Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

Mon, 11/08/2004 - 12:30

#1

emxibus

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Joined: 10/24/2008

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

Zzzzz,

Invasions look like a very fun game, great job!

Things I liked:

Exploring mechanism
upgrading forts and army
invasion chips

few questions on Setup:

Why are there 60 exploration tokens, but only 40 exploration locations on the board?

If all the exploration location are occupied at the start of the game, where do you put your God pawn?

From the component list, I'm having a hard time figure out where the "player's items" are coming from?

What do the player markers (the markers that cover the C, and 1,2,3,4) look like, I'm picturing little cubes?

Combat questions

What's the reasoning for using an 8 sided die for combat? Does it help balance combat between a 4D8 and a 1D8.

I'm assuming that combat continues until one side is defeated? If so, what about allowing the attacker to retreat once the odds are heavly against him (4D8 to 1D8).

What about including 8 dice instead of 5? This way both players involved in combat don't ever have to share dice.

Action questions

Do you find that moving your god pawn one space is enough? Have you thought about making it two spaces with stoping on occupied spots, or making movement a free action?

Misc. thoughts

At first glance I didn't realize that there were 3 magic regions, I thought there was only 1.

I like that there are only a few exploration locations in each region, and having shared resources will motivate me to takeover the entire region (so I don't have to share).

The more I review the rules the more I want to try it out. Great job!

-JR

Mon, 11/08/2004 - 13:36

#2

Zzzzz

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Joined: 06/20/2008

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

emxibus wrote:

Why are there 60 exploration tokens, but only 40 exploration locations on the board?

I wanted the board to have a sort of random feel to it. As a result of using 40 of 60 chips, there is potential for the game stradegy to change for players from game to game. One game you might have all 5 godly talismans, and if you control all 5 you win (since they are worth 3 VP each). Along the same lines, a little tension can be added with the invasion chips. You just never know how many outside invading factions will be in the game and where they will invade from.

emxibus wrote:

If all the exploration location are occupied at the start of the game, where do you put your God pawn?

Exploration chips are never "occupied" to the point at which your god pawn cannot move onto an exploration location. The presents of a chip or even owner control of a location does not stop a god pawn from being able to move into an exploration location.

emxibus wrote:

From the component list, I'm having a hard time figure out where the "player's items" are coming from?

Not sure I total follow you question, besides the goa pawn (each player gets 1) and the player markers (which each get 20 of the color matching the selected god pawn color), there are no other "player items".

emxibus wrote:

What do the player markers (the markers that cover the C, and 1,2,3,4) look like, I'm picturing little cubes?

They can be anything, but right now I plan on using glass counters for future prototyping. But I have also used some simple plasitic beads in the past.

emxibus wrote:

What's the reasoning for using an 8 sided die for combat? Does it help balance combat between a 4D8 and a 1D8.

Actually it is just a result of a previous verion of how I was originally generating the community resources. Previously I was going to have the starting player of each round, role 4d8 to represent the starting community reources (ie 1d8 for Wood, 1d8 for Stone, etc.). But the game evolved and no longer used d8 for resources. But I left it in for combat.

emxibus wrote:

I'm assuming that combat continues until one side is defeated? If so, what about allowing the attacker to retreat once the odds are heavly against him (4D8 to 1D8).

Yeah combat should continue untile someone wins, though I should add that statement to the rules. As for a retreat, I considered that but i was having a problem with how that would flow in the game. As a result I think if you actually use an action to Invade a players hill-fort you should fight to the death. Though I could add in a retreat action, for just this case. Thus you would only be able to retreat if you had a remaining action to do so..... I will have to think about this..

emxibus wrote:

What about including 8 dice instead of 5? This way both players involved in combat don't ever have to share dice.

Yepp I think that would make life easier on the players.... not sure why I overlooked such an obvious thing like that (though I was trying to prune the component list at one point, maybe that was one reason for reducing the number of dice).

Action questions

emxibus wrote:

Do you find that moving your god pawn one space is enough? Have you thought about making it two spaces with stoping on occupied spots, or making movement a free action?

I think the movement is enough, I dont want players to run around the board from north to south, east to west. I think it keeps players on their toes. Though I will keep this in mind during future playtesting.

Misc. thoughts

emxibus wrote:

At first glance I didn't realize that there were 3 magic regions, I thought there was only 1.

