Liar's Auction revisited

About 2 years ago I had an idea to build a bigger game out of the mechanic that is Liar's Dice. I discussed it with a friend, and we worked on a game using a multiple Liar's Dice Auction that I came up with... he didn't want me to discuss the game, so I didn't. I kept a blog post describing the early version of the game unpublished so as not to break his confidence or anything...

Well, that friend disappeared - left town and didn't reply to emails or phone calls. He eventually moved back to town, but still didn't contact me or return calls - the last I spoke to him he sounded disappointed that the Liar's Dice auction game (as well as another game we were working on together) couldn't be finished. I replied that I'm still here, and still interested in working on them, but that hasn't promoted any further contact.

So while I liked the direction that game was going, I have decided to take my Liar's Dice auction mechanism and do something else with it. I don't feel this is a moral no-no because it was my idea, and I'm not re-using game I was collaborating with that guy on - just the main mechanism I'd come up with for it.

In discussing a different possible theme for this mechanism in BGDF chat, someone suggested time travel. Frankly, the idea of getting to a location (in time) after an incident occurs but before anybody else is the closest thematic match I have heard of for the Liar's Dice mechanism, which is basically a "guess closest to the right number without going over" thing. It isn't as perfectly clean when going back in time, but I think it's close enough to say that you don't want to disrupt things and cause paradoxes, so only the player going back to a point just before an item is rumored to have disappeared (destroyed, stolen, damaged, lost) is the player that gets to take it... that way the general public might not notice any difference.

What I'm getting at here - and I bet it's not clear - is that players will be curators of futuristic museums. Time travel has just been discovered, and as a result you have the unique opportunity to exhibit some of the world's lost treasures for the first time in your museum! Each round information will surface on 6 different artifacts from the past, each of which was thought damaged, destroyed, or lost forever... doing some research to find out exactly where and when these items disappeared, players will calibrate their time machines and send explorers to grab the items before they get lost or destroyed. It's imperative not to change history, so only the player who gets closest to the time at which history dictates the item goes missing is allowed to take the item. If you don't go back far enough, the item will already be gone, and if you go back too far and take the item, history will change (and you can't risk that!)

Maybe better is this blurb:

With the advent of Time Travel, museum curators have procured prototype time machines, and will use them to go back in time and "save" precious cultural artifacts that - until now - have been lost to history (damaged, destroyed, or lost forever). But it's very important not to cause a paradox, or let people know the item still exists - so only the player who arrives closest to the time the item is thought to have disappeared will be able to take it!

Furthermore, as time travel becomes more widespread, rumors of future technology surface, and players can attempt to go forward in time and procure them for their own use (only the player that arrives first, after the point it's invented, will get it).

The game will be about set collection then. Your museum will have maybe 5 Exhibits, and you need to collect items to put in the exhibits. Maybe for example Green indicates ancient Mayan civilization... so you collect Green artifacts (from the Green auction) and will score for them. One main scoring thought I had before (and would like to continue to use) is that winning one auction makes you better at winning that auction again, but winning the same auction over and over is less and less lucrative. For example, your 1st/2nd/3rd Mayan artifact might be worth 5/4/3 victory points. Therefore getting three different artifacts is worth more than getting three of the same artifact. However, having a Mayan artifact may give you more information about the Mayan culture, and help you to correctly calibrate your time machine when going after other Mayan artifacts (having a green item allows you to count 1 additional Green die when resolving an auction, usable only by you).

I like the dichotomy of getting better at winning the same auction again but having incentive to try and win a different auction.

I mentioned "technologies" from the future - those would be not artifacts that score points, but rather items that give you bonus abilities, like the ability to re-roll some dice before the bidding phase of the auction, or the ability to swap items with an opponent or something.

So now I just need to rethink some of the abilities that could be needed in this game, and maybe come up with some cultures such as the Mayans to draw from... doesn't have to be extremely historically accurate - after all, each item in the game is one that is not supposed to exist, so I can make them all up!

Maybe 5 cultures, and 1 color always representing a futuristic technology - thus 5 exhibits per player. I'm liking this theme more and more!

Cow Tipping details

I had a few thoughts today about Cow Tipping... I don't know whether they are good ideas or not at this point, but I think they are worth considering. There are 2 different ideas, completely unrelated...

1. Numbers on cards are highly anti-thematic. You're allegedly recruiting a gang of cows, so what's the deal with cards with numbers on them? Suppose instead that the cards simply had 1 of 7 or 8 different cows pictured. Then instead of a Set of like ranked cows or a Run of several cow cards in numerical order in the same suit, there would simply be "All the same suit" gangs and "All different suit" gangs.

I'll note that if you look at Rank instead of Suit in the current version of the game, a Set gang (all the same Rank) is just like the proposed "All same suit" gang. In the current game there are 5 suits, 7 ranks. So a Set gang would be the same as a "Same Suit gang" if there were 7 suits.

It would be much easier however to get a Run gang (All different suits), because it would not require a specific numerical ordering. Therefore the tipping costs would have to increase for that type of gang.

The purpose here is two-fold: Get rid of the antithematic numbers on the cards, and make more nice pictures of cow characters. As an added bonus, it might be easier to grasp how to make a set for a young player - either all the cards have to match, or none match.

2. Scoring has been touted as too complicated for the game. I'm not sure I agree with that, especially if using the "Draw 2" mechanism rather than the original "refill hand to 7" rule. However, it occurred to me that it might be easier to simply count majorities for each type of vehicle tipped and for each color. there are 10 categories (5 types of vehicle, 5 colors), and for each category there could be a player with the most cards collected. The player with the "most mosts" could be declared the winner.

This could devalue the importance of variable costs and the fact that Busses are harder to tip (cost more) than Motorcycles, making it a race for the Motorcycles for example. Another possibility is that a Motorcycle majority isn't worth anything, Car/Truck majorities are worth 1 point, Tractor majorities worth 2, and Bus majority worth 3... color majorities worth 1 point each. This kind of thing would sort of be a middle point, still some adding of points, but the numbers would be smaller. There could even be 10 scoring cards, 1 picturing each type of vehicle and 1 picturing each color, which he winner of each majority would take, making it really easy to add up their points (VPs could be listed on the card)

Another thing to note is that once you have 3 Trucks, there's less incentive to get a 4th Truck. It's worth something for the color, but since you already have the majority in Trucks then it doesn't help anymore.

In other news:
The turn sequence has thus far always been "Tip, Discard, Draw." This made a lot of sense when the "draw" meant "refill your hand to 7 cards" - if you didn't discard first and didn't tip anything then you would already have 7 cards! When using the "Draw 2" rule it was less important, and players often wanted to draw first, then discard.

I was pretty adamant that Tip/Discard/Draw was the same as Draw/Tip/Discard, just delayed by a turn, but players were still unhappy with the prospect of having to choose a discard then drawing something matching the card just discarded. I pointed out that if you drew at the beginning of your turn, you'd have the same issue drawing a card that worked with the one you discarded at the end of last turn... I was only met with the bad logic "at least you'd have something else to choose from!"

I understood the reason the designer placed the draw at the end of the turn was so that when a player's turn came around, they'd know whether they were going to Tip or not, and they wouldn't have to reconsider based on the new cards they drew. What I didn't consider was reorganizing the turn as "Tip/Draw/Discard" - which still puts the card draw after the Tip, but also allows players to draw new cards before having to discard one.

One major factor which led me to agree that this was in fact better than Tip/Discard/Draw was that sometimes you Tip using all the cards in your hand, and in that case you have no card to discard. So you don't. Then you draw 2 cards... thus gaining Card Advantage (as we used to call it in the old days of Magic). The person doing this is generally someone who has tipped, and probably tipped several times in quick succession since their hand wasn't built back up. Therefore the person is likely winning, and why should they get an advantage of any kind? They shouldn't - this is just what I thought was wrong with the "Refill Hand to 7" rule. So yes, it's true, Tip/Draw/Discard is a better turn order. It also felt a little more like I was building up a set on purpose that way. I'll be using that rule from now on.

Time Travel and Board games

I've discussed before how time travel is hard, and though there have been several attempts at games based on it, the closest I've seen to one that works really well is Khronos. Khronos is a pretty interesting game, but it's really hard and somewhat tedious to see the implications of your actions.

I had never really planned on trying to design a game about time travel, at least not until I got some kind of good idea for it. A recent (February) Game Design Showdown was about going back in time, and that got me thinking about the subject a little bit. What I came up with was a cooperative game (another genre I haven't really worked on much) idea:

Like so many science experiments, this one went horribly wrong. In a bid for the Nobel Prize, a brilliant but eccentric physicist got a bit overzealous with a new discovery, and inadvertently created a tear in the space-time continuum. This tear is unstable, and in time would grow and eventually unravel space-time altogether - and that would be bad for everyone.

It's up to a team of scientists to find a way to fix space-time before the instability grows too much and the world turns inside out. The only problem is, the tear in space-time has begun to cause 'Rewinds' - instances in which time literally rewinds and the scientists are pushed back to a previous point in their endeavor.

Players work together to navigate a tree of decisions, each leading to 1 of 2 paths. At the end of each branch of the tree is a Result card, some with a favorable result - the scientists fix space-time and save the day... and some less favorable - game over! with each turn there's a chance that the instability of space-time triggers a Rewind, pushing players back some number of decision points. The worse the tear gets, the bigger the Rewind. If time rewinds past the beginning of the game, then that's all she wrote!

The main mechanism of this game was to be that players must make choices with little or no information at first, then as they move on more information becomes available. Then when a Rewind occurs, players can use the newer information in order to re-do a prior choice they made. On a players turn they first roll some dice, and then they can do one of several things - each option might be restricted in some way by the die roll. In addition, whenever the roll totals 7 (or perhaps is over some threshold), a Rewind occurs and players are pushed back along the decision tree some number of spaces. An Instability track indicates how far back the Rewind takes the team, and after the Rewind, the Instability increases (the next Rewind will be bigger).

