Eminent Domain - Technologies

I'm thinking of a potentially streamlined way to do the technologies, once they're split up into 3 levels of techs and you purchase the one you want:

Nomenclature
For the sake of discussion, let's refer to the 6 actions in the game as A, B, C, D, E, and F. Let's also say that any given Technology deck will be comprised of cards with 2 icons each, one of which will be one of the 2 associated with the type of deck (i.e. Harvest and Colonize for the Fertile deck). Therefore each card in the deck can be described as XA, XB, XC... YA, YB, YC... where X and Y are, in the case of the Fertile deck, Harvest and Colonize.

Now, on with the post...

Proposed technology deck format
Suppose there were just 1 Action/Effect/Ability associated with each of the 6 actions (A-F). Maybe each level of technology in a deck should have those 6 Actions/Effects/Abilities on 2 cards each:
XA, YA: Action/Effect/Ability A
XB, YB: Action/Effect/Ability B
XC, YC: Action/Effect/Ability C
... etc.

It could be that the Level 1 techs have no Action/Effect/Ability (just double symbols), or a weak one (maybe the same action as the Role card - thus a Harvest/Colonize card would be exactly the same as a Colonize card, but with a Harvest icon on it as well. The level 2 techs would have the nifty Action/Effect/Abilities on them*. Level 3 techs are probably going to be cards with strong abilities that stay in play, and are worth significant points.

* Ooh, just thought of this - the Level 2 tech cards could have BOTH actions - like a WS card could have "Action: Get 1 Army AND Draw 2 cards" (!) - this removes interesting abilities, but might be good anyway, and easy to try.

Updated ED Proto?

Despite deciding that I probably don't want to go with a 2D array of planet cards or tiles, I went ahead and made a set of tiles... each one has a planet type and one of it's associated icons (or a + hand size icon or +1VP icon). The intent is to lay them out in a hexagonal board. The center tile has all 6 symbols represented, making it good for all actions, and therefore more valuable. Player 'home' planets would be attached to 5 blank tiles in a sort of pyramid shape, and appended to one side of the large hexagon, so in order to get to any planet tile you'd have to move your ship 2 spaces from your home planet.

The idea here is that the Survey action moves your ship around, the Warfare action attacks the tile your ship is on (for a standard number of armies maybe 5), and the Colonize action colonizes the tile your ship is on for a variable price, which increases as you approach the center of the hexagon.

There are 4 rings to this board, the first ring would cost maybe 2 to colonize, the next ring would cost 3, the 3rd would cost 4 and the center tile would cost 5 (or something like that, maybe it would ramp up more, like 3/4/6/7). When you attack or colonize a tile you would take the tile in front of you so you could see what bonuses you've got, and you would place a player marker of some sort on the space... the VPs of the tile would be based on it's location as well, representing that you had to do more work to colonize a tile near the center. After colonizing or attacking (let's call that "claiming") a tile, your ship would jump back to your home tile, and you'd have to make your way out there again.

One benefit of this board is that it lets you aim for particular bonuses - if you want to go the warfare route, you might target tiles that give you +1 Warfare. If you notice a number of tiles near your base that have Harvest and Trade icons, maybe you'll decide to go that route. Maybe you'd prefer to survey your way out toward the center of the baord and try to claim tiles that are worth more points. Or maybe you'll eschew abilities and go for planets with +1VP on them. Another plus is that it could create more direct player interaction - the early Surveys move your ship in front of your own home base, but later in the game you might decide to move over to the area in front of an opponent and compete with them for planets. Most notably, suppose another player chooses the Survey role, moving to a particular tile, and you can follow and move to the same tile, then on your turn you colonize it out from under them!

On the down side, this idea is kind of bulky. Is the game a board game or a card game? Does it need a bunch of (60+) tiles in addition to a whole lot of cards? It might just be simpler to draw from the deck, and my latest ideas on that mechanism seem to be working out alright.

Latest Survey mechanism
In my last playtest I tried laying out some planets (face down) in a similar manner to what I described in a previous post. This time I said "If you pay 2/3/4/5 symbols you get to take the 1st/2nd/3rd/4th card AND EVERY CARD BEFORE IT, look at the back, choose the one you want to keep face down in front of you, and put the rest back in any order." This meant an opponent Following the role would do the same thing, but they would have to have at least 3 symbols as that would be the cheapest card available. that worked alright, and I realized afterward that that was almost the same thing as saying "draw 1 card from the deck per symbol, keep 1 face down and put the rest back on top." Except for the costs of things. The next time I'll try that, the Role action will be "draw 1 card per symbol, keep 1." and the Follow action will be "draw 1 card for every 2 symbols, keep 1." This is a little cheaper than the original rules for 1 card, the same cost to look at 2 cards, and a little more expensive thereafter.

If that goes well, I might consider redoing the planets a bit so some are definitely better than others, to lend more value to looking at more cards at a time. But will that feel like luck of the draw if I can only afford 1 planet, and it happens to be a good one? In any case, the planet you get goes face down, and you still have to Claim it via Warfare or Colonization actions.

I'm using the same format for Research as well - draw 1 card per symbol when you choose the role, 1 card per 2 symbols if you Follow the role. I'll see if that works. Of course, this would change if I ever get around to changing the technology system to one where you bu the tech you want with research symbols. Lately I've been thinking that while that would be good, I'm kind of wondering if it's necessary. Maybe I'm just getting used to the original system.

I also made player aides describing the turn order, and the Action, Role, and Follow effects for each of the 6 Role cards. I think that'll help, since some of the Role cards don't describe what they do.

More Eminent Domain playtests!

Wednesday night I got the opportunity to play a couple 2p games of Eminent Domain with Mikey - I hadn't updated my prototype for the new ideas I've been having, so we played by the old rules, with the following exceptions:

1. Starting deck DID contain Warfare but DID NOT contain Trade cards.
2. The Colonize Role could also flip a planet (if desired, instead of adding to it) - the Follow could only add icons still.
3. Used "Collect 1 VP from supply" as the ACTION on Trade role cards.
4. The Warfare Role could also flip a planet (if desired, instead of collecting Armies) - the Follow could only collect Armies still.

The games went well! The first one dragged on a little longer than we would have liked, ending with the VP pool running out. For the second game Mike removed 5 cards from each deck and I reduced the VP pool by 8 (from 32 down to 24). That one ended with the Colonize pile running out, and it was over too quickly so we put the 5 cards back in each pile and kept playing, and it was a little too long. The third game we kept the setup the same, and the game ended via the Survey pile running out, and again it took a little too long.

My conclusion is that 19 cards in each pile is probably too many for a 2p game, but 14 is too few. Maybe 15 or 16 would be better. The VP pool at 24 is probably fine for 2p. With more players I'm sure there will have to be more VPs in the pool and more cards in the stacks, but maybe not many more... for each player in the game, the piles of role cards begins with 2 fewer cards in it... so in a 4p game there's only 11 cards in each pile! Will that be enough?

Overall I kinda liked how it played out. I think I would still like to re-organize the technology decks and have players "buy" the techs they want as I've described before, but I'm not so sure about the 2d array of planet cards anymore. I might try a Stone Age style row of Planet cards, like I've mentioned, but maybe put them face up so players know which one they want, and the 1str one in the display costs 2 Survey icons, the second costs 3, the third costs 4, and the 4th costs 5 icons. Then you'd take the planet and still have to "unlock" it via colonize or Warfare actions.

I was liking the idea of taking abilities off the planets and simply having Action and + hand size icons on them, but there are some abilities that are really good which would have to be static, like "play an additional Action card each turn" and "remove a card in hand from the game before choosing a Role" and "draw an additional card when not following a role" which kind of have to be on planets - unless I want to make Tech cards that are Static. I suppose I could do that - they could look different (different color text/background), there could be just 1 copy, and it would go in play in front of you rather than into your hand or deck.

Eminent Domain, cont'd.

In light of the new structure of the game, here is a restructuring the actions and roles for Eminent Domain... now the Follow action is the same as the Role action - but having chosen the role you get 1 additional symbol (from the Role card you must take):

Survey

• Action: Peek at any face down planet tile.
  
  
• Role: Move ship 1 space per symbol played.

Colonize

• Action: Draw 2 cards.
  
  
• Role: Play symbols based on location of ship. Claim planet tile under your ship.

Warfare

• Action: Collect 1 Army.
  
  
• Role: Collect 1 Army per symbol played OR Discard 5 Armies to attack planet under your ship.
  

Harvest

• Action: Produce 1 Resource on one of your planets.
  
