Needed: Playtesters for Tempest

What kind of game is it?

I began a 2-player game with my brother, but we had some major rules questions so we weren’t able to finish, because we weren’t sure if we were playing the game as it was meant to be played.

I’ll go through the instructions and write any questions or observations.

Theme: I noticed that you didn’t include the thematic synopsis that you posted on the message boards. I think you should include it in the rules, because it really enriches the game and makes everything make sense. If someone else, who hadn’t read the post you made on the theme of the game, read the rules as they are, they might not know what was going on and the game would lose something, especially because it is a playtest version with no cool art or cool bits.

Colors & Starting Locations: We found that, because of the Harvesters, it was necessary to mark our starting locations. Perhaps there should be a piece (like a ‘home base’) in each color to mark this. Or perhaps a Base Tile that replaces the Land tile you place it over.

Components List: should include Storm Tiles and a Standard Deck of 52 Playing Cards (I assume it’s a standard 52 card deck, since you didn’t say otherwise).

Distribute Cards: An observation - with a 52 card deck and 4 players, the game will start with only 12 cards in the draw pile, so I imagine the game will be over very quickly. My brother suggested that perhaps the end game conditions should be a reshuffling of the deck = to the number of players (i.e. in a 3 player game, the game ends after the deck is reshuffled for the 3rd time; in a 4 player game, it ends after the 4th time.) Of course, we only played a 2-player game, so we can’t say anything about this for sure, it’s just an idea.

Turn Actions: You didn’t specify, but I assumed that one player would take all 5 turn actions, then his turn would be over. Then the next player would take all 5 turn actions, and so on… As opposed to each player taking action 1 in clockwise order (draw cards), then each player taking action 2 (building units), and so on. Please correct me if I assumed incorrectly.

Robots: Should be called ‘Mechs’

Harvester: Several questions here.
1: Can a Harvester only hold Metal or Toxic Waste at the same time, but not both?

2: Does a Harvester have to end his movement on a resource space to pick it up?

3: Does a Harvester have to end his movement on your starting tile to drop it off?

4: What if my starting tile is attacked and becomes Toxic Waste? Can I just leave a Harvester there and automatically pick 2 Toxic Waste up every turn?

5: We found that, with many Harvesters on the board, it was impossible to remember what type of resource each one was carrying. I imagine if the final product had miniatures, the Harvester miniature could have a small ‘tray’ where, when you picked up a resource, you could put it in the tray. However, we used d6s, where 1=carrying nothing, 3=carrying metal, and 6=carrying Toxic Waste.

Move Units: You said it under the ‘Storms’ section, but you didn’t say it here: I assume units cannot move diagonally.

Move/Place Storms:
1: I didn’t understand the first sentence within the rules of the game: “Each player can place 1 storm down on that particular storm’s coordinates.” There are no other instances of ‘coordinates’, so I assumed that they could be placed anywhere.

2: Can a player move a Storm placed by his opponent?

3: The rules say that storms end after 3, 4, or 5 moves, but the storm tiles say they end after 3, 4, or 5 rounds. Which is correct?

4: Rain Storm – in the rules, the duration for this storm is 3, but on the Rain Storm tile it says 4. Which is correct?

5: Rain Storm – when a tile is turned into a water space, do all units on that space die?

6: It would be very nice if there was some way to track a storm’s duration.

Attacking: -Carry-Out: When an Ace is played, I assume it is the Ace-player’s choice as to which of his opponent’s cards is discarded, but it is not specified who’s choice it is.

Does a Land tile still become a Toxic Waste tile even if the Defender won the battle? Or if there is a tie?
Can you attack an empty Land space simply to turn it into a Toxic Waste Tile?
Can a Player’s Base tile become Toxic Waste?

Winning: Like I said, we didn’t play a full game, so I can’t really say how the scoring worked out. However we did notice that the last scoring condition, ’10 points for having 25 of any unit (cyborgs or mechs) on the board’ is not possible because each player only has 12 cyborgs and 12 mechs, allowing a max of 24.

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Despite all the rules questions, I like the feel of the game. I like the card-based combat system, and as you say it is a light and easy to understand wargame. If you can answer my questions, I would be happy to playtest again. I can probably get a 3 or 4 player game together on Wednesday (tomorrow), otherwise I'll probably play with 2 again.

