Big Birthday Weekend - on the SedjCon schedule?

At 9:30 this morning the first guest arrived for my "Birthday BBQ," and at 1am the last guest left. After a round of disc golf with Rif and Michael, 13 other friends came by to eat food and play games such as:

* Race for the Galaxy
* Pandemic
* Puerto Rico
* Princes of Florence
* In the Year of the Dragon
* Louis XIV
* Railroad Tycoon
* Goa
* Leonardo Da Vinci
* Guitar Hero
* Katamari Damacy

It was a lot of fun, and maybe the best part was that a frisbee friend of mine, Anita, who never really plays games but who's come over a couple times and liked it, won both Puerto Rico and YotD - and against good, seasoned players!

I enjoyed this weekend so much that I might add it to the SedjCon schedule :)

Knights Templar, and a backwards approach to game design

I always thought that the Knights Templar could offer a strong theme for a medium/heavy eurogame about building up power and influence. There's so much legend and mystery surrounding the Knights Templar that I'm kinda surprised there's not already some game about them. Today in the BGDF chat room I was bouncing ideas off people about what a Knights Templar game might be like.

I was having some trouble with player identity and conflict... who would the players represent, and what would be the point of the game? I think I was having trouble because I was going about it sort of backwards. I started not with a main mechanic, or a problem for the players to solve, but rather with some parameters:

* 2 hour max game length,
* Medium/heavy euro-strategy style
* Knights Templar theme

And then tried to come up with a game structure that fit the parameters. One idea was a cooperative game, where players are all members of the Order of the Temple, but I couldn't figure out what they would be playing against. The inevitable decision by King Philip to send out "Order 66," disbanding the order and killing the Knights? That doesn't sound too good... Maybe a competitive game where the players each play a country and he Knights Templar are a sort of Non-Player Character in the game. Nah, too distant from the theme.

What I've come up with so far is a competitive game in which players accumulate Wealth and Influence for the Order of the Temple until the Crusades end and King Philip starts his purging of the Knights (Friday the 13, 1307). After that point, the game will either end and he with the most influence will be the one Knight that escapes (wins), or perhaps the game will start suppressing the influence of the Order, until it is gone, and at that point the player with the most influence escapes while the rest are arrested by Philip (and ultimately burned at the stake!)

My idea is that there will be a disconnect between the players, who will all be members of the Order of the Temple (or perhaps Families), and the Order itself. Since joining the Order meant turning over all your personal wealth, it wouldn't make sense for players to have individual holdings. Instead, players will be amassing wealth for the order, in a communal coffer. Players will also take actions which will earn Influence.

In the case of Influence, players will track the amount of influence they bring to the Order, and the total influence of the order will also be tracked. Upon the turning point in the game, the total influence of the order will begin to decline, setting a clock for the remainder of the game. It's possible at that point that some of the actions will change, become more potent, etc. It's also possible that there will be a geographical element to King Philip's purge... starting in France and radiating outward, buildings will be removed from the board (causing the Order to lose their Influence). Thereby a Church or Castle built in or near France is "more fragile" than one built farther away, and could therefore offer more in game terms than a distant Church/Castle.

The idea of Rank also came up, where a player could advance in rank and therefore have access to more or better actions. In the case that Rank is determined by Influence (essentially score) i don't like that idea, because it is the kind of mechanic that can make a winning player win more. However if Rank is based on the amount of Wealth the player has amassed for the Order, then it becomes interesting - there's an opportunity cost in investing in Rank (less Influence or victory points). In that respect I like the idea.

So far that's about all I've got. The game begins with players amassing wealth, influence, and power for the Order of the Temple, then when the Crusades end and King Philip issues the decree to disband the order, the Knights Templar take important relics and artifacts and go into hiding.

Maybe the Relics could be an endgame score kind of thing...

Ides of March

SAGA's Ides of Gaming event occurred on March 15th this month, the Ides of March. It was also the 1st anniversary of the event, so it was 12 hours long, had scheduled stuff, and was also the official announcement of RinCon, a full gaming convention which the group will be putting on over Halloween this year.

As a side note, the convention sounds pretty cool, and it's only $20 to pre-register. Check out RinConGames.com for more info.

I had a good time, and got a lot of games in. Here's what I played:

Pandemic
I'd been under the impression that Pandemic is a neat attempt at a cooperative game, but it suffers from some of the same shortcomings of all cooperative games. Namely that it's solitaire. Jim Cote wrote up a nice post on Pandemic, and my comment on that post says a lot of what I had thought of the game after 2 or 3 plays.

Until yesterday I hadn't really lost the game. Since it had seemed easy, we decided to play in "Heroic" mode, which means using 6 Epidemic cards instead of 5, making the game harder. What I didn't realize is that the game also gets harder the more people you play with. So when we played 4-player in Heroic mode, we got thoroughly squashed by the game twice in a row. Then we decided to step it back to Normal mode (5 Epidemic cards). With 4 players in Normal mode we lost twice when we would win the very next turn. Later we tried one more time, determined to win a game... we played with 3 players on Normal mode, and not only did we win, but it felt like a foregone conclusion.

My new position on this game is that the discrete difficulty levels are kinda weird. It appears that there's a significant jump in difficulty going from 3 players to 4, and of course there's a big jump going from Normal to Heroic. 4 player Heroic seems neigh impossible, while 3 player Normal seems too easy. many 4 player games on Normal appear to be lost on the last turn, which seems likely the best outcome (intense, but maybe winnable). I'd like to try 3 player Heroic to see how that goes.

I'm a little unsettled by something which I suspect is true (and which I hear has been mentioned on BGG) - that there's a certain percentage of games which, based on the order of the cards in the deck, are simply unwinnable no matter what the players do. This wouldn't be a problem if the percentage were low, but I get the impression that the number is likely pretty high with 4 players. I'd be curious to know what that value is for 4 players on Normal, and if it's "too high" (I'm not sure where I'd draw the line) I'd probably not want to play with 4 players anymore.

In the Year of the Dragon
I played another game of ItYotD, and I continue to really enjoy the game. This time I started out with a first turn Double Dragon, a play which people on the internet appear to think is the obvious first play, and is likely unbeatable. I do not agree with them, but it seemed like a good play to make anyway, so I did it. Tyler on the other hand started with a Court Lady and a Craftsman. He struggled some in the midgame while I did pretty well, so I thought I would end up beating him. In the end though I had struggled with space constraints and had to fire some people, and Tyler ended up winning by 5 points. There's some more evidence that the Double Dragon is not unbeatable!