Today I put a little thought into some details - I envision a deck of 'choice cards' which would be shuffled and dealt out in a triangular 'trellis' pattern. The last (8th) row of the trellis would be made up of Result cards - maybe 5 bad ("game over, you lose") and 3 good ("WIN!"). Maybe 1 of the good cards is extra good, so players can try to find that particular result as opposed to just any of the 3 good result cards for a harder game.

Each decision point has 2 possible outcomes, each leading to one of the decision points in the next row. The point of the game is to navigate through these decision points to one of the Result cards in the 8th row - but of course you want it to be one of the winning Result cards.

Possible actions on your turn would include:

- Peek at some of the Result cards - the closer you are to the 8th row the fewer you look at, narrowing it down. After peeking at them you shuffle them and replace them. Thus if you do it in the beginning, you see that indeed 3 of the 8 cards are 'winners' and 5 are not. If you do it from the third row you look at 6 adjacent result cards... and from the 6th row you look at just 3. They have to be the three you could still reach without rewinding - so if they all are losers then you'll want to rewind and try another path.

- Get resources - based on the die roll maybe you collect certain colored cards which will be needed to progress to the next row.

- Advance - pay the listed cost in cards in order to advance to the next Decision Point (next row). Depending on which of the 2 paths you wish to take you might need a different combination of cards to pay.

- Force Rewind - Players can trigger a rewind, backing up time and moving the group to an earlier decision point - but this of course makes the Instability grow - too much and space-time will unravel.

- Repair Instability - There should be some way (at some times) to repair the instability somewhat, moving the track back, effectively lengthening the game - giving players more time to successfully finish before the space-time continuum unravels.
This could be based in part on arriving at certain cards - the end card could repair the Instability a certain number of units, so maybe you actually have to hit more than one of them. And some cards along the way might do that too. This would also add weight to an action that allows players to look at the 2 upcoming Decision Points, to help decide which direction they want to go: "This one has a Repair icon on it, let's collect the stuff we need to go this way!" Maybe some Decision Points are worse and they cause an instability bump when they're revealed. The Peek action mentioned above could also be used in the midgame, not just to look at the Result cards but any upcoming Decision Points. Maybe look at 1 of the possible Decision Point cards and put it back, or all of the possible Decision Points in a column and then shuffle them.

further thoughts on this will be forthcoming... eventually.

Cow Tipping Dev't...Nevermind what I said before!

In my last post I postulated about what makes a Rummy Variant vs simply a set building game, and I had some ideas for Cow Tipping along those lines.

Upon further reflection, I think I need to reverse pretty much all my opinions about those ideas to change Cow Tipping. The Thurn & Taxis mechanism is neat, but I think it's too complicated for this particular game. Perhaps I'll be able to use it in some other game in the future.

Also, building sets on the table is probably more trouble than it's worth - with one notable exception which I'll talk about in a minute.

I had a much simpler thought yesterday, and after trying it was pleased to see that it fixed just about everything I saw as a problem with the game. The only change from the original, as written rules is that instead of filling your hand to 7 cards at the end of your turn, you simply draw 2 cards. Those 2 cards can come from any combination of discard piles and the draw deck - except not both from the same discard pile (though maybe that would be OK too). Here's why this seems to work...

One major problem I saw was that when refilling your hand to 7 cards every turn, you really just want to tip whatever you can as soon as you can to churn through cards. The more cards you draw, the more chance you'll make a set and tip again. There's no additional cost to tip a more expensive Bus an to tip a Car... you should just tip the car if you can and see if you draw a set again to tip the bus. If you did, hurray! If not, drat! It's all just luck. If you draw 1 card at a time waiting to get a big enough set to tip the bus, either you'll get super lucky and the cards you need will come up right away, or you'll lose to someone who tips frequently and draws more cards.

Consider the Draw 2 rule instead. Now if you tip with a 3 card gang, it takes you 3 turns to recover your hand size, while if you tip with a 5 card gang, it takes you almost twice as long. This is fair, because you're likely getting a Bus instead of a Car which is worth more! In addition, each of those turns you're drawing cards which you're more likely to want, not just 5 off the top of the deck that are completely random. You can actually work toward building a set.

When playing this way I really felt a sense of accomplishment when I tipped a vehicle. Like I'd built up to something and then was rewarded for my effort. Also, I often had to choose between tipping a cheaper vehicle now, or continuing to build my gang to get a more expensive Tractor or Bus - and this was a realistic choice, meaning I would realistically be able to build up my Gang. Alternatively, I could have 2 sets going on in my hand, and I could tip something small, preserving the other set I was working on.

Tipping a Bus for 6 cards now meant my hand was decimated and it took a while before I could tip again - which is how it should be!

Scoring
The fact remains that some players have said the scoring is too complicated. I'm not sure how sold I am on that though. Maybe it's fine the way it is. It's possible the numbers are off or something, but that's a different (and fixable) issue.

Rummy Variant vs Set Building

I've been calling Cow Tipping, a card game Tasty Minstrel is planning on releasing next year, a Rummy variant. This is mostly because in the game you are putting together a run or a set like you do in Rummy. The rules as written force you to discard a card, and then allow you to draw one from opponent's discard piles or from the top of the deck (which is like Rummy). Before that happens, if you have a sufficient set or run, you can discard it in order to claim a scoring card (which, obviously, will help you score points). Then you refill your hand to 7 cards.

I've decided that I'm not sure when a game is a Rummy variant and when it is simply a set building game. How many aspects must be similar before a game is considered a Rummy variant? There are specific definitions for "Trick taking" and "Climbing" games - is there such a definition for a Rummy game?

I'm considering trying the following changes in order to inject more control and player choice into this particular set building game, because as written I don't think it feels enough like you're building a set:

Set building on the table in front of you.
Rather than building up these sets and runs in your hand and then discarding them to take a scoring card, I think it might be good to construct the sets on the table in front of you. To keep it simple, you are allowed 1 of each type of set (1 Set and 1 Run), and each turn you can add to them until they are sufficient to exchange for a scoring card. If you cannot add to either of them, then you have to discard one and start a new one. This I think will encourage people to be drawing cards when possible that add to their sets, and to start to build sets that they have cards in hand to add to it with. In addition, this will give players (who are interested in watching for it) a reason to discard 1 card over another - THIS card will hep an opponent, THAT card won't, so I'll discard that one! Currently you can't really know whether THIS card or THAT card are safe to discard, so you just pick one.

Card drawing vs Card playing
Instead of filling your hand every turn, I would like to try a mechanism wherin you draw cards. Borrowing from Thurn & Taxis a little bit, I would like to see players having the opportunity to draw more cards and play fewer in one turn, in order to build up their hand, and in another turn have the opportunity to draw fewer cards and play more. I also want to maintain players having to discard a card for other players to use each turn, so the rule I'll try is that you can either Play 3 then Draw 2... or Play 2 then Draw 3. One card must be played to the discard pile each turn. The other card (or cards) must be played to your sets in play. If they do not legally combine with the cards in play to form a set, then you have to discard what you had and start a new set with the card you play.

This brings up a question I hadn't considered. Suppose you have a red 2, 3, 4 in play, and you have a red 6 in hand but no 5. Can you play the red 6, as it's legally part of a set that is simply unfinished yet? I think so, but you wouldn't be able to cash in that set until it is complete. It seems like it would be really tough if you had to lay down the cards for a Run in order, and there's no similar restriction for the Sets.

The point of these changes, as I mentioned, is to make it feel like you are building a set, and to give players some reason to do one thing over another, while still keeping the game fast paced and light.

Scoring
Scoring in Rummy games is often based on what cards you have left in hand when someone 'goes out' (and in that case scoring is bad). In Wyatt Earp for example, scoring is based more on majority of each color for which you have sets in play, which is very different than the scoring in Gin Rummy for example. In Cow Tipping, scoring is of course based on the scoring cards you collect during the game. It's sort of another set collection mechanism in that you score more for having more of the same color or type of car. It's been mentioned by players that the scoring is too complicated for the game, and I think that's true - you have to do a lot of math to add up the points you get for sets of cars, then do it again for sets of colors, then add the 2 results together for your total score. I'm not sure what better scoring method there could be, but there's got to be something similar that is easier to calculate.

Another month, another post...

I had resolved to post once a month on this thing, but I've clearly been slacking in that regard. So what's new in Seth's gaming life?

Recent Gaming
In the last month or so I played a lot of games, 66 in June, and 19 so far in July. So what have I been playing?

In Seattle I played a lot of Dominion with Jeremy and Aaron. I haven't played in a while, and it's fun - especially against those guys for some reason. I also played 2 games of Lost Cities: the Board Game (which I like better than Keltis for sure, but it's still mostly luck) with them and Amelia and Emily, a game of Citadels, and 2 games of Masters of Venice.

I picked up Masters of Venice knowing very little about it, but I thought Jeremy and Aaron might like it, I wanted to try it, and hey - at least it was only $35! After buying it I read some stuff online, all of which was mediocre and said the game was very fiddly. I'm happy to report that we liked it pretty well, had a good time talking about it and thinking about it after the first game, and for the most part our play improved in the second game. It is a little annoying to have to adjust a price every time a cube comes into the game, but it's actually not that bad - at least all the tracking makes sense with regard to supply and demand.

The game is one in which you can buy and sell shares of stock in companies, as well as bu, sell, or cash in resource cubes in order to make money or fulfill 'orders' - selling and fulfilling orders increases the value of the stock in the associated companies (there's 1 company per type of resource cube). The idea is to make the most money. There seems to be a lot of ways to go about that, so I think the game could be really interesting. I'd have to play it a few more times to know weather or not it has any kind of staying power, but it's certainly worth a few plays at least.

