2020-2021: A playtesting retrospective

 A couple of years ago I posted a playtesting retrospective spanning late 2017 through the end of 2019, and I thought it as interesting to see the breakdown of time spent on various games, especially while considering the state that I know those games to be in now.

Now it's a couple years later, most of which has been spent in a global pandemic. Let's see what I managed to get playtested in 2020 and 2021...

2020

January
Throughout January, after a break for a Disneyworld vacation, we iterated a few times on the All For One revamp, and I brought Apotheosis back out after 6 months on the shelf.

All For One seemed to be working well, and I remember being pretty excited about the new updates. Unfortunately I haven't played it since, though in the interim I did create a Tabletop Simulator mod for the game, and I've even pitched it to a couple of publishers that way.

Apotheosis progress was coming along, and we ended up playing it a few times a month throughout 2020.

February
In addition to Apotheosis, February saw the debut of an Isle of Trains board game. First we played Dan's first draft version. Then a few weeks later I brought my own take on his concept, which was a lighter, more straightforward game, and we played that a few times.

March
March was weird, because I had to cancel most weekends for my Anniversary, and then a COVID scare. The 1 time we did play, we tested Apotheosis one more time, and enjoyed a published game: Glen More. Beyond that, I did play Apotheosis one more time at home with my wife.

April
Sadly, I had to cancel my weekly playtest meetup indefinitely due to COVID. I didn't test anything at all in April, but I did figure out how to implement prototypes on Tabletop Simulator, starting with Apotheosis.

May
Thanks to the technology of TTS and the internet, I was able to get a test in now and again online. In May we played Apotheosis a couple of times.

We also played the Isle of Trains boardgame once, and I think I've come around to thinking that maybe Dan was on the right track wanting to make a heavier game.

Finally, we played an updated version of Automatown which designer Michael Brown joined in on as a co-designer. He made a TTS mod and we were able to see his updates.

June
I was still getting the hang of making digital prototypes, and getting online playtests together. Unfortunately I didn't get any tests in June at all.

July
In July I pulled couple of older prototypes out of the woodwork. I played Reading Railroad at home with my wife, I played Exhibit online with my testers, and I got together with a designer who had come on board to work on Kilauea with me to check out his ideas for the game.

August

I got an online tests of Reading Railroad in August, as well as a couple games of Crusaders at home with my wife to test new faction powers I was developing.

I had an online pitch meeting for Apotheosis, which seemed promising. The publisher wanted to set the game in their fantasy universe, which was a perfect fit, so Rick and I reskinned the prototype with their art assets.

September

I kicked off the month with another test of the new Crusaders factions with Michelle. 

A few weeks later I had a prototype of a brand new game, Keeping Up With The Joneses, which I played twice with Michelle, and twice solo - and solo testing is something I almost never do!

Online I played one more game of Apotheosis with Rick and Aaron, my two main testers since going digital.

October

October was a busy month for testing, mostly on account of solo testing for Keeping Up With The Joneses - I played 6 solo games in.

I got in three online tests of Keeping Up with the Joneses as well, and three tests of Apotheosis too.

November
I revisited a couple more older games in November via digital prototypes with Rick and Aaron: Exhibit and Dice Works. I also played one of Rick's prototypes called Cwen.

December

We finished off the year with 4 tests of Apotheosis with some significant changes based on playing with the publisher who had showed interest, and the game got better and better.

2021

January
I started out 2021 playing games by a couple of my testers' latest games: Andy's Gemstone Pylons, and Rick's Stardock (later renamed Starlight).

We played Keeping Up With The Joneses once, and Apotheosis twice (once with the publisher)

February
I only had 2 test sessions in February, and we switched gears and played Sails & Sorcery, trying to figure out how to fix the issues with the Plunder action.

March
I didn't test any of my own stuff in March, but I played Rick's Starlight game a couple of times, as well as a skiing game that Andy was working on as a developer.

April
In April I revived another prototype, Deities & Demigods, to reacquaint myself and my players with the game. We also played Exhibit again, then later in the month I had the opportunity to pitch it to a big publisher (unfortunately, they passed on it). 

May
I started off the month with two more pitch meetings: Apotheosis and Keeping Up With The Joneses with one publisher; Riders of the Pony Express, Deities & Demigods, Sails & Sorcery, and Apotheosis with the other.

