On May 9th, I setup a demo at Board N Brew Café, a local game store. There were three people who came to play; Carter, Justice, and Marius who is one of the store owners. This game would be four players with me as a fourth. Originally, I wanted to try out a three player game, since that has not been done yet, but I decided to try it next time.
The objective for this game was to be the players with the most zones controlled by the end of game round six (I still prefer to say game turn, vice game round, as it sounds better to me, but that is not the preferred method now). The UNRF players were Carter and Justice. The Sazzarran players were Marius and I. While we were working together in our teams to get the most controlled zones, there would still be competition to be the single player to have the most controlled zones as well.
We played three game rounds before calling it quits. The game had lasted 90 minutes by that time, although there were delays with Marius having to serve other customers and short discussions on the cards and game improvement. The actual time may have been closer to 70 minutes. But even for three rounds that was still too long for what I was trying to achieve.
The two biggest things I was looking at for this game was game time and using the Giant Walls. There were labeled as GSWs for short: Giant Steel Walls for the UNRF and Giant Shield Walls for the Sazzarran. The GSW tokens were double-sided hexagons with an open space in the center to place over the city images on the board, and they had a steel surface image for the UNRF GSW on one side and a yellow cross hatched side to represent the GSW for the Sazzarran.
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| UNRF Giant Steel Wall on the left, and Sazzarran Giant Shield Wall on the right. |
So, game time was still too long. If this was a two player game it would have lasted 60 minutes for sure with experienced players. For a four player game and three of them not knowing all the capabilities of the cards it would of course take longer to play. So I am looking at 60 to 180 minutes game time.
In order of the Phases, these are the points we found:
PORTAL PHASE: The Harpoon and Crimson Valkyrie MECHA cards each have a Special Ability to look at the top one or two cards of the Target City Deck so the UNRF players have an idea of what Cities the Sazzarran forces may appear through their Portals. The cards stated to use during the Resource Phase. I have to change that to state using during the Portal Phase.
We tried a new method of the Sazzarran players drawing two Target City Cards each, choosing one of those cards as their Target City. The other card would be placed facedown at the bottom of the Target City deck. By doing this, the Target City deck could be used up by game round 4. The players would have to shuffle and could possibly draw some of the same target city cards during rounds 5 and 6, or even later rounds if playing other scenarios that could last up to 10 rounds.
This new rule added with the Harpoon MECHA being in play allowed the UNRF players to look at one of the players' hands. If the Crimson Valkyrie was in play, the UNRF players could look at both hands of the Sazzaran players to see all the city choices. So the UNRF players could see as many as four possible target city destinations but only two of them would be the Portal location. This ruling seemed to work during the game, so I will be using that again for future games, until something better comes along.
RESOURCE PHASE: The players would normally receive 15 Resource Points (RPs) on the first round, 13 on the second, 11 on the third and so on to the 6th round where they each receive 5 RPs each to build their forces. Having added the GSWs to the game and hoping they would get used, I figured we would each get 6 more RPs for each round. The end result of that was by the third round we had all our Military Units (MUs), MECHA, Kaiju and nearly all the Bases on the game board with about 7 GSWs.
That turned out to be way too much on the board. So, I will go back to 15 RPs starting. However, Justice came up with the idea of having RPs available every second round. For example, it would be something like 20 RPs each on Round 1, 15 RPs on Round 3 and 10 RPs on Round 5. This way, the players are practically forced to save some of their RPs for future rounds. That method will be tried in the next gaming session.
In all the games played including this one, the UNRF would need to buy Bases. The Sazzarran would start with Portals, but could also buy Bases once they controlled a zone. I found that the Sazzarran were still winning most of the time, and it may be because of the Portals and being able to get Bases. Therefore, to try and balance the next game, the UNRF will no longer need to buy Bases, but can deploy their forces from any city zone. Also, they can deploy their MUs and MECHA at any zone on the board on the first round. Buying the GSWs will also fortify their city zones to prevent the Sazzarran forces from destroying or controlling the city zones. The Sazzarran players would not get Bases, but would still use the Portals and when controlling a zone can buy and deploy their own GSW to provide protection while deploying their forces from the zone in future rounds.
The GSWs were each worth 3 RPs. This seemed to work for cost. They would protect a city zone from being damaged during the Battle Phase. More details on that in the comments for the Battle Phase. During the game there were about 7 GSWs on the board, but that was because of the extra 6 RPs the players had. Take that away, and it may not be as easy to get GSWs. But that is the option the players have in getting Bases, MECHA/Kaiju, MUs and now GSWs. After the game it was recommended the GSWs be reduced to 2 RPs each, especially if we lower the availability of RPs to every second round. Something to try out the next gaming session.
