Scout night 6 player playtest (2/16/19)

[Mike]

Placeholder.

[FlameBlade]

1 or 2 godballs?

[Mike]

Just 1. Four rounds. 45 minutes. Only 1 point. Lots of stuff out. Plenty of fun, but mostly a learning experience. I'll analyze more in a bit.

[Mike]

It wasn't enough of a playtest to tell anything about how the new cards play, but everyone caught on pretty quick and had a good time. They just didn't want to spend 3 hours playing it out. About 1 hour is their commitment level.

6 is crowded. Maybe 2 godballs would have been better.

Seed terrain should also only be 1 per player when you have 5 or 6 people. The field started too crowded, and it felt like everyone got a legend and wanted it out right away: sheep, labyrinth, olive tree, palladion, lion. I think the new legend rules will help mitigate this some, making it clearer how each type operates.

But again, I was thrilled with how well they got the rules. We were discussing defend, and someone asked "what's the difference between once per round and once per turn." I explained and saw the lightbulb go on. It was nice.

I was disappointed we didn't play more, but what I did see tells me we're on the right track.

Interestingly, we sat down to Heroes of Midgard later, and we were all learning the rules together. Someone commented, "I take it back. Your game isn't complicated at all." And he's right. Godball looks intimidating when you first sit down to it, but it's pretty straightforward once you get the AP/hero move concept.

Having "play this to X slot" made all the difference in the world. No one had issues with how gifts work.

For some reason half the players kept wanting to spend AP to play cards and were confused that they couldn't find the cost on the card. Maybe because gifts have a cost on them, that confused them. A little rearranging in the final product will clear that up.

[Eliahad]

Yay for being on the right track!

There's going to be a new iteration of the hero boards coming thanks to your comments. I'm going to move the Hero name, in white text to overlay the bottom of the Hero portrait. Then, in the now empty box, I'll put: "On your turn you may:" and the turn order language.

[edit: No, I'm not going to do that. It's already pushing it with dive and drop, that would be a bridge too far text-wise on the hero board. 'sides, it' s nice having the space to put tokens and AP that aren't being used.

[Eliahad]

We could put that text in 2 corners of the map though...

[Eliahad]

Free thinking on the 5 and 6 player problem:

We need to be able to test that issue with 5 or 6 people that are familiar enough with the game that we can play reasonably quickly, and we don't have enough players who can do that at the moment. (This is not bashing any of the amazing people have played. Mike and I (and Flame) have just played a whole lot more!)

Would 8 rounds be better? Not if we can only get through 4. Would 2 Godballs work? Maybe? I feel like we could figure this out if we could sit down and try 3 games in a day with 5 or 6 people. In person, of course, because that's faster than online. Unfortunately, that's all we'd really be able to do in a day, so it's not conducive to say, testing at GenCon.

So what I think we need to do is keep playing 3 and 4 player games until the ruleset is solidified. Mike, you and I should get a couple of 1v1s to test as well. Just to see what we can notice. I always get caught up in the playing (not necessarily a bad thing) and I should strive to be more objective.

Then when the feel is right there, we can see what tweaks are needed to enhance the higher play count experience. I think your suggestions are good, Mike, I just can't currently see how they would change the feel.

[FlameBlade]

Once you get cards set in the stone, I could set up some sort of playtest with my crew.

Right now, cards are changing too rapidly for me to consider testing. Just need to get to the point where it's "frozen" for a considerable amount of time before I could invest in testing with a couple of groups.

One will be nonblind and one will be relatively blind by virtue of language barriers that I have.

[Mike]

Reasonable. We're going to finish up the new version of the rules, tweak the cards--especially legends--to match the new version, cut the decks to 24, and then you should be safe to playtest for a while. We'll keep tweaking, but hopefully no major overhauls for 2 or 3 months.

[FlameBlade]

Just saying, it's great that you playtested with 6 players. Just it's now apparent to me that we are close to locking down the cards so we can have a series of playtests over wide range of players and places just to see how it all works with different players. Not to mention, have some repeated tests with some groups to see how well it "ages" with them.

[Eliahad]

I'll post this here, because I mentioned having "what you can do on a turn" printed on the board here.

Or a reference card... One side:

On your turn:
1. Refresh Phase: Restore 1 AP
2. Action Phase:
You may play 1 card.
Take as many hero actions as you want and can afford.
(Do these in any order you wish)
3. Clean Up and Draw Phase: Restore hand to 4 cards. (You may discard up to 2 cards if you did not play a card in the action phase.)

On other side:

Objects (including the Godball): do not occupy a hex, can be carried, kicked and thrown

Beasts and Heroes: occupy a hex, can be shoved, pummeled and force fumbled.

Terrain and Monuments: only ever 1 per hex.
Created terrain replaces terrain already present.
Moving terrain destroys other terrain and Beasts as it moves over them. Heroes dive out of the way.
Tokens ON moving terrain are moved with the terrain.
-----
Force Fumble: Hero caused? Fumbler chooses. God caused? They choose.
Intercept first opportunity: closest to path - > closest to throw/drop/kicker - > next in turn order.

[FlameBlade]

Force Fumble clause. Not clear what is meant by 'you'

[Eliahad]

Adjusted.

[FlameBlade]

Action phase: "may play a card"

[FlameBlade]

Aside: does "monument" destroy terrain? If so, is that in the rules?

[Eliahad]

Yes, it is considered a terrain type and therefore subject to all the rules of terrain.