Odd Ducks Playtest 10-23-22 notes

Playtested 3 different ideas today. The key things that came out of it are:

• "Bidding / Tichu" variant went over surprisingly well for players selecting "go out" bonuses.
• "No shedding bonus" variant with stock prices changing on odd cards was more interesting than expected. 
• Multiple testers mentioned wanting more "agency" with their card-playing options. 

It feels like there are two ways this design can go and I'm not sure which route I want to go yet (or if I want to try and plow through with a middle road that touches on both). 

1. Shedding focused with tense "tichu" bidding play.
2. Trick-taking focused, where the cards you take is the priority and going out has little to no impact.

#1 is fundamentally a more streamlined and familiar climbing/shedding experience, though still definitely enough of it's own game to stand on it's own.

#2 has the potential to get wonky and clunky with math, though I think that's largely fixable with tracks for stock prices. This feels like a more unique design direction.

I am currently tempted to go with #2, but I can't shake the great tension that came from shed-out bonus bidding that came from #1. I could slam these together and have shedding out give core score modifiers, with tense bidding, and then also have cards taken to modify the stock prices. The worry there is this may turn into TOO MUCH happening, but it also lets me have my cake and eat it too, so this is the way I want to test the next time. It may crash and clunky burn, but I just need to see. 

Next Steps

I have two different ideas I want to test next, and each involves a significant change to the deck makeup. In each of these ideas, all odd cards will modify the stock value of the player who takes them, and all even cards are stocks of that player's color:

1. Decks of 1-11 per player, each person starts with 2 wild cards (however winning player's stock value). 
2. Decks of 1-7 twice per player. 

The 2 wilds per player are there to increase agency, which was a big note I got. The reason I want to try #2 is to balance out the strengths of runs vs sets. At 4p with #1, the biggest set meld is 4 while the biggest run meld is 11. With #2, then at 4p the biggest set meld is 8 and the biggest run meld is 7 which feels closer. I don't know if I want to add wild cards into the mix with this option, as player hands will already be 14 cards each which are about the maximum I want to try.