I also played a game or 2 of Race for the Galaxy while in Seattle... for the first time in ages. I don't like that game too much anymore, but it was still fun to play vs Jeremy. Race and Dominion have fallen by the wayside for me because I think Glory to Rome is simply a better game of the same scope. I got Jeremy to play a couple games of it, but he didn't like it too much. that surprised me, because I thought my Magic friends would really like GtR and take to it more easily than they did. Tyler and Mike like it, but they didn't grasp it as easily as I thought they would. Jeremy really didn't seem to like it that much at all - I think he prefers Race and Dominion.

At KublaCon in May I played a game of Small World, the remake of Vinci. I liked Vinci a lot, and played a bunch online a while back on Ludagora.net. In Seattle I played Small World 4 times... it's good, and fun - I keep going back and forth on weather I like it better than Vinci or not. Some parts yes, some parts no. I think the graphic design is pretty bad, but some of the other changes are good for the game. I don't think it's something i need to run out and buy, and if i were buying, I'd probably rather own Vinci (though I may not believe that as much as I used to).

I played a few other games here and there, but the main thing I've been playing has been unpublished prototypes. As head of development for Tasty Minstrel, as well as a game designer myself, it follows that I would play a lot of prototypes - and if you've ever read my blog before this should be no surprise. This is, after all, a game design blog!

Prototypes
It's been a long time since I have worked on any of my own games. I spent some time in June thinking about two games which I grabbed out of the KublaCon game design contest - one was called Streets of Cairo, which was like a heavy Carcassonne, and the other was called Tomes of Knowledge, which had a really neat theme but was in effect a "Take That!" style card game which I didn't think fit the theme (or at least, didn't fit the theme the way I thought it would and wanted it to). I wrote up a lot of comments on Tomes of Knowledge, more or less completely redesigning it the way I might go about it, and sent those comments off to the designers to use or not use as they see fit. If they update the game and want me to look at it again, I'll be happy to, but until then there's really no reason for me to think about it anymore.

That's especially true since Tasty Minstrel has 2 games "on the list" for next year which I have prototypes of and need to work on...

Cow Tipping is a rummy variant which, currently, has a sort of disconnect between complexity of scoring and complexity of game. It's a very cute them, and the designer has done a beautiful job with the prototype (and would be doing his own art for the game, I believe). I'm also exploring ways to make it feel more like you have the opportunity to build a set - that may or may not pan out.

Belfort is a Worker Placement / Area Control game which is really good and also has a really cute theme. Well, the theme itself isn't anything unusual, but the characters in the game are super-cute :) My main challenge there is to make sure that a certain part of the game (a part that is different every time and therefore makes for a fun, replayable game) works right and is all balanced and everything, and maybe (though it's not clear if it's necessary) to make sure the worker placement portion of the game is strong enough... or at least that the different parts of the game are appropriately involved and interesting, and anything uninteresting gets cut or streamlined out of the way so as not to drag the game length out.

I feel really good about Belfort, as it's the kind of game I like to play, and it's a solid design that is fun and not just like other games out there. I've played it twice since Friday, and I've been giving it a lot of thought and corresponding with the designers. It feels good!

Publishing
Th art is almost done for Terra Prime, and frankly I can't wait to see it! I want to get some posted on the Tasty Minstrel website as soon as possible. The art for Homesteaders is largely complete, and I think Ariel did a fantastic job with it. After the TP art is done, there's not much to do except sit and wait for the manufacturers to do their thing... I'm getting a little antsy!

KublaCon recap

A couple weeks ago I went to KublaCon, and before I went I posted a To-Do list. Here's how that went, followed by a recap of the convention:

- Blind test Homesteaders

I did not get a blind test of Homesteaders in.

- Blind test Terra Prime

I did find someone to blind test Terra Prime, and I got a couple of good comments on a couple of things that could be clearer in the rulebook.

- Play and discuss Hammer and Spike with Rick Holzgrafe

I did play Hammer and Spike with Rick, as well as with JC Lawrence. Game went pretty well- except that I made the same mistake I did last time and left myself broke one turn and so needed to take a loan... in the end I lost by about 5 or 6 points if I recall, so the loan by itself didn't cost me the game - I made several other mistakes which contributed...

- Play Winds of Fate with someone

I did not play Winds of Fate at all. Nor did I even discuss it with anyone :(

- Play Corner Lot with JC Lawrence

I did play Corner Lot, and liked it more than I thought I would

- Play Ohana Proa if possible

I did not play Ohana Proa :(

- Play Kaivai and/or Logistico - some games I've been wanting to try for a long time.

I did not see, let alone play, either Kaivai nor Logistico. One of these days I'll get around to it - maybe at BGG.con this year.

I guess you could say that overall I failed pretty badly at my To-Do list, however I had a great time at the convention anyway. I played a lot of games, hung out with some cool and interesting people, and I even learned something about the area...

The first day of the co, Andrew (from L.A.), Alex (from San Diego) and I went walking in search of a place to eat. Alex plays frisbee, and I mentioned that it would be cool if there were a park around in which we could throw a disc (I happened to have one with me). He said he didn't think there was, and I hadn't seen one either. Fast forward to the end of the convention, at the airport they needed someone to volunteer to bump to the next morning's flight, and in exchange for my volunteering they gave me $600 in flight vouchers, as well as a night in a hotel and dinner at the hotel as well. It turns out the hotel they put me up in was about 1/2 a mile down the road from the convention hotel, and right next to it was a nice, green soccer field! Good to know... maybe next year I'll try to organize a small outing to throw a disc around! Also, that hotel, while not as nice and fancy as the Hyatt Regency, had free WiFi in the rooms!

Unfortunately I had dropped the ball on the game design contest - I forgot to enter anything. And sadly, this would have been my last year to do so, as by this time next year I'll be a published designer and no longer eligible for the contest. I went to the presentation anyway, as JC's game Corner Lot was in the contest, and in general I wanted to see what was there. I saw 2 games that looked kinda interesting, and I asked the designers to send me a copy to be considered by Tasty Minstrel Games. Both of them simply handed me the copy they'd just gotten back from the contest, and I brought them home with me! It was fun to get new prototypes to try out, but these 2 games were not finished to the point where I'd vouch for them. I gave some comments to the designers, and told them if they end up improving the games that we'd look at them again.

I wanted to write a full report of my goings on at KublaCon, and I started to do so, but got sidetracked... it's now been a month, so I'd better at least post this, I don't know if I'll ever get a chance to finish my report!

KublaCon! To-Do list

It's about time for KublaCon, I leave Friday morning bright and early. It occurs to me that I completely forgot about the KublaContest - I had planned to submit Winds of Fate this year, but I guess I just plumb forgot! :(

I think it's time to revisit that game, hopefully I'll be able to bring a version of it to KublaCon and get it played by some people.

In addition I'd really like to get some blind tests of Terra Prime and Homesteaders in at KublaCon in order to see what needs work in the rules.

So here's my To-Do list for KublaCon:
- Blind test Homesteaders
- Blind test Terra Prime
- Play and discuss Hammer and Spike with Rick Holzgrafe
- Play Winds of Fate with someone
- Play Corner Lot with JC Lawrence
- Play Ohana Proa if possible
- Play Kaivai and/or Logistico - some games I've been wanting to try for a long time.

Overdue update

It's been almost 2 weeks since I posted anything! Not terribly much has been going on. Here's a brief summary of what's going on with my various endeavors:

Tasty Minstrel Games
The question on everybody's mind is probably "how's the publication coming?" Or if I'm lucky it's more like "When will Terra Prime and Homesteaders be in stores?"

Well, I'm currently working on rulebooks while Michael is soliciting quotes from manufacturers. Research is leading toward some good news for both price and schedule, so that's good. If everything goes as planned, the games should be out in plenty of time for BGG.con (see below)

Another thing that's new is that we received some submissions:
* a space themed worker placement/area control game,
* a colonization game,
* and a railroad game

I've had a chance to play each of those, one of which we've decided we're not going to pursue now, though we may be interested next year, one we're fairly interested in, but it needs some work, and one we can't really consider yet because another publisher has first dibs - if they decide they're not interested then we will decide if we are :)

I got an email about a submission as well, and we will be receiving yet another from someone we met at the GAMA trade show. I'm looking forward to the latter, because I liked it a lot when I played it before.

Game design
Nothing doing on the game design front at the moment. Concentrating on TP and HS publication, and notes on the prototypes I've been playing.

On a plane recently I read through some of my design notebook, and put a little thought into an old Pirate game idea. Actually, it's a game about trade where you can pursue victory by being a merchant (facilitating trade with pickup/deliver trips around the board), a pirate (attacking merchant ships and ports), or privateering (attacking pirates, and interdicting trade). It occurred to me that some of the mechanisms from Terra Prime could be used here - some of the bookkeeping and mechanical actions I mean. It would be an entirely different game with different decisions and different motivations, but some of the mechanisms could be similar to Terra Prime.

Gaming
Lately I've played a lot of Glory to Rome. John came over and we played 8 or 9 2p games - I won all but one of them. I even beat Tyler 2 out of three yesterday.

I've started going to a new friend's game night once a week, and I've tried some new games there: Municipium, Giants, Castle for all Seasons, and Jet Set, among other games like Space Alert, Goa, Princes of Florence, and Yspahan.

I'm playing in an online In the Shadow of the Emperor tournament, and I'm doing terribly. I also lost an online game of In the year of the Dragon - by 2 freaking points!

Conventions
Kublacon is coming up in about 2 weeks, and I fully expect to go to that. I seem to have slacked on buying a plane ticket, so I might have to pay too much to get there. Also, Southwest.com hasn't been working the last couple times I tried it, which is getting pretty annoying. I'm sure I'll also go to Strategicon's Gateway event in September, and of course BGG.con in November.

