New Design - Playtest #2

So the second playtest of the game was completed on Friday.  I had made many changes since version 0.0.1, and I believe that most of them were very successful. 

The event deck certainly helped by added a surprise at various points in the game.  This kept all of us on our toes, especially since we pretty much had all of the bad events, and only 1 or 2 of the good ones. 

I made changes to the card costs in Year 1.  This was done after number crunching revealed that the average cost/worker of the Year 1 cards was much higher than the costs for the other 2 years.  This change allowed everyone to have plenty of resources available when Year 2 began, instead of half the people needing to discard the first card of the year. 

The new resource boards proved mostly successful.  The common resource board was great, but needs to be a little larger.  The individual resource boards, however, were both too small and did allow for some players to accurately show how much gold they had.

The change in how much food to feed citizens each year definitely helped at more emphasis to gathering food without making it appear too cumbersome.  I feel that this will not be changed anymore, just tweaking buildings on how much food can be purchased.

Now onto the actual playtest.  The game was 3 players (both did not play the first playtest), so a good test for how I divided the cards (since I believe the game works best with 2, 4, or 6) due to the card distributions).  Each player attempted a different strategy:
Player 1: maximize citizens and stockpile resources
Player 2: build a gold -> VP engine and run it a lot
Player 3 (Me): Have buildings that allow resource swaps prior to building to minimize having to discard cards

During the game, it became apparent that Player 1's strategy was very strong.  He was able to amass over 30 wood and use that to build most of his Year 3 buildings, which allowed him to perform more Upgrades and build the higher reward buildings as well.  He was able to cover the food expenses by having 2 buildings from Year 1 that allowed him to purchase 4 food for 1 gold.

At the end, the final score was:
Player 1: 88
Player 2: 81
Player 3: 73

Still a close game, but still some balance issues to work on.

Here's a picture of the end of game state:

End state of playtest #2

Based on this playthrough, here are my thoughts on what to do next:
1) Change some building abilities.  Specifically, only allow trade of 1 gold for 3 food to attempt to weaken the maximum citizen strategy.  Also change how much extra gold can be received due to the Gold Mill and Assay Office (there is too much gold in each player's control at the end of the game).
2) Change most of the Synergy abilities to replace the default building ability instead of adding a new ability (but only when both abilities are similar)
3) Add more clarity to the individual resource boards.  If possible, also include some common rules clarifications if space allows.
4) Tweak some of the Event cards.
5) Tweak the player boards to look more like the layout of an old west town.

Overall, I think the changes made for Version 0.0.2 were a big step in the right direction.  I really like where this is going, but am starting to worry that these 2 good plays are masking some big issue that has not been discovered yet.  But I will not let those fears stop me.  On to Version 0.0.3, hopefully to be ready for 12/14!

New Design - Quick Update

A quick update on my game:

Here are the changes that have been made so far:
 - I have created resource boards both for the players and the resource locations.  This eliminates the need for a LOT of resource tokens
- The wording on a few cards have been changed to avoid confusion.
- Some building costs and abilities have changed slightly
- At the end of each year, players must now pay 2 food for each citizen instead of 1.  To help for the first year, each player starts the game with 1 gold in addition to what they choose at the beginning.
- Created a player guide for turn order.
- Revised the available resources in the resource locations

Here's the To Do list:
- Event cards
- Event card rules
- Print all the changes
- More testing

My next chance for a play test is next Friday.  I believe I can get the To Do list completed by then, but we'll see.

Board Game YouTube Channels I Frequent

Just one more quick post for today.  Just in case anyone is interested in learning more about board games in general, here are the YouTube channels I subscribe to:

The Dice Tower - Provides a lot of quick overview and reviews of all kinds of board games
Undead Viking Videos - Similar to The Dice Tower, but goes more in depth for the overviews
Rahdo Runs Through - Provides 2 player runthroughs of board games
Watch It Played - Also provides runthroughs of board games, but are either 2 or 3 players depending on if both of Rodney's children join in
MiWi's Video Walkthroughs - Also provides runthroughs of board games, but uses varying player counts.
Geek & Sundry - The Tabletop episodes with Wil Wheaton also provides runthroughs of board games with 4 players.

