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.

2018-2019: a playtesting retrospective

Back in late 2017 I started formally tracking my weekly playtest sessions in a google doc. One up-side of this is that I can go back now and review what was played each week, by whom, and what aspect I was looking to test that day. It's also interesting to see how much time we dedicated to each game, or how much time passed in between playtests of a game.

I'd like to use this post as a sort of retrospective on the last two years (or 28 months) of playtesting. Let's take a little trip down memory lane...

2017

Late August 2017 was the first session I'd logged, and that day we were evaluating 3 games I'd brought home from GenCon for TMG: Margrave, by Stan Kordonskiy, which turned into Old West Empresario, Rolled West, by Daniel Newman, and Embark, by Philip duBarry. Not only did we end up signing each of these, but all three are on store shelves now!

In September of that year we continued evaluating games: Pixel Factory was a neat one, but ultimately TMG did not sign it. Back to Earth was also neat, and we did sign it, but due to unrelated circumstances we ended up releasing it later. Railways is a game by some British designer friends of mine, and I liked it, but it needed some work. We did suggest the new title: Railblazers. My understanding is that at this point it has improved greatly, but the main mechanism which I was interested in (like the Mancala-rondel in Crusaders) has changed completely.

October saw us switch gears a bit. We spent a lot of time playing my games: Eminent Domain Origins (a Terra Prime reboot) and Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory (a dice game version of EmDo -- I should add those to the BGG database). This went on into November as well.

December was spent almost entirely on a dozen games of Embark, which had been signed by that point. I also see a lone play of Eminent Domain Origins at about Christmas time.

2018

We started off the new year with 2 more games of EDO, but then spent the rest of January, February, March, and half of April playing about 3 dozen (!) games of Old West Empresario, working on game balance and player powers. The only other playtests in those months were a few games of Harvest to test some potential expansion characters (unfortunately, we never did do an expansion to Harvest).

Late April through mid-May we tested the Crusaders: Divine Influence expansion, which was in pretty good shape to begin with, but we hammered out a few details. That one has now been printed, and is about to ship from the manufacturer in China and should be out later this year.

My son was born at the end of May, and my playtest sessions went on  hiatus. The only other testing that happened in 2018 was at Rincon -- Michael was in town and we played a game of Deities & Demigods (now Olympus on the Serengeti), and several games of Imminent Domain (now Sails & Sorcery, but that title might not be final either), which is the game Michael designed based on the deck learning of Eminent Domain and the area control of El Grande.

2019

After an extended hiatus, I finally got back to regular playtest sessions in February of 2019, and we spent that first month back playing Eminent Domain Origins some more, fine tuning some last details.

March was spent on Emperor's Choice. TMG is doing a Deluxified version of that game, and we developed a 2 player variant which went over well with Richard Ham of Rahdo Runs Through, who famously only plays games with his wife.

April and May were dedicated almost entirely to developing Sails & Sorcery, changing up the format so it would play better, but keeping the core ideas of the game.

June was spent working on a new design of mine, Apotheosis. We iterated through several big changes as we quickly honed in on what worked and what didn't.

We started out July with a quick couple tests of a 5/6 player expansion to Crusaders. This worked out well, and we've got art done, but this won't come out until October. Then it was back to Sails & Sorcery through August. Most of the game was pretty solid by that point, but we were trying to fix this one niggling dynamic that just didn't work right.

We switched gears again and spent September and half of October playing Alter Ego, my co-operative deck learning game. We played quite a few games considering that one of my main testers doesn't like co-op games!

We ended October and spent most of November working on expansion content for Pioneer Days that we got from the designers.

We revisited Alter Ego once in November and once in December, and spent the rest of December testing Eminent Domain: Chaos Theory, and another one of my games: Riders of the Pony Express. Riders was in pretty good shape, but was a bit fiddly. We fixed a couple of small issues, and brainstormed how to remove some of the process a little bit.

In addition, we played a few non-playtest games including Tapestry (which did not go over well), In the Year of the Dragon (my favorite Feld game), and we tested a game for one of my playtesters (we actually did this a couple of other times, but I hadn't recorded those). Also, I took my players out for an annual Playtester Appreciation Day to see the new Star Wars movie (we saw Solo last year, and Episode VIII the year before that) -- only one of them could make it though.

Finally, we capped off the year reviving my oldest game design that was any good: All For One! I initially got involved in that co-design 17 years ago, and it had been so long since the last playtest (2012?) that I didn't try any changes, we played straight from the rulebook. It was great to revive this old classic, and we started off 2020 with some significant changes to All For One, which worked well and felt great!

All For One revisited -- again

It's now been about 17 years since David Brain first sent me a prototype copy of All For One, can you believe it?

The last time I had played the game was maybe back in 2012 at a protospiel event. I might have played it one more time since then, but to be honest, I don't remember if I did.

Well, I decided to bring it back to life at my last weekly playtesting session of 2019, and since I didn't remember what changes I was considering, we played it as-written (circa 2012). Then we discussed the game, and I brought it back out today, and played 2 more games, with some significant changes. Good news: I think the changes were for the better!

Since it's been so long, I'll run down the basic rules as I'd write them as of right now:

Setup:

As before, place the plot tokens and character figures in their home spaces on the board. 

Shuffle mission cards and deal 4 to each player. 

Give each player a reference mat and 1 One For All card. 

Deal each player a secret goal card (using only the ones for the appropriate player count).

Set a pile of VP tokens in a supply

NO GUARDS AT ALL

Game play:

On your turn, you have an Action phase and a Draw phase. 

Action phase:

During the Action phase you can do any number of actions from the following list, in any order (most are limited to 1x/turn):

a1) Move (1x/turn): Choose any 1 character and move them up to 3 steps. You may double back, but you must stop the move action upon encountering another character. If carrying a Horse, may choose to have the character ride instead, moving exactly 4 steps, jumping over tokens and figures.

a2) Pick up tokens: While moving, you may have the moving character pick up any number of tokens in the spaces you visit by discarding 1 card for each. Note that when riding, you may not pick up the tokens you jump over. Characters have no capacity limit. (you may pick up the a token in the location of another character you encountered - wording above might make it sound like you can't since I said the move action ends)

ONCE PICKED UP, TOKENS ARE NEVER DROPPED. In order to move them to another character, a Demand action is required (see below)

b) Demand a plot token (1x/turn): If 2 characters are in the same location, you may have one of them demand a plot token held by the other. In this case, a duel ensues to determine the outcome. Note: You do not have to use the same character that you moved - more than 1 character can act on your turn.

c) Complete a mission (1x/turn): Choose a character. If the conditions of a mission card in your hand are met, you may complete the mission with that character (some missions require a specific character to do them). Receive points based on the type of mission and the tokens you deliver (see below), and then bump 1 of that character's favored story tracks per token delivered (max 1 bump per track per mission). ONCE A TRACK HAS MAXED OUT, IT'S COMPLEMENT TRACK IS ALSO LOCKED IN AND NO LONGER MOVES.

c1) Duel missions: 3vp (and draw 1 card)

c2) Character delivery (either/or): 4vp for 1 token, 6vp for both

c3) Any Character mission (2 req'd): 5vp

c4) Standard delivery (req'd/bonus/bonus): 4/6/8vp for 1/2/3 tokens

d. Play One For All card for some effect:

d1) Play when completing a mission to gain an additional 2 VP

d2) Play when picking up tokens to cover the discard cost of all pickups this turn (so max 3 tokens, since you can move up to 3 steps)

d3) Play during a duel for 3 offensive moves (or during another player's turn for 0 offensive moves, but you get it back immediately)

d4) Play during the draw phase of the turn to draw 2 additional cards

d5) Play to immediately end your turn (skipping the draw phase) and start another. This allows for a 2nd move action, a 2nd demand action, or a 2nd mission.

Draw phase:

Draw 2 mission cards from the deck.

You may play One For All to draw 2 additional cards.

Then reclaim your One For All card.

Max hand size = 8 cards (including One For All). If you have more than 8 cards, discard mission cards until you have only 8

Game ends when all 3 story tracks are maxed out

Duels:

Duels between characters are triggered by Demand actions and by Duel missions. In any case, when you trigger a duel on your turn with a character (the one making the demand, or one of the two in the duel mission), you choose one of that character's story tracks to fight for. Announce the chosen character, the nominated track, and if applicable the token being demanded (and maybe from whom, to help other players out).

All players must play 1 card simultaneously, then reveal. Blue cards are worth 1 offense (2 if it's that character's signature move), red cards are worth 1 defense, white cards (riposte) are worth 2 defense. Add up all offense and all defense. If there is more offense than defense, the the duel has been WON. If there is more defense than offense, the duel is LOST. If there is the same amount of offense and defense, then the duel is TIED.

If WON: NOMINATED track is bumped. Token IS moved in the case of a demand.

If LOST:  OPPOSITE track is bumped. Token IS NOT moved in the case of a demand.

If TIED: NO track is bumped. Token IS moved in the case of a demand.

One For All card played by active player is worth 3 offense.