Yeah I noticed that and a couple other people also mention it, I will have to think about how to visual highlight the 3 different regions.

emxibus wrote:

I like that there are only a few exploration locations in each region, and having shared resources will motivate me to takeover the entire region (so I don't have to share).

Yeah... I also like the idea. I think it also adds in a a decision for other players, once you take over a region, I might just be the player type that comes to invade that region to reduce your control of it!

emxibus wrote:

The more I review the rules the more I want to try it out. Great job!

Thanks..... and thanks for the feedback.

Mon, 11/08/2004 - 16:55

#3

emxibus

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Joined: 10/24/2008

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

Zzzzz wrote:

emxibus wrote:

If all the exploration location are occupied at the start of the game, where do you put your God pawn?

Exploration chips are never "occupied" to the point at which your god pawn cannot move onto an exploration location. The presents of a chip or even owner control of a location does not stop a god pawn from being able to move into an exploration location.

OK, when I read the rules and saw, "Each player places their god pawn on a different, unoccupied,exploration location." I thought the exploration location had to be void of tokens, when I should have thought void of other god pawns.

Zzzzz wrote:

emxibus wrote:

From the component list, I'm having a hard time figure out where the "player's items" are coming from?

Not sure I total follow you question, besides the goa pawn (each player gets 1) and the player markers (which each get 20 of the color matching the selected god pawn color), there are no other "player items".

I was confused by the following rule:

Distribute Player Items
Each player selects a color and takes the 10 hill-fort markers, 5 stone markers, 11 control markers and a god pawn of that color.

I'm not sure where the 10 hill fort, 5 stone, and 11 control markers are coming from. That's 26 markers and there are only 20 color matching markers. Am I missing something, what is the makeup of the 20 player markers?

Thanks,
-JR

Mon, 11/08/2004 - 17:18

#4

Zzzzz

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Joined: 06/20/2008

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

emxibus wrote:

I was confused by the following rule:

Distribute Player Items
Each player selects a color and takes the 10 hill-fort markers, 5 stone markers, 11 control markers and a god pawn of that color.

I'm not sure where the 10 hill fort, 5 stone, and 11 control markers are coming from. That's 26 markers and there are only 20 color matching markers. Am I missing something, what is the makeup of the 20 player markers?

Good catch...... that is a error on my part. Overlooked that spot, it should refer to just taking 20 player markers now. What is there now is a previous iteration of the game that used player specific pieces.... hill-forts, stones and control markers. But I reworked the components in order to reduce the component overload I was originally having, but missed this change. Thanks for a good catch!

Tue, 11/09/2004 - 01:44

#5

Trickydicky

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Joined: 12/31/1969

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

Zzzzz, I think this game looks really interesting. It looks like the kind of game that I would like to play. I really like the idea of a community pool of resources specific to a location.

A few spelling errors (we all make them)

In the Distribute Player Items section there is a "by" that should be "be".

In the Increase Defense section "indicated" should be "indicate".

Now some questions:

When you get a VP for defeating an attacking army, is that only for an "Invasion Faction" from the exploration chips, another player's army or both? If it refers to another players army does it give to many benefits to the player attacked if they win the battle? They get any Godly Talismans the attacking player has plus a number of points equal to the attacking player's invasion strength. I would be very reluctant to attack someone if all I was going to get was a hill fort I would still have to build, but I could possibly give them 7 VP (if my math is correct).

Can player's attack each other's god's? I would imagine if they can the combat would be between the 2 different invasion strengths of the player's. Plus then the attacking god could take away the defending gods talismans if the attacker won. If you can't attack each other's gods is there any way to get into a resource community without attacking a Hill Fort? and can you have 2 gods in the same exploration location or do gods create a roadblock?

If I explore a location and it has a Hill Fort or Megalithic Stone on it and I don't build right away can another player move right in and build it under my nose?

A caution about the trading mechanic. I might be the only evil enough player to think of this, but could I purposefully trade 3 resources from an area to get a resource that I could easily get from another area simply to reduce the number of resources for others. For example if I was first in a round and I shared a gold resource location with 3 other players. Could I trade the gold for magic 3 times in order to build something, even if I am in a magic resource area? That would take 9 gold from the gold resource area, probably leaving it empty for the rest of the round. I think you could fix this by making a "Trade Action". This would also make it that much more important to be in as many different resource locations as possibly, in order to reduce the number of times you have to trade.

The resource distribution on the build card seems odd to me. There are 9 times you would need stone, 7 wood and 5 for both magic and gold. Did you do this on purpose? What was the reasoning behind it?

