Pretentious Board Games

We have been playing more games of Harbour recently. I have been trying to get people to play it every day at lunch. One time they all revolted and asked to play Witch Hunt instead. This is funny because I was actively campaigning for Harbour, but they wanted to play my game instead. I cannot say that I am sad that that happened (having my game more popular than a game that a publisher is about to publish is a good step). After playing more games (of Harbour) I am still not sure what the optimal strategy is. I was able to pull off some large point margin games by picking up only large buildings, but I have not won every game. I just got a bunch of kickstarter updates (templar intrigue, burgoo, coin age, robots on the line) recently. I look forward to getting all of the games that I supported last year. Hopefully they all come in before the end of this year. I have been too busy with other things to make much progress in any of my games recently, although I have been getting a gr...

After a few more days of playing, I have more thoughts about Harbour For one thing I have played my first four player game. Four player games: Playing with four players makes the game a little more difficult to plan for, but not that much. The pacing of the game is slightly slower in a 4 player game, but still not boring. Sadly enough you cannot fully plan for your turn during other player's turns since their turns have a high chance of changing your plans. Some cards (tax office, and abbey) seem to have different power levels based on the number of players. The weakest point for the tax office card is at 3 players (where you get only two goods, but get to pick neither of them) The abbey card seems to be best in a 2 player game. As I haven't played a statistically significant number of games I am in no position of authority to make the above statement, but that is the way that it feels to me. Market Alteration: If you use an action to change the market it is less ...

I received a playtesters copy of Harbour on Friday night. My wife and I already had a date planned, but I was able to convince her to try it out after we were done having sushi. Components: The rule book was not entirely complete, but was pretty good (I will sum up our questions later in the post). Some of the components did not look exactly as they did in the rule book (an accompanying letter explained most of the discrepancies, but the Market Board was set up slightly different than the rule book indicated that it would be). Alison wants it noted that she found the rule-book by itself to be confusing. It explains everything on the cards, but because of the lack of context it is a bit overwhelming. We did not actually realize that we each started with a symbol (a coin for me and a top hat for Alison) until after the first game was over. Andrea's favorite card was the Ranch I expect the rulebook the be cleaned up a lot before the final release of the game (Eminent Doma...

I played another game of Witch Hunt (this time with my monthly gaming group). They liked the idea of the game, but said that it needed more work. I already knew that it was a good idea that needed a lot of balancing, so I was pretty happy with the feedback. We also played Dancing Robots (which I haven't played for a long time). They loved the judges and liked the difficulty that the game presented in balancing the various stats of the robots. The game went well, but I almost want to speed up the dance off. I need to figure out how to do that. I also talked with Dave, and hopefully he will get me the last part card artwork soon.

We have been hunting witches a lot recently. We have changed the game a fair amount, and are considering changing it more. The most up to date rules can be found here . Some changes that have been made: Balancing the Governor and Magistrate to make them give a standing bonus (+3) or penalty (-3) instead of making them kill players outright. Changing the pastor to give other players point penalties for not helping him. Changing the way that the roles gain points (almost all of them) Removing 'Witches' from the game entirely. There are now 'hags', 'trollops', and 'crones', all of which still have effects that activate upon people looking at them. Split up the Accomplices and the Witch Haters into more people (they still share common point gaining mechanisms, but they are quite different now.) We have experimented with different values of claim cards (+2, +1, 0, -1, -2), and (+1, +1, +0, -1, -1). It remains to be seen which set will win out. The...

We played two games of the witch game today. It went fairly well for a first play ever. There were some complexities that need to be excised and some power levels that need to be adjusted, but all in all it was a fun game. The first game went as follows: Mike: Gossip Pastor who loved Dwayne Dwayne: Constable Witch Hater who loved Beret Bob: Defense Attorney Martyr who hated Mike Beret: Magistrate Witch TJ: Clerk Recluse who loved someone (perhaps Mike?) The game started off well with me trying to influence everyone into sharing identities with me under the guise of trying to find out the witches. I allied with bob to try to get him killed and told everyone that he was a witch, but Beret tried to defend him as an ally witch. Dwayne thought I was on his side since I was a Puritan, but I lied to him about Bob to try to convince Bob to talk people into sharing cards with me. TJ was discovered by some action cards, and I shared with Beret and got killed. The game ended with a h...

We played some games of Creative Accounting (which is currently toying with being called 'Space Scoundrels') at lunch on Wednesday. The games went well. Everyone seemed to enjoy them, and we got to test four players for the first time. We also played a five player game. We played about five games total. We have some preliminary cards for the witch hunt game, and I have written some rules, but I am not yet done with the first draft of the rules. When I finish it I will post here. We played most of a game of cosmic encounter at lunch today, but I had a meeting so we had to quit before the game ended.