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sean johnson
United States
avon
Indiana
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If I want to get a game playable by September 18th, then I figured that I needed to start play testing almost immediately. So this morning, while my son napped, I made all the 62 cards needed for the game. I swiped some components from Perry Rhodan: The Cosmic League and Warhammer: Invasion, and we were off!
The game took around 20 minutes to play, and my wife won. After playing the game, she said "There are some kinks, but I think there could be a good game in there."
In my opinion, here are some of the things that really worked:
1. The deck size was perfect. Having 26 cards was a good pool, but it was limited enough to give a slight feeling of scarcity. This made each ship feel more valuable.
2. For the most part, the combat system which is the core element of the game worked. Obviously, since this is the most central part of the game it has the most problems, but the base mechanics will work, and moving a fleet into attack position and rolling a fistful of dice is satisfying.
3. The time was right. This is a light tactical, tug of war game. There was a little back and fort and the game ended at the right time.
Of course not everything worked quite right, so here are some of the problems to address:
1. The single biggest flaw is that combat was way to deadly. The idea is that equal sized fleets would go toe to toe for a couple of rounds, until a player had to make a tough decision of fighting it out one more round or retreating. As it was, with the exception of a couple of times where I had horrendous rolls, the game was one of mutual destruction. I probably need to up the shield modifiers a little, and I really need to up the armor of each ship. I was very conservative in guessing where that should be the first time, and this first test showed it to be way to low.
2. The next problem was with the battle cards. I tried to use a Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock as the basis. This means that each player had five battle cards. Each battle card got +2 against one card, +1 against another, but then lost to the other two cards. Having five cards was apparently to much as my wife felt these cards were arbitrary and not connected well to another. I think I will try again with a simpler Rock Paper Scissors mechanic. Assault will give a bonus against Skirmish, Skirmish will give a bonus against Defend, and defend will give a bonus against assault.
3. There was some initial clunkiness with the "home area". The idea is that all cards not in the deck are in play, in either the home area or one of the "In System" or "In Orbit" areas. Since the home area is hidden from the opponent, this led to a large stack of cards face down, and keeping track of what a player had available was awkward. This was easily fixed by making a player's hand part of their home. Thus home will now have to areas. The hand, where cards wait for deployment and the starbase (on the table in front of the player), where damaged ships heal.
For a first run, I am fairly pleased with the results. I agree that the could be a fun game in this design. I am glad for a couple of days off with labor day coming up, so I can do a bit more with this game. I need to work on the issues stated here, I need to continue making components, and I need to start putting the rules down on paper.
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