Thanks for sharing your game with us. It is always great to see how other creative minds think.

Tue, 11/09/2004 - 04:55

#6

Johan

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Joined: 10/05/2008

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

Hello Zzzzz

My first reaction when I read the rules was that this is a game that I will play once and never more. The major reason for this is that I got the feeling that the game will control you (you have one pawn to move and fight with in a combat game) combined with a 2-hour game length.
Still I believe that you have something that could be really good. The most interesting part of the game is the resource handling system.

Comments on the rules
This is two different games in the same rules. If you play the 3-4-player variant it will be a building (racing) game to reach the 15 points. If you play a 5-6-player variant there will be a combat game. I don't know what the result of the play-test but I believe that you need different victory condition depending on the number of players (and maybe different scales for the resources).

The resource handling seems to be the reason why you jump one person each turn. Normally this will be a problem in the game since you don't follow a strict path. One thing make it more logical is to include a "End of turn" phase where something is done (expand the resources, add some events, moving invasion fleets are some example). You have a small break before the next turn starts.

Why do you use D8? I did not find it in the rules why the really uncommon D8 are used instead of D6, or D10.

Finally a question mark: When an Invasion fleet (or a player) has destroyed a Hill fort or a Megalithic Stone, will it be possible to rebuild that later.

// Johan

Tue, 11/09/2004 - 07:46

#7

Anonymous

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

My first comment is that I always a soft spot for this type of game. The explore-and-squabble premise is sufficiently different from the German games I usually devote my time to that there's something refreshing about this type of thing. By incorporating action points etc. I think your taking the best bits of German games and an older genre of Anglophone pseudo-war games.

The exploration feels fun; in these games I always think it is nice, however exciting random exploration is, to have some opportunity to control discoveries.

I would agree with comments that the combat may be a little random. I think the D8 may be a mistake as it will make the possible outcomes vary so much that overhwelming power will be undermined by fate too often for my liking. Surprises are good in combat, but I tend to think they're best when they're player-ordained ones.

I think there's a nice game there, but perhaps tightening it to reduce playing to 60-90 minutes might be a move to go for? I think that will be especially true if the luck factor remains.

Tue, 11/09/2004 - 12:02

#8

Zzzzz

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Joined: 06/20/2008

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

Trickydicky wrote:

A few spelling errors (we all make them)

Yepp..... I did not send the doc through spell or grammer checking. That will come later once I get the basic fleshed out and more playtest.

Trickydicky wrote:

In the Distribute Player Items section there is a "by" that should be "be".

In the Increase Defense section "indicated" should be "indicate".

Thanks!

Trickydicky wrote:

Now some questions:

When you get a VP for defeating an attacking army, is that only for an "Invasion Faction" from the exploration chips, another player's army or both?

Just the "Invasion Faction" from the exploration chips. As of right now I player's armies cannot attack each other (though I have thought about changing, but currently I dont like the feel of this in the game.

Trickydicky wrote:

If it refers to another players army does it give to many benefits to the player attacked if they win the battle? They get any Godly Talismans the attacking player has plus a number of points equal to the attacking player's invasion strength. I would be very reluctant to attack someone if all I was going to get was a hill fort I would still have to build, but I could possibly give them 7 VP (if my math is correct).

I was thinking about reducing the loss of the "attacking player" to only a single godly talisman of the defending hill-fort players choice. And The main reason for having the attacking player "lose" an item (if they possess one), is to cause a little tension and an agonizing decision for the attacking player. You never know, there might just be a case where you need to invade in order to gain enough VP to win the game, yet it could be a risky move....., since losing might cause your opponent to win since they receive one of your godly talismans.

Trickydicky wrote:

Can player's attack each other's god's? I would imagine if they can the combat would be between the 2 different invasion strengths of the player's. Plus then the attacking god could take away the defending gods talismans if the attacker won. If you can't attack each other's gods is there any way to get into a resource community without attacking a Hill Fort? and can you have 2 gods in the same exploration location or do gods create a roadblock?

Well I thought about having the gods attack each other, but I wanted the game to focus more on the control of land. So for now I wanted a simple combat system, to allow players to take over control of another players hill-fort locations..... I will have to think about this, for some reason I feel like I see a problem in the combat/control area of the game.

God pawns do not make a road block.... player can freely move around the board.

