EvenOdd Shedder Dev Journey & Test 11-1-22

I'm backburning the name "Odd Ducks" at this point, the original idea that odd value cards were special for stocks doesn't make sense right now, so the working title has become EvenOdd.

Development Journey!

After writing my last post, I spent hours tweaking and thinking about this game and went on a couple of development journeys before arriving at the game I tested today.

BIDDING

The same night I wrote the last post, I later realized that I could do away with the "shed-out bonus" cards and instead replaced them with a bidding phase after cards were dealt. The deck is made up of cards from 1-7, so I gave players 14 card hands, and we simultaneously picked one card to bid into the shed-out bonus pool. Just like I mentioned before, the player who bid the lowest card led first, and the player who bid the highest card would gain 2x those points if they shed out first, but instead lost that number of points if they didn't shed out first.

BREAKING TIES

The previous point led me to a problem. With cards valued 1-7, there WILL be tie situations. I decided to add tiebreaker numbers to each card so that they are all unique. This was originally done with dots under the cards like this:

The idea was that if two cards of the same value are bid, then the dots will break the tie to know which is higher or lower. I loved how these cards looked but wasn't sold on how easy they would be to parse.

BOMB BOONDOGGLE

From this point, I fell down a deep "bomb search" rabbit hole. I mentioned in the last post that I was quite interested in finding some way to add bombs to the game to add uncertainty and agency. The idea of a bomb is a meld that can be played outside of the led meld and one that is strictly stronger. I did come up with a great idea, in theory, and it involved finding essentially "straight flushes" inside the deck. If a set of cards had consecutively ascending dots, this would be a bomb with 3 or more, and a run of cards that had identical dots would also be a bomb. I was certainly worried it may be hard to parse these ideas, but figured if the mechanics worked well, then I'd figure out how to show it correctly later. I reached out to a good friend of mine who is far better at math than me, and he graciously built some simulations to determine the odds of finding these types of bombs at various player counts and bomb minimum lengths (3+ or 4+ cards for example). This is a visualization of the bomb types:

The results of my friend's math were quite interesting, but unfortunately, they didn't provide me with any kind of consistency. I was hoping to find a situation where the odds of a bomb with a 3p deck could be similar to that in a 4p deck, and thought I could likely get there by changing the minimum bomb length. In reality, based on my friend's simulation, the closest gap I could get between the 3p and 5p decks was around 20% which is way too big. I don't think the game will feel right if you have a 30% chance to get a bomb with 3p and only a 10% chance with 5p. I was disheartened by the results but also really happy to see them before I invested more time into this idea.

Feeling dejected, I decided I needed to come back to the WHY of this bomb search. This was based on key feedback from playtesters who wanted more agency in the middle of a hand. If someone played 1 & 1, then I wanted there to be the possibility that it wasn't strictly going to win. If there is a chance of bombs, then you may sweat a turn playing 1&1 because a bomb could come in and steal a "guaranteed lead" from you. I thought about this more and realized that bombs aren't the only way to do this...

BREAKING TIES AGAIN

Going off of the previous example of a 1&1 being unbeatable, well, what if they could be beaten by a stronger 1&1 from another player? I already put unique tie-breaker dots on the cards, so why couldn't one 1 card be stronger than another? This felt like a eureka moment, as well as a really head-slapper. Within a minute of this occurring to me, I had it mapped out, I'd use the up/down strength mechanic that is already in the game, and now a 1(2 dots) 1 (5 dots) would beat a 1(3dots) 1(4 dots). Two cards mean lower is stronger, so the 2 dots are stronger than the 3 dots. Sure this means that there will still be strictly "unbeatable" cards in the deck, but these will make non-decision plays far less often than before when you couldn't beat a pair with the same pair. 

I realized that the "dots" on the cards wouldn't lend themselves very well to quickly parsing the strength of one card vs another, so I changed the cards to look like this instead. The deck was identical, it just showed differently.

Playtest! 11-1-22

With these changes in mind, I was itching to actually try them out and see if they would work. 

I was able to get an impromptu playtest tonight with 3 players, and we played through 3 hands. The overall feedback was positive, both of my opponents not only enjoyed the even/odd low/high mechanic, but they also liked the tie-breaking with the second numbers on cards. I was worried this would feel clunky, but surprisingly it felt natural and simply worked well.

The main points of the discussion centered on the bidding part of the game. On the first hand one player bid a 4 and didn't expect that it would be the highest number. This meant they were essentially surprised with a bet, and when they subsequently didn't go out first, they had a strong "feels bad" moment as they lost 4 points. To them, it felt like the game randomly decided they had bet, and they would much prefer to actually make that decision themselves.

The other tester was also not sold on the entire bidding package of the game. I couldn't pull out any specific pain points, so I think it was more of an overall feeling, but it did foster a great conversation and brainstorming session between the three of us. Here are some of the key points discussed as well as how they affect my plans for the next test:

Slow it down

The hands finished surprisingly fast. I liked the quick pace of the game, we easily finished 3 hands in 15 minutes, but it almost felt too fast too me overall. Happening into a 1-7 card straight isn't going to be all that rare with a deck like this, and being able to dump over half your hand in that case, as well as more likely but slightly smaller cases, makes it easier to shed-out. I hate to say it, but I think I'm going to test with a 4 card ceiling next time to try and slow the hand down just a bit. Also, to force players into leading singles more often since they'll hypothetically have more remainders. That last part may not be true since low runs are still possible, but I'm curious to see how the dynamics shift. A 4 card ceiling means there are still 2 odd and 2 even options which feels like it still offers enough good options. Most hands were 4 cards or less anyway. I hate putting in arbitrary feeling limits like this, so I'll likely think on this part quite a bit after more testing.

Nothing for the loser!

It felt a little odd that the last player with cards still got points. With the score setting phase, there are cards equal to the players, so you may get lots of points and never actually shed-out. This led me to explore the idea of removing one of the score cards so that there is no card for the last player, which means they score nothing for that round. They are intended to be shed-out bonuses, so why give it to a player who didn't shed out? This design space got me considering what to do with that last, lowest, score card and this led me directly into...

High revealer bonus instead of bet

The player who revealed the highest card for scoring takes the lowest score card and puts it in front of them as a potential bonus if they go out first. If they do go out first, then they gain that number of points, however, if they don't go out first, then the card is simply discarded with no further effect. This means they won't accidentally find themselves having put their points on the line, but it also means there is an incentive to bid high because it gives the player the potential to gain these bonus points. 