  
• Role: Produce 1 Resource on your planets per symbol played.
  

Trade

• Action: Collect 1 VP.
  
  
• Role: For each symbol played, discard 1 Resource from your planet and collect 1 VP.

Research

• Action: Remove 1 card in hand from the game.
  
  
• Role: Look at a legal Tech deck and choose a Tech costing no more than the number of symbols played. Shuffle all cards from that Tech into your deck.

Each player will have a ship pawn which will start on their staring planet site. Via the Survey action you can move your ship around the array of face down planet tiles, turning face up the one you land on. You can take this planet tile in front of you and claim its benefits by either the colonize action (cost in symbols depends on distance from start tiles), or the warfare action (cost is a standard 5(?) armies).

Each planet tile will have either an Icon for one of the 6 actions, a 1VP symbol, or a +1 Hand Size. All other benefits will be rolled into the technology decks, which should either be bigger, or there should be 6 (one for each action) instead of 3. I'm not sure if I want to split that up into 6 decks yet - if I do that I might also make 6 types of planets - 1 per action (rather than 3 types of everything, 2 actions associated with each type). I kind of like 3 types, each with 2 actions associated with it, so I'll probably keep it that way. I might make a 4th type - a generic typs - which has 1 of each icon represented in the set.

Eminent Domain - more ideas

I have not tried it yet, but the more I think about it, the more happy I am with my plan for the Tech decks in Eminent Domain, which is as follows:

Instead of drawing X cards and keeping 1, I would prefer that players pick up the entire Tech deck, and 'purchase' any card they want - using the Research icons they played. So if you choose the Research role and add 4 symbols to it, you can take a tech costing up to 5. Your opponent who Followed the action with only 3 symbols can take a tech costing up to 3. In addition, I think I'll make 2 copies of each card, and you get to take both of them.

The decks could be structured as such:
5 3-cost cards with 2 symbols and a decent ability
4 5-cost cards with 2 symbols and a good ability and worth 2vp each
3 6(?)-cost cards with 3 symbols and a good ability and worth 3vp each.

And again, 2 copies of each card. Or maybe 3 copies of the 3-costs, 2 copies of the 5-costs, and 1 copy each of the 6-costs. When you purchase, you get all copies of that tech card and shuffle them into your deck (not into discard, that way you'll draw them soon).

In other news...

I have a friend named Sebastian who is a great game designer. He lives in London, and works on games with the famous and prolific Reiner Knizia, and he's also published one of his own games, On the Underground (which I rate very highly, and not just because I know the author!). I really enjoy chatting with Seb about game designs, he often gives me an idea which helps me look at a game in a whole new light, or which helps me fix a problem I have with a game. For example he made a comment about All For One which led to the current version of the story tracks I'm using in that game. Today I was bouncing Eminent Domain ideas off of him and he made some great comments which, coincidentally, were akin to the thoughts I was having - only 1 step further. The funny part was that I had not yet mentioned the thoughts I was having on the subject!

Seb's suggestion was this: regarding the planet card display, instead of a row of cards like I was talking about, try a 2D array of cards which players move a Ship pawn around on.

The upshot of this is that the Survey action could move your ship, and the Colonize and Warfare actions could simply grab up the planet your ship is on. This adds a geographical element to the game, which I like. It also gives the opportunity for interaction (you could move over and colonize my planet before I get a chance). It also allows me to separate the costs for colonization vs warfare - the Colonize cost could be based on position on the board (just paid at once, no more hiding colonize cards under planets), while the warfare cost (generally higher) could be printed on the card.

And incidentally, I could turn the cards into tiles. I'm thinking they'd be laid out face down with only the type showing, and when you land on a planet, you turn it face up and learn it's ability and Warfare cost (Colonize cost is known already because it's based on position in the array). Thus, the ACTION on the Survey cards could be "peek at a face down tile."

I think I will try this next - now to update my prototype!

Prototype night!

Last night I had a few people over for the express purpose of playing All For One - the Three Musketeers game I had been working on with David Brain, which has been on Hiatus for about 3 years :(

Eminent Domain
Andrew, Ashley and Brian arrived first, and the 4 of us first tried Eminent Domain - I thought it would be short, as Tuesday's 2-player games went quickly (I actually thought 4p might go even more quickly!) - and while it wasn't as short as I thought it would be, it actually seemed to go pretty well. I had made some minor modifications since Tuesdays first attempt, and for the most part they were a step in the right direction, however there are definitely some aspects that still need work. The biggest of which is probably the Colonize and Warfare actions and how they flip over planets.

Since currently the Colonize cards get stuck under the planets until you flip it, players easily get to the point where they actually don't have any Colonize cards left in their deck. In a sense this is kinda neat, as you can sort of hide Colonize cards under planets and never have to draw them again if you don't want to. However, it led to a disappointing circumstance where in order to flip the planet, a player would have to take a Colonize role just to get a colonize card into his deck, then later draw it and use it. Then they're left with an extra Colonize card they don't really need, which is kinda lame too. By contrast, Warfare seems a lot better. you can simply aggregate armies little by little when other players choose Warfare, and eventually you can attack a planet to flip it, without filling your deck with a bunch of warfare cards.

Part of the problem is perhaps that I'd made the Role effect for each of those actions simply to accumulate Colonize icons under planets of pile up Armies, and the Action effect to actually flip a planet. Perhaps both the Role and the Action should allow either. Brian suggested that with the current mechanics, simply lowering the cost for Colonization and increasing the cost for Warfare might do the trick. I could easily test that by simply reducing the Colonize cost of all planets by 1, and increasing the Warfare cost of all planets by 1. There would still be planets that are 'easier to take over by warfare' and some that are 'easier to colonize' - but each cost would be 1 more/1 less than at present. Instead of 6/4, 5/5, and 4/6, it would be 5/5, 4/6, and 3/7 - not a ton of difference.

Another, different idea that I'm considering is putting the planets in a display like the cards in Stone Age, where the first one costs maybe 2 icons to colonize, the 2nd costs 3, the 3rd costs 4... in this way, perhaps you would see the front of the planet so that you'd know what you were going after to begin with. This would change the dynamics of the game a lot, and maybe take away some of the more original aspects, but might make for a better game overall - as I suspect players would be annoyed by the current system in which the benefit of the planet you get is unknown until you colonize it (though that hasn't happened yet). So in this scheme, the Colonize ROLE would be to colonize a planet, and you'd need the required number of symbols to do it. The other players would get to do the same, but they don't get a +1 from the new Role card. Warfare ROLE would be "Attack!" and would be similar - you attack a planet by discarding a certain number of Armies depending on the location in the display - maybe interesting if the costs were inverted - 2 warfare => 4 to colonize and vice versa...

So what of the Warfare ACTION? well, that's easy, collect an army. And maybe the ROLE should allow you to collect X armies instead of attacking if you like. Should the Warfare ACTION allow you to attack? Or should other players get to get a planet whenever you do (if they have Armies to spend)? I think the latter. What about Colonize? It seems there would have to be a way to get colonize icons into your deck, so what would it mean to Colonize without actually having enough symbols to take a planet? Maybe there should always be a planet which costs just 1, so you can always take it? Does that make it far too easy to obtain planets? And what about the Survey role, does it go away altogether? Or does it perhaps monkey with the planets in the display? Definitely things to think about.

Utopia
Andrew had brought a protoytpe of his own called Utopia, which I played once and recall it being inspired by Wealth of Nations (though not just a copy of that game). Since David and Steve had arrived we had too many for All For One, and since David wasn't interested in A41, he, Steve and Andrew played Utopia. I'm not sure how it went, but it seemed to go kinda long - a little longer than All For One did and I think they cut it off early. I saw that David had A TON of debt - I don't recall what that means for that game. I believe you pay $1 interest per loan each turn, up to a maximum of $5 - so while each loan also reduces your score I guess David decided to "go big or go home."

I believe that game has a nifty scoring mechanism in that the resources you have are worth points at the end depending on how many are left in supply. The resource with the most left in supply are worth 3vp each, 2nd most are worth 2vp each, and least left in supply are with 1vp each or something like that. I remember thinking that was cool from when I played it that on time.

