[GDS] MARCH 2015 "A Team Apart" - Critiques

What a close contest. With so many creative, interesting ideas it's great to squeak out on top.

I would have voted Silver on this one if I could have. The moons orbiting seems like a unique interesting mechanic. That's how war in space could really be, with the shape of the battlefield changing as moons orbit at different rates.

The not talking part of the contest feels just tacked on. The game would be better with talking, but you did use the theme well.

I couldn't vote for By Jove!, as I submitted my choice too fast, but I think that I would have given it bronze (or silver, maybe), since the theme was very original: a mixture of non-sense science-fantasy and more formally designed ideas. The interpretation of the moons of Jupiter was good, I'd say.

As for Stanley Pool, I don't remember if I voted gold or silver for it (should have kept track of my choices), but I really liked the way the theme fits to the gameplay, and especially how the two phases interact. The explanations are concise and clear, I can very well imagine how the game would look like.

I appreciate all the feedback!

I was worried that the theme would be a bit too wacky, but the idea for this game started out with the title and I just knew it had to be about Victorian Steampunk astronauts. Some inspiration from Eddie Izzard helped as well -- "No flag, no country!"

I actually had to water down the gear-orbits quite a bit from my original vision, since describing the board ate up so much of the word count. If I ever build a prototype for this, andymorris, I definitely want to incorporate interlocking gears somehow. Ultimately, the challenge in the lack of communication was supposed to be in setting up extra moves and coordinating attacks silently, but I got so caught up in space dirigibles and silly acronyms that I didn't focus so much on really integrating the requirement. Next time!

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Stanley Pool definitely felt truest to the theme. I liked the spin on building hands instead of taking tricks, but I personally wanted more clarification on the setup of the board and the interaction between teammates. Admittedly, I had a hard time wrapping my head around this one with the limit on the word count, but I'd like to think that it would all make sense seeing it in action. Also kudos for being the only entry that took on this particular theme!

I thought this idea was quite creative. I think the secret vote, only one team gets to take an action system would make a very interesting game play/decision making dynamic. There were a couple things that held it out of the medals for me. The main one is that I didn't feel like the three discipline actions were equally valuable. My perception is that recruit would be by far the best action because you get to immediately place pieces in a new stronghold. Whereas it would take several war turns to get to a new stronghold. It didn't feel like there was quite enough manipulation of all the territory. This would certainly work itsef out through play testing and may already be resolved by the secondary effects of the cards, but there weren't any examples. Overall a very solid idea and the theme was very well applied.

Thanks for all the comments and votes!

500 words makes it very difficult to clearly define the rules of the game and any engaging effects within. I realized about half way through writing the rules that only one person acts per turn so I had to add effects into the game that only the other players on the team could use. It was kind of tacked on at the end but I think with play testing it could work itself out.

For those wondering, a sample of some of the effects I was thinking.

Remove an opposing unit from any non-stronghold territory.
Occupy an adjacent empty territory.
Simple discard and draw effects.
Effects that move the Daimyo token on either team.
A team changing effect perhaps?

Didn't really think very far into them as they were added so more than one person could act every turn.

Thanks for all the votes! I'm honored to have gotten as many medals as I did.

Thanks. Yeah, with the word limit I decided to focus my descriptions on the more unique aspects of the game that fit with the contest. I tried to give a feeling for the 4X empire/combat stuff without getting into it's details. It combat could be something simple like Risk, or like a more complex war game with a variety of units.

You have created a simple game which could be fun, quick and easy to learn and play but my concern is if it is too simple and did not have enough replayability. I liked the stronger/weaker tokens that you place in the provinces but I am concerned how players will interact - are they gonna try and get in each others provinces to get them out or are they gonna stick to a corner and going round a few provinces to try and get all the 3 different tokens they need in one province in order to get points from all farmers?

This one got my bronze. I really like the idea of pairing a card with a worker. I like how the cards already played impact what happens on an action. It might be nice if there was some carry over round to round for this impact. I like the idea of shaking up the teams, but without a description of how the scoring and end game work I was left with lots of questions. I like how you said 500 words = not enough, well said.

I like the idea of worker placement while trying to understand your teammate but on the other hand you don't know if that person will continue to be your teammate. It also balances out by having to commit a worker and maybe wasting him but potentially gaining an advantage.

As Andy mentioned, this game went far over the 500 word limit. I looked over the first 500 words, which were mostly component descriptions. While there would have to be a lot of editing to get the rules down to 500 words, one thing I recommend is to really simplify the components list (if you have them at all). I like to include a brief summary of components just to give people a feel for what's in the game. For rum runners, I might use something like this:

Cards: Destination, Supply, Action
Tokens for Police, Road Blocks, Money
Bootlegger location sheets

This gives people the idea that there are a variety of card types, tokens, and the bootlegger sheets. Later when you get into playing action cards, you might describe a couple types of actions as examples, with the feeling that there are more possible actions.

With the short word limit, sometimes it's also necessary to cut a rule from the game, or just allude to it briefly. It's tricky with this of course, deciding whether you want the game to feel simple and complete, or complex with parts missing from your rules.

This one missed out on the medals for me because it didn't quite feel like area control. The team dynamic is interesting. I like the unknown ally idea, but it might make sense if the ally was secretly decided before the game. I like where your going with this idea, but to me it felt like it needed a little something more. What if each of the secret tokens had a symbol on them and then the spies had to collect a certain set of symbols rather just any four. Maybe there could be different combinations needed to enter the government building depending on the side you approach it from? Maybe you could spend discretion tokens for bonus actions? Just some thoughts.

Thanks for your comments!

Now that the contest is over, I can clearly see that I gave too much importance in the complete explanation of the game while staying under the 500-word limit.
That made me simplify the game a lot (I was indeed thinking about defences the government could place on some paths, which would take time to pass, or completely block the ways.).
Next time, I will try to summarize everything a bit, in order to propose a more complex game.

The original idea involved a small set of special action cards that were given out to the spies, and the government would call for a certain card (of his choice). The player with that card in hand would become his ally, without the others knowing it. Once the player would play that card, everyone would know he's the traitor, which could be good or bad, depending on the situation. There would be no difference in the tokens, and the difficulty in collecting them would be a bit higher, with the goals to reach at 5 or 6 tokens in total.
Due to the word limit, I decided to simplify the game principles, so I could explain them easily... but I see that I should have kept the original idea and only be more concise in my description.

All of your ideas are very interesting, and I particularly like the set of different tokens which would allow the spies to act differently, and have different accesses over the map. (Makes me think about Ticket to Ride...)

I will definitively try to do better next month! (How could it be worse than last??)

Thanks much for the comments on Galilean Moons, which was my entry.

The critique that the mechanics and scoring were not well enough defined -- you were kind to attribute that to the 500-word limit, but the grim reality is that they were not defined. If I had had more words, I might have done so, but I haven't done it yet, and I'm afraid that this game is not even in my top 3 of games I want to work on. Maybe someday, though.

Really the whole concept was the synergy of the action card colors within a team, with the opportunity to change teams, combined with the inability to talk about it in order to plan collectively. I hadn't really gotten any further than that, and as I wrote up that much, I realized that I was already at the word limit.