I played Rick's Starlight once more as well, then missed the rest of my sessions due to a vacation to Hawaii, lack of players, and technical difficulties.

June
Another tough month for playtesting... I had a first test of a new I-Cut-You-Choose game idea (later titled Division of Labor) with Rick, and a pitch meeting for Sails & Sorcery, then missed the rest of my sessions for one reason or another.

July
I got a 2nd test of Division of Labor and found some fundamental issues that would need to be addressed, and finished off the month with 3 tests of another revived prototype, Skye Frontier.

August
Another rough month for test sessions, I only got 1 playtest in: I got a gig developing expansion content for Amun-Re, a classic Eurogame from 20 years ago, and I tested some early content for that with Rick.

The rest of my sessions were canceled, but I did have a pitch meeting for Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (unfortunately that didn't go anywhere)

September
I started September with a solo test of Keeping Up With The Joneses, then spent the rest of the month working on the Amun-Re expansion - 3 live tests, and 6 solo.

October
Six more solo tests and 5 live tests of Amun-Re took up all my testing time in October.

November
One more Amun-Re test in November, then I switched gears to Deities & Demigods because (drum roll please)... it got signed by a publisher! The publisher requested some changes, and I spent November working on those.

December

I finished off the year with 3 more tests of Deities & Demigods iterations as I worked on addressing the publisher's concerns.

The switch to online playtesting was a setback in my playtesting throughput, and it cost me some of my regular testers, but TTS has allowed me to continue testing, and pitching games, through the pandemic, and I've got at least a couple of regular online testers.

I miss testing more, but the good news is that I am finally making a little headway with pitches. Over the course of the pandemic, Isle of Trains got picked up by a new publisher who's going to do the base game as well as the expansion Dan and I made what, 7 years ago now? Deities & Demigods has been picked up, and I got that development gig on Amun-Re. I've had a few meetings recently to try and find a publisher to ick up the EmDo and Crusaders game lines, hopefully one who's willing to pick up the entire line (base game, expansions, and as-yet-unpublished content). No luck with EmDo an Crusaders thus far, but I just had a promising meeting or two about them, so hopefully something will come of that.

Skye Frontier - 4p playtest

 I got a chance to play a 4p game of Skye Frontier this afternoon with Rick, Aaron, and a new arrival at my playtest group, Eric. Other than some technical difficulties right at the start, I think it went fairly well...

The game only took about an hour, but I think we got enough stuff done. I audibled during the game to awarding N coins for completing an area of size N (instead of N-2), which spend the game up a little bit -- with that change I should probably add a few coins to the supply (like 18-20 coins per player rather than 15/player). Also, my current rules say that the game ends at the end of a turn when the coin supply runs out, but it seemed clear that we should finish out the round.

We used the tweaks I decided on after last week's 2-player test:

• Scrolls cost 1 of each cube (rather than 1 of any cube), and are worth 1x value (2x if in a completed area)
• Start with 1 of each cube (rather than producing in each area, which amounts to about 2 of each cube or so)

Those seemed to work OK, and seemed to have the expected effect - more people were storing tiles, and the Build action being used more.

Here are some notes from this session:

• Barrel icons should be worth something extra, since there aren't as many things that score for them. Conveniently, they have a coin icon incorporated into them, so maybe I could just make them worth 1vp at game end
• OR... one (or two) of my players suggested just removing the barrels, making fewer total icons, and making it a little bit easier to get the other icons you're after
• We used 4 each score tiles, scroll tiles, and regular tiles to explore. I had considered scaling the regular tiles by using N+1, so no matter what all players would be choosing from 2 or 3 of them every time. I think I might try that next time. As for score and scroll tiles, I might try reducing those to 3 next time
• I haven't ever used it, but technically there's a rule in the rules doc that say s you can draw a scroll tile off the deck if you don't like what you see, but I don't like that, so I'll be deleting that rule
• As mentioned above, I think I'll award N points for completing an area of size N (rather than N-2). Originally I wanted to disincentivize making a bunch of small size-2 areas, but I'm not sure that's necessary or worth the extra rule
• Also as mentioned above, I think we should play out the round after the game end triggers so players get an equal number of turns