Bring back betting!

The previous idea feels like a relatively tame carrot for one player if they go out first, as well as a tame stick for their opponents to try and deny those bonus points. I don't mind these, but I do love a bet when it comes to shedding games and I want to bring it back. Again, a key piece of feedback was not being forced to bet by the game, so my thought is why not make it optional again. I see two ways of going about this right now, I'm not sure which I prefer:

1. Once all score cards are revealed, and the high player takes the lowest score card as a potential bonus, that high player may choose to "double or nothing" that bonus score card. They do this before the low player leads the first hand. If the bonus card is a low value then that player may feel like they may as well bet, but of course they won't get much benefit either by doubling a small number. If it happens to be a higher value bonus card, then that incentive to try and double it could be interesting. I'm not sure if "double or nothing" is the right call, or if I should make it meaner and go with "double or lose points equal to the bonus". I imagine I'll test the tamer version first.
2. Have all players be able to do a "double or nothing" bet before they play their first card. There could be betting tokens they could take to make it obvious, or they could just call it out like in Tichu. If they do this bet and go out first, then they gain double the points of that score card. If they do not go out first, then they still take the highest score card, but they flip it face down to show they gain no points for it due to busting. This may feel bad, since why work hard for inevitable 0 points, but it does deny those points from opponents, so hopefully they'd still be motivated to go out ASAP. The idea here is that multiple players could bet, which is always a fun time when it happens in other games like Tichu. This could be especially interesting to give multiple players "hail mary" options if they are far behind and want a way to potentially catch up even if they didn't reveal the highest score card for that round.

Oops, I think Odd Ducks is two games.

 Had a great single-hand playtest today, tried a "kitchen sink" game where I threw all the ideas from previous tests together. The stocks were increased, and on every even card, and every odd card changed the stock price of the player who won the trick. It worked well enough, but the stocks we had at the end of the hand felt kind of random and secondary to the decisions we were making. This was also the first test with wild cards (2 per player), and those worked well enough. In the discussion after, the main point was "there was too much going on, lots of good ideas though." I wasn't surprised by this, in a way, this test was me intentionally testing how much I could throw in, and I think it was too much.

2 Weird Things

One note Nick told me kept rattling around in my head ever since: "For a card game like this, I feel like it should only have one weird new thing, not two". I believe he was specifically referencing how this game seemed to not be sure if it is a shedder or a stock-aquisition-based game. But I kept thinking about this and realized that it is already doing 2 weird things, and I think that's been my problem. 

In my first post about Odd Ducks I mentioned that there are 2 gimmicks, and only now am I realizing that trying to marry them together into one game has actually been the real problem.  Gimmick 1 involves the odds-high / evens-low idea, and this absolutely works best in a shed-out focused design. Gimmick 2 involves cards that are stocks tied to players, and this absolutely works best when playing cards is about grabbing NOT about getting the lead and going out.  Several times I've thought about changing gimmick 1 so that you could beat a meld with a larger one (like a triple beating a pair) so that there is extra flexibility to grab stocks, but that just doesn't work at all with the core conceit of the gimmick. I think these gimmicks need to break up.

Gimmick 1 as a game - Odds & Evens Ducks

I think there is an exciting betting/shedding game here, where gimmick 1 is allowed to shine. Here are my thoughts for a test of this as it's own game:

• Deck size is 2 x (1-7) per player so that everyone always has 14 cards and the full deck is always dealt. This means there will be far more duplicates which will allow the "set melds" more space exist in this design
• Keep the initial round bidding that was tested the previous time. Have cards like -1,0,1,2,3,4,5 (super TBD) and players in score order (or maybe reverse score order) choose one card after seeing their hands. 
• The player who selects the lowest will lead first.
• The player who selected the highest bid will double their shed-out bonus if they shed-out first. If they don't, then instead they lose that number of points and give them to the player who did shed-out first.
• I feel like this might need some form of a BOMB so that you aren't guaranteed to win with a single 7 etc. 

Gimmick 2 as a game - Stocky Ducks

This game should be all about having cards you take be stocks and manipulators. I'm not even sure if this should be a climbing game, but one thing I do know is that the card-play aspect needs to be much more flexible (perhaps more like Hachi train) with its card play. I will potentially keep the stock price fluctuation cards and stock cards in the deck idea, I'll need to think about this game much more before I have a coherent idea of how the card play should actually work. 

One strong note I got in both this and the previous test, was that players are interested in changing the values of other players' stocks in addition to their own. I feel like there is something there, but it's not even a shadow of a mechanical idea just yet. 

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. 

Odd Ducks - Where it's at & where it's going

 Odd Ducks Current Ruleset 10-6-22

Components

• 5 x 13 card decks, one per player, with the same layout (colored cards match the player's color)

• ?? x Shed out bonus cards (possible values being something like -2,-1,0,1,2,3,4, etc)

• 5 x Player bidding tokens

Setup

1. For each player in the game, shuffle their player deck together.
2. Deal the entire deck out to the players, they should have 13 card hands.
3. Place Shed-out bonus cards faceup (the number and types are still a big question, discussed later in this post)
4. Give each player a colored bidding token (to help remind everyone who controls which color).

Gameplay

Odd Ducks is a climbing-style shedding game where the strength of melds and point values for cards change from one hand to the next. The object is to play all of your cards while also gaining as many points as you can.

Playing A Hand

The hand is broken up into a number of tricks. In each trick, the starting player will play one meld to the table. Their opponents, in clockwise order, will be able to pass or play onto the current meld in order to take control of the hand. Players may only play onto the current meld if their played cards are stronger than the current meld. Once all players pass back to the last player to play cards, the trick will end and with the last player to play cards being the winner. The trick winner takes all scoring cards (non-white) that were played into the trick and puts them into a face-up scoring area. The white played cards are removed to a face-down discard pile. The previous trick winner will be the starting player for the next trick.

The hand will continue until all but one player has shed out. At this point, the last player with cards must discard their hand and then perform the Shedding Out procedure described below. The hand will now end, and players will score all the cards in their scoring area.

Legal Melds

• 1 or more cards of the same value
• 2 or more cards that are a consecutive run

Meld Strength

• Odd meld size = Higher is stronger
• Even meld size = Lower is stronger

Shedding Out

As soon as a player plays the last card from their hand, they have shed out. They take the highest value available shed-out bonus card, and place it face up in front of them. Once a player has shed-out, they must wait until the end of the hand in order to score the cards in their scoring area.

