Nanogrid Hex tile update

First, the eye candy!


Ok, so due to popular agreement that hexagon tiles are more interesting I dumped a bunch of time into making prototype 2 of Nanogrid. I have to admit that I am loving how its coming out. The hexagons, as well as the interesting path combinations they produce, are much more appealing to look at.

One note from last weeks plays was that the game should probably scale in tile quantity according to the number of players. The current prototype has 9 different tile variations. Currently you play with one set of these 9 tiles for ever player. This means a 4 player game has a total of 36 tiles available, and a 2 player game only has 18.

I put more time into the power up distribution. All three skills have a total of 4 power up locations in each set of 9 cards. This means that there is an average of 4 power ups per skill per player in each game. This might seem like too many since the skills can only be advanced a total of 5 times, but in my plays so far I haven't seen the skills over advanced.

One last big change was making the Energize locations location specific instead of tile specific. I also decided to make Energize locations all have only one path into them. This means you can never expand through them, you have to make a conscious detour in your network in order to grab a new Energize point. This gave them a two sided feel, one the one hand they were like building new outposts in the frontier. On the other hand they also seemed to act as missile launching sites, since you can strategically grab one near an opponent and then just charge up and fire into their network with great results.

Here are the rules of the game as it currently stands:
- The goal is to replicate all of your dice onto the board before anyone else, victory is instant upon placing your last die.
- On each turn, each player gets 2 distinct actions. These are chosen from the following 5:
1. Place a tile and draw a tile back into your hand if there are any left. This placement can not completely lock in any player.
2. Energize any of your dice on one Energize location (Yellow border and STAR in the middle). This adds pips to that die equal to that players Energize skill.
3. Transfer any number of pips from one die on the board to another of your die on the board. The starting die can not go under 1 pip in this fashion. You may send these pips through dice up to but not exceeding your Transfer skill level.
4. Replicate a new die on the board. Do this by reducing one pip from one of your die and place a value 1 die on a empty location that is within your current transfer skill distance.
5. Hostile Replication which places one of the player's dice and removes an opponents. This follows the regular Replication placement rules. The attack must have 2 pips additional power over the victim die. This means that in order to attack a value 1 die, the player must replicate with a value 3 or higher die. The victim removes their die, and the player places a new lvl 1 die in its place. The victim adds 1 pip to an adjacent die to the attack location as salvage from the attack. You may not attack an opponents last Energize location.
- Replication Skill increases allow the player to make a number of legal non-hostile replications equal to their Replication skill level for the cost of 1 action.

The game I played which ended with the picture on top lasted well over an hour. It was tough strategically trying to beat myself as I played each players turn. In the end Green pulled out a surprise win. I found it humorous that I could get so into playing each color, and even propagating animosity between two colors due to previous aggression, that I totally missed Green's victory possibility until his turn. Green was a mid game leader who got attacked by both red and yellow until it seemed Green had no chance for victory. Then Red and Yellow spent too much time attacking each other and Green bounced back. Blue was largely ignored all game and almost pulled off a win as well. I was very pleased at how close each player was, as well as the way an obvious leader could be kept in check.

By the end of this game I did not have any real changes I felt were necessary. Mid game i felt that the Energize skill was underpowered, but then seeing Yellow roar back from obscurity to almost take the game largely with this skill alone I changed my mind. This game is really ready for playing with other people now I think, time to see what zany ways my friends can come up with to break it :)