All For One
While David, Steve and Andrew played Utopia, Brian, Ashley and I played All For One. I was excited to play it again since it has been over 2 years since I played! At BGG.con 2007 I played the game, then sent it home with Zev from Z-Man games. Sadly, it sat on his shelf for an entire year as he had other things going on and didn't get a chance to play it. When he finally did play the game, he thought it was "too Euro for a theme that screams Ameritrash," and so he was not interested in publishing it. I had him send the game to another publisher, this one in the UK, Jackson Pope of Reiver Games. I had a suspicion that he wouldn't have the capital to produce the game. It turns out I was right, but since the game was in England I thought it might be a good idea to have Jackson send it not back to me, but to my co-designer David Brain. It was David's original game idea in the first place, and I came on as a co-designer and developer way back in 2003! as such, we're coming on 7 years that this game has been around (since I got involved) and it's still not published! The theme is spectacular, and the game has been received very well by most players at conventions...

Sadly though, David seems to have lost pieces and was not able to send me back my prototype that I'd missed so dearly. I have not been able to play the game since I gave my copy up to Zev! In an effort to correct that, I set about making a new copy of the game. It's not as good, as the mapboard had changed by hand and I had to sort of re-create the changes. I had to make a whole new set of Plot Tokens as well. Luckily I had invested in additional Musketeer minis from Reaper so that I actually had another set to use. A months ago I finished putting together the prototype, but it wasn't until last night I got to play the game again!

So how did it go? I was hesitant because it seems like I wasn't liking the latest version as much or something. I also couldn't recall exactly how to play, but fortunately my rulebook was up to date and, if I do say so myself, well written! I taught from the rulebook as if it were a published game, and we got to playing in no time.

The basics of gameplay is that on your turn you activate one of the 6 characters in the game, and then you move them around, picking up plot tokens as you go. Your hand of mission cards informs which character you might want to use and which tokens you might want them to get. There is some route optimization, as over time the various missions get either easier or more difficult while characters, guards and tokens move around the board. You score points by completing missions, and you also progress storylines, and at the end of the game you score some bonus points for the storylines you have on your hidden goal card.

In our game some very interesting things happened. There was some blocking, there were missions being completed, there were duels fought... in fact, as Brian recognized that the Peace storyline was the one he did not share with either of us, he decided to fight a number of duels with guards in order to advance the Peach storyline and score bonus points that Ashley and I would not get. All in all it was a good, fun game. I ended up winning by merit of completing more missions than everyone else (I did 6). However, most of my missions were duels, so I only scored 4 points apiece off of them. Brian's 3 missions scored almost as many points as my 6, as he did several Special Deliveries (worth 6 points, as they have 2 required tokens) and a Standard delivery for 5. I believe Ashley and Brian finished within 1 point of one another, and I finished a handful of points ahead of them.

The best news is that both Brian and Ashley LOVED the game! It felt great not only to play again, but to have such a warm reception from the players! I definitely want to play this some more, including with Michael to see if he'd like it to be a Tasty Minstrel release!

Ground Floor
After Utopia and All For One had ended, Andrew and Ashley went home leaving Brian, David, Steve and I to play Ground Floor - David's game about Entrepreneurship. This 4 player game was a learning game for Brian, but Steve, David and I had all played before. Brian picks up games quickly, opting to "just do something and learn as you go" when playing a new game rather than trying to figure out all the ramifications of each play when not even familiar with the game (a strategy I'd like to start employing as well).

This game we used a slight tweak to the Economic Forecast deck to make it less predictable. In a Recession for example, there will be between 1 and 3 consumers... until now, once the first recession goes by and it has say 1 consumer, then the next time a Recession comes up we all KNOW that at least 2 products will sell. This was disappointing because the game is much better if you cannot be sure whether it'll be 1, 2, or 3 consumers during a Recession. To fix this, we created a double deck - 2 copies of each card. To set up the Forecast deck we shuffled the 6 Recession cards (for example) and used only 3 - now each one has a 1, a 2, or a 3 on it, but just because 1 comes up doesn't mean it won't come up again next time. A MUCH better mechanism, for just a LITTLE BIT of setup cost at the beginning of the game. In addition, we moved the top card down to the 'current' pile but left it face down (which informs you as to the range of customers but not the actual number), so that the FOLLOWING card is now visible, letting players plan ahead a little more. This tweak was well liked and is a keeper.

Steve began the game just loaded with money and information - I wasn't sure where it was all coming from! What I realized was that he had opted not to purchase any Small TIs or upgrade any of his Ground Floor rooms. Instead he saved all his money and info so that in round 4 when the better floors become available he could get 2 of them in one shot. He opted for "the big combo" as we've come to call it - Assembly Line (which lets you get 3 cheap supply each turn) and Research Lab (which lets you trade a Supply in for $3 and i3 3 times a turn) - so for 6 of his time units Steve could make $9 and i9, without having to compete with us for it. As a result however, we had less competition for Consumers and Consultants and maybe the rest of us were able to make more money and info that way than we would have otherwise.

I chose to purchase TIs that increased my income each turn, so in the end I was collecting $8 and i8 without spending any time units at all. I also opted for a late game Warehouse (the turn before the Small TIs go away) so that I could store up some supplies and score well off the Floor that rewards 1vp per supply. In the end I scored 6 bonus points off of that floor, which is pretty huge - on par with 2 Bonus Floors really, and for less money investment - but I DID have to spend time filling my storage space with Supplies, and I ran the risk of someone else buying that bonus floor (though it would have been pretty poor for anyone else).

In the end I scored 51 points, enough to beat Steve's 44 - he had somehow run out of gas despite all his riches midgame. In the last round he was unable to maximize his two Bonus Floors (2vp/popularity level, 1vp per remodeled room) and he had to choose between the two. Brian did fairly well in his first game, finishing with 38 points - no Bonus Floors at all, but I think in a future game now that he knows what's going on he'll likely do much better. David had a rough early game, and as such finished last. I'm not really sure what happened with him, but I wonder if it ad to do with his early game Emergency Meeting purchase - a TI which helps guarantee you Info from the Consulting Firm. It is a nifty ability, but I'm not sure it's as good as something that nets you info.

After the game we discussed a few of the buildings and I think I've finally gotten David to agree that a couple of them (Store Front, Office Admin, etc) are simply not useful and should be cut! Even better, we looked at some floors that seem like they'd be better in the early game (help getting employees) and made them into Small TIs so they're available when you need them. Finally, we strengthened a couple Floors and TIs that seemed too weak, like the Internship, which gives you 1 additional time unit per round (1/3 of an employee) - it seems good, but unless that 1 time unit can get you i3, then it's simply not comparable to the other options. We bumped it up to 2 time units (2/3 of an employee), and now I think it'll be really comparable, as it's almost as valuable but much more versatile.

A great game, and it only took about 2:15 minutes! I'd still like to see it go a little quicker (under 2 hours) - not sure whether that's feasible or not.

All in all a great night for prototypes!

Eminent Domain - Rules V0.2

EMINENT DOMAIN
by Seth Jaffee
A civilization building game for 2-4 players

Overview:
Survey the galaxy to expand your civilization... Will you colonize nearby planets, or take them over by force? Harvest resources for trade, and do research to improve your technology. Build the best civilization and win the game!

Components:
114 Role cards
31 Planet cards (including 4 Starting Planet cards)
36 Technology cards
40 Resource discs (10 ea. in 4 colors)
30 Black Army discs
30 White VP discs

Setup:
Separate the Role cards into piles by type and place them in the indicated locations on the board.

Give each player 1 of the starting planets (put unused starting planets back in the box). Shuffle the Planet deck and each

Technology deck and place them in the indicated locations on the board.

Each player takes 2 of each action card EXCEPT Warfare and shuffles them together to form their starting deck. To start the game, each player draws 5 cards from their deck into their hand.

Determine who will be the start player. That player begins the game by taking the first turn.

You are now ready to begin!

Player Turns:
A player's turn consists of the following 3 steps, in order:

• 1. Play Action Card.
  The active player may choose a card in their hand which has an Action: effect and play it. The card's action is resolved immediately.
  
  
• 2. Select Role.
  The active player MUST select a Role for the turn by taking a Role card from the board and laying it face up in front of him. The Role card indicates one of the basic actions of the game. The player may add additional cards bearing the same icon as the Role selected in order to boost the action. After the active player resolves the action, each other player in turn order (clockwise from the active player) may choose to either Follow the action, playing cards from their hand bearing the appropriate Icon as indicated by the Role card, or simply draw 1 card from their deck instead.
  
  
• 3. Cleanup.
  The active player places all cards they've played this turn (including the newly selected Role card) into his discard pile. He may discard any number of cards from his hand, and then he draws cards from his deck to refill his hand to the hand limit (base hand limit is 5). If the deck runs out of cards, the discards are shuffled to create a new deck.

