Thursday, September 29, 2011

It's about damned time!

I have good news!

After 10 months of waiting for artwork, manufacturing, and shipping... experiencing delay after delay for one thing or another and disgruntled fans and customers (both reasonable and unreasonable)... I am ECSTATIC to report that people are FINALLY starting to receive their copies of Eminent Domain!

Woo Hoo! I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I'm looking forward to a wave of reviews, session reports, and strategy posts on BGG, hopefully positive.

Happy gaming!

Monday, September 26, 2011

The long wait is finally over... for some people anyway

Last week I got news that the boat had landed, and all of Tasty Minstrel's games had arrived in the warehouse (ahead of schedule for once)! I was sworn to secrecy, but today it was announced that the Kickstarter copies started shipping out last Friday! That means people in the eastern US will probably be getting their copies any second now, while people like me on the west coast will be receiving their copies in the next couple of days.

I know the international orders will still take a while to arrive - I wish there were a better system for that. Hopefully there will come a time when TMG has a distribution partner, or a warehouse, in Europe and some of each print run can be sent directly there rather than sending it back and forth across the globe.

I have heard that our exclusive surprise for Kickstarters DID make it into the shipments, so Kickstarter supporters should be receiving those along with their copy of the game.

I look forward to seeing reviews, session reports, and strategy posts at BGG and Boardgaming.com starting to pop up this week!


In other news... My friend David (designer of Ground Floor, coming soon from TMG) helped me put together this official rules sheet for the Bonus planets:


This will be available in the files section of BGG as well as on PlayTMG.com in the near future. I think it looks great, and I love that it matches the rulebook.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Quarriors play at Strategicon: recap

I played a game of Quarriors at Strategicon about a week ago. Here's how it went:

3 player game, me going first.
Turn 1: I rolled enough Quiddity to bu some 3vp blue die which had the special ability of drawing additional dice after it scored.

Turn 2: I rolled 3 Pawns, and activated them all.

Turn 3: Score 3 points, cull 3 dice. Rolled the Blue die, which came up creature and killed the Pawn one opponent had played. I think I bought another Pawn as well.

One opponent bought a Red creature die. That die came up 2 or 3 times, but never rolled the creature side the whole game.

Turn 4: Score 3 points, cull 1 die, drew 1 extra die (from Blue die ability). Rolled something unimpressive, I think I bought a Portal or another Pawn or something.

Turn 5: Rolled the Blue die again, came up Creature again, killed 1 of opponent's 2 pawns, killed the other opponent's pawn. I think I also activated a Pawn.

One opponent finally scored 1 point (not the one who bought the red creature die).

Turn 6: Score 4 points, cull 2 dice, draw additional 2 dice (from Blue die ability). I think I activated a Pawn or 2.

Turn 7: Rolled the blue creature die a 3rd time, came up creature side for a 3rd time. Also rolled 2 Pawns.

This game was over at 15-1-0, I made 1 choice (buy the blue die) and was completely hopeless for both opponents. I'm not sure if it mattered WHICH die I chose, the fact that it came up Creature every time and my opponents dice didn't meant I was going to win no matter what.

I'm not terribly impressed with Quarriors. I'm just sayin'...

EmDo Expansion update - part 2

I just posted some thoughts about the EmDo expansion. The purpose of this post is to start revising the tech cards and stuff that I would like to include in the expansion, and some of the specifics.

Cross-type Techs
Level 1 (2 different required planets)
Double Time
Action: Play 2 more cards during your Action phase this turn.
Symbols: Colonize/Water (can discard this card as if it were a resource in your Empire)
Cost: 3 Research
Pre Req: Advanced/Metallic

Double Time
Action: Play 2 more cards during your Action phase this turn.
Symbols: Produce/Food(can discard this card as if it were a resource in your Empire)
Cost: 3 Research
Pre Req: Advanced/Metallic

Double Time
Action: Play 2 more cards during your Action phase this turn.
Symbols: Research/Silicon (can discard this card as if it were a resource in your Empire)
Cost: 3 Research
Pre Req: Fertile/Metallic

Double Time
Action: Play 2 more cards during your Action phase this turn.
Symbols: Trade/Silicon (can discard this card as if it were a resource in your Empire)
Cost: 3 Research
Pre Req: Fertile/Metallic