The players all said they did enjoy the game, so maybe it's time to start looking for a re-skin or re-theme. Since I've been calling it "Skye Frontier," it's made me think of a game about airships and flying islands, with something of a steampunk vibe, but I don't have anything specific in mind. One of my players had some good, unusual ideas, which I'll list here so I can find them later:

• The scrolls suggest towns or factories that need specific resources. Could be like space colonies or factories.
• Or make it ecosystem themed - icons are prey, scrolls are predators, trading is migrating or something
• Ok this might run into appropriation issues but: volcano island culture, scrolls are temples, icons are villages and farms, trading is sacrificing to the volcano (or boats represent escaping/expeditions to another island?)
• A little more abstract could be restaurant manager themed: castle represents your restaurant, trading is delivering food, icons are food suppliers (butchers, farms, fishers, specialties like truffles), and scrolls are restaurant reviewers. "Exploring" is connecting with new suppliers, terrain could be growing regions OR cuisine styles

It was good to have a full test, to get a full table of testers, and to have a game go over decently well!

My kingdom for a playtest! Partial plays of Division of Labor and Skye Frontier

 I have been missing out on playtesting lately, as every week for the last month I have had to cancel for one reason or another. So I was very excited to get a 3-player test of not one, but two of my games last Sunday. Well, they were each only partial plays, but it was still a lot better than nothing!

Division of Labor

First up was Division of Labor, which is the working title I'm using for the I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement game. The last time I playtested anything, Rick and I gave this idea a first run, and that basically led me to believe the mechanism had some potential, but the game had all kinds of issues. I addressed some of those and was excited to give the 2nd draft a go. At this point I don't really have the endgame figured out, so Rick, Andy, and I just played 1 round and then had some discussion (also, at that point, TTS started acting funny anyway). The biggest idea that came out of that session is that while the main mechanism did work, it didn't feel much like I-Cut-You-Choose. In addition, it felt frustratingly difficult (in a bad way) to do some of the things you wanted to do.

For the next iteration, I will make some tweaks and changes, the most important of which address the above issues. It might be OK if the game doesn't FEEL like I-Cut-You-Choose... I could just stop billing it like that and it could just be a worker placement game with procedurally generated spaces or something. But I do like the idea of "I-Cut-You-Choose Worker Placement," enough to give it at least 1 more shot. I think a mistake that led to this failing has to do with the hasty board I made in order to test the game. I had players each splitting a bunch of cubes and placing them in a central location, and as they were used, they got distributed outward. As a result, there were basically far too many options when placing your workers - when splitting cubes it didn't fee like you were making an important split that would affect another player. 

To make the choices feel a bit more like ICYC, I will try reducing the instances of splits. Instead of each player splitting 8 cubes at the top of each round, I'll just have 1 player split 8 cubes, then the next player choose between them. Then player 3 can choose between the other pile from p1, or the 2 new piles from p2, etc. I suspect this will feel a lot more like ICYC, though it may be tricky to make geography matter, or else I could lose the Worker Placement aspect.

As for the latter issue, things being frustratingly difficult to do, I have a solution as well. In general terms, I had designed a lot of stuff in the game with restrictions, when I may have done better using incentives instead. For example, in the first draft you could only build the building indicated on the tile explored in its space. Therefore if you wanted to build a particular type of building, you were at the mercy of the Exploration draws. Perhaps better would be to allow any building to be built, but offer a bonus or discount when building the indicated type. That's similar to what I did in Crusaders, and the thought crossed my mind in this case as well - and now I think that's probably the way to go.

Skye Frontier

Since we only played a partial game of Division of Labor, we had time to try another game. A few weeks ago I started getting antsy to dig into one of my older designs, last played about 2 years ago at AZ Game Fair: Skye Frontier. Unfortunately, we had to cut that one short a few rounds in when my toddler awoke, and my players were running low on time anyway, but we did get a chance to feel out at least a few rounds of play. It went OK, though I started getting the impression that of the 4 actions in the game (Explore, Build, Produce, Trade), it seemed like most of the turns the player chose Explore. I'll note that when we had to stop, it was about when we were all running out of our starting cubes (it costs cubes to build tiles into play - we might have started with too many cubes by the way), so perhaps we would have started seeing some Build and Produce actions, maybe Trade too.