GAME END:
The game ends at the end of a turn in which one of the following has happened:

• Any of the Role card piles are exhausted
  
• The VP supply is exhausted

At that time players count the victory points on the Technology cards in their decks, on their face up Planets, and collected via Trade. The player with the most points is the winner! In the case of a tie, the tied player with the most armies plus resources wins.

The Actions:

Survey

ACTION: Draw 2 cards.

ROLE: For each Survey icon played (including the Role card), take a card off the top of the Planet deck. Looking only at the BACKS of the cards, choose one to place face down in front of you.

FOLLOW: Pay X Survey icons to take X-2 cards off the top of the Planet deck. Looking only at the BACKS of the cards, choose one to place face down in front of you.

Colonize

ACTION: Turn up a Surveyed planet in front of you which has the requisite number of Colonize icons under it, OR place this card under a face down planet in front of you.

ROLE: Place any Colonize icons played (including the Role card) under a face down planet in front of you.

FOLLOW: Place any Colonize icons played under a face down planet in front of you.

Research

ACTION: Remove 1 card in your hand from the game.

ROLE: For each Research icon played (including the Role card), draw 1 card from a Technology deck corresponding to one of your colonized (face up) planets. Put 1 in your hand and the rest on the bottom of the deck.

FOLLOW: Pay X Research icons to look at X-2 cards from a Technology deck corresponding to one of your colonized (face up) planets. Put 1 in your hand and the rest on the bottom of the deck.

Harvest

ACTION: Produce 1 resource on one of your colonized (face up) planets.

ROLE: For each Harvest icon played (including the Role card), produce 1 resource on one of your colonized (face up) planets.

FOLLOW: For each Harvest icon played, produce 1 resource on one of your colonized (face up) planets.

Trade

ACTION: Discard 1 resource from your colonized (face up) planets and collect 1 VP from the supply.
[Considering making the action simply "collect 1vp from supply" - but that might be too crazy]

ROLE: For each Trade icon played (including the Role card), discard 1 resource from your colonized (face up) planets and collect 1 VP from the supply.

FOLLOW: For each Trade icon played, discard 1 resource from your colonized (face up) planets and collect 1 VP from the supply.

Warfare

ACTION: Discard the listed number of Armies to turn up 1 Surveyed planet in front of you, OR Collect 1 Army

ROLE: For each Warfare icon played (including the Role card), collect 1 Army.

FOLLOW: For each Warfare icon played, collect 1 Army.

Eminent Domain - Rules

EMINENT DOMAIN
by Seth Jaffee
A civilization building game for 2-4 players

Overview:
Survey the galaxy to expand your civilization... Will you colonize nearby planets, or take them over by force? Harvest resources for trade, and do research to improve your technology. Build the best civilization and win the game!

Components:
114 Role cards
31 Planet cards (including 4 Starting Planet cards)
36 Technology cards
40 Resource discs (10 ea. in 4 colors)
30 Black Army discs
30 White VP discs

Setup:
Separate the Role cards into piles by type and place them in the indicated locations on the board.

Give each player 1 of the starting planets (put unused starting planets back in the box). Shuffle the Planet deck and each Technology deck and place them in the indicated locations on the board.

Each player takes 2 of each action card EXCEPT Warfare and shuffles them together to form their starting deck. To start the game, each player draws 5 cards from their deck into their hand.

Determine who will be the start player. That player begins the game by taking the first turn.

You are ready to begin!

Player Turns:
A player's turn consists of the following 3 steps, in order:

• 1. Play Action Card.
  The active player may choose a card in their hand which has an Action effect and play it. The card's action is resolved immediately.
  
  
• 2. Select Role.
  The active player MUST select a Role for the turn by taking a Role card from the board and laying it face up in front of him. The Role card indicates one of the basic actions of the game. The player may add additional cards bearing the same icon as the Role selected in order to boost the action. After the active player resolves the action, each other player in turn order (clockwise from the active player) may choose to either Follow the action, playing cards from their hand bearing the appropriate Icon as indicated by the Role card, or simply draw 1 card from their deck instead.
  
  
• 3. Cleanup.
  The active player places all cards they've played this turn (including the newly selected Role card) into his discard pile. He may discard 1 card from his hand, and then he draws cards from his deck to refill his hand. If the deck runs out of cards, the discards are shuffled to create a new deck.

Game end:
The game ends at the end of a turn in which one of the following has happened:

• Any of the Role card piles are exhausted
  
• The VP supply is exhausted

At that time players count the victory points on the Technology cards in their decks, on their face up Planets, and collected via Trade. The player with the most points is the winner! In the case of a tie, the tied player with the most armies plus resources wins.

The Actions:

Survey

ACTION: For each Survey icon played (including the Role card), take a card off the top of the Planet deck. Looking ONLY at the BACKS of the cards, choose one to place face down in front of you.

FOLLOW: Pay X Survey icons to take X-2 cards off the top of the Planet deck. Looking only at the backs of the cards,choose one to place face down in front of you.

Colonize

ACTION: Turn up a Surveyed planet in front of you which has the requisite number of Colonize icons under it, OR place any Colonize icons played (including the Role card) under a face down planet in front of you.

FOLLOW: Place any Colonize icons played under a face down planet in front of you.

Research

ACTION: For each Research icon played (including the Role card), draw 1 card from a Technology deck corresponding to one of your colonized (face up) planets. Put 1 in your discard pile and the rest on the bottom of the deck.

FOLLOW: Pay X Research icons to look at X-2 cards from a Technology deck corresponding to one of your colonized (face up) planets. Put 1 in your discard pile and the rest on the bottom of the deck.

Harvest

ACTION: For each Harvest icon played (including the Role card), produce 1 resource on one of your colonized (face up) planets.

FOLLOW: For each Harvest icon played, produce 1 resource on one of your colonized (face up) planets.

Trade

ACTION: For each Trade icon played (including the Role card), discard 1 resource from your colonized (face up) planets and collect 1 VP from the supply.

FOLLOW: For each Trade icon played, discard 1 resource from your colonized (face up) planets and collect 1 VP from the supply.

Warfare

ACTION: Discard the listed number of Armies to turn up 1 Surveyed planet in front of you, OR for each Warfare icon played (including the Role card), collect 1 Army.

FOLLOW: For each Warfare icon played, collect 1 Army.

Eminent Domain - continuing thoughts

I still have not finished my prototype for ED, but I did do a little thinking on it...

First off, while "expropriate" is a cool word, saying it a few times convinced me that I don't think it's a good game term. I'm using Colonize instead.

In thinking about how the game will play out, I have amended the way Colonizing will work. When using the Colonize action, 1 marker will be placed on a Planet for each Colonize symbol, and the action on the Colonize role card will be "Colonize (flip) a Planet which has the required number of Colonize icons on it." In fact, the markers could be the cards played - which could e interesting as it temporarily thins your deck of Colonize icons.

I like Warfare working differently - I like the idea of piling up spaceships, then spending them to 'attack' a planet. maybe the action on the Warfare role card is to 'attack' a planet - you'd need enough ships to defeat it, and you'd spend those ships in order to flip the planet. then you'd have to collect ships again before attacking another planet.

I did some thinking on costs and VPs as well. As for costs, I think planets should probably cost between 3 and 7 symbols. As for VPs, I think each tech deck could have 6 cads worth 0 vp, 4 cards worth 1 vp, and 2 cards worth 2vp. Then the planets could be worth between 2 and 6 or 7 vp each. That sounds reasonable for a starting point anyway...

One more thing that crossed my mind was the possibility of a Survey threshold... not only would you look at some number of Planets, but in order to take one you might have to have 'enough' Survey icons (threshold indicated by the card). In fact, to keep consistent with things like the Colonize action described above, maybe you add to your Survey icon pile (markers, or cards stacked up), and the ACTION on the Survey card is "survey 1 planet" - and the number of planets you look at is designated by the number of Survey icons you have set aside. Hmm... might be too much work, but might be good - I'll have to keep it in mind.

Sometimes you get what you pay for

As you may have seen on BoardGameGeek.com, the production of Terra Prime and Homesteaders was, shall we say, less than optimal. When choosing a manufacturer there are many considerations... when we met them in April I had a really good feeling about Panda (the company that manufacturers many of Z-Man's games), but one of the big considerations of course is the price. Panda seems to be a really good outfit, and as a result they cost more. For a fledgling company like Tasty Minstrel, cost is a really big consideration.

