Notes from Thirteenth Playtest

Dan dies!

We changed the end game bonuses, removing the "highest score" bonus entirely, and reducing the "largest terretory" and H || G bonus to 5 points each.

This worked well, they feel more like tie breaks now than deciding factors. There's an increased concern about catch-up, and whether the winner will be a surprise, especially after Kris failing to kill a squirrel for 4 turns, giving up, and then his gatherer went and got killed by a bear.

We increased the amount of hidden information. The only thing you have to reveal now are deadly animals. This decreases the amount of poaching, adds a nice bluffing element, and requires just as much memory.

We adjusted the animal Hide & Meat values. Squirrel and Rabbit were worth 1 for each. Deer and Bear were worth 2 for each. Wolf was worth 3 Hide, Boar was worth 3 Meat. It's crazy, but the supply/demand thing really works with this market! By decreasing those numbers demand remained high, and we almost maxed-out the Hunt score track.

We made pouches disposable. Having a pouch was too much of an advantage. Now they are discarded after you sell what's in them.

Prototype Game Tactics

I'll be the first to admit that I am a very tactical player when it comes to board games. I find my day job provides enough intellectual challenge that when it comes to playing games I just want to have fun, not plan 5 moves ahead. But I've been having enough success at this game that we discussed today what it is I've been doing to win.

1. Watch the Market. Sell when your tiles are near the top, but don't get too greedy and wait for them to be in the very top slot.
2. Watch what the other players have. If nobody else has killed a big animal, hold onto yours as long as you can until someone does, then sell immediately.
3. Buy only the equipment you need. This game is short, points are precious. (at this time an equipment card costs 3 points)
4. Take calculated risks. When you have nothing to lose, charge after that bear with a club! When you've already bagged a kill but aren't ready to sell, maybe poaching a rabbit would be a better idea.
5. Keep an eye on the end game scoring bonuses. They are currently over-valued :P

Of course these strategies will change as the rules are fine tuned. And luck does play a large part in the game, a good or bad roll at a critical moment can mean the difference between bagging that bear, or an inopportune death.

Notes from Twelfth Playtest

Playtest with 3 players fit easily during a lunch break (not worrying about time anymore, that issue is solved).

We tried this whole big experiment where we split the animals into "small game" and "large game". It may have worked ok mechanically, but doesn't make any sense with the theme.

Also, we're starting to pick apart why it is I seem to win every game by 20-30 points. We know the "bonus" points are too high, but there are definitely some strategies I was using, it's not entirely luck.

To Clarify:

• Gatherer swapping - what if you didn't know what was on the spot? Starting to suspect this rule might cause more confusion than it's worth considering how rarely it comes up, but I'll see how it plays when there's more hidden information.

To Try Next:

• Fix the animal Meat & Hide numbers (lower Bear, higher Bird)
• When exploring keep more information hidden, don't reveal tiles that you leave behind on the board.
• Weaker Atlatl - just +1 damage, no "to hit" bonus. It was too good a bear killer, and too rare.
• Pouches are disposable. Once you sell what was in it, discard it.

To Try Later:

• Lower point bonuses (maybe remove high score bonus entirely). Maybe try this next.
• Animals might be sold for either Meat or Hide.
• Free equipment! Maybe instead of buying equipment, you just get one card free every time you go to the market?

Notes from Eleventh Playtest

Playtest with 4 people ran 35 minutes (not including rules teach, which has gotten much faster, even if I did leave out some details - sorry Eddy).


Observations:

• Meat & Hide still lose value very quickly in the Market
• The pattern that appears to win the most games is Spear + Atlatl to kill a Bear, then wait until Meat & Hide have an average value >3 and sell.
• 4 spaces movement still works, but you can pretty much cover the whole (explored) board
• Point bonuses are definitely too high. They should be tie breaks, not make you (or rather me, sorry guys) win by 30 points.