Since you didn't specify, and because we didn't play a full game, I refrained from offering any 'ideas' for things that could be added or changed, I simply pointed out rules questions, etc. that we had. If you want me to include any ideas, let me know and I will include them after the next playtest.

Cheers,
Tim Davis

Sorry about the delay but I couldn’t get anyone together until yesterday. Again, we set up for a two-player game.

SCORING & GAME END:
We thought that the scoring seemed kind of arbitrary and didn’t really fit with the theme. This may be the scoring you based the game around, but I’ll offer what we thought could work. As scoring determines gameplay, we thought it would make for a more interesting game if you got points for what resources you had at the end of the game, in addition to points for each unit (maybe units would be worth ½ of what they originally cost, i.e. a Harvester would be worth 4 points because it costs 8). This would add more strategic decisions as you try to balance your resource expenditures with your resource income and military strength.

An observation: the game end depends on a lot of combat taking place. What if the people playing are a bunch of pacifists, or don’t like interaction? They can just sit in their corners and build a horde of units, and the game will never end. The obvious answer might be: “these people shouldn’t be playing this game”, but that’s probably not the best one. One idea is that, if a player doesn’t attack on his turn, he instead puts the top card of the deck into the discard pile. This would ensure that the game plays at a steady speed, and it might even encourage combat. If this seems too fast, you could say if no combat occurs during an entire round, then put the top card into the discard, but that would be harder to keep track of.

Also, you should note in the rules what happens when the deck is shuffled for the last time. I.e. do you finish the current turn? The current round?

STORMS:
Overall we like the idea of the storms as they add to the theme of Earth in turmoil. Two of the storms seem unbalanced though, Rain and Thunder.

Rain storms are very flavorful but are ridiculously powerful, especially with the option of dropping one on your opponent’s base 1st turn. Perhaps bases should be immune to storms? I think units should be able to move off of Rain storms (if possible) before they are turned into water, or afterwards on the player’s turn. They would still be powerful because you could still destroy your opponent’s closest resource by turning it into water, and also make him have to build some extra Bridges to get around the water you’re adding.

Thunder Storms aren’t as overpowered, but they are still deadly, seeing as Mech’s are the most powerful unit in the game. Thus they can basically wipe out a player’s entire army in one fell sweep if they are all on the same square. Possible alternatives: make it a set number of Mechs destroyed, like 3, or one half of those present.

BASES:
We think bases should be able to be attacked, just not turned into Toxic Waste. As makes sense, and of course Bases should add to the defense of that space if they are attackable. An easy way to implement this into the game would be to make Base Tiles, the same size of the regular Land tiles. Each player would have one of their color and they would replace the Land tiles that they were placed over. Thus, seeing as they are no longer land tiles, they couldn’t be turned into Toxic Waste if attacked. So a Base could never be destroyed or occupied by an enemy, but could still be attacked.

BOARD PLACEMENT:
On our first game I set up the board in a random square. On the second game, we placed tiles one-by-one as the instructions suggest. We weren’t really happy with the board each time. There should either be restrictions on tile placement (which I’ll go into) or some sort of basic preset based on the number of players (which I’ll also go into).

-Tile replacement restrictions:
One of the main ideas here has to do with water tiles, which in essence form a river. Therefore, water tiles can only be placed next to other water tiles (therefore the first piece placed should be a water tile, but you can never enclose the river (it always has to be on the edge). This would help to more evenly divide the board, it would create an interesting border, and it would make Bridge units more of a necessity.

There are other stipulations we thought could be added, such as two resource tiles (metal and/or toxic waste) should never be placed next to each other. Also, bases should never be placed next to each other.

The point of these rules, or whatever ones you use if any, would be to make a more evenly distributed board.

-Basic Preset based on player #:
We felt that whoever placed their base first after the board was complete often had a major advantage, and that sometimes the 2nd player put his base directly adjacent to the other player’s base, because that’s where all the good stuff on the board was. This may sound like a good way to have lots of conflict, but the problem with it is that the whole rest of the board may never be used throughout the whole game. Thus, perhaps there should be a basic preset, which could go one of two ways.

First, and easiest, is that there could be a number of preset boards for 2, 3 and 4 players that show where each type of tiles go and also where each player’s base goes. Or… the boards could be preset and then players would choose where to place their bases on the board as usual.

