KublaCon 2009 con report - better late than never!

I never did get around to posting last year's KublaCon report, and I think that's because I never got around to finishing it up! Here's what I have, which is not complete, but is quite a bit. I'm posting this for my own convenience as much as for your benefit, but maybe you'll find it entertaining.

Friday 5/22
Got up super early to catch a 7am flight - arrived 9am at the Hyatt Regency Burlingame. It always amused me that the game convention was in a place called BurlinGAME (I'm easily amused). I met up with Andrew Schoonmaker with whom I was sharing a room, and we went downstairs to get some breakfast. The prices for everything in that hotel are horrendous. I chose to get the "breakfast special:" ham, egg, and Cheese on an English muffin for $4. First food-related mistake of the day! The thing was so small that it made me MORE hungry - that's the opposite of food! Also, they nuked the hell out of it in the microwave, so it was very, very hot. The cheese, if was ever in solid form, had been reduced to a sort of grease.

Fermat
They hadn't opened registration yet, and Andrew and I wanted to do something, so we started the convention with a game of Fermat. Glancing at Andrew's tallish stack of tiles and then to my haphazard pile I thought the game was really close. In reality I had quite a few more tiles than he did, but the disarray made the pile look shorter I guess. The game was weird, with all the large numbers next to EXP and multiplication symbols - it was kinda hard to make a lot of numbers (I think we skipped a few)

Wizard's Tower
After that we played a game of Wizard's Tower - something I don't think I've played in the last 6 months (BGG.con) or maybe 12 (Kubla last year)! I was in good shape with respect to endgame bonuses, and I had a Yellow tower in the central region. When I destroyed one of Andrew's towers I thought I'd clinched victory - but I could not complete any further towers in the next few turns to end the game. Andrew ended up with a massive clump of towers in the center region including 3 of his own and 3 neutrals. All told that's 33 points (one of the towers was on Red)! Andrew pulled out the win, but it was pretty close. At least I avoided a blowout!

Alex Eaton-Salners arrived, and we were all hungry for lunch but didn't want to spend a fortune at the hotel. So we decided to take a walk down the street to see what other options were available. There's a Sizzler across the street, and a Benihana a ways down, but those didn't sound too good to us. The office buildings in the area all appeared to have a little hole in the wall restaurant in them, mostly for the people who work there I presume. One was called Mr Teriyaki, and I suggested we try that. It seemed a good enough idea, but when my beef bowl came it looked NOTHING like the picture in the menu. For one thing it was completely buried in onions! I hate onions, so I picked them all off and they completely filled my soup bowl. The remaining dish was less beefy than I'd expected. It wasn't terribly good either, nor was it terribly cheap. Second food-related mistake of the day!

Rapscallion
After returning from lunch, the three of us played Rapscallion. Last year Andrew and I had been watching a game of Rapscallion being run by Ted Alspach, and 2 players had to leave midway through the game (coincidentally, I believe they were both in or near last place at the time). Andrew and I subbed in for them and played the rest of the game. It so happens that we finished 1st and 2nd if I remember correctly. Neither of us had played the game since then until Andrew played it Thursday night with someone. After he taught we played a game... I did TERRIBLY! Andrew won by a landslide. We all agreed that the game was kinda cool, but that it was a little too irritating that you HAVE to get rid of one of the playing cards you've collected in order to get another bidding card. I suggested that it would be cool if players started with 1 more playing card so that they'll have another option to discard in case the 2 they pick up are in the same set. In fact, it might be cool if the playing card you started with was a joker that works the same way as the Rapscallion does.

Sorry Sliders w/ Alex/Rick/Helen
Rick and Helen Holzgrafe arrived, and we decided to play Princes of Machu Picchu - but they had to go get it from their car. In the meantime we played Sorry Sliders - on 3 of the boards. It's kinda fun, though not for very long.

Princes of Machu Picchu w/ Alex/Rick/Helen/Candy
I have played Antike, Imperial, and Hamburgum. I LOVED Antike when I first played it, but haven't really played since. I HATED Imperial when I first played it, maybe not as much without the investor card, but it's not really my type of game. I like the Rondel mechanic though, and I liked Hamburgum - apparently more than anyone I play games with did. I had been interested in trying PoMP to see how the next Rondel game played. I liked that it wasn't a war game, but I didn't really know what to expect. I hadn't heard any rave reviews...

In the end the game was "OK" - just "OK." With the size of the board I think they could have done a better job of delineating the areas, but that's neither here nor there. In the game you collect various resources in order to put workers on the board or collect Priest/Priestess tiles, which help you run up the mountain more quickly. You want to run up the mountain because it means you get to draw a card, and the card has scoring conditions on it. At the end you will get some points for having stuff matching what it says on the card. The workers help you get more resources, or allow you to get resources when someone else takes the resource action. This was a nice interaction in the game. The game ended after a certain number of rounds, when the Spanish arrive. If at that time all the priest/priestesses tiles are gone, or all the cards have been drawn, then the Spanish don't take over and you score normally. Otherwise, you score normally, but the player with the most gold icons (on the cards) gets to triple his score, second most gets to double it. This seemed to add a little trick to the endgame, when you are selecting your cards, you have to choose between something that scores well for you, or something with a lot of icons in case the Spanish take over. I liked Princes of Machu Picchu enough to play it again, but I think I liked Hamburgum better.

After that game it was getting close to 7:00, so Andrew and I went to Knuckles to get dinner with Rick and Helen before the BGG meetup. I was going to get a burger, but at the last minute decided on a chicken ranch sandwich thing. It had bacon on it and sounded good... in reality though it wasn't terribly big or filling, and it came with a side salad which I didn't like and therefore didn't eat rather than french fries. Third food-related mistake of the day!

Small World with Derk/Aldie/Doug/Shelly
After the BGG meeup I hung out with Derk and Aldie and we ended up playing Small World with Doug and Shelly Garret. I've played (and liked) Vinci, and I wondered how different Small World would be. It's the same game (by the same designer) but re-themed and maybe cleaned up a bit. Instead of a map of Europe, it's a generic map, and the civilization tiles have been divided into races and special abilities. They still combine in the same way and confer various powers. I think they increased the number of powers... I know they took at least 1 rule (+1 to attack when controlling an adjacent mountain) and made it into a special ability of a race. I didn't mind the rules changes which in some cases seemed to streamline things, and in some cases didn't really make much difference. However I was pretty disappointed in the graphics. The art was nice to look at piece by piece, but all together it looked like a jumbled mess. In particular, the small race tiles all had detailed pictures on them, which were difficult to distinguish on the board, especially when in decline. The brightly colored player discs in Vinci were much better if you ask me.

Fits w/ Sid/Miguel/Lawrence
Aldie had a copy (I think it was Doug's) of Fits, which it turns out made the short list of SdJ nominees. It's a Reiner Knizia game based on Tetris. Each player has a collection of Tetris pieces, and you begin by placing one of them at random on your board. The board is a set of columns with dots showing, sometimes other symbols or numbers as well. Each 'level' has it's own rules but in general you get -1 point for each dot showing on your board. Sometimes you get positive points for covering up symbols or leaving certain symbols showing. The idea is to place your Tetris pieces like you would in Tetris - such that you don't have any open spaces on your board.

... That's about as far as I got in my detailed descriptions, some of the rest is just a quick note about what I played and maybe with whom.

Curse of the Mummy w/Aldie vs me/Miguel/some guy/some lady who's name started with a G (she won, I almost)

Saturday 5/23
Kachina w/ JT Mudge, Scott Caputio's fiance, and that G lady (she won, I almost). It's fun playing prototypes with designers which end up being published!

Knizia seminar
Reiner Knizia was the special guest last year, and I went to one of his seminars. I've been to several of his seminars over the years, and while there is often something new and interesting that comes up, you hear a lot of the same things over and over. Such is the nature of hearing the same person speak multiple times! This time I asked a question about his group of insiders, the players that are more than playtesters, but who really help develop the games more. I don't know how many of those he has, and to what extent they are responsible for some of the games with his name on them, and I was curious. He didn't really answer my question, but he did speak very highly of my friend Sebastian Bleasedale, one of his inner circle, and also published in his own right with On the Underground.

Knizia playtests
Reiner had some games with him for testing, and I was too late to get in on the playtests, but I watched. One of the games turned out to be exactly like Qwirkle. 5 colors/shapes instead of 6, and you can't hook the end of a chain and go the other way (like in scrabble), but otherwise identical mechanics. The scoring was different - you were trying to get rid of your stock of tiles. If you play the 4th tile in a particular set, you get to discard 1 tile from your hand or stack. If you add the 5th (and final possible tile), then you get to discard 2 additional tiles.

The other game had a proposed theme Mayan temple or something. I suggested Ziggaraut as a name, but no one seemed to like it. Reiner didn't want anything TOO thematic (regarding changes to game to match theme) - he wanted it to remain very abstract. He didn't want so much theme that players expect more. I think that's a ridiculous thing to think, personally, but I did see what he was saying.

Qwirkle w/ 2 women who had been playtesters of that Knizia game and also with Michael. After I'd pointed out the similarities to Qwirkle, I ran and got a copy from the library to show Reiner. After that, since I had it out, some of us decided to play. I don't think I've ever done so well at Qwirkle before!

Corner Lot w/ JC, Miguel, and Aliza
Despite my assumption that spending all my cash in the first round was probably a bad plan, I noticed 3 blue cards in the current market and nothing much in blue (maybe a low card) in the future market... so I blew all my money on the 3 (big) blue cards. I kinda forgot that the income is 2 less than the printed value (until the Empty Lot is built), so I was more screwed than I had expected in the following rounds. I did however end up with a pretty big Blue suit, with a couple runs in it, as well as a set of 7's and a rainbow run. I had to buy the blue Empty Lot (wild) and set it to $9 (not $12) because I wasn't able to get the $9 card (being broke all the time). I think I finished dead last.

I liked Corner Lot more than I thought I would, and I don't really have any thoughts on improvements - the game seems to be "done." It bothers me a little bit that the top card is a $12 instead of a $10 (it goes from $9 straight to $12) - especially when counting straights. That's not as bad though as the other thing that bothers me - that 90% of the time when you buy a wild you make it a $12. Maybe 10% of the time you make it a $7, $8, or $9 to fill in the hole in a straight flush. You never want the wild to be anything less than $7. I suppose that's OK, and the wilds could actually be printed as "$7-$12" - JC talked about some chits to indicate the value of a wild after you've bought it and that way there could be 5 each of two double sided chits, one saying 7/8 on the front/back and the other saying 9/12. I did have a suggestion for the rules: reword the priority marker rules such that it reads like this: On your turn you either pass, or you take the Bid/Buy marker and either bid or buy (the marker could say "Bid" on one side and "Buy" on the other). If ever it's your turn and you already HAVE the marker, then if you Pass you trigger the reduction of the cost for the smallest property and you pass the priority marker to the left. If you like, you could add a little something which occurs if you take an action and everyone else passes - it would trigger if you take an action and already have the priority marker. This is of course unnecessary, and I don't know what it would be (except gain a buck or 2). That's not even worth thinking about unless it's deemed bad somehow for everyone to pass except 1 guy.

