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Crystal Heroes - First playtest

Well I took the time to print out and cut 24 (12 x 2) cards and placed them with standard poker cards (as card backs) in plastic sleeves.

Conclusion #1:

Sleeves suck major. Plastic cards will be easier to shuffle and not have extra blank space. This is a worthwhile investment in making PLASTIC cards.

Conclusion #2:

Players need a way to TALLY up score. There are a lot of numbers to calculate and you would need a BLANK card that says "Scoring". Will have to add +1 card to the base set.

Conclusion #3:

The final score was Blue = 33, Red = 20. And this is the difference having EXACTLY the same deck of 12 cards... RPS rules made a difference in that one (1) Red card was slain. Also Blue got +5 VPs for color domination. Otherwise the score would have been 28 to 20.

Conclusion #4:

Round re-shuffle. Need to figure out HOW to order the rounds BETTER. What this means is that from a scoring perspective, the rounds need to be EASY to compute Victory Points (VPs). Will need to playtest more to see how this can be properly ordered.

Conclusion #5:

After one (1) round of playtesting, it is obvious that the game needs tweaking. The strategy used makes a difference - but I'm not too sure HOW. I was playing very strategically with Red and Red lost. Blue was more about playing cards and seeing what happens. Blue WON. Not sure what that has to say about the game...

More playtests and thinking needs to be done!

Cheers all...

Comments

Color coded markers

Oh yes, I forgot one point:

Markers should be color coordinated. So each player should have two (2) markers instead of one. This means when writing on your opponent's cards, you can clearly identify which writing is yours and which is HIS.

With TWO (2) markers, it is guaranteed that BOTH players can have a unique color when writing on the cards.

And yes it's AWESOME to write a BIG "X" when you slay an opponent's Hero! :P

Needs streamlining

Not sure HOW - but the game needs definite streamlining. What do I mean by this? Well it has to do with the fact that scoring and keeping score is not easy... This is why as an Android App, all that would be taken care of and all players need to focus on is playing the best strategy to win the hand/game.

But with cards you need to compute this - and then you need to re-compute this for melee combat - and then you need to re-re-compute this when an assassin kills one unit, etc.

I need to think MORE about how the game should be played. For the moment, I am left with a lingering feeling that the game needs simplification. Just so that computation could be made easier.

The "Active" abilities also tie into this...

More thought needs to be done for this game.

Keep you all posted!

Note: Having TOO MANY exception rules, like "this" and "that" BUT "only if", etc. It doesn't help at all. Passive + active abilities also lead to more confusion. Still need to ponder more about the rounds and how they could be more "direct" and less arbitrary.

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blog | by Dr. Radut