Double Time
Action: Play 2 more cards during your Action phase this turn.
Symbols: Warfare/Iron (can discard this card as if it were a resource in your Empire)
Cost: 3 Research
Pre Req: Advanced/Fertile

Double Time
Action: Play 2 more cards during your Action phase this turn.
Symbols: Survey/Iron (can discard this card as if it were a resource in your Empire)
Cost: 3 Research
Pre Req: Advanced/Fertile

Level 2 (3 different required planets)
Synthesize
Action: Search your deck and discard pile for any card, put it in your hand, and shuffle the rest to create a new deck. Play another Action.
Symbol: Any Resource (can discard this card as if it were a resource in your Empire)
Cost: 5 Research
Pre Req: Advanced/Fertile/Metallic

Deep Space Probes
Action: Search the Planet deck and discard pile for any card, shuffle the rest to create a new Planet deck, and put the chosen card on top.
Symbol: Any Resource (can discard this card as if it were a resource in your Empire)
Cost: 5 Research
Pre Req: Advanced/Fertile/Metallic

Warfare Techs
Level 1 (cost 3 Fighters - Maybe OR 3 Research?)
Improved Colonize
Action: Same as Improved Colonize
Symbols: Colonize/Fighter (can discard this card as if it were a fighter in your Empire)
Cost: 3 Fighters
Pre Req: Fertile

Improved Production
Action: Same as Improved Production
Symbols: Produce/Fighter (can discard this card as if it were a fighter in your Empire)
Cost: 3 Fighters
Pre Req: Fertile

Improved Trade
Action: Same as Improved Trade
Symbols: Trade/Fighter (can discard this card as if it were a fighter in your Empire)
Cost: 3 Fighters
Pre Req: Advanced

Improved Research
Action: Same as Improved Research
Symbols: Research/Fighter (can discard this card as if it were a fighter in your Empire)
Cost: 3 Fighters
Pre Req: Advanced

Improved Survey
Action: Same as Improved Survey
Symbols: Survey/Fighter (can discard this card as if it were a fighter in your Empire)
Cost: 3 Fighters
Pre Req: Metallic

Improved Warfare
Action: Same as Improved Warfare
Symbols: Warfare/Fighter (can discard this card as if it were a fighter in your Empire)
Cost: 3 Fighters
Pre Req: Metallic

Level 2 (cost 2 Destroyers?)
Cryptography
Action: Draw 3 cards, then return up to 2 cards from hand to the Stacks.
Symbols: Fighter/Fighter (can discard this card as if it were 2 fighters in your Empire)
Cost: 2 Destroyers
Pre Req: ??

Other New Techs
Wealth of Knowledge (?)
Permanent: Your standard Survey cards can be used to Boost or Follow any Role.
Symbols: None - Permanent
Cost: 2 Destroyers? 5 Research?
Pre Req: 2 Metallic

OR

Wealth of Knowledge (?)
Action: Your standard Survey cards can be used to Boost any Role this turn.
Symbols: Survey/Iron? Survey/Fighter?
Cost: 2 Destroyers? 5 Research?
Pre Req: 2 Metallic

Thorough Scanning
Permanent: You may look at 2 fewer planets per Survey Role. If you do, keep 1 additional Planet.
Symbols: None - Permanent
Cost: 2 Destroyers? 5 Research?
Pre Req: 2 Metallic

Biosphere
Permanent: [Silicon Resource Slot] [Iron Resource Slot].
Symbols: None - Permanent
Cost: 2 Destroyers? 5 Research?
Pre Req: 2 Fertile

Scientific Method (Discovery?)
Permanent: You may purchase 1 additional Tech card each Research Role. Pay for each card separately (both cost and pre-reqs).
Symbols: None - Permanent
Cost: 2 Destroyers? 5 Research?
Pre Req: 2 Advanced

OR

Scientific Method (Discovery?)
Action: -1 Research cost for each Tech Card you purchase this turn. You may purchase 1 additional Tech card this turn. Pay for each card separately (both cost and pre-reqs).
Symbols: Research/Silicon? Silicon/Fighter?
Cost: 2 Destroyers? 5 Research?
Pre Req: 2 Advanced

Specialized Production
Action: Choose a resource type. Collect 1 Influence for each resource of that type you produce this turn.
Symbols: Produce/Food? Produce/Fighter?
Cost: 2 Destroyers? 5 Research?
Pre Req: 2 Fertile

Military Tactics
Permanent: -1 to your Warfare costs.
Symbols: None - Permanent
Cost: 2 Destroyers?
Pre Req: 2 Metallic?
[This is similar to - probably worse than - Scorched Earth Policy I thought it would be good if it costs Destroyers rather than Research)

Fighter Upgrade
Action: Discard X Fighters, collect 1 Destroyer [maybe X = 0]. Discard X Destroyers, collect 1 Dreadnaught.
Symbols: Fighter/Fighter?
Cost: 2 Destroyers? 5 Research?
Pre Req: ??

