Game #1: WarZone (by Scurra)

Some first impressions.

Rules are still a bit rough as can be expected with an untested game, but I was able to understand most of it.

Some unclear points:

This process is then repeated but in reverse so that each player has placed two combat tiles, ending with the starting player.

I believe you mean that starting with the starting player and proceeding in a clockwise fashion every player places one tile. Then the last player places a second tile (which means he places two tiles right after another) and then the order is reversed (counterclockwise) ending with the starting player. Right?

After a Region has been contested

What exactly is a contested region? Any region that had tiles in it? Do blank tiles also count?

After a Region has been contested, the player with the most units in the region scores 3 points and the second 1 point. If there is a tie for first place, both players score 2 points (a tie for second scores nothing.) Black units count for this purpose. If a player would score 3 points for a region, they may choose to take a unit from the Discard stock instead of scoring the points. The unit markers are moved the appropriate number of spaces along the scoring track.

What if there is a three-way tie for first? What if there is a tie for second?

Example: Region 2 has 3 red units, 2 black units, 2 blue units and a green unit. Red scores 3 points but Blue doesn’t score because there is a tie with Black. However, if Blue and Green were in Alliance then both Blue and Green would score 2 points as their total is tied with Red (who would also score 2). In the first instance Red could opt to take a unit from the stock instead of scoring, but not in the second instance.

Ah, that clears it up. Perhaps it is better not to hide actual rules in examples.

The game lasts until there are no Black units remaining in the Capitol region after all the regions have been scored (note, there may still be Black units in other regions.)

I think I understand it now, but the "after all the regions have been scored" bit confused me at first. You mean that "at the end of a player's turn (after counting the scores for contested regions) if there are no black units remaining in the Capitol, the game ends". Initially I thought you had to score a region at least once during the game, before the game could end, which didn't make a lot of sense.

Another thing that bugs me about the game ending. Why would anyone bother to attack the Capitol? If there is no incentive to attack the capitol, the game would never end. It should be worthwile to attack the capitol, but not so much that whoever let's the game end by conquering the capitol automatically wins the game. This is something that should be tested.

If I had a majority of units in two area's and I would just keep scoring those areas turn after turn, would that break the game?

You put the results of revealing 2 tiles in a matrix, but I feel this is unnecessary because an attack vs. a defense tile has the same result as a defense tile vs. an attack tile. You could just put them in lines of text.

The black units add a nice twist to the game, but also some complexity. What if you removed them and just started with one unit of each color in each area? Just an idea.

The game looks fun, but I suspect it might also become repetitive after a while. This game should probably last around half an hour or so, but certainly not much longer than an hour.

Scurra,

I've scanned the rules, and will post a few general remarks, stream-of-conciousness style; I'll try to get something more fleshed out up in the next couple of days.

Why the overt Settlers references? (K'tann, box art, "settlers", etc) -- is this supposed to be tongue in cheek?

WarZone is not a good name, in my opinion. Neither was "Guard Duty", also in my opinion. Neither are the names I come up with for my games. Why is it so hard to come up with a good name for a game?

About the game itself. I really like the core concepts. I think the idea of "place 2 guys, then place 2 tiles" is good, and I can see some agonizing decisions. Since you're stuck where you placed your guys, you have to spend a Move tile to get them in to the center, but that could cost you a chance to Attack/Defend, etc. It does seem that you could Move guys, and then have them end up in a region where you're going to Attack, but since combat doesn't seem to be dependent on force strength, maybe it doesn't matter.

I don't particularly like the combat resolution table; it seems like a clunky thing to include in a game with 3 pages of rules. First off, since "Blank" and "no tile" are the same, get rid of Blank row and column from the table. In fact, why have the Blank tile at all? If you only get two actions, you'd never use Blank.

(Oops, just saw the later rule). Ok, so according to the rules on the 3rd page, you don't get your tiles back until you've used them all, kind of like Dragon's Gold. I don't think this is necessary for this game. For one thing, having only 5 tiles, it's easy to count into other people's hand, so you know what they have and what they don't. Thus, "Blank" really isn't meaningful; it just means one of every 6 of your actions (since actions come in pairs) has to be a non action. That's not necessary; 2 actions per turn is enough of a restriction all by itself.

Coming back to my earlier comment, why not have the effect of the tiles be independent of whatever other tiles are played, with only one exception. So, for example, "Attack" would have the effect "Remove one enemy piece", BUT, if a "Defend" tile is also played in the region, "Attacker also loses one piece", for example. That, I think, would simplify the game tremendously, because then you can print the effects on the tiles themselves, making the game more playable. But you'd still retain some of the bluff aspects, and the multiple tile interaction effects.