Scoring

All black cards in a player's scoring area are worth points to them equal to their shed-out bonus value. All cards that match a player color are worth points equal to that matching player's shed-out bonus value for whoever has those cards. Tally these points and then begin the next hand.

Game End

This is completely TBD at the moment.

Odd Ducks - Big Questions

All of my current uncertainty for the game relates to deck construction, scoring, and endgame. So far the actual process of playing cards into a trick seems completely solid, and I haven't made any revisions to that since its conception.

Deck Construction Questions

Currently, the deck is made up of sets of 13 cards (1-13) per player so that it fully deals out exactly 13 random cards to each player. I keep going back and forth about the number of scoring cards in the deck. In the last playtest, there were 2 player scoring cards and 1 neutral (black card that scores for your own shed-out value) card in each set, and it felt like there weren't enough neutrals. Neutral scoring cards seem key because they are the main motivator for a player to try and shed-out before their opponents. I worry having 5 scoring cards per deck could lead to a feeling of "this is too much to score" at the end of a round, but testing is necessary to see how that actually feels. 

Shed-Out Scoring Questions

This is currently the biggest set of questions that I have for the ruleset. In the last playtest the shed-out bonus values started at -1, 0, 1 (it was a 3p game) and we quickly realized these values were simply too low and that the zero value felt kind of boring due to it simply negating so many cards and not allowing for much score movement. We also tested -1, 1, 2 for one hand and this felt MUCH more interesting. 

That being said, one of the key pieces of feedback I got from those playtesters was that it'd be interesting to see those shed-out values change from one hand to the next. A bunch of ideas were thrown out, and none of them have been tested. Below are the ideas I specifically want to test:

• A static set of shed-out values, probably players + 3 options. Before any cards are played from a hand, players (likely in score order) must "bid" by putting a token of their color onto a empty shed-out bonus card. Once all bids are in, the player who bid the lowest (put onto the lowest value card) will be the starting player for the hand. All bidding tokens except for the highest bid are removed back to the players, then remove all non-bid shed-out cards. That highest bid stays on the shed-out bonus card and this becomes a goal for that player. If they shed out first and take the bonus card with their token then they get some big reward (potentially immediate points equal to the value of the bonus card) but if any other player sheds-out first then that player who bid the highest loses some number of points (maybe points equal to the value of the card) as a penalty for bidding so high but not going out first. I want this to be a way for players to show confidence in their hands, and to tempt players to bid up the values with a real downside for bidding too high. I think this could add a Tichu-call-esque vibe to the game but won't know without actually trying it.
• Each player starts the game with a full set of shed-out bonus cards (perhaps in their color?). At the start of each hand, all players simultaneously choose one of their remaining bonus cards and then reveal it. These are put into a scoring supply, in order of the bonus card values, and they become the bonuses that are given as players shed-out that hand. Played shed-out bonus cards are removed from the game after the round, so players have less options as the game goes on. This ties in with endgame questions, because using this the game could simply end after players have used all of their bonus cards. This could also be a way to have players show confidence in their hand, perhaps they throw out their biggest bonus card when they feel really good about a hand etc.
• Have a number or bonus cards equal to twice the player count. At the start of each hand, randomly deal out 2 bonus cards to each player. Everyone simultaneously selects one of these and reveals them. They will be the bonus values for the current round, and when setting up the next round, all of these are shuffled and health out again to the players. This gives players some amount of choice for what cards will be available, but not TOO much choice. I'm not crazy about this idea, but it could be interesting to try.
• Here's the last one, and it's the biggest change. Player card scoring is STATIC during the round, as in you know exactly what the blue scoring cards are worth from the beginning. This is done by having those player color values be set to the shed-out bonus that color got in the previous round or it is set by the overall player scores (highest current score has their stocks worth the most, and so on). In this way players know for sure what all non-neutral scoring cards are worth in the round. With this idea, players wouldn't score any points for their own color scoring cards. So the player who is winning (or just shed-out first last round) will get no points for their highest value bonus, which could offer some interesting rubberbanding to the scores. Also means the person who shed-out last (or is just losing the game) won't be able to take negative points for their player color scoring cards (they could still go negative due to shedding-out last and having neutral cards be worth negative points). I was super in love with this idea when it first came to me, but the more I think about it the more I worry it may simply not be interesting. I do want to test it because it's the biggest scoring change out of all these ideas.

Game End Questions

I currently don't know how the game should end. In one way, this is the most broad set of questions because I don't think I can really figure this out until the numerous scoring questions are locked in. The end game condition could well be wrapped up into them (for example having a diminishing player hand of bonus cards to play). The key thing I want to keep in the game is some form of tension that even the player who is winning (maybe even by a lot) could still technically lose the game before it is over. Because of this, I don't love the idea of playing X number of rounds by itself. I could come around to this as long as there was an alternate condition, perhaps "shooting the moon" type of thing that even a last-place player could do to immediately win. I don't have any other specific ideas here, I don't think it makes sense to focus on these questions until the scoring is more figured out.

Odd Ducks? a quick design diary catching up to the present

I've had a new idea that I am quite excited about, currently called "Odd Ducks." The game originated during a playtest of a friend's game (Shreesh) and has blossomed from there. It started out with a single gimmick and now has two gimmicks, and below is a design diary that brings me to the present. I'll write a second post detailing the rules and options for the game as I currently see it.

Gimmick #1: Odds & Evens for Ups & Downs

This is where the game first started, and it's a straight-up modification of a key part of Shreesh's design. Their game was a dominos shedder that had 1, 2, & 3 card melds (runs and sets), and when the meld was size 1 or 2, the LOWER the card was, the stronger it was. With 3 card melds, the higher the value, the stronger, and that is where their game sits. Days after playtesting, I asked them, "have you tried this with single-value cards instead of dominos? And have you considered what if odd meld sizes are high = strong whereas even meld sizes are low = strong?" Their response was something like, "I haven't tried single-value cards, and the odd/even idea sounds great to me." These ideas didn't really work for their dominos-based shedder, and at that moment, I decided to see if I could design my own game with this as the core principle. 