EmDo Expansion update

Last time I posted about the EmDo expansion I mentioned that I was worried about the Exotic stuff, and preferred the idea of differentiating the resources more by making things cost resources. I thought maybe some tech cards could cost resources, and some planets could cost resources - and the specific resource costs would require players to get particular planets into play in order to afford them.

I whipped up a few such tech cards, as well as some techs that cost Fighters instead of Research symbols, some that require 2 different planet types, and some that contain a resource in lieu of a symbol (you can discard that card from our hand just like discarding a resource token from a resource slot in your Empire). Tonight I played a couple games with John, and got a chance to feel out how these cards felt.

The Good
I did get a feeling of exploration again while I tried to figure out ways to use these new technologies. Many of them were just Improved [X] techs, just like the level 1 techs, but the different costs meant you could get them without focusing on Research. For example, in the first game I spent my first 2 turns collecting 3 Fighters so that I could follow John's turn 2 Research even though I had nit flipped over my planet yet. While I'm not sure I actually want people to be able to do research without a planet in play, I do like the idea of a player not having to add research cards to their deck in order to get some tech cards.

The Bad
I constantly found it annoying and irritating to have a pile (even just a small pile) of tech cards with specific individual costs. It's a pain in the ass to remember which is which, and what costs what. I specifically chose to make all the level 1/2/3 tech cards cost the same thing (3/5/7 Research) to avoid this type of thing. As a result, I did not like the tech cards that cost specific resources.

The Ugly
Furthermore, in exploring the different ways to make the different resources do different things or acting different ways, I think I've decided that it's not worth doing. It represents a change to the fundamental design of the game, and no amount of monkey wrenching will make it feel right to me. It was worth a shot, but I think trying to add inherent meaning to the resource types is a mistake, considering that the game was built on th premise that the types themselves are not inherently different.

The correct way to make it matter that there are different types of resources is to provide more things like Specialization, Diverse Markets, and Genetic Engineering. To that end, I have come up with a new technology:

Specialized Production
Action: Choose a resource type. +1 Influence for each resource of that type you produce this turn.

Another type of thing I've had in mind to emphasize the importance of having one resource over another is like the Agendas I've discussed before. One thing I tried tonight (though in the 2 games we played neither John nor I made use of it) was a global effect (like an Agenda) in play from the beginning of the game. This one was called Trade Leader, and said "When leading a Trade role you may put the first resource traded onto this card (replacing any already there) instead of trading it. Resources of that type trade for +1vp." This affects the value of the resource type for ALL players, and anybody can change it if they want. I realized during play that I think you should be allowed to use a Trade Action to activate that agenda as well. I think it might be good to add one (some?) of these sorts of global effects to the 1st expansion as standard, then later in an expansion focusing on Agendas, add more and the Politics role to deal with getting them into play.


Techs that cost fighters
On the other hand, as I said, I did enjoy the techs that cost fighters. The fact that they can cost the same amount - 3 fighters for an Improved tech for example - but not require a big investment in Research. So I think those (or some form of them) will stay. They fit better into my vision of the expansion anyway.

The first draft techs of this type were simply the Improved Techs, with a cost of 3 Fighters and no planet requirement. I think I will add back on the planet requirement, and I'm toying with the idea of adding a Fighter icon to the native icon... meaning you could discard the card during an Attack action like it were a Fighter in your Empire. Thus, doing warfare based research gets you a tech card that can be used as a Fighter.

While I have not done it yet, I still plan on introducing Destroyers and Dreadnaughts (medium and large ships), and I think it follows that Level 2 warfare based tech would cost 1 Destroyer, or 2, or 1 plus some fighters... something like that. Level 3 warfare tech would cost a Dreadnaught. I'm considering various ways to go about obtaining Destroyers and Dreadnaughts, so the exact cost for the level 2/level 3 techs will depend on that.