Glory to Rome w/ Marcus (who I played Ys and TP with 2 years ago), Bey, and Dion
Dion was sort of learning (or maybe re-learning) the game, so when I was watching, I was trying to help him play. Then in the next game I joined in. I smoked the competition... I nearly used the Prison to steal Marc's purple building which allowed the play of multiple matching role cards, but it just didn't seem better than keeping the VPs! Marcus had multiple Merchant clients, but had some trouble getting cards in his Stockpile to sell. I sold a couple things as well, and ended up building out all the sites thinking I barely beat Marcus. I had forgotten that Dion sold something which negated one of Marc's bonuses, so I won by plenty.

Cities w/ Marcus, Bey, and Dion
The same group then played Cities, which is like a cross between Take it Easy and Carcassonne. Marc and I tied, and I believe we tied on the tiebreaker as well!

Municipium w/ Marcus, Bey, and Dion
I signed up for a game called Bartender, a new card game that the designer was pimping - his gimmick was that the winner of the game gets to keep it... they stole our idea! Tasty Minstrel is doing [edit: DID] something similar for BGG.con, called the Tasty Minstrel Winner Cleans Up event. I didn't necessarily want to play (Ceej got in the game), but I was curious about the rules. After listening to them, I went back to the Glory to Rome group, who had been explaining Municipium. I learned that recently, and got there just before they started so I was able to join them. It was a close game between Marc, Bey, and I but if I remember right, Bey pulled out the win - set up (inadvertently) by Marc.

At this point it was dinnertime and Ceej and I were going to drive to Chipotle. We were a little bit worried that Municipium would last too long and we wouldn't get there in time, but we were fine. I offered to pick up food for Marc, Bey, and Dion, and Ceej was picking up food for a friend of his - so we ordered 6 burritos all told. When we got there we found that they were almost out of a lot of stuff... they actually ran out of black beans and carnitas so we had to adjust our orders. On the way back I stopped at the Walgreens right there and stocked up on what turned out to be twice as much cookies and Pringles as I needed. I also bought a box of Cheerios. The plan was to avoid spending a fortune eating at the hotel the rest of the weekend!

I had been wanting to play Werewolf or Time's Up all weekend. No one really was playing WW on Friday night, but fortunately I was signed up for the Time's Up event which Ceej and I got back just in time for. Alex was there waiting, and though Derk was going to play, he wandered off and did something else instead. I paired up with Alex and we DOMINATED the opposition- despite a turn in the 2nd round where I forgot I could say a word and only got 2 cards! Ceej paired with a young girl who was slow to start, but then did really well once she got going. We all decided to play a 2nd game except for one guy who had to leave, so a new pair sat in. They didn't do well at all in the first round, so Alex and I weren't worried... but then they REALLY ramped it up and gave us a run for our money! We pulled out a narrow victory in the end though! Whew...

... That's all I have. The game design contest is covered, briefly, in a KublaCon Recap post I made last year, but I guess anything that happened on Sunday is lost forever, relegated to the recesses of my memory.

KublaCon 2010

I just got back from KublaCon 2010, another great weekend of fun and games in San Francisco! I applied some lessons I learned from last year... After arriving late Thursday night and not finding anyone I knew, I spent way too much on a Burger and Fries at Knuckles. Friday for lunch however, I went with Ceej again to Chipotle (Sean and Andrew - not Schoonmaker, another Andrew from L.A.) and ran into Lucky's for some turkey, french rolls, and cheese. I also picked up some Mountain Dew, cookies, and doughnuts. I ate far too much of the snacks, but the sandwich stuff was a great idea! I ate turkey sandwiches for the rest of the weekend for a pittance compared to the hotel's price gouging!

David Cunkelman pointed out a deal the hotel has which might be worth looking into in the future - for something like $30 per night added onto your room you can get access to a fancy lounge on the 9th floor where they have free internet as well as free food at mealtimes and desserts and drinks... sounds like a pretty good deal if you have enough people in the room!

After my ridiculously overpriced burger (which was at least tasty and filling) I watched some people playing The Adventurers - a game I've not played. I got to learn it by watching, and it looks like a light, fun little game. I probably wouldn't enjoy playing it more than once though. Then I headed up to bed.

Friday
Mosh Pit
Friday morning I started out with a game of Mosh Pit with Andrew Schoonmaker, with whom I again split a room. Mosh Pit is a game by a guy here in town, it's an abstract game kinda like Hive. I tend to dislike games like Hive (2 player abstracts), and I'm not sure why. I like this one quite a bit better, and I think it might be because in Mosh Pit you get 1 or 2 actions on your turn, and each player gets a maximum of 5 actions each round. Thus if you budget your actions, only taking one at a time while your opponent takes 2, you can end up finishing the round with 2 actions in a row, then starting the next round with up to 2 more actions in a row! getting 2, 3, up to 4 actions at a time really opens up the potential for a clever or tactical play, which makes it a lot more fun for me. I think the action budgeting in Mosh Pit is brilliant!

Terra Prime
Next I ran into Miguel, Aldie, and some friends of theirs, and chatted for a bit. Everyone was anxious to play a game, and Miguel suggested that I teach them my game, Terra Prime. I generally don't bring published games to conventions, but I did bring Terra Prime because I have the expansion for it. I sat out and taught Terra Prime as a 4 player game because I think it's a better experience 4 player than 5 for new players. It went pretty well, with most of the players figuring out what to do, until Tricia - who was doing very well at the time, decided to run recklessly into a red tile. I suggested she not do that, because if it were 3 Aliens they would hit her at least twice and as many as 5 times - and her shields were down to 2 energy... but she did it anyway (balls to the wall!) and sure enough, a triple alien managed to roll 3 hits for a total of 5 damage - knocking every module off her ship, INCLUDING the shiny new Thruster she'd just bought the turn before! It was an unfortunate turn of events, but hey, at least it turned out EXACTLY the way I predicted. *sigh* maybe some day players will treat Hostile Aliens with the fear and respect they deserve.

Eminent Domain
Those guys had some place to be, so next I found another group of players and introduced them to Eminent Domain. That game seems to be holding up, I think it's "about done."

Africa
I saw some of Steph's friends: Jeremiah and a woman who's name I always forget (who I met at BGG.con) and Ted Alspach, and another local woman. They were playing Africa, an old game by Reiner Knizia which I'd never seen. I watched and learned how to play, and when they decided to play again they offered me a seat. The game was pretty simple, there are a bunch of face down tiles all over the (hex grid) board (1 per space), and on your turn you may either teleport across the board (and that's it), or you can Move and do an action, then move again and do another action. The actions are essentially all just "flip up a tile adjacent to you and do the appropriate thing with it." Some tiles you keep for endgame bonus scoring and some you move adjacent to other like tiles elsewhere on the board and score points based on how many it's touching. There's 1 or 2 more small things you can do, but that's essentially it. Of course all your decisions are based on what will score you points. I thought it was an OK, though dry and somewhat boring game. I did manage to win by a fair amount though, so that was nice :)

Eminent Domain
After Africa, I ran another 4 player game of Eminent Domain for that same group of players. I played that (or ran it) a number of times over the weekend and it seemed to be pretty well accepted. In a couple cases it was VERY well received, in others it was only generally well received, but in no case was it disliked that I noticed. This time they mentioned that it was a little overwhelming at first, but about 2/3 of the way through the game they really started to 'get it.' I suspect there might be an expectation issue - if people go into Eminent Domain expecting it to be light and simple like Dominion, then they may be disappointed to find that there's a lot more going on than that. If they go in expecting something along the lines of Glory to Rome, then their expectations should be reasonable. Thus, I think I ought to stop billing it as a "deck building game" and instead call it "Like Glory to Rome, with Deck Building in it" or something. because that's what it is, a role selection game with deck building, not a deck building game.

Wizard
Next they pulled out Wizard, a game a loath, but since they were nice enough to try Eminent Domain, I couldn't complain too much. Andrew had arrived to see the end of Eminent Domain, and he joined up for Wizard. I REALLY SUCK at Wizard!

Flea Market
I seldom buy board games, and I seldom find good deals at the Flea Market. Last year I bought Railroad Tycoon for $50, which could be a good deal depending on how you look at it. In retrospect (considering I haven't played it since I got it) I probably should have instead waited and gotten Railways of the World and some of the expansions for it. Then I wouldn't have had to carry that heavy freaking box home from San Francisco! This time I did find a bargain though... Gardens of Alhambra for $2. I was taken aback when I asked the price, maybe she'd said $22 and I'd misheard? Nope, she just wanted to get rid of it, so she sold it for $2. I didn't like Alhambra, but I suspect this offshoot might be more enjoyable, and at $2, how good does it really have to be? If nothing else, I have some friends that do like Alhambra, and this could be a gift for them if I hate it. I also saw someone selling the first couple seasons of BSG on DVD for $20 apiece. I thought about getting them, but it wasn't the whole series (just the first 3 seasons), and only the first 2 were really that amazing anyway. However I have recently been thinking of trying to watch that show again, the first season anyway, so in the end I picked that one up.

Innovation
Sean McCarthy, a friend from Seattle, arrived. It was a surprise that he was coming at all, and it was even cooler that he brought Innovation with him because I've heard him talk about it and I've wanted to give it a try! After the flea market Sean, Aliza and I played a 3-player game of Innovation. When I'd first heard of the game I was really excited by the sound of it. The meld/splay mechanism sounded brilliant (and it is), and the tactical combos sounded fun. I love Glory to Rome by the same designer. The more I heard about the game though, the more I started to suspect that perhaps Innovation is TOO chaotic, and I was bummed to find out upon playing that it's not the amazing, awesome new thing that I hoped it would be. The effects are so sweeping that the entire board can easily change before you get another turn, and every card on the table is likely to effect your board position and the things you'll be able to do on your turn. It's almost as if every card in the game is really in play at all times, and to an extent you have to consider that - because for all you know, by the time you get a turn, any given thing might have happened. Therefore planning ahead is difficult to the point of absurdity, and at some point the game becomes less of a strategic contest and more of a crazy luck-fest not dissimilar to simply rolling dice to see who gets a higher result. It's true that with more familiarity with the cards, you have an easier time deciding what you can do and maybe even what you should do, but even if you know every card in the deck, while it may reduce the AP and down time, it doesn't change the fact that the game is totally chaotic.