In fact, Tasty Minstrel Games has plans for BGG.con! We will have a booth, and we will be having a sort of launch party for our 2 games. We call it the Tasty Minstrel's Winner Cleans Up event - participants will gather for a presentation style rules explanation, then random groups of 4 people will be given a copy of the game to play in the open gaming area. The winner gets to keep the copy of the game! We plan to run one of these events for each game. I'll be posting on BGG about it, and I'll probably put up a sign-up sheet so we can get an idea of how many people will want to participate.

Terra Prime publication

As I've mentioned, Terra Prime is being published by Tasty Minstrel Games. Art is being done by Josh Cappel, who's work on Wasabi, Gheos, and Pandemic has proven to be amazing. I've seen some samples and so far the style looks pretty slick. A little more cartoony than I had originally imagined, but as long as it's consistent I think it will look great!

Since my last post I've finalized some rules...

* As discussed, asteroid fields and stray asteroids hit on 3+ now. I ended up making the Astromech Navigational Computer (which will probably just be called "NavComp" or something I can't be sued for) upgrade after all. It only costs Blue + Green, which means you can buy it without having to get a Cargo Hold or do any exploring first - which is good because it helps in exploring. I also attached a few points to it to make sure it's worth getting rather than delivering goods early in the game. The result is that if you can complete a tile and you want the bonus from the tile then you might want to deliver. If you're not going to complete the tile you might rather grab an Astromech which could help later, gets you your points (though less flexible than if you'd delivered and gotten money), and it doesn't help the delivery guy finish the tiles. Also, to make sure it wasn't useless I made the effect be that with the Astromech you only get hit on a roll of 6 for asteroids.

* I tried the 'red planets can teleport you home' rule and I like it. That is now the official rule.Red planets don't produce a resource, so instead of gathering a resource there, you can teleport home (giving an opponent a Leadership Point if you use their colony, of course). This makes the prospect of trips to the far reaches of space a little less bleak because you can get back in a hurry.

* I'm sticking to 2vp per alien - with the caveat that, if it can be described simply enough, I might make Warships worth 3vp. "What the hell is a Warship!?!" you ask? Well, to better describe the extra damage done by double and triple aliens, I've decided to have 2 types of symbols: Scouts and Warships. The Scouts will look less menacing than the Warships. A single alien is really just a Scout. A double alien is 1 Scout and 1 Warship. And a triple symbol will be 1 Scout and 2 Warships. Simply put, all alien ships roll 1 die to attack, and Warships do 1 additional damage. And as I said, Warships might be worth 1 more vp. However if it's not easy enough to describe, I'm OK with all the aliens just being worth 2vp. I'm also considering awarding the same VP for Diplomacy (which is currently 0vp) now that I've made it more expensive. That way it's consistent, and I'll note that it's still a relatively bad deal compared to delivering. Then again, maybe I'll leave it as is... Diplomacy was intended to be a sort of backup plan anyway. It's a way to clear out aliens so you can colonize, even if you're not really prepared to fight aliens. Only awarding points for killing aliens rewards the investment in weapons, and I've always liked that.

* I did decide to turn discarding a Colony marker into a free action, but ne that can only be done at a Colony (and thereby using the colony - the owner gets VP).

* I decided the game is better without players starting with Energy on their built-in shield. They can always charge it up, or buy a shield and charge, before heading out into the unknown.

* As for starting player advantage or disadvantage... a lot of people comment that the early players have an advantage because they get to colonize the closest planets to Terra Prime. It's pretty even for the first 3 players, but players 4 and 5 need to make alternate plans. In a way I like that dynamic, and by definition their first colonies are worth more points because they're farther away from Terra Prime. I used to start players with different amounts of points to begin, but I found something I like better... players 1, 2, and 3 start with 20 credits like always, but player 4 and 5 (in a 4 or 5 player game of course) start with an additional 10 credits. This will help them buy both a gun and a shield if they want, in case they need to clear out an alien before planting their first colony - for example. All players will start with 3vp, so that if they risk an asteroid without shields in the very beginning they actually have something to lose. It's small, but I like the dynamic - in particular for a player who wants to colonize an Asteroid Field directly next to Terra Prime on the first turn (such a colony can be very lucrative).

* I like the change in colony scoring - that you get points for asteroid fields rather than additional planets. There's interesting tile laying now regarding whether or not to group planets to create or destroy further colony locations, and if you want to boost the score of your colony then you risk damage. That often just means having to refill shields, which takes 10 credits (=1vp) and an action - but that's a cost all the same.

* I have been allowing 2 tiles to be examined using the long range scanner, and it seems fine.

* For Reward tiles I went with color specific cargo holds, Green and Blue in the first phase, yellow in the 2nd. All of these flip to a regular 2 cube hold if you get the Cargo Capacity upgrade. I also retooled some of the later ones to give a cube and some energy. Some players didn't like not being able to use the cubes that popped up, but most of the time you can use Energy.

* I figured out an ingenious method of organizing bits... currently in my prototype I have glass beads for colony markers, and you place them on the planet that defines the colony - thereby covering the only important piece of information on the board. Instead of that, I want to use pac-man shaped tiles as colony markers, each circular tile the size of a sector with 1/3 cut out. Thus, you place this on the board covering ALL BUT the important information. It cuts down on clutter, and keeps from obscuring the only important info a colony provides. The only problem with this idea is that the tiles are too big to fit in the cargo holds on the ship board. But lo, Josh came up with a solution for that! A supply of generic pac-man shaped tiles onto which you place a colony marker! When he asked me how many would be needed, I had another stroke of genius... you only need as many colony markers (also used to cover aliens) as there are Reward tiles, as when those run out the game is over. Therefore, the reward tiles themselves could be pac-man shaped, with the reward on one side, and a starscape on the back to cover stuff on the board!
... I'm so proud of myself :)

Sadly, the publisher is balking a bit at having a special piece for the colony markers - they might have to be rectangular tiles - which wouldn't be the end of the world... but little double-dome shapes with a tub-like hallway in between them would be pretty cool. Or a Cylinder split down the center perhaps. I guess we'll see what happens there.

Tasty Minstrel Games: GAMA trade show

The trade show last weekend was very interesting! I had no idea what to expect, so when halfway through the first exhibition day someone apologized for it being so slow, I was a little surprised. I guess there's usually a lot more traffic. But hey, it's a recession - maybe a little silver lining is that in a recession while most things are going down, board games can actually thrive. The big example being Monopoly becoming a huge success during the Great Depression. Board games are cheap entertainment compared to something like a movie.

If the first day of the show was slow, then the second day was flat out dead. Many people were only there the first day. But nonetheless, Michael, Erin and I exchanged a lot of business cards, met a lot of people, and made a lot of contacts with various retailers, manufacturers, and distributors. Many people seemed to like our name, "Tasty Minstrel." :)

All through the show I was amused by the catch-22 wherein retailers would stop by our booth, listen to my spiel about the games, and say "yeah, we could sell that in our store... but they don't buy from the publisher, they go through their distributor. Then distributors would come and say 'yeah, we could bu that, but we don't know if it'll sell.' So how do you bridge the gap? I guess that's the question!

I met a number of people at the show, including a couple of game designers. I invited them to join the Board Game Designers Forum. I also met Mike Compton, who's postings and blog I have read online - he runs a store in Utah, and heads up a design group up there.

The strangest thing for me was meeting with Mike Nickoloff, who's company Sorvent aims to connect designers with appropriate publishers. He met with us to pitch some games... to pitch me games, not the other way around.

Tasty Minstrel Games

In about 8 hours I'm heading up to Las Vegas with my friend Michael and his wife Erin to attend the GAMA trade show. I've never been to such a show, and I understand it's different from the game conventions I go to - it's not about consumers playing games, it's an industry show where publishers sell themselves and their products to retailers or distributors, or something like that.

Michael and Erin have started Tasty Minstrel Games in order to publish board games, and I'm trying to support them as best I can. They are launching with 2 games, my Terra Prime, and Alex's Homesteaders which I helped develop. If things go well, the plan is for me to be the in-house developer for TMG, which is the kind of thing I've been wanting to do for several years now.

I'm looking forward to finding promising games and helping develop them if need be for publication. I've got a few in mind already by some of my colleagues at the Board Game Designers Forum.

In the next couple of days Tasty Minstrel will ave a website with some information about Michael, Erin, and myself, as well as descriptions of Terra Prime and Homesteaders, and a blog for and about Tasty Minstrel and its games. For example, I'll be posting a design summary for Terra Prime - probably nothing you don't already know if you follow this blog religiously, but it'll be a nice, compact summary of all the major milestones in the game's development over the last 4 years or so. I've asked Alex to write something similar for Homesteaders, as it had gone through a lot before I ever saw it. I like reading these sorts of development blogs, so maybe they'll be interesting to other people as well, and will make for good starting content for the website.

Terra Prime - final touches continue

I played 3 games of Terra Prime yesterday (and watched another - all 4 player), and 6 more today (five 3p and one 4p). I tested all the rules I posted about before, as well as some adjustments to them. I tweaked some of the tiles here and there as well. Here are some thoughts on how it's going (which, to sum up, is very well!)

Comments from previous post:

Instead of 1 cube per alien symbol, it costs 1 cube plus 1 per symbol.

This seemed fine. It's pretty tough to 'buy off' a triple alien this way, but it was tough before, and that's kinda the point. If you're being diplomatic, it's probably to get rid of a single or MAYBE a double alien.

As an action at a colony, a colony marker can be removed from your ship and returned to the supply. An opponent gets a point if you use their colony this way.

This still seems harsh, considering that if you're doing it, you're already screwed up. I'm thinking of making it a free action, but one that can only be done at a colony (and the player with the colony still gets a point for you using their colony this way)

Colonies on Red planets are called Bases, and work exactly like Terra Prime.