Double Time
Play 2 additional cards during this Action phase
Of the few people who had playtested the Exotic expansion (and told me about it), the Double Time cards seemed universally popular. Everybody likes to play more cards, take more actions, do more things! I modified those for this playtest to remove the Exotic icon (replacing it with a resource icon), and put 2 different planet types on them. Requiring 2 different planet types is not much different than requiring just 1 planet, it's just more available to a player who begins setting up for a varied planet 'strategy' as opposed to the normal thing to do which is to double up on your start planet if you intend to go the research route (because the level 2 tech requires 2 of the same planet type). Also, it's not available from turn 2 because you do need a 2nd planet in play.

On that note, I think any Level 2 techs I add of this type should require 1 planet of each of the three main types (Fertile, Metallic, and Advanced).

Thursday, September 08, 2011

KoA&S, Alter Ego, Nottingham, and a TMG submission

Here's a little update on a couple of things:

Kings of Air and Steam
I got a good playtest session of Kings of Air and Steam in at Gateway last weekend. A 5 player game (I watched) where each player seemed to like the game. It dragged a little longer than I'd like, but not too bad - 5 players, learning rules, and a convention atmosphere took about 2:45. I was able to try some of the new rules Scott and I have been discussing, and I think they are working out very well. Tuning them a little further, here is what I think I will try next time:

* Cube values will range from $5-$9
* Depots will cost $5 for the first person to buy one, and $10 otherwise (this may prove to be too much) rather than $4/$6/$8.
* Passive income a straight $5 (used $3 last time, rather than an increasing amount). I thought maybe multiples of $5 would make it easier physically to play the game.
* No upkeep - with the 2nd+ Depot on each link costing $10, I don't know if it's really necessary to pay upkeep on your cubes.
* $15 starting cash (to help pay for the more expensive Depots)
* 1vp/$1, 10vp/Depot (same as 1vp/$10, 1vp/Depot, but maybe easier to count)

Alter Ego
I finally got a chance to play a couple rounds of Alter Ego, the latest version I posted about. My friend Jason and I played through a couple of turns each so I could see how the game flow felt. I thought it went really well. Now to re-do the villain deck again, and the equipment cards. Jason suggested that he liked the idea of a staged villain deck, maybe with some mini-bosses in it (which could be like the more expensive villains I currently have.

One clarification I thought about was that while players need to be able to attack more than 1 bad guy at a time, I think a bad guy with 2 hostages should only be able to be attacked once per turn. Their whole point is that they take more turns to defeat.

Another thing I noticed was that the Arch Villains being known from the outset - while good in theory - may not apply here. Since Alter Ego has become a cooperative game where you can help your buddies attack the bad guys, it's not so important to build your deck toward a specific endgame goal. So it may be necessary to address that somehow. Ideas for that:

* Maybe each player has a Nemesis which only they must face alone
* The Arch Villains could have interesting abilities, such as "Can only be faced by 2 Heroes at a time" or "Must be faced by a lone hero"
* ... other?

Nottingham
At Spielbany last April I played a cooperative game by Richard James called Nottingham. It was originally made for a Robin Hood themed Game Design Showdown at BGDF.com, and featured a neat theme where the players are on the side of Prince John, while a potential traitor would be on Robin Hood's side.

Tonight I played a new, revised version of the game, and I must say I think it's improved. It has a deck building mechanism which was interesting in that a good penalty for certain things was putting a junk card in your deck - though I'm not sure the deck building was utilized to the fullest. A relatively large part of the cooperation involved passing cards to other players decks, which was interesting. The game was a bit fiddly to play, but mostly that's because the prototype was not fully constructed - the fronts and backs of tiles were not connected, etc. I think with proper production it would be acceptable though. I liked a lot of stuff about the game, the 2 main 'problems' as far as I was concerned were...
1. Balance. The Merry Men's plots were weak (on purpose I think), and we were able to keep everything in check with no problems. The difficulty didn't seem to match our ability to do stuff and we were able to breeze through the game. However, I think this could just be a matter of tweaking things like the number of cards players get to hold, and how many plots (and what their exact effects) are. I did like how the plots usually had an effect who's intensity depended on the number of active plots in play.

