Arika McClure: the first person to punch out a spaceship

I just went to my 3rd Board Game Design Guild Meeting last night. Since there were not enough people who brought games, we ended up playing The Age of Vikings as one of the two games that were played. The people seemed to understand the game and we got through an entire game as well.

The notes that I took (of the comments that people made) were as follows:
  • When someone buys points, following players should have to pay 3 to buy points. (this is sort of against my original idea, however I see why this would seem a reasonable thing to say.)
  • Viking games should have more warfare (This was reiterated at least twice. I need to do some theme work, apparently).
  • Fiddly rules should be on a card (I can totally do this - I already have such a card, and expanding it into a mat wouldn't be that hard)
  • Perhaps there should be disputed territories: when a player takes over an island half way they can block the other player from benefiting from it. (not sure if I love this. I want the game to move along, and I worry that this would slow people down a lot)
  • Shields could be player owned, and removed from the island when it is taken over. (an interesting idea - chieftains are like this already, so there is a precedent in the rules).
  • Perhaps a colonial theme would be better than vikings, since there is not nearly enough warfare. (I like vikings way more than colonists, so perhaps I should instead work to make it more viking appropriate.)
  • Track the use of one time use gods by 'tapping' them (I just added this to the rules)
  • Hammers being worth 2 ships makes the math harder (I have reduced them to 1 already)
  • The number of chieftain tokens should be a hard cap (this is in the rules already)
  • Chieftains may be the wrong name, since chieftains sounds like a good thing. (I have changed the name to Rival Chieftains, so that is fixed)
We also played a game of TLDR at work today, and for the first time we were able to win the game at work. I think that the superheroes are way too powerful if they are allowed to attack alongside the robots in a fight. We ended up saving up 16 alien corpses and building the 8th Power, and the Mothership was a pushover because the superhero provided 4 damage of any type (leaving only two damage for the robot to have to do, and that is super easy to provide).

I will definitely have to change it to either robots or superheros in a fight, but not both. Though, I think that superheroes perhaps should be able to fight as a free action. That would probably not be too powerful.

I need to continue to work on the rule books for both games, but I am certainly feeling pretty good after these positive results.

About Extinction Events: I haven't yet figured out enough rules to make a good first playthrough. I only have 5 days till NaGaDemon starts, so hopefully I can get in a play or two before then.

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