Maybe this is OK - I mean, it is a tile laying game... maybe it's OK if most turns consist of drawing and placing a tile? But to an extent, if that's all we're doing, then why bother with the other actions. The obvious response is that you could set up an engine, then start producing and trading or something like that. So maybe there's not a problem at all. I'd like to get through a whole game before committing to any thoughts on that.

Prototype revival: Skye Frontier

 It's been about 3.5 years since the last time I played Skye Frontier, my Isle of Skye/King of Frontier mashup. Of course, it's one of those "designs with so much potential" that I know so well. I seem to have a lot of those, don't I? Backburnered, or forgotten games that I think have "so much potential" every time I read my old notes about them...

Well, a little while ago it occurred to me how easy it would be to make a TTS mod for this game, as long as I could find a mod for Isle of Skye -- just add a few infinite bags with gray, green, and blue cubes, and that's it! So that's what I have done, and now I have a virtual prototype of Skye Frontier!

In addition, I noticed a comment on that old blog post (linked above) from Michael Brown, a Utah based designer who has commented a lot on my posts, done some playtesting for some of my games, and came on board as a co-designer on Automatown. The comment was saying that if he could pick up a copy of Isle of Skye, then he'd give my mashup a try. I didn't feel at all bad about that, because even if he didn't like my mashup, Isle of Skye is a fantastic game all its own :)

I emailed Michael to see if he ever did pick up a copy of Isle of Skye, and if so, whether he had tried Skye Frontier at all. I didn't expect that he would have even remembered that, but if he had, I was interested to hear about it! As it turned out, he had not gotten Isle of Skye, but had been meaning to for a few years, so he went to his FLGS and picked up a copy, then he gathered the cubes needed to try Skye Frontier, and gave it a play with his wife. He wrote a nice, detailed blog post about his session.

Now, in talking about that session with him, it seems he played a few rules wrong... they didn't take VP out of the supply when completing areas, and they doubled the points from scroll tiles. But I think the sum total of that was mostly that the game may have gone a little longer than it should have (which favored his heavy shipping strategy over Alison's more generalized strategy) - at the very least, the final shipping phase he mentioned (which netted Mike +6 points on Alison) wouldn't have happened. But at the same time, un-doubling the scroll tiles would cause a similar net loss for Alison, so the final score might not have been much different after all (hard to be certain).

From the session report in that blog post, it sounded like the game was fairly close, with two really divergent strategies, so that generally sounds good. On the down side, Mike felt like his strategy was degenerate and boring, and if a strategy is degenerate and boring, then I'd prefer it not also be competitive. However, it also sounded like perhaps Alison would have done well to stop choosing Produce once Mike got that big lake set up... but then again, leaving that to Mike means she wouldn't have gotten as many cubes. Hard to say if she could have played differently to overtake the big shipping strategy.

In any case, I've got a TTS mod for the game all set up now, and I'd love to give it a shot one of these days and see how the latest version holds up. I worry a little if the Explore action isn't still a little bit too good/juicy.

Skye Frontier v2.0 -- playtest, thoughts, tweaks, and rules

I've posted before about my Isle of Skye / King of Frontier mashup (code name: Skye Frontier). It's one of those designs I made a prototype for, played several times, liked a lot, and showed some promise, but has sat on the back burner for a long time. Looking at my previous posts, it looks like I haven't touched the game in 2 years (almost to the day).

But that doesn't mean I haven't thought about it! Once in a while (usually on airplanes) I peruse my design notebook, and I come across my notes for Skye Frontier, and I think "you know, I should really revive that one." So last Friday as I dashed out the door to AZ Game Fair (#AZgamefair18), I decided to bring it along, just in case.

I had a good time at AZ Game Fair, played a handful of games, tested 2 prototypes, sat on a game design panel, and got to do a little escape room. I might write up a bigger con report for AZ Game Fair, but this post is specifically about Skye Frontier, so let me skip right to that playtest.

Sunday morning, John and Kara Morgan were up for a game, and actually asked if I'd brought anything to test, so I thought "what the heck," and pulled out Skye Frontier. While setting up the game, it occurred to me that I didn't have my 8.5x11" player boards (that don't fit in the Isle of Skye box) with me -- I'm not actually sure where they are at the moment. Bummer.

