Jones Brood Playtest

[Kyle]

Played last night, but want to wait to give my full feedback until after we play again this week. It was one of those things where you think you know how it works, then you play and it all clicks together and you’re like, “Oh shit! I get it, but probably would have done my first few moves differently.” I think that happens with every good game I play.

Short summary is that we loved it- particularly the mechanic of the boards with card overlays, and thought it was well balanced. The struggle for the ball really felt like animalball.

[Mike]

I'm thrilled. The animalball comparison makes me happy. I'm glad you want to try again. Your learning experience seems to parallel other people's in that by the end of the first game there's a lot of "oh shit, if I had realized THAT, I could have..."

In as many places as possible, when the question is, "So, can I do X?" we've tried to make the answer yes.

My only questions before your next game is how many players did you have, and what was the final score?

[Eliahad]

Yay! Thank you, Kyle! I'm sorry for all the crap I was heaping upon you via the podcast. I will drink my shame with sugar and milk.

And Animalball was a pretty significant inspiration, to the point where, if I recall correctly, the question was asked, "If the rest of everything you're doing is awesome, does it matter if anyone scores a point or not?" We're sorry, Steve Safford, but we decided the answer to that question was 'yes, yes it does matter.'

The question I have is, "did the fact that it took a little bit for things to click detract from the game for some of the players?" We know there's a learning curve, but I, personally, haven't figured out how much it affects the enjoyment of playing the game.

[Kyle]

Final score of 0-0-0 among three teams, but we had to stop after six rounds when one kid shot another kid in the face with a rubber band, making that kid cry and bash the table, rage quitting.

One question that wasn't clear from the rules- When you pick up an object, is that a free action you can take if you occupy the same space? Or do you have to do an intercept action and can do it adjacently. This came up as we all rushed the godball and I was the first one to get there. I read back through the rules, but it didn't jump out at me immediately, so we just agreed it's a free action if you occupy the same space.

[Kyle]

I played as Aphrodite, and I think next time I'll pick someone else. Her powers of player manipulation are cool- but clearly only really effective once you have a feel for the game and know how to use them.

When I right up my big review (after another couple playtests), that's going to be my biggest advice is- not to change the game at all, because it played great, but to make it more accessible to pick up and play for the first time. Maybe incorporating a "quick start with the basic rules" version that a lot of board games use now and then you incorporate all the rules for your second game. I'm not sure I'm going to have any suggestions for changing the game or mechanics themselves- they worked really smoothly.

[Kyle]

[Eliahad]

Well, I made note of it, at least.

The intent is that if you are in a hex with an object, you can pick it up freely. Switching between multiple objects in a hex is also free.

It had not occurred to us if you are in adjacent hex that you could use the intercept reaction to pick it up. Mainly because (we assumed wrongly that people would understand) reactions are used on other players' turns. We will need to clarify this in the rules.

[Mike]

I composed the entire answer in my head, if that counts.

You can pick something up by simply moving into the hex. Picking up and dropping objects within your own hex is a free action that you can do as often as you like. It is not interceptable. Therefore, you have full control over objects within your hex on your own turn.

Dropping an object to an adjacent hex is also free, but it IS interceptable.

You cannot intercept an object in an adjacent hex that is just sitting there. You can only intercept objects that are thrown, kicked, dropped, or otherwise moved by a card that indicates it is interceptable.

[Mike]

But seeing Dave's answer, I think "intercepting" from an adjacent hex may be cool. It's not legit under the current rules, but it makes sense to add it.

[Kyle]

[Eliahad]

[FlameBlade]

Keep interception a reaction. No need to muddle around. Keeps rules simple. Make it a gift to be able to get an object from adjacent hex.

[Mike]

Make Grab Object a gift that replaces Force Fumble. Basically allowing you to use FF on loose objects.

[Kyle]

Was going to play a couple more games this weekend, but we’re unexpectedly having to go back for emergency surgery for my son again. Sorry for the delay, but we’ll get there.

[Kyle]

Okay, my wife and youngest six kids are going to be gone camping in the rocky mountains of Colorado for nine days starting this Saturday. Which means my regular D&D group can't play because two of my players are going to be gone. So I've invited the remaining five players over to the house Sunday night (our regular gaming time) to play Godball. It will be a good mix of experienced and not-so-experienced players, so I'm interested to see how they respond to it- and the age ranges are between 15 and 23. I'll let y'all know next week.

[Mike]

Awesome awesome!

[Eliahad]

Woooooooo!

[Mike]

Only recommendation: game works ideally with 3-4 players. 2 is also very fun, but not as dynamic.

5 or 6 gets a little bogged down. So if you get to a point where you decide to try that many at once, we're thinking of doing it with 2 Godballs. Just place both of them on Mt Olympus and see how it goes. We have not playtested that yet.