This turned out to be too degenerate, bu it's too bad because I liked the idea behind it. I changed it to Red planets providing Shields, which was OK, but still lacked something. Then Mandy suggested the Red colony have the ability to teleport your ship back to Terra Prime. I'd danced around that idea myself but never really thought about actually allowing your ship to teleport across the board. It might be a great compromise! Next I'll try Red colonies providing shields and teleporting players home (as an action, of course).

Command Ships have a built in shield (1 Energy). Asteroids and Asteroid fields in uncolonized sectors inflict 1 damage per symbol.

I like the built in shield, though I'm back and forth as to whether it should start with energy or not. I am currently of the idea that automatic damage for Asteroids isn't as fun as rolling dice and the potential to save a damage here or there, so I've been playing that a 3+ hits for asteroids. This is different that the 4+ for aliens, which is a little annoying but might be ok. It lends itself to a possible new Ship Upgrade: Navigation Computer (or "Astromech") which would make it 5+ instead (they help you plot a course so as not get hit by asteroids as much). This upgrade would help people who want to Explore/Colonize, so it should probably cost Yellow + Blue (or green) + Brown, and be worth a few points (maybe 3). It might combo well with a Cloaking device for someone who wants to sweep the Red Zone for exploration points and plant a colony out there as their endgame.

Asteroid Fields add 1 Leadership Point per symbol to the value of a colony.

I like this. I've tried to uninflate the VPs for aliens and colonies, so instead of scoring for all of the stuff in your colony, you score for the planet you colonize plus any Asteroids (since you had to withstand them to get there) plus of course the distance from Terra Prime. Thematically it makes more sense that planets would increase the value of a colony and asteroid fields would reduce it, but I can't worry about that right now!

And further thoughts:
- I mentioned the Nav Computer above. Not sure if I feel like adding an upgrade, especially since it changes the components. Strictly speaking it's not necessary so it might not make the cut.

- I might change the Long Range Scan action to look at two tiles rather than just 1. People are hesitant to use the action because they feel they're wasting their time. Maybe looking at 2 tiles would help more. Also, I've upped the usefulness of Red planets, and also made them a little more scarce (made Yellow a little more scarce as well), so maybe it's more worth peeking at tiles to plan your future turns.

- Early (phase 1) Reward tiles (game end timer) were a little too strong. Especially Cargo Holds. I have some ideas to fix this, one is to just give out weapons or half-full shields on the Phase 1 tiles. But first I'll try a color specific cargo hold - one for Green and one for Blue in phase 1, and the Phase 2 one will be a Yellow specific hold. This one is a little more awkward with regard to components (there has to be 3 special cargo holds that are different from the rest), but I think it might be worth checking out. As for player differentiation, the cubes you can carry have a big effect on which upgrades you can buy, and therefore which strategy you pursue.

- I went back down to 2vp per explore, and changed Alien scoring to 2vp per symbol. I was annoyed that the player killing the aliens for points was the same one colonizing the planet they were guarding - it seemed too swingy. I think it's fair with a lower value for Aliens, though I might bump it back up to 3vp/symbol. I do think it's better than you get the VP per symbol though, so if you don't finish them off you still get your partial credit. I was thinking about a bonus for finishing them off, but that's what the reward tile is for. It may prove disappointing that sometimes you cannot hold the reward though - that bothered me at first, but now I think it's a neat variable extra VP for killing aliens or colonizing.

- I might think about making the rewards an opportunity, or indicating a different reward for if you killed an alien or if you colonized to get it. this might be too much work to worry about.

That's about it for now. I'm sure I'll test it some more this weekend with these new tweaks. I also tweaked some of the tiles for planet, asteroid, and alien distribution, so I'll see if I like that any better than what I had.

Terra Prime: Finishing touches

I don't think it's time to break the full news story just yet, but information will be forthcoming... in the meantime I'll note that Terra Prime is indeed being published!

Aside: I'm really excited to have a game published... it's been a goal for some time now. I'm not sure why it's such a big deal for me - maybe it's pride in seeing my name on a box in the store, or affirmation that I've done something that somebody else feels is good enough to publish, or the potential satisfaction of bringing other people joy by creating a fun and interesting game. I'm sure it's some of each of those.

As such, I am in the process of putting on the finishing touches, tightening up the loose ends, and deciding once and for all exactly how I want each of the parts of the game to work. People are coming over tonight and tomorrow to play the game with me, and I hope to try a couple different versions of a couple of different aspects in order to choose what I think is the best. Here are some of the things I'm going to try out to see if I like them better than the current rule:

1. Since players now receive a reward for building a colony and for removing hostile aliens (a reward tile from the Game Timer supply) - usually cubes - I want to increase the number of cubes needed to diplomatically defeat the aliens. Thematically it's a trade now, rather than a payoff, since you get cubes back.

Instead of 1 cube per alien symbol, it costs 1 cube plus 1 per symbol

If I don't like that, then I will keep it 1 cube per symbol, but maybe disallow Brownium - but I think this rule will work fine.

2. There's been a sentiment that you should be able to discard a colony marker from the ship in case you find yourself lugging one around with no place to put it. This can happen, especially to a new player who is late in the turn order. The thing to do is either to find an Asteroid field or something to drop it off, or else fly back to Terra Prime and unload the marker. The problem is that you probably can't carry goods if you do that, which means you just wasted a lot of time picking up a colony marker, flying around with it, then flying it back home. The current rule is that you can jettison resource cubes whenever you want to, but you cannot jettison colony markers - those are people, you can't just dump them in space to die!

On one hand it's intended that you should not pick up a colony marker unless you know what you're going to do with it, and so if you end up getting screwed that's kinda too bad and it should be a harsh punishment. On the other hand, the punishment for accidentally picking up a marker when you shouldn't have is very harsh if you have to do nothing for a couple of turns to correct it. One possible solution is to mirror the resource rule and allow the colony marker to be discarded at any time. Thematically it can be programmed to fly home on it's own or something. But as I said, it's supposed to be harsher than that, so maybe it takes an action (you have to prepare the marker for travel and program the autopilot). Maybe you lose leadership for it. Or maybe you can do it as an action at any colony, and if it's an opponent's colony, they get a point (like any time you use an opponent's colony).

As an action at a colony, a colony marker can be removed from your ship and returned to the supply. An opponent gets a point if you use their colony this way.

3. Red colonies have evolved over the course of the game. Originally they were just like Yellow, Green, or Blue colonies - they made Red resources, and you could buy Modules at them. But based on the game's geography and development pattern, it wasn't useful to have red colonies sell things, and there wasn't time in the game to really benefit from delivering red resources, so instead red planets became like Big Buildings in Puerto Rico - they just added extra points to a colony. As a result, it's good to have a red planet in your colony, but there's no benefit to colonizing ON the red planet itself. Thematically that was OK because Red planets represent planets with civilized alien culture, and they don't allow you to rape their planet for resources - but you get a lot of leadership for making friends with them.

There's been a sentiment among some players that it sucks to have to go all the way back to Terra Prime to rebuild your shields if you get beat up by asteroids and aliens while exploring. To me that was the point, you make trips to and from the base, and if you pimp your ship out right, you can make more efficient trips - and at the end of the game you build up for a big trip in which you either come back with a big load of goods to deliver, or you don't come back because you're endgame is fighting big, tough aliens or else dropping off high scoring colonies. It's been suggested that Red colonies allow you to buy shields, or that any colony allow it so that you don't have to go all the way back to Terra Prime. Last weekend Jeremy suggested that Red colonies act exactly like Terra Prime. Thematically, you make nice with the alien civilization that lives there and they let you build a base. They have the technology needed to teleport your goods back to Terra Prime and to build a satellite scanner, bu upgrades, buy and charge shields... and maybe you can even pick up colony markers (maybe they're Alien colonists) there. Honestly I'm a little skeptical about picking up colonists, but the rest sounds like it would be fair, it would give you a reason to colonize on Red, and like any other colony - if someone else delivers to your base, you get a point.

Colonies on Red planets are called Bases, and work exactly like Terra Prime.

I worry a little about someone colonizing Red, picking up a colony marker, then colonizing red again right next door, etc. Jeremy suggested that that would be really hard, and in the end comparable to fighting alien after alien. I will try it with the red colonies being just like Terra Prime and I'll try to break it by going for such a colonization strategy and see if it works. If I don't like the game that way, maybe Red colonies could be mini Terra Primes, where you can buy and charge shields, scan, and maybe deliver resources - perhaps for just 1vp apiece, or perhaps there could be a Red pile of demand cards again, which indicates what the Aliens want.

4. Asteroid damage is only maybe, and it's a 50-50 chance per asteroid. I wonder if that's not scary enough. This morning I thought maybe the Asteroids should ALWAYS damage your ship, making stray asteroids that much more dangerous, and making the Asteroid Fields have a bigger impact on the route planning in the game. If this resulted in having to really plan better routes and more interesting tile placement, then that's great. If instead it just makes people feel like they have to buy shields on turn 1, then that's less good. In concert with this I was thinking that the command ships should start with a wimpy built in shield that holds 1 energy cube. That way people can still go exploring and don't have to fear the single asteroid fields in the green zone (though really, you never HAVE to fly through an asteroid field).

Command Ships have a built in shield (1 Energy). Asteroids and Asteroid fields in uncolonized sectors inflict 1 damage per symbol.

Another thought is that instead of automatically damaging your ship, the asteroids just hit more often - a 3+ instead of a 4+ on the die for example. That would make them scarier, but could still result in people lucking out because they didn't get hit- a sentiment that some players complain about.

5. If making the Asteroid Fields more harsh, I wonder if I shouldn't also make them score some points - 1vp per symbol would be fair I think.

Asteroid Fields add 1 Leadership Point per symbol to the value of a colony.