Richard, if you're reading this: One thing that I think might be neat is if the plots did not get cleared at the end of each round - only when they're addressed by the players. Then the players would have to deal with them, and if they don't, the effects will snowball out of control. tonight it seemed like we could largely ignore the plots and just keep down the Merry Men and Corruption tracks (and we only ever got a couple Merry men in play). I also think it would be neat if one of the Outlaw cards was Robin Hood himself, always in play, and uncatchable - who's effect is to add like 2 Merry Men to the track.

2. The bigger problem I had was the turn structure. Jason said the point was to have players sort of pre-plan all the turn's actions, then after the plan is made, players take their turns. Jason and I were playing 2 characters each, and that might have made it more complicated - but we spent a lot of time planning out a turn, then still made mistakes by playing it out differently than we'd planned. It seemed like adding AP to the game on purpose. And with 11 cards per player (we quickly advanced the track that says how many cards you draw), there were a lot of combinations of options to consider.

One idea I had was to break that up - don't give players all of their cards right away, so they cannot plan out their whole round in advance. That might help, but I'm not sure.

the turn structure as it is does not seem like it would lend itself very well to a traitor (which is supposed to be an option for when there's more than 1 player).

TMG submission
Finally, I played a short dice drafting game submitted to TMG. It's not professional to talk about submissions, so I won't do that anymore - the game was neat though. It was a little easy to accidentally make an illegal play (both Jason and I did that), but maybe that's fine, players just need to be a little careful they don't do that.

Sidetracked!

I SHOULD be working on EmDo expansions, Alter Ego, Kings of Air and Steam, Exhibit, Dice Works, etc...

Meanwhile though, I have been distracting myself with yet another deck building game idea. I thought of another game using deck building - this one was going to be a more typical style deck builder at first, but when it came down to the details, I could not bring myself to copy Dominion. So instead it's more like the Research mechanism from Eminent Domain broken out on its own.

Skyline
The game is called Skyline, and in it you use deck building to add cards to your deck, collect sets of cards in your hand, and use them to put those cards into play as buildings. The idea mostly came from the visual concept of the cards with silhouettes of a building on them, so when stacks of these cards are splayed side by side, it would look like a downtown skyline.

Here's a rundown of the game in its current form (obviously subject to change, as I have not tried it yet!):

Game turn:
Architect Phase: Play a card for it's effect, or draw 1 card.
Bid Phase: Play cards to purchase a card from the display, or draw 1 card.
Construction Phase: Play a card onto your tableau (pay by discarding cards), or draw 1 card.
Design Phase: Draw 1 card

In each phase you can EITHER play cards, OR draw a card (obviously in the Design Phase you just draw a card). This is instead of refilling your hand at the end of the turn. I don't know if that will work, but it sounded like a neat change to me.

Cards in the display will be from 5 face down stacks - one each for 0-cost, 2-cost, 3-cost, 4-cost, and 5-cost. Each stack has cards in some number of colors (5 or 6 probably). The more expensive the card, the more VP it's worth and the better the effect on it. The cost is the number of cards of that color which must be discarded to purchase the card, or to play the card to the table. Currently I'm thinking that except for the 0-cost pile (building bases, what you need to start a building), the stacks will each be shuffled and the top card revealed and available for purchase. there might need to be more cards available, I'm not sure yet.

That's the idea anyway. I hope to create some cards and give it a try soon. I'm sure you'll hear more about it at some point.

Aaaaaand another one...

Skyline has not been my only distraction. Just today I was inspired while reading the review of Funkenschlag: The First Spark on Opinionated Gamers. I thought of a resource gathering mechanism (which is completely unrelated to Funkenschlag). Tonight I created some hex tiles and sorted some meeples and wooden discs to give it a try.

The basic idea in this one is that you lay out an array of hexes, each with radial lines dividing the hex into 6 'spaces,' and a circle of color in the center. When joined, these lines create spaces for meeple placement, each touching 2 of the circles. After a few rounds of worker placement, players use the resources (colored circles) their meeples are touching to build some "technology" or "building". Also, each circle could have a token on it, maybe a 1-shot resource of a particular type (like the resource cubes in Olympos), or maybe 1-shot abilities (like the tiles in Hansa Teutonica).

That's about as far as I've got on this idea. Who knows if it will get anywhere.