But I didn't let that deter me! I decided to just try the game without player boards. The purpose of the player boards was really to actually help players complete their regions (and because King of Frontier had one, and I was starting from that), but I didn't see a problem playing without them. And after this test, I'm not sure I need them at all -- I think I'll leave them out! Mark this down as another one of those accidental development discoveries :)

The major things I remember needing work were the luck-of-the-draw inherent in the Explore action, especially with respect to scroll tiles, and maybe some specifics of the build action. So this test I tried one of the ideas that came up before... I separated out the scroll tiles and made a separate supply of those, sorted into piles of 4/4/3/3, and you could claim one as a prize for completing a region of size 3+/4+/5+/6+. These small piles were laid out, so you'd be able to choose any of the tiles that happened to be in one of the piles you qualified for. So if you completed a size 3 region, you'd get one of the first 4 scroll tiles (while they last), and if you completed a size 6 region or bigger, you could claim any remaining scroll tile you want. That worked pretty well, but there was still a question of whether those tiles needed to cost extra for having scrolls on them (and potentially being worth big points).

I had been scoring the scrolls just like Isle of Skye: full value of the scroll, doubled if its region was complete. An easy nerf would be to ONLY score scrolls if the region is complete, otherwise it's simply a tile that might help your geography. I think that's probably a good nerf no matter what, so I'll be trying that going forward.

After playing though, I have a different idea I'd like to try...

The other tweak I'd made was the resolution of the Explore action, I liked the idea of the original rule: either grabbing the tile you want from the display, or drawing 2, keeping one, and adding the other to the display. I like the thought that you get a better choice, but you're adding options for opponents as well. However, it definitely could have some luck of the draw involved. And the original privilege of getting to go again (getting 2 tiles in a turn) I think is what led people to choose that role too much. A combination of that, automatic building, and auto-production when completing regions meant that you really only needed this one role to do all the game action, and that's just silly.

So this time I tried this... You start with a display of 4 (maybe N+1) tiles. When someone explores, everyone gets to take one of those tiles in turn order. Your privilege for choosing Explore is that you got to draw 2 tiles from the bag, and could take one of those instead if you wanted to. The idea being that everyone gets a tile, and you get first pick, and more options to choose from.

Next time I want to try expanding on that a little bit... I'd like to layout 4 (or N+1) tiles, as well as 3 or 4 scroll tiles from a separate scroll tile stack. Then the Explore action would be that in turn order, players each take 1 non-scroll tile from the display, and your privilege is that you can take one of the scroll tiles (or the face down top tile from the deck if you prefer) instead.

This way, you get scroll tiles by calling Explore, and they only score if you complete their region, so you have to do some work to get points out of them, I'll make them cost something to build (any 1 cube, or maybe 1 of each cube?) as well. That way when you call Explore, you get first pick, about 2x the options for tiles, and access to the ones that could score points.

One thing I did like about the original rules was the speed and elegance of building right when you take the tiles. I might like to try that again -- when you explore, if you have the cubes, you build the tile right into play. If not (or if you don't want to build it yet), you put into storage. Then you use the Build action to put it into play later.

Speaking of the Build action, after a bit of hemming and hawing, I think I would like to try "everybody may pay to build 1 tile," and your privilege would be that IN ADDITION, you may build 1 tile for free. So if you get tiles you can't build, you can either choose build to build them for free, or you can produce resources so that you can pay for them when someone else builds.

Another tweak or two... At first I didn't start players with any resources. Then I tried starting them with 1 of each cube. I see a note saying "never mind, don't do that," but I don't remember what was good or bad about it. In an effort to jump start the game a little bit, I think I'll try starting with resources again.

In fact, I might also start the game with a reverse turn order draft of N (or N+1) tiles, which you get to put into play attached to your castle, and then a resource on every space in your little domain. This way maybe players won't start with EXACTLY the same resources (though maybe pretty similar).

So here's the latest rules draft as of feb 11, 2018:

Skye Frontier: An Isle of Skye/King of Frontier mashup

v2.0 By Seth Jaffee 2/12/18

Setup:

1. Lay out 4 scoring tiles at random.
2. Shuffle the 14 scroll tiles and lay out 4 face up next to the face down stack (3?).
3. Mix the rest of the landscape tiles in the bag and draw out 4 face up beneath the scroll tiles (N+1?).
4. Create a supply of 15 coins per player in the game (so 30/45/60). Set aside more coins for after game end triggers. When this supply is exhausted, the game end will trigger. Each coin will be worth 1 point at the end of the game.
5. Create supply piles of blue, green, and grey cubes.
6. Randomly select a start player and give them the turn marker. They will begin the game as start player.
7. Give each player a castle tile. Reveal N+1 tiles from the bag, and in reverse turn order, each player takes one and puts it into play attached to their castle (landscapes must match, roads need not). Return the unchosen tile to the bag.
8. Each player may produce 1 time in each of their areas before the game begins.