Suggestions:

• Reduce or even remove some point bonuses (point bonus for having highest score may be redundant, even though it's low score that gives you points)
• Simplify animals to be either Small Game or Large Game (would a bear be 2x large game?) instead of Meat & Hide in the market
• Let's revisit Equipment. If Pouches and Atlatls are so key to victory, there aren't enough of them, or they should be weaker (maybe both).

Starting to Think About Components

Added a Components section to the rules. Looking at maybe using The Game Crafter and/or Superior POD to make print-on-demand prototypes, neither appears to have a minimum quantity, which is great because ideally I'd like to print 1, work out the kinks, and then print 5-10 to send around for blind playtesting.

• Game Board - game crafter does 10" x 10" boards, which is modest, but may work since we're down to 24 tiles. May do a separate floating board for the Market. Score tracks could go around that or the main board.
• Dice - 3 per player would be cool, but not realistic.
• Player Boards - I scrapped these already. They'd be nice but haven't been necessary.
• Prediction cards - such low quantity, may source these separately and distribute among several copies, or come up with an alternate component to hide this decision. 
• Player Pawns - could be used for the score track, or could use cubes if can color match. Game Crafter has two types so those will work for Hunters and Gatherers.
• Exploration Tiles - this is the key feature missing from Game Crafter, but Superior POD has them at 5/8" size.
• Claim Markers - this could be tiles or anything that's flat and matches the player colorse.
• Equipment Cards - next to-do is to knock this down to 30 (three per character per player = 3 * 2 * 5)

Notes from Tenth Playtest

Playtest with 3 players ran 40 minutes with 24 tiles (plus once more around).

Kris rolls a 3 on 3d6 and dies!

What we tested:

1. Removed the turn track. Game ends after the Explore Tiles run out, and everyone gets one last turn.
2. Equipment is fixed cost at 3 points each, with no selling.
3. The average value of the plant tiles was increased. See blog post on Tile Distribution.

Observations:

1. It worked! The increased quantity of plants drove down their value and created more movement in the Market.
2. There is definitely more opportunity for hidden information to cut down on grabbing stuff that other people find when they're the wrong role.
3. The advanced rules for poaching & stealing (where you can collect 2 tiles in a turn) are probably not necessary, it just doesn't come up that often.

Losing the Turn Track - Tile Distribution

I need to get rid of the turn track. The game already has 2 score tracks, and it's hard to remember to move the tile along that track. Also, with fixed turns there's no way for players to effect the end game, no way to speed it up or slow it down.

The clearest solution is to end the game after the Exploration Tiles run out (plus maybe once more around so everyone gets a chance to visit the Market one last time). But to do this I'm going to have to figure out how to shrink the number of tiles and keep them balanced between plant/animal.

Here are some possibilities from crunching the numbers, given a target of somewhere around 24-40 total tiles, 3 different kinds of plants, and 5-7 different kinds of animals (removing Birds and/or Squirrels). I'm also trying to increase the average value of individual plant tiles, to decrease the demand for them.

1. I could go with 3x of 7 different animals, plus 7x of 3 different plants for a total of 41 tiles.
2. I could go with 3x of 6 different animals, plus 6x of 3 different plants for a total of 36 tiles.
3. I could go with 2x of 6 different animals, plus 4x of 3 different plants for a total of 24 tiles.

My initial thought was 36 looks good, that's almost exactly half the current 70 tile board, and we go through half the stack in a game, right? But then I pulled out the board, eyeballed about how much of the 10x7 board we do actually fill, and it's really like a 5x5 box in the middle, so the 24 tiles is probably where I should start.

I'll venture some plant distributions for both 24 and 36 tiles anyway:

24 tile stack:

• 1x plant (value 3)
• 2x plant (value 2)
• 1x plant (value 1)

For each of Nuts, Herbs, and Berries.

36 tile stack:

• 2x plant (value 3)
• 3x plant (value 2)
• 1x plant (value 1)

Also for each of Nuts, Herbs, and Berries. I could just as easily have gone with 2 of each for the 36 tile stack.