Through a couple playtests, the following hasn't changed one bit:

Legal Melds

• 1 or more cards of the same value
• 2 or more cards that are a consecutive run

Meld Strength

• Odd meld size = Higher is stronger
• Even meld size = Lower is stronger

The main reason I am really enjoying this gimmick is that it makes high and low values potentially strong. So far, I've found the puzzle of getting through my hands to be fascinating (if not occasionally confusing). 

Gimmick #2: Cards as Stocks

As I continued to mull through Gimmick #1, a concern popped into my head early. What if someone gets really lucky and they simply play all their cards fast? This is a shedding game where playing cards is the key, how do I deal with this? My first answer to this came through the lens of the game Tichu, and that was partnerships. If someone gets a really lucky hand, well maybe their partner didn't, and they have to figure it out as a team. I considered team-based play for a while, but the concern of player count restriction loomed large. This led me to wonder, what about organic teams? Where your partner changes each round. Or what if you can partner with someone who ISN'T partnered back with you? This is where I started to get some traction. 

Quickly the core idea of Gimmick #2 emerged, what if players had one or two cards that were their color, and these cards can be played into tricks and won by various players. Then those cards will be worth points that are variable depending on when the matching player shed out all their cards! 

The first iteration of this idea involved giving each player 2 cards in their color that where faceup on the table, one says "odd" the other says "even" and they are flexible wild cards that must match their restriction when played onto the table. I quickly realized, before playtesting, that this was simply way too powerful and players would likely almost always win a hand with them which means they'd always take their own stocks. 

Just 30 minutes before my first real playtest, I came up with a new idea. Lets make these 2 faceup cards value 7 and 8, respectively. These are the "weakest" values in a deck (at the time the deck was 1-14 x player count) since they are right in the middle and won't be hugely impactful for even or odd sized melds. The first playtest was done using this rule and overall it "worked", though it quickly became obvious that (especially at lower player counts) it was still very easy to toss the 7 and 8 together into a big run that was unlikely to be beaten. We quickly adopted a 4-card meld limit which worked well enough, but I hate arbitrary limits like this and knew I needed to come up with something different.

I spent a bunch of time considering this, briefly thinking about making the player colors the highest and lowest number possible, but the issue of easily winning your own stocks was still around.

Then I had a big new idea: Why not just shuffle the deck together so that you aren't guaranteed to have your own stocks in hand? From this I quickly iterated to adding "black" stocks into the deck that score points for the player based on the point value the player gets for shedding out. So if they are first, their black stocks may be worth 3 points each, but if they are last then their black stocks would be -1 points each, etc. I made the deck smaller, now 1-13, and made the middle card 7's into these black stocks. I the 4s and 10s became player-specific stocks and this is how the game was for the second playtest session.

By and large that session went very well, though the testers did mention an interest in being able to manipulate the shed-out values for the players as well as possibly being able to convey some information about player hand strength earlier in the round to help guide stock-aquisition decisions. 

Since the second playtest I've thought a bunch more and decided I want to try increasing the number of black stocks, from 1 to 3 per player set. I then pushed the player stock values to 3 and 11, and realized all the "power" cards are odd. Thus "Odd Ducks" the name was born, we'll see how long it sticks!

Mutation: More quick notes

 I wanted to get some ideas written down before I forget. I playtested a few times with Anastasia a month and a half ago and just realized I hadn't mentioned it.

The big notes:

1. Playing 2p was awesome, controlling 2 colors. What if you always controlled 2 colors? We tried "Between Two Petri Dishes" at 3p where we each shared 2 colors and it sort of worked. Lots of overlap but I think there is potential there.
2. Removing the assumption that dice MUST always match. We tried a couple of games where dice had to match at least one side instead of all sides and surprisingly it didn't break the game. It made it easier to have "good plays" so we were less often going fishing with bad die rolls to start new things. I'm honestly not sure how I feel about it.

Tricky Stocks, a new idea after a long drought

 First post in 5 years! I recently went to a trick-taking convention, and it got my brain swimming with potential ideas for making my own trick-taking game. I prefer shedding games, but for now, this design really feels better suited for trick-taking.

Tricky Stocks

Starting this off as a "may follow" game where the player who wins the trick will take the winning card as one stock of that color. The player with the weakest played card will choose any remaining card in the played trick to put into the "operations" splay. All other players can "upgrade" one card in their hand, spinning it 180degrees and adding 10 to its value.

The strength of the suits is dictated by the operation track, start with shuffled single cards of each suit and splay them. The current idea is to only use the operations splay to break value ties, so a 7 will always beat a 6.

The current idea is that players start a round with X cards and put one face down in front of them. Then reveal this, and it's each player's initial stock for the round. Once all cards have been played, each player scores for their stocks, with each one being worth points equal to the number of that color in the operations splay.

I'm toying with the idea of having variable values for stocks and operations depending on the upgrade as well as the overall value of the card, but for now, I'm keeping them symmetric.

After scoring, shuffle everything up and do it again, most points after a X turns wins the game?

Seems pretty simple at the moment, but it's a neat place to start, and I'm hoping to test it with someone soon. Currently, it feels like a 3p minimum game due to the "first gets stocks, last runs operations, middle upgrades" structure.

More mutation testable ideas

Dice are now STABLE or UNSTABLE.

no retools on a pair

Pair affects all stable adjacent dice to a players strain that match the pair value.

Mutation modification testing notes.

Quick mutation update ideas before I forget them like last time

STRONG DIE = same level adjacent dice < current level
WEAK DIE = same level adjacent dice >= current level

Only weak dice can be stacked on.
When doubles are rolled, player must remove if possible and it's any birds eye adjacent STRONG die.
May reroll double only if no legal removals.
Don't place a die on a turn when you remove one.
Give removed dice back to opponent
Game over after any player places their last die.

Xenoterra Playtest 1

Last night Jes and I did the first playtest of Xenoterra and it was... interesting. Below are a couple photos of the current state of the game, and then i'll follow with my thoughts and ideas on how things will change.  The rules played were essentially identical to the ideas in the last post, so if you read that then hopefully the card layout makes a bit of sense.

Here is one of the 7 sheets of cards made for this game:

Firstly, these cards were created using my friend Teale's card prototyping software "Nothing Sacred Cards".  His main boardgame design website is NothingSacredGames.com and you can go straight to the download by clicking here. Super powerful program once you wrap your head around it, and Jes came up with the idea to create a Google Doc that will actually generate the code required for the cards straight out of the spreadsheet.  To give you some idea, the actual data that was used to create these cards looked something like this:

This means that balancing and adding new cards is as easy as modifying cells in a spreadsheet or adding new rows.