Second, and probably more in line with what you were shooting for, is that there is a preset for 2, 3 and 4 players, but it only shows the center of the board and where the bases are placed around the edge of that center, and is only partially complete. So players would set-up that preset center and place their bases where indicated, and then place the remaining tiles one-by-one as indicated in the instructions.

Both of these methods could ensure that each player had equal starting grounds based on the tiles in the preset.

Another Possible Option
This would have to be playtested, but I think it would make for some interesting decisions and it sounds pretty simple. The idea is that, if you use Base Tiles, players don't choose where they start, they insert their base tiles into the random stack of tiles at the beginning of the game during board creation, and when someone draws their base tile, that someone places it like any other tile onto the map.

BUILDING UNITS:
It seemed sort of silly to us that you could build a unit anywhere on the map on any Land tile. It seems more logical that units should only sprout from your Base.

CARDS IN HAND:
My brother thought it would be a good idea if, at the end of your turn, you MAY discard ONE card from your hand if you want to. That way you can slowly cycle through the junk if you’re not engaging in any immediate battles. This would also speed up the game a bit by helping to cycle through the deck.

ATTACKING:
Just an observation: under the current rules, the maximum attack strength of any attack force is 10, because you can only have 10 cards in your hand. The maximum defense strength is infinite, because you can draw from the top of the deck.

UNITS:
Cyborgs suck and I could never find myself building one. Mechs seem overpowered compared to them. I propose these possible changes:

Cyborgs move should be 2 because they are weak, and this will make up for their inability to move over Toxic Waste. Mech’s move should be 1, because they are stronger and can also build bridges. If a Cyborg’s move is 2, perhaps it can spend all 2 to move onto a Toxic Waste tile? Just a thought.

Bridge also seem to come up rarely. Maybe they can move down water?

Neither of us liked how Harvesters were the ultimate defenders. It would make more sense that you should have to protect them, because they are your resource gatherers, and it would also make combat more frequent if their defense was lowered (or if they had none), because people want to kill those darned Harvesters!

OVERALL FEELINGS:
After we thought about the game some more this second time around, we’ve come to the conclusion that it is too simple. There just isn’t too much going on to get excited about. Not that there should be a ton more rules, just that it needs to be expanded. There is still room for adding things to the game without it becoming overwhelming to play. Here are some suggestions we came up with:

A third resource! A third resource would add more variety to the maps, it would MAKE you have to go trudging all the way across the board to get all 3 resources (if you wanted them), and would thus encourage more interaction and make the struggle for board control more interesting. You could use a third resource to balance the costs of any new units you might add to the game…

More units! Basically the only things we ever build were Harvesters and Mechs, and that got pretty bland after a while. If you do add another resource, you could make these units require that while keeping the other units the same (if you wanted). Suggestions for new units:

Outpost: each player should have 1 outpost which would basically be a miniature second base. You could build units there, gather resources from harvesters there, and add to the defense of units present (not as much as your normal base). The only thing is, because it’s a unit, it could be destroyed. Obviously this, like the Bridge unit, would require a special “builder unit” present who could build it.

Hovercraft: Move 3, Def 1, can fly over water, and collects resources like the Harvester, but only 1 at a time, instead of 2.

Mega attack unit: Str 3, Def 0, Move 1 ???

Mega defense unit: Def 3 etc.

Terraform station: My brother really liked this idea he came up with, because we were both trying to think of ways to improve the Bridge Unit, which isn’t really that spectacular. So, this could either replace the Bridge unit, or be in addition to it, but that might be kind of redundant. This would be a special immobile unit (requiring a builder, like the bridge) that effectively turns whatever tile it is placed on into a Land tile. So, you could put it on water, like a Bridge, and the cross over it. Or you could use it offensively and turn your opponents local Toxic Waste into a Land.

Troop transport ship: Picks up units, moves fast, drops them off elsewhere.

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If you choose not to use a standard 52 card deck in the final product, you could put other cards in the deck, like combat tricks, or cards that you play outside of combat. Obviously you wouldn’t want too many of these, but they would spice up the game a bit.

If each player controls a different “faction”, each faction could have some special characteristics or powers, or maybe a special unit only that player can build.

That's all we got. We tried to come up with some flavorful ideas that still went along with your original presentation of the game. Hope it helped! :)
-Tim Davis