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Ben Bateson
United Kingdom
Ross-on-Wye
Owner of original 'crappy art' GtR and pleased about it.
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Yes, yes. I know. I've not updated the blog again.
Right, here we go, then.
A surprisingly solid foursome - the 4 Bs of Ben, Becky, Bill and Boydell - kicked off Bank Holiday weekend and it was very much an evening of playtesting and trying games to their (or our) limit.
Becky and I kicked off with the delicious Famiglia (now playing the proper rules on the green cards - doesn't actually improve the game any, to be honest) and had just moved onto Innovation when Bill and Tony sauntered in. One day, everyone will be there at 7:30...
Anyway, I swiftly conceded Innovation given that Becky was drawing from the 6 pile while I was still doddering about in the 3s, and we brought out a Boydell project which is rather close to publication: Guilds of London.
Guilds has a rock solid core of card management (not too dissimilar from Race For The Galaxy), and Tony is just trying bolt on extra bits and pieces such as a 5-player variant and different colonies. Personally, I'm not sure the game needs them - there would be a lot of downtime in a 5-player game, the new tiles break the Guilds theme, and the new colony makes it a little too easy to access the Gold Cards (end-of-game bonus goals a la Princes of Florence). Still, Tony is mooting putting this one on Kickstarter, and I urge everyone reading to go and have a look - it knocks Paperclip Railways into a cocked hat.
Moving on, I had a game of my own to playtest. My first ever design, and I'd started simple by lifting a concept mooted at Surprised Stare. They'd had an informal little challenge to make a card game using only 18 cards (plus other 'normal gamer' bits and pieces such as cubes and dice) and I piggybacked on this. My Round is a ostensibly simple card-laying and pattern-forming game, complicated somewhat by the fact that you can lay cards anywhere - overlapping, in different orientations and so on.
I was pretty satisfied with the playtest: it didn't run too long, nobody said it was an awful game (although they might just have been trying to be polite), and Tony pointed out a couple of ways I could reduce the number of scorecards and consolidate the 'special powers', which prompted a little redesign. My Round v1.3 is almost ready for playtest if anyone wants a copy.
We finished the evening by playtesting a published game! We'd played a couple of games of Don before and couldn't work out whether it was totally bizarre, broken or just bonkers. A couple of games, both won by runaway leaders (myself and Bill respectively, I think) were completely inconclusive. I think the game is possibly broken, Tony thinks it's just weird and Becky doesn't understand it at all. I think after five plays or so, the Don might just have had his day...
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Owner of original 'crappy art' GtR and pleased about it.
