NaGaDeMon 2013 Day 12

Yesterday at lunch we had a four player game:
Players: Taylor, Dave, Chris, Antione
Taylor, Dave, and Chris all started by grabbing four fish and two resources each. This allowed for them to all grow to six people.
Antione opened up by grabbing six fish, so on the second turn he ended up fishing last (his population fell back down to four because of this, and he remained there most of the rest of the game). I have considered changing how things are done to prevent some from getting all the fish that they want and others from getting much fewer fish. Perhaps I will come up with something useful soon.

The early game was dominated by canoe building and starting up building statues.

Taylor, Dave, and Antione all ended up with the same number of statues (8) and people (4), and Chris ended up with two statues and 5 people. The statues were placed such that Chris was winning in positions 1-4 (he was the only guy who moved his statues very far), and Taylor was winning in position 5. There was a three way tie for position 6. The tie breaking is likely to change to a  more complex scoring method, and the scoring phase is also in need of a rehaul. Taylor ended up playing his explorer cards correctly and therefore won the game (though I felt that Chris should have really been the winner since he would have won in 4 of the 6 places, and he also played his explorers right (he just was overwhelmingly in the minority in terms of where people wanted the explorers to go.))

The things I learned because of this game:
1) More fish (seriously, Mars Needs Fish)
2) Fewer trees might be useful, this would speed up the game a bit, and I want the game to be speedy. Perhaps we should even give people starting wood (for second turn canoes if they desire)
3) The AAAH! cards are definitely a real part of the game in the future. We hadn't been playing with them, and after the game people asked for explorer cards that move the explorers back (people who had never read the rules, so they couldn't have been influenced by them).
4) Consider making explorer cards be rewarded based on something (having extra stone or wood at the end of the game?)
5) Consider making explorer cards cost more based on how many have already been bought/rewarded.
6) Perhaps reorder the player mats to make boxes appear in the correct order (first to last).
7) Complex scoring method: when there is a tie, it might be best to tiebreak based on who has the farthest unmatched statue instead of by who had the most people. For example:
          Q 5 4 3 2 S               
Player 1 | | | | |1| |
Player 2 | | | |9| | |
Player 1 wins
          Q 5 4 3 2 S               
Player 1 | | | |9|1| |
Player 2 | | | | |2| |
Player 2 wins
          Q 5 4 3 2 S               
Player 1 | | |9| |1| |
Player 2 | | | |1|1| |
Player 2 wins

8) Consider playing till the islanders all die off instead of till the last tree falls. This would allow for a strange endgame.

I will try to convince my wife and sister in law to play tonight (and we might play during lunch - hard to say).

Also, I will update the rules as necessary.

Finally, I have been working on (in my non-More Moai time) a solo/cooperative Roguelike board game. I will post about it when there is something to post. (Like the game is playable or something like that).

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