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Game #15 : Tourney by Torrent

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Sun, 01/18/2004 - 18:25
Torrent
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By odd twist of fate, my game is the first GDW of the new year. Tourney is a game of Knightly battles in the middle ages, and is more of a card/board game than a big-board-on-table thing. Currently it is subtitled "Romanticizing the bloody sports of yore", but that may not survive to publication when the game gets that far. I would like to see it published eventually.

The link to the rules is http://www.groundedtraveler.com/Tourney/Tourney.html. My personal net connection has been flaky these last days, so I am taking the opportunity to post my intro on Sunday instead of Monday. Sorry, I just don't want to not be able to get online tomorrow morning.

The game is currently based around three players. I have a strain of two player rules that I will post soon, and am taking suggestions on four players.

The basis behind it is to win events to gain Favor's (colored cubes representing the favor of one of the big family) and winning melees to win Tropheys (card with conditions that give extra points).

Hope you enjoy, and be brutal (atleast that fits the theme right)
Andy

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Mon, 01/19/2004 - 03:52
#1
Aerjen
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Game #15 : Tourney by Torrent

My computer says your document has no data (monday 8.51 AM GMT +01.00)

EDIT: It's working now

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Mon, 01/19/2004 - 04:43
#2
Oracle
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Game #15 : Tourney by Torrent

I have no trouble loading the file now, and I didn't a few hours ago.

It sounds like a great theme. It brings up images of Defender of the Crown or the movie A Knight's Tale.

What sort of combat is Melee in this case? I thought Duel would be Melee fighting.

Jason

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Mon, 01/19/2004 - 04:48
#3
Torrent
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Game #15 : Tourney by Torrent

Yeah, I've been having those 404 and Contains no Data issues all weekend, even loading BGDF.

As for Melee. This is the Field Fight. Instead of Ordered Fights between two knights, several whole teams wander about the field trying to knock down anyone not on their team. Last man standing. It was supposed to be a more 'realistic' event of the battle field.

Andy

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Mon, 01/19/2004 - 11:25
#4
SVan
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Game #15 : Tourney by Torrent

Great game! The theme of the game is well done. It would be a game I would buy for the right price.

There are some things I feel my opinion can help with. I think instead of having a team color (which doesn't seem too necessary) I would go with a special flag for each player. There's already enough colors in the game with the cubes and you don't want to confuse players.

I like the idea of Trophies giving points in different ways. It gives players different ways to win each time they play. I think 1 point is plenty for a player that has the most cubes of a color. I would rather that the trophies would determine victory over who has the most cubes, but allow a person to collect extra cubes to edge out a victory.

You gave a way to win ties, which works, but I would like to see something different from the random approach most games use. Also you didn't give a way to resolve a 2nd, 3rd, etc. ties, if the first tiebreaker was a tie. Maybe make it where each player plays a battle card from their hand instead of the deck for ties, and if players run out of cards in their hands, let them draw 7 cards again.

I also think there should be injury tokens, make them red, and change the red favor cubes to another color. I think the injury cards underneathe would clutter up the space in front of you, especially if you have 4 or more knights with 2 or 3 wounds on them. Plus it could mean 20 or more cards out of the battle deck at times during the game.

I hope this helps. Good luck with your game.

-Steve

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Mon, 01/19/2004 - 12:14
#5
phpbbadmin
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My thoughts

It sounds very cool. I've played Quests of the Round Table and I was a bit dissappointed by it. Was Tourney at all influenced by Quests? They seem similar.

My only comment is that the game seems to be a bit too random for my liking. Almost every thing seems to be luck of the draw (other than allocating which knight to use and which support cards to play). Perhaps you could even it out by giving each player their own battle deck with a set # of cards. The player could play any card in their battle deck, discarding the card each time. When they deck ran out, they could pick up their discard deck and reuse all the cards again. This mechanic is put to good use in a lot of games to help reduce the random draw effect to a certain extent.

However, if you are going for more of a random rich game, it looks good. The fact that you excluded dice would leave me to believe this is not the effect you are after. At any rate, it looks good. The rules were very clear, which is a skill I greatly lack.

-Darke

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Mon, 01/19/2004 - 19:46
#6
Anonymous
Game #15 : Tourney by Torrent

Torrent

Great looking game. I think it has a lot of potential. It is definitely something I would consider playing.

I think it would be possible to make this into a 4 player game very easily without a lot of modification as you currently have it written. You may have to increase the card counts on some items, but for the most part I think it would scale up to 4 well. Beyond that, you'd have to add more cards to make it playable for 5 or 6 players - but that's what expansions are for!