You are ready to begin!

Each round, the start player will choose a role from the list below and each player in turn will resolve that role. For choosing the role, you'll get a privilege. Then the turn marker will pass to the left, and the new start player will choose a role.

Roles:

Explore
Choose one of the 4 face up landscape tiles (NOT the scroll tiles). You may build it if you can pay the cost (see below). Otherwise, set it aside in your storage area, you may build it at a later time.

Privilege: As the start player, you may choose one of the face up scroll tiles instead if you wish, or take the top tile from the face down scroll stack. 


Build 
Take a tile from your storage and place it onto your board, paying cube costs (see below).

Completing a region:
When building results in completion of a region (capped off on all sides with matching landscape throughout), immediately take N-2 coins from the supply, where N = the number of tiles in that region. For example, completing a size 3 region is worth 1 coin, while completing a size 6 region is worth 4 coins.

Note: You are allowed to place tiles such that the landscapes do not match. When a tile is placed such that landscape edges do not match, neither of the non-matching regions will ever be considered "complete".

Note also: You are allowed to place tiles such that roads do not connect. Roads are not landscapes, they do not delineate regions, and they do not count as matching or non-matching for purposes of building.

Costs of placing a tile on your board:
Pay 1 green cube for each Sheep, Yak, or Farm on the tile,
Pay 1 black cube for each Tower or Barrel on the tile,
Pay 1 blue cube for each Boat or Lighthouse on the tile,
Pay 1 cube of any color for each non-matching landscape edge,
Pay 1 cube of any color for each scroll on the tile.

For the purposes of building, you may pay 2 (3?) coins in lieu of any cube.

Privilege: In addition, as the start player you may build a tile, paying only for non-matching landscape edges -- ignore other costs.


Produce
Choose a landscape region and add 1 cube from the supply onto each tile in that region. Fields get green cubes, Mountains get black cubes, and Water gets blue cubes. Tiles may hold more than 1 cube (limit 3 cubes max per tile?).

Privilege: As the start player, you may produce in a 2nd region.


Trade
Choose a landscape region to trade from.

For Fields and Mountain regions: For each tile in that region that connects back to your castle via roads, you may discard 1 cube from that tile to collect 1 coin from the supply.

For Water regions:  For each boat in that region, you may discard a cube from anywhere in that region to collect 1 coin from the supply.

These coins will be worth 1 point each at the end of the game.

Privilege: As the start player, you may trade in a 2nd region.

Game End:

The game is over at the end of a turn in which the supply of coins is exhausted, or when the tile bag is empty. At that time, each player should calculate their score to see who wins. Points come from:
* coins collected via trade or completing regions are worth 1 point each,
* scrolls on your player board that are in completed regions are worth points based on their scoring condition,
* Consult the end game scoring tiles for bonuses conferred by each.

Skye Frontier: An Isle of Skye / King of Frontier mashup -- updated rules

 For those following along, here's an updated rule set:

Skye Frontier: An Isle of Skye/King of Frontier mashup

Setup:

* Give each player a player board with a 4x5 grid of spaces (the exterior of the grid has pre-printed landscape types).
* Give each player a Castle tile, which they will pace on any space on their board (landscapes must match, roads need not).
* Shuffle the tiles in the bag, then draw 4 into a face up display on the table.
* Place 15 coins per player into a supply pile and return the rest to the box.
* Place a supply of green, black, and blue cubes nearby.
* Randomly choose a starting player and give the Starting Player tile to that player.
* Draw 4 Scoring Conditions and display them for end game scoring.


You are ready to begin!

Each round, the start player will choose a role from the list below and each player in turn will resolve that role. For choosing the role, you'll get a privilege. Then the Start Player marker will pass to the left, and the new start player will choose a role.