Race for the Galaxy
I played 4 games of Race for the Galaxy yesterday, with Tyler winning most of them. They were all 3 or 4 player games, and I think I really prefer the game with 2 players. The best news was that I found out that I didn't lose a card last week at the restaurant after all :)

Qwirkle
I had played Qwirkle once before, and I met the designerl last year at a convention. I loved the idea of the game, but playing it yesterday made me think 2 things...
1. It takes a long time for my opponent to take their turn. This means my opponent is probably thinking the same thing. Maybe it was just that opponent, as I don't recall this from the last time.
2. (and this is a much bigger deal) I'm not sure how 'fair' the game is. It seems like the luck of the draw can be very swingy. In yesterday's game I didn't have a play in the world for the first half of the game, and i was getting trounced. Then later, every tile I drew seemed to match up with the board, I scored 3 Qwirkles in a row! I just wonder if the luck of the draw doesn't play too big a role in the game. I still like it, and I might like to get it as a gift for my mom (who likes Scrabble) or my sister (who likes pattern matching stuff like Set and Tetris).

Puerto Rico
I'm pretty good at Puerto Rico. I've played a lot, and I've put some effort into studying strategies and improving my play. In this game it was me, my friend John (who's also very good), Bill who plays once in a while, and his wife... who despite playing once in a while, seems to not remember what actions do what from one turn to the next (let alone from one game to the next). We also had a new player at the table, who seemed to pick things up very quickly.

Bill went first and chose Builder. As player 3 I made an unusual play (for me) - based on the thought that player 2 (the newbie) would choose mayor to get her Indigo running I chose to build a Hospice so I could then Settle a manned quarry. I felt this would be an interesting start, and since the number of 'inexperienced' players was high, I figured anything could happen and I'd have a fun and interesting game trying to keep on my toes. I spent most of the game trying to make sure I was staying ahead of John, who I figured would be my main competition. John was doing a very extreme strategy as well, he had nothing but corn plantations, a small market, and a Wharf.

One turn the new player was going to take a Prospector with 1 gold on it so she could get 2 gold. There was also a trader with 2 gold on it, and no one had any goods at all. I recommended that she take Trader instead, and explained that it's the same 2 gold for her, but taking trader makes the trade action less good for whoever ends up doing it later. In the following round, who ended up choosing Trader? Me of course :) Way to talk yourself out of 3 gold, Seth!

In the end, when John was scoring 5-7 points per Captain phase, I looked around the board on my turn and saw that everyone had 1 or no goods (John had none) so I chose Captain. While we were loading goods, I found out that Bill's wife had 3 more gods that I couldn't see before, so she made out with even more points than I did during that captain phase. If I'd seen her other goods, I would have chosen the more obvious play at the time: Prospector. In fact, when this happened, Tyler walked up and said "Who doesn't pick Prospector?"

When final scores were tallied, I had beaten John handily, but it turns out that Bill's wife (who had built 2 large buildings) had scored the same as I had... I counted up my goods plus money and looked at her huge stash of production and they were equal! Then there were a couple coins beside her player mat, which turned out to be he final tiebreaker.

Age of Gods
I have not played Age of Gods, but I won it in the raffle. I'm not too sure about it though, I have only heard that you own one of the factions, but you don't know which - and you control any faction on your turn. Over the course of the game, faction control is revealed. So maybe in the early game you don't want to damage any faction too much or build anything up too much because it might/might not be yours. I'll probably geta chance to try it on Thursday.

In the Year of the Dragon

I don't generally do full fledged reviews of games, but once in a while there's a game which attracts a lot of my attention. I've recently played In the Year of the Dragon and it has impressed me with its strategic depth, replayability, and general quality so I thought I'd take a shot at reviewing the game to explain what I like about it.

I bought YotD at OrcCon last month, having never seen nor played it. I knew nothing about it, really... all I could say is "I've heard good things," and I'm not even sure that was 100% true! But I had a few dealer dollars, the price was pretty good, and I like Notre Dame (by the same designer) so I went ahead and bought it.

The Components: Most reviews start with an overview of what's in the box... the contents and quality of components. In YotD you get...
* a game board,
* 7 sturdy tiles for the actions,
* wooden 'scoring' and 'initiative' markers for each player,
* lots of cardboard chits for rice, money, fireworks, palace floors, privileges, and dragon shaped player markers,
* Plastic stands for the player markers,
* a set of 12 cards for each player, including the smallest player aid ever,
* Lots of square tiles for people and events (12 events and I think 10 for each person)

The board seems just like that of Taj Mahal, and like that other game, I have a hard time getting this board to lay flat once it's unfolded. Aside from that small gripe, and the super tiny text on the player aids, I have no problem at all with the components, they are on par for a nice eurogame. A friend of mine thought the art was lousy, but I guess that just doesn't bother me. There have been complaints online about the insert... it's designed alright, but the wells could be just a bit deeper so the tiles could fit in sideways. It's not unmanageable as is though.

The Rules: YotD has a fairly simple round structure. There are 12 rounds - one for each month of the year of the dragon. Each round has 4 parts... first you choose an action, then you hire a person, then you resolve the event, and finally you score points. This round structure is repeated 12 times, and then the game ends and there is a little bit of endgame scoring. The player with the most points at the end, wins.

Actions
The actions, and the action selection mechanics, aren't the most clever part of the game. When it's your turn, you simply choose the action you want. However the actions are shuffled up each round and dealt into piles, and when you take an action you put your dragon marker on the pile the action is in. It costs $3 to do an action in a pile where someone's already placed their dragon. this means going first is something of a big deal, because money is hard to come by, and if you don't go first someone might take the action you want, or even an action you don't want that happens to be paired with an action you want, and you'll have to pay. Of course if you don't have $3 then you can't pay, and therefore cannot take that action!

The turn order is dictated by an initiative track (called the "person track") in the center of the board. Each round players take their turn in order, per their position on that track. Thus if you want to go first, you'll want to find ways to advance past everyone else on the person track.

The 7 actions are...

* Get rice
* Get fireworks
* Get money
* Move ahead on the people track
* Score points
* Build Palaces
* Buy a privilege

Each of these actions do just what it sounds like, they get you some amount of one of the resources in the game, allow you to improve your standing in the turn order, score points directly, give you more palaces (which sore points and make room to hold people tiles), or buy a privilege which will score points every round for he rest of the game. The amount of resources and stuff you get, the potency of your action, depends on which people you've employed. For example if you have a farmer, then you get more rice per "Get rice" action than if you don't have a farmer.

There's a very important alternate action - instead of taking an action a player can fill up to $3. This is important because when you have less than $3 you can't take actions where other players have taken actions, and the only way to get money otherwise is one of the actions. So to make sure players don't get continually screwed, you're allowed to skip your turn to take money.