Some questions:
During set-up, each player is dealt 4 Knights and 1 is made a vassal. Yet, the first step of a game turn is the call to service - why would I not want to call up this Knight to be on my team? I did not see a limit on the number of Knights, only on the number of total Vassals, though I'm not sure how many of those I can have either. It seems like 2 from the layout of the board, but that could be wrong. So how many Knights can I have on my team? Later on, in the Melee, you mention all the Knights from each side play in the melee, and then refer to 3 as this number. I'm a bit confused now, so maybe a distinction as to the number of Knights and Vassals would be appropriate.

How many support and battle cards can I have in my hand? I am dealt 7 battle cards at the start of the days events and discard used battle cards. Can I retain battle cards between days? What happens if I use all of my battle cards? Can I draw more, or am I out of luck for that days events? By my count, I can play 1 battle card for each of the 2 events, leaving me with 5. Then for the melee I play 1 for each Knight (3) total. If I'm no t knocked out, then I only have 2 battle cards left to play so 1 of my knihts doesn't get a battle card. Is this intended?

Why place the melee marker if all 3 knights are in the melee? I might be a bit confused on how many of the event markers there are and how many knights I can have on my team. I see that he's marked because he plays soley in the melee, but isn't that also indicated because he's not marked with a 1 or 2?

Is it possible to play two of the same events in the same day, say 2 duels, or 2 jousts? I assume you can't, but this might be either a: need to be clarified, or b: considered as a way to play. Having 2 jousts in 1 day might be interesting since I assume differnt Knights have differnt ratings in the different events.

Thanks for the chance to look at your work.
- Geoff

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Mon, 01/19/2004 - 20:08
#7
sedjtroll
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Game #15 : Tourney by Torrent

I have some friends who participate in SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) and ECS (Empire of Chivalry and Steel). I'll try and run this by them and see what they have to say about it.

I can't guarantee how cooperative they'll be though.

- Seth

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Tue, 01/20/2004 - 04:03
#8
Torrent
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Game #15 : Tourney by Torrent

paleogeoff wrote:
Great looking game. I think it has a lot of potential. It is definitely something I would consider playing.

Cool, thanks.
Quote:

Some questions:
During set-up, each player is dealt 4 Knights and 1 is made a vassal. Yet, the first step of a game turn is the call to service - why would I not want to call up this Knight to be on my team?

The order of phases in the first step is what I see as important. Yes, in theory you would want the largest 'stable' of knights you could get. That way you could pick the best ones and spread out the injuries. However, the Vassals are what give you the ability to draw support cards. If you Called your initial Vassal you would get no Support cards, because cards are drawn After the call to service. This is the cost of getting a new knight into your line. I envision the numbers on things to be such a way that have a good support card to be the difference between winning and loseing. Also support cards are the way to heal your team quicker.
Quote:
I did not see a limit on the number of Knights, only on the number of total Vassals, though I'm not sure how many of those I can have either. It seems like 2 from the layout of the board, but that could be wrong. So how many Knights can I have on my team?

There is no real limit on the number of knights you could have. I say no real limit, because there is a practical one. There are six days(Rounds), if you pulled one knight up per turn plus your original 3 you would end up with 9 guys.
Quote:
Later on, in the Melee, you mention all the Knights from each side play in the melee, and then refer to 3 as this number.

Each player at the beginning of the day marks 3 of his knights with the event markers. (1,2,M). This is the team he brings to the tourney that day. Thus a Melee is fought with 3 knights on each side (assuing noone is injured out of the day) Since the knights don't actually die, but just retire from the day, each player should always be able to field a full team of 3. So having more knights in your line merely gives you more flexibility not more raw strength.
Quote:

How many support and battle cards can I have in my hand? I am dealt 7 battle cards at the start of the days events and discard used battle cards. Can I retain battle cards between days? What happens if I use all of my battle cards? Can I draw more, or am I out of luck for that days events? By my count, I can play 1 battle card for each of the 2 events, leaving me with 5. Then for the melee I play 1 for each Knight (3) total. If I'm no t knocked out, then I only have 2 battle cards left to play so 1 of my knihts doesn't get a battle card. Is this intended?

Well, the battle and support cards are kind of in seperate Hands. You play your support cards on your knights and then put the unused support cards down. You are then dealt 7 cards at the beginning of the day's events. I don't think you can run out of Battle Cards. Each player has two battles within each event (duel/Joust), thus being two cards per event. An archery event takes only one. So at a max in the non-melee part of the day you use 4 cards (2 events * 2 battles each). The melee is actually one card played per Team, not per knight. Since you get to distribute injuries from the card you played, I thought it would be too much of a blood-bath to have so many cards. There are two rounds of melee, so if you survive the first you need 2 cards for the melee. This gives 6 max per day. The unused cards are indeed discarded with no carryover possible at the moment.
Quote:

Why place the melee marker if all 3 knights are in the melee? I might be a bit confused on how many of the event markers there are and how many knights I can have on my team. I see that he's marked because he plays soley in the melee, but isn't that also indicated because he's not marked with a 1 or 2?