Roles:

Explore
Either:
(a) Draw 2 tiles from the bag, place one into your storage, and place the other face up into the supply.
Or...
(b) Take 1 tile from the face up supply and place it into your storage.

Privilege: Repeat this action after all other players have gone.
Ideas to try: Allow the option to Build the tile just taken instead of taking a 2nd tile. Or always allow building the tile immediately upon taking it -- this was the original rule, but Explore seemed to be the most popular action by far. 

Produce
Choose a landscape region and add 1 cube from the supply onto each tile in that region. Fields get green cubes, Mountains get black cubes, and Water gets blue cubes.

Privilege: Produce in a 2nd region.

Note: When completing a region, immediately produce resources in that region.

Trade
Choose a landscape region.

For Fields and Mountain regions: Take 1 coin from the supply for each tile in that region that has cubes, and connects back to your castle via roads. Then discard 1 cube from each of those tiles.

For Water regions:  For each boat in that region, you may discard a cube from that region. Take 1 coin from the supply for each cube discarded that way

These coins will be worth 1 point each at the end of the game.

Privilege: Trade in a 2nd region.

Build 
Take a tile from your storage and place it onto your board, paying cube costs (see below).

When building results in completion of a region, immediately produce resources in that region (see Produce, above).

Note: When a tile is placed such that landscape edges do not match, neither of the non-matching regions will ever be considered "complete".

Privilege: Pay only for non-matching landscape edges -- ignore other costs.
Ideas to try: Allow a 2nd build as privilege (at full cost).


Costs of placing a tile on your board:
Pay 1 green cube for each Sheep, Yak, or Farm on the tile,
Pay 1 black cube for each Tower or Barrel on the tile,
Pay 1 blue cube for each Boat or Lighthouse on the tile,
Pay 1 cube of any color for each non-matching landscape edge,
Pay 1 cube of EACH color for each scroll on the tile.

Game End:

The game is over at the end of a turn in which any player fills their board with tiles, when the supply of coins is exhausted, or when the tile bag is empty. At that time, each player should calculate their score to see who wins. Points come from:
* 1 point per coin collected via trade
* points based on scrolls on your player board
* points based on the end game scoring conditions

Skye Frontier - a mashup (also, a word about fake variability)

A year or so ago I was introduced to The King of Frontier, which is a sort of mashup of Carcassonne and Puerto Rico - a role selection game where the roles allow you to draw and place tiles on your player board, produce goods on those tiles, trade those goods for points, and build some higher valued tiles.

Carcassonne's not my favorite game, but I have no objection to tile laying, and I absolutely love role selection in general and Puerto Rico in particular. So King of Frontier sounded like an excellent game that was right up my alley.

Unfortunately, upon playing the game, it left me wanting. I was not impressed with the balance, and I generally thought it fell flat. I wondered if I couldn't do better with a role selection tile laying game, but I didn't think about that for very long - instead I just sort of lost interest.

Recently I've become enamored with a new game called Isle of Skye. When I heard the title (spoken), I assumed it was some kind of airship game, probably with a steampunk sort of theme. But as it turns out, Skye is the largest and most northerly major island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. Isle of Sky is a tile placement game where you build your little board by connecting square tiles like Carcassonne, which you obtain by a nifty sort of "I-split-you-choose" mechanism wherein you price your tiles, then opponents have a chance to buy them from you - but if they don't, then you buy them for the price you set. Medici works something like that as well.

Side discussion about Isle of Skye and "fake variability"

I've played Isle of Skye a handful of times now, and I enjoy it a lot. the tiles you get have landscape features which you need to connect appropriately, and they have various icons which interact with scoring conditions in various ways.

That's one of the attractive mechanisms - there are many tiles that depict scoring conditions, and you only use 4 of them each game:
In round 1 you score condition A,
In round 2 you score condition B,
In round 3 you score condition A & C,
In round 4 you score condition B & D,
In round 5 you score condition A, C, & D
In round 6 you score condition B, C, & D

So timing of scoring is interesting, and available scoring conditions changing game to game is interesting, it really gives a feel of variability and replayability... Or does it?

MOST of the tiles (there are one or two exceptions) score points based on different icons on your board, or your geographic situation (closed landscape regions for example). This serves to alter the values of the various tiles that you draw at random, which informs your decisions for how to price your tiles, and how much you should pay for tiles.