GameStorm 2009 - Part IV

The last day of a convention is always pretty slow as people have either worn themselves out, or leave early to get home for work the next day. We still had Candy's copy of A Castle for All Seasons, but we couldn't find anyone to play with so we started setting up for a 1 on 1 game of it. As we were setting up, 2 guys walked up and wanted to play, so we got to play a 4 player game (which I prefer). We taught them the game and then played - I tried to use the Stonemason more this time and get some VPs from building. I built the Well (12 cost, 10 vp) early with the Stonemason, and I think I built the big 30 cost building with Bricklayer and hired a 17 cost worker there (planning on scoring 25 for leftover resources). At one point I was going to play Stonemason again, and was looking to see whether I could build the building I wanted, and I said something out loud like "oh wait, I can't do that yet - I have to do something else first," to which Jeremy replied "oh, in that case..." and picked up the card he was going to play. I figured he was going to play Master Builder, and thought better of it since I'd sort of indicated I wasn't able to build - but I WAS able to build, and I was playing the Stonemason anyway... I played up the "error" as best I could to try and coerce Jeremy into not playing the Master Builder after all, and in the end it worked! he chose to play a Worker. To make matters worse, another player also played Stonemason, and so Jeremy's Worker got raped for resources - he ended up with $2 and a wood instead of Wood, Stone, and Clay! I won that game by a landslide, pulling off a couple good Master Builder turns as well.

After that we ran into DJ again, and he had 2 friends with him. We looked in the Library for a 5 player game, but couldn't find anything we wanted to play. DJ had a list of games he wanted try, and we finally settled on Space Alert - which I'd been trying to convince Jeremy to try (even though honestly I didn't love it after BGG.con). I thought I'd remember how to play, but as it turned out I was struggling to remember any specifics about the game. We played the first training simulation (and didn't do very well), then we skipped to the first training mission, and did better but ended up dieing! I think if we tried again we probably could survive at least the training mission, but we decided that was enough of that. Jeremy was more intrigued than he thought he would be, and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I think we needed to communicate a bit better, as we didn't seem to have a handle on who was doing what or when - and that's really the whole game.

Rick was running his prototype of Hammer & Spike with the 4 train gamers that had been recruited and scheduled for that time, so I started watching that. DJ and his friends wanted to play A Castle For All Seasons, so Jeremy played that with them while I went back and forth watching Hammer & Spike and Castle for All Seasons, and as soon as H&S was done Rick was going to play one of my prototypes. I wanted to test the new version of Winds of Fate, but I felt it would be more responsible to test Terra Prime at the moment, so I chose that.

It turned out both of those games finished at about the same time, and we couldn't find anyone else to play Terra Prime, so Jeremy, Rick, and I played it. It went pretty well - though Jeremy found a double alien, and instead of running away (as I advised), he moved alongside them and into an asteroid field. He ended up taking a ton of damage and losing all of his modules... this was a pretty big setback. Rick set up nicely (maybe too nicely) for delivering, buying 2 Cargo Holds, the Cargo Capacity upgrade, and the Government Contract upgrade. The problem was that the delivery tiles only had a few Blue spaces, and the first three colonies made were blue - no green. That was partially my fault, as I made the second colony and had the choice between blue and green after Jeremy had chosen blue already. So Rick couldn't deliver all of the blue cubes he was picking up - and he decided to do something else - he started exploring for another place to colonize. By this time Jeremy had made a green colony, and I picked up some green to deliver and finish off tiles. I also picked up a blue and a brown since it was clear I would be able to finish 1 if not both of the tiles needing green (noone else seemed to be trying to - I contend that Rick should have made a B-line to the green colony as soon as Jeremy founded it). I scored a lot of points (21 in total) off of delivery tiles and Government Contract bonuses, and I ended up wining by 20+ points. However, Rick did manage a 21 point turn at the last minute with a deep space colonization which could potentially have ended the game. It didn't, so I got another turn in which I made 16 points myself. If Rick's action had triggered the game end I still would have won, but it would have been by maybe 6 points, a very close game. As it was I won by a healthy amount.

I like the way the early colonies can shape the game... in this case no green colonies, and noone managed a yellow colonies until really late either (which means no yellow tiles for extra delivering, and no engines for extra movement).

By this time people were pretty much all gone, so Jeremy an I left to convention. It was time for dinner, and we met up at Old Chicago with a frisbee friend of mine that just moved to Portland. I had a really good time all weekend, and tomorrow at noon I'm on my way home. I'm sure Evie will be happy to see me!

GameStorm 2009 - Part III

Planning on getting up early-ish to get to the convention and start gaming is all well and good, but when you go to sleep at like 5 or 6 in the morning, it's not surprising that you wake up at 10:30 :/ When I got out of the shower and was ready to face the world, I found that Jeremy had also just barely rolled out of bed.

We got to the convention in time to secure a copy of Battlestar Galactica and meet Julie and Peter (and a friend of theirs) at the prearrange 1:00. Sadly, it was probably close to 2:00 before we started with the rules explanation, and then a very slow game which finally ended after 6:00! That was the longest game of BSG I've ever played, and that includes the 6 player learning game at BGG.con!

After BSG we went upstairs to the video game room because Jeremy wanted to play in the Rock Band tournament. I played a few rounds of Street Fighter 4 (man it's been a long time!), then headed down to play Jeff's prototype Rune Wars. It's a combat game like Nexus Ops or maybe the Warcraft board game with a cool system of unit building and resources, heavily influenced by Magic: the Gathering.

In Rune Wars you start each turn by collecting a VP for each City you control, then you get to draw a card and can choose which color from the 5 different decks. Each color can let you make units of that color/type, give your armies containing that color unit a special ability, and contains cards which have effects that are in tune with that color's theme. Then you get a chance to play a card or else draw another one, move your units around the board, resolve any conflicts, play another card if you like, and then recruit and promote units. You also gain 1vp for defeating an army with at least 3 units in it, and for gaining control of a city (?), and the game ends when someone scores their 11th vp. I liked the mechanics for card drawing, card playing, card duration (the cards sort of age over time and go away), and unit creation, but the game itself isn't really my kind of game.

After the playtest I called Candy to see where she was, and if she wanted to play Castle For All Seasons... she was in her room getting ready for bed, but she said we could borrow the game, which was awesome of her. Jeremy and I wanted to play that again all day but hadn't been able to.

While looking for someone to play CfaS with I found Jennifer, and she was on her way to play Times Up! Title Recall. They had room for more players, so Jeremy and I jumped into that. I had hoped we could be on the same team, but I ended up on a team with a girl from Romania - that was a challenge because she wasn't as familiar with American pop culture... but we did well, tied for 2nd, only 5 points behind Jeremy's team in the end.

Finally, after the Times Up game we found someone to play Castle For All Seasons with us. It was Lynette, who had played Lost Adventures at BGG.con a year ago. We played a 3 player game, and I tried a Trader/Master Builder/Trader opening, and immediately wished I'd played Messenger or a worker in round 2 and then Master Builder in round 3 instead because I realized I didn't want to trader again in turn 3 (which was the reason I played MB round 2, obviously). It was a bad start, but I managed to time a Master builder or 2 well and got some free points that way. I ended up 2nd (barely) to Lynette, who won by 10 points over me.

I'm starting to worry that CfaS mostly comes down to luck - if someone plays or doesn't play a Master builder, or if people build anyway when 1 player plays Master Builder, then they seem to get a really big advantage. I'm wondering if there's a winning strategy that involves simply Master Buildering almost every turn... if so, that would be lame. Of course you probably wouldn't do it EVERY turn, and you'd probably want to build a building here or there so you could get a helper in the castle (probably on the 'unbuilt buildings' space, since your MB might discourage players from building a lot). These are the things I think about when I play a new game...

GameStorm 2009 - Part II

Slept in a little this morning, and then Jeremy and I headed back to the convention. We both wanted to play Castle For All Seasons again, and maybe Battlestar Galactica if we could. We didn't end up playing either.

Today (Friday) we played the following:

Hammer & Spike, Rick's new train game, with Rick and his mother in law Joan. I'd heard a little about this at BGDF and on his blog, and I was excited to try it. Hammer & Spike (affectionately known as Rickety Rails) is a train game where you build connections and deliver resource cubes, like Railroad Tycoon (and in fact inspired by RRT). The cool bits are that your deliveries are limited by "fuel." Your train can only go 3 cities before having to refuel. Players can build fueling depots, and you can use fuel from your own station for free, or pay an opponent $2 to fuel up at their depot, in order to move another three cities. The other neat thing about the game is that the cities (of which there are 6, the rest are towns) have a variable demand. There are 4 colors of resources, and when you deliver one to a city, the city decides it now wants a different color. On top of that, a big point-getter is a "switchyard," which can be built at a city, but not until you've delivered 1 of each colored resource to that city. The effect this has on the game is very big, and very good.

I could go on about this game, I liked it very much. I couldn't think of much to make it better - I did suggest a small change to how replenishing cubes works - (since it helps all other players, it hurts to have to pay money to do it), and we all agreed the game does not end soon enough (you play for 20 turns, when it should probably end after 15 or 16). I would happily play this again, but I don't know if I will this weekend or not. I hope Rick will send me a copy to play with Michael - who knows, maybe Tasty Minstrel Games* will want to publish it!

* more on Tasty Minstrel Games later

We went to the hospitality room and got some hot dogs for lunch, then Jeremy and I found Jennifer and we decided to play Brass. Just as I was finishing up explaining the rules to Jeremy, Rick returned from showing his prototype to some group of industry people, and he jumped in as well.

I noticed in this game that while 2 people were building Cotton Mills for early income, both of them were also building ports to ship them through instead of using the external market. For the record, the players doing so were Rick and Jennifer, each of whom had played at least once before. I shat out Coal mines like it was going out of style (Developed the first one away turn 1, then built 2 level 2 coal on turn 2). Jeremy did the same, sadly trumping one of my placements positionally. Due to this, I did not get to flip either mine before the Canal phase ended. Jeremy built a boat, and I built 3 level 2 Cotton Mills and shipped them all through the foreign market.