For this playtest I had created 26 unique cards, and with multiple copies of all of them created a 56 card deck to play through. The player sheets looked like this:

The population cubes went on the left grid, "temporary use" actions like drawing cards and when construction/research completed went into the temporary area and I used 3 D8s in the bottom to show how much of each resource a player had.  The way the temporary actions worked is if a single population was used then it went into the "1 cost" slot.  If three population were used (either for drawing a card, or when a building with 3 stages completed) then one cube was put into each of the boxes for "1 cost", "2 cost", and "3 cost".  Once a turn all the cubes shift once to the left, back towards the grid.  This idea was to show longer term effects of large action use, if you spend 4 actions to do something then it'll take 4 turns to get all of those cubes back.

Here is a photo I took midway through the game:

As you can see, I used my iPad to draw up a quick "capacity" track, turn order circle, and card row action use modifiers.  iPads are useful! Jes trounced me, winning 10 to 6, and it took about half an hour to play.

Playtest Thoughts:

1.  Holy crap is the "Capacity track" fiddly! As a recap, almost every card that can be built has a "-capacity" value and the negative values to the left of the grid of cubes are also negatives to capacity.  Several times during the game we both found that our Capacity track location was wrong because we'd missed a moment to adjust it.  We were having to adjust it about 4 times a turn on average, just terrible! Here is our thinking on it post game:

• We both really liked the moving cubes from the grid and putting them out onto other things.  Having the Population cubes be a somewhat universal resource used to show the time and investment that goes into construction/research was very cool.
• We both really liked the 4 phases to the temporary action track where cubes go after purchasing cards as well as after completing construction/research.  Having the cubes trickle back in was very interesting, and Jes built her engine around getting her cubes to come back faster.  I wish I could say this was why she won, but ultimately I don't think that really affected much.
• Lets just get rid of the "capacity track" all together! It's annoying to keep changing, and just going off of the Population grid is super elegant.  I'm thinking of maybe printing the capacity value directly into each cell of the population grid so with a glance you can tell what your current level is at.
• But what about the capacity use of the constructed buildings? I'm thinking that constructed buildings will permanently keep some number of cubes to show that they are being operated.  This will do just as good of a job at showing capacity use, and it will still be easy to see where you are at compared to everyone else.

2.  Resource gathering needs to be more effective.  Halfway through the game we changed the rule to "just take all the resources that you have unlocked" away from "take all of one resource on the card".  It's far more satisfying to take several types of resources and it makes the decision of which resource card to take way more interesting.

3. "Playing a card" as an action was just boring and felt like a waste of a turn. Very early in the game we changed it so that the moment a card is bought from the row, it comes into play on it's side to show that it isn't built yet.  

4. Going along with #3, this vastly changed how the "Action" cards worked.  Since we eliminated the idea of a "hand" very early on, the actions immediately came into effect when used.  I didn't hate this idea, in fact it got me thinking about a total overhaul of the "action" cards in general.  

• They need to have resources on the bottom of them, that was an idea to make the card row go fast and it simply went TOO fast since they all got discarded after pretty much every turn and there was little future planning.
• "Action" cards were only called that because i've played Through the Ages a ton of times.  The way they worked felt far more like an event, so i'm going to change them to "Event" cards and also tweak how they play to more accurately feel like events.  
• One thought I have for this is perhaps every event gets "Triggered" when it hits the end of the card row if no one drafted it.  This trigger can be positive or negative, but it's always global and hits all players.  This could cause an incentive to draft an event before it helps your opponent, or NOT draft an event because it'll hurt you both but may hurt opponents more.  I have always liked "events" in games, but always hated it when they are unplannable.  Nations did a good job with this in giving you a full turn to plan for the event, and this idea would give players a similar amount of time and options to deal with it.

5.  Buildings and Technology are too similar.  Some thoughts Jes and I had on changing this are:

• Perhaps buildings require more resources but less time, and technology requires zero or very few resources but far more time.  This was prevalent in the current test of the game, but not different enough.  On average buildings had about 4 levels and technology had 6.  I am thinking the averages should probably be more like 2 and 4.  
• Technology levels will perhaps use two population cubes a level to show the manpower of research, but no resources.  This means that researching will take a heavy capacity toll, but allow your resource engine to keep rolling to build buildings. It's a thought i'll give a try to.

6.  There were no interesting late game options.  It was obvious the game was a couple turns from ending and every building and technology took at least 4 steps to complete.  I'm going to work on reducing the steps as I mentioned in #5, but I feel like there needs to be other Victory point options late game.  No solid other ideas on this currently.

In Conclusion

The game was surprisingly and thankfully very "light" at this moment.  I am NOT trying to create the next brain burning 3 hour beast here, so the fact that AP was minimal and turns went quick in the first game is a victory in my opinion.  The playtest went very well overall in that I found myself hating how the game was actually being played, but loving several of the smaller mechanics and wishing they were more prominently working together.  Not bad at all for a first playthrough!  I'll be trying to impliment many of these changes over the next week to keep the ball rolling on this potentially very interesting game.  

Working title: Xenoterra

New game idea, the main mechanic has been stewing around my head for about a month now. Finally brain designed it far enough that I need to write this down and hopefully start really working on a prototype.

Overview:

1. Euro style civ / engine building game. 
2. Set on foreign planet in the future, humans land from different ships escaping from a dying earth. 
3. Lots of indirect conflict though diminishing opportunity selections, currently zero direct conflict and I hope to keep it that way. 
4. Best civ once all the cards have been drawn wins. 

Mechanisms:

On a players turn they can take one of three actions before always doing an upkeep:

1. Draw a card (or cards depending on their engine)
2. Play a card (or cards depending on their engine)
3. Discard a resource card on that turns location and take the appropriate resources. 

During upkeep the players will:

1. Gain or lose resources based on the Fatigue track, as well as from buildings and technology the player has researched
2. Freely add one (or more based on their engine) level to each active technology or construction cards as long as the appropriate costs can be fulfilled. 

Each card has four sections to it:

1. Name of the technology, building, or special action. 
2. Victory point value for completing the card.
3. Construction/Research track showing the levels and costs in actions and resources to complete the card.
4. Details of the technology, building, or special action. 
5. A set of resources, always having a number of ore and then a variety of two or three other specialized resources. 

