Start cards and avatars

I played Grab the Loot at work with the changes that Daniel and I talked about, and then the next night at the Board Game Design Guild without them. They definitely need some balancing, and I am not sure if they make the options less interesting, but I am going to work on fixing them up. My notes from the game at work were as follows:

• more money gain - things cheaper - top one is free most of the time. 
• add a few more greeds for 2 players
• Captain should give 2 coins. 

I have implemented the first and last, and I am not sure if I am going to make the second one happen. I need another playtest before I continue with the new changes.

I also made a new mat for The Madness Place taking into the feedback that I received from Daniel. Here it is in all it's glory:

I also made some start cards for TMP - cards which guarantee that you start with a level 2 device, and a time card, so that removes a little bit of the fiddlyness of the setup, and balances the possibility of one player getting a time card in the draft and the other player getting no time card in the draft.

It should also encourage players to use the swap action (which among players that are first timers is a good thing, because it is an advanced technique that only my wife and I use, but it is really powerful).

Alison and I played a game of TMP tonight with all of the new rules, and it was fairly broken. We jury-rigged it into working and finished the game, and then had a long discussion about what needed to change to make it work for real.

The problem was making storing energy free. It made all energy automatically stored (because once you ran out of useful things to do you could just end your turn by storing all your remaining energy one unit at a time.) Why have a rule that energy is lost between rounds if storing energy is free?

We decided that the rule should make it so that once one player passes, for every turn that they miss, the can start the next turn with one time energy. This will make other players have to not take too many turns after someone passes because they don't want to give tons of free time energy to the opponents.

After the changes were made mid game, we went on to having a fun game. I built a time machine, and a green/red generator (red was balance, and green was everything except for draw, balance, and stealing a device). Alison built an infinite blue machine and a blue to green converter. We liberally stole each-others devices and finished so close.

Here are some notes from the playtest:

• Dual cost rooms should be valued higher.
• Perhaps +1 point will do it?
• I could imagine them even higher if you were considering the difficulty of getting two devices to make the energy, but the random chance of the universal machine providing just what you need makes me hesitant to do that. In some games they would be easy, and in others they would be hard.
• Rooms that cost Spark/Madness are windfalls when they are late in the game.
• Just remove them. They should cost time, and be valued the same as other time rooms.
• Time when used should allow the machine that it is used on to be run action free one time.
• I know that this is in direct opposition to the discussion I had with Daniel, but we played it his way, and having your entire turn be to pay an energy and remove a meeple is so boring when the other player is doing real things that we felt that this is necessary.
• When you pass, gain 1 time every time you miss a turn.
• This forces players to consider how long they want to keep going after someone passes - it gives them the option to choose, but makes sure that they are not wasteful.
• This could also serve as a catch up mechanism - if someone got behind an infusion of free energy could be helpful for them.
• When using another player's device, pay once per use.
• give the cube
• activate the device action free - pay cost and place special (colored) meeple.
• special meeple does not block other player from using the device.
• This is critical, since the I felt that Daniel really hated me stealing his device, and that is not a good play experience.
• Thematically, special meeple is your mad scientist?
• Remove player abilities. They are forgotten more than they are used.
• Does more players necessitate more draft cards? 2 per player +1?

So, with these ideas, I hope that all of the changes that were envisioned with my play with Daniel will be realized an balanced. Playtesting, however will be the only thing that can ensure that.

The game ended with a 1 point spread, and I would have won if I had been given one more turn, so it feels pretty tight at this point. I think that allowing every player to use other players devices is the real reason for this. You can't get so far ahead if your opponents can access the same things that you can. The bonus energy that you get when someone uses your device is also nice.

I have also been working on my PlaytestHub website, and have made definite strides. I need to do more things, but it is moving along nicely. Perhaps by the end of next month I will have finished it.