People
In part 2 of the turn you hire one of the 9 people in the game. Each player has exactly 1 card for each of the 9 people, and 2 wild cards. When you hire a person, you discard that card out of your hand, and it's gone for the rest of the game. Thus, over the course of the game each player will hire each person at least once - you can double up with the wild cards which let you pick any person). The question becomes, which person do you want each turn, or on a larger scale, what order do you want the different people (and, which people do you want to double up on)?

The people, their abilities, and their initiative value is one of the things that makes this game so interesting. Each person tile has 2 attributes, a number of symbols indicating how much they help a particular action, and a number indicating how far you advance on the person track when hiring that person. Most of the people come in 2 types, the "young" version has a higher number for initiative, but doesn't augment actions as much, while the "old" version generally augments actions more, but has a much smaller initiative value. Thus, when hiring a person, you not only have to consider which action they augment, but also where that puts you in turn order (as mentioned above, going first can be a really big deal).

These people are going to help you take actions and score points during the game, and the game complicates this process by limiting the number of people you can employ at one time. Players start with two 2-story palaces. You can fit 1 person per floor in a palace, so if you have as many people as you do palace floors, then you'll have to fire someone to hire a new person. This makes you really manage your people, as you may not want to get rid of anyone. Also, people tiles are worth points at the end of the game if they survive, so running into space constraints will cost you valuable VPs! Palace floors can be added to your board with the Build Palace Floor action.

Here's a list of the people tiles available, preceded by their initiative value:
* 1 Lady - 1vp per round
* 2 Craftsman - 1 extra palace floor when building
* 3 Tax collector - 3 extra money when getting money
* 1 Old Farmer - 2 extra rice when getting rice
* 4 Young Farmer - 1 extra rice when getting rice
* 2 Old Doctor - Save 2 people during Contagion event
* 4 Young Doctor - Save 1 person during Contagion event
* 2 Old Scholar - 3 extra victory points when getting points
* 4 Young Scholar - 2 extra victory points when getting points
* 3 Old Pyrotechnic guy - 2 extra fireworks when getting fireworks
* 5 Young Pyrotechnic guy - 1 extra firework when getting fireworks
* 3 Old Soldier - 2 Helmet symbols (for Mongol event and initiative action)
* 5 Young Soldier - 1 Helmet symbol (for Mongol event and initiative action)
* 2 Old Monk - 2 Buddha symbols (worth points at game end)
* 6 Young Monk - 1 Buddha symbol (worth points at game end)

Events
Each month one of 6 different events occurs. For the most part these events force players to lose people unless they prepare properly. Sometimes they allow players to score some points. Here is a list of the 6 events, each one appears twice in the game:

* Peace - nothing happens
* Festival - Most fireworks scores 6vp, 2nd most scores 3vp.
* Mongols - Players score 1vp per Helmet symbol, then fewest symbols loses 1 person.
* Drought - For each palace, pay 1 Rice or lose 1 person from that palace.
* Contagion - Lose 3 people, less 1 per bowl symbol (doctors).
* Tribute - Pay $4. for every $1 you can't pay, lose 1 person.

These events are the real genius in the game design. The year of the Dragon always starts with Peace in the first 2 rounds, so players can get a head start preparing for the upcoming events. The other 10 events are shuffled and dealt randomly at the beginning of the game, making sure no event happens twice in a row. This sets the order of events for the game, and it is different every game. Players can plan based on this order of events - which events will I prepare for? Which will I ignore? You can really plan a strategy for the game based on which events occur early, or which occur late.

Scoring
In any game the scoring is what drives players decisions - it's a measure of incremental progress toward the final goal: victory. In YotD there is scoring each round, and final scoring at the end of the game. In general, a player can concentrate on scoring more points each round, probably ending up with a low endgame score because they're spending time scoring points rather than defending against events. Alternatively, a player can aim to prevent losing people to events, in which case they won't score as much during the game, but they may have a 30+ point endgame score.

The things that are worth points each round are Palaces, Court Ladies, and Privileges. Endgame score comes from people remaining in your palaces, Buddhas on Monk tiles in your palaces, and leftover rice, fireworks, and cash. The decisions faced by players as to which events to pander to, which actions to use for points vs preparing for events, and which people to hire are all very intricate, interesting, and important.

I have quickly grown very enamored of In the Year of the Dragon, it may well be my new favorite game!

Winds of Fate, revisited

Odysseus: Winds of Fate was originally to be about "betting" on whether Odysseus and his crew would make it safely to Ithaca or not, then trying to influence his voyage to the outcome you bet on. I have been unhappy with how my first draft of the game ended up representing that, while I liked some of the ideas, it just didn't come together right. As a result, it's sat un-played and un-thought about for well over a year now.

Recently I realized that I actually had much of the game prototyped, and that I should take the upcoming Protospiel opportunities to maybe try it out again. It might be easier than trying to get together copies of Hot and Fresh or Dynasty, which require more prototyping before they can be played at all.

Today I put a little thought into making the game more directly about betting on the outcome and then influencing the outcome, and I think I like what I came up with.

Originally there were going to be 2 types of 'coins' or scoring chits, and you would win them by "winning" an adventure - you'd get White ones if the adventure outcome was favorable for Odysseus and you'd get Blue ones if it was not. White and Blue represented Athena, who hopes to help Odysseus return home, and Poseidon, who hates Odysseus and wants to see him drown. Players would collect coins in these colors, and depending on the outcome of the game - Success or Failure - only 1 of the colors would score. Or maybe 1 color would score more than the other.

I liked this mechanic so much that I also tried it for All For One briefly - King points and Cardinal points, and the ones that counted depended on which pool ran out first. One problem with the mechanic in both games was that it seemed too "all or nothing" - you could put a lot of work into collecting blue points, and if the game end is White, your efforts turn out to have been worthless. No one liked that very much. Also, it didn't correctly reflect an investment in or betting on the outcome, so it was failing the initial design goal anyway.

The latest idea modifies these White and Blue coins a bit. Instead, there could be coins with Athena on one side and Poseidon on the other. When finishing an Adventure, players would "win" some number of these coins (depending on their performance), and of their reward they could bank a certain maximum amount toward a Successful outcome and a certain maximum amount toward a Failure outcome - basically investing in the game end. They could also withhold some of the coins to be spent during the game, presumably to influence the outcome. Ideally, if you thought the outcome would be Success, you'd always invest the maximum possible into "Success," and you'd withhold some or all of the coins you could have invested in "Failure" to spend trying to influence the game toward a successful outcome.