One For All card played by any other player is worth 0 offense, and they get it back immediately.

Abilities and Signature Moves: as before. Aramis' ability to avoid guards must change (since there are no guards now): You may discard a card to move beyond another character. If that proves too useless, maybe it doesn't need to cost a card.

--- End Rules ---

So the big differences from before are:

1. No guards at all

2. 8 card hand

3. Draw 2 cards per turn instead of 1

4. Pay cards to pick up tokens (making that more intentional)

5. No such thing as dropping tokens or hand-offs, it's all just demand actions

6. No "active character" for the turn - you can act with different characters in a turn (move Aramis, demand with Athos, complete a mission with MiLady)

And to clean up some exceptions:
7. Make all Meeting missions into Duels (so they're all the same)

8. Allow riding a horse over dashed lines (ferry crossing and catacombs)

Both 4p games we played today took about 60 minutes, and this mix of rules seemed to work really well.

I added a few connections on the map, and I think a few more might be in order. Might want to sort of revisit the whole map and also the mission cards to make sure that (a) named locations are sort of evenly spaced out (ideally not less than 4 steps between any 2 named locations), and (b) based on token starting locations, no missions are doable on the first turn (at least not without using the One For All card for extra actions)

Due to the higher hand size and extra card draws, the deck almost ran out in our 4p games, and I suspect for 5 players it would definitely run out, so more missions are needed. I'd begin by making more missions with Horses as required or bonus tokens.

I think this is a big improvement over the previous version with respect to fiddliness and rules overhead. It feels good to see some progress on this game -- the biggest disappointment of my game design career is that nothing has ever come of this game.

Playtest day: revisiting Automatown and Riders of the Pony Express

The ball is back in Michael's proverbial court for the game I've been testing lately (Sails & Sorcery), so Saturday I brought two games I've had on the back burner for a while: Automatown and Riders of the Pony Express.

Automatown

It's been 2 years since I initially prototyped this worker placement game where you use your workers to build more workers, and it's been almost as long since I got it to the table. The basic premise is that you're building robots out of head, arm, torso, and leg pieces of high, medium, and low quality (as well as scrap). You can make a generic robot with anything, which gives you another works, and adds 1 strength to your army of robots, but if you get the correct combination of head, arms, torso, and legs, then you can complete a blueprint and make a better robot -- stronger, or with a cool ability you can use each time you send it out.

Challenges with this one include things like (a) the scary look of 13 different resources (even if there are really only 4, each with 3 levels of quality -- but since the blueprints require specific levels of quality, it kinda IS like there are 13 different resources), and more importantly (b) the "combo-y" nature of the abilities does not seem to be coming through, so there isn't a strong feeling of engine building to be had.

I got some good notes, some of which had come up in previous tests, but it's been so long I'd forgotten about them, and I hadn't updated my prototype (friendly reminder: keep our prototypes up to date!). Things like making a specific set of starting worker placement cards, to ensure the first round has useful actions for example. Also, reducing the game end trigger for 4 players, so that the game ends before players have 10+ workers each and the blueprint deck runs out (also, I could make more blueprints). Also, I think I need to improve the engine building aspect / combo-y nature of the robot abilities (again), because it seems like players weren't feeling like they were able to build combos.

Some good ideas that came up this time include:
* Rather than taking any card from the 3 available blueprint cards, take the 1st (if you placed 1 worker), 1st-2nd (if you placed 2), or 1st-3rd (if you placed 3 workers). Ether that, or take any one you want, but to access the cards deeper in the row, pay resource cubes onto the ones before it (as is common in games with a card row). I like both of those ideas, and I'm not sure which I like better.
* Possibly making the higher level resources cost more to get, since currently it felt easy to get what you needed. Currently things are designed and balanced such that the high quality resources are worth more than the low quality ones -- a low quality torso is worth 2 (scrap + upgrade), and a high quality torso is worth 4 (scrap + 3 upgrades), which IS more, but with so many workers, and so many ways to get, upgrade, and swap resources around, it didn't feel hard for players to get what they needed (though by definition, they were paying more for it). I think overall the system might just be too flexible. If I re-balance things so that going up a level requires not just an upgrade action, but also a scrap (+2 units), then that might make the higher level resources somewhat harder to get, and it might also simplify the worker spaces, some of which are oddly designed in order to get the values right.
* Maybe cut a whole resource type, and just have head/torso/legs, reducing the resource variety by 3, and the cost complexity by 25%

Some ideas that I'm less sure about, but which certainly bear considering or trying include:
* Separating scoring from building robots. Make it so you build robots for workers and abilities, but then do scoring some other way.
* Making a sort of Master Blueprint that you could improve/update, to give a better sense of "that player wants that type of resource," so that you can plan and block better.
* Maybe don't require 1 of each type per robot -- instead maybe have a robot that requires multiple heads and only 1 torso, for example. Or change the resources to be things like actuators and power cores instead of heads and torsos. With good iconography, the costs would be clear enough, it's not necessary to make sure each robot has each of the 4 types of resources. This may also help the engine building aspect, since you won't need to always get all 4 resource types (something the swap ability was supposed to help with)

I definitely got a lot to think about for this one, and I'll be revisiting my prototype soon to try another version.

Riders of the Pony Express

This is another "oldie-but-a-goodie" from the back catalog. My last blog post about playtesting this one was 4 years ago (whew!), but I might have played it since and not posted about it. The premise of this one is that you're a rider for the Pony Express, tasked with delivering parcels to various towns on our way from Missouri to California and back. You haggle with your fellow riders, trying to get people to take your parcels for you, and offering to take parcels that are on your way, before riding from town to town to make deliveries. This was my attempt at a low-bid auction, initially a "count-up" auction, where the auctioneer would count up from 1 to 10 or until another player jumped in to claim it, I think it works better as a blind bid (even though generally speaking I hate blind bids). However, it's possible that the "count up" auction could be a variant rule, because non-designer/social gamer types seemed to like it.

This game went over pretty well with my playtesters, and a new rule I found hand written on the rules page was a great change that I don't think I'd tried before. In the past I'd had some trouble with the 5 player game, and decided maybe it should just be a 4p max game, but this new rule might actually make 5p work just fine after all. The rule is that you leave your bid card out, so you can't bid the minimum ($3) over and over again. We clarified that to be that the bid winner leaves their card out, which must be what I had meant in the first place :)

I was hard pressed to find anything I really wanted to change for the next test of this. I think I'll boost the Bear hazard up by 1, to make them more different than the Bandits, and to make the Shotgun item more attractive. I also might try a tweak to the delivery phase based on some comments that one of my testers felt strongly about.

All in all, a good playtest day. We even played Dave's video game prototype, which is a pretty fun spaceship building/dogfight/king-of-the-hill ting based largely on one of my favorite old arcade classics, Rampart.

Recent playtesting: Apotheosis (FKA Worker Learning)

Apotheosis

Since I last posted about it, I've had the opportunity to play Apotheosis (the current title for my Worker Learning game) about a dozen times. We've quickly iterated on a couple of different aspects, going from 8 starting workers (one level 1 and one level 2 of each type) to 4 (one of each type, some level 1, some level 2, depending on turn order), adding a space to recruit more workers (I'm torn on this), adding a space to pay a chunk of resources for steps on the victory tracks, and tweaking the resolution of the Recall turns and the requirements and rewards for adventures.

The current version looks something like this:

You start with a Fighter, a Cleric, a Mage, and a Thief, 0/1/2/2 of them are level 2 at the beginning if you are player 1/2/3/4 (the ones that start leveled up are dealt to you randomly, and no two players will have the same combination of upgraded starting workers).

You take turns either placing a worker and gaining the benefit of that space (your worker must be at least tied for the highest level in that area), or recalling your workers and sending them on an adventure. Most spaces are better if you are higher level, or the right class. You can gain resources, train (level up), claim adventures (so nobody can do them out from under you), buy progress on the victory tracks, turn resources into blessings, which are like wild resources, visit the Throne Room to earn royal favors, or visit the tavern to recruit more workers.

When you place a worker, you have the opportunity to play a Side Quest card for either of 2 effects (one cares about what type of worker you are placing that turn, the other doesn't). When you recall workers, you earn steps on the three victory tracks, and if you qualify, you may do an adventure to earn more steps. The adventures have 3 tiers, and the higher the tier you do, the better the rewards. After returning from an adventure, your workers level up, becoming better at their jobs.

When you do certain Side Quests, or tier 3 adventures, you get a special resource called Spoils. You can visit the throne room to turn those Spoils into Royal Favors, which you can use at certain points on the victory tracks to take a "shortcut" as well as earn a Boon (reusable power card).

Design concerns

I'm noticing a real tightness in the design -- a difficulty creating adventures that are both doable by a player who has not recruited any new workers, but also doable by a player who has. The current level cap is 6, and so I wanted the adventures to require max 6 levels of any one class. If you hire a worker, then place it, and recall once, then you have 2 workers who's levels total 4 or 5 -- that's almost maxed out already! I am considering making the level cap 8 instead of 6, but d6s are easier to use in the prototype. Doing so would allow for more variety and more texture in the adventure requirements. It's also possible that not every adventure needs to be doable without recruiting another worker.