I think I'm disappointed in Innovation, which is too bad, because I had high hopes for liking it.

Saturday
After Innovation it was time for bed. Saturday morning I woke up in time for a playtesting event put on the schedule by Candy Weber. I started out by playing Rick Holzgrafe's Railways of the Western U.S. expansion for Railways of the World (which is a remake of Railroad Tycoon). Rick had made a train game inspired by Railroad Tycoon called Hammer and Spike, which I rather liked. The publisher of Railways of the World ended up trying it and liking it, but though it too similar to Railways to publish separately - instead he commissioned Rick to take certain ideas out of Hammer and Spike and use them to create an expansion to Railways of the World. The result is Railways of the Western U.S., and potentially another expansion combining the eastern U.S. map and the new one for a Coast-to-Coast expansion. The Coast-to-Coast expansion takes something like 6 hours to play, which was deemed too long so we just played the Western U.S. expansion.

I'm happy to report that not only is Tucson, Arizona on the map, but it's even a colored city while Phoenix is gray :) Ont he other hand I'm sorry to report that I performed TERRIBLY at the game! My initial chosen strategy hod hijacked by another player (the player to my right no less), and I never bothered to figure something else out. I finished dead last by a lot.

Terra Prime w/ Expansion
After the train game, Rick and the guy that hijacked my plans played my Terra Prime expansion with me. Rick has played TP a couple of times, in prototype form as well as the published version, and I wanted to know how he thought the expansion compared. I managed a healthy 1st place finish, but that's to be expected since I've got a lot more experience with both the base game and the expansion, but my 2 opponents finished within 8 points of each other. I think they both said that the Expansion improves the game, so that's good. They seemed to like it.

Spacial Delivery
It only seemed fitting to follow Terra Prime with Spacial Delivery, Rick's space themed delivery game that won the KublaCon Game Design Contest 2 years ago. It was under review for publication by a European publisher for 18 months, but was recently turned down. I played the game once, before it was in it's current form, and had given some relatively extensive feedback to Rick afterward. I don't recall in depth what the game was like last time, so I was interested to see how it went this time.

I think some of the same things that bothered me the last time still bothered me this time, and added to that there were a lot of fiddly costs I don't remember being there before. I got the impression that I might have liked the game better last time, and even then there was a list of things I thought needed work. Rick mentioned that while he had thought the game might be done before, more recently he was getting a nagging suspicion that it's really not, and later in the weekend he said he'd been thinking about Spacial Delivery pretty much non-stop since our game of it. I hope Rick gets that game to a point he's happy with, because I think it's got a solid foundation.

Eminent Domain w/ Gareth
Gareth McSorley had contacted me on BGG about trying Eminent Domain, and he found me at the con so I played a 2 player game with him. He took to the rules right away, not really even using the player aid. It was only a couple of turns before he had the mechanics down, and I think by the end of the 1st game he was already thinking about some strategies. He said he liked it very much, so I asked if he wanted to play again now that he knew how to play. We played a second time and there was clearly marked improvement in his play.

Bananagrams
I happened upon a group of people playing Bananagrams and I played a few fun rounds of that.

Time's Up!
Every year I like to get in on the Time's Up! tournament, so Andrew and I talked 2 of the Bananagrams players to join us for it. Tricia was my partner and she was hilarious! I had a lot of fun, even though we got smoked by Andrew's team - who went on to win the final round as well :)

Zendo
After Time's Up I played a little Zendo - or tried to anyway. I am no good at that game whatsoever! I think it's because I never know how specific a rule might be - so when I DO figure it out, I think I haven't because I think of all the other possible things it could be.

Galaxy Trucker
Fortunately, some of the Zendo players wanted to play something else, so even though it was Galaxy Trucker, I was happy to join them. I have never played Galaxy Trucker, but never really cared too much to try it. It was nice to give it a shot, but I really didn't know all the stuff on the cards so I had no idea what I was putting on my ship. I went ahead and looked at the cards you're allowed to look at, but much of the info didn't make sense to me. I got pretty wrecked, but it was kinda fun. I'd play it again, but I wouldn't run out and buy it or request it myself.

Sunday
Corte de Lorenzo
Sunday morning I met up with David Cunkelman and I talked him and Sean into playing one of the submissions I'd brought with me. We played Corte de Lorenzo, and then we chatted a little about how to evaluate a submission. I'm new to this, so it was interesting to talk about that.

Ground Floor
As an example of a game that really grabbed me right away, despite the flaws it had when I first played it, we next played Ground Floor. Ground Floor is intended to be published in 2011 by Tasty Minstrel Games, designed by David Short, a guy here in Tucson who I met at RinCon last October. I really like Ground Floor, and have been working on developing it with David for about 6 months and at this point I think the game is really solid.

Sean McCarthy, David Cunkelman, and a friend of Davids who's name I didn't catch played a 4p game of Ground Floor. Our game went well with the slight exception of David spilling his soda on Sean's player board - could have been a lot worse! Only lost 1 player's worth of Ground Floor tiles and 1 Specialty tile - easily replaced!

David made some skeptical comments early about game balance, but at the end I think he saw how for example my large money advantage early didn't necessarily equate to a large positional advantage in the end. He did have 1 comment that hadn't come up and which might be an issue - that the last player in the randomly determined turn order may be a little screwed when it comes to popularity and rewards... I don't know if this is a problem though, and I think it could be taken care of via some easy method.

After the game, I went upstairs with Sean to get a sandwich for lunch, and he asked me what specifically I did to develop Ground Floor, so I got a chance to go over it and see what I contributed. That was a fun discussion for me, and hopefully interesting for Sean too.

Innovation
David wanted to play Fresco, but we couldn't find a copy of either. Doug Garret's copy was sitting there in his tub, but we couldn't find him to ask his permission to use it, so instead we played Innovation while I used my social resources to try and track down Doug. This game didn't make me feel any better about Innovation, though I did win by 1 turn this time instead of losing by 1 turn.

Fresco
Fortunately, my social networking came through, and we got permission to play Doug's copy of Fresco - which it seems was nominated for the SdJ (German game of the year award). I have played twice before, bot only with all the optional rules on. This time we played with NONE of the optional rules, only the very base game. I think I prefer the optional rules, which aren't much more complicated, but I did note a distinctly different feel to the game without them.

Eminent Domain
After Fresco, I bumped into Scott Caputo and chatted with him about general games-being-published stuff, since his Kachina and my Terra Prime just recently came out. Then Scott, JT Mudge and I played Eminent Domain - I wanted to know what they thought of it. They liked it (JT won pretty handily), and they said that they thought it was my most polished design that they'd played (they played and liked Wizard's Tower a year or two ago, and they might have also played All For One that year).

Jab
(BrainFreeze - broken clock :( )
At this point I wandered around a bit and ended up chatting with Brian Powers, who had entered a game in the Design Contest. He was short on time, so I showed him a quick game - BrainFreeze! I haven't played BrainFreeze! in ages, and as it turned out the chess clock was broken! :( Hopefully I can fix it. Meanwhile I showed him the second quickest game I had with me, Jab: Realtime Boxing. We played 1 round but then he had to get into a game of Power Grid.

Eat Poop You Cat
I found the Zendo group playing Eat Poop You Cat, and they invited me in for their last round. That's a fun game for late night gaming!

Monday
Triplets
I went to the Game Design contest award presentation so I could scope out the games and see if anything looked interesting. I walked away with 2 prototypes to bring home and play - one was Heroic Deeds, a card game about being a superhero and solving crimes... the interesting concept in it is that you have to worry about your Alter Ego and what your Heroic Deeds does to your everyday life. I fully suspect it to be a rehash of last year's Tomes of Knowledge, a neat foundation with a "Take That!" card game on top of it... But I'm really curious to see how they've approached this aspect, and who knows, it could be awesome!

The other prototype I walked away with was Triplets, an abstract tile laying game which has a similar feel to Set. The designer is a friend of Ricks, and so he, Rick, Aliza, and I played a game of it after the awards presentation. Triplets was one of 2 winners of the contest (they couldn't choose between the 2 so they crowned both games winners). The other winner was called Destroy Atlantis, another tile laying game, and the designer of that game will be sending me a copy.

Mosh Pit (Aliza and Karlo)
By this time the convention was winding down. Karlo (from the BGDF chat room) was hanging out, along with Aliza and Andrew. I wanted to get Mosh Pit played once more, so I taught it to Karlo and Aliza so they could play a 2 player game of it.

Lord$ of Vega$
While they were playing Mosh Pit, I noticed that James Ernest was playing a game of Lords of Vegas, a game coming out from Mayfair later this year. I saw a GIANT prototype of it at GTS in March, this one was much more reasonably sized. I was happy to be explained the game while watching, and it looks really, really good!

Eminent Domain w/ Aliza and Andrew
Finally, I had about an hour before I had to leave for the airport, and Aliza, Andrew and I played a final game of Eminent Domain (mostly so I could show Aliza because she was interested in seeing it). It went pretty fast because both Andrew and I dug into the Warfare stack, and it got down to 2 cards very quickly. However, Aliza was winning, so neither of us wanted to take that second to last Warfare card! The cleaning staff needed to take down the table, so rather than fight tooth and nail to come back, Andrew went ahead and chose Warfare. I did what I could to get points, but I couldn't quite catch Aliza so she was able to end the game in the lead. She said she thinks her RftG group would get a kick out of it so she may print up a copy to play with them.

Ground Floor - Playtest at Gamesmiths

There is now a Game Design 'club' in Tucson called Gamesmiths. Mostly it's just me, David Short, and Michael Eskue, but Simon Stump from BGDF has been at both of the 2 meetings so far, and April's meeting had a few other faces as well, and there are a couple people we know of who say they'll come but have yet to be able to make it. Phil Eklund might join us next month, time permitting as well.

The Prototype "in the fire" for April was Ground Floor, a worker placement game by David Short that I'm helping him develop for Tasty Minstrel release in 2011. I've posted about Ground Floor before, and as far as I'm concerned it's in really good shape right now. Pretty soon we'll be getting Blind test kits together to solicit blind testing on the game.