Originally, the game had cards, and you would play these cards to try and influence which of 2 paths the boat takes each round. Then you would play these cards to influence the outcome of the adventure, which would have an effect on the overall outcome of the game. Now I think the path choice will be based on a blind bid using these coins. I think players will also buy more cards with these coins. Then the card play could work as before (similar to card play in Taj Mahal), with the rewards being coins... more for the 'winner' and fewer for 2nd/3rd place, etc.

At the game end, players will score for all banked coins, where the coins invested in the 'correct' outcome will score a return of 1 coin for every 3 invested - in other words coins in the 'right' bank will be worth 1.33 points while coins banked toward the 'wrong' outcome will only be worth 1 point each.

I think this better represents an investment into the game outcome and then influencing the outcome. I also like the decision of whether to bank the coins for points, or keep them to buy more cards or influence the path of the boat and thereby the Fate of Odysseus.

I'd like to go through the Encounter tiles I made and modify the events that occur, and maybe the powers on the cards that exist. Some will have to be changed to work with this new structure - others could stand to be more fun or interesting. Hopefully I can get this done in the next couple of weeks so I can actually play the game at Protospiel West when i go to GameStorm at the end of the month!

New games!

I usually don't buy games, but I decided to get 2 games at the convention last weekend. One of them I ended up getting for about 30% off if you count the Dealer Dollars I won (I should work on winning more of those next time!). the other I got for about %15 off, but with no tax - not as good a deal, but I decided I wanted the game. Here's what I got:

In the Year of the Dragon
I've never played or even seen this game in action, and I really don't know anything about it except that it's by the guy that designed Notre Dame. I've heard some good things about it though.

Kingsburg
I played Kingsburg once at BGG.con last November, and I remember thinking that I was not as enamored as I thought I'd be. I like the idea of splitting up your dice and placing them on several spaces vs adding them all up and placing them on 1 space. I remember thinking though that the rewards were largely the same whichever way you did it. I figured that in general you'd get fewer but better rewards if you clump your dice, and more but weaker rewards if you split them up. Instead you usually get about the same number of resources, maybe +/- 1 if you split them up. It didn't seem to make a difference in the game I played. However while watching some people play this weekend and thinking about it a little, there are things you can collect that allow you to add 2 to the dice you are placing, which you can use once per placement - that would make each placement better when splitting up dice, giving the effect I was probably looking for. So I'm looking forward to trying the game again.

I guess I know what I'm bringing to game night tomorrow night!

OrcCon 2008

I went to OrcCon over President's Day weekend, and I had a pretty good time. I'll edit this post to start including some semblance of convention report talking about the people I hung out with and games I played. I'll probably do a geeklist at BGG as well, which I'll link to here.

The convention was fun all around. I played fewer tournaments, and really didn't play well or win much. I only earned 6 Dealer Dollars. I finished out of the money in the finals for Princes of Florence, Notre Dame, On the Underground, and Guillotine. The 6 Dealer Dollars I did get came from a random game of Wheedle - a short, silly game I just happened to walk in on when they were about to start.

I didn't play any Time's Up at all, but at least I played Werewolf, and it was fun!

More to come...

Airlines as a theme (instead of trains)

Someone on BGG started a thread asking why there aren’t games about the airline industry like there are about the train industry.

In the thread several plane games were mentioned, maybe the most relevant is the upcoming Aviation Tycoon from Z-Man games, but as someone in the thread said, based on the description, that could be a game about any kind of transportation system. That poster was pretty adamant that any airline game would have to be a detailed simulation of the airline industry, including things like the difference between a 727-100, 727-200, and 727-200A. Not surprisingly, he said his numerous attempts at such a game have thus far led to nothing.

I maintain that there are several different ways to go about an airplane game, and I think they could all produce an interesting game. Off the top of my head I could list a few basic structures for an airline game. Sure, maybe some of them would also work with other forms of transport, so someone interested in a plane game that couldn't be re-themed to something else wouldn't be too interested. I got news for those people though - almost every game can be re-themed.

• When I think of airlines, I think of a map with lots of lines connecting cities. I think a connection-type game could be made where you need to get your airline established in cities... it's not physically the same as laying train track on the ground, but I think it's analogous. In order to have a scheduled flight between 2 cities, you have to have some semblance of control in each of them. This version of the game would concentrate less on the specifics of that control, and it would deal with getting control of the right cities to 'build' the right routes, similar to a train connection game, but in a different way. There could even be technology, as planes could have limited range until you upgrade them.
  
• Another version of a plane game could eschew the connections, and deal more with the passengers in the airport itself. You need to get passengers through ticketing and security, to their gates and onto their flights.
  
• It was mentioned to me that the real business in running an airline is securing time slots and gates. So a game could be made which concentrates on earning/buying/bidding for certain gates and/or time slots at airports in order to put together flights that go from point A to point B. This last idea I thought about just a little bit, and here's something that might be an OK start:

I imagine a board with a number of airports, each with a list of time slots. Perhaps there are multiple spaces at each time slot (1 for each gate). During the "scheduling" round players attempt to control these slots via some method. Then, during a resolution round, passengers would take the scheduled flights to their destinations.

There could be passengers that are in a big hurry, willing to change airlines at every stop if it'll get them there faster. There could also be passengers who would rather stay on the same airline the whole way, no matter how long it takes or how many stops on the way.

I didn't intend this to be a new project to think about, so I probably won't do anything with it - at least not for a while. I just wanted to mention it and get some thoughts down where I can find them later :)

I just had an idea for Red Colony...

Since the game is about exploring and colonizing (hmm... where have I seen that before? heh) - I'm imagining a board covered with face down tiles. Probably square tiles, as opposed to hexes, but that remains to be determined. The tiles could have some kind of terrain or features on them. When you build a "building," you do so without knowing what's on the tile - you flip the tile face up and place your building marker or whatever on it. The terrain or features might be symbiotic or amenable to that particular building, or they might not. I don't imagine there'd ever be a huge penalty, maybe some additional cost, or sub par efficiency (depending on what the building does).

Then there could be an Assay action, which could cost some time/effort/resources, and would allow you to peek at a face down tile.

Thus, in general you build whatever buildings you want to pursue your strategy, and you do it wherever it's convenient. Or, if you prefer, you can spend the extra time and cost up front to find better places to build each building, and maybe your better placement will yield more efficient results or VPs or whatever.

it's not a particularly deep thought about the game, but I think I like the idea and wanted to get it posted somewhere before I forgot :)

The search for affirmation...

I did send Terra Prime off to Seattle last week, where I understand my friend's bosses may be interested in publishing a board game in addition to their main project, which is publishing a video game. They are a new company, working on their first video game title.