In the second half of the game, I got all the boat building cards, and Jeremy didn't... so we sort of swapped strategies. I ended up building *2* boats in the Rail era, and he built 1. I also built a lot of Coal and Iron, doubling up my action 2 or 3 times during the game. I don't think I built even 1 level 3 Cotton Mill, which was originally going to be my strategy - this is mostly because Rick ate up the foreign demand.

In the end, I scored 157 points while 2nd place (Jennifer) had 98. Jeremy was close behind her, and Rick was not too far back from them. I'll note that every tile Rick built in the Canal era came off the board - he didn't build any level 2 tiles at all in the first half of the game.

I continue to really like Brass. I am more experienced than my opponents were, so it follows that I was able to win, but I didn't think I was going to have that many points!

To pass some time, Jeremy and I played a little Magic variant called Magic War. It's sort of like a cross between Magic: the Gathering and War - the object is to get all of the cards from a common deck, and you don't need to pay the casting cost for anything (there are no land cards, you just assume you have infinite lands). It's fun, and not a little ridiculous :)

Finally, Rick and company invited us to play a 6 player game of Railroad Tycoon with his wife, her mom, and Candy. I had an excellent start, taking 3 or 4 shares on the first turn to secure the first delivery along with a service bounty, then soon after scoring the first 3-link delivery (3 more shares to upgrade my train). I got up to $10k and was ready to upgrade to level 4 for the 4 point bonus as soon as anyone challenged for that, and then something kinda bad happened. Rick's wife Helen built into Chicago when I didn't expect her to, but it was 4/5ths of a long rout to another city. I really wanted to build there, and worse if she finished the route I would have been cut off from a lot of stuff I thought I'd need, so I built to her destination to block her and help myself. So she used her next action to finish her track, but it cost her an extra $4k... this was just the beginning of a Big Mess in the Midwest, as Helen's mom really wanted to build into Chicago as well, and Candy was already sharing the Midwest with me. Thousands of dollars later, all that remained was a tangled mass of track. I had made Helen pay out the nose for her Boston-Toledo connection, and though I thought she might have been going for New York-Chicago (that card didn't come up) or New York-Kansas (which did), she ended up getting neither. It's possible hat my aggressive play lost me the game, though I think another major contributor was when I looked at the number of empty city markers left and saw a decent sized pile (maybe 7), so I thought the game had a couple turns to go, and I used an action to make a New City, only to find out immediately after that there were 3 or 4 empty cities on the board which hadn't been marked yet! This meant the game end was likely to trigger THIS round, and that being the case I would definitely not have wasted my time with the New City - I would have built track to some deliverable cubes, and I would have scored my 6-point Tycoon card in the process. Instead I lost by 10 points :/

I hate when that happens - when I make a significant game decision based on misinformation... especially when I specifically check on that information. I need to learn to be more careful - I should have looked at the board to see that the leftover empty city markers were accurate... those things get missed all the time.

After that game it was getting close to midnight. Jeremy and I found the Werewolf room and were waiting for that to start, but then decided we should head home and get something to eat. I had hoped to get to bed early-ish and then return to the con earlier tomorrow, but here I am now - 2 hours of Magic War and 2 more hours of Internet later... oh well - best laid plans and all that. Before we left I saw Julie and Peter and made plans with them to play Battlestar Galactica at 1:00 tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully we will play A Castle For All Seasons before that, and my prototypes afterwards - we'll see how that goes.

GameStorm 2009

I got to Portland yesterday to hang out with my friends Jeremy and Amelia, and to go to GameStorm. Today we played some Dominion and Rock Band then Jeremy and I headed over to the convention. I was bummed that there wouldn't be a Protospiel this time, but when we got there I found out there was a different, related thing called Game Lab. I hadn't heard of this, but evidently there will be some demo-ing and playtesting going on. I brought Winds of Fate, Terra Prime, Homesteaders, and Brain Freeze, and I think I'll try and get some of them played. In particular TP and WoF.

Today (Thursday) we played the following:

A Castle For All Seasons, with Rick and Candy from the bay area. I've been wanting to play this game for a while now, especially since my friend mike got it in the mail - but he's never available anymore and so hasn't brought it over yet. We finally got to play it today, and it was pretty cool. A little less intuitive to play than I'd hoped, but seemed pretty good... Jeremy and I both wanted to play it some more, but couldn't find another copy all day!

Afterward Rick showed me his new rail game, which looks cool. I hope to play it tomorrow. Then he and Helen went to get dinner and go to bed.

Agricola with Jeff (who we met last year at this convention). Jeremy had played once before, and Jeff had never played. It was an interesting game, and in the end Jeff finished with 36 points, maxing out his fields, grain, and vegetables. He didn't get a third family member until round 13 (another round 14 for the 3 points). I've never seen anyone score so well only having 2 people for that long! Jeremy finished with 39 points. I pulled out the win with just over 40 owing mostly to the Wet Nurse. I baked a ton of bread, finishing with 10 grain and 12 food leftover!

Street Fighter 4 on PS3. We went upstairs and checked out the video game room. Some guy was playing Super Mario Brothers 3 on an old school NES - I couldn't believe hos ghetto it looked! I remember it looking better than that, but I guess that's because nothing at the time looked a lot better. now it looks old and terrible. I played a couple rounds of Street Fighter 4 against some guy - I got crushed the first game, then owned him the second. Then we went to get some dinner.

On a related note, it sounds so funny when they say a value meal is on sale for $4, and then when you order it they say "$4 please." Not $5.34, but $4... no sales tax!

Hamburgum with DJ (a nice guy we met tonight). I'm really not all that good at this game, but I continue to like it. Jeremy boxed me out of most of the board by building - I could have avoided that, but didn't notice. In order to build more buildings I then had to complete a church, which took a lot of work and a lot of money. I ended up dead last, while Jeremy had a good game and crushed us with 109 vps - 15 points ahead of me. I was dead last.

Homesteaders with Jennifer, a woman who's played some of my prototypes at BGG.con and liked them. I narrowly beat out Jeremy 58-52. We were all a little Action light, I spend many of my Actions selling cubes for money and VPs.

Oops, forgot! (Re: WoF)

I forgot something when posting last night that I was unhappy with the bet chip format (specific locations, drawn randomly)...

For one thing, the bet chips themselves are worth VPs, so if you take a reward tile that says "get a bet chip" you at least get the base VPs for the chip. Maybe you get to make a bet with it (will reach that location in such-and-such round) that will payoff decently, maybe not. In any case - and here's what I forgot - you can use ANY bet chip to add to your Destiny Bet (bet on which game end condition will trigger). So you can keep a 'useless' bet chip for the base VPs, or bet it on the Destiny bet for a potential gain. Therefore they're not completely useless, and maybe the idea is fine as is.

It turns out I had all these thoughts before, but spaced them last night when I was reconsidering the idea. On the down side, I stopped worrying about this idea and therefore did not update the prototype accordingly (also, I broke my stupid circle punch thing because it was too weak to cut through 1 layer of Chipboard :( )

I might not be able to test the game (and I definitely won't be able to test that mechanism) this week at GameStorm (to which I'm on my way as I type this). I'll have to give it a shot when I get home. I also need to make a new board with 4 columns instead of 3 and a couple more Encounter tiles.

I have an issue with one of the ideas for WoF that I had been considering. Jeff Warrender suggested something I think is good... that players should bet on which round Odysseus will get to particular locations - not just when the game will end. I thought I might make the bet chips all specific to one of the locations and have them drawn randomly, however I'm now thinking that a player could get really screwed by simply drawing locations the boat has already visited or that are either really close or unlikely to be visited anymore, so I'm suddenly not liking that idea anymore.

My next thought is to give each player a set of bet chips - one for each location. I'm afraid this might lead to the same problem as before though with everyone having the same things to bet with and therefore making similar bets.

I guess I'll have to think about that some more. Hopefully the new deck and set collecting will help.

Terra Prime: New endgame trigger playtest

I got a chance to play Terra Prime again tonight (finally!), and try the new endgame trigger again. I tried the 'game timer tiles' 2 weeks ago, and they worked well, but I didn't like that the rewards on them were all various amounts of VPs. This time each tile had some 'stuff' - a free module, or some resource cube or other. I liked that a lot better!

However, I did uncover an issue... I was awarding these timer tiles whenever anyone killed an alien, Colonized a sector, or finished a delivery tile. The first two of those worked very well - you get a little something immediately upon doing the scoring action. The latter though caused problems both thematically and mechanically. You deliver resources and are rewarded with... more resources! Which you can immediately deliver again without doing any work? That's lame.

The fix is easy though. When completing a delivery tile, you already get the tile which comes with some bonus VPs. So I'm simply not going to award a timer tile for that. Instead you'll only take a timer tile (and thereby advance the game end) when defeating aliens (via combat or diplomacy) and when colonizing a sector. I might need to reduce the total number of timer tiles to ensure a good game length, but that's certainly easy to do. Oh, and since deliveries don't progress the game end, I think I might add one more game end condition as a failsafe - if the delivery deck runs out (either one) then the game will end. I don't think this will ever actually occur, but better safe than sorry.

I'll want to test the game some more with various numbers of players to make sure I get the right number of timer tiles, and to make sure there's no balance issues introduced by the early free stuff (in particular the potential free cargo hold).

The game went well... it was pretty strange actually. There were 3 Blue colonies made, and no Green ones, but the initial demand tiles required 2 blue and 4 green cubes. The only player that had never played before did the best, winning over me by a pretty good margin. One player did very poorly, not grasping what it was he could do to repair some early bad play. Every move he tried to make just happened to be overshadowed by another player's play, and he just didn't see it coming. One player got 3 different tech upgrades, another got 2 and I got 1. All but about 2 yellow and 3 or 4 red tiles ended up being explored, which was pretty good - the game ended before the whole board was explored but not too early.