New Game - First Play Test

So the first play test of my game occurred this past Saturday.  Since I had not even tried a run through by myself or with my wife, I was very nervous.  I had no clue how balanced everything was or if any of my crazy ideas even worked together.  Unfortunately for all involved, I was slightly ill prepared, as I had to buy card sleeves on my way to the game day.  This caused me to ask everyone playing to help sleeve the "cards" (paper printouts).  Then I had to take 10 minutes to setup the resources (which are limited based on player count).  Oh yeah, I forgot to put on the cards which year they belonged to, so that took another 15 minutes to get right...  When I finally was explaining the rules, I fumbled through it a bit, but believed I got everything said.

So we started the first year.  I had a plan I wanted to try since I wanted to test a potential corner case, but the way the cards fell, I only partially completed the plan.  Thankfully, each of us tried a (at least) slightly different strategy.  At the end of the game, there was a tie at the top (77).  Last place (me) was at 73.

Edit: I forgot to mention that all players seemed to be very engulfed in the game.  There were a couple times that other people playing a different game were asking how much longer, and they had to ask multiple times to get any response from us.

I could not have asked for a better result!  Asking for comments at the end of each year, no one mentioned any major problems.  At the end of the game, there were some minor issues brought up (card wordings and not enough tense moment), but I was already aware of some of these, and the others are not too difficult to address.  I left the game day extremely proud of what I have accomplished so far!  I thank everyone that played the first game with me, and look forward to more plays with you all and anyone else that wants to try it out!

Edit: Changes I am looking at for the next version include: card wording updates, new method to track resources (both for players and the limited resources available at all locations), and potentially a small deck of event cards that affect all players at the beginning of each year.

New Game Overview

Okay, so it's time to talk a little bit about the game I am designing.  The idea is that players have been provided land by the government in the west (during the Wild West time frame) to build a new settlement/town.  Over the course of the next 3 years, players are constructing buildings and bringing new people to their towns to create the best town in the area.

So on to the game play.  The game is divided into 3 rounds (years).  Each round, players start with a hand of building cards and a number of citizens (determined by year).  For 5 turns (each turn = 2 months), players will pick one of the building cards and then pass the remainder to their neighbor for the next turn.  Players then do 1 of 2 actions with the chosen card: place it into their town to be built, or discard it for a temporary citizen that stays for the remainder of the year.  At this point, players place their citizens into one of a number of locations: resource locations (Forest = wood, Quarry = stone, Gold Mine = gold, Hunter = Food), building cards to be built (each building card requires time to be built in addition to other resource costs), or onto ability spots of already built buildings.  Following worker placement, all workers are resolved, and the turn is completed.  Following the last turn of each year, players are required to feed all of their citizens (including temporary), or lose points.

That is the overview of the game.  If anyone wants more specifics, let me know.  For those who do not live nearby that are interested in playing the game, also let me know, so that I can send you a print and play version when I get a few more things nailed down (hopefully not too long after the new year begins).

New Game Design

So for those that do not know the type of board games that interest me, I am a big fan an euro-style board games.  My favorite sub-type of euros are worker placement games.  However, one of my favorite board games is 7 Wonders, which uses card drafting as its main feature, and no worker placement.  At one of the game nights I frequent, someone had mentioned that there were not many games similar to 7 Wonders.  This statement stuck with me for a couple weeks, which led to an idea for a card drafting game.

I will add posts soon to describe the game and the first playtest game.  What I will say about the game is that it is a combination of card drafting and worker placement.  The game has been playtested once (4 players) with no major issues, only minor problems and thoughts on things to add.  I will make some of the changes and additions suggested, and hope to have version 0.0.2 ready for the next test in a couple weeks.