Stagecoach game... almost done. Comments?

I take it you mean Seth ;)

Glad you like it.

You can feel free. I just was putting a prototype together last night, I just need to make some sort of town indicator- something to secretly determine which town the outlaw is in which can be revealed to show the location. Maybe I'll just make sets of Town cards for each player, like for the roads. That's 28 more cards, but it's probably easier than the little pinwheel things like El Grande or Pirates Cove has.

Hmm... that's odd, it works for me.

Thanks for checking it out. Let me know if you make a prototype and I';ll discuss the rules with you (via PM or chat) to make sure they're clear and up to date.

- Seth

I made a MAP for your viewing pleasure. The first three Route markers will probably start out randmly distributed to towns 2, 3, and 4. The last one will start on the Mine.

I thinhk I forgot to mention it, but the last marker just bounces from the Mine to the Bank and back, it never ends up on a town.

Regarding shootouts, while they are definitely thematic, unless I can think of a good game reason to have them in they don't seem to fit in the game system. Maybe it could be a way to remove other peoples Dudes from the board... you challenge them to a shootout. I don't know how that would work exactly- maybe you can reveal your Outlaw's location and he challenges some player's Dude to a shootout. Obviously the Outlaw wins, so the Dude goes off the baord (and back to the hideout, even though he's technically dead). In other words, as an action you can remove a Dude in the town where your Outlaw is. I guess that could work.

Jeff brings up another good point. The Hideout/Playmat mirror of El Grande's Province/Court mechanic doesn't add anything thematically at all. I like the 'scarcity' issue in El Grande though that you have to recruit Caballeros to your court before you can play them to the board, making it not always possible to just play guys to the board.

Is there another way to go about that? I had the same question with my Chasing Tail showdown entry in which I had players somehow EARN dogs to be placed on the board.

It just seems like always having guys to place is sorta boring. But perhaps if you had to use an action for each guy you want to place- and you can only place them where the Stagecoach is- and there are other things you want to do with your LIMITED number of actions as well (move guys around, holdups) then maybe that's ok. This would mean deleting the Recruit action and having Dudes go directly from your Hideout into towns (or roads I guess).

One more issue regarding Dueds in roads, waiting to Ambush... what if a player wants to move one back to a town? Should they get to move them directly to any town they want? If so it would be 2 actions to teleport across the board, vs 1 action to move to an adjacent town. My other thought is to make them move to the Town Selector, and then you can only move Dudes from the town selector to the selected town at the beginning of the turn (though of course you select the town when you put them there)

Finally, one other idea might be to only allow Dudes to move from towns to the ADJACENT roads. In that caseI would think a hidden placement would be in order. Say you have a bin for each road, so you can see when a Dude ENTERS that bin, but you can't count how many dudes are in that bin... that might make Ambushes still be interesting. I know some people (Jeff?) aren't a big fan of hidden but trackable information, but remember that people would have about 13 bins each, and Dudes would move in and out of them all the time. I think there would be enough transactions in that case that people wouldn't bother keeping track (as opposed to El Grande where it's relatively easy to remember how many guys are in the Castillo if you try).

Thanks for the comments,
- Seth

P.S. I wonder if the towns shouldn't start with some gold on them. That might make the game a little more exciting.I don't see this game having any kind of "story arc".

Perhaps instead of players starting with 2 Dudes in a single town, and having a turn order effect involved in placing them, what about using the Town Selector to simulaneously place 2 dudes, then a second round to place 1 more Dude...

Furthermore, perhaps the towns should start with some gold chits on them.

Wouldn't that spice up the early game a bit?

- Seth