David posted a detailed session report of our 5 player game from Monday, which really does the game justice. I look forward to playing the game again, and to seeing its release!

Eminent Domain Print-and-Playtest feedback

I can't believe it's been a full month since my last post!

A lot has happened in that month, including having received my first royalty check for Terra Prime! Awesome! And Mike was funny when he gave it to me - suggesting I frame it... and not cash it ;)

It felt good to see my name on the box, even better on the store shelf and to see people posting strategy articles online. I kinda wish more people were playing and loving the game though. I'll have to write up a nice strategy article to get more people interested in the game. It's been rough with the production errors, I think that turned a lot of folks off from the outset.

I have been playing Eminent Domain, and I have finally settled on game end conditions (I think!):
For 2 and 3 player: VP pool or 1 pile exhaustion.
For 4 players: VP pool or 2 pile exhaustion.

The piles will be slightly larger for 2 and 3 player, because not as many cards go out for player decks. This seems to make for consistently decent game lengths as far as I can tell.

I posted on BGG and BGDF about an Eminent Domain Print-and-Play opportunity, and I got several takers. I have heard back from a few of them already. I like how the game works, so this is mainly a good blind test of the rules, which I have to admit I did a piss-poor job of writing out!

When I wrote the rules down, I tried to be as succinct as possible. The rules themselves are very simple, there are 3 parts to your turn:
1. Action: Play a card from your hand and do what it says after the "Action:" on the card.

2. Role: Choose one of the 6 Role in the game, take a Role card from that role's pile of cards. You may add to it any cards from your hand that have the icon of that Role on them and do what it says after the "Role:" on the Role card.

2b. Follow: each opponent may Follow the Role by playing cards from their hand that have icons of that Role on them and do what it says after the "Follow:" on the Role card OR, instead of Following they can "Dissent" (draw 1 card into their hand).

3. Cleanup: Discard any cards you want to discard, then reset your hand to 5 cards.

That's it, that's really all the rules to the game. The rest of the specifics involve following the directions on the card. Sure there are some other bits like setting up the game, and when the game ends, but the meat of the game is right there.

I hope I don't offend anybody with this, but I was very surprised at how much confusion there seemed to be regarding just those rules alone. When teaching the game in person I had players trying to boost Actions with cards from their hand, Follow other player's Actions (not Roles), play an Action off the Role card piles, or play a card from their had as a Role. I also had people trying to draw cards from the Role piles when dissenting rather than drawing a card from their deck into their hand. It seemed I had overestimated people's ability to, well, follow directions really (or remember the directions I guess), as well as their familiarity with a term such as "draw a card."

I've learned that I make a lot of assumptions. To me, "draw a card" means take the top card of your deck and put it in your hand." I've got an implicit assumption about the word "draw." In Dominion for example, you don't DRAW Kingdom cards, you GAIN them... DRAWING is taking cards from your DECK into your hand. It's the same thing in Eminent Domain, and yet more than 1 person attempted to take a card from the Role piles when instructed to "draw a card."

Getting a little deeper into the rules, there is a limited pool of VP tokens, each worth 1 point at the end of the game. The rules originally said nothing specifically about when to take them or when not to take them. Certain card actions (or Role effects) instruct players to take VP tokens from the supply, and that's technically all the information you need. The rules shouldn't have to list every single instance in which you DON'T take VPs from the pool, that would take pages upon pages! I've always followed the school of thought that the rules should tell you what you can do, not what you cannot do - if the rules don't say you can do something, then it's automatic that you cannot do it.

Moving on... in addition to the VP tokens, other things in the game are worth points. In particular, once you flip a Planet card face up, you will score points for it. This is indicated by a VP icon on the planet. Nowhere in the rules does it say that you should collect any VP tokens from the limited supply when flipping over a planet - you just count those victory points at the end of the game.

Again, I hope I don't offend anybody, but imagine my surprise when SEVERAL DIFFERENT play testers all made the same mistake of collecting VP tokens from the supply when flipping over planets! This mistake would have an awful effect on the game, and I can see how playing that way could totally ruin the experience. With that in mind, maybe it's worth stating explicitly in the rules that you do not collect VP tokens when flipping a planet... but how was I to know people would do something that they weren't instructed by the rules to do? My confusion was exacerbated by the fact that there are several established games in this genre (Race for the Galaxy, Puerto Rico) with exactly this same mechanism, and yet the mistake was still made, not by 1 group but by several!

Again, I was making assumptions. I assumed that people would read the rules literally and follow them correctly, and I assumed also that people would understand that mechanism since it occurs in other similar games. It turns out that perhaps I should change my philosophy, and in the case where a game-breaking mistake is possible perhaps I should explicitly state things in the rules, even if they technically shouldn't need to be there.

The good news is that even with some of the play errors made based on either the fact that I didn't write the rules down very well, or the fact that some rules were misunderstood or misplayed, I'm still hearing that some of the test groups are enjoying the game. I hope that this exercise will make me a better rules writer in the future!

Board game inspired by Craps

On the way home from GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas the other day I started thinking about using a dynamic from Craps as the backbone of a board game. When I play Craps, I stick to the strategy of "minimum bet on the pass line, maximum bet on the free odds," because as I understand it, that's the best odds you're going to get in Vegas. Most of he bets on the Craps table are lousy, but the free odds are the best deal you're going to get.

So what I do is bet on the pass line, and when a point is established I put full odds behind the line, and then place a Come bet (which is just like the Pass line when there's already a point established). Then I back that up with full odds as well, etc. On a good, long roll where lots of different numbers come up and no 7's come up, it can get to a point where almost any roll is income for me, and the only bad roll is a 7. Obviously if the 7 comes up before any of those bets pay off, then that's terrible, but if those bets hit before the 7 comes up then I haven't lost anything (in fact I've won a little), and if they hit a second time before the 7 comes, then I'm winning money!

So here's what I've got so far for a board game based on this mechanism:

Let's say there's a small deck of cards which have jobs on them, jobs of type A, B and C. Job A is more rare than B, which is in turn more rare than C... Job A is like rolling 4 or 10, B equates to 5 or 9, and C equates to 6 or 8. Maybe there's actually 6 types of jobs, each correlating to the numbers 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10.

There are also cards in the deck that say "Cancel Job A" (similar cards for all job types), and at least 1 "Cancel ALL jobs" card. This deck will replace the die rolls on the craps table. Players will have a small number of workers in their color, let's call them Managers.
There will be generic workers as well, we'll call them Day Laborers.

At the beginning of each round, each player has an opportunity to 'look for work' by sending 1 (maybe more) of their Managers to a particular space on the board (the "pass line" equivalent). Then you flip the top card of the deck, indicating what type of job is available. Your managers must then move to that job, and you are allowed to send some number of Day Laborers with them. The maximum number of Day Laborers you can send will be 3, 4, or 5 per manager, depending on the job (type A = 3x, type B = 4x, Type C = 5x) - just like in Craps.

In future rounds, if a card comes up canceling a job that you have workers on, you'll get your Managers back, but your Day Laborers will get upset and leave (you lose them). If another card for that job comes up before that though, you'll get paid money for each of your Day Laborers, and maybe you get a new Laborer for each of your Managers (but no money), and you get them all back. If you had "looked for work" again that round, you could use these returned Laborers to "bet on the odds" with the Manager you had used that turn. If a "job canceled" card comes up then you lose your bets for that job, but if you were looking for work (a Come bet) then you get something - maybe a new Day Laborer to work with.

That's all I have so far. I think there might have to be something else to do with Managers (and maybe Laborers) so that it's not simply betting on the card flips and seeing who is more lucky. I imagine strategies such as "commit more workers to a particular job, for a big payoff when that job comes up" and "commit fewer workers to each job, but commit workers to more jobs overall, so that you can get more, smaller payouts whose sum will be bigger than the big payout."

Maybe another aspect of the game could involve investing in making you better at particular types of jobs. You could get tiles which give you additional money for particular types of jobs, or which insulate your risk for certain types of jobs (you get your workers back, even if it's canceled for example), or perhaps something that allows you to look at the top 3 cards of the deck and re-order them, giving you a lot of information for the upcoming couple of turns.

I wasn't planning on modeling other Craps bets, but it wouldn't be difficult to mark a subset of the Type A jobs a certain way, effectively making them the "Hard Way bets" - a double 2's version of Job A, compared to the other versions (1-3 or 3-1). Players could easily place a manager on some space that equates to betting on the special case version of Job A coming up.

Overall the main mechanism of the game would be like playing Craps with a "Deck of Dice." Anyone have any thoughts on this??

GAMA Trade Show

I just got back from GAMA trade show in Las Vegas. I had a fun trip overall with Mike and our friend Tyler. Our mission was to get as many retailers as possible to sign up for Tasty Minstrel's Retailer Mailing List. We got a lot of contact info and handed out a lot of plush dragons. I also got to say hello to some people and do some networking. I looked at some games from some designers, and I believe James Earnest will be sending me one of his games to see if Tasty Minstrel wants to publish it. James no longer publishes his own games, he just takes the ones he thinks are really good and shops them around to publishers. I think it would be good to get a couple good games from some well known designers into Tasty Minstrel's line, so I look forward to seeing what James sends me.

On that note, I got a submission from Bruno Faidutti the other day. I had just enough time to print and cut a copy of it before jumping in a car to Vegas - I'd hoped to get a chance to play it there. Unfortunately that didn't happen, but I hope to give it a try on Monday.

The only games I played at the show were...
Eminent Domain: I played a couple games of ED with a few people, and it went over pretty well.

Terra Prime: I didn't play Terra Prime, but I gave a lot of retailers the quick description of it.

Homesteaders: I demo'ed Homesteaders 2 or 3 times during the PSI sponsored Game Night.

Ascension: Rob Dougherty, a name I recognize from the old Magic: The gathering days, was demoing a deck building game called Ascension. I played 3 games of it (and won all three, yay!) and was interested because I'm also working on a deck building game. I feel that Eminent Domain is a different scope from Ascension, just as it's also not really in the same category as Thunderstone or Dominion as a straight deck building game. The whole idea was to use deck building as a mechanism in a larger game.

At the show I also got my hands on a couple new games that I'd like to try out:
Space Junkyard by Mayday Games didn't look that great at first, but reading the rules it sounds pretty interesting. I also picked up a copy of Merchants, by Catalyst Games - a Reiner Knizia game that looked interesting.

I'm looking forward to playing some of these games!