Each player has a player board which let's them track:

1. Population cubes set in a tiered grid with the longest row on top and the lowest row near the bottom. Each spot along the rows has a population cube on it, and each row has a negative effect to fatigue on it based on how far down it is. First row is -1 per cube, second is -2 etc.
2. A zone to put population cubes that have been short term spent and will come back on the following turn.  Cubes will go here from drawing cards as well as completing construction/research.
3. three locations where resource dice will be placed, associated with the three resources in the game. Players will set the dice to equal their current amount that they have. Currently thinking they will be d10s.

Central Card row and Resource zone

1. Cards will feed out onto a sliding row with population cube costs associated with them.  The oldest cards will have the lowest population cube cost and the newest card will have the highest cost.
2. When a round is over, the oldest cards will slide off the track and into the resource zone.  In this zone the cards are rotated so that their resources are on the top instead of the bottom, and they now become available only to be taken as the "gather resource action".  The rest of the card is unused from now on and the card is discarded when a player uses it to gather.

Fatigue Track

1. A central theme of this game is that the more you are able to do, the more fatigued the player's population is going to be and this will set you back.  Almost every building made and most technologies will come with a negative impact on the player's fatigue level.  
2. The fatigue level directly correlates with turn order, so the less fatigued a player is, the earlier in turn order they will be able to play.  
3. There will also be resource and other penalties associated with dipping very far down the fatigue track.  This is to stall out run away leaders, since the better a player is doing the farther back in player order they will most likely be.

Turn order Rondel

1. This will be a Rondel with 8 or so slots in it.
2. Each player will have a piece associated with them on the rondel, no slot will ever have more then one player piece.
3. When establishing turn order, players will look to the fatigue track and start "leap frogging" their pieces to the very front of the rondel.  They will start with the player with the lowest fatigue.
4. If two players have equal fatigue then it is the player whose piece that was farther forward on the Rondel which leap frogs first.  This means that players with equal fatigue will alternate who goes first between them each turn for as long as they are on the same fatigue level.

That's a pretty good summary of where I'm at currently.  It feels good to have it written down, though I doubt it'll make much sense to someone reading it cold. I started writing this a week ago and have already revised this document significantly.

Mutation: starting to tighten this thing up

I had a couple productive playtests of Mutation yesterday, below is the feedback I received:

• Change removal rule to "Remove, then place. You can't place where you removed".  This is a far more elegant and simple rule to explain over the "only remove when adjacent to a chain of at least 2 dice" rule i've used for years.
• Variable end game condition, most likely first to 10 (value to be tested) or largest strain after 20 turns.
• Test a partner variant where you work together and win as a team when one of you has the longest strain.
• Work on 2 player game more.  
• Perhaps both players play two colors in much the same way a partnership game would play out.  
• Perhaps you roll four dice at a time (2 of each color) and place both on your turn.
• Asymmetric 2 player mode, one player is the bacteria and the other is an immune system or antibiotic fighting back. 
• Players have different actions available to them, bacteria spreads fast but the opponent is "Stronger" somehow.
• Tested some cardplay options. Nothing has really clicked yet, though I like the idea of a variant that uses card play to slightly modify dice and perhaps restrict double total numbers. 
• Tried 6 cards, one of each value, and you can spend them to induce a double or break the level 1 adjacency rule.
• Issues here are how it can slow down the game and potentially have odd stalemate moments where the first to spend the card will surely lose becasue the opponent can spend theres to come back and then both will lack the card and the second player will have the desired board position.

General consensus is that I DO have something here and it is close to done.  I just need to tighten up some of the rules, and increase the possible variant options to add value to the overall game.  There was also a feeling from everyone that Mutation isn't necessarily detracted by being a pure dice game.  I don't want potential customers to be turned off by the apparent lack of proprietary content.

More Mutation Musings

I tried a couple things out. Want to get some stuff down in writing.

Rolling 2 dice, using on on the board and one into the mutation pool seems interesting so far.

I tried a scenario where leveling up cost mutation points equal to the level attained.  Also you needed to roll a die pip that matches something in your pool to go up level.  If you miss then by definition you can add another die to your mutation pool and become even more likely next turn to level.  I put in an added "you can immediately legally place a number of die from your mutation pool equal to the Mutation Pool value - New Level attained" i order to try and mitigate getting behind from a bad roll not letting you level up at your first opportunity.  This seemed cool, but other players who DID get it on their first turn had a permanent lead on that unfortunate player and it wasn't good enough.

This led me to thinking about some sort of penalty for stacking, for instance paying a mutation point, but i'm worried that could really slow the game down. I am also thinking about possibly aiding the stacked player in some way, but "giving them a mutation point" seems odd and what value would it be set to? Perhaps they just roll X additional dice on their next turn where X equals the number of stacked die they had between turns.

A different Idea involves the Mutation pool collecting sets of dice with certain values.  For instance maybe you have to cash in X doubles from the mutation pool where X is equal to the new level.  This may have a bad effect of spreading out who has leveled based on luck even more.

Or perhaps you can always stack, but your level gives you a discount on mutation points for payment of the stacking?

Mutation Musings

This game is cool, it's just too simple. Thoughts:

• Have a pool where you can put dice to show your "mutation points".  Spend mutation points to level up your organism as a whole. You can't have two dice with the same value in the mutation point pool.
• Three overall levels for the organism.  The game always has the same 3 level up bonuses and then 3 random ones that are associated with each.  The 3 main ones are:
• Level 1 - No stacking (starting point)
• Level 2 - Can stack up to total height of 2
• Level 3 - Can Stack up to total height of 3
• "Random bonuses" are a stack of cards, three are dealt out at the start of the game randomly, they are associated with the three levels.  This means from the beginning of the game everyone will have a bonus that will likely differ from previous starting settings making each game start off feeling different.
• Take out "doubles = removal", they simply allow a reroll
• Possibly spend Mutation points (maybe die needs to match?) to do a standard removal action.
• Variable game end conditon, not sure what this is yet.

New Project: Slaughternight FEVER

What is it?
This new project is a big attempt by me to create a deck building, character leveling, fast paced action game with variable player powers and lots of ridiculousness.  The game is currently themed as a future dystopian death pit game show where each player must kill off waves of various enemies and they get points according to how well and flashy they do it.

The Deck
The backbone of the system is deck building, which isn't anything new but I feel will work well for this theme.  Your deck is your carrying capacity as well as all your available skills.  You still pull some items out and equip them, thus taking them out of the deck pool.  So if you start taking on too many items/weapons/misc then your deck will start to get sluggish due to being overburdened.  In addition to this, you will take wounds as negative cards right into your deck so they will also slow down how well you can do things in the arena by clogging your hand.