I don't really know very much about this publisher's motivation or how interested they really are in pursuing this endeavor. I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but I'm a little skeptical that this will really go anywhere. Board gaming is still such niche hobby, it's hard to imagine that a fledgling publisher really knows what they're getting themselves into.

Of course I could be wrong. Maybe they have money set aside for just such an endeavor, and all they're looking for is a game that they think is worth it! But for the time being I'm not getting my hopes up too high. I hope that doesn't sound like an insult to them, because that's not my intent at all! Who knows, maybe they'll even hire me to seek out other good unpublished board game designs and help develop them for publication as well! I know I've got a number of candidates I could recommend...

In any case, it's exciting to think that people are interested in playing my game - whether or not they're interested in publishing it. It's a little extra exciting in this case since it's at least a possibility!

So now I find myself curious and anxious to hear - not to hear that they've decided to go ahead with publishing the game (of course that would be awesome, but as I mentioned, I don't really expect it) - but to hear that they've played it, and what they think of it.

I wonder how many designers are in it for the money - which I understand to be negligible, how many are in it for fame or notoriety, and how many are just looking for affirmation. Affirmation that what they've created is enjoyed or approved of by the target audience.

Conjunction Junction, or perhaps Reading Railroad

Scott and I have been tossing back and forth ideas on the structure of Conjunction Junction (perhaps a better name... Reading Railroad?). Scott drafted up a ruleset, and I massacred it in my usual style. The main thing I realized while discussing it with him is this... and this may be a comment on collaborative design:

I don't think we're working on the same game.

For the most part, Scott's ideas for the format of the game seem a lot better suited to the complexity level we're going for, and more elegant in a lot of ways, so I've completely adopted them over my original thoughts of buying and selling letters and placing letter tiles on the board as track. Instead, the board has more abstract regions which you can "build track through" - and you do so by spelling words with letter tiles. The words don't have anything to do with the board, you just spell words - the longer the word, the more "Track Points" you get, and it costs a certain number of Track Points to build through a region. Leftover Track Points turn into VPs.

This I like - the idea is that you can make smaller words to connect cities, with little or no Track Points leftover for VPs, or you could make bigger words so you get more VPs as you lay track on the board to connect cities. The Cities still have City Tiles in them which you'll use at the end of the game to spell other words for endgame scoring.

This is where there appears to be a difference of opinion on the purpose of the game. In order for a non-wordsmith to be able to do well, I think it's important that the words you spell with City Tiles (which you've been collecting during the game) be pre-determined, printed on a scoring card, so you have some direction when you are choosing which cities to connect, and that motivation isn't wrapped up in your ability to recognize and spell words. Scott suggests that this is equivalent to not actually spelling words with City Tiles, and instead it's like saying "make a network that connects this, that, and the other city." This is, in a sense, true - and in fact could also be represented that way, although my actual mechanic would be like having a set of different possible network connections to make. However, doing it with letters on City Tiles goes along with the theme of the game and the wordbuilding mechanic. There are a few other reasons I think it's a little different as well, but they're specific and not important to the overarching question.

Scott has thus far preferred a system where players spell whatever word(s) they want/can with their City Tiles, and get rewarded for them... basically you get points for making a 3 letter word, a 4 letter word, a 5 letter word, etc. In matter of fact, I really like the idea, for a word game. For this game however, an original design goal (for me) was that it not be a word game at all. There are plenty of word games, and building words for the sake of building words is a well established genre - the thing I thought would be interesting was to make a game that a player who hates that genre could play with a player that loves that genre.

I think both scoring systems could work very well, and they both have some very interesting things going for them - I think they both give the player motivation to connect various cities over other cities, and I think they both reward doing a "good job" of connecting cities. However, the fundamental question remains - is this a word game, or a connection game?

I'll have to see what Scott thinks of my version of the ruleset he wrote. I'm interested to see what kind of implications the difference between word game and connection game will have, because in the end both scoring systems aren't all that dissimilar. I think the key is where the tension is when it comes down to the decision as to where you want to place track - what cities do you want to connect. Should this be based on your skill at word building, or your skill at analyzing the relative positions of City Tiles and which you need for your scoring card?

I maintain that using word building as a mechanic in a connection game is the more interesting way to go, because you don't see a lot of games like that. On the other hand there are plenty of word games out there.

"Shipping vs Building" (SvB)

Games provide players an opportunity to make choices, then evaluate the results and make more choices, etc. until an end result is achieved. Many games make this process interesting by providing multiple paths to get from the beginning of the game to that end result. Multiple paths to victory as it's often called. Various strategies, or ways to approach the game in an effort to win. I refer to those paths as the game's Shipping vs Building.

This term comes from Puerto Rico, arguably the greatest multiplayer strategy game of all time. In that game the extreme strategies are Shipping - loading goods on boats for victory points, and Building - spending money on buildings which are worth points. These are not mutually exclusive strategies, but in general the more shipping you do, the less building you can afford, and likewise the more building you do, the less goods you'll be shipping. These are simply the 2 major methods to gain victory points, the winning player will do some combination of the two.

That's a pretty pure example, from a well renowned game, of multiple paths to victory, and that's what I am referring to when I ask a question like "what is this game's SvB?"

When designing games I often ask myself, what's this game's SvB?

More thoughts on Hot and Fresh

I was going over my recent ideas on Hot & Fresh with a friend of mine, and looking at the board a lot. The good news is that the last time I fiddled with the board, it appears I did lay out spaces between locations. I have no idea if it's a good layout, but it's a layout - and that's a start!

The bad news is, while we talked about it, it occurred to me that the interaction and flow of the game would likely be much better if each delivery had a specific origin (not the same for all pickups) and a specific destination. So basically, instead of delivery drivers picking up pizzas from the shop, maybe taxis picking up fares from various locations and driving them around town to other locations.

This is bad news because thematically I love the idea of a young delivery driver taking shortcuts and speeding to deliver pizza on time, while the idea of a taxi driver driving around town is less exciting to me. On the other hand, the mechanics seem to fit the taxi theme much better.

The basic structure of the "Crazy Taxi" version of the game would be similar - there would be a face up display of people who've called your dispatch office for a ride. Your dispatch office has, of course, radioed this to all the drivers, and the first driver to the location gets the pickup. The display of Fare cards would be N cards (maybe 3? Maybe relative to the number of players?) face up, each card having an Origin, a Destination, and a Tip (and maybe also a Fare value). When you pick up a fare, you take the card from the display and place a number of tip counters onto it as indicated by the Tip value on the card. At the end of each "cycle" (which is a couple of turns), each Fare card loses one Tip counter. When upon arriving at a destination, you score the remaining Tip counters and discard the Fare (or keep them in a score pile perhaps).