ED endgame data

Looking through the record sheets for the last few games of Eminent Domain (mostly 4 player, 1 3p) it appears that if I change the end condition to "2 piles exhausted" and then reduce the piles to 12 cards each, the game should end in about 10 rounds for 4 players. The 3 player game would also have ended in Round 10. I think that sounds about right. 8 round games have definitely felt too short. 9 rounds was less bad. The 10 round 4p game we played at Gamesmiths felt pretty darn good. The 13 round 4p game we played last Saturday (2 piles exhausted and VPs ran out the same round) was way too long. In all those cases, a 2-pile exhaustion endgame trigger and 12 cards per pile would have made for a game that lasted 10 rounds.

I think a 10/11 round game is a good length. 9 is acceptable for a "short" game (not a typical game), and 12 rounds should be fine as a "long" game.

In addition, I think I'll start finishing out the round once the endgame is triggered so that every player has the same number of turns. It is so disappointing when you get fewer turns then someone, and they end the game while you are 1 action away from Colonizing a planet or trading a bunch of resources. If you can't reasonably do anything on your turn, then so be it, but if you CAN, it's too annoying not to be able to. If everyone has the same number of turns I think it'll feel more fair.

If this game end condition holds up and proves to work for all player counts, I'll be impressed, surprised, and happy! :)

Recent Gaming: Macao

I finally got a chance to play Macao last night with Wystan and John. I've been looking forward to trying it because it has a really neat sounding mechanism wherein you choose resources based on die rolls, and the larger number of resources you take, the longer you have to wait to get them. Specifically the game works like this:

Each round (there are 12) you first draw some cards which will be available for the players to draft. 2 of these cards are known ahead of time, but the others are drawn randomly. Each card has numbers in the bottom left and right corners that are summed to indicate the cost of buying Prestige at the market this turn - the left numbers make up the cost in gold, the right numbers make up the amount of Prestige you get.

In turn order, players must draft one of the cards and place it on their player board, which is like a buffer or way station en route to getting the card into play. If your buffer is full when you draft a card, you simply remove a card to make space - and you incur a penalty of 3 points, so you are encouraged not to let that happen.

After this draft is complete, some dice are rolled - there are 6 different colors of resources in the game, and there is 1 6-sided die for each color. Once rolled, each player may choose 2 of the 6 dice for which to collect resource cubes. The number on the die indicates how many cubes you can collect, but the catch is that you don't actually GET the cubes for that number of turns... so if you choose the 6 blue die, you'll get 6 blue resources, but not until 6 turns from now. This is tracked by placing the cubes in the appropriate location around your hexagonal player aid tile, which you then rotate 30% (1 space) and collect any cubes it's now pointing to. I'll note that since you rotate the thing right after choosing the cubes, you really only wait N-1 turns to get them (or 5 turns for those 6 blue cubes in the example above). If ever you collect zero cubes after rotating your thingamajig, then you are penalized another 3 points! So it's always good to make sure you'll have something coming each turn.

Now, in turn order, players execute their turn doing any or all of the following, in any order they like:

Activate a card: I dislike the word choice here, but Activating a card means means purchasing the card from your buffer board and putting it into play in front of you. Each card indicates its cost in cubes. Activating a card has nothing to do with USING the card!

Use cards in play: Once cards are in play, many of them can be used once per turn to do something: Collect a cube of a certain type, Trade in a cube of a certain type for a Gold coin, etc. Those are the main abilities, but there are a few others like "advance on the turn order track if you are the furthest behind on it" and whatnot.

Purchase *1* City space: On the board there are a bunch of city spaces that cost some number of cubes. You're allowed to buy at most 1 per turn, and when you do you collect the Goods marker that was placed on it (randomly) at the beginning of the game. The rest of the board depicts sea routes and islands which you can sail your boat to, and when you get to one of these islands you can deliver the goods you have collected to it and score some Prestige.

Purchase Prestige for Gold: Once per turn you can purchase some number of Prestige points for some number of Gold coins. These numbers were set at the beginning of the round by the randomly drawn cards from 7 paragraphs ago. These values fluctuate so some turns it's more efficient than other turns, but even if less efficient VP/$-wise, there's also the once per turn limit to consider. If you have the money, then buying 9 VP for $7 might be a good idea even if it's a bad conversion rate, because it's still 9 points you weren't getting otherwise.

Advance on Wall: The "Wall" is a track on which each player has a turn order marker. It works a lot like the People track in In the Year of the Dragon or the Popularity track in Ground Floor. Furthest down the track goes first, and turns proceed in order down the track. If multiple markers are stacked on the same space, then the one on top goes before the one below it. It costs 1 cube (any type) to advance 1 space on this track, and 2 cubes to advance each additional space, so if you want to go first, you can spend some of your cubes to do so.

Advance your boat: You can spend as many cubes as you like to advance your boat that number of spaces. There are specific routes printed on the board going between 6 different islands. Each island demands one of the types of Goods, and will pay 5 Prestige for the first, 3 Prestige for the 2nd, and 2 Prestige for the third good delivered. It's possible to score multiples of these at once if you arrive at the island in possession of multiple goods.

At the end of the turn, any cubes you have leftover are discarded, so if nothing else you end up using them to move your boat or advance along the Wall.

That's it - once each player has taken their turn, you move to the next round... reveal new cards and start the whole shebang again. Near the end of the game, when there are fewer than 6 turns remaining, die values which are too big to be realized anymore are treated as if they rolled 1.

I found the game fun and interesting, though frankly I was a bit put off by the lack of ability to plan. Short term planning is sketchy because you don't know what will be rolled and therefore have no idea what cubes you'll have access to (or when) as you draft your card for the round. Long term planning is also sketchy because while you know a couple of the cards that will come out down the road, you will likely prefer different ones when the time comes, so you have little to base your choice on what larger quantities of cubes to take. Don't get me wrong, I don't think the game needs to have perfect information or the ability to know exactly which cubes you'll need 7 turns down the road, but I do think it would be if you could plan a little better.

When it comes to this lack of ability to plan I think the culprit is the fact that all of your cubes spoil at the end of the turn. I think it's neat how the game encourages you to get cubes each round, and encourages you to use them all up, but I definitely think the ability to store at least SOME cubes would help a lot. Suppose for example each player started the game with a Warehouse building, which allowed them to store 1 cube of any type. There could also be Warehouse cards that would come up who's effect would be to allow a player to carry over 1 cube of a particular type to the next round. I would like that a lot better than the actual rules under which you cannot save any cubes from turn to turn. I wouldn't mind trying a variant of the game in which the cards that allow you to sell a Cube for a Gold also acted as those Warehouses, either in addition to selling a cube, or instead of (i.e. tap the card to sell a cube for 1 GC OR tap it to hold a cube for next round).

When setting up the game, Wystan forced the 'random' setup of the goods tiles such that exactly 3 of the Joker goods were located on city spaces costing 1, so that each of us could get 1. He cited previous games where those tiles happened to end up on the more expensive spaces which turned out to be annoyingly slow and had players complaining. I have not played in such a game, but if that's the case I'd wonder why each player doesn't simply start with a Joker tile, and maybe have the City spaces cost 2/3/3/4 rather than 1/2/3/4. That's just a thought off the top of my head though. It does seem like an advantage to go first if there were, say, only 1 Joker on a 1-cost City space.

Overall I think Macao is an interesting little game, and I can see myself playing it a few more times, but ultimately I'd like it better if you could save a few cubes and/or plan a little better.

Even More Eminent Domain playtests!!

I have had the opportunity to play Eminent Domain a few more times. We played a 4 player game at the inaugural meeting of the Gamesmiths game design club, and last night I played again with 3 players at my friend's game night. Both games went really well, and all the recent changes have proven to be good:

Combination of Trade and Harvest into 1 card
Ever since I combined the Trade and Harvest roles, that aspect of he game has been a whole lot smoother. It would be more accurate to say I combined the Trade and Harvest CARDS, not the Trade and Harvest ROLES, because the roles are still separate - when you choose the Trade/Harvest role you decide whether it's Trade or Harvest this time - players can only Follow the role you have chosen.

I did a little math to compare the approximate average number of points you get per action for Settling and Attacking planets and how many points you get per action for Harvesting and Trading resources. The current incarnation seems to have the following property, which I think is good (and that would explain why it feels like it works now): In the beginning of the game, Colonize/Warfare is a better deal (vp/action) than Harvest/Trade. As the game goes on, Harvest/Trade picks up in efficiency and after a point surpasses Colonize and Warfare to become more efficient. In the late game, Harvest/Trade can be much more lucrative than Colonizing or Attacking planets. It becomes a question of when the game ends, and how much trading a Trade player gets done before that time comes.

I like this dynamic, and the only challenge I have now about this aspect of the game is the main challenge I have overall - controlling the game end. Why are game end triggers always so difficult?

Game End Trigger - Pile / VP Exhaustion
I am happy with the trigger event of the endgame in Eminent Domain: When you run out of VPs, game over, or when one of the Role card piles is exhausted, game over. I like it because it is simple to track, no one has to remember anything, and furthermore every turn you progress the game toward the end because you are compelled to take a role card from one of the piles. The question is, how many cards should be in each pile (and how many VPs in the supply) to make for an appropriately long game? Also, how do you keep the game length from varying too wildly if everyone decides to use a Colonize strategy, and everyone is choosing the Colonize role frequently? A 4 player game could be over in 4 or 5 rounds if that happens! Too quick!

Another option I've considered is when *2* piles are exhausted. I don't like that as much though, for one thing, what do you do with the empty pile? Can you still take that Role? If so, do you still get a +1 to it (even though you don't get the card)? Ooh, here's a thought - suppose a card s printed on the space where the rest of those Role cards will be stacked, and when they're gone the printed card indicates the action you can do - and suppose that version of the card printed on the board is BETTER than the regular card actions - then you might really want to get to the bottom of the stack for your strategy so you can use the better version of the Role. That could be interesting...

The biggest problem with 2 piles exhausting is that I think it would be very easy for 1 pile to exhaust while none of the other piles are even close, and by the time the 2nd pile does exhaust, far too many turns have gone by. I'm very tempted to just stick with 1 pile exhausting (including VP as a pile).

The Politics card
Version 1: No action, contained all 6 symbols so could be used to boost any Role. This was a problem because having the Warfare symbol means that you effectively had Warfare cards in our deck, and the whole point of adding the Politics card was to remove Warfare from the starting deck! Oops! Easily fixed, I could simply not include a Warfare symbol on the Politics card... but I never tried that. Instead I switched to...
Version 2: No Role or Follow ability. Action: Take any Role card into hand. Thus, it acted kind of like a wild in that you could get the card you want to boost your Role, but it took up your action to do it, and it also put a card into your deck. I kinda liked that as it could be used later to push the game end trigger. After playing with it though, it seemed like players could really race through the decks and end the game before it should be over. The danger is that if I make the decks bigger to accommodate, then if players DON'T do that the game will go on too long. So I made a small adjustment for...
Version 3: No Role or Follow ability. Action: Take any Role card into hand and remove this card from the game. This seems best so far, as it helps a player customize their deck a little bit at the beginning, but doesn't put a continual drain on the piles. Unless something better comes along, I think this is the winner.

