This past week saw 2 tests of my game idea. The first was my regular Thursday games night where we tried the battle mechanic and some of the unit rules as a variant for Risk. The second was on Saturday, the full game with the new board.
Thursday: The Risk variant provided me with quite a few pointers as to what strengths and weaknesses there are in the battle mechanic as it stands. The most glaring problem with the original battle rules is that it makes retreating a bad choice at the best of times. I want both retreat and hold to be equally valid choices. On the strength side I'm happy to say the battle mechanic proved both deep and complex in an almost chess like manner with none of the major upsets that is common to Risk. Two problems I encountered was that it took longer than expected for players to learn/understand the battle mechanic, and no one really got a good hang of what tactics to use (including myself). Only late in the game did we start to use the artillery to add depth to our defences and the cavalry to outmanoeuvre heavy defences. One important point for me to remember in future if I run a similar test: try harder to help all players to formulate valid tactics. Because I was focussing on the rules and what problems and questions might arise I almost won the game. Never win your own game during a test, people will just end-up feeling that you set them up to lose somehow.
Saturday: This test confirmed some suspicions I had but also laid other worries to rest. I was worried that the move to replace cards with tokens might make for more inconvenience during the deployment phase. This was partly true, so I may yet set aside my dislike of cards when I create the final version. In terms of the map I'm inclined to reduce the number of yellow zones and increase the number of blue and green. The automatic defence is proving formidable. You get thrown out of the orange zones very quickly, and forget about getting the red zone. So giving the attacking team more refuges would be good. In general the game design plays neat and tidy. The only exception is in the rules on how launchers engage choppers. Things can get very chaotic once the board fills with units and it can become difficult to track which launchers have taken their turn to fire at choppers.
The feeling of the game is one of hectic action. From this test game so far I have to say there are no obvious tactics. The only guideline I've come up with is that you need to aim for a fine balance. Concentrate your forces too much, and you'll gain a very limited number of zones. On the other hand if you spread out too much your opponent can easily mop up your entire force, although his ability to do so will depend on whether his forces are mobile-centric or firepower-centric.
I was also contemplating to double the zones and make only half of them deployable, in order to try and accentuate the movement limits of units. But for now I'll keep this idea in the back of my mind while I still try to simplify and streamline the existing game.