The most interesting mechanic i've come up with so far is a way to have a feeling of randomness in combat while completely eliminating dice from the equation.  I want this randomness to be controllable by the player, and this mechanic resolved itself into "combat stats" on every single card that can be put into your deck.  They are three modifiers which lie on the bottom of the card, as seen on an example card below:

So whenever you make an attack, you figure out what your current attack power is (explosion symbol) and if you have the correct range to the target.  Then you do your "combat draw" which is simply drawing the top card from your deck and using ONLY these modifiers on the bottom of the card to see if you did enough damage or even hit the target.  With melee attacks you effectively always "hit" the target, but you might not do enough damage to overcome their defense.  With ranged weapons you have to have the range equal the distance away.  So you might have been 3 spaces away from the target with a range of 4, and missed because you pulled this card as your combat draw making your range actually 2 and therefor not enough.  

This is important because you for the most part have total control over what cards go into your deck, so you KNOW if you are putting crappy range modifiers into your deck, but this might be good enough because you need the extra defense modifier for when you are attacked...or you just love the idea of that +2 to your damage when you draw the card.  You don't need to worry about accidentally rolling low on a bunch of dice and feeling like you eventually lost the game due to bad luck.  Sure there is the luck of the draw, but you have the burden of making sure your deck isn't going to backfire on you.

The leveling

The next idea is actually taken from one of my first game development projects "Reliquary".  Its the idea of having a skill upgrade map that you move around in order to modify your base skills.  The original idea came from the video game Final Fantasy X.  Below is the current layout for the character sheet:

As you can see, you start in the center of the hex grid map, and as you level up you can increase various mixes of the three main attributes. The exact mechanics for how you move around is still being worked on.

The Arena

Lastly we have the playing arena where this game takes place.  Eventually I want it to be modular, but for now its the grid you see below with various white hex shapes to create obstacles:

The idea is that each player "controls" one type of enemy mob.  They don't actually dictate where they go, but these mobs only move on that players turn much like Castle Ravenloft.  In addition to this, that player has a responsibility to kill more of "their" mobs then others by way of a bonus point system.  If they kill more of that mob then anyone else then they get X bonus points but if someone else beats them in the kill count then they LOSE X bonus points.  This is currently the only real player interaction in the game, just denying the other players their bonus points. 

This photo was taken during the half hour first ever prototype game I played with Owen tonight.  It turned out to be way too hard for the players, and we were swiftly overwhelmed by hobbits and killbots (awesome mobs, I know).  This playtest illustrated that I have not given the players enough room to DO stuff on their turns.  I'll be modifying many of the base cards for the next play test, mostly consisting of adding in action chains so that after you play a card like "run" you can get another action back to do something instead of using most of your turn just to try and reposition yourself.

This game is about SLAUGHTER after all, gotta emphasize the action!  I know I have been somewhat light on actual mechanics so far in this post, but that is mostly due to them being very preliminary so far.  Hopefully i'll get some more work done on this as the month progresses and I can get more specific info up for you guys :)

Nanogrid 3.0

Really? another massive revision?

Well, sort of. I knew I loved the card play mechanic that was introduced in the last post but I also went abit crazy trying to figure out how to balance it so it wasn't so easily breakable. Mak, in our test game, proved he could just horde replicates and dominate with a win as soon as he was within boosted replication reach of his end goal. In addition to this, I had "boring turn" syndrome where energizing was simply not "cool" and it took your entire turn. I always did like it when you got to do two things on your turn.

which led me to the following revalation: By placing a card onto the public tableau, and then bringing a different card back into my hand I am in essence choosing TWO different actions. What if you perform the action of the card you play as well as the card you pick up all in the same turn? And in the order you choose? Holy crap that sounds interesting! I honestly had this idea very shortly after the last play test, but I didn't get around to trying it until about a week ago.

Why'd it take so long to try this?

My frustration with other parts of the game honestly kept me away for a while. It wasn't until a week ago that I had the second big idea that I got myself in gear and built it out into a new prototype: What if your cubes on the board can move? Not only that, what if they don't actually hold a value at all... they are simply movable playing pieces? Now I don't have to get my brain hurting with transfer distances, and swimming my eyes over a sea of pips on top of crazy connecting lines. PLUS it gives me a great excuse to use all those blank dice I purchased over a year ago!

After one quick playtest with movable cubes and the new two for one action mechanism I knew I was ready to try it with my friends. Below is a picture of the end of the first game with others. It might not be obvious on first glance, but yellow won the game by getting to the 6th green upgrade (he forgot to push up the skill since it was inevitable so everyone forfeited their turns).

This game was played with Geoff, Evan, and Erick and it was really interesting.  Firstly, they all said they not only enjoyed it but want to be a part of future tests.  As a designer there really isn't a better compliment then that.  There were definitely problems still however, most notably bieng the ability for one or two people to totally lock down the movement of pieces...which can completely nullify other peoples turns since they can't actually DO anything.

So a significant amount of brainstorming with everyone went into how to force people to actually play the cards in their hands instead of hoarding all the replicates while everyone else stagnates.  My solution for this so far has been to make the Primary (playing card down) action and the secondary (picking card up) actions more and more different.  In some cases like replication I am trying to make it actually slightly painful to pick up so that you can't just easily grab them to screw everyone else.  I want you to still be able to block in this way, but it has to hurt a bit.  I added a "spend energy to move a cube" action to the energize role as well in order to get more moving going on the board.

A second playtest happened two nights later and it was also very successful.  This time one big issue was that I reduced energy input far too much and we all hit a drought of energy which we couldn't get out of.  We house ruled it halfway through the game to keep going, but this lead to a great train of conversation on how small changes in one portion of this game can trickle through several other mechanics.

I am happy to say that at this point I feel I am finally out of the "innovate" phase of this game and now into the "balancing" phase.  I feel the card play mechanic is interesting and enjoyable, and now am going to be striving to get all these moving pieces to work smoother together.  I expect numerous small revisions in the next couple months as I tweek it, but its definitely going places.  

Nanogrid 2.0

After over a month of taking a brain break from Nanogrid development I have jumped back in. The issue I was running into was that the game was really just an interesting area control mechanic. So it wasn't FUN, just pretty. My previous couple posts were ways to make it more strategic but they all fell flat when I tested it with myself, thus me taking a break to distance myself from the game for clarity.