I made a game record sheet which makes it very easy to record what action and role each player chose, and how many turns the game lasted. Last night's 3p game took about 45 minutes and each player got 13 turns, which is just about what I want. Monday's 4p game took 1 hour and each player got 10 turns, which is also about right I think. The more players in the game, the fewer turns it could take - I'm OK with that. I suspect that a 2p game will last about 15 turns (plus or minus) and take around 30 minutes - that seems to be how recent 2p games with Tyler have gone.

To Do List
I would like to continue to think about the following items:
* Consider changing the Tech cards such that the Level 3 tech is just a big bonus in points, like Puerto Rico's big buildings. They seem to take too long to get the neat ability into play. However, they ARE worth 5 points (which is kinda a lot), and leaving the ability on doesn't hurt as long as in at least some circumstance (if you try really hard) you can reasonably get it into play and use it a few times.
* Consider reformatting the Planet draw pile to mirror the Technology decks - 3 piles by type, 3 levels of planet within each... Level 1 planets like what I have now, Level 2 a little better (maybe 2 icons, or more vps), and level 3 being the Big Bonus scoring things. Like Tech cards, Level 1 would cost 3 Survey icons, Level 2 would cost 5, and Level 3 would cost 7 - and to keep people from just getting a ton of Settle icons in their deck and going for a Level 3 planet every time, there would be a prerequisite of 1 L1 planet to get a L2, and 1 L2 planet to get a L3. In theory, the gu who only has a couple Survey cards in his deck and relies on following other payers' Survey roles to get planets in play will only get L1 planets, while the player who calls Survey more and has more cards in his deck ("is better at surveying") will be pulling down better planets. I like that this setup is symmetric with the Research system, but I keep thinking it sounds too complicated. Honestly I really like the system as it is right now.
* Consider alternate themes for the game. I don't like that as-is the game can be so closely associated with Race for the Galaxy, and I don't want all of my games to be space themed either. Eminent Domain is in the same category as games like RftG, Glory to Rome, Dominion, San Juan, and Thunderstone - I wouldn't want it to resemble any of those too closely. I'd prefer a theme that is significantly different than those themes. The front runners are...

• Classic Civ: I'd always intended to switch to a Classic Civ theme, but now I'm not so sure it sounds as good as I'd like. Maybe just too generic?
  
• 16th/17th Century Colonization: Anything you can do in space can also be done on the ocean, with islands instead of planets, right? So you find Fertile islands, Mineral Rich islands, or Inhabited islands. This might be about the same as "Classic Civ" (or close enough that a distinction is unnecessary).
  
• Business: Play as the Ruthless CEO of a company in the 1980's and climb the corporate ladder via Mergers and Hostile Takeovers... I actually like this theme, but I'm not sure if a "business" theme really sounds that FUN. My friend made an interesting comment: "If you're Freidman Friese you can design a game about managing a factory... you're not Friedman Friese yet." One more downfall of this is that I'm working on David's board game about Entrepreneurship: Ground Floor, and it's possible we'll work on a Ground Floor Card Game as well.
  
• Mafia: Tom Lehmann suggested a Mafia theme, which I noted could be combined with the business theme above. This seems promising, but the last time I tried to use a prohibition era bootlegging theme (which is similar to a mafioso theme), Mikey shot me down because it offended his Mormon sensibilities. So I don't know how he'd feel if the "types of planets" were illicit businesses such as Casinos, Brothels, Speakeasies, or Bootleggers.

In the end, I'm enjoying the space theme pretty well, so maybe before I worry too much about a theme change I should wait and see if the potential comparisons to RftG do materialize.

The Gamesmiths

The inaugural meeting of the Gamesmiths, a newly formed Game Design Club, occurred last night at Hat's Games at 6:30. Michael Eskue, David Short, and I were in attendance - we'll have to do some better advertising next month.

To start with we played Eskue's abstract game called Mosh Pit. MP is a bit like Hive in that you place tiles on the board and move them around in an attempt to assemble a particular configuration. In this game your tile types are each one of the stereotypical internet Memes: Ninja, Pirate, Monkey, Zombie, and Alien (which could be Robot instead). On your turn you can do 1 or 2 actions, and you get a total of 5 actions each round - so you can do more up front if you want, or stall and save up for a larger action later. Each round the start player shifts, so in a 2 player game you can actually get 4 actions in a row if you budget your actions carefully!

The 5 actions you can do are pretty simple:
1. Place a tile
2. Move a tile
3. Shove a tile (which is like moving actually)
4. Turn a tile face up
5. Activate a tile

Each type of tile has a different effect when you activate it, and activating the tile turns it face down. The effects will move tiles around the board or flip them face up or face down.

The goal is to make a contiguous group of your face up tiles including 1 of each type.

In general I do not like this type of game - I played Hive a couple times and I am not a fan - mostly I'm not too fond of abstract games and I'm also not fond of 2 player games. I have to say I was skeptical going in that I would like this game at all. However I'm happy to report that I did like Mosh Pit, a lot more than I thought I would! I don't know if it's because the chaos/craziness of the abilities allows for more sneaky, tactical play, or maybe it's the ability to take more than 1 action in a row that allows for setting up a chain of moves to surprise your opponent. It certainly wasn't the theme! I am not a fan of Hive's theme, but I also don't care for the internet memes much, nor the pasted on "galactic concert at which these characters are moshing, and want to mosh with their buddies." It's not like I could think of a better theme though, and it didn't kill my enjoyment of the game or anything.

I think if using the internet icons, it would be good to somehow include that in the theme (and title) of the game. I ended up suggesting Meme Mosh Pit, which sort of does that, and phonetically sounds kinda funny, like imagine the title in a talk bubble from one of the Zombies, sounds kinda like he's stuttering or something. I don't know, it's a lousy pun that kinda amused me.

After Mosh Pit, we set up Eminent Domain. Simon Stump showed up just in time to get in on the game, which was perfect timing. We played a 4 player game and I used a record sheet I'd made to record each player's turn.

For those that don't already know, Eminent Domain is a civ building card game with a deckbuilding central mechanism - as you take actions, cards for that action go into your deck, making you "better" at doing that action (or at least, more specialized at it). The theme right now is sci-fi/outer space because it was initially supposed to be a sort of card game version of Twilight Imperium. I would like to re-theme it to a more classic (ancient?) civ theme.

In Eminent Domain, your turn consists of a Action phase, a Role phase, and a Cleanup phase. For the Action you may play a card from your hand for it's Action effect. For the Role phase you MUST choose one of the 5 roles in the game, taking a card for that role from the respective stack. You can boost the Role by playing additional cards of that type from your hand. After you resolve the Role effect, each player has the opportunity to also partake in that role by "Following" it - playing cards from their hand of that type and receiving the Follow effect (mostly the same as the Role effect). If a player does not wish to Follow the current Role, he may draw 1 card instead. Finally, in the Cleanup phase you discard any unwanted cards from your hand, then reset your hand to 5 cards. There are some planets which you can eventually get that increase your hand size.

This game may have been the most interesting multiplayer game of ED yet - 2 players were using Warfare, 2 were using Colonize heavily. Only 1 person (me) did much Research (ended up with 2 2vp tech cards), and 3 people were harvesting and trading. The game ended via VP exhaustion, and the final scores were all very close: 22-19-18-16!

David continues to be disappointed in the randomness of the Survey action, but everyone else thought it was fine. I am still on the fence about changing the system out for one which separates the planets into piles by type, and sort of mirrors the Technology/Research part of the game.I see pluses and minuses both ways.

I'm still struggling with/worried about the game end conditions. I think they're evolving toward something good, but it's not easy to figure out how many cards should be in the Role card piles or how many VPs should be in the supply!

All in all a good test I think!

Afterward, David and I chatted about how a Ground Floor card game might work. Sounds like it could be very doable!

Politics in Eminent Domain

I got a chance to play Eminent Domain again tonight, 3 players this time. I tried out the stuff I talked about yesterday - namely the Politics card switching to say "Action: Take 1 Role car into hand." That's it, that's all it does. Well, maybe that's misleading as it has some other implications... the biggest of which may be that it gives players a way to help rush the game end by digging through a pile of cards faster. This sounds like a neat thing, but it also means the potential of a MUCH faster game. I don't know how often it would be the case, but if players use the Politics card a lot then it could either make for a short, unsatisfying game, or else require a bunch more cards to maintain a decent game length.

My current thought on the matter is that the Politics card should be removed from the game when used - so the player can replace it with an action card of their choice, maybe customize their starting deck a little bit. I think I'll try that next time.

The combination of Harvest and Trade appears to be working well. Mathematically I think it's the right way to go - in comparison with Warfare and Colonize. I tried removing the "Action: Collect 1vp" (Trade action) and making the Trade role exchange resources for VP at a 1-to-1 ratio (rather than 2vp/resource). I think that's the right way to go now that the Roles have been combined. The only remaining issue I have with the Role is that it seems VERY easy to have too many Trade/Harvest cards. It seems like you only ever need 3 or 4 cards at a time, and you start with 2 in your deck and get 1 every time you choose the role. So what can I do to make having more Harvest/Trade cards more interesting???

Recent playtesting: Ground Floor, Eminent Domain, Belfort, and All For One

I've gotten a lot of playtesting done lately, which is great! I've been able to play several games each of several different prototypes. In no particular order...

Ground Floor
In the last game of Ground Floor I tried a few of the new tweaks I've been talking about:
Remodeling (for $5,i5) allowed at any time, not just at the end of a round
I'm not sure how much this will really get used, but it's certainly better than having to wait for the end of the round. I believe it was used twice this game. I think it's a keeper! I do wonder if ($5,i5) is too expansive for a remodel - mathematically it's not too much, but realistically I think it might get used more if it were ($4,i4). The question is whether that's "too good" or not. It would certainly be the thing to do at the end of the game - rather than pay ($3,i3) for a VP players would sooner remodel their rooms. Maybe that's OK though, as you only have so may rooms to remodel.

I'm probably full of crap - ($5,i5) is a fine cost - especially considering one of the other tweaks...

