Psychonesia

The small island game is getting out of hand. I played a second game of it last night, and both players found highly lucrative strategies. One of the strategies snowballed in a really fun way, the other was degenerate, and I am putting in a fix for it. The snowbally one was just crazy awesome.

Here is the end state:

The right player found one stupid trick to gain 6-12 points a turn (Hint: it was 2x exploring every turn and then buying points once he had 30 goods). It only involved 2 specific cards and having three or more workers, so it was pretty bad.

The left player stacked his abilities up until he could labor to: draw 10 cards, settle an island, tuck 3 cards for free, gain a free worker, and gain a point. This net him about 5 points a turn, but on a really good turn he could get 12 points. His strategy reached fruition slightly quicker, and was snowballing faster, so he would have won had he not drawn the entire deck and ended the game early.

It felt like a wild engine building game. I really liked it.

The game currently consists of 88 cards, 25 workers, and 8 tokens. Here are the rules as they currently stand (which is woefully inadequate):

Setup: give each player 5 cards, 5 goods, 1 worker, 1 home island, and 1 leader.
Players take turns taking one action each until someone passes 50 points, or any supply runs out (cards or workers)
For each action: Remove all workers from an island you own. For each action, n is a number that you choose that is less than or equal to the number of workers removed (but no less than 0). After the action, scatter the removed workers - evenlyish divided among islands you own. Don't add two workers to any island until they all had one etc.

Possible actions:

• Settle: Pay n goods. Settle an island from the top n cards of the deck. Pay goods equal to the cost (number of up arrows on the island) or discard it. Discard the other cards.

• Explore: Pay n goods. Select a resource card from the top n cards of the deck. Gain goods equal to the number of goods and points equal to the number of points.

• Draw: Look at 2n cards from the deck. Select a resource card to keep from the cards.

• Build: Pay n goods to tuck card(s) under the island: 1 for right tuck, 2 for left tuck, 3 for bottom tuck, 4 for top tuck. You may tuck multiple as long as they are all paid for.

• Harvest: Activate n card(s) tucked right on the island, and gain the goods that they indicate.

• Multiply: Gain n/2 workers (round up). Place them on the selected island. Do not scatter.

• Sacrifice: Pay 5 goods. Gain 1 point. Do this up to 2n times.

• Deify: Pay 8-n goods. Flip your leader over to its god side. Gain a new leader from the top of the leader deck.

• Trade: Give an opponent 2n goods. Gain n points. You and that opponent may freely trade cards from your hands.

• Labor: Activate n cards tucked down on the selected island.

• Promote: Discard your active leader. Look at the top n cards from the leader deck. Select one to be your new leader.

There are some graphical changes I want to make to the score card, I want to add island cards that have more down arrows on them, and there are probably a few more balancing things, but I am really happy with how quickly this game is coming together.

I am also starting to prepare some games to be submitted to publishers. It is lengthy, but hopefully will yield results.