Nanogrid 2.0
The nitty gritty of the issues Nanogrid had was that it was for the most part multiplayer solitaire where each turn almost always had an easily deduced best outcome and no restrictions on what you could do. A few nights ago I was thinking about ways to restrict the players options on their turn when I came up with what I think is a great card play mechanism. Keep in mind the base game is virtually unchanged in this rev.

Each player always has a hand of 4 cards, and there is always a community pool of three cards on the board. There are 4 different card types, one for each of the actions possible (energize, transfer, replicate, place tile). A player can only do an action that they have in their hand at the beginning of their turn, and when they play that card it goes into the communal pool where they then take a different card out and put that into their hand for later. In this way you have the strategic implications of doing what you want to do now but not wanting to feed your left hand opponent exactly what they need. Added onto that, you are thinking about what you will be wanting to do NEXT turn, and that will influence what cards you bring back up from the public pool. Awesome.

I added onto this the ability to play 2 cards of the same color at once into the pool. This "boosts" that action, which lets you execute that action as if you had the next upgrade level already (ex .Your table says you energize for 3 pips, but you do a boosted energize so you actually add 4 pips to your dice). I also had a special combo of one transfer card and one replicate card, in order to do a replication one farther away then you are currently allowed.

I also changed the end game condition. Getting all your dice out just turned the game into a race, and that never felt right to me. Now the end game condition is tied directly in with the skill table. You win immediately if you either get your 6th upgrade of one color, or have all three color skills up to the 4th skill level at least.

The last significant change was eliminating the "hostile replication" and I attached the combat aspect of the game to the Transfer action. Now you transfer energy into an opponent, and they loose pips according to a simple difference between each of your Transfer skill levels. So if I have a transfer skill of 3 and my opponent has a skill of 4, then its a 1:1+1 situation and so my one pip of power kills 2 pips of theirs. This is meant to be a "beat up on the leader" mechanic, so the player with the lesser transfer skill actually gets the upper hand.

Playtest with people
Below is the end of the first game played with others.

Yellow : Mac
Red : Brad
Blue : Paula
Green : Me



Paula won by grabbing 6 of the green Transfer skill, it was getting close. I was one orange Energize upgrade from winning in the previous round but this was too much of a threat and Mac destroyed three of my dice with one transfer action, ouch!

One thing I really liked is that in order for Paula to win, she NEEDED to have 2 replicate cards so that she could "boost" the replication and lay down two dice. Since we can't see her hand, we didn't have one of those annoying end game situations where you can say for sure "Paula will win this turn guys". You can just say "she MIGHT be able to, depending on how she has built her hand". Plus no one noticed anyway, she was sneaky :P

Conclusions
Everyone enjoyed it, but I feel that the game went a little longer then it should have. It lasted abit over 2 hours. Here is a list of the input I got:

1. Energize is too slow and uninteresting, do something to increase the energy flow into your system
2. Having an end condition based on the number of energize locations you control would be cool
3. Transfer rate is perhaps too easy to get to ridiculously high numbers
4. Mac commented on the card mechanic being "rondel-like", and I see where he is coming from and don't have a problem with this.

So i'll be adding a new end game condition and probably changing energize to add that number of pips to more then one energize so you essentially get a 2x multiplier on your energize when you expand into more energize locations. Perhaps overkill? Only testing will find out.

I think i'm going to modify the Transfer skill tree as well, make it have a little slower of an escalation into huge transfer numbers.

All in all a great success, you all will hopefully be seeing me carrying this around and trying to get you to test it more often :)

Bitchin Hub Idea

NOTE: I haven't playtested ANY of this yet. But i've been crunching the "Hubs" idea for over a day and already I had some issues with it:

- Why wouldn't players just wait until the last second to build all three hubs? I.e. leave the third slot open but fully protected so that they can just replicate in at the end and grab all three. What incentivizes them into building them earlier?

- The skill block off was a good idea for this, but didn't make sense due to the last tier always bieng unavailable since the game ends when the third hub goes down.

Now i'll admit that i've been looking for a way to get neutral dice into the mix for a couple weeks. It hit me this morning, you have to actually BUILD the hubs. It takes a while, it takes a good chunk of energy over a few turns, and it is neutral until it is completed. So the idea is you start building a Hub and it is a 1 pip white die in the center. So as it is built it is essentially up for grabs, and someone can swoop in and possibly knock you out of position and take over where you left off.

The details of all this are still knocking around my head, I probably won't know exactly what set i'll use probably until I sit down at the first play test. But I like this idea a lot. Thinking about going with 2 hubs for end game in this case due to the game possibly dragging. Regardless, I am pretty sure this is how the next playtest will be tried!

Nanogrid: Build Hubs?

I'm pretty zonked, so this will be more of a brain dump for me to expound upon later.

Current issues:
1. Too easy for a player to call themselves off to the point of no one being able to ever get to them.

2. I am not happy with the current attack system. It is ineligant and crude, but I don't have anything better so i'll stick with it for now. It is definitely on the short list of needing some serious brain storming. I have even pondered bringing in dice roll based attacks, but i'm not sure if i want that much randomness in THIS game.

3. Feels too one dimensional to me. I don't really like the end condition and how the last couple turns seem to play out in a slow bleeding way until one person barely out produces everyone else. I feel like the game is currently a good foundation that needs something built on top of it.

What i've done to work on these issues tonight:

1. New winning condition idea formulated: First player to construct three Nano-hubs wins. A Hub is instantly created when a player has a die of their color in all three dice locations on a single hex tile. They then pull a glass bead from their player sheet and place it on the center of the tile.

2. These glass beads will restrict how deep a player can go into their tech paths. So by placing them on the board it will allow a player to access the higher value skill upgrades due to that location bieng freed up.

3. Maybe when an opponent breaks one of these sets of three dice, the hub is de activated and returns to the corresponding players sheet? I want to make this very lucrative to the attacker...maybe they get a full second turn if they pull this off?

4. Pulled out 5 of the 9 patterns due to them bieng problamatic to the new end game solution. Built 5 new ones that are slightly more conducive to making connections, yet made sure that no tile has all three locations actually connected. Hopefully this will make walling off somewhat harder, playtesting will hopefully tell me more.

None of these have been tested at all yet, hopefully will be soon.

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 :)