Boosts based on Popularity
David and I settled on some specific little boosts, chosen in Popularity order at the end of the round, like Age of Steam has. We decided to have 5 choices, and the least popular player in the game doesn't get one. You can choose between:
Temporary Employee: +(') next round
Money: +$2 ("Petty Cash"?)
Info: +i2
Supply: +1 Supply
Remodel Discount: ($1,i1)

The Remodel discount could be applied more than once in a turn, so that reward could be worth a bit more than the others if you set yourself up for it. Other than that, they're all worth about the same, but depending on your situation at that point in the game you might really rather have the $2 than the i2.

The point of this is to make Marketing more important, and in that I am not sure it's successful. I guess we were spending more time and money on Marketing, but then we were getting a little more [something] back in return... so what's the difference, really? Getting the rewards is kinda fun, and it helps differentiate people's income a bit, but I wonder if it's really worth the effort. It does take some time to deal with, and just 1 more thing to think about both when placing Time units (do I try and get popularity?) and when choosing the reward (should I take the supply, or do I need a little extra Info to do what I want to do next turn?). I expect it to add 15+ minutes to the game length all told, and that's the opposite of what I was trying to do (which was reduce the game length).

There were some questions such as when exactly do you get the boost. We did it at the end of the turn, after dropping popularity (should be before though - especially considering the "No Drop" TI). It worked fine, and people liked it, but I'm not sure I liked all that much. Maybe it helps give people a little income boost (customizable), which might help make up for the weakening of the Phase I TIs - but I think it will add a significant amount of time to the game. It's a decision point, and you don't always know just what you want. In Age of Steam it works better because it's a bigger portion of the game - in Ground Floor it's just "a little more income" and so I don't know if it's worth the extra effort or not. I guess we should try it a few more times and see how it goes, and how much time it takes.

Starting job market
Starting with the option of hiring an employee (at $5,i5) seemed a little overwhelming to me. It was certainly an interesting thing to consider, but I found myself missing the succinctness of the first turn where you had like 2 good options - either you buy a TI, or you start investing in income with Production and Consulting. This time I also had to consider Marketing, and hiring an employee... I felt like this bogged down the first turn more than it served to jump start the game. I would like to try it again, but I'm skeptical that I'll love it.

Hiring prices
For a 7 round game at least, I think the hiring prices should shift down a notch to 2/3/3/4/4/5/6/X and maybe the marker should start the game on the 5. This should make them a little cheaper so that they more likely pay off over the course of a shorter game, and get them in play sooner to jump start the game a little. Honestly though, I think I liked it when you couldn't hire in the first turn, it focused your first turn onto fewer options, which felt less overwhelming and kind of made the first turn go faster. Thematically it makes sense too that you're not hiring right out of the gate. So I'd also like to consider the cheaper track mentioned above, with the marker starting on X, so that you're hiring people on the 2nd and 3rd turn (and they're cheaper so they pay off better/sooner) rather than turns 1 and 2. But maybe it's OK to have a first turn option of hiring an employee. this would be especially attractive to the player with the Training specialty.

Merchandising price adjustment
I found the Merchandising price adjustment based on the economy to be too fiddly and annoying, and totally not worth it. Though it sounds neat to have the economy affect the price - the price brackets already sort of do that. I don't think I even want to try that change again.

Nerfed Phase 1 TIs
I'd have to try it again, but the weakened Phase I TIs seem so weak! The stronger versions really jump started the game more... the potential down side is that maybe noone ever buys a floor or TI in the first Phase over hiring or saving money for the better Phase 2 stuff. Needs more testing to see if that happens.

Belfort
We played 4p Belfort with Moneylender, Library, New Bandit, New Spy, and Recruiter guilds. I think the new spy ought to be 2 cards (everyone reveals 1, spy takes 2 of those) instead of just 1. The new Bandit's guild is a less directly interactive guild - instead of stealing resources from players, you get to choose Wood or Stone, collect 5 of it from the supply, then you have to give 1 to each of 2 opponents. New Bandit seemed OK... I personally thought it was boring. I suspect the point leaders will not get the freebie resources and the point trailers will, and I guess that held true. Often the freebies were given to players who had already taken their Action phase, so they couldn't use them that turn. Not sure how much difference that makes in the general case though. It felt more like a Resource guild than an Interactive guild. Not BAD, just not a game changer at all.

I'm not against including these various guilds, but I think I'm leaning toward leaving the old "mean" Thieves and Bandits guilds in as a standard. Maybe the setup for your first game should tell players to use the Spy or Wizards guild rather than the Thief or Bandits.

Otherwise, the game was great!

All For One
Playing All For One was nice, but it really just served to remind me how annoyed I am that all of my balanced and tweaked Mission cards and board layout have disappeared. I guess at some point I'll just have to go through it all again and re-tweak and re-fix everything, maybe it'll approximate what I had before that I was happy with. Let this be a lesson to all would-be game designers: Use computer files and keep them up to date (rather than hand changes on components), especially if you're sending the game off to submit to a publisher or something. More than once now I've lost prototypes or parts of prototypes as a result of submitting them.

Eminent Domain
I played a couple of 2 player games of Eminent Domain with Tyler last Sunday, and a 4 player game on Monday as well. I implemented the "combine Trade and Harvest into 1 card" idea and it seemed to work fine. In retrospect it really seems like that matches the power level (point-getting potential) of Colonizing and Warfare, with a higher top end - which is OK because it's limited by your capacity so it's really hard to reach that high end. When reducing to 5 actions though I put Warfare cards back in the starting deck because I like a hand size of 5 and a starting deck of 10 cards. I liked it better when you didn't start with Warfare though, so I wanted to replace it in the starting deck with something else. I thought about adding another Role to the game, perhaps Politics... but I couldn't think offhand of what it might do - then I thought hey, it could be a sort of wild... no action, but boosts all Roles. So I made 8 of those cards (1 for each starting deck) before we played on Monday. It was an interesting idea but ultimately didn't solve my problem because you still effectively had Warfare cards in your deck! I was going to try removing the Warfare symbol from the Politics cards, meaning you simply can't use them to boost Warfare, but I think I've got a better idea - they should have an action, but not boost any Role. In thinking of what that action might be, I came up with "Take any 1 Role card into your hand," making it still kind of a Wild boost (because you can take a card for the Role you're about to choose), but it costs you your action for the turn, and it puts a card in your deck.

Here are some tweaks and changes I want to try for Eminent Domain:
1. Try multiple pile exhaust as end game trigger (try 2 piles)
2. Make 1 Technology card into this: Action: Place up to 2 Colonies on any 1 planet. Or maybe Play 2 Colonize cards as actions (so you could add then flip, or add to 2 different planets). Maybe make it "Up to 3" since you have to have them in your hand. These would probably be the level 1 X/Colonize techs
3. Remove Warfare from Politics cards.
4. Reconsider Politics cards - maybe only an action and no boosts... where the Action is...
- Take any Role card into hand (which makes it effectively wild, but it uses up your action and fills your deck with that role) <- I think I like this.
- Reveal the top 2 (3?) cards from your deck, you can use symbols on those cards to boost your Role this turn
- Something else?
5. Specify on Harvest/Trade cards...
- Action: Produce 1 Resource OR Trade 1 Resource for 1 VP.
- ROLE: Produce 1 Resources per Harvest symbol OR Trade 1 Resource per Trade symbol for 1 VP each. (not 2vp anymore)
- FOLLOW: Produce 1 Resources per Harvest symbol OR Trade 1 Resource per Trade symbol for 1 VP each. (not 2vp anymore)

Eminent Domain playtest

Two weeks ago I had an idea to try and improve Eminent Domain by combining the Trade and Harvest roles into 1 card. Tonight I finally tried the game again - 2-player with Tyler - and we used that new rule. I think it worked very well.

Instead of having to fill your deck with a bunch of Harvest cards AND a bunch of Trade cards in order to execute a trading strategy, we could simply get 1 card in your deck that did both. I liked the dynamic. I didn't make any change to the symbols - they still either help Trade OR Harvest, depending on the icon. I think that's probably OK.

The worst part about this change is that in order to maintain a starting deck of 10 cards (2 of each action) then I have to include Warfare in the starting deck. I have been playing with just Colonize, Survey, Research, Trade, and Harvest in the starting deck, which I thought went a long way toward balancing Warfare with Colonize (otherwise Warfare seems much easier to use than Colonize). So now I either have to reconfigure the starting deck (but I like 2 of each card - it's simple and symmetric), start with only 8 cards per deck (not sure I like that because a 4 card hand would probably be too small, and a 5 card hand doesn't mesh well with an 8 card deck), OR... maybe come up with another 6th action to add to the game.

So what action, if any, could be added? Maybe Politics... but what would it do? I like Politics being in the game, but I don't think I like Politics being another route to victory. I almost think maybe Politics cards should be sort of Wild, counting for any action... is that crazy? Should there be an action for the card? If so, what would it be? I'm open to suggestions...

Playtest night!

Last night I had a Tasty Minstrel Playtest night, and about 10 people came over to play Belfort, Ground Floor, and another prototype that was sent to me... I had intended to play Train of Thought (with slightly different rules) but it didn't work out that way.

Train of Thought - new rule:
Train of Thought is a great game, and the only complaint I have about it is the possibility for a player to shortcut the rules and subvert the game by structuring their 3 word clue as follows:

Say the required word, then give a completely unrelated 2-word clue
Last post I said "I'm not sure there's any way to fix the rule, but maybe a simple thing like phrasing the rule as "3 related words, 1 of which is the starting word or a prior guess" - so the words could be related by being part of a sentence, or by free association even, but the unrelated 2-word clue would be clearly outside the spirit of the rule.

I wonder if the game should be tested with merely 2 word clues - one of which has to be the starting word. That would certainly eliminate this issue!"

Until now I've been of the opinion that forbidding this "cheating" type behavior would be bad, because some people have had problems being able to come up with a 3 word "sentence." I don't want to tell potential players "Sorry, you're just not creative enough to play this game. Go play something else!" However after OrcCon's playtest I would really like to try that 2-word clue idea, it sounds better and better all the time.

I had intended to test that last night, but the way things happened it didn't work out that way. Jay and Sen, designers of ToT and Belfort, are meeting this week and promise to try it out and let me know what they think. I should be able to give it a try later this week as well.