I guess I just don't care for the complicated interactions; like, if I choose "Defend" and he chooses "Move", he moves, then I get to return a guy to my hand. It's kind of counter-intuitive, and will be hard to internalize, I think. Much better, I think, to have each card have its stated effect, and then have a special effect if its paired with one other kind of card. You could also add a "Draft" card/tile to allow you to return a guy from the discard pile, or maybe allow you to place a guy on the board. In fact, why not add two of these to the tile mix, and then just give everyone four total actions each turn? (Rather than two placement actions and two tile-based actions).

You should look at a game called Wallenstein (which I'll probably say more about in a separate thread, as I just got it and really like it!). It has some ideas that are very similar to what you're doing here; the idea of acting only once in each region per turn, for example. That game is much more complex than yours, so I think you still have something here.

I think your game shows that incorporating peasants/NPCs into the game is not easy without the rules becoming fiddly. I'm not convinced that having a set of tiles for the peasants is desirable or necessary. I think it could be good, but it could also be clunky; I'm a little worried about how exactly peasants move. It seems like getting to make that decision could be rather powerful.

I agree with Zaiga that you want a clear reason to attack the central region. You don't, in my opinion, want a game-end mechanism that is connected to a board position, because it could make the game drag more; you only want that to be the case if there's a big advantage to going for that board configuration, such that players will want to do it. I think this game feels like it should go about 45-60 minutes. You need to make sure the end game doesn't allow it to drag to 90, that will be too long.

I don't know whether it will get repetitive. I could see some different strategies being viable if the rules are reconfigured a little bit, and perhaps the ways by which one gets VPs. Not sure though.

Either way, I think the game sounds great, and sounds like something I'd definitely buy. I would be interested to hear what others say about the "combat chart". I would like to see it get hacked, but perhaps you'll tell us more about why you went with that system, and what you particularly like about it.

Great job Scurra!

-Jeff

Ok, I'll buy that. But I still think that in a 4-player game, say, it's easy to remember what people have available, and what they've used (especially if the discards are face up!), so in practice, you can probably have a pretty good idea whether they're actually bluffing or not (Scurra can tell us when he's playtested it). I wouldn't mind it so much if the Bluff tile also gave you something; how about "Bluff" == "return a guy to your hand from the Discard pile"? That way, you're not wasting an action, but you're also not affecting anything on the board. I just don't like the thought of losing one whole action, when you only have 2 per turn. I don't think the benefit of "tricking" someone else really makes up for the penalty of not acting.

I'd like to hear what Scurra thinks about our points, and why he included the bluff card in the first place; it will probably make a whole lot more sense.

-Jeff

Does it make any sense at all?

Well, I like the idea behind Settlers of K'Tann, though there are a few fine points about the game I'd like to ask about. I am at work, so I may have to do this in parts...

Also I haven't read the other responses yet. I didn't want to bias my response.

Chronologically through the rules:
1. Out of curiosity, what is the reason for the "can't place where another player just placed" rule? I take that to mean that if player 1 places in zone 7, player 2 cannot, but player 3 can if they wish.

2. If I read this right, once you play your "Attack" tile, you won't be able to play it for the next round- so that's where some strategery comes in. However, what happens in round 3 when everyone only has 1 tile left, and everyone knows what it is? Would it be beneficial to do something like give each player 2 of each tile, then get the used ones back every couple of turns so you never can figure out EXACTLY what they have? Or do you want to be able to figure out what they have (either way has merit).

3. Placing Black tiles- at random? That seems odd. Should the "on player" get to choose the placement (so on your turn you have somewhat of an advantage because you play the Black player as well as your own color)? Or not because that advantage is too great? It sounds to me like "Black" is supposed to play like any other color, just controlled by a certain person (which changes throughout the game).

4. Regions "contested in order"... this means you turn over all times in region 1, resolve, then region 2, etc, right?

5. To simplify the rules/chart, perhaps just say that if there is only 1 tile, pretend there is also a blank tile and consult the chart.

6. Regarding the chart- is this a typo? When I play Defend and you play Move, shouldn't I kill a Black unit rather than get one back? Also, is the idea that the Black units will attack people in their regions, therefore "Defending" (without another color present) means fighting off Black (and killing their dude)? In which case Black, as a third party, will sit back and watch if two other colors are fighting in their region (not a bad tactic I would guess). This would be their 'home court advantage' I suppose.

7. Alliance with Black: You get to place the tiles (not at random). So if you DID have the 'on player' placing the Black tiles on purpose rather than at random, it'd be like each player has an alliance with Black on their own turn. That's probably bad. However random placement means there's a common enemy that only has real tactics if their allied with someone- maybe that's good. I don't know what I think about this.

8. Game End: As people have said (I read the responses now), there needs to be some kindof incentive to end the game. Puerto Rico has a game end that will definitely come eventually, but can come faster if people try- such that when a player thinks they're winning they can try and end the game faster, and when a player is losing they can try and prolong the game. Implementing that kind of thing might be nice.