The company Mike chose was MUCH cheaper than Panda and other options. They are the same company that manufactured Andrei Burago's Galaxy's Edge. I am not privy to every detail, but I do know that TMG didn't just choose the cheapest option possible! Mike ordered a copy of Galaxy's Edge to check out the company's work, and from what we could tell they seemed to do a fine job. There weren't complaints online about the quality of that game either, so it was something of a surprise when we received our shipment and started to find the production quality... lacking.

The moral of the story, and of this post I guess... Sometimes you get what you pay for. I'm not sure how one can tell when or whether a deal is "too good to be true" - but it may be important to note that price isn't everything. TMG's trip to Atlanta to attempt a quality control effort for Homesteaders cost upwards of $2000, and replacing missing or damaged parts isn't cheap on the wallet or the reputation... amortize that over the 2000 copies of Homesteaders printed and it increases the unit cost of the games by over $1.00! I don't know how much more it would have cost per unit for one of the more expensive manufacturers, but if you're making the decision it's worth comparing apples to apples - I'm not saying that the lowest bid will necessarily give you a bad product, but it may at least be more likely - so it might be worth figuring some extra potential cost into the price when getting bids for production. If you luck out and get a good product, then more power to you - you could really save some money! However there may be a greater chance you'll receive mis-aligned, mis-cut, moist, and otherwise not-to-spec games as well, so be prepared to deal with that.

Ground Floor

I've recently become friends with a guy in town who's working on a game called Ground Floor. He first showed it to me at RinCon in October, and it looked cool so I invited him over to play it. The game was interesting to me, but the first tie we played it went long, and some of the interesting mechanisms didn't seem to be shining through like I thought they could. I discussed certain aspects of the game with my friend Steve, who likes to talk about these things with me, and we figured out what we thought needed to be addressed and I emailed that info to the designer (David). Since then he's come over a couple more times to play the game, and each time I've sent comments back, and each time the game has gotten better and better. Last night David brought Ground Floor over to play with the latest round of comments addressed, and the playtest went extremely well.

Ground Floor is a game about being an Entrepreneur. Each player has just started a company. All they have is 7 Information, their ground floor office (representing certain basic actions they can take), $9 income per round from investors, and their time (4 marker discs representing units of time). As the game progresses, players can hire employees (which reduce your $ income but increase the number of time units you can use), upgrade their ground floor actions, and add floors to their building, gaining abilities and Prestige. To finance this, players "do business" in town by scheduling meetings, advertising, shopping at outlets and making products to sell to the public. They must do this in the face of a volatile economic atmosphere - in a Boom economy more products will sell, but noone will be looking for work. In a Depression you will be hard pressed to sell any products, but the job market will be full of potential employees who can be hire on the cheap. You can see the Economic Forecast, but can never be sure exactly how many consumers to expect in a round, so how you price your products matters a lot, as does your popularity level.

I'm really enjoying the game in it's current incarnation. The crux of the game is balancing 2 resources - money and information. In the early game players have an income of $9, and it's difficult to get an appreciable amount of info. As you hire employees though, your income goes down (you have to pay their salaries), and the only really good way to make money is through selling products. Selling products is tricky, as it depends heavily on your popularity, the amount of products being sold by players, and the number of consumers for the round. You need to find a way to make both money and information because it costs a significant amount of each to add on to your business. Your score 9Prestige) will be based on the floors and abilities of your company. A 6 story skyscraper is more impressive than a 3 story building for example, but there's something to be said about having a better operation on your ground floor as well.

Our game last night was particularly interesting as it had a very unique turn of events - the Economic Forecast deck turned up 3 Depressions in a row! That's almost impossible, and the ramifications were that we were all very poor for much of the game. We had to find alternate ways to make money. Very thematically, people were firing employees in order to get more income! It was difficult times in a difficult economy, and in that respect the game was very true to life!

The only "problem" left with the game as far as I'm concerned is that it takes too long. Our game last nigh was something like 3.5 hours for a 4 player game. That's unacceptably long. However I believe shortening it to 3 phases of 3 rounds each (rather than 4 rounds each) will shorten it up nicely - hopefully it will shorten it enough!

I will be taking a copy of Ground Floor with me to Atlanta to play with Mike and whoever we can get to join us. If you're in that area, let me know - we'll be looking for people to game with!

- Seth

Eminent Domain

I really like the name Eminent Domain, and think it would be a great name for a game. It may not be a great name for THIS GAME, but nonetheless I found myself without a name when I started making card files for the game, and today I decided Eminent Domain, while thematically not really correct, sounded cool and would do for a name for now.

On that note, I thought it would be good to NOT use all the same terminology as Race for the Galaxy. Sure, thematically Eminent Domain is similar to Race for the Galaxy - but I think it will make for a VERY different game. So to dissuade the obvious comments about RftG, I think I should use my own terminology. Considering the name Eminent Domain, I think the Settle action could be changed to Expropriate. The Explore action could be called Survey. I'll note here that the Explore action in my game (get a planet card to score later) is NOT the same as the Explore action in Race for the Galaxy (draw cards)!

As I mentioned, I've created some card files for the game, but I'm not quite done with that. I'm going to need a list of static abilities for the planets, and card effects for the technology cards. Here's what I have so far...

First off I'll outline the turn order, then I'll describe the card distributions. Each player's turn will have the following structure:

1. Play a card for its effect (optional). Basic Role cards might not have an effect.
2. Choose a Role card and execute the action (mandatory - each player in turn can Follow and also take the action, or draw 1 card). Only the active player gets a Role card to boost their action. The Role card will stay in that player's deck.
3. Refill hand to current hand limit.

I am going to have 3 types of planets in each of 3 categories: Fertile, Advanced, and [need a name] indicate what type of actions the planet helps out with:

Fertile: Harvest/Expropriate
Advanced: Trade/Research
[other]: Survey/Warfare

The other attribute a Planet card will have indicates how you go about Expropriating it. There are again 3 types: Uninhabited, Civilized, and Hostile. Each can be Expropriated in a different way:

Uninhabited: Requires a certain number of Expropriate icons
Hostile: Requires a certain number of Armies (which are gained via Warfare)
Civilized: Requires some combination of Expropriate icons, Armies, or Resources
(Actually I think it will be that a certain number of Expropriate icons is required, but you can spend Armies and Resources instead)

I'm looking at 27 Planet cards, 3 of each combination, each with a "cost" (in Armies or Expropriation icons), a VP value, and an ability. Here are some of the static abilities I've got so far:

+1 Research [ADV]
+1 Trade [ADV]
+1 Expropriate [FERT]
+1 Harvest [FERT]
+1 Survey [___]
+1 Warfare [___]
+1/+2/-1 Hand Size (-1 for a Planet worth good VPs)
Play 1 add'l card each turn
Take an add'l Role card when performing an action (even if Following)

I'll need some more of course.

Each of the three categories of planets (ADV, FERT, [___]) will have an associated Technology deck, and via the Research action players can add those Research cards to their own decks. The Research cards are strictly better than the base action cards in that they each have 2 Action icons, and they each have some effect which can be used in the first part of the turn. Here are some of the effects I have so far:

Remove any 1 card in your deck from the game [ADV]
Collect any 1 Resource from the Supply [ADV]
Collect any 1 Resource from the Supply [FERT]
Use any combination of Resources to Expropriate (or otherwise make it easier to Expropriate with Resources this turn) [FERT]
Peek at drawn Planet cards before choosing which to Survey [___]

I obviously need some more. All decks will also have a couple cards which do not have an ability but are instead worth some Victory Points.


If anyone has an idea for some good static effects for planets or card effects for technology cards, please feel free to post them in a comment!

Dominion engine

Dominion is arguably the most innovative game to hit the hobby game industry in a long time. It appeals to a lot of people for a variety of reasons. For me it invokes the feelings I used to get when building decks for Magic: the Gathering. In Dominion, turn by turn you modify the contents of your deck, adding better action cards and getting rid of the less efficient starting cards. Lately I've been pondering the use of this "engine" to promote a game...

Last night I played the recently released Thunderstone, which is an RPG style adventure game which builds on the Dominion engine. In Thunderstone you "play Dominion" in order to fill your deck with heroes, weapons, spells, and equipment and then go dungeon diving to defeat monsters. It's an interesting extension of the Dominion mechanism, but to me it felt like a lot of work for what is largely just playing Dominion.