Belfort:
I ran a 5 player game of Belfort, using one of the guilds I'd changed but not used yet. I chose for the interactive guild the Spies Guild, which reads as follows:
Each opponent discards 1 Property card. you may take one card discarded this way into your hand.
The original Spies guild was "Look at 1 player's hand and steal one of their cards." I didn't like that very much, and thought this modified one would be better. As it turns out however, I didn't consider what would happen as soon as players ran out of cards (due to playing cards and being Spied on)! It was extremely difficult to ever build another building because if you buy a card during your turn, it will very likely no longer be in your hand by the time you would be able to play it.

This was a very interesting situation, and the purpose of the Guilds (especially the Interactive Guilds) is to change the game a lot so it's different every time... but in this case, no matter how interesting int might have been, all 5 players did not like it. They all seemed to like the game, but they all thought that guild was broken, and that it broke the game. I have an easy fix though, which I still think is better than the original guild... instead of discarding, each player should reveal a card from their hand, and the spy can steal 1 (maybe 2?) of them. That will keep the parts I wanted, without causing the game to lock up. John suggested a corollary: that you cannot steal a player's last card. I'm not sure if I like that or not. I think if the Spies Guild is in play, you probably want to keep your hand well stocked with cards by buying them frequently and by trying to get and build a Library - I think that would be a good effect for that guild to have on the game.

The Belfort game only took 2 hours and 15 minutes, including rules explanation - which is pretty good! However I think that's in part because there were a lot of turns when nobody could really do anything, so that might have sped some things up.

Sebastian's Prototype:
I don't know how much I should say about another designer's prototype (which is currently being reviewed by a publisher), so I won't be specific at all. I printed out the stuff and made a copy of Sebastian's game the other day, and Sunday night I was able to play a 4 player game of it. It went OK, and I communicated my biggest concerns to Sebastian that night. Last night we played a 5 player game, and it didn't go nearly as well. Too chaotic, not enough actions/turns to do anything, and a problem we had with the 4 player game got exacerbated in the 5p game. I sent our comments to Sebastian, hopefully he'll find them helpful. I'm afraid that game simply isn't a 5 player game.

Ground Floor
We ended the evening with a 4 player game of Ground Floor - modified down to 7 rounds. I was hoping this would shorten up the game length (on the clock) without really impacting the feeling of getting stuff done. We also implemented a number of tweaks to the T.I.s based on a lot of analysis and thought (as chronicled in my prior posts).

The long and short of it was that while I liked the shorter game, David was less convinced. I went with the complete opposite strategy from last time - I hired NO employees, just got an Internship Program first turn, bought all of the 'drip income' floors (Network Admin for i3, I.T. Dept for i4, and Investor for $3), and made do with my $12 and i7 income each turn. I used my 6 (')s fairly effectively in Merchandising and at the Consulting Firm in order to make some good money and info when the economy was up. I was able to churn out floor after floor, and finished in the lead by about 10 points (a huge margin). I'm not entirely sure why I was able to do so well, but we attributed it to a couple of things:

1. I was playing like the game was going to be over in 7 rounds... it's possible other players were playing as they would have if the game still lasted 9 rounds.

2. I started with the Meeting specialty, which has already been shown to be "too good." I used it about 2x as much as "average" (the numbers I based the balancing on in the previous post) and therefore gained probably 8-12 extra units worth of stuff compared to other players.

3. The Internship Program, Network Admin, and Human Resources are demonstrably better than most of the other Floors and T.I.s out there. They are nicely balanced against each other, but it's highly possible that all three of them are too powerful. I had 2 of these from turns 1 and 2, while other players had 1 or none of them.

4. It's possible the I.T. department yields too much info, but I'm skeptical about that because it's just info - as Eric pointed out after his last test, there's no way to turn info into money (well, not directly) but there are ways to turn money or Supply into Info. Thus there's a diminishing return to getting a lot of info, in that you need a lot of money to use it all. I might want to reduce IT Dept to i3 to match the Investor's $3, but I kinda like the asymmetry.

Other than that, I just played a pretty good game - the couple mistakes I made were minor, and I had some advantages from my buildings that were a little too good. David got Human Resources, went the Employee route, and got Construction Administration (also under-costed for its ability), but he didn't get it until late game and only got to use it twice. I am still surprised I finished that far ahead of him.

After the game, Tyler and I looked at the possibility of buying the following buildings, which you could do without ever placing a (') anywhere except on your ground floor meeting room (even un-remodeled) and the Construction Company (and one time on Research and Testing to sell your starting cube)...
Turn 1: Network Admin
Turn 2: Internship Program
Turn 3: Construction Admin
Turn 4: IT Dept
Turn 5: Investor
Turn 6: Executive Bonus Floor
Turn 7: Either one of the +3 Bonus Floors, or 2 T.I.s (one of them the Bonus T.I.)

That adds up to 38-40 points (depending on what the Bonus T.I. is worth - we're knocking it down a few points to start). It's worth noting that this completely boring strategy is NOT a winning score! I managed 45 points in yesterday's game - though this 38 points would have beat all the other players. That just illustrated how the Construction Admin and/or Network Admin and Internship are too good.

David made a good point - while it's nice to see a competitive strategy wherein you don't have to hire a single employee, David does not want that to be a winning strategy. A player winning this game should have to have employed at least 1 person, that's his view. And I can get behind that, because the game is about growing your business - not NOT growing your business.

Floor and T.I. tweaks
The resulting tweaks are as follows:
Remodeled Meeting: (')('): i3 (not ('): i2)
Network Admin: i2 instead of i3
Human Resources: discount of $2, i2 (not $3,i3)
Internship: (') (not (')('))
Construction Admin: (')(')(')(') to activate (not (')(')(')) <- mathematically this is right, but with (') limits I'm not sure it's such a good idea*. Another option is to leave the activation at (')(')('), but move the floor back to phase III - then it would be mathematically sound, and might be just the right time to buy it (round 5, in time to help you afford your last 2 floors)

* Alternate idea - rather than make the Construction Admin worse, what about boosting ALL the floors to be worth as much as CA? Then anything you buy instead will net you just as much... Not sure that helps though, because one issue we don't want to see is players becoming completely self sufficient - the Street is supposed to be better than even your good floors.

Other building tweaks which are unrelated to that power discussion...
Marketing: move to Phase 2. This one might be undercosted, but since the benefit is indirect maybe that's OK? I guess we'll see if it gets used now. Makes sense though - no need for much advertising in the last couple of turns.

Public Relations: Make it a T.I. instead of a Floor - it's simply not being used, a TI would be cheaper and that might see more use.

Warehouse: Cut! It's simply not needed... that prompts another change though...
Production Bonus: +3pp per Supply (not +1). So it's 3 or 6, but for 6 you have to flip your Closet.

Customer Service: New name = Premium Product.

Bonus T.I.: 0pp +1pp/T.I. (not 3pp +1pp/T.I.) <- I'm not sure I like this... I think it needs 1 or 2 pp on it. It's a minor point though. My reasoning is that any player will have 1, maybe 2 T.I.s on their board, so buying this late game will be worth just 3 points - no more than any other T.I., though you could build another one after that (or along with it) and get 1 more point out of it. I guess that's reasonable considering how easy it is to afford a T.I. in the first place. For the price of your 4th Floor ($4,i4 + $10,i10) you could get 2 T.I.s - the Bonus one and 1 other... which is probably 4+3=7pp. your 4th floor if it's a bonus floor is probably worth 7-9pp So I guess it's about right, but I think it could use 1pp on it rather than 0. If that 2 TI turn was your 2nd and 3rd T.I. then you're only getting 6vp, just like buying any other T.I. for the same price as that 4th floor...

Rules tweaks
Like I said, I liked the 7 rounds, David didn't. Tyler mentioned that he felt like there might not be enough time for your Employees to pay off, which is a valid concern. Employees turn $3 (3 units) into 3(') (more than 3 units based on building powers). So an employee is probably worth 6 units a turn (so you're paying 3 to get 6, or netting 3 units a turn). They cost a hefty amount (6, 8, or 10 units). This means to break even, you really have to get that Employee by round 3, any employee after that will be a waste unless you get it cheap, or eke out more than 2 units per (') by doing a good job on the street. Currently you can't really afford an employee until round 3 because they start off so expensive. So one Rules Tweak is to start the Employee track with some employees available (at $5,i5), so the first player, and maybe the second player have an interesting choice - they can actually hire on turn 1, spending almost all their money. Another option is to build a T.I. first turn, also spending all your money. And you're other good options are Production and Consulting.

Another tweak is to help make Remodeling more attractive. We considered reducing the cost to ($4,i4), but I'm not sure that's necessary - is it good for the remodeling to be a better deal than the T.I.s in the late game? Or should people want to get into the Construction company? Instead I think we'll try this: David suggested that maybe you
should be able to do a Remodel any time you want - not just at the end of the turn. I think waiting until the End of Turn to do it introduces an unwelcome lag, and by the time you can make use of your newly remodeled room, you don't really want to anymore. If you could remodel and then use the new room right away, then there would be a lot more reason to do it (this is feasible because you get income AFTER you have to remodel - hence the lag).

David had another idea, that the price become ($4,i4) and the action be done at a standard Ground Floor room which costs (') (... so (')+$4+i4: Remodel a room) - which could also work, but I'm not sure I like it as much as just paying ($5,i5) whenever you want and not having to spend a ('). I think the reason is because you want people to remodel in the early game, and at that point they don't have a lot of (')s to be throwing around.

Popularity tweak
Tyler suggested that the Popularity fight wasn't a big enough deal. I was hesitant to agree, because in just about every game I've played there has been some contention for turn order. Some games more than others of course, and in some games there's the guy who ignores it altogether... which is OK too. Popularity matters for 3 things:
1.) Merchandising sales when supply exceeds demand
2.) Turn order - this is a worker placement game, and at times it's good to go first. however at other time's it may be better to go later in turn order, but not usually.
3.) Endgame tiebreaks - the most popular tied player wins. This may not metter very often though.

Tyler had an idea, that there could be some 'roles' which players would choose in turn order and they would gain that role's benefit for the round. This is very Wallace-esque, just like Age of Steam or Automobile. It's not a terrible idea, and in fact some of the Floors/TIs that are unpopular could easily be made into these Roles. We may try that at some point, but what we're going to try next instead is this, and I'm not positive if I like it or not...

We've attached a little income boost to being more popular. At the base level, where everyone begins, you get nothing extra. Each space above that on the popularity track yields a better item...
i1, i2, $1, $2, $3, Supply, Supply, Supply+$1+i1
Thus there's an incentive to fight for popularity even if you don't want to go first. I'm interested to see how this works. I'd also like to see how a Role Selection type of thing would work (and that could reduce the number of Floors/TIs in the game).