Trickydicky wrote:

If I explore a location and it has a Hill Fort or Megalithic Stone on it and I don't build right away can another player move right in and build it under my nose?

Nope... you have control. Though this is part of the problem I think you helped me see in the question above. I think players might need a way to take control of a location when you only "control" it, and it has not been developed.

Trickydicky wrote:

A caution about the trading mechanic. I might be the only evil enough player to think of this, but could I purposefully trade 3 resources from an area to get a resource that I could easily get from another area simply to reduce the number of resources for others. For example if I was first in a round and I shared a gold resource location with 3 other players. Could I trade the gold for magic 3 times in order to build something, even if I am in a magic resource area? That would take 9 gold from the gold resource area, probably leaving it empty for the rest of the round. I think you could fix this by making a "Trade Action". This would also make it that much more important to be in as many different resource locations as possibly, in order to reduce the number of times you have to trade.

The resource distribution on the build card seems odd to me. There are 9 times you would need stone, 7 wood and 5 for both magic and gold. Did you do this on purpose? What was the reasoning behind it?

I will comment on this more later... sorry work got to me before I could respond to this comment.

Trickydicky wrote:

Thanks for sharing your game with us. It is always great to see how other creative minds think.

Well I heop to share more games down the road.... and I agree that it is always great to see how other creative minds think. This is the biggest reason for putting this game up on the GDW, wanted to see what everyone else thought.

Thanks for you input.

Tue, 11/09/2004 - 13:45

#9

Anonymous

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

Howdy, thought I'd weigh in with some comments on the rules. Having seen an earlier version, I like the direction this is heading in! I'd be glad to volunteer for a playtest sometime.

Main comment is the length, with the number of areas to explore and control, I don't know if this is a 90-120 minute game. I'm not a big wargamer (so take this with a grain of salt), but this has the feel of more 2-3 hours. It seems like there's so much to do, that players may just be getting established by the 120 minute mark. Playtesting will bear this out, but I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing. There are gamers out there that don't mind a heavier game if the guts of the game warrant the length. I'd be interested to now how long playtests have run and other players' feelings on it.

I do like the added possibilities of combat between god pawns that meet in an area or between a god and his opponent's areas. It would possibly overload the game, but it would allow for more decisionmaking on the part of a player taking control of an area without building anything. If they're taking control just for the resources without building any kind of fortification to protect it, then they should be able to lose it (and give VP to the victor). Something to think about.

Just a minor point, in the MOVE GOD PAWS section of ACTIONS, you mention that movement occurs between connected exploration locations, nut you don't really state what that means. It seems pretty self explanatory, but youmay want to clarify so there are no misinterpretations.

In the EXPLORE LOCATION section of ACTIONS, you mention that the first player to explore a region reveals the resource chip for that region. Is that a holdover from the older version where the regions didn't have established resource types?

Another thing I thought about, when an exploration location is relieved of its exploration chip, why not replace it with a new random one face down? There are 20 extra and only 15 instances when the chip will be removed (invasion army moves (5), player takes a follower (5), player takes a godly talisman (5)), so there will be plenty of extras. Just a thought.

Where you mention the movement of the invasion armies by other players, you mention that "the player may chose (sic) the location to which the invading faction will move . . ." but the player may only choose under certain conditions. Normally, the invasion army must move to the nearest player controlled exploration location. A player may only choose a direction if there are two player controlled exploration locations equally distant from the invasion army chip. You may want to restructure the sentence a little to make it clear that the player may only choose under certain circumstances.

Under INVADE HILL-FORT, youmention that the only requirement is an action, you may want to mention that the player must have an invasion army.

Regarding combat, have you thought about giving ties to the defender to give them a slight edge? This could work for both players invading other players and players fighting off the random invasion army.

Under COMBAT WITH INVADING FACTION, you specify that the player rolling for the invading faction rolls 1d8 plus 1d8 per power of the invading faction. This is different from the way player controlled invasion armies work (1d8 per power), why not simplify and have ALL armies roll 1d8 per power. If you want the invading factions to roll an extra 1d8, just increase their power by 1.

Regarding resources, I take it players are not allowed to store resources (since there are no chips or tracks to indicate stored levels of resources). Also, how do players track what resources they may spend after a trade? I see that they may simply decrease the resource track for a region that they are tapping for a resource, but if they trade 3 of one resource for 1 of another, how do you track the new resource type available for trade? Is it the honor system? That may be OK, but it's something to consider improving somehow.