My own thoughts on using the Dominion engine are a little more along the lines of a different game than Dominion altogether, with a central mechanic using a variation of the deck building mechanism. I'm actually adapting an older idea I had to represent a players personal "tech tree" (set of abilities, like in Goa or Hansa Teutonica) and I think a deck building mechanism could work well. Each player's deck would contain cards relating to the various actions in the game, and whenever you take an action, you would add a card to your deck that associates with that action. The intensity/strength/potency of that action would be based on how many cards for that action are in your hand/drawn/revealed from the deck. Here's an example of my first thought for the mechanism:

Let's say there is an action in the game which is "collect wood" and another action which is "attack" - among other actions. Your starting deck would have maybe 2 cards for each action in it. When you choose to "collect wood," you reveal the top 2 cards from your deck and for each of those that has the "wood" symbol you collect 1 additional wood resource. Then you take a Collect Wood card and put it in your discard pile. In the future, your revealed cards are more likely to show wood icons because the concentration of them in your deck is higher. Similarly, if you choose the "attack" action, you would reveal 2 cards and get attack bonuses for each attack icon, then you would get a little better at attacking.

Now, consider that there are other cards you could add to your deck as well, perhaps an Axe. An Axe might have both a Wood symbol (because it helps you chop down trees and get wood), and an attack symbol (because it can be used as a weapon). Each time the Axe comes up, it will boost either the Attack or the Wood action, so it's better than either of the basic cards. The idea would be to get cards in your deck that boost the actions you want to take, and then of course take those actions. There would also be an action which allows you to reveal more cards at a time, thus making you 'better' at all actions - it would probably have some cost associated, allow you to take any 1 'basic' card, and increase the number of cards you reveal each time.

This 'tech tree' mechanism seems like it would work and be good for a variety of games, but thematically I think it would be nice in a civ building type of game where it represents the strength of your civilization in the various aspects of the game - population, warfare, agriculture, culture, technology... the kinds of things you find in games like Through the Ages. Michael had asked me to think about how a streamlined card game version of Twilight Imperium might work, and so I started considering this mechanism for something of that theme - a space opera civ-style card game. Here are my current thoughts on that:

Imagine there are 6 different actions in the game - probably the same or similar actions to those you'd see in Twilight Imperium. For each action there's a stack of cards in the center of the table, and each player begins the game with a deck of 2 cards for each of 5 the actions (we'll say that one action is called Warfare, and at the outset no one is good at that action so you don't start with any Warfare cards in your deck). There is also a deck of Planet cards which show the category or type of planet, and maybe some value as to how difficult it would be to settle, on the back of the card and details of the planet's benefits on the front. Finally, for each of the (3 or 4?) types of planets there is a deck of Technology cards - color coded so you know which associates with which.

Like Twilight Imperium, on your turn you select 1 action (role), and you take a card for that role from the center and add it to your discard pile (you have now become a little 'better' at that action for future turns). Then all players, starting with you, get a chance to take that action. Each player has a hand of cards, and when resolving the action you can play the appropriate cards from your hand to boost it in some way. Having chosen the role, perhaps the card you took from the center actually goes into your hand, effectively giving you an extra card of that type to use that turn. Possible actions are as follows...

Explore: Draw 1 card per Explore icon from the Planet deck LOOKING ONLY AT THE BACKS OF THE CARDS. Choose 1 of them and place it FACE DOWN in front of you. You have explored this planet, but have not settled it yet, and therefore get no benefit from it yet.

Settle: The back of the Planet card indicates how hard it is to Settle the planet. In order to succeed you must have the appropriate number of symbols. There could be different types of Planets -
- Uninhabited: In order to Settle you need a certain number of Settle icons.
- Civilized: In order to Settle you need a number of Settle icons, but you can use Armies to pay for some of them.
- Hostile: In order to Settle you must spend a certain number of Armies.

Research: You can research at a planet which you have settled. Draw 1 Technology card per Research symbol from the Technology deck matching a Planet you have Settled, and add 1 of those cards to your discard pile (putting the rest on the bottom of the deck). These cards would be like the Axe example above, they would be more efficient than the basic action cards, either giving more than 1 symbol of a type, or symbols of more than 1 type, improving your capabilities. The type of planet would indicate the sorts of abilities in the deck.

Warfare: Gain 1 Army per Warfare icon. These will be used to settle Hostile planets, and maybe could be used in a defensive capacity in some way.

Harvest: Produce 1 Resource per Harvest icon, perhaps based on the capabilities of planets that you have settled. These could be used to trade for VPs or perhaps could substitute for Armies or Settlement icons for Civilized (or Hostile?) planets. Perhaps some planets have slots on the back, and an alternate way to settle them is to fill those slots with the appropriate Resources.

Trade: Exchange 1 Resource per Trade icon for Victory Points

Turn by turn players would choose roles, allowing each player to participate in the role, and at the end (beginning?) of your turn you would refill your hand to 5 cards. Maybe you get a chance to discard cards you don't want, and maybe there's some way (via the technology deck) to remove cards in hand from the game so you don't need to draw them anymore. The game would end when either the Planet deck or one of the action piles, or possibly when the VP pool, is exhausted. Planets would be worth some VPs, as would points earned throughout the game by Trading*.

* Thought on trading that just popped into my head - perhaps when you trade stuff it goes into a common pool, and you can trade for other resources in the pool (pre-seeded with 1 or 2 of each) at a 1-for-1 rate. This would be a good way to get resources you don't have access to - which would matter if it took specific combinations of resources to do certain things. Maybe "victory points" is one of the "types of resources" - so you can always trade for those, or you can trade VPs for resources you might need to use (players would start with some VPs). The pool would be pre-seeded with a bunch of the VP resource, and maybe the game ends when that one runs out.

I think this could be a solid game using the deck building mechanism inspired by Dominion as a base for players to build a their strategy. How will they advance their game? Will they Settle a few select planets and then improve their technology, gaining points and abilities that way? Will they produce lots of Resources to trade? How will they settle planets - through normal means? Military force? Trade? I think this will offer players a lot of ways to go about improving their capabilities and earning points. I guess I'll have to make a prototype and find out if I'm right about that!

Time Rewind - first draft test

I tried a version of the Time Rewind game idea with Steve last night, each of us playing 2 characters to simulate a 4 player game. Honestly, while it had some potential, I didn't like it as much as I thought I would.

I approximated the cards and mechanisms in the game using a deck of cards. Here's how we played:

Setup:
Take the 5-10s and Ks of a standard deck, shuffle them, and lay them out face down in a 7 row pyramid/trellis pattern. Flip up the first card (tip of pyramid) and place the 4 player pawns on it. Take the 4 As, 3 Qs, and 1 other card from the deck and shuffle those, laying them out as the 8th and final row. Q represents a victory condition (get to a Q card and then 'pass the challenge' there). As and the other card are failed attempts to fix the Instability.

Shuffle another deck of cards - these are the cards players will draw. On these cards only the suit matters, not the rank.

Each turn went like this:

1. Collect resources: reveal the top 4 cards from the deck. Players distribute 1 card to each player any way they like. In addition, move the Instability marker 1 space along the track for each Heart revealed this way. This serves as a semi-random timer for when rewinds happen (when the end of the track is reached, a rewind happens).

2. Move - any player who wants to move their pawn can do so, to either of the 2 spaces in the next row adjacent to their current position.

The trellis represents a tree of binary decisions, so you can only navigate it forward. When a Rewind occurs, it sends players back in time (to the left on the trellis), giving them the opportunity to make different choices this time, however you can only make different choices for the decision points that got rewound, anything that's "still in the past" is set and cannot be changed (until a later Rewind takes you back beyond that).

3. Draw - anyone who didn't move can opt to draw 1 card from the deck. If it's a heart, advance the Instability marker.

4. Peek - anyone who didn't move and didn't draw can peek at upcoming cards... choose a row, and look at all face down cards in that row which you can still possibly get to. Shuffle those cards and return them face down. this gives you some information as to whether you're on the right track or not, and is probably most useful for looking at the last row from a few rows back to see if there's a Q there.

5. Challenge - reveal any face down cards people had moved to, and undergo the challenge there. In this version the challenge was simply this: Play a number of cards equal to the number on the card (so 5-10) plus 1/2/3/... for being in the 2nd/3rd/4th/... row, with cards matching suit counting double. A K card, if passed, is collected as an Item, and in this case the item simply gave a +3 to all challenges matching that suit (i.e. the K of Spades helps you win further Spade challenges). If you fail the challenge, the Instability marker is moved up once. Perhaps this should have been variable depending on how much you fail by, to encourage playing cards even if failing.

We also moved the instability marker one space if the card turned up was a Heart.