Each player has 3 slots in their cab, so they can carry up to three people. Some fares however take up 2 slots (a guy with a bunch of luggage) or all 3 (a family of 3). The Tip value would be adjusted appropriately.

The traffic laws would work the same way, whenever you break a rule, you draw a card (or or maybe increase a track). At the end of a cycle, you roll 2d6, and if your roll is less than the number of cards you've drawn (or the value of the track), then you get a ticket. Maybe if you have a Fare in your cab, they get mad and jump out (without paying), so you lose your fare - this might make it even more dangerous to speed or break rules while you have a fare, compared to when you're on your way to pick one up. Tickets would probably be worth negative points at the game end: -1 for the first, -2 for the second, -3 for the third, etc. There could also be a Courthouse on the board, where a player could stop and pay off a ticket at the cost of 2vp or something, which would be worth doing if you have 3 or more tickets (or if you plan to by the end of the game).

It's possible the cards you draw for breaking the rules might have effect on them as well, that was the original intent. However for the first draft of the game I think I'll leave that out. There could also be event cards, introducing such things as construction or a traffic jam in certain sections of the board. I'll leave that out for now too, but it seems like a fit for a game with an emphasis on route planning.

The other thing that seems like a fit for route planning is the traffic cop pawn, which exists in the pizza game, sort of. In the taxi version though I don't think it would be player controlled, mostly because I can't think of a good mechanic for it that would fit. However I think there could be a few cops, which randomly are assigned to certain blocks (main roads between intersections), and their effect would be that you simply aren't allowed to break any traffic laws on that block.

The only player interaction in this version would be racing for the pickups. I don't know if that would be enough, but frankly it sounds like more interaction than the pizza idea!

Cooperative games - the very definition of multiplayer solitaire?

One of my least favorite things about the cooperative games I've seen so far - mostly Lord of the Rings and Shadows over Camelot, as well as various role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons - is that they can and often are more or less driven by the most dominant (or stubborn) person in the room. It's like that person is playing solitaire, and everyone else is just watching. For some people that might be OK, or even fun, but for me... well, I'd like to see a game in which each player must make their own choices, do their own thing, and yet still be encouraged to help the other players.

In Knizia's Lord of the Rings cooperative game, an attempt is made to make the game effectively multiplayer by giving each player different cards, and it's presumably up to each player how he spends those cards. It would be a much different game if the players played the game in seclusion, without being able to discuss each others' plays, and in theory, you're not supposed to tell people what cards you have, but really - where do you draw the line? What's the difference between "That next event looks dangerous, maybe we should fight our way through the board as fast as possible," and "If you have fight cards, you should advance the main track or we're going to lose," and "play your fight card and a friendship card, so player 2 can get the Heart they need, and I can finish off the board with the cards in my hand."

Shadows over Camelot adds a particularly effective deterrent for this kind of thing... namely the player coaching everyone else might in fact be a traitor! This is a novel idea, and it goes a long way toward solving the solitaire problem, but not all the way. In practice, it's still possible (easy, even) for a dominant personality to drive everyone's play, whether they're a traitor or not. Statements like "You should go to the Grail challenge and play a Grail card, unless of course you're the traitor!" can go a long way toward dominating a game. In that particular game, not working as a team is a good way to lose, so either you do what the dominant guy says, or you do your on thing and people think you're the traitor, or you do your own thing and the team loses because everyone's doing their own thing. In Shadows over Camelot you're also not supposed to discuss what you have in your hand, but to a lot of people it's just tedious to say "That's an awfully pathetic looking Black Knight" when placing a face down Fight-1 card there, or "I feel anxious to start the fight against the Saxons, but I fear I cannot finish!" Is the intent to promote role playing in order to communicate what you have in hand? Or is the intent that you're not supposed to know what people have in hand? I propose the latter would be more fun as a game, because the former leads to solitaire.

So how do you do it? How do you create a game in which players want to work together, but also have to think for themselves and make their own decisions? Here are some thoughts I've been having so far - no guarantee they'll work:

- I'd like to see team building and team dynamics, but I'd also like to see each member of the team have to do their own thing.

- I like the idea of team strategy - a discussion of who's going to have what responsibility, and that could theoretically by dominated by an Alpha player, but then in the resolution of each member's duties I'd like to see players have to act for themselves. Maybe little solo mini-games.

- The player interaction is in preparation for multiple (simultaneous?) mini-games, the result of which feeds back into the group's next strategy session.

- I also like the idea of a player not being "on the team" (i.e. a Traitor). Specifically, I like the idea that any player may become a traitor sometime mid game, and nobody knows ahead of time who or when.

The idea here is a cooperative game, where all players are on the same team (except for the potential traitor), and they're working together to accomplish a common goal. The theme I've had in mind for this is the TV show 24, where players are CTU agents working to avert a terrorist attack. Jack Bauer, being the show's hero, would make an appearance in the game, but as an NPC - a character or resource players could make use of, but not a personality any single player would play. The theme could be made generically anti-terrorist, even on a larger scale, where players control various branches or departments (CTU, Homeland security, FBI, CIA...) - but I personally think there's some value to tapping into a cool, established franchise for a theme. Most licensed games don't impress, but that's because the people doing them aren't trying to make a good game, they're trying to sell some crap based on the license. I'd like to make a good game with a licensed theme.

Terra Prime updated

I made some progress this weekend updating stuff for my Terra Prime prototype - I redid the delivery tiles so they have the point value printed on them (and I added one and changed one). I updated the Cargo Hold tiles so they wouldn't look color specific anymore. I redid the Tech Upgrade board to accurately reflect recent changes, and I even named all of the upgrades:
* Government Contract: Extra $ per delivery action
* Increased Cargo Capacity: Flip Cargo Holds to the double capacity side
* Targeting Computer: Re-roll all unsuccessful Weapon and Shield rolls once
* Battlestation: Additional Weapon and Shield
* Cloaking Device: Aliens don't attack at the end of Move/Explore action
* Hyperdrive: Additional Thruster, and Explore x2/turn

I even re-wrote the rules (still editing). The only thing I have left to do is to update the player boards to edit the action list, and to add the innate weapon and shield info.

I think I'll also add an innate capacity to carry 2 Brownium cubes, so that players can pick them up even if carrying a colony marker or other cargo. I decided to make Brownium spendable as cash when buying a module rather than having Mines provide free $ for everyone. This seems good, except that the inability to use that effect when toting goods is a little too frustrating, so I think I'll add 2 Brownium-specific slots to the starting ship. Like the innate weapon and shield, this will not count as a cargo hold, will not increase the cost of cargo holds, and cannot carry a colony marker.

I hope to get another test or 2 of this game in before sending it off to Seattle, which I plan to do on Wednesday.