The thing is, it doesn't matter WHICH scoring conditions are up... you just reference them in order to make your valuation decisions. They could really be the same tiles every time and the game wouldn't really change - you draw the tiles at random after all! This idea of fake variability is interesting. It almost doesn't matter that the variability is fake, players will think it's real because it LOOKS like variability. I'm certain if the game came with static scoring conditions, people would complain that it feels too samey.

Now, if you saw the scoring conditions for the game, built a personal draw pool of tiles based on that, and always drew from that pool... then it might matter which scoring tiles were in and in what order they appeared, because you could include (or omit) certain tiles that will or won't score too well. for example, some of the tiles have end game scoring such as "1 point per Farm" which are independent of the variable scoring conditions, and you could include many farms and all of those score tiles when the scoring conditions don't include them, hoping players will allow you to buy them on the cheap as they chase the scoring conditions. THAT would be variability!

But I digress... let's get back to my original post, which is less about Isle of Skye, and more about fixing The King of Frontier.

Back on track

Where was I? Oh yes - I'd played King of Frontier and it fell flat, I wanted to take a stab at a better version but lost interest, and recently played Isle of Skye. Right...

The other day on a plane ride I was looking through my design notebook (as I am wont to do), I came across the notes about King of Frontier and I had an epiphany. Maybe I could fix the problems I had with King of Frontier by basically just playing with the tiles from Isle of Skye! I knew I had a copy of Isle of Skye waiting for me at home, so I wrote up some rules and looked forward to trying it:

Skye Frontier: An Isle of Skye/King of Frontier mashup

Setup:

* Give each player a player board with a 4x5 grid of spaces (the exterior of the grid has pre-printed landscape types).
* Give each player a Castle tile, which they will pace on any space on their board (landscapes must match, roads need not).
* Shuffle the tiles in the bag, then draw 4 into a face up display on the table.
* Place a certain number of coins (not sure how how many yet) per player into a supply pile and return the rest to the box.
* Place a supply of green, black, and blue cubes nearby.
* Randomly choose a starting player and give the Starting Player tile to that player.
* Draw 2 (?) Scoring Conditions and display them for end game scoring.
* EDIT: Make that *4* Scoring Conditions (after playing once, it was clear that more scoring conditions would be better)

You are ready to begin!

Each round, the start player will choose a role from the list below and each player in turn will resolve that role. For choosing the role, you'll get a privilege. Then the Start Player marker will pass to the left, and the new start player will choose a role... technically you don't need the Start Player marker, but since it's in the box, I used it anyway.

Roles:

Explore
Either:
(a) Draw 2 tiles from the bag, place one on your board or into your storage, and place the other face up into the supply. Placing tiles on your board costs cubes (see below). Or...
(b) Take 1 tile from the face up supply and place it on your board or into your storage.

Privilege: Repeat this action after all other players have gone.

Produce
Choose a landscape region and add 1 cube from the supply onto each tile in that region. If that region is complete, add 2 cubes instead. Fields get green cubes, Mountains get black cubes, and Water gets blue cubes.
EDIT: Now that I've played, I might try this instead: rather than double producing on a completed region, simply auto-produce once in a region when it becomes complete.

Privilege: Produce in a 2nd region.

Trade
Choose a landscape region. Take 1 coin from the supply for each tile in that region that has cubes, and connects back to your castle via roads. Then discard 1 cube from each tile scored that way. These coins will be worth 1 point each at the end of the game.

Privilege: Trade in a 2nd region.

Build 
Take a tile from your storage and place it onto your board, paying cube costs (see below).

Privilege: Build a 2nd tile.
EDIT: Instead of building a 2nd tile, I tried "get a discount of 1 cube" which seemed to work well.

Costs of placing a tile on your board:
Pay 1 green cube for each Sheep, Yak, or Farm on the tile,
Pay 1 black cube for each Tower or Barrel on the tile,
Pay 1 blue cube for each Boat or Lighthouse on the tile,
Pay 1 cube of any color for each non-matching landscape edge.

Game End:

The game is over at the end of a turn in which any player fills their board with tiles, when the supply of coins is exhausted, or when the tile bag is empty. At that time, each player should calculate their score to see who wins. Points come from:
* 1 point per coin collected via trade
* points based on scrolls on your player board
* points based on the end game scoring conditions