With just 4 types of worker, many of the tier 2 adventures require 3 of the 4 types. So you basically need to train up all of your workers if you wan to use them at all, there's not really such a things as choosing a class and neglecting it. I'm considering adding a 5th worker type to help with this -- it would allow the adventure requirements to be much more diverse.

Another thought is to add Split and/or Prestige classes:
Split classes would be like regular workers, that count as either one or the other of two types (like a Fighter/Thief would count as either a Fighter or a Thief.
Prestige classes would be like super workers that count as BOTH of two different types (Paladin = Fighter AND Cleric). For these you would probably have to discard your previous worker, therefore they BECOME a dual class worker.

Brainstorming possible solutions

Split/Prestige class workers would be pretty cool. but that sounds like expansion content to me. However adding a 5th (maybe even a 6th?) class to make the adventures more different from each other sounds reasonable. But that idea comes with its own challenges...

In the current game, each worker type is associated with 1 resource, and 3 of them are associated with one of the victory tracks. When you recall a fighter, you advance on the Crown Imperial track, and adventures that require fighters advance you further on that track. Thieves are associated with the Prince of Thieves track, and Mages are associated with the Mastermind track. Clerics are great supporting characters -- they aren't associated with any particular track, but instead give you Blessings, which are sort of like a wild resource that can be used in various different ways.

So if another worker type is added, do we need another resource? That might be a pain, but would be doable. Another victory track? I don't necessarily think that's a good idea (though I suppose it could work). What is another iconic adventurer class anyway?

One possibility is to make this 5th class a sort of Split/Prestige class like I mentioned above. Like a Paladin, which could act as either (or both) of a fighter or a cleric. But that would simply overload the fighter related stuff. So maybe better if whatever the new class is, it doesn't advance any of the tracks, but is otherwise "better" than a normal worker (counts as all types when placing?). Or perhaps it advances the track of your choice, and has some other drawback (doesn't count as any type when placing?).

As for the level caps, one way to fix that situation is to not use dice as workers (even though it's super convenient for prototypes). Instead, perhaps a mini or standee, with a base that has a little pointer, then a dial could be attached to the bottom such that the pointer points to the number on the tile corresponding to the current level. This is a user friendly way to not have to use dice, and therefore not be as limited in their value. The level cap could easily be 8, or even 9!

Another, different possible solution to the over-leveling issue is to limit the level-ups to only 1 per recall turn. This would slow things down considerably, and it would probably matter quite a bit which one you choose to gain levels and which ones you don't. It might also make a much bigger difference between playing 1-2 workers then recalling vs playing 3 or 4 before recalling. I'd be afraid this is TOO slow, but it ought to be easy enough to test. If it works, then that would make a level cap of 6 potentially viable after all.

Eminent Domain Origins playtests - 2p and 4p

Today I got a couple more "last minute" tests of Eminent Domain Origins in, one 4-player (using the 2-5p starting cards), and one 2p (turns out I hadn't tested 2p since making all these updates and changes).

In the 4p game, Dan joined Dave, Jesse, and me. He played the game once about a year ago, so was basically a new player, so I asked him to just play normally and let me know what was fiddly, odd, hard to understand, or easy to forget. Dave and Jesse each tried the new 4-5p starting cards (Jesse started with a colony marker loaded, an energy, and $10; Dave started with 2 crystal and an energy). I decided to try alien hunting, since I hadn't seen it much lately, and so started with a weapon and a crystal. I gave Dan a basic $30 starting card.

In the end, the game was quite close, with Dave winning out 60-50-50-49. I may have missed a round or two, but I counted 17 rounds -- I thought I remembered Terra Prime lasting more like 20-24 or so. Jump starting the game a little bit by giving players starting resources and cutting the phase 1 reward cards, and allowing colony spots (planets) to exist in adjacent sectors, may have sped the game up a little bit, but I DID add 3 tiles to the phase III rewards, so we were only really net down 1 reward tile total. It's likely players just did more scoring actions (colonizing and defeating aliens) than what sometimes happens so the game was on the short end.

Dave's winning 60 points came on the back of quite a lot of delivering. He used his 2 crystal start to quickly (turn 4 or 5) get a Matter Converter, and soon after delivered a bunch of cubes for a fistful of credits and bought 2 Thrusters in one turn. Dave is usually partial to Afterburners, but I guess he decided he didn't have the energy economy for it this time. In any case, he had 5 actions while the rest of us ad only 3 for a while. Dan and Jesse eventually got Thrusters of their own, for some reason I didn't bother, which may have been my downfall. The verdict on the starting card is that it's probably fine. The verdict on Matter Converter is that it's potentially very strong, probably not a problem, but might ought to be worded such that you still have to carry the correct cubes according to your holds, and then deliver/upgrade as if they're wild, rather than letting you convert them to whatever you want whenever you want, which just encourages you to visit your own places.

Jesse's downfall may have been poor rolls combined with potentially ill advised pathing. He kept crashing into asteroids, and hadn't bought shields first. This cost him 3vp on more than 1 occasion. Had he just rolled a little better (or spent the action and $20 to get and charge shields), he could have been neck and neck with Dave in the end. Never mind that one of the collisions cost him an engine, about 1/2 way through the game, putting him out maybe 7 or 8 actions! However, his start was strong, Starting with a loaded colony marker was pretty great, it allowed him to usurp a colony spot from player 1 (Dan, who might have been better off doing something a little bit different), and as Jesse pointed out, irrespective of turn order, starting with a loaded colony means that he's the ONLY player who could colonize 2 spaces from TP on turn 1. It also means that players earlier in turn order have to be a bit more careful and hedge their bets if they're not colonizing on turn 1, lest their colony get sniped. That's probably OK, but we decided to take away the energy, so that if there's an asteroid in the way, at least you have to risk losing 3 points to do that.

I tried to do some alien hunting, and I did an alright job, my big errors were getting an early Battle Station instead of selling cubes to afford a Thruster, and not setting up any accessible early game colonies for other players to use. The only planet 1 step from TP was a green one off to one side, and since Dan didn't take it, I decided to colonize it on turn 1. Nobody used it all game, and I didn't drop any colonies in high traffic areas, so I didn't get to leach any points off of other players.

Any way you look at it, that score was pretty darn close all around.

After Dan left, I mentioned the board scaling for 2 players (2 fewer tiles in each row, and only 1 of each tech upgrade), and it occurred to me that I hadn't played 2p in this new version of the game. So I had Jesse and Dave play 2p while I watched. They ended up choosing the sort of standard $20 and $30 for starting resources, and while I lost count half way through the game, I'm pretty sure it lasted about 20 rounds -- just a few more than the 4 player game. I noticed that in the mid-game, both players spent time upgrading their ship rather than dropping colonies or killing aliens, which dragged the game out a little bit, but also was fun for the players to really pursue a strategy. Dave ended up with a Thruster and 2 Afterburners (with Additional Module Slots), so was doing 8 actions per turn. Jesse had 2 Thrusters for 5 actions per turn. Both geared up for alien hunting, but neither did a whole lot of it until the end of the game. Between the two of them, they explored every tile, but they also left a lot of maybe lower scoring colony spaces alone... had either of them grabbed a Cryo Chamber (or Cargo upgrade) and started dropping multiple colonies per trip, the game could have been considerably shorter (on par with the 4p game perhaps).

The verdict was that the 2p game seemed fine. I think we don't need to do any further scaling such as removing any reward cards. It felt like the game dragged a little, but that was because (a) players drew it out a bit, and (b) Dave's turns started taking incredibly long as he hemmed and hawed over planning out his 8 actions!

All in all, I think it was a fine test day. I made a tweak to one of the starting cards (take the energy off the loaded colony marker one), and I might tweak the wording on Matter Converter. I might also add a reward card or two (probably double up on existing ones) just to make sure there's enough time in a 5 player game for players' strategies to develop.

Eminent Domain Origins progress

It's been a while since I last posted about Eminent Domain Origins, my Terra Prime reboot in the EmDo universe, so I'll begin by revisiting the changes discussed in that post and offer my current thinking on them. Then I'll mention the latest modifications, and how those went in yesterday's playtests.


New modifications discussed 10/27/17:

• Add one "any module" slot to the command ship.

After trying this a few times, I ended up removing it, and I prefer the game without it. The expansion (being included in EDO) added an Extra Module Slot tech, which is pretty cheap and allows players to get extra slots if they want them.

• Add 1 "any resource" hold to the command ship.

I have continued to like this, and decided to keep it. With this extra slot, players are not required to purchase a cargo hold in order to carry 1 Yellow cube, or 2 Blue/2 Green cubes, which means they are able to go for various technologies without having to buy a cargo hold first.

I also updated the cost and effect of a few technologies.

• Set direction on tiles, so there's no possibility of illegal placements or configurations.

I have been using completely random orientation for space hexes, and I've come to like it just fine. The map is more different game-to-game, which is probably a good thing. 