Because you could have more than 3 knights in your 'stable', but may only field three at a time. So I need a marker for the third team member that is playing that day, but not in a specific event.
Quote:

Is it possible to play two of the same events in the same day, say 2 duels, or 2 jousts? I assume you can't, but this might be either a: need to be clarified, or b: considered as a way to play. Having 2 jousts in 1 day might be interesting since I assume differnt Knights have differnt ratings in the different events.

I had originally thought to not allow two events of the same type. And yes the knights have different abilities. At the moment the knight's numbers range from 1-6(or 7) with each knight having atleast one 'specialty', ie there won't be any wussy-knights with no skill, but there will be 'generalists' with average skill in all three.
Quote:

Thanks for the chance to look at your work.
- Geoff

Thanks for the input and thoughts.

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Tue, 01/20/2004 - 04:18
#9
Torrent
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Re: My thoughts

Darkehorse wrote:
It sounds very cool. I've played Quests of the Round Table and I was a bit dissappointed by it. Was Tourney at all influenced by Quests? They seem similar.

Nope never played, only briefly read about it on BGG. The game is more influenced by the film Knight's Tale.
Quote:

My only comment is that the game seems to be a bit too random for my liking. Almost every thing seems to be luck of the draw (other than allocating which knight to use and which support cards to play). Perhaps you could even it out by giving each player their own battle deck with a set # of cards. The player could play any card in their battle deck, discarding the card each time. When they deck ran out, they could pick up their discard deck and reuse all the cards again. This mechanic is put to good use in a lot of games to help reduce the random draw effect to a certain extent.

Yeah, I know it has some luck-of-the-draw effects. I actually see the effect more in the support and knight Draws. If you got a bad group of knights to begin with you would be in trouble for several days until you could get more. The one idea I had for this is making several sets of 'family knights' in player colors. So each player gets a set of four knights for his family pennent which are roughly balanced against each other, but strong in different events. This might reduce the 'bad start' effect. As for the randomness in Support cards, I like that.

As for the randomness in drawing battle cards... I essentially see this whole thing as a form of trick-taking. There is bluffing going on here, especially with the injuries. If you are in a battle and have a high talent knight and a two highish cards, one with an injury one without; then you have to decide whether you want to attempt to inflict an injury if you are sure you will win the contest. On the other hand if you are fairly sure you are going to lose and have an injury card, do you play that and hope the other guy will play one too, thus hurting his own knight, but risking the idea that he didn't play one so you take your own injury.

The other way I tried to reduce the randomness of the battle cards is by giving extra's. You really only need 6 per day, but you draw 7, so one card isn't played (more if there is an archery event).

Quote:

However, if you are going for more of a random rich game, it looks good. The fact that you excluded dice would leave me to believe this is not the effect you are after. At any rate, it looks good. The rules were very clear, which is a skill I greatly lack.

-Darke
Thanks for the compliment on the rules. That is actually like the 5th or so draft, you wouldn't want to read my originals. I don't mind the randomness so much, as I see this as a fun medium-filler game instead of an epic gamer's game.
Thanks for the suggestion on the battle cards. I will certainly try that during playtesting and see how it goes. I really like the mechanic of these numbered cards with injuries, and kind of hope if I can manage a standardized deck I can use it in some other of my designs.

Andy

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Tue, 01/20/2004 - 04:35
#10
Torrent
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Game #15 : Tourney by Torrent

sedjtroll wrote:
I have some friends who participate in SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) and ECS (Empire of Chivalry and Steel). I'll try and run this by them and see what they have to say about it.

I can't guarantee how cooperative they'll be though.

- Seth
Cool. Yeah, I was syked up about having this on GDW and went looking for magazines related to SCA, RennFaires and the like on the web yesterday. Didn't get far because my net connection kept dropping.

I actually used several sites run by SCA members for inspiration and help with tournaments in general. I will be interested in hearing their reaction.

SVan wrote:

Great game! The theme of the game is well done. It would be a game I would buy for the right price.

Cool. I'm hoping to have it happy and fun by either Hippodice next year for that contest, or for self-publication around Christmas next year.
Quote:

There are some things I feel my opinion can help with. I think instead of having a team color (which doesn't seem too necessary) I would go with a special flag for each player. There's already enough colors in the game with the cubes and you don't want to confuse players.

Ok, I see. Yeah, there are alot of colors about. I had hoped that having favors seperate from players would help. I may just turn the player colors into shield designs (which is more on theme anyway). And since the points are all tracked in favor cubes, or just tabulated at the end with the trophies, I don't think I need the scoring track. That saves me the 'matching' player score tokens, and some board space.
Quote:

I like the idea of Trophies giving points in different ways. It gives players different ways to win each time they play. I think 1 point is plenty for a player that has the most cubes of a color. I would rather that the trophies would determine victory over who has the most cubes, but allow a person to collect extra cubes to edge out a victory.

