Boardy Games

Hello! A few questions about the game as written:

I assume the attack mechanics work both against settler tiles and fortified worker tiles, correct? Is it possible to spawn new settlements or are you limited to the two with which you start? Also, I'm not totally sure whether the mode dial adds anything to the game; it seems like it effectively just lets players sometimes take three turns in a row. I'd want to try a game without it first, then add it and see if it produced desirable results.

I had to read through the rules a few times before I started to grasp the flow of the game (I recognize that this is just an alpha writeup). I think a useful next step would be an example of play or turn flowchart, especially if you started working on a theme, which could help the reader plug tiles into functional roles by analog. "Settlers" is a perfectly good theme (there is a fairly prominent game on that theme already, in fact), but two others I thought of were "rival gold prospectors" or "termite colonies." "Space settlers" could also help give some rationale for the mode dial if you choose to stick with it (information lag, etc).

Brendan:

Good ideas! I like the "termite colonies" one especially :D (I had originally toyed with the idea of rivaling bacterial colonies...but I think termites fits better).

Yes, the rules are a bit rough -- sorry for that; I would even go so far as to call it "pre-alpha" :D

I have to upload the pictures still, but I did actually proxy up the gamepieces and run through 9 turns of gameplay with those original rules. There was some good moments and some bad ones. I put it up on my wiki, here's the link: (removed by author)

I agree with you about the modal dial -- the majority of times, the alternate turns were useless, and it was NEVER favorable to spawn a worker with alternate face up. I thought of a variation for that modal rule that seems to make more sense, flavor-wise. (See "afterhoughts" in the playtesting log, under "exhaust mechanic").

Re: spawning new settlements: yes, you can produce new settlements. the pre-alpha rules have an action that workers can perform where six workers surround an empty tile, and one takes an action to remove all six and replace with a settlement.

I'll see if I can revise the rules with my observations from my first round of playtesting this week sometime, and maybe do another round of testing. As it is right now, I wouldn't waste your time playtesting it yet, unless you're really bored of have some ideas. :)

Cool! I think termites are vastly underused.

Ok -- I've updated the ruleset to "0.2", incorporating some changes from first round of playtesting.
Changelog is in the Discussion section (link removed by author)

I've also added photos to the PlayTesting log (5 photos) from the session. [ (link removed by author) ]

I changed the "modal dial" thing to use lunar phases. I think that concept seems a bit more intuitive, at least for now. Maybe a better flavor idea will come along. *shrug* I also changed how it works, slightly. We'll see how it fares in playtesting!