• Re-examine distribution of hazards on exploration tiles (I haven't done this yet).

I still haven't done this, and I still might. I have more to add to this now, see below...

• Change Weapon module cost (a simple $20 each. Or even just $10?)

I've kept the $10 weapon cost, and I've been fine with it. I also did nerf alien scoring down to 1vp/alien killed instead of 2, which seems fine, but I wonder if alien hunting is no longer as strong a strategy as it used to be. Maybe that's OK, as it used to be fairly strong!

• Consider changing the Shield action (people have trouble with "Do one, the other, or both: Buy a shield module for $10, charge shields for $10"). Maybe recharging shields should be free?

After some hemming and hawing, I think the best thing to do is just keep the Buy Shields rule the same... in one action you may optionally (1) Buy 1 shield module for $10, then optionally (2) charge all of your shields for $10.

• Change Delivery Optimizer to "+1 LP when you complete a demand tile. At game end: 1vp per demand tile collected."

I have continued to use this, and I think it's fine. If you buy it before completing any demand tiles, then it's the same as it ever was. If you buy it after you've completed some tiles, then it's a little bit better than it was.

• Start with energy on your built-in shield?

I have been doing this, and it seems OK so far. I have a new idea that will make this point moot, see below...

• Colonies immediately produce as soon as they're created, so there's less wasting actions waiting for the new colony to produce. 

I have enjoyed this, but I have a new idea that will make it moot, see below...

• Ignore the "no planet adjacent to Terra Prime" rule as well, all of this hopefully just speeds up the game a little bit.

I have been doing this, and I think it's fine. I am planning on keeping this rule (that is to say, removing the restriction).

• Ignore the limit on Exploring, and just have that be wrapped into the Move action 

I've been fine with this. I've decided to embrace just about anything that removes stalling and waiting from the game.

• Wrap the Pacify and Attack actions into one. 

Yeah, this can be 1 action, dealing with aliens. You can shoot them, or you can "Pacify" them (might change that to Befriend or something). I reduced the cost of Pacifying aliens to "1 cube per icon," rather than "1 cube per icon plus 1." Perhaps for that reason, I've seen more pacifying of aliens lately, and it's kind of neat - you give them a brown and a green, and maybe they give you a yellow and an energy (on the reward tile) -- it's like a trade.

• If I remove the Explore limit, then it might mean I ought to allow exploring out of a wormhole (I'd rather not do that), which leads to exploring 2 tiles at once (or that).

I have allowed this, and so far it seems to be fine. Again, I think it just sort of speeds up the game.

• Finally, the Afterburner module (pay 1 Energy for 2 actions this turn) seemed WAY too good. I think it was probably a little too good before, but it didn't seem that bad because to power it efficiently you had to fill your module slots with shields... but with the additional module slot (see above), you could pretty easily get 3-4 shield modules and 2 Afterburners, and do 7 actions per turn, only needing to spend one of those actions every 3-4 turns to refuel. That felt like too much, even if the player who did it didn't score very well (I think it took him too long to set up and start abusing that). So losing the extra module slot might make the Afterburner OK again, but I might try another version.

I'm currently of the opinion that without that extra module slot, the 1 Energy = 2 Actions Afterburner is probably OK.

Now I'll discuss some of the more recent changes:

• Hyperdrive: Cost changed to Yellow+Blue+Brown, points removed, effect changed to: "After each (->) spent on a move action, you may immediately take an additional move action."

Now that there's no "explore" limit, it doesn't make sense to allow it 2x/turn. I COULD just have this be a thruster that doesn't take up a module slot, but in an effort to be more interesting, I thought I'd try this effect. It lets you move after moving, which is like saying your move actions move you 2 spaces (worded that way to avoid rules issues, for example Alien attacks). This will therefore help you zoom across the board, which could be good for a delivery strategy, or a colony strategy that wants to get to and from the red zone quickly, or maybe even an alien hunter.

• Cloaking Device: Cost increased to Yellow+Green+Brown. 

Cloaking device has always been a very strong tech, and so it should cost a little more. Also, this way the costs are more evenly distributed. hyperdrive costs Y/Br/Blue, cloaking device costs Y/Br/Green. And cloaking device is better for an alien hunter, so using green makes sense, while hyperdrive may be better for a delivery strat, so using blue makes sense there.

• Wormhole: 1 move action will move you into a wormhole and out of ANY wormhole (used to be 2 actions)

In an effort to make the wormhole rules less confusing, I'm trying this change. This way you're never in a sort of limbo space "inside" the wormholes, so you won't ever try to short range scan something from inside the wormhole (which a player did, and I realized doesn't make sense). I've tried this twice now, and as a result, the wormholes seem to do a much better job at what they were supposed to do... shrink the board in the late game! There are currently 3 wormholes in the green zone, 2 in the yellow zone, and 1 in the red zone, but I might change that a little bit. I might add another in the red zone, and I might go back down to 2 in the green zone, or even just 1, but make it always in the same place (see below).

• Add free resources to the blank green zone exploration tiles

It was pointed out that exploring a tile and finding it blank is super boring, but I couldn't think of anything else to put on the blank green exploration tiles. I don't want the green zone to be dangerous, so no aliens or stray asteroids. It would be lame to find a sunstar ("Treat this tile as if it were blank") there on turn one. I already have some wormholes... so the only thing I can think of is a free resource. I tried it with a free brown whenever you explored a blank tile, which was kinda interesting because it maybe speeds up your ability to get tech, especially if nobody builds a mine.

Later I had a different idea which I might try that would make this a moot point. What if the green zone just didn't have exploration tiles at all? And what if there was always 1 wormhole, in the center green tile (the only one that's 2 moves from Terra Prime instead of just 1)? It could make some thematic sense, that the Terran Federation set up their first space station just outside a wormhole -- maybe that's how they got there. This would remove the need for exploration tiles on the green zone, and would make blank exploration tiles irrelevant. And that wormhole placement MIGHT make for more interesting games than when a wormhole occurs 1 space from Terra Prime (not sure).

• Nix production, just spend an action to get a resource.

One thing that's been a bit of a hassle with Terra Prime is clutter on the board, and it's always been easy to forget to produce on your colonies at the start of your turn. I've never worried about that, as it's easy to tell if a colony should have a resource or not, but I've never loved having to figure that out (and it happened all the time). So what if you din't have to produce goods and place them on the board? What if you could just always get a resource as an action? That would remove one of the interactions I liked in the game -- competition to pick up certain resources, but the assurance that YOUR resources would always be there for you. However, I don't know if that interaction is really such a big deal, and having to stall or out when someone takes the resource you were going to get seemed like a feel-bad moment. As my playtester kept putting it yesterday, "being able to do things is better than not being able to do things." So I thought I'd give this a try. So as not to be degenerate though, I thought it should be limited to once per turn per colony, so you can't sit there and fill up on cubes so easily.

In the first playtest yesterday I tried this, and it worked pretty well. It felt a lot like the regular game, the only real difference being you never got screwed out of a resource, and I didn't miss that dynamic.

I wondered if the arbitrary 1x/turn limit was really necessary -- after all, you're already a little bit restricted on what you can carry. So in the 2nd playtest I tried removing that limit, even though I suspected it would cause a problem. Sure enough, I didn't like the result. Without the limit, there's less reason to visit someone else's planet to get resources, and with the Matter Converter tech it got a little ridiculous -- you could just go to the closest planet, pick up 57 resources, then come back and deliver them all for money and points.

So, even though I don't like arbitrary limits and I'm trying to remove rules, I think the 1x/turn/colony limit is necessary. This rule still allows me to chop off the production phase, which needs to be awkwardly explained before anybody has any colonies, and it gets rid of the "should this colony have a resource?" questions entirely. It also makes obsolete the idea of producing a resource immediately upon colonizing (which is just one more step in the fairly lengthy colonize process).

• Define Sunstar exactly

I think the simplest rule for sunstars is "treat this space hex as if it ere blank." In fact, it may be good to have a few blank space hexes (with a sunstar icon on back), and when you reveal a sunstar, you simply replace the hex with a blank one.

This has an unintended consequence (though one I'm OK with) of removing asteroids from being in the way. There's one rule clarification that's probably necessary... what happens if you explore into a sector with an asteroid field, and find a sunstar on the tile with the asteroid field? Do you roll for the asteroids? I think the answer would be no - you'd move in, flip the tile, replace it with a blank one, and then see if you roll for asteroids. I think that makes the most sense.

The other alternative would be move in, roll for asteroids, then explore the tile... either way would work, but I just want the rule to be clear and consistent.

• Draft starting resources

At the beginning of the game, it's possible the first players have an advantage over later turn players. That's why the later turn players got more money to start with. I've been increasing that compensation lately, such that players start with 10/20/30/40/50 based on their turn order. In related news, I had started players with their built-in shield charged with energy, just because people seemed to want that.