Conjunction Junction (what's your function?)

Last month I posted about the possibility of using word building as a mechanic in a game that's not necessarily a word game. I've given it some thought and discussed it with a few members of BGDF, and now I've got an outline of a game which I think might not be bad at all. It's a connection game, with a light railroad theme, using word building as a way to lay track. The object of the game is to collect city tiles, which have letters on them in order to spell certain predefined (potentially thematic) words. The working title (thanks to Darkehorse from BGDF) is Conjunction Junction, which is not technically accurate, as we're not using conjunctions to make sentences, but it's got a nice ring to it, and really evokes both words and trains :)

The bullet list of important points in this game is...

• People who are good at word building should be able to excel at this game.
  
• People who are NOT good at word building but who are good at connection (or perhaps economic) games should also be able to excel at this game.
  
• There needs to be a point to building words, rather than word building for the sake of word building.

The basic structure of the game is relatively simple. Imagine a hex grid, with certain hexes indicated as cities. This is not unlike Railroad Tycoon or Age of Steam. In fact, let's just go ahead and imagine the Railroad Tycoon board. Now imagine the pile of hex tiles from RRT, only with letters on them. Also imagine the New City tiles from RRT, only more of them, and they have letters on them too. We'll call the lettered track tiles "letter tiles" and the New City tiles "City tiles". The City tiles are stacked on the cities, All the S's on one city, all the F's on another, etc.

Over the course of the game, players lay track to connect cities, collecting the City Tiles from those cities. In the end these City tiles are used to spell words on a card, and the winner is the player that spells the most, or the biggest, word on the card. Something like that.

Along the edge of the board there are a number of bins. The bottom one is empty, and the rest have pairs of randomly drawn letter tiles in them. On your turn you may choose to either get tiles or use tiles. If you get tiles then you pay money - you put $1 in the empty bin and take whatever is in the next bin for free... Or you put $1 on that bin as well (with the 2 letters), and take the contents of the third bin. When you take a bin, you get everything in it - the 2 letters and any money that happens to be with them, then the contents of each bin above that one slide down. You can actually take the first bin and just get money (nothing slides down in that case, there are never letters in that first bin).

If you choose to use tiles then you either place letter tiles on the board to spell a word and get paid $1 per letter you place, or lay generic track (from an off-board supply, like in Railroad Tycoon) at the cost of $1 per tile you place. In either case, you must place tiles from one city to another, and then you take a City tile off of either of the 2 connected cities.

That's the basic structure of the game. I've been having a steady stream of thoughts about the specifics...

It would be interesting if there were incentives to build off your network as opposed to willy-nilly all over the board. One idea is that you could have multiple networks, but building gets more expensive if you do. The advantage to building onto your existing network in that case is cost. Perhaps the standard cost to use tiles is ($1/network - $1), so no extra cost if you just have 1 network, $1 extra if you have two networks, etc.

I think there might also be a warehousing cost, like $1 to save tiles after building... and/or whenever you get tiles you pay $1 if you already have any.

I just need to be sure that taking cash and paying for track isn't strictly better than building words, and I also don't want it to be strictly worse. One of my design goals for the game is that a word builder and a non word builder should both be able to play and be competitive.

I was also thinking that you could maybe 'sell' tiles for $1 apiece, because what if you take 2 tiles, only need 1, and are stuck with the other... Do you have to warehouse it every turn until you can use it? Do you have to discard it? Are you allowed to sell it for $1? Maybe selling for $1 is fair.

Tough to use letters could have a coin pictured on them, meaning you get an extra $ for using that letter.

I think there needs to be a connection bonus or else $2/tile for building a word, or you're basically losing money. You'll get tiles for an average of probably about $1 per tile, so if you place them for $1/tile then you're not making progress... but maybe that's ok.

Discussing this game in the chat, Nando had the following to say:
10/01/2008 15:29:08 ‹Nando› freaking. complicated.
10/01/2008 15:29:17 ‹Nando› for a word game anyway

It's not really a word game. Word games are about making words for the sake of making words. This is a connection game with word building as the main mechanic :)

Of course, since I started writing this post, Doho123 has come up with a very interesting alternate format for the game, which has a lot of good things in it (though I don't know if I'm entirely sold yet). Curse you Scott! :)

Gears are turning, feels good!

I'm really happy with the feeling of progress that's come along recently with respect to Terra Prime, Dynasty, and Hot and Fresh. Heh, in the case of Hot and Fresh, gears are literally turning (almost)!

As soon as I get TP off next week, this is what I need to jump on or else the designs will stall again...

Dynasty: Brainstorm discoveries.
I need a list of Discoveries or inventions, preferably ones that were made by the ancient Chinese (such as gunpowder, hot air balloon, compass, plow...), some cost for them, and of course a game effect. Some of these I think are pretty straightforward, like the Plow could allow access to an extra resource of a couple types (the types you would harvest with a plow). Of course, for it to make sense I also need a number of resources... I think the Hot Air Balloon will allow leader pawns to move further, maybe the Compass will allow 2 leaders to move with 1 action.

If anyone has any suggestions, don't be shy! Some of the inventions will simply be for VPs, and some will have prerequisite discoveries (either by player, or in general - like Paper must have been invented by someone before Paper Money can be invented. Maybe Paper Money is a personal invention which allows you to "trade" for 1 resource per turn without giving points away (taking the other player's chit onto your board).

Hot & Fresh: Design board
As discussed prior, I need to lay out the board for the game. I have had a map section for a long time which I'd like to use...


I just need to pick locations and figure out how many spaces need to be in between different places. And I need to delete every other residential road, there's a bit more in that section than is necessary. I might also like to add more traffic light intersections, as that was the original point of the game.

If I can keep on top of those things, then I think I'll have prototypes of these games to play before too much longer!

These 4 walls closin' in, gettin' bigger...

Last night I tested Terra Prime with a smaller board. I used only 1 row of green tiles instead of 2. The net result is that the "safe zone" without aliens was condensed, and the yellow and red planets were much closer. I actually think this was a positive change. The board might be too crowded with 5 players, so it might be that the small board is the 3 player (or 3/4) player board, and the larger board is for 5 (or 4/5) players. I'll have to test it out with different numbers of players. I did go through and mark a subset of tiles to use for the smaller board, to make sure planets and asteroids were distributed well.

The game also went much quicker - a 3 player game flew by in about 45 minutes. The small board is a lot less friendly as well, there's more competition for things, and hostile aliens feel like they're right on your doorstep.