Yeah, I actually see the Trophies as affecting choices of players. Most will probably be points for certain combinations of colors of cubes (see the very bottom of linked rules, there is a link to a text file of some of my ideas for that). And since you start with a Trophy card, you already know from the beginning what patterns will get you the most points. So just going for the 'most of a color' is probably not the best choice. Also since you don't know what trophies others have, hopefully you don't feel like you are out before the end of the game. I actually see the cubes themselves being fairly evenly spread, with just color choice and such determining victory.
Quote:

You gave a way to win ties, which works, but I would like to see something different from the random approach most games use. Also you didn't give a way to resolve a 2nd, 3rd, etc. ties, if the first tiebreaker was a tie. Maybe make it where each player plays a battle card from their hand instead of the deck for ties, and if players run out of cards in their hands, let them draw 7 cards again.

Yeah, I kind of hope that ties are not really common, but they could be. My favorite support card that I thought of relates to ties. "Lucky Socks" just allows any knight to automatically win One tie he is involved in. I had two other ideas for ties.. was to introduce some sort of 'suit system' in the battle cards, perhaps based on the families represented by the favor cubes. Each value has a suit, which is in a heirarchical relationship with the other suits. Ties are broken with this relation.
Secondly, try to do some sort of 'compare talents of knights' highest talent wins ties. But then you get into multiple tie categories, down almost to the two possibly being exactly equal. At which point thematically, they should both get favor for fighting an honorable battle.
Quote:

I also think there should be injury tokens, make them red, and change the red favor cubes to another color. I think the injury cards underneathe would clutter up the space in front of you, especially if you have 4 or more knights with 2 or 3 wounds on them. Plus it could mean 20 or more cards out of the battle deck at times during the game.

I hope this helps. Good luck with your game.

-Steve

Yeah, I had originally planned for little red tokens. I think I took them out because it already felt like there were already a lot of little bits on the table. I hadn't really thought about the alteration of probability with using the cards themselves. Fewer in the deck, and there aren't THAT many Injury cards to begin with. Only 9 (0-8) * 2 = 18. I will certainly watch that during playtesting.

Andy

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Tue, 01/20/2004 - 10:11
#11
phpbbadmin
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Ahhh ok

Quote:

As for the randomness in drawing battle cards... I essentially see this whole thing as a form of trick-taking. There is bluffing going on here, especially with the injuries. If you are in a battle and have a high talent knight and a two highish cards, one with an injury one without; then you have to decide whether you want to attempt to inflict an injury if you are sure you will win the contest. On the other hand if you are fairly sure you are going to lose and have an injury card, do you play that and hope the other guy will play one too, thus hurting his own knight, but risking the idea that he didn't play one so you take your own injury.

Ok I wasn't able to glean this interesting nugget of strategy from the rules or the sample card. This makes better sense. I can live with the randomness for the support cards. That makes sense...

Have you considered incorporating a system to allow people to 'purchase' support cards? I.E. you could spend favor tokens to purchase support cards? I know this might take your game into another direction that you didn't want it to go. It also might lead to a runaway leader problem (I.E. the players who won favors would use them to constantly purchase more support cards thus guaranteeing future wins and more support cards). You might balance this by giving people loss tokens that they can also use to purchase support cards. However, I could forsee that this might lead to tricky balancing problem that might better be left alone. (Although it may be cool. If the losing player was able to purchase support cards with his loss tokens (albeit at a slightly steeper rate than purchasing with favor tokens) then a losing player might have a better chance of staying in the game. It also might make players who are in the lead agonize about whether to 'spend' precious favor tokens instead of keeping them to use to score victory points. - Just a thought).

Good work and keep us posted how it goes!
-Darke

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Tue, 01/20/2004 - 13:54
#12
Torrent
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Game #15 : Tourney by Torrent

I appreciate all the comments. I just posted a very early 2 player variant.
http://www.groundedtraveler.com/Tourney/2Player.htm Take a look if you want, it essentially adds rules for playing the third plays as a dummy player, that each player gets to control. I like the idea of a shared player instead of just two people on the field.

As always any comments are welcomed. I would like this to be a marketable game, and realize that having it available and playable by multiple numbers of players increases that.

As for four players, I see a problem in that if each player plays each other the number of battles per event goes from 3 to 6, with either a two divisional or a three layer melee round. In order to have enough cubes to give out that would mean each player only gets host duties once. I'm not sure that is fair. It also gets bloody fast, as in each of your knights fights in double the number of battles and thus risks double the number of injuries.