Adding 2 more paths out of Terra Prime helped the turn order thing a little, but it occurred to me that I could try something new: I could make starting resource cards for players to choose from. I like how that works in Chimera Station, where you draft starting resource cards in reverse turn order. I was going to try using that here, but in the end, this is what I tried:

I made 3 P1 cards, 6 P2-3 cards, and 6 P4-5 cards. For each player, I dealt 2 cards for their position, and let them choose between them. The P1 cards are worth about 10-20 credits, the P2-3 cards are worth 30-40 credits, and the P4-5 cards are worth about 40-50 credits.

I kinda liked this, and more importantly, I think players would see this as more interesting, more variety in the game. Originally the game achieved this by having the first N reward tiles (1 per player) give you some module which would set you apart from other players, differentiating the player profiles. Since everyone's early game should really be "establish a colony ASAP," this meant everyone would have a nudge in one direction or another. Of course, it'd be at random, not chosen.

Adding these starting resource cards are neat, but now I'm sort of double dipping on that mechanism. You might choose a starting resource card based on how you want to approach the game this time, then after dropping your first colony you might get something that works well with that, or something that doesn't. I don't love that, so I might just take out those first stage rewards altogether.

• Ion Cannon useful all turn

I've noticed a few times that when using an ion cannon (spending an energy for 2 weapons), sometimes you don't defeat the aliens, and then your next attack is super weak unless you spend MORE energy. I don't like that, so I think the ion cannon should continue to work until the end of the turn.

This would be consistent with the afterburner, I think. You'd activate the module by placing an energy on it, while active, it does its thing. At the end of your turn, you'd clear off any energy on your afterburner or ion cannon. I think this will make the ion cannon a lot more useful, a player with enough actions could potentially use a single ion cannon activation to fight several alien clusters!

Recent testing: EmDice

Looking through my blog, it appears that it's been a full 4 years or more, I think, since I have played my Eminent Domain dice game, affectionately titled EmDice, though I could use a better before going to print.

FOUR YEARS!

I had considered the game "basically done," and figured it would eventually get the green light from TMG to go into production. I even got some manufacturing quotes, including one as recently as January of this year. Now that my big projects are finally done out of my hands (Pioneer Days and Harvest debuting at Essen, Crusaders and Oblivion in production), it's about time to prioritize what to work on, and revisit some of these older titles to see if they're up to par.

So for the first time in ages (it was not trivial to actually find the prototype!), I got EmDice to the table. One player surprised me by saying that he liked it better than the card game!

One thing that sometimes bugged me about the game was that when re-rolling dice when dissenting, because you don't have good options or don't like your hand, you could easily end up with an equally bad hand over and over again. I guess that's how dice games work, but the thought crossed my hand that perhaps when dissenting you should be able to EITHER re-roll all dice of 1 face (as currently is the rule), OR choose any 1 of your active dice,, and change the face to what you want. My players didn't think that was necessary, perhaps it could be a tech ability or something, but maybe it's not needed as a basic rule.

NOTE: Try some power as "When dissenting, instead of re-rolling dice, you may change 1 active die to any face."

I made 2 more observations while playing...

Warfare leader bonus
In EmDo, the leader bonus for Warfare is that you get an additional Warfare symbol, and you get the option of attacking a planet instead of collecting fighters. Other players generally cannot attack when following Warfare, only as an action, or when they are leading the role. In the dice game, there aren't actions, so you ARE allowed to attack when following, which I think is the right call. It follows then that the leader bonus should be 1 warfare icon OR -1 Warfare cost. You still have to choose to either collect Fighters OR attack, but as the leader, when you attack you get a discount.

A way to represent that a little more concisely is to say that the leader bonus for Warfare is actually just "+1 Fighter" (not a Warfare symbol or a discount). That's effectively the same in the case you're collecting fighters, and it's about the same in the case you're spending fighters to attack as well. The only real downside is if you want to attack, need the "discount," and there's exactly 1 fighter in the supply, and you don't want the game to end (you're about to spend Fighters after all). But maybe that's so rare I shouldn't worry about it. Russell also suggested it might be more clear to keep the delineation of either getting fighters, or spending them. This more concise bonus allows you to get 1 Fighter then attack at the same time, which is potentially less clear cut for some players.

NOTE: Try Warfare leader bonus: "+1 Fighter"

Combine Produce and Trade
Something that ended up being a big breakthrough in EmDo was realizing that Produce and Trade was a terribly swingy and risky strategy when those two actions were each on their own card. The game became much better when they were combined into 1 card. It occurred to me as we played the other day that I had put Produce and Trade icons on their own die faces, causing the same problem here as it did in the card game!

The problem wasn't quite as pronounced in EmDice as it was in the card game, probably due to the Dissent rule allowing you to re-roll unneeded die faces. But it was still there, and frankly I was embarrassed I had gone that route!

The obvious solution is to combine Produce and Trade icons onto the same die face. In the card game, this left me with 5 basic card types, but there are 6 faces to each die, so I would need to fill 1 more die face. My first thought was to add a 2nd Survey symbol to each die, since that's pretty important. But why not borrow from the base game yet again, by adding a Politics icon to the die?

That makes sense, the die faces would then be Survey, Warfare, Colonize, Produce/Trade, Research, Politics. But what would Politics do? In the card game, Politics cards in your starting deck were sort of Pseudo-wild. You removed them from the game, replacing them with the role card of your choice. Making the politics icon COMPLETELY wild seemed way too strong, but maybe pseudo-wild would be ok. My first thought was "2 POL = any 1 icon", making POL icons bad unless you have them in pairs, then they're good. But that's probably too harsh - often times you'd have only 1, and it would be useless. I had also thought of allowing all POL icons to be re-rolled during a dissent, in addition to whatever you chose, but that's just adding more rules as band aids.

My next thought seemed better - discard a Politics die to change another active die to whatever you want. Maybe this addresses the concern I had at the beginning of this post as well.

Dave had a concern that it would remove much of the interaction in the game -- looking around the table to see what people are capable of. If you happen to have 3 POL icons, then you could follow any role you want! Of course, you could only do it for a maximum of 3, and you'd be completely out of dice after that. So I might try it, but with an eye toward Dave's concern, to see if it degrades the game at all.

Other thoughts on what Politics could do...

• Agendas: a set of cards, deal 3 out during setup. They have actions on them, and on your turn you spend Politics icons to do that action. This could add variety to the game,a s the cards could be different from game to game.
• Another version of pseudo-wild: "You can always spend X POL icons as X-1 of anything else."
• Add a politics role, in which you spend Politics icons similar to how you spend Survey icons, buying Clout tokens from a display (mirror the Survey/Planet display, but with Clout tokens). This adds another track, and another bag of tokens though, which isn't ideal.

Of those, I think I'll start with "Discard POL to change another active die."

NOTE: Try combining Produce and Trade into 1 die face, and add Politics die face.
NOTE: Try Politics: Discard this die to change another of your active dice to any face.

So, while I thought EmDice was "basically done," it turns out I can see a few tweaks worth making. I think I will update my prototype and get it to the table again next week, maybe I can finish it up and get it into production before it slides back onto the shelf!

Recent testing: Alter Ego

After bringing Alter Ego back to the table after 2 full years, I wanted to keep it in rotation, lest it find its way back to the shelf for another couple of years. So we played a 4 player game of it last Friday, and I incorporated 3 changes since the last playtest:

• I nerfed the Teamwork tokens -- they didn't give us an additional fight icon anymore
• I changed the penalty system to the one I described in my previous post (linked above) -- for every 2 penalty tokens, you lose 1 icon. The only way to remove penalty tokens is through one of the few equipment that does that.
• I included the new insight I had recently about a 2 civilian "safety net" -- instead of losing immediately when you're out of a civilian color that you need, you take one of the black tokens. Black civ tokens never get returned to the supply. This way you have to lose 3 times that way in order to actually lose the game.

That last one was great, I could tell immediately that it was a perfect solution to that particular problem.

The penalty system was interesting, and Dave thought it was certainly an improvement over the previous version. I'd like to see it in action a little more before I weigh in on whether I'm happy with it.

The nerfed Teamwork tokens were a bit of a problem, I think. With the costs the way they are now (henchmen basically cost 2-5 icons), it's quite difficult to defeat the expensive henchmen without teamwork, and since their costs are specific, it's still difficult. The additional icon of your choice that the TW token used to give you helped a lot with that, but it also kind of made defeating the cheaper henchmen sort of trivial. Also, it seemed weird to say "I'm spending this TW token so you'll fight on my team, but I don't actually need any of your icons, I just need the one from the TW token."

So what probably has to happen is that I need to re-cost the henchmen, possibly with a max cost of 4 icons (or possibly not). Also, I think the henchmen costs need to be more heavily in one icon or another, like AAABB, rather than ABCDE, so that you can reasonably build your deck toward defeating them!

In other news, it's come up so often that I probably need to re-order the turn sequence so that the Family phase is AFTER the fight phase. Maybe I an incorporate it into the Recoup phase, slightly simplifying the overall turn:

1. Job phase: Collect money (penalty for not playing Job cards)
2. Patrol phase: Bring henchmen into play (penalty for not playing Community cards)
3. Fight phase: Spend icons to fight henchmen
4. Family phase: Discard display, draw cards (penalty for not playing Family cards), choose card from stacks, fill display from hand, discard remaining cards.