I also tried adjusting the costs of things. I started each player with $3 instead of $2, and I made modules cost $2 + $1 per like type you already have, instead of $1 + $1/like type. I was happy I did because I thought it might be too easy to get a very quick 4th Engine (extra actions) that way, but now I'm not so sure. I might go back to the old cost structure.

I started each player with a "built-in" shield but not a gun. I adjusted the combat rules such that the more guns/shields you have, the better each of them work. I think next time I'll start each player with an innate shield and gun (not the same as "built-in" because built-in stuff affects costs), so that the starting money can either buy a Cargo Hold, or a Shield + Gun - and if you go Shield + Gun then you can reasonably take on at least a single alien.

I'm excited about the progress of these playtests, and I hope to get a few more in this week/weekend, then I send the game to Seattle to see if this publisher likes it!

Terra Prime changes tested, now what?

Well, I did test Terra Prime last night, some of the changes seemed good, others not so much.

* Game Length
The game length seems good still, though it still seems to end a bit abruptly. If there were a magic way to make the game feel like it coasted to an ending rather than coming to an abrupt end, I'd love that!

* Game End Conditions - I might like to scratch the exploration trigger, and have the only game end condition be when someone runs out of markers, then I want to add that you get rid of a marker when you fill a tile (which you collect for the bonus points). I might also have that the tech upgrades get marked out of your supply of colony markers. And I'll give people like 10 markers instead of 8 (for 3 player... 1 fewer for 4 player and 2 fewer for 5p)
I didn't use counters for delivering, but I did use them for upgrades - which I liked. Eric ended the game via alien hunting, getting all his markers on the board that way. He had 2 upgrades and 3 colonies and killed 3 aliens. That seemed fine, but the rest of us each had 4 markers left... so I'm not sure if that's good or not.

* Demand Tile change - Instead of adding a yellow tile when a yellow colony is founded, I think one of the green tiles should be replaced with a yellow tile. Similarly, when a red colony is founded, the red tile should replace the other green tile. In other words, there would only be 2 delivery tiles available at any given time.
I think I liked this one, and will try it again to see how it plays out.

* Combat change - I'm going to try to streamline the combat a little.
I don't think I was happy with this version of the combat. It made early asteroid fields almost automatic hits, it made aliens very, very dangerous... Then again, in a sense they're supposed to be. Here's what I will try next:

Ships have a built-in shield (I'll print it on the ship board), with the target number 6 on it, indicating that shields work on a roll of 6. Each additional shield module allows you to roll 1 additional die and reduces the target number by 1. I'll indicate this by putting a little "-1" on the shield tiles. This way you have some semblance of defense even if you don't buy a shield, and with 1 shield the system mirrors the current one, each additional shield is even better.

Weapons could work the same way, only I think the ships won't start with a built-in weapon. Each weapon module will give you 1 die and an effective +1 to hit on all your dice. So 1 weapon hits on 6, 2 weapons hit on 5+ each, and 3 weapons hit on 4+ each.

Aliens and asteroids can work the same way as the weapons, 6 as a base target number, roll 1 die per symbol, and reduce the target number by 1 per symbol.

This should make small aliens less dangerous but just as in-the-way as ever, and larger aliens will require work to kill (as usual) and should deal some damage (as they ought to).

Ideally, when coming out of combat with a triple alien you should have scored your points, colonized your juicy colony, and then you have to limp home battle worn.

One thing I might do which has been suggested once or twice is make shields available at red colonies as well as at Terra Prime. That way if you get in a scuffle and get beat up, you don't have to go all the way home to get more shields. Although, you're supposed to have to limp home if you get beat up, and it makes a more interesting decision as to which module to lose if you get hit. If you are near more shields, you just lose the shield and buy more. It's not supposed to be that easy.

Tuning Terra Prime - showing a publisher?

My friend works for a new company getting ready to put out their first video game title, and evidently they are interested in doing more than just video games... My friend told them about Terra Prime, and they are interested in trying it out!

That's pretty sweet, so now I guess it's time to iron out the couple of kinks that have been annoying me, and send them a copy. I'm hoping to test out some of these changes this week, make whatever adjustments are necessary, and send it out to them some time next week. In order to make myself do it, I'll try and set a deadline for myself - lets say January 16th I'm going to Fed Ex the package. So here are the ideas I want to try out...

• Game Length - I've been a little disappointed in the game end triggers and he fact that the game doesn't seem to last long enough to really get into red colonies/delivering red cubes. Red cubes are intended to be a big, late game play, you drop a colony on a red planet for a chunk of points, then you cart a red cube back to Terra Prime for a chunk of cash, and then you're pretty much done. If you're good (or lucky) you could maybe get all the way back out there and collect another red cube to deliver, but that takes a long time. I upped the value of the red cubes to 10vp (from 6) hoping the incentive would increase to go get them, but I really think 6 should be the right value. I'll have to try and find end game triggers that allow for people to get to the end game plays. I might also try going for them sooner, maybe it's a groupthink/player issue and not a game problem at all. I rather like the amount of time the game takes to play, and I wouldn't want it to get any longer.
  
• Game End Conditions - I've always been happy with the "a player places his last Colony marker on the board" game end trigger, but I've never been happy with the "certain number of tiles face up" trigger, and there's never been a trigger related to delivery. I think I might like to scratch the exploration trigger, and have the only game end condition be when someone runs out of markers, then I want to add that you get rid of a marker when you fill a tile (which you collect for the bonus points). I might also have that the tech upgrades get marked out of your supply of colony markers. And I'll give people like 10 markers instead of 8 (for 3 player... 1 fewer for 4 player and 2 fewer for 5p)
  
• Demand Tile change - Instead of adding a yellow tile when a yellow colony is founded, I think one of the green tiles should be replaced with a yellow tile. Similarly, when a red colony is founded, the red tile should replace the other green tile. In other words, there would only be 2 delivery tiles available at any given time. This way, once there are yellow and red colonies, you can't just deliver green and blue unless someone brings in the yellow. I think this will make a delivery strategy a lot more interesting.
  
• Combat change - I'm going to try to streamline the combat a little. This won't really make it any less random, which is one of the things I'm skeptical about, but it should make the die rolling a little less clunky at least. Instead of the current system, where you roll 1 die per gun or shield, and they work on a 5 or 6, you'll roll 1 die per symbol (no matter how many guns/shields you have, even zero), and on a 6 they work. Each gun you have gives you a +1 on your roll when attacking, and each shield you have gives you a +1 to your roll when defending. There will no longer be a roll for the alien's attack, just for your shields. The 'extra gun/shield' upgrade will be unchanged, and the 'guns/shields work better' upgrade will make each gun/shield give a +2 modifier instead of +1, doubling the usefulness of the guns and shields you have.

That's it for now, time to head home and try it out!