Quote:
Have you considered incorporating a system to allow people to 'purchase' support cards? I.E. you could spend favor tokens to purchase support cards?
I did ponder this, but I decided that the favor cubes are few enough in number as to be too important to spend. Basically if you were behind you wouldn't want to go further behind for only a chance at getting back, and if you were far enough ahead to spare cubes, then you don't need the help.

At the moment in the 3 player game if every possibility of a cube being won occurs (archery could have fewer than 3 per event won) then 42 of the 44 cubes are taken. The maximum in cubes any one player can get is 30: if no archery is drawn and they win all of their battles (6 days * 2 events * 2 battles = 24) and finish second in every melee (6 days). This is the extreme case and would imply no trophies won. I see the cube numbers being much more equal and thus coming down to the points gained by trophies through clever choosing of colors tobe more important.

I do like the idea of having some sort of loss tracking system that gives support. The problem there is theme. If you lost battles, the idea of someone giving you stuff seems odd. I dunno, maybe that can be glossed over if it helps the game.

Andy

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Tue, 01/20/2004 - 14:17
#13
SVan
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Game #15 : Tourney by Torrent

I didn't realize on the first reading that the number of your knights as vassels actually determines your draw. I think that is a great system, since you basically have to choose to leave a good knight back just to recieve support.

Maybe there could be a rule to bring back knights as Vassals (one per turn max) to help you draw support cards? Maybe the knight cannot have wounds on him to be sent back as a vassal.

Also I think forgoing your draw for support cards should heal the same amount of injuries as discarding. I can see the reasoning that you have forgoing worth more, but it just unbalances the game.

Hope this helps. Will check out the 2 player rules later. I think 4 players would make make the game much more accessable, as that seems to be the optimum number of players most of the time I have seen, but if you think it would hurt the game, then I wouldn't worry about it.

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Tue, 01/20/2004 - 14:38
#14
Torrent
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Game #15 : Tourney by Torrent

SVan wrote:
I didn't realize on the first reading that the number of your knights as vassels actually determines your draw. I think that is a great system, since you basically have to choose to leave a good knight back just to recieve support.

Actually each Knight has a support number in the top left (see example card linked from rules), that dictates how 'rich' the vassal is and thus how much support he gives as a vassal. So some cards could be rich lords willing to give a lot, or barely scraping along knights only able to provide one per turn.
Quote:

Maybe there could be a rule to bring back knights as Vassals (one per turn max) to help you draw support cards? Maybe the knight cannot have wounds on him to be sent back as a vassal.

I have thought of allowing some swaps. It is on my list of stuff to watch for during playtesting. Is 6 days really enough time to want to put someone back to vassalage status.
Quote:

Also I think forgoing your draw for support cards should heal the same amount of injuries as discarding. I can see the reasoning that you have forgoing worth more, but it just unbalances the game.

Hope this helps. Of course it helps. :) I'm curious about the 'unbalancing' effect of forgoing cards. I may remove that and just let it be a straight discard. It would certainly make my rules look cleaner too. I'm just wondering what about it you think makes it unbalanced?

Andy

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Tue, 01/20/2004 - 15:44
#15
DarkDream
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Tourney

I went ahead and looked over the rules.

My first concern with the game is it now appears a game only for 3 players. This is pretty unusual. I think it is pretty important to be able to support a range of players, for example 2-4 or at the very least 3-4 players.

The central mechanic of your game is the actual fighting of events. What I would do is concentrate on this particular part the most, refining it and so on. If this does not work well and is not fun then your whole game collapses. Right now I personally feel it is a little random, and I don't like the play one card to determine the winner.

To me any duel with swords, would be a back and forth contest. I would like to see a series of rounds for any fight (multiple rounds of card playing). Maybe the winner of a round would get to choose one cube. A contest could be three rounds for instance and at the end, the player with the most cubes gets one bonus cube. Of course, if a player gets too injured, the other player wins by default and gets the remaining cubes plus a bonus one (for winning).

Maybe an idea, is that a knight can expend a favor cube to add one to his battle score.

As for the melee event, it seems rather similar to the sword duel except for the two rounds and having all knights participate. Maybe you can introduce the rounds I mentioned above, and have players secretly pick an opponent instead of taking the highest score of just one.

What would really be neat is an event (maybe to replace the melee) where it consists of the knights first of all battling on horses with lances, and then with swords. To begin with, each player does a joust round (if both score equal both are knocked off). The loosing player is then on the ground and must fight with his sword. As the player has a disadvantage on the ground, the lance player gets a +2 bonus or something. If the two battle and the guy on the ground wins, the lance player is knocked off the horse and both must duel it out as a sword duel event.

Also to add a bit of spice to the game, have some knights with special abilities, for example, Edward The Bruce, is an excellent swordsman, when fighting a round can pick up a battle card from the deck and decide to use it or not.

