Board Game Designers Forum

OBJECTIVE is first a strategy game. Many strategic games that I have played have difficulty resolving conflict without bringing chance into the game. So me and my friend decided to make a board game that is highly strategic, with resolutions that are also strategic and tactical. It is essentially a two part game. The main board is a symmetrical and is gridded in a hexagonal pattern. There are cities and forts. Each player starts in their own fort. There symmetrical cities that are available for expansion of IPC's/money/value points. But the bigger cities are more rare, and tend to be in the center of the action. The movement of the armies costs the army IPC's. So essentially the farther you travel the weaker your army becomes. That is until you reach a city. If it is uncontested, it can add to your tax base. The fort recharges or collects 4 points per turn... but can only send new armies out of the fort. If you purchase a general however, then your army can collect the value points independent of the fort. Or in other words, the cities are recharge posts for armies. If you leave the city under control of a tax collector, and take the general away from the city. The recharge points are sent to your home fort as taxes. The movement is restricted to 3 value points per turn. If you are on a road it costs 1/2 IPC per hexagon, or 1 IPC off road... Unless you have a transport. The transport makes the cost of travel on roads 1/3, however it cannot leave the road. You can spend your turn and IPC's without moving in order to research new technologies. One of which would be better transports... which would lower your cost to 1/4. The other character that can be purchased is a spy which turns other players tax collectors into your own and can travel off road at 1/2 IPC or 1/3 on road. All movements must be in whole numbers or is rounded up to the highest whole number. So if your spy only moves 1 hexagon, it will still cost you 1 IPC. So you can only move 3 characters or armies per turn. So, this part of the game is still changing... but I think we have the battle system worked out. All players will get a turn collecting income, and the purchasing. If you do not want to purchase you just pass. Once purchase and collections are done. All attacks are declared. Once an army is attacked, it cannot escape or move until after the attack.

Then we have battle mode. Battle mode is played on a different board altogether. It is essentially a chess/checkers board... The only exception depends upon the size of the city of contention. The smallest cities are played on a 4x8 board, the forts and the single largest city is played on a standard 8x8. So between and including 4x8 and an 8x8. The army size is denoted by its Value point/IPC/Resources. Value points buy you things in battle mode. The pieces that are used are standard chess pieces... The pieces move the same as in chess, and the objective is practically the same. However, the defending army's king can escape if it reaches the opponents home square. It is essentially the only way to retreat. But to start off with each player only has a king. They are in the center on the home rank directly opposing each other. The attacker gets the first move. You can either move what you have or purchase. Purchases can either buy material (pieces) or position. And sometimes a little of both. The piece value's are 1 for a pawn, 3 for bishop and knight, 5 for rook, and 9 for a queen. Only army's with a general can purchase the queen. Other purchases can include terrain. One is a black out square, where no one can go through it or on it. This can only be placed in the 4th and 5th ranks. Another is a sticky square, where any piece that wishes to go through it, must stop on it and wait for the next turn, and also can only be purchased on the 4th and 5th rank. The last position that can be purchased is a land mine. This can only be placed on the 1st and 2nd ranks of the home rank. You can only purchase 2. If the opposing armies piece ever lands on the square... it is destroyed immediately. You have to write down which square is the mine, and flip it over so that your opponent cannot see. When you declare they landed on the mine, you must show flip over the card that has the square written on it. If you do not do it and instead make your move, you cannot go back and do it. So you must remember what square. The other way of purchasing position is placing material on the 3rd and 4th ranks from your side of the board. This costs an additional 3 value points. So a pawn placed on the 3rd or 4th rank will cost 4 IPC's. All material must be placed on your half of the board. Also I should note, you can purchase and place pieces that put your opponent into check. Your opponent can then purchase a black out square or a sticky square that interferes with the check, move the king, or purchase and place material that interferes with the check (such as placing a pawn in front of the king). If your king is checkmated the battle is over. Your remaining IPC's and piece values are split into 2 halfs. 1/2 goes back to your fort, and the other half goes into the army that defeated you.

When you go into battle mode, all players resolve all conflicts at the same time. So if you are in the lead, likely your armies may be attacked multiple times. This means may have to play up to 4 different battles at the same time. The only way to take an opponent out of the game is to attack and defeat the fort. The remaining armies left over are disbanded and the player is eliminated. The fort then becomes like a city.

Also battle mode is played under timed conditions. You have 10 seconds per move starting from when you opponent makes his move. Each additional second taken will cost 1 IPC. This essentially takes luck out of the game, but keeps enough uncertainty in the game to even out any "chess experience" advantage out of the game. It would not surprise me for at all if a Chess grandmaster doesn't blunder away material, and lose a battle... due to the time control, the amount of games being played at once, and due to the nature of piece placement/purchase. This changes the game quite significantly, and yet retains the same tactical feel of chess but it is nothing like it.

Writing all this out makes it seem very complicated. But it is actually rather simple once it is understood. This is my first attempt at writing out any description of it, or any description of a board game. So I know it is probably kind of hard to follow. But I will try and clarify and condense in later posts.