[Eliahad]

If you have any cards that say "the Godball" and you're playing with 2? Have the player pick one or the other.

[Kyle]

Second game session review. We played with five people:



But on your recommendation, teamed some of us up together so we only had three heroes on the board (which I think is wise for a beginner game). Before I get into the details, let me tell you about the insane moment of the night. I had Heracles and had knocked out and then scrambled to pick of the godball towards one edge of the field. Then these two jackasses:



They use a god card to move a pillar of heaven adjacent to Heracles... and then... rotate Heracles two hexes counterclockwise around the pillar... and then... I was in their goal... with the godball.

First point.

Fucking epic, everyone lost their shit.

Needless to say, everyone really liked the game-- without exception. We all thought the rules were fairly intuitive (although see some of the notes below) and we all really like the game conceit of the hero board with the card overlays. We just think that's cool. More importantly, even though there are deep strategies that you develop in the game (it became apparent to all of us that a good strategy would be to place gifts without using them and then... BAM... use them all at once for power turns), but the basic strategy is something everyone can related to- get the ball in the goal. So even though we had a wide variety of personality types (drama kid, soccer kid, autism spectrum, etc.) everyone got into it and loved it.

Thoughts:

1- Quick start rules: I talked about this briefly before. Since I had played the partial game before and knew the basics, I was able to explain the hero board and basic turn orders to everyone pretty quickly and everyone understood them fairly well. However, when Gabe and I were muddling through the rules for the first time, they were pretty dense. And objectively looking at them, they're not. You need comprehensive rules that cover all sorts of situations and conflicts that can arise, and I get that. But when you get this hot-ass game in your hands and you pick your heroes (which is the first thing everyone does before they even crack the rule book) then you realize that it's going to be over half an hour of slowly pouring over the rules to muddle how everything works. It was a bit of a drag for us the first time. My suggestion is have a simplified "quick start" two pager that says, "Pick one of these three gods. Here's arrows pointing to the hero board with one sentence instructions. Turn order! Follow instructions on cards. Have fun!" Because once you actually start playing it and get into it- the rules are very intuitive and easy. And then after you play a first game, people can go back and look through the full rules and they'll all make sense to them because they'll have the context to put them in.

In this game we played however, none of that was an issue because I served as the quick start guide and ran everyone through it- so in five minutes we were playing the game. A couple of times we had to look up certain things, but it was no big deal and didn't hinder the game.

2- Terrain- the rules on terrain weren't terribly clear to us and there are a lot of rules on terrain in the book to look through. So when we had questions about how certain things with terrain worked (moving it and its effects on things) we scanned the rules and then just decided it would be quicker and easier to houserule it and look it up later for the next game.

3- Gifts- Everyone loves the hero boards and everyone loves laying down gifts on the hero board. We all thought, though, that with only twelve rounds to do stuff in, that's not a lot of time to lay stuff down and set up your hero-- especially when you have these powerful objects and miracles you can play. You only get to play 12 cards. We all wanted to have more interaction with our hero board (and other peoples) but it didn't make sense for the way the game was playing out. Now I understand that part of this is strategy, part of it is that it could just be our particular game, and part of it is limited by how long the game can be. But we all wanted more interaction with the hero board. I don't have a good suggestion for this. It's just a thought.

4- Wait times- The only real negative criticism someone made was, "There's a lot of waiting, and waiting is boring." So we talked bout that. We agreed that part of that is inherent to board games... you have to wait your turn. Part of that is also inherent in the chaotic nature of Godball itself- it's hard to set up a strategy when there's so much fuckery going on by the other players in the scrum. You can come up with brilliant plans, but by the time the turn gets back to you, it's all changed. We concluded that it was fine, and that as we get better at the game, we'll get better at more broadly strategizing to account for the fuckery as we experience it more.

5- Scoring vs. fucking people over- Just a comment. This game is built to have just as much fun fucking other players over as it is to score and win. We all loved that. We all enjoyed that almost... almost as much as the possibility of scoring.

Questions:

1- Goals- After intial setup, goal areas are fair game to fuck with, right? For example, if you have the power to move a pillar of heaven, is it okay to movie it into a person's goal, essentially cutting their scoring area by a third? I think that's okay (and hilarious). As an actual game example, the assholes that already scored played a god card that created a portal in front of them and then in their goal. The stepped into the portal, paid 4 AP and BOOM- 2 points. That's legit right?

2- Pillars on terrain- If a pillar moves on a piece of terrain, does the terrain stay or is it obliterated by the pillar? The answer wasn't really of any consequence to us, but we were curious because it happened in our game.

3- I've got some questions about what happens when terrain just appears vs. moves vs. moves with special stuff on a card AND how all those interact with the Dive function. But I want to go back and reread the terrain rules on that first.

Basically that's it. It's a fucking great game and we all loved it. We're going to play it again.