Some other ideas for some spice, is instead of winning a trophy you win the princess of the hosting player. With the princess, you can play it to get one knight from the opposing player (their is an alliance with marriage). The neat thing, is that the player who is hosting the princess will battle extra hard to keep her himself so he does not need to loan out a player. A player for one day, must host a princess -- it can not be avoided.

I don't know how crazy you want to get, but you could have a dragon (maybe from an event card) show up and now all players must choose one of their best knights to fight it (the fighting mechanics would be essentially the same except it is all knights versus the dragon -- which would be really tough -- and each knight that scores a hit would get a favor cube).

I think the best part of your game is the idea of the valor cubes and the trophys which give you bonuses for a particular color or combination. If balanced properly, this would give you an excellent method of achieving different victory conditions.

For example, an archery event is for all blue cubes and you really want orange cubes to get your bonus. As such you don't care so much for this event and put a lesser knight to reserve your better. It can add strategy and add needed descision making. I think this is your best mechanic in the game, and if you can get the fighting right and balance the cube portion, you may have a winner on your hands.

Thanks for sharing your ideas in progress. I feel if you keep working on it, it could be really good.

--DarkDream

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Tue, 01/20/2004 - 17:26
#16
SVan
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Game #15 : Tourney by Torrent

The unbalanced part comes when a player who has knights in his vassal that are drawing lots of cards. With 4 or more cards, they could forego half of their cards and heal 4 injuries. 2 knights with a support of 2 each can do that for you. I think that should heal most if not all of your knights.

Although I like the idea of foregoing cards, I think you're probably right with taking it out. It will make the game a lot more cleaner.

Hope this helps.

-Steve

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Tue, 01/20/2004 - 17:41
#17
Anonymous
Game #15 : Tourney by Torrent

Torrent wrote:

The order of phases in the first step is what I see as important. Yes, in theory you would want the largest 'stable' of knights you could get. That way you could pick the best ones and spread out the injuries. However, the Vassals are what give you the ability to draw support cards.

Good point. I do see this as a possible strategy though, if I'm hosting the days events, then it's to my advantage to take a vassal player that might have a better score in one area and convert them to a knight. Has anybody play tested the game this way to see how things turn out?

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Well, the battle and support cards are kind of in seperate Hands. You play your support cards on your knights and then put the unused support cards down. You are then dealt 7 cards at the beginning of the day's events. I don't think you can run out of Battle Cards.

Yep - I was doing my math differently. I thought every knight in the melee had a battle card played on them, not just one for the entire melee. This might need to be clarified in the rules.

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The unused cards are indeed discarded with no carryover possible at the moment.

You might want to consider carryover. That would allow a new level of strategy for the events, especially if you get a battle card that could be the difference to a battle, but you don't want to use it on the first day on the chance you'll never get it again. How often is the battle deck shuffled throughout the game? Since battle cards w/ injuries currently remain with the injured knight until healed, that eliminates certain cards from any reshuffle. Maybe too, I might want to hoard certain types of cards. Do you have to play a battle card for each of the events? Can you choose to not play one and 'throw' a match? Would you want to do this? If you hold cards between days, this might be a unique strategy to the game.

I agree with darkdream's comments that the 3 player set up is different. If you could develop the game so that there were enough pieces to play with 4 players, then you only need to package the game with 2 sets of rules - one set for 2 players, and 2 set for 3-4 players. I think having the game available to 2-4 players makes it more marketable.

- Geoff

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Wed, 01/21/2004 - 07:02
#18
Torrent
Torrent's picture
Offline
Joined: 08/03/2008
Re: Tourney

DarkDream wrote:
My first concern with the game is it now appears a game only for 3 players. This is pretty unusual. I think it is pretty important to be able to support a range of players, for example 2-4 or at the very least 3-4 players.

It is only current for 3 because it is onl currently good for 3. I put up some two player rules, see previous post. I also put up some of my concerns for the 4 player game. Until I can figure out how to reduce the expontential increase of battles with the 4 players, I can't condone it for such.
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Right now I personally feel it is a little random, and I don't like the play one card to determine the winner.

To me any duel with swords, would be a back and forth contest. I would like to see a series of rounds for any fight (multiple rounds of card playing). Maybe the winner of a round would get to choose one cube. A contest could be three rounds for instance and at the end, the player with the most cubes gets one bonus cube. Of course, if a player gets too injured, the other player wins by default and gets the remaining cubes plus a bonus one (for winning).

This is basically intended to be on the light side and more entertaining than brain-burning gamers game. The randomness and reduced number of actions is part of this. I had thought about doing three round battles like in normal tournaments, but in my mind that ended up being a lot of repetition of the same mechanic over and over. I still have a banch in my notes for this sort of system to be a pure fencing game. This current game is themed around a larger tournament, not individual events. So it needs to lose detail in the individuals to keep the overall from getting bogged down.