The last step of this phase was for the players to draw as many Tactic Cards as they each have MECHA, Kaiju or Bases in play. For example, if a UNRF player had one Base and two MECHA, he would draw three Tactic Cards. The maximum allowed is five cards. The players are allowed to discards any Tactic Cards, then draw back up to maximum five depending on number of Bases, MECHA or Kaiju they each have in play. The players are then allowed to use any Resource Phase Tactic Cards before going to the Movement Phase. This seemed to work so far. I will keep this method for the next gaming session.
MOVEMENT PHASE: The movement for the MUs was reduced from 2 to 1 zone per round, unless using a Movement Phase Tactic Card which can allow for more Movement points. This seemed to work as before the MUs were able to move quicker around the board. However, I may go back to 2 Move per MU to allow for quicker movement and enemy engagement on the board.
The movement of the MECHA and Kaiju seemed to work. They had an average Move of 3 zones, with some moving as much as 4 or 5 zones. There were also Movement Tactic Cards to allow MECHA and Kaiju to move further across the board.
BATTLE PHASE: This was where the game play slowed down, especially when by the third round, there were about 10 city zones occupied and at least 7 of them were contested that a battle had to take place. Only playing one turn of battle between players at each zone still works, especially to keep the game going and not being bogged down trying to eliminate each other in each zone. Also, having more RPs to buy units did not help. Less units on the board means less to destroy, and easier to control.
Using the Special Abilities of the Bases, MECHA and Kaiju, as well as the Tactic Cards further slowed down the momentum of the game as the players had to take the time to determine if they wanted to use the abilities/cards depending on their die rolls. Some abilities/cards could only be used if a certain die number was rolled. For example, the Nuke Em All card required two rolls of 6 to be used to activate the card. So, the players had to strategize if it was worth sacrificing dice to activate an ability or card.
An idea that developed from that was to use RPs instead of the die rolls to activate the Special Abilities and Tactic Cards. The RP cost would be listed by the ability on the cards. The players would have to save RPs in order to use these abilities. The Pro is that the players do not have to sacrifice dice to try and get better attacks, etc, and can actually use the dice to do their regular hits. The Con is validating using RPs to activate an ability. I would have to look at is as the ability being related to research and development of weapons/technology that would give the MECHA/Kaiju an edge in battle. To be played out at next gaming session.
Maybe it would be more fitting if I call them Command Points instead of Resource Points. Command Points denote High Command giving them Points to build and deploy their forces as well as activate the special abilities on the character and Tactic cards. Something to ponder, anyway.
The GSW rule of having a Defense Value of 6 and 2 hits seemed to work. An opposing player had to sacrifice a die roll of 6 to basically destroy an opposing player's GSW. It has its pros and cons in that a player could only attack with two dice that round and still get a 6 that could be used to either destroy the GSW or be used against an MU, MECHA or Kaiju. The players also could not damage a city with rolls of 1 or 2 so long as the GSW remained in play. This proved beneficial for both players, especially if the objective was to control zones for victory points. However, as soon as a 6 was used to destroy a GSW, any rolls of 1 or 2 during that battle could immediately be used to damage the city.
One recommendation to this was that the GSWs were DV 5 and took two hits. This means a player would have to roll at least two 5s during a battle, and use them to destroy the GSW. It is either that or use two 6s, but I think still having a DV of 6 and needing two rolls of 6 would make it much harder to destroy a GSW. I guess further game play will decide that issue.
END PHASE: In this game, the Sazzarran players had a total of 58 VPs. The UNRF players only had 7 VPs. Too overwhelming for my taste. So, take away the VP aspect and just go with zones controlled would still be the Sazzarrans having 11 zones and UNRF with 5 zones. A little more fair. Although some people may like having to calculate Victory Points.
Therefore, in the next gaming session, and as a primary game objective, the team with the most VPs in controlled land based hex zones wins the game, whether cities are destroyed or not. Each land zone or destroyed City zone is worth 1 VP. Each damaged or non-damaged city zone is worth half its HP value in VPs, rounded up. Those values are listed beside the HP value. A tie can be broken based on the number of controlled land and city zones.
Comments are appreciated.
My next demo events are as follows:
May 16th is Apt to Game for Edmonton Game Designers meeting
May 18th - 21st is DPX Expo
May 23rd and 30th is King's Court Cafe
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