In this new scheme, I suppose it makes the most sense to play any Events in addition to your regular 5-card display, and then discard them when you use them during the following Fight phase (or maybe leave them in play until you use them, so if you didn't need it that turn, it'll still be there the next turn).

One other thing that came up was the idea of having a simple board. Suppose there were 5 locations, each bearing one of the 5 fight icons. Then suppose the Henchmen costs were reduced by 1, but cost the icon of the location they're at in addition to their printed cost. This would give the henchmen a sort of variable cost, and could maybe add some potentially interesting board play to the game. I don't know if that's really necessary, but it could potentially add to the theme.

Recent testing: Deities & Demigods

It's been about 3 months since anything has happened with Deities & Demigods. The last changes I made were adding Hera cards to determine start player each round (instead of the Olympus track), and on Matthew's suggestion I added 1 Demeter card to the Olympus deck -- when Demeter comes up, each player individually chooses any deity to either show devotion to or to activate. I also created a whole bunch of player powers to try out, but before using those, I really felt I needed people who knew the game.

So a couple of weeks ago I decided to teach my new group of regular playtesters the game (without player powers). The first time we played, we used Demeter, and I'm a little unsure about that card. It does add some interesting dynamics to the game, but it also makes the game a lot longer, and it allows all players to get a LOT more done, to the point where I fear it feels too much like everyone can do everything. One solution could be to make things cost more (quests harder to achieve, etc). Another is to just not have Demeter (I've played dozens of games without him, and the game seemed fine), though that does miss out on the interesting aspects of adding him. He could be a sort of promo card (a single card that makes a significant difference in the game).

The following week, we played again - this time without Demeter. I still feel like he added interesting things, but I'm not sure I really missed him either.

A bigger problem is that I worry buildings are too strong (and therefore Hephaestus is too important), at least relative to the other deities. One reason might be because the Favor of Hephaestus rewards you for building, and buildings are worth points. By contrast, Hermes favor rewards you for having high devotion, which is decidedly NOT worth points, and therefore ought to be worth a lot more (maybe 0/2/4 instead of 0/1/2 for example). Ares rewards you for spreading out, which is worth a little bit of points, but it also encourages you to not fight for majorities, which is a little weird. I was thinking I should amplify the Ares scoring card to something like "double your endgame city points" or else "3/2/1vp for majority/tied/present in each city." That latter would be the same as it is now if you put 1 guy in each city, a little more if that 1 guy earns you majority or ties for it. The former would help whether you spread your guys out, or pile onto a couple of cities. It actually favors piling onto 2 cities and getting 1st, but that leaves points for other players in other cities too, so maybe it's OK.

A couple of new buildings I tried might be a little out of control - for example one that says "double the number of favor tokens you have." Most of the buildings are worth 4 points or so, maybe a little more if you do a good job (collecting 5 Gardens of Babylon for example makes them worth 5 points each). There's not much upper limit on the score for a building that doubles your favor tokens. If you happen to have 13 of them when the building comes up, then you get a HUGE benefit, in some ways due to luck of the draw. I'm also not sure I want to be the player who feels like he has to take that building for little or no benefit to stop another player from getting such a boon.

I had been thinking that game was about done, but maybe it could still use a few tweaks, and that's before even trying the player powers. And I still would like to one day try the Hades module!

TL;DR: Things to try in future plays...
* Double reward for Hermes favor
* Increase reward for Ares favor (double city vp? 3/2/1vp for 1st/tied/present in each city?)
* Don't use Demeter, see if it's really necessry
* Watch out for certain buildings that are potentially worth too much
* Consider reducing the benefit of some of the artifacts - maybe they don't need so much benefit. They should be worth about the same as 3 gold or 2 troop movement, I think. Which probably just means not having the icon in the corner at all.

Recent testing: TMG submissions, Deities & Demigods, AlterEgo, and the revival of EmDice!

I haven't been posting too much lately - I managed 4 posts in August, but it's been almost a month of silence since!

Part of that is me being a bit busy, another part is me being lazy, and a third part is that much of what I've been doing on the game design front has been evaluating submissions I brought home from GenCon. I am usually very open and transparent in my blog, but until we officially sign a game, I don't feel it's right to talk about them in public.

That said, I brought home quite a few prototypes from GenCon, and I had a few previous submissions that I received updates for, and things like that. I've been pretty happy with all of them so far! Whether we sign them or not will have to do with manufacturing quotes (which I've requested), and I'd like to play them all with more different people to get a better idea of how well they'd be received.

Without giving anything away, here's some teaser information:

Submission from Speed Dating event:
I liked this dice drafting game game when we saw it at GenCon (obviously, since I brought it home with me). It reminded me a little of Pioneer Days, and I thought it could do with an old west re-theme anyway. There was one aspect that seemed more work than necessary, so I tried implementing it in a different way, and my playtesters all thought it played much more smoothly that way. If we do pick this one up, I am currently thinking of making it a "sequel" to Pioneer Days -- in PD you're heading out west, and this game deals with building up a town once you get there.

Submission from designer we know:
We've met with this particular designer a few times, and I've played a few of his submissions. Of those, we've only published one so far, but this new submission might just be the 2nd! The first time I played it with 2 of my testers, they both loved it and said I should publish it immediately. Then I played again with 5 players, and that went over well too (and I managed to win when I thought I would be nowhere close :) ). The theme on this one is awfully similar to one of the games we've already done, and it superficially resembles an existing, well known published game that just got a reprint. It's nothing like that game except in a superficial way, but it will likely draw the comparison. I'm not sure if I care though, and I can't really think of a great re-theme opportunity (the existing theme fits well). So if we pick it up, then we might just not worry about the comparisons.

Submission #1 from before where we'd asked for a change:
There's a game I have played a few iterations of so far. The core mechanism of the game is great, and works well, but the first time I played it the supporting stuff just wasn't there yet at all. I gave the designers some notes, and said that if they were to address the things I mentioned, I'd be happy to re-evaluate.

We met with them at Origins, and played an updated version of the game, but while they did start to address my concerns, they didn't address them as fully as I wanted to see, so I gave them some more notes, and suggested that if that was the direction they wanted to go, then I'd be happy to see what they had at GenCon. It's kind of convenient the timing of Origins and GenCon for this type of exchange :).

We met with them again at GenCon, and they're new version was MUCH closer to what I was looking for, so I took the prototype home with me to examine it further. I played a couple of times at GenCon, and another couple of times after I got home, and while the game is definitely a lot closer to what I had envisioned, and I do think we'll sign it eventually, I sent notes one last time. I expect to sign the game after taking the new version at BGGcon in November, assuming the designers latest changes work out as well as we all expect they will.

Submission #2 from before where we'd asked for a change:
We had a submission that is kind of a roll & write version of one of TMG's existing titles. The original version of the submission seemed too much to us like just the board game, but also with dice. It didn't take advantage of the roll & write format (namely: minimalism and portability).

I corresponded with the designer a bit as he updated the game, and at GenCon we played an updated version that seemed to be a much better use of that format, and still evoked the source game well. Andy brought the prototype home to Utah with him, but I got files from the designer and made my own copy, and after a handful of games (and some commentary from Andy), I made some tweaks to the record sheet, and I think it's probably in pretty good shape. We're waiting on some quote info before we decide whether to sign it or not.

Submission from before Origins and GenCon:
I have one submission that I had originally seen a GenCon several years ago, and was interested in, but another company had it for a while. More recently I heard that the designers got it back, and since I had been interested in it before, I had them submit the game to us. I liked the main mechanism, and I thought it could be fun to set the game in the Harbour universe and give players unique characters to use (like we did with Harbour and Harvest). Unfortunately, initial reaction from players wasn't as enthusiastic as I'd expected, but I'd still like to play some more before making any decisions on it. However, Essen is coming up, and I don't want to hold this game hostage so to speak, so I told the designers to go ahead and show the game around at Essen, and if they don't find another publisher interested, then I'd continue to evaluate the game.

Submission I've known about for a year, and finally got:
A couple of years ago at Essen, I was talking to a designer friend about Crusaders, and other mancala-rondel ideas. Some of that inspired an idea for him, and he emailed me asking if I minded his using that mechanism in a game (of course not, why would I mind?). Some time later (about a year ago) I learned that he had successfully created a game based on that mechanism, and I played a prototype of it and thought it worked pretty well. But they said they weren't done yet...

Finally, a few weeks ago, they sent me the files and I made a copy of the prototype! I have enjoyed it so far. It's very tight, and seems a little short with 2 players (though the right length, just seems so quick!). I look forward to trying it with a few more folks to test the reaction to the game.

That's about it for the TMG submissions. As I got through all of those with my playtesters, I haven't had a lot of time to work on my own games, but I DID get a few of them to the table recently:

Deities & Demigods:
A couple of weeks ago I decided to teach Deities & Demigods to my new group of regular playtesters, so that they could get acquainted with the game before trying to test player powers. I'll go into specifics of that in a separate blog post.