9. Challenge Box: Why not just put the tiles on the board in the appropriate regions?

- Seth

Excuse me while I display my ignorance...

What is Thoth?

Check the downloads section.

-Darke

The parody aspect was completely lost on me. I think a game like Munchkin is obviously intended to be a parody of RPGs. It was not obvious to me that your game is a parody of anything -- it's much too serious, and much too legitimate a game. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But I think if you want it to be a parody, it should be far more obvious. Having a lookup table, with redundant entries, wasn't obviously funny enough for me to make the connection.

The problem seems to be that the bonus comes after the game ends. Thus, a good player might find a way to delay the onset of the game end condition. I think that a better way might be to have a "first person to do X gets a Y VP bonus", eg. Another idea might be to restrict movement outward, ie, movement must go along the same circle, or inward. That might have other negative effects as well, though...

Regarding alliances, are players allowed to negotiate during/between turns? Otherwise, it seems like managing to enter an alliance at all would be a kind of lucky occurence, where both players managed to drop an Alliance token. Otherwise, you'd be reluctant to do so, since if the other player drops an Attack, you're punished devastatingly for that.

Regarding units, I typically think of units as corresponding to strength, but here, it's more about position; ie, units give you flexibility of operations, but don't necessarily confer strength (ie, having 10 guys in a space doesn't make you fight any better, although it does make you harder to remove). There's some things that I'm not yet able to wrap my head around, but I think with actually playing the game, it would make more sense. I really think there are some great and subtle concepts going on here.

I do think it's worth trying it both ways to see which is "better". I could see that late in the game, when you're less interested in placement, having four actions rather than 2 (useless) placement actions and 2 (good) real actions could be advantageous. But on the other hand, maybe you want the choices to become more difficult later on. I wouldn't change it before you playtest...

Looking at the table again, there's actually very little in the way of interaction. Most of the effects seem to just be combinations of carrying out the individual effects of the tiles, with the order specified. For example, you could remove "Move" from the table altogether by just saying "the Move player always acts first", and that covers the entire Move row and column. The only complicated interactions are Attack/Attack (who goes first)?
Attack/Alliance (I don't like this at all -- penalizes the olive branch way too heavily; people will never extend it)
Attack/Defend (how about just "can't remove from the Defend player?" -- otherwise, it seems other players benefit too much from the "umbrella" protection of the Defend player; had they wanted protection, they should have placed their tile there!)

So, I really do think that the Combat table is unnecessary; it's daunting, when in fact, Combat resolution is really pretty simple. I would just print the "normal" effect on the tiles, and note that Attack interacts with the other tiles somewhat differently. The combat table makes it seem way more complicated than it really is.

Again, I really like the game, and think there is a lot of interesting stuff going on here. Great show!

-Jeff

I wouldn't worry too much about the end condition right now. The base mechanics look pretty solid right now and if I were Scurra I'd assemble a prototype and simply try it out. A good endgame condition will become clear when actually plaing the game, I think. I would leave out the natives for the first few testsessions, just to see if the mechanic of placing tiles, bluffing and alliances actually works and is fun and then add stuff on top of that.

The game looks a bit flat right now. It is probably fast and that is a good thing, but I don't think it could hold my interest for longer than an hour. All you actually do is place tiles and then hopefully score some points, repeat. This is not bad in itself (Carcassonne is little more than place tiles, score points), but it does mean that either the game should be relatively short or the mechanic should be part of a "larger" game.

How about making it a planet instead of an island, which is essentially the same thing. Then you can use the Space motif to explain away anything that doesn't make sense, the natives can be aliens, etc.

Also, while you said Warzone isn't really accurate (I agree), perhaps battlefield is. I thought of that this morning, and Battlefield Earth popped into my head. Obviously that's no good for a name, but maybe Battlefield X, where X is something interesting...

That by the way is how I started thinking about planet vs island.

- Seth

David,

I too liked the fast play and bluffing natures of the game. It seems to me that the black units feel a little like they are simply tacked on the end of the turn (which is maybe why people feel disjointed about them.)

What if you made them a part of the decision making process ... For example: Each player, at the beginning of the turn draws one of the Black unit combat tiles at random and then DECIDES (as per their own tiles) where and how they would like to play this. It would make the Black Units a more dynamic force in the game, without making them into a whole separate player/entity controlled by any one player, or a simply random factor that may or may not get in the way.

For games with less than 5 players you could have the starting player draw 2 Black units, or you could simply have some of the actions open to the Black units not used in a given turn.

I think this approach might also add to the whole "Bluffing" aspect of the game.

Not sure what anyone else might think, just throwing out some ideas...