So a challenge could be hard or easy, and in general they get harder toward the "end" of the trellis.

6. Trigger Rewind - as a group you can decide to trigger a Rewind on purpose - rewind just 1 step (everyone moves left 1 space on the trellis) and the Instability marker is moved forward once. This may be necessary to get to a decision point otherwise unreachable.

That's it, then you go to the next round. Hand limit was 5 cards, and each time the Instability marker reached the end it caused a Rewind, the first rewinding just 1 space, the next 2 spaces, then 3... etc.

The game was kinda fun, and showed some potential, but as we discussed various mechanisms for the different aspects it just seemed more and more like Solitaire by Committee. Maybe that's OK, a lot of the cooperative ("Collaborative?") games out there right now (maybe all) are Solitaire by Committee, and people like them just fine. I am not out to make a SbC coop game, but I concede that this may turn into that.

More importantly, I noticed that moving your player pawn around on an abstract web of decision points was really lame. A better implementation (and pretty much the original idea for the game) would have the scientists (players) running around a board which depicts a town with the mad scientist's lair off to one side, and various locations where you could pick up items and take actions. The Trellis could be represented more like the original model, a stack of event cards which you would, at the beginning of your turn, flip and address... most would allow you to make a choice - perhaps as to what combination of cards you can play to the common pool... either (Red + Blue) or (Green + Yellow) for example. Some of those cards would be major events, and when those come up they have some requirements that must be met by cards in the pool. If the requirements are met, those cards are removed and the benefit of the event is earned. If not, then the benefit is not met (there may be a penalty). In the case of failure, the players may have another chance later, after a rewind.

In this version I think there would be some tools, and a number of Tool tiles (maybe 3 for he first level, 4 for the next, and 5 for the last?) would be placed face down in the Mad Scientist's Lab. In order to repair the Instability, the players would need to send someone to the Lab to 'throw the switch' or whatever, and when that happens either they have the right tools with them at the time (in which case Hurray! the Instability is partially fixed! things get a little better!), or they don't, in which case they make it worse! Maybe any tiles matching tools you have are removed (as are the tools), and any unmatched tiles make the Instability worse (increase the intensity of a rewind).

I think the benefit of passing challenges in the event deck would be revealing Tool tiles at the Lab, so that you know what you need to get. Players would probably have some number of actions points, and they would use them to move around the town and activate the buildings there in order to collect tools, draw cards, peek at the top of the Event deck, or whatever. Maybe even trigger little rewinds (making the instability worse) in order to re-do a challenge just failed.

That might be my next attempt at this game. Not sure how it will play out.

TMG@BGG.con

Next week is BGG.con - the biggest and probably most fun game convention I go to each year. This year Tasty Minstrel Games will be in attendance, and we'll even have a vendor booth. This is a new way for me to experience the convention, as in the past I've only gone as a gamer looking to meet people and play games.

I'll still be looking to meet people, hang out with friends from around the country, and play games... but this year there will be more to it. I'll spend a lot of time in the Tasty Minstrel booth teaching Terra Prime and Homesteaders, and playing prototypes of upcoming games (Belfort and Wizard's Tower) as well as submissions we're considering (Dice Factory) and other prototypes of mine and my friends' (All For One, Lost Adventures). Here's a list of TMG related things I'll be doing next week at the con:

* Teaching Terra Prime and Homesteaders in the booth
* Playing prototypes of Belfort, Wizard's Tower, Train of Thought and Dice Factory
* Running Tasty Minstrel's Winner Cleans Up events
* Selling Terra Prime and Homesteaders
* Selling plush Tasty Minstrel dragons

As for non-TMG related things, I also plan on doing the following:

* Helping Derk and Aldie set up on Wednesday
* Playing prototypes of friends' games in Proto Alley
* Puzzle Hunt
* Game Show (depending on the format)
* Late night Time's Up! and Werewolf

I'm really looking forward to the con again this year. If you're there, be sure to stop by the Tasty Minstrel booth and say hello - I'm looking forward to meeting and playing games with you!

Random Red Colony and Dynasty thoughts

I have been wanting to revisit some old designs, and in fact, I have put together another copy of All For One (sort of) since the copy I had got sent to Z-man, then on to Jackson Pope in England, and then to the co-designer David Brain - where I understand most of the bits have gone missing :(

Sadly, I had made changes by hand to the board and cards, and I'm not certain what all of them were. I guess I'll just have to rediscover them.

In addition, I have been putting more thought into Dynasty - probably my most ridiculously neglected game considering how simple it ought to be to try it! My friend Steve is living at my house for the time being, and I have decided that while I've got the chance I should really bounce ideas off of him and get some of these ideas progressed!

RED COLONY
I briefly described Red Colony to Steve, and in doing so I thought of an idea which might be good. I'd always imagined things in Red Colony being built under a network of protective domes. So it follows that the early game building you do in the game is to build some domes connected by tubes. This could be a sort of land-grab in the early game where players build tubes and domes in order to reserve land for themselves in order to build buildings.

The domes and tubes would of course require some resources, which the players would obviously start the game collecting. At some point they will be done with those resources and will need to switch their income to some different type of resources in order to construct the buildings they want in their domes - Farms, Factories, Habitats, whatever.

So the crux of the new idea is that you begin with an area enclosure type of thing, and go from there. Admittedly I have not reviewed my posts on the game, and I don't necessarily remember exactly how I thought the game would work, so I don't know how this new idea would fit in exactly, but it sounded interesting.

DYNASTY
In re-examining Dynasty I read some of my more recent posts, and in one of those I detailed an alternate method to deal with military aspects in that game. Since discussing it with Steve, I have done some more thinking about how the military part could work, and I think I have refined it further.

First of all, I think players should be able to purchase Leaders. I don't think there needs to be a distinction between Political and Military leaders either, just Leaders. The cost should be some set thing, and they would be purchased just like Discoveries are purchased - you'd have to have access to all the resources needed, or else trade with someone. Since I like the idea of Leaders really affecting the game after Cities exist, maybe the cost would include some special resource that you can only get from a City, so nobody can build a new leader until SOMEONE obtains a city.

The rule I currently think might be a winner for attacking is this... in order to conquer a Village, you have to have 2 more Leaders in the area than the defender. As long as that's true, you can remove 2 Leaders from the board and take the Village (maybe the Leaders set up shop in the Village and don't move around the board anymore). For a city, same thing, but it costs 3 Leaders to take a City. So if you have a city and a Leader in a territory, I would have to have 4 Leaders in the territory in order to Attack the city, in which case I would remove 3 of them and take over the city.

I chose 2 and 3 for the numbers so that there could be a Discovery (gunpowder?) which allows you to take a Village or City with 1 fewer Leader.

Steve and I talked about some other aspects of the game. I should probably list some of them here so I don't forget. In no particular order:

* I have always considered that there would be 8 different resources. Suppose instead there were 9, 3 of which are represented twice each on the board, 5 are represented once each, and 1 is not represented on the board at all. Now consider that each city tile has one of the 5 rarer resources on it. When upgrading a Village to a City, you gain access to the listed resource. Thus, in the early game, there would be 3 resources which are in abundance (easy to gain access to), and 5 which one player will own and others will have to trade for. Then, as cities come into play, the rare resources will become more common as cities pop up showing their symbol. In addition, the 6th city tile would bear that 9th resource, which is not represented on the board (Gold?). the only way to gain access to that one would be for someone to upgrade that city.

Steve suggested that when you place Village tiles, they must be face down, so you don't know which one has which resource on the back. That's an interesting idea, but I don't know if it's better than being able to decide which resource you want access to.

* I don't think I like the previous posted idea for founding Villages - starting with a leader in play, and moving them around to found Villages wherever you want. I think it would be cooler if you had to deal with the resources near your starting territory, and trade for the rest. So I think Founding a Village in a Territory adjacent to one of your other ones sounds better to me. Steve and I briefly discussed the possibility of only being able to found a Village in a territory adjacent to one containing ONLY your own Village/City... so you couldn't spread through another player's territory, just create a border. I don't think that idea is very good though.