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Maybe an idea, is that a knight can expend a favor cube to add one to his battle score.

See my post in reply to Darkehorse. There really aren't enough cubes about for spending them to be a viable option in my mind. They are too valuable, but it will be on my list for playtesting.
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As for the melee event, it seems rather similar to the sword duel except for the two rounds and having all knights participate. Maybe you can introduce the rounds I mentioned above, and have players secretly pick an opponent instead of taking the highest score of just one.

The thing about Melee is that you can select which opposing knight gains the injury if your battle card has one. So you can selectively target opponents. Yes, it uses the Sword Talent, making that an important one, which isn't far from theme. However since it uses al three of your knights, do you place yoru best Lance Guy to the Joust knowing that his low Sword may hurt you in the melee.
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What would really be neat is an event (maybe to replace the melee) where it consists of the knights first of all battling on horses with lances, and then with swords. To begin with, each player does a joust round (if both score equal both are knocked off). The loosing player is then on the ground and must fight with his sword. As the player has a disadvantage on the ground, the lance player gets a +2 bonus or something. If the two battle and the guy on the ground wins, the lance player is knocked off the horse and both must duel it out as a sword duel event.

This is supposed to be a card game themed about a medieval Tournament, not a simulation of one. Like above, I know such events existed but I didnt want to deal with the detail of them. Also with so many events I needed keep systems similar enough to not be difficult to remember.
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Also to add a bit of spice to the game, have some knights with special abilities, for example, Edward The Bruce, is an excellent swordsman, when fighting a round can pick up a battle card from the deck and decide to use it or not.

Special abilities will definiately be apart of it. See the link at the bottom of the rules to a text file of my preliminary thoughts of such.
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I think the best part of your game is the idea of the valor cubes and the trophys which give you bonuses for a particular color or combination. If balanced properly, this would give you an excellent method of achieving different victory conditions.

For example, an archery event is for all blue cubes and you really want orange cubes to get your bonus. As such you don't care so much for this event and put a lesser knight to reserve your better. It can add strategy and add needed descision making. I think this is your best mechanic in the game, and if you can get the fighting right and balance the cube portion, you may have a winner on your hands.

Exactly.. the strategy is knowing when to play your high card and risk you best knight to gain a single cube of the color you want. The trophy conditions are hidden so noone is exactly sure which cube you want.

paleogeoff wrote:
Good point. I do see this as a possible strategy though, if I'm hosting the days events, then it's to my advantage to take a vassal player that might have a better score in one area and convert them to a knight. Has anybody play tested the game this way to see how things turn out?
Nope, not yet. I studying abroad this semester, so my playtesting friends aren't around, nor do I currently have the equiptment to make a prototype. However, I do have a lot of it laid out in my head and will doing prototype and playtest pretty much the moment I get home.
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not just one for the entire melee. This might need to be clarified in the rules.
Will do. Clarifaction noted.
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Since battle cards w/ injuries currently remain with the injured knight until healed, that eliminates certain cards from any reshuffle.
Im thinking of following advice given earlier and switching these to marker tokens instead of cards. As for reshuffles, there are 54 cards. 21 per day for 3 people, so every 2.5 days about for a reshuffle.
As for the ability to throw a match, there are 0 cards.

I do agree that 2-4 would be great. I have 3 right know, working on 2. Then we'll see about 4, but I don't have much hopes. Kosmos makes a lot of games for 2, and many things are 4+, so I don't see having a game that is perfect for 3 being a bad thing. I certainly wont put in rules for 4 unless I know they work.

Thanks all for the thoughts and stuff. This is quite helpful.
Andy

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Mon, 01/26/2004 - 12:33
#19
jwarrend
Offline
Joined: 08/03/2008
Game #15 : Tourney by Torrent

Sorry to not get back to you sooner on your game, I've been swamped working on two games of my own.

I think your game sounds pretty solid! I only have a couple of comments, and I'm not sure whether they've been made before...

Regarding the rulebook: it probably needs a good edit. Be careful about being consistent about the way the terms "knight" and "player" are used. I think there's at least one point where you refer to a player as a "knight". Also, it's not clear whether one can have more than 1 Vassal active or not. Finally, I don't know if I like the "title" that each action is given, for example, "Support your local Knight", but that's just personal preference.

I like the Vassal/Knight dichotomy. You want vassals to be able to get support cards, but you need to upgrade them to knights to be able to fight. I like the "favors" system, where if you win an event you can choose the color. This could create some nice strategy about which events you really try to win.

