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.