That’s right. We played TW 3 times today. AND, we also got to test the 2p version of the game.

We played with one of the people who may end up doing art work for the game so we thought it important that he play the game a few times to get an idea of what we were doing, the nature of the game, the feel of it given the way we’d written cards, etc.

I was concerned that the 2p game might seem contrived b/c it’s a game with fewer available turfs (needing to only control 3 home turfs to win), no teleporters because the board size is smaller and with just one other player, you clearly want to kill them.

It ended up being fun anyway. Needing to navigate around the board did make it slow and ultimately the DP win condition kicked in and I don’t like the game to end with points as the deciding factor. But it’s got to happen some of the time if it’s a valid win condition.

We then played 2 6-player games. This was the first time we were able to do that as well. The max so far has only been 5 players. So, a 2p and 2 6p games with 3 new sets of eyes to give fresh feedback…

The 2nd game ended in Round 2. ROUND TWO. That’s not possible. This sparked the discussion that will forever be known as the Siren Wars of 2012.

The scenario:
Josh was playing the Sirens who’s faction power allows him to take 2 troops from anyone but the attacker to use as additional troops when he’s defending against an attack. He had a nemesis in play and that player only had 2 troops due to an event mishap that killed off too many of her troops. Pestilence (kill 2 troops in every controlled turf) will get ya every time…

So he borrowed her troops. And I was attacking him and was going to win.

So, we just stopped it right there and had a half hour discussion on order of operations, the spirit of the nemesis kill win condition, faction powers, death by defensive action, etc. It was heated and lively and it resulted in a rewrite/clarification of the Siren powers and a rewrite of the nemesis kill win condition and the secret win conditions that involving the secret killing of the player to the right or left of you.

It was very useful and actually had a domino effect on many different cards and mechanics. Good times.

The final game wasn’t nearly as eventful.

The feedback from the 3 new players: It’s a fun game.

We then went on and tested our other game but… that’s a different post.

Played two more games today (#11 and #12) and somehow, the secret win condition: encircle is how the win was achieved both times. Encircle involves surrounding a troop on all sides.

We were able to uncover the need for a minor revision to specify that there be a minimum of 5 exposed adjacent squares in order for encircle to be valid. One of the wins only required 3 squares based on the position on the board (with dead spaces also surrounding the encircled player).

Any game that uncovers something is useful. It’s also good to hear that no one is bored with this game despite the fact we keep making people play it. 🙂

We’re playing TW a 2nd time with the group of friends we sometimes get to see on Wednesdays.

They marveled at how much the game changed in the 10 days since they last played. They were also a little shocked/scared to hear that we had changed it up and played 4 times between that last game as well.

“We at Cray Cray Games are cray cray for games!”

So… yeah. The game ended quickly because a secret win condition (protecting the swamps) ended up triggering because no one was in any swamps in the 5th round. Something to look at… potentially… because we don’t want any too-cheap wins.

Didn’t I just play this yesterday? Oh yeah…

So, we’re playing with 2 people who last saw the game in the first play test session for games 1 & 2 on 4/14.

Seeing all of the changes that were implemented in the last three weeks, one said: “This almost seems like a completely different game given the amount of work that’s been done. It’s cool.”

Some comments were given on the troop-loss cost given to winners and discussion was had on how that should be calculated. Overall, there was no substantive feedback given.

It’s been a whole week since the last game. Shocking.

We’re taking a trip to Worcester today to see some friends who live there. Two of them have already played the game but we are introducing the game to someone new today. Yay! A fresh set of eyes.

In the process of playing we stumbled upon a bit of feedback regarding the priorities on the Action Cards and will implement that and test it out next time.

Action Cards
Action cards are how things are done in this game. Each round, the player with the First Turn Token (FTT), after the event is read and troops are added to the board, draws N (number of players) + 3 action cards. He selects the action that will be played for the round and passes the rest of the selected cards so that the rest of the players can choose their action.

Yes there is shuffle-randomness to what actions are available each round. This also introduces a little bit of an ability to be… cut-throaty and take an action you don’t even want to use just to screw over another player. Good times.

The actions are as follows with the following priorities:

1. Place 2 defensive troops
2. Troop Maneuvers
3. Move to or Attack a Desert
4. Move to or Attack a Forest
5. Move to or Attack a Mountain
6. Move to or Attack a Plains
7. Move to or Attack a Sea
8. Move to or Attack a Swamp
9. Place 4 defensive troops

The feedback we received concerned the set priorities for Turf types. A desert always being a 3, etc., was favoring turf types over others because their numerical priority was based on alphabetical order.

In addition, the guy with the fresh set of eyes suggested perhaps adding teleporter-free movement around the board w/o using the current set of attack cards. That set off some discussion regarding how the game works, the intent of mechanics Josh and I put in play, etc. and in the end I took many notes on potential changes to implement and test.

It was a very productive day and the new person liked the game and looks forward to seeing it again after further progression.

We played two more games (#6 & #7) today. We only had four players today which was opportunistic because we could try out the 3-4p version of the game which modifies the game board a bit – decreasing the number of available turfs.

That’ll make more sense when we show pictures of the board. We won’t do that, however, until we’ve worked with artists to get what we would consider the final version of the art work.

Today we played with the 2 people who were involved in games 1&2 and 3&4 and even though it’s been 8 days (and 2 play test dates with 3 games) the game has progressed quite a bit.

We were showcasing the fact that a win-cost was introduced, the teleportation rules addressed and the board configuration adjusted so that the distributions gave no unfair advantages.

We played 2 games and there was no substantive feedback given nor issues uncovered.

Woot!