There could be a luck of the draw effect, but it should even out over the game. But, I don't like the tie breaker system at all. Tie breakers are a pain, but you need to think of something better. How about "winner gets the victory, loser keeps the card he drew"? Something, anything, to make ties more interesting. Or else, just flip a coin, which is what your system currently is.

I think you have a clean system at this point, and I'd resist the urge to create "special effect" knights and such; these will just add more complexity, require adding more special rules to decide how they interact with each other, etc. And moreover, it will make the combat resolution that much more laborious. Even the "support" cards will contribute a little complexity, but since it's a core part of the strategy, it's justified.

Basically, I think any game with "card based modifiers" is going to have the potential for people to forget that so-and-so has such-and-such card, or someone else will need to analyze every card that everyone has showing, etc. So, card-based modifiers can work well, but they must be kept simple to work most effectively.

I think you have a very richly themed game with a little luck and a lot of fun. I hope you are able to keep pushing this one further, there is a lot of potential for this one! I'm sure you're aware of Ivanhoe -- I haven't played, but it seemed kind of abstract. Your game evokes the theme much more interestingly, and I think a lot of people would be interested in this one. Good luck!

-Jeff

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Mon, 01/26/2004 - 14:58
#20
Torrent
Torrent's picture
Offline
Joined: 08/03/2008
Game #15 : Tourney by Torrent

jwarrend wrote:
Sorry to not get back to you sooner on your game, I've been swamped working on two games of my own.

I certainly understand, thanks for taking the time now.
Quote:

Regarding the rulebook: it probably needs a good edit. Be careful about being consistent about the way the terms "knight" and "player" are used. I think there's at least one point where you refer to a player as a "knight". Also, it's not clear whether one can have more than 1 Vassal active or not. Finally, I don't know if I like the "title" that each action is given, for example, "Support your local Knight", but that's just personal preference.

Yeah, I do need to work on terms. Especially since in some places Knight and Vassal get mixed up. As for Support your local Knight, that is a play on a movie title with Jimmy Stewart called "Support your Local Sheriff". I just have an odd sense of humor. Those are there to keep the rules from looking all the same and keep ME from getting lost. They will probably reduce to one word titles in the future.
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I like the Vassal/Knight dichotomy. You want vassals to be able to get support cards, but you need to upgrade them to knights to be able to fight. I like the "favors" system, where if you win an event you can choose the color. This could create some nice strategy about which events you really try to win.

Cool thanks. These are my two favorite bits too. As for the luck of the draw you mention below, I think I may work on building a 'starting team' per color for the players. So you don't get hosed by your initial draw, and it also provides more incentive on later days to upgrade to knights the random guys you drew.
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There could be a luck of the draw effect, but it should even out over the game. But, I don't like the tie breaker system at all. Tie breakers are a pain, but you need to think of something better. How about "winner gets the victory, loser keeps the card he drew"? Something, anything, to make ties more interesting. Or else, just flip a coin, which is what your system currently is.

Yeah, the tie-breaking is the weakest part of it now. I like the idea I saw in some Zoo game (Zoo-sim I think), where there is a constantly rotating hierarchy of flags. If you lose a tie your flag goes higher, if youwin it goes lower. It kind of fits my theme too. I'll keep thinking about it.
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I think you have a clean system at this point, and I'd resist the urge to create "special effect" knights and such; these will just add more complexity, require adding more special rules to decide how they interact with each other, etc. And moreover, it will make the combat resolution that much more laborious. Even the "support" cards will contribute a little complexity, but since it's a core part of the strategy, it's justified.

Yeah ok, the special abilities of knights will probably still be there, but be subtle and not directly affect resolution of combat. The one I point at is 'The Barbarian', really high sword with special rule of 'Only may fight in Melee'. Special rule but not something that is going to affect the math. Most of the wierd-ish stuff will be in support cards. I hope that since they are only around one day or so that forgetting about them won't be such a problem. You just played it, so probably had a reason you will remember.
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Basically, I think any game with "card based modifiers" is going to have the potential for people to forget that so-and-so has such-and-such card, or someone else will need to analyze every card that everyone has showing, etc. So, card-based modifiers can work well, but they must be kept simple to work most effectively.

I think you have a very richly themed game with a little luck and a lot of fun. I hope you are able to keep pushing this one further, there is a lot of potential for this one! I'm sure you're aware of Ivanhoe -- I haven't played, but it seemed kind of abstract. Your game evokes the theme much more interestingly, and I think a lot of people would be interested in this one. Good luck!

-Jeff
Thanks for the complement. Yeah, I've seen Ivanhoe, not played it either. Also seen something about Oylmpic Games playing atheletes to gather laurels. I'm hoping this is different and evocative enough to seperate itself. Yes, I will keep with it. I'm really hoping to have it playtested and balanced by the end of the summer. Either for pulishers or for Hippodice.

Andy

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