Tiles, 18 Plants, 18 Animals. OK, cool, it's not that hard to keep the numbers balanced and scale up to a slightly longer game.

The next question is, do I want to make it longer? One of the important goals of this game design has been to keep the game short. I think games with lots of randomness (in this case tile drawing and dice rolling), either need to be really short, so if you're losing it doesn't drag on, or really long so that the probability has time to even itself out. If the game is currently 30-45 minutes long, increasing the tile count by half would take it from 40 to 60 minutes. Does this game work as an hour long game?

Notes from Forty-third Playtest

Final score symmetry
White: Lester, Blue: Dan, Red: Kris, Orange: Me

Crazy close game today! Lester went out to an early lead collected enough extra tiles to put pressure on the village value track. But Dan came from behind to tie him on opposite tracks, both for the highest score bonus, and lower scores. And then on the very final turn, and his second attempt, he took out a squirrel to tie for the area bonus.

Meanwhile I died a lot and Kris struggled with the score track, he beat me out by one point in the end.

Village: 2-2-3-4-5
Looks like it helped a lot with the hunt/gather balance. Hunt total was higher, but highest scores tied. If this change does work I'm not sure why I wouldn't make it 1-2-3-4-5. Nobody ever sells at that lowest value, it could just as easily be 0-2-3-4-5.

Scouting and Torch on trial
This game was also a trial run to give Scout and Torch explore one last shot. Torch will be simplified, but Scout looks like it could stay.

Dan played guinea pig and used it deliberately, spending his first two turns just gathering information. It was a come from behind battle, but in the end he caught up and tied for a win.

Now I want to start teaching the rule differently. Instead of treating Scouting as an exception, I want to teach it as a full fledged third option (Hunt, Gather, Scout), that can be used by either character under certain circumstances. I think it will add another level of strategy to the game.

July 7th Update: Things To Try Next

Talking about the Village value track and asking the question, "what am I trying to solve?" bring up an idea - once the village track gets moving, once people start selling, the game gets more interesting. What could I do to encourage that? How about one of these value sequences? 1-2-3-4-4 or 2-3-4-5-5?

Also, on a slightly related not, does anybody else think the Pouch might now be over-priced at 4? I haven't seen people buying it as much as they used to, maybe we could try lowering the cost to 3? That would open up more starting turn combinations: Pouch+Club, Pouch+Spear, or planning ahead Pouch+Arrow.

Notes from Forty-second Playtest

Beejell and Nancy

Another five player game! Cybil's mom Nancy joined us, along with Beejel and Spencer. They hadn't played in a while, but picked it up fine. Nancy's starting to get dangerous, planning ahead. Cybil's still hunting and dying, although I joined her this time in the death-respawn loop. At some point she'll figure out that the Bow and the Sling should be her favorite weapons, because they're the hardest to miss with.

Setup Rules
Had a minor breakthrough with the setup rules; simply that I should stop trying so hard to build a good random layout system. Instead I'm just going to provide different default setups based on the number of players, and then say players can make their own, as long as they do so before rolling to see who goes first.

The Torch
Played this equipment with only the "fends off animals" ability and it's just fine. The extra exploring didn't come up.

Scouting
I think it's safe to say this rule is dead. It just doesn't come up enough to merit the effort of teaching it. The most common form of failure is dying, and that already has a catch-up mechanism. Cybil died 3 times and still got second place.

5 and 6 player
This game definitely plays five, and might even play 6 players. I need so spend some time with the numbers to see what tiles I would add if I want to extend the game a little longer with more players. 24 tiles is so beautifully balanced, there are 50% plants, 50% animals, 2 of each animal and 4 of each plant. Have to maintain good balance, but not made the game too long.

Hunt vs. Gather
Hunt got the highest score again. I still need to try new village values: 2-2-3-4-5.

Notes from Forty-first Playtest

End Game

Finally a playtest with 5 players! Eddy, Dan, Lester, and Kris all joined me during lunch today. Lester won, hoarding plants and a bunch of animals and guessed correctly that Hunt would score the highest. Dan and Kris also guessed correctly. The game was so low-scoring that Dan tied for second collecting only 3 tiles. Eddy had a great poach early on, but ran into some trouble (a.k.a. lots of bears) mid-game. I did really well hunting, but drew a couple 1 value plants, pressed my luck, and died, running out of time to sell everything I'd collected and ending up with one point.

Challenges

In a 5 player game you don't get many turns
This makes it hard to recover from one bad decision or roll. But the turn still go fast enough, the game might support up to 6 with extra tiles. 

Village placement is brutal with 5 players
The current method I'm using involves rolling dice and taking the highest roll. With 5 players that means 10+, which can put the village against the top edge, which guarantees people are gonna get blocked, and also with so many players it's a long walk to clear spaces. Also as players 4 and 5 Kris and I were too chicken to put the obstacles in interesting spots. I need some simpler board setup rules. 

Hunt keeps getting the highest score
The last 3-4 games Hunt has gotten the highest score, since raising the Wolf to 3 hide, and changing the plant value distribution to 1-2-2-2. We discussed it after the game and I think it was Kris who landed on what might be the problem: the village values (currently 2-3-3-4-5) guarantee each animal gets you at least 6 points, so you can hoard a bunch and the timing doesn't matter as much when you sell them. This was exaggerated by  how few turns you get in a 5 player game. But it's close enough to balanced that I'm going to try simply changing the values to 2-2-3-4-5 and seeing if that helps. Also, even though it's counter to a lot of what I've been doing with the game, at some point I want to try a Fibonacci progression, 1-1-2-3-5 and see if player behavior acts to self-balance the points.

Torch is still too complex
The torch's second use - being able to explore a 3rd time - did come up this game for a change. And I used it quite effectively to get my gatherer killed. The goal of this last iteration of equipment design is simplification, and the torch is still effective and worth the cost as a way to fight off deadly animals without this exploration ability. I'm going to scrap this extra rule. 

Scouting hasn't come up yet
I'm striving to simplify this game as much as possible, so this rule has been on the chopping block for a while. But I want to keep it around a little while longer. First, someone (and maybe someone with a better memory than me), should try intentionally not collecting anything one turn, so that they can scout on the way back and have knowledge of 5 spaces, at the risk that others know something about 1 or 2. Second, I want to see if it really works as a catch up mechanism after a run of bad luck. Maybe Cybil will try it when Emily comes out to visit. Or else Dan's pretty good at finding the wrong thing when he's exploring.

Successes

Not too much downtime
Considering there is no simultaneous like in many modern designer games, and the only thing to do during other people's turns is memorize what is (or might be) on a face down tile, the rounds go really fast. It helps that it's fun to watch the successes and failures of the other players.

Weapon costs and abilities feel balanced
I've gone through a lot of iterations on the weapons, making them simpler, and balancing how many points they cost vs. how many points you get to start vs. how powerful they are. I'm pretty happy with where they are now. The math shows different weapons are better for different situations, and it appears to be proving out in game play, where everyone did take different weapons (and we were all successful at hunting). I think it also helps that the costs have all gone down, so there are many more opening turn options, and the cost feels like less of a detriment to playing the strategy that you want.

The rules are getting simpler
Having simplified equipment means the base game will be easier to teach. That means once I get through another draft of the rules it will be time to start working on characters! Looking forward to using them for catch-up mechanisms and end game scoring bonuses. And of course it'll back to the most entertaining part of the game design process for my playtest team, brainstorming and trying out new ideas.