* Steve mentioned that perhaps instead of trading for anything from anyone at any time, perhaps you could only trade for the resources that are available in Territories containing or adjacent to your own Villages. So if you need access to Wood, and you aren't at least adjacent to Wood, then you will have to found a Village first to get closer - even if 3 opponents all have access to wood. I don't know if I like that or not. I thin it would make some differentiations in who can get which Discovery, which might differentiate strategic paths (or "player postures")... but I expect that to sort of happen organically based on the scoring system. if you trade willy-nilly for resources to bu whatever Discovery you want, then you will be giving points away left and right. I hope that players will be judicious in how much trading they do, and attempt to be as self sufficient as possible, trading minimally when necessary. In other words, if your desired strategy requires a lot of blue and red resources, and some brown and gold as well, ten you should probably try and gain your own personal access to red and blue, and maybe 1 of brown or gold and only trade for the one you need, and of course for the odd orange or yellow resource as needed as well.

* Based on my idea above for removing leaders from the board to do things, I think the leaders would have to be fairly easy to replace. Maybe the standard action could be "get 1 leader for XXX cost, or 2 for XXXYY cost." There could be a discovery that gives you +1 Leader perhaps, or make it cheaper. If attacking removes leaders from the board, then upgrading a Village to a City should probably remove 1 Leader as well.

Gear Burn

I saw a cute print & play game on BGG by the guy who designed Equilibrium (Tasty Minstrel is considering Equilibrium for publication, but it won't be any time soon as there are other games in line before it). It was a racing game, and it only needed the board and some dice and markers, so I thought I'd give it a try.

The game is called Gear Burn, and the general gist of it is this:

On your turn, you MAY first upshift or downshift into another gear. Then, you roll some dice depending on what gear you're in... this is kinda like Formula De. You roll 1d6 for 1st, 2d6 for 2nd, 3d6 for 3rd, and 4d6 for 4th gear. The highest die showing indicates your Speed, and you MUST move forward that many spaces during your turn. The smallest die showing indicates your Maneuverability, and you MAY move UP TO that many spaces left/right during your turn. If you crash into a wall or another car, that's real bad (you lose a turn). You begin the game with 3 Wrenches, and once per turn you may spend a wrench to re-roll any 1 die. This is good for when your roll guarantees you'll crash - but you can only do it once per turn, and only 3 times per race.

I ended up playing a 2p game with my roommate Steve. It was much more fun than I expected! I did note that all of the movement mechanics are based on averages, so even though the average roll on 3d6 is greater than the average roll on 1d6, you could go as fast or faster in 1st gear as you do in 3rd sometimes. That seemed odd. also, it seemed pointless to upshift to 4th gear, as the gained benefit (more likely to roll a 6) didn't outweigh the penalty (more likely to roll a 1, and it takes 2 turns to get down to 2nd gear if you need to). I could ALREADY roll a 5 or 6 pretty easy with 3 dice...

I suggested we play it again, only this time using a different distribution of dice:

1st gear: 1d3
2nd gear: 2d4
3rd gear: 3d6
4th gear: 4d8

This way, not only are you almost guaranteed to be able to go faster in the higher gears, there's a real reason to shift up to 4th gear - you can really haul some ass! Moving 7 or 8 is worth it sometimes, even if you lose some maneuverability. In 3rd gear the most you can move is 6 spaces.

This worked really, really well actually, so I emailed the designer and let him know. He posted some thoughts in his blog.

We played a 4 player game after that as well. Here are some other small comments I made about the game to Shea:

- It might be nice to be able to move through cars sideways (but not forwards), meaning it would be harder to find yourself boxed in. With 4 players it frequently got blocky and that led to a couple forced collisions. Some of that would be good, but currently it MIGHT be too much (maybe not though).

- There's a catch-up mechanism which is that if you're in last place on your turn, you get to add 1 to your Maneuverability. Sometimes while in last, that added maneuverability is just not helpful, while 1 additional speed would be. I might like to try it with "+1 to Speed OR Maneuver" giving the losing player the choice.

- There's also a penalty for being in first place: you have to subtract 1 from your maneuverability. This was rough, which it's supposed to be, but possibly too much so. If you crash, lose a turn, then start the following turn in 1st gear and roll a 1 (which is 33% on 1d3)... you automatically crash again? That's harsh! Maybe the penalty shouldn't apply in 1st gear or something. Or maybe a different penalty should apply. Or none... such a penalty encourages people to be in 2nd so that when the gu in first finally crashes they can coast past them for the win.

- Tyler thought it would be neat if the game were modeled after the video game Super Off Road, where you could customize your car with Tires (for extra maneuverability), Engines (maybe lets you upshift twice in a turn, once per race), Nitros (move additional 2d4 distance or something)... etc. For a 1-off game players could customize their car at the start, or for a campaign mode there could be prize money which you spend on upgrades between races. I think this is a neat idea, but I can also see playing the game without it.

- I observed that there isn't any choice in the movement portion of the turn (99% of the time anyway) - the choices you make are what gear to be in, and whether to use a wrench. Shea mentioned making additional maps which could potentially give you a reason to drive to one space instead of another. I suggested putting prizes (I was still on the Off Road thing, so I said Money or Nitros) on certain space on the board - tempt people into the outer lane approacing a curve for example to get the prize. Shea suggested additional wrenches, which is also an excellent idea.

- Shea also mentioned the same thing Tyler did - that wrenches could allow you to drive through a car without crashing. He and I also had the same idea that a wrench could allow you to shift 2 gears in one turn. I don't know if the wrench should get too complicated, but I do like those uses for it. he said he'd probably add those uses and shy away from the Off Road style upgrading and any campaign version of the game. That's probably fine, but if it were to get published I think the added depth of potential upgrading and campaign mode would be worthwhile.

Shea also looked at some math on various dice distributions (see his blog post) - and is likely to go with the following distribution:

1st gear: 1d4
2nd gear: 1d4 + 1d6
3rd gear: 1d4 + 1d6 + 1d8
4th gear: 1d4 + 1d6 + 1d8 + 1d10

It's not a bad idea because it reduces the components down to 4 dice rather than 10, and it doesn't use a non-standard d3... but I think it won't work as well. When you upshift to 4th gear, it's because you want to haul ass. You don't want to roll about the same as you would in 3rd gear - you want to SPEED UP. If I were putting the pedal to the metal, I would much rather roll 4d8 than 1d4 + 1d6 + 1d8 + 1d10.

Cow Tipping details... continued

I finally got off my duff and made a modified deck for Cow Tipping - one which simply had 8 "types of cows," with 8 cards of each type. This was easy enough, just used 4 decks worth of cards, just the red ones, numbers 2-9.

Again, the types of sets were to be "all the same number" and "all different numbers." When we played the game I found a major error in the deck configuration! I was thinking that it would be equally difficult to get an "all the same" set as an "all different' set, but that isn't true at all. It's much easier to get an "all different" set than a set of cards of the same type.

The game was really not as fun at all, nor as interesting this way. One player even asked if we could quit mid-game. I think part of the reason was the deck configuration, there was really no point in building a homogeneous set, so instead you simply drew cards toward a diverse set. I think with a better configuration the feeling of building a set might return a bit.

Tyler admitted that was a possibility, but suggested that that wasn't the problem - that rather the game just wasn't that fun. It's not interactive enough... He suggested that the tipped cars be left face up, so you can tell without having to remember who's going for what. Furthermore, he suggested each type of car might confer some kind of ability - the more expensive Trucks and Buses conferring better abilities than the Cars and Trucks.

I would like to try it again this way after fixing the deck. I have removed the 8's and 9's, so there are now 6 suits, with 8 cards in each suit. I intend to add 1 card in each suit that counts as 2 cows in that type, but cannot be used in a Diverse set. I might also add a few special cards (maybe featuring Clyde and Elsa) which would count as 2 cards in a Diverse set, but cannot be used in a Homogeneous set.

I might give some more thought to the idea of abilities - simple ones... but I think it is probably "too much" for this game.

Tasty Minstrel Plush Dragon!

Tasty Minstrel Games - Super Duper Pre-order Special!

Tasty Minstrel Games has posted demo videos of the launch titles, Terra Prime and Homesteaders, as well as details of a terrific, limited time pre-order special:

1000 packages for US residents: $44.95 for BOTH games, shipping included!
100 packages for non-US orders: $59.95 for BOTH games, shipping included!

In addition, the 1st 100 people to order and also post some special html to their blog referencing Free Game Friday, get a plush Tasty Minstrel dragon!

All the details and all the links needed to order can be found on the same page as the demo videos.

There's also a give-away contest running right now at boardgamegeek.com where you could win a copy of each game! The contest and the super Duper sale end at about the same time, so anyone who pre-orders and then wins the contest can have their pre-order refunded with no hassle.

Good luck to all who enter the contest, and for anyone interested in these two games - I have to advise you jump on this special pre-order before they're all gone... It's an insane deal!