Alter Ego:
After bringing Alter Ego back to the table after 2 full years, I wanted to keep it in rotation, lest it find its way back to the shelf for another couple of years. So we played a 4 player game of it last Friday. I'll make a separate blog post with more details of the playtest.

EmDice:
Looking through my blog, it appears that it's been a full 4 years or more, I think, since I have played my Eminent Domain dice game (affectionately titled EmDice, though I could use a better before going to print).

FOUR YEARS!

I had considered the game "basically done," and figured it would eventually get the green light from TMG to go into production. I even got some manufacturing quotes, including one as recently as January of this year. Now that my big projects are finally done out of my hands (Pioneer Days and Harvest debuting at Essen, Crusaders and Oblivion in production), it's about time to prioritize what to work on, and revisit some of these older titles to see if they're up to par.

So for the first time in ages (it was not trivial to actually find the prototype!), I got EmDice to the table. I'll post separately about how that went, but one player surprised me by saying that he liked it better than the card game!

WHEW!

So that's what I've been up to lately. How about you?

Crusaders and Oblivion print and play opportunities on Tasty Testers Guild!

We have something which I think is an underutilized resource... it's the Tasty Testers Guild (number 1976) over at BoardGameGeek.

In the Tasty Testers Guild we sometimes post PnP files for upcoming TMG games when they're ready for blind testing. It has worked well in the past for games such as Exotica and Battlecruisers, but sometimes I put a game up there and get little if any response.

I currently have PnP files for two of my upcoming games (through TMG of course), and if you follow this blog you will recognize both:

Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done

Crusaders is fully blind-test ready, with a rules doc as well as up to date PDF files, and the game is very nearly in its final form. If anyone has a really great suggestion for the rules I'd consider it, but I'm mostly concerned with perfecting the game end trigger timing (number of influence in the supply at each player count) and balance of the faction powers. I probably won't include all 18 of them in the game -- I might cut it down to the best or most fun and interesting 10 or so.

If you play, please let me know what you think, where the game is fun and where it wasn't, which faction powers you liked best and least, and what you think of the game end trigger (was the game too long or too short, and if so by how much?).

---


And now that Exotica has arrived and interest in EmDo is stirring:

Eminent Domain: Oblivion

Oblivion has come a long way, through several distinct iterations over the last 4 years or so. I finally have the Agenda system where I think I want it, that part of the game seems to be working very well.

I have only recently added all the Prestige planets, the whole idea of Annexing planets, an all of the tech cards, so it's likely some of them are too good or not good enough, or that I'm trying to add too much to the game.

If you play this one, please first off tell me if the description in the Tasty Testers Guild thread made sense (sorry, I don't really have a rules doc for this one yet), and tell me what you think of the Politics role, the Agendas, the Annexing of planets, the effects on the Prestige planets, and the existence of (and usefulness of) the Prestige tech cards.

Now would be a perfect time to start getting some feedback on both of those games!

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing feedback in the Tasty Testers Guild!

Tips for playtesters

With UnPub 6 coming up this weekend, the State Of Games podcast this week was all about tips for playtesters. It's a good listen for people heading to UnPub or any designer convention, or otherwise participating in their designer friends' playtests.

To prepare for that podcast, Jessica putout a call for tips from designers to help players of prototypes contribute in the most helpful way when playtesting a game. I answered the call, and they summarized some of my comments on the show. I thought I'd share my advice here for anyone interested in reading the entirety of the email I sent them :)

"What are some specific tips you have for playtesters testing your games?"

I'm going to begin this answer as I often do, with the phrase "It depends."

The type of feedback you're after will depend on what stage your game is in, so as a designer it's probably a good idea to clearly communicate that to the players before you begin. Otherwise you'll end up with players interrupting the game to make suggestions about the graphic design of the player board that you just threw together to facilitate playtesting and will obviously be redone by a professional should the game ever see print!

TIP #1: Just play the game like it's a normal game.
In most cases when I'm playtesting a game I just want players to play it as if it were a finished game that came off the store shelf. Unless I specifically request it, I'm not looking for a player to go out of their way to break the game by doing things that aren't in pursuit of their own victory. Especially in early testing... finding game breaking loopholes and edge cases is my job as the designer, not your job as the player.

Now, if a you see a loophole that you can abuse in pursuit of victory, then by all means abuse it! But it's a waste of time to intentionally try to torpedo the game while doing something you're not realistically going to do in the game.

It's a bit different in a late-stage playtest when the game is nearly done. At that point it might be good to intentionally do something stupid to make sure the game holds up. I wrote a blog post on the League of Gamemakers about making sure a bad play or mistake won't keep a player from enjoying the game experience.

Tip #2: Avoid commenting on graphic design of a prototype.

Occasionally you'll playtest a game by someone who's self publishing, or a game that's got near final art, and in that case it might be acceptable to point out flaws in the graphic design. But in MOST cases when you're playtesting a game, it will have prototype components, lovingly hand crafted by the designer. That's secret code for "cobbled together in photoshop (if not MS Word), and printed in B&W -- and if you're lucky there'll be google image art here and there." This is NOT the final graphic design of the game, and the designer knows that.

Some game designers are also graphic artists, and their prototypes make the rest of us want to hide in a ditch, ashamed of the bland, boring look of our handmade games. But even those designers are unlikely using final graphic design and iconography.

My point is that interrupting the game to say "you know, this icon should really be a triangle" or "your green and red centimeter cubes you got in bulk from an education supply store aren't colorblind friendly" is probably more disruptive than it is useful.

I hereby apologize in advance for any difficulty you have learning and playing any designer's prototype that hasn't had the benefit of professional graphic design!

TIP #3: Don't interrupt play with suggestions mid-game.

When an idea or suggestion comes up, it's tempting to bring it up before you forget, while it's fresh in your mind. But that can be very disruptive to the playtest, so often times it's better to make a note of it and bring it up after the game.

TIP #4: Bring paper and pencil to a playtest session.

Speaking of note taking, it would be awesome if the designer handed out paper and pencil at the beginning of the playtest so that players could take notes of their thoughts during the game in order to revisit them later. Some designers do this, others (like me) would if they ever remembered to... but there's nothing stopping you from bringing your own paper and pencil to a playtest session!

TIP #5: Stay on topic during feedback sessions.

Often times feedback sessions aren't very structured, and that's fine. But if a designer asks a specific question, or asks about a specific part of the game, it's probably more helpful to address that question and only that question until the topic changes, rather than sidetrack the conversation with other unrelated thoughts (even if they're well thought out and good thoughts).

Oblivion playtest -- with the new planets and techs and stuff! Big update with lots of details!

I played a 4p game of Eminent Domain: Oblivion today. If you've only just happened upon this blog, or if you've been living under a rock or something, Oblivion is the 3rd expansion to my card game Eminent Domain. The first expansion, Escalation, has been out for just over a year, and the second one, Exotica, is going to hit store shelves in about 2 weeks. Oblivion will likely be the final expansion for the game.

I've posted quite a bit about this expansion over the several years I've been working on it, so I'll assume you have read that, or will go read it if you haven't and are interested (go ahead, I'll wait...)

Yesterday I finally got around to making more planets for the expansion, and while I'd discussed not including any tech in this set (I feel like there's kind of already too many techs, and too many points in the tech stacks), there are some fairly obvious types of effects that would make sense to have. So I decided to make a couple of Diverse techs (requiring Metallic, Fertile, and Advanced planets), and more importantly a small stack of Prestige tech. This is because I also decided to make most of the new planets Prestige types, the idea being that Prestige planets are all about the politics.

Originally I'd made 5 planets... 1 each of metallic, advanced, and fertile with a Politics icon, and 2 Prestige planets with a replenishing Clout token. I had talked about making more planets of the Bustling variety (ones that give you actions -- there were a handful of those in Escalation), and I decided to make them all Prestige planets. Since I make prototypes on 8.5x11 sheets of paper and can fit 9 cards on a sheet, I made 9 new planets... which seemed like a good number actually, since there are 9 of each planet type in the base game. So in Oblivion, if I remove one of the replenishing clout planets, there'll be 10 of each planet type total. That means there'll be enough to go around that I can make a Prestige tech stack without worrying too much about people not being able to access it. In fact, I should probably make that stack more robust, but if I don't make prestige starting planets then it's not as big a deal.

PLANETS

Anyway, I made the following planets:
Advanced -- Politics icon, Silicon (3vp)
Fertile -- Politics icon, Food, Water (2vp)
Metallic -- Politics icon , Iron (3vp)
Prestige -- Replenishing Clout (2vp)
Prestige -- Action: Draw 2 Clout tokens (2vp)
Prestige -- Action: Recon the Agenda deck (4vp)
Prestige -- Action: Recon your deck (2vp)
Prestige -- Action: Swap 2 upcoming or Active Agendas (3vp)
Prestige -- Action: Dismiss up to 2 Upcoming Agendas (4vp)
Prestige -- Action: Discard a Clout token to collect 1vp (2vp)
Prestige -- Action: Annex a Planet (pay [POL] equal to its Annex cost) (3vp)
Prestige -- Action: Trade 1 Resource for 1vp and a Clout token (2vp)
Prestige -- Your planets gain Annex Cost: 6[POL] (3vp)

Having now played with these planets, I think some of them might need tweaks. The two 4vp planets' actions are pretty weak or narrow, but that's why I made them 4vp. I could potentially add resource slots to some of them, but historically, Prestige planet resource slots can hold "any resource", and that might interact too strongly with some of the Agendas (then again, maybe that's a good thing).