Winds of Fate: backburner thoughts

I've been avoiding thinking about this game in order to think about Terra Prime, but I really can't do any more with that until I play it some more - so I guess I'm out of excuses. Here's how I think I'd like to see the cards work in Winds of Fate:

As I've mentioned, I think there ought to be 5 'suits' for the cards, each associated with a different deity. Athena/Poseidon would be sort of wild, Helping/Hindering in any Adventure. The other three deities would each be assigned to a different adventures, and they would Help in 'their' Adventure while in other Adventures they might Hinder, or just do nothing.

The deck of cards which players draw from will consist of cards that will either be Athena or Poseidon cards, which will work as they always have, or they will have some effect listed for each of the other three deities. That effect will be like a Help value or a Hinder value, and could be nothing.

So depending on which Adventure you are in, you could play either an Athena card or a card for the 'local' deity for that Adventure (identified by the current location) in order to Help Odysseus, or play a Poseidon card or any card that says "Hinder" in order to hinder Odysseus.

As for drawing cards, I had an idea tonight about that. I thought it might be neat if there was some kind of dichotomy between drawing lots of cards and drawing high valued cards. So the idea I had was maybe something like Alhambra has - a face up pool of cards, and instead of drawing a particular number of cards you draw up to a particular value worth of cards from the display. That would create an organic method to allow a player to choose several low valued cards in various suits or else a single higher valued card in a particular suit.

The Athena/Poseidon cards, since they are equally useful in any adventure, should be lower valued in general. Other cards could be some combination of high and low values for the different suits perhaps. Not sure how that would factor into the card drawing thing I mentioned above.

TP: Alien scoring

I wanted to up the VPs for aliens ever since I added the automatic damage... I think the way to do that is like this:

Each alien symbol you kill immediately gives you 1vp. Then, if you finish off the aliens, you get the usual 3vp/symbol. That way, if you kill 2 symbols and don't finish off the aliens, you get 2vp for your efforts. Also, this makes a triple alien worth 12vp rather than 9.

A fancier way to do it is to have Alien Warships and Alien Scouts... the Warships are the ones that do +1 damage. Therefore all single aliens would be scouts, double aliens would be 1 Scout and 1 Warship, and triple aliens would be 1 Scout and 2 Warships. In fact, that would allow for more variety in alien encounters - maybe you come across a pair of scouts - not as nasty as the 'normal' double alien, but worth 1 less vp as well. I don't know if that's really worth the effort.

Another thought is that instead of 3vp/symbol, the single alien is worth 3vp, double is worth 5, and triple is worth 10. The benefit here is that with scoring chits of denomination 1/3/5/10 there's the simplicity of 1 chit for each type of alien.

Oh, maybe I didn't mention - I think we're going to go with scoring chits of denomination 1/3/5/10 rather than a score track :)

Terra Prime (cont.)

Tonight I played Terra Prime with the new game end condition I discussed yesterday. In short, I liked it. Here's the longer story:

A couple of days ago I posted a few things that were bothering me about the game. I've addressed each and I'm feeling much better about them.

With the updated shield rules I don't mind the automatic damage from aliens. I was hoping that would be the case. The big issue though was the game end trigger. I did like the communal game length track. It did the job of coordinating all players efforts toward ending the game, which was the idea. Now each time any player takes a scoring action, they hasten the game end.

I decided instead of a simple track I would use rewards on tiles, like I talked about. In tonight's game I used the following rewards:

Green tiles: $10/Weapon/Cargo Hold/Shield (with 1 Energy)/Brownium
Yellow tiles: Variable VP (1-3)
Red tiles: nothing, but 3 of the 5 said "end" and 2 "end" tiles end the game.

Reflecting on the game and discussing it with my friend I think I would like to change some of that. Here's what I'll try next:
Green: $10+Brownium/$10+Brownium/Weapon/Cargo Hold/Shield (fully charged)
Yellow1: Bluium/Bluium/Greenium/Greenium/Cargo Hold
Yellow2: Thruster/Yellium/2 Greenium/2 Bluium/2 Brownium
Red: Yellium+Greenium/Yellium+Bluium/Greenium+Bluium/2 Yellium/3vp

With 3 of those Red tiles indicating "End" as I mentioned before, and 2 (maybe 3) "End" tiles means game over. This mix takes VPs off of the tiles and instead gives players "stuff" which is useful. I tried to arrange it so that the "stuff" is appropriately useful for the stage of the game in which you get it. I will be testing this some more, but so far I like it. I do worry a little that getting free stuff subverts the need to make money and bu stuff. I guess we'll see. If that turns out to be the case then I can just remove the rewards and just use a generic communal timing track for the game end.

Edit: I think I will go for all 3 of the "End" tiles coming up indicating game end. Also, while making the tiles I switched up some of them, I've updated the list above to match the prototype.

Terra Prime game end condition

I think I'm having an idea about the game end trigger in Terra Prime...

Instead of each player having a game end timer (the number of player tokens they have to put on the board), perhaps there should be an aggregate timer. Each time a player takes a scoring opportunity (completes a Demand tile, Kills an Alien, or places a Colony), they could draw a tile from a preset pool of face down tiles. there would be a set number of Green, Yellow, and Red tiles. The green tiles would be worth maybe 0-1 VP, yellow worth 1-3 or something, and red worth 3-5 maybe. In addition, maybe 3 of a total of 5 red tiles would say "End" on them, and the game is over when the 2nd "End" tile is drawn. This way there's a little uncertainty in exactly when the game will end, there's a race element for scoring opportunities, and whenever you make a scoring play, you literally hasten the game end.

Some potential problems with this is that it might create a game of chicken because taking the last tile of a color makes the next scoring opportunity worth more points. That suggests perhaps the VP value should be reversed, or that some other benefit should be awarded with the Green tiles... potentially a free module (gun or shield in Green, cargo in yellow perhaps) or coins.

On the up-side, this could facilitate some additional story arc in the game. Maybe when the Green pool runs out, all players get 1 additional action per turn, and then again when the Yellow pool runs out. This would basically mean that in the late game, when trips around the board are longer, all players would move farther each turn. Thematically, well I can't really think of a good thematic reason for that. maybe as time goes on, the Federation learns how to be more fuel efficient or something. Who knows.

An interesting afterthought - in the case where green tiles confer a free module, that could serve to differentiate players. I could see the game giving players 2/3/4 actions per turn in the Green/Yellow/Red phases (respectively), so long as during setup players begin with a Colony marker on their ship (which is basically the first action you take anyway). The Green pool could be 1 tile per player, and the rewards could be cost balanced: 1 Gun, 1 Shield (no energy, or maybe 1 energy), 1 Cargo hold, 1 Credit (or maybe 1 Brownium), 2vp (worth more than 1 Credit but less flexible). The Yellow pool could be 2 (3?) tiles per player (or maybe just 9 tiles) with rewards of 2-4 vp. Then there could be 5 Red tiles worth 4-6 VP, 3 of which say "End" on them. I'm not sure if the vps I've mentioned for yellow and red phases should be reversed or not. I keep going back and forth on it.

Anyway, this sounds good at first blush. I will mull it over and maybe make the tiles to try it out.

Terra Prime - final touches?

With Terra Prime on the verge of being published, it's time to put on the finishing touches and finalize all the aspects I've been iffy on or unhappy with.

For the most part I'm very happy with and very proud of the game. There are a couple aspects that I'm not 100% sold on though. The offending items are...

Shield purchase/recharge specifics:
Since changing the rules for shields (a change I like, by the way), I've been unhappy with the fiddliness of the purchasing. I had thought the best way to go would be to have 1 action be to buy a shield module for 10, or charge up all of your shields with energy for 10. That did everything that I wanted to do, except I don't like having to spend 2 actions to get 1 fully loaded shield. My newest idea is to give the shield purchase action two parts. First, you may bu a shield module for 10 (this is optional). Second, you may charge up all of your shields with energy for 10 (also optional, though if you're buying a shield it's likely you'll want to do it). This makes a lot of sense, I just hope it isn't too complicated to explain. One of my least favorite things about the game is that it takes so long to explain.

Automatic damage from Aliens:
A recent addition is automatic damage from aliens. Single aliens do 0-1 damage, double aliens do 1-3 damage, and triple aliens do 2-5 damage. The reason for this was because before, if you prepared for combat, you could cut through aliens and come out with out a scratch. The intention was that the triple aliens should be pretty easy to defeat if you prepare, but you should have to limp home having been damaged. The automatic damage seems to work, but it might be a little too harsh. The biggest question is whether the stray asteroids and asteroid fields should work the same way (automatic damage) or not. I think the asteroids could be less dangerous than the aliens.

Game End conditions and using player markers for Upgrades:
I've always had some trouble with the game end conditions for Terra Prime. the current rule is that when a player puts their last marker on the board, the game is over. The markers are placed on Colonies, Aliens, upgrades, and demand tiles. I kind of like how this works, but there are 2 problems... the biggest is what happens when you have 1 marker left, and on your turn you can kill an alien and also colonize? Somewhat less annoying is the fact that it just feels wrong to have an upgrade use up one of your markers. I think the markers should represent scoring opportunities, so using them for colonies, aliens, and demand tiles seems fine - but the upgrades don't directly relate to scoring.

One solution is to use a different type of player marker - one that doesn't relate to the game end trigger - for the upgrades. Another idea is to have tiles for the upgrades such that when you buy the upgrade, you take the tile and place it in front of you. This is similar to the modules, so maybe would fit the game. It would mean an additional 24 tiles or so, but that might not be so bad.

So I guess it's time to test these solutions and find something I like!