ANNEXING PLANETS

I mentioned an Annex cost in the previous section. All of the new Prestige planets have an Annex cost listed on them (they're all Annex Cost: 4[POL]). There are a few effects which give you ACTION: Annex a planet (pay [POL] equal to its Annex cost). In addition, as an option when doing a Politics role, instead of activating or dismissing an Agenda, you may Annex a planet (which of course means flip it over by paying it's annex cost).

John suggested that the Politics cards could have "ACTION: Annex a planet" on them, but for one thing, the Politics cards already have an action printed on them, and for another I wouldn't want to have to reprint all the politics cards! Also, it might be too easy to flip the Prestige planets that way.

The Improved Political Influence tile (hmm, maybe I should just call that the "Politics tile" -- "Political Influence is a very long term!) now has All planets gain Annex Cost: 7[POL] instead of the extra vp for trading at least 3 different resources at a time.

I'm not sure those costs are perfect, they may need some tweaking. I settled on 7 for the Politics tile because Improved Politics also gives you a Politics icon, so you really only need 6 other ones, and that's on par with one of the more expensive Agenda costs (and so shouldn't be impossible). It might be too high though, and I could see bringing that down to 6. 5 seems awfully low, though it's still higher than the standard Annex cost of 4 printed on the Prestige planets.

TECHNOLOGY

As I mentioned, I made just a couple of Diverse tech cards:
Diverse Lobbyist (Diverse perm L1): [POL] (a permanent politics icon)
Diverse Clout (Diverse perm L1): Whenever you draw Clout tokens, draw 1 more and then discard a Clout token.

Filibuster (Diverse perm L1): When dissenting a role, draw 1 clout token.
Party Whip (Diverse perm L1): When another player follows your role, draw 1 clout token.

And I made one of each Advanced, Fertile, and Metallic tech:
Farming Subsidy (Fertile perm L1): ACTION: Discard any number of Clout tokens. produce 2 resource for each clout discarded this way.
Grassroots Movement (Fertile perm L1): Your [COL] icons can be used as [POL].

Free Trade Agreement (Advanced perm L1): Once per turn: You may discard a Clout token to collect 1vp.
Scientific Community (Advanced perm L1): Your [RES] icons can be used as [POL].

Political Climate (Metallic perm L1): ACTION: Recon the Planet deck for a Prestige planet.
Police State (Metallic perm L1): You may attack planets by paying [F] equal to the Annex cost.

And of course, a handful of Prestige tech:
Political Annexation (Prestige L1):ACTION: Annex a planet (pay [POL] equal to it's Annex cost).

Campaign Trail (Prestige L1): ACTION: Target planet gains Annex cost: 4[POL] until end of turn.

Targeted Lobbying (Prestige L1):ACTION: Recon the Clout tokens for any one token and take it.

Call in a Favor (Prestige L1): ACTION: Trade up to 3 Clout tokens for 1vp each.

Wheel & Deal (Prestige L1): ACTION: Trade a resource for a Clout token and another different resource (doesn't need a slot).

Executive Order (Prestige L2):  ACTION: Activate the rightmost Upcoming Agenda, or Dismiss the rightmost Active Agenda. (2vp)

Prestige Clout (Prestige perm L2): Whenever you draw Clout tokens, draw 1 more and then discard a Clout token. (2vp)
Prestige Lobbyist (Prestige perm L2): [POL] (2vp)

Many of these techs are permanent because I have a few Agendas that refer to permanent techs, and I thought it would be interesting to have several in the game even when not playing with Escalation or Exotica. I feel like some might be too strong at L1, but who knows. I'm not sure if I want to keep the Diverse tech or not, I could just delete Diverse Lobbyist and Diverse Clout and make Party Whip and Filibuster into Prestige techs. Then I wouldn't have to explain Diverse Tech in the Oblivion rulebook for just 2 cards.

I currently just have a [POL] icon on each of the Prestige tech (2 icons on the L2 tech). I suppose I could make sure there are at least 6 L1 prestige techs, and put a role symbol on each (in addition to the [POL] icon).

AGENDAS

The current Agendas look like this:
* When activated or removed: Recon the Agenda deck for any 1 Agenda and put it into the center active slot.
* Return any one Upcoming Agenda to the bottom of the deck, then Recon the Agenda deck for any 1 Agenda.
* Attacking a planet requires 2 more [F]. When activated: Settle a planet.
* Attacking requires 2 fewer [F]. When activated: collect 2 [F].
* After your turn, if you have at least 1 Adv, Fert, & Met planet in play (face up), collect 1vp.
* After your turn, if you have the most Advanced planets in play (face up), collect 1vp.
* After your turn, if you have the most Fertile planets in play (face up), collect 1vp.
* After your turn, if you have the most Metallic planets in play (face up), collect 1vp.
* After your turn, if you have the most permanent techs in play, collect 1vp.
* Collect 1vp each time you play a L1 tech card for its action. When activated: Take an L1 tech.
* Colonize costs are increased by 2. When activated, Attack a planet.
* Colonize costs are decreased by 1. When activated, Settle a planet.
* Research costs are increased by 2. When activated: Take an L1 tech (ignore pre-reqs).
* Research costs are decreased by 1. When activated: You may spend [RES] to buy a tech card.
* Agenda Activation costs are increased by 1. When activated: Remove 1 Active Agenda from play.
* Agenda Activation costs are decreased by 1. When activated: Return an Upcoming Agenda to the bottom of the deck.
* +2 Produce symbols per Produce role. When activated: Produce any 2 resources (no slot required).
* -2 Produce symbols per Produce role. When activated: Produce any 2 resources (no slot required).
* +2 Survey symbols per Survey role. When activated: Take the top Planet card (face down).
* -2 Survey symbols per Survey role. You may keep 1 additional Planet per Survey role. 
* Hand size +1 for each permanent tech in your empire. When activated: Draw 3 cards & play another action.
* Hand size +-1 for each permanent tech in your empire. When activated: Draw 5 cards & ignore hand limit this turn.
* Annex costs are increased by 2. When activated, Improve Politics tile.
* Annex costs are decreased by 2. When activated, All other players downgrade Politics tile.
* Tech cards may not be played as actions. When activated: Take an L1 tech.
* You may trade Clout tokens as if they were resources. When activated: Draw 2 Clout tokens.
* [POL] icons can be used as [WAR] or [PRO] icons.
* [POL] icons can be used as [WAR] or [TRA] icons.
* [POL] icons can be used as [SUR] or [PRO] icons.
* [POL] icons can be used as [SUR] or [TRA] icons.
* Choose a resource type. +1vp when trading if you trade at least 1 resource of that type.
* Choose a resource type. ACTION: Discard that resource to collect 1vp + any other resource.
* Choose a resource type. ACTION: Discard that resource + Water to collect 3vp and a Clout token.
* Choose a resource type. ACTION: Discard that resource + Food to collect 3vp and a Clout token.
* Choose a resource type. ACTION: Discard that resource + Iron to collect 3vp and a Clout token.
* Choose a resource type. ACTION: Discard that resource + Silicon to collect 3vp and a Clout token.

I think I need to test more, but most of these seem alright. I'm not sure what a good Agenda deck size would be. I used to want the deck to be small enough that if an early Agenda got dismissed, there would be a chance to see it again later, but I think that's unlikely to matter in practice so I think I'll stop worrying about that.

ALTERNATE VICTORY CARD

I still need to come up with an Alternate Victory card for this set: Political Victory being an obvious title, but I'm not sure what to make it. All of the alternate victory cards so far have been double sided, so I might need something to go on the back. I think I had an idea for "Traditional Victory: Nobody can with with an Alternate Victory card." or something like that.

But there was also the idea that the Alternate Victory card be an Agenda, one that's always available and has a high Activation cost. Maybe that would be too easy to achieve... but maybe Traditional Victory could be such an Agenda, which means you couldn't win by an alternate victory while it's in play, but could be dismissed (for a high cost). Also, that way players wouldn't be afraid to follow your Politics role for fear of an instant win!

So what should Political Victory do? It could be a planet that's always available, need not be surveyed, cannot be attacked or settled, and can only be Annexed (with a high Annex cost), but that has a similar problem as an instant win agenda.

It would be neat if you didn't have to use the Research role to access it. The obvious thing would be to tie it to the Politics role somehow. Maybe have it cost some number of Clout tokens? Except you can just draw 1 for an action every turn and then win... Hmm. I'll have to give it some more thought. If you have any ideas, leave them in the comments!