That's it! Great game, thanks for sharing it!

Tue, 11/09/2004 - 16:06

#10

Zzzzz

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Joined: 06/20/2008

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

Johan wrote:

My first reaction when I read the rules was that this is a game that I will play once and never more. The major reason for this is that I got the feeling that the game will control you (you have one pawn to move and fight with in a combat game) combined with a 2-hour game length.
Still I believe that you have something that could be really good. The most interesting part of the game is the resource handling system.

Really only one play.... hmmm well I will have to keep that in mind when I do more playtesting. Obviously I dont want a game that only gets played once! As for the "game will control you", I will also have to watch that during playtest, I can see your point, but I dont think it comes out that way in actual play..... but again it is something I will keep in mind.

Johan wrote:

Comments on the rules
This is two different games in the same rules. If you play the 3-4-player variant it will be a building (racing) game to reach the 15 points. If you play a 5-6-player variant there will be a combat game. I don't know what the result of the play-test but I believe that you need different victory condition depending on the number of players (and maybe different scales for the resources).

I understand what you are saying and the goal is to have exploration, building and combat. WIth more players you are right that it leans more towards the combat area, but I think it is playing ok. I will again keep this in mind during future playtesting.

Johan wrote:

The resource handling seems to be the reason why you jump one person each turn. Normally this will be a problem in the game since you don't follow a strict path. One thing make it more logical is to include a "End of turn" phase where something is done (expand the resources, add some events, moving invasion fleets are some example). You have a small break before the next turn starts.

Yeah the resources are the cause of the "jump one person" rule, but I like your idea of having some phase concept in here to help keep things organized in the game.

Johan wrote:

Why do you use D8? I did not find it in the rules why the really uncommon D8 are used instead of D6, or D10.

Well the d8 is part of an original design, which was using d8 for generating resources. As a result I decided to also use the d8 for combat. I will think about using d6 for combat, since there is no specific reason for d8 in combat, except as a result of an older version of the game.

Now I will also mention that I personally dislike my entire combat part of the game..... so I am open to suggestions....

Johan wrote:

Finally a question mark: When an Invasion fleet (or a player) has destroyed a Hill fort or a Megalithic Stone, will it be possible to rebuild that later.

Yes.... but I did notice that I do not state this in the action area (at least not for a megalithic stone)..... I will clean this area up.

Thanks for you input.....

Wow until you put something up on GDW, you just never see some of these issues/concerns.....

Tue, 11/09/2004 - 16:12

#11

Zzzzz

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Joined: 06/20/2008

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

Richard_Huzzey wrote:

My first comment is that I always a soft spot for this type of game. The explore-and-squabble premise is sufficiently different from the German games I usually devote my time to that there's something refreshing about this type of thing. By incorporating action points etc. I think your taking the best bits of German games and an older genre of Anglophone pseudo-war games.

Glad to see it appeals.... and honestly I need to go look up what Anglophone pseudo-war games means. Could you give me any examples?

Richard_Huzzey wrote:

The exploration feels fun; in these games I always think it is nice, however exciting random exploration is, to have some opportunity to control discoveries.

Hmmm I did not really think about the FUN of controlling a discovery. I will keep it in mind.

Richard_Huzzey wrote:

I would agree with comments that the combat may be a little random. I think the D8 may be a mistake as it will make the possible outcomes vary so much that overhwelming power will be undermined by fate too often for my liking. Surprises are good in combat, but I tend to think they're best when they're player-ordained ones.

Well as I previously posted I dont honestly like my current combat system for this game. So I will think about some potential changes and go from there.

Richard_Huzzey wrote:

I think there's a nice game there, but perhaps tightening it to reduce playing to 60-90 minutes might be a move to go for? I think that will be especially true if the luck factor remains.

Yeah I have to do more playtesting and figure out the time thing. There should be ways to reduce the time, but I have had limited testing on the game. So I will work on this, maybe altering the combat system will help this in the long run.....

Tue, 11/09/2004 - 17:05

#12

Johan

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Joined: 10/05/2008

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

Zzzzz wrote:

Johan wrote:

My first reaction when I read the rules was that this is a game that I will play once and never more. The major reason for this is that I got the feeling that the game will control you (you have one pawn to move and fight with in a combat game) combined with a 2-hour game length.
Still I believe that you have something that could be really good. The most interesting part of the game is the resource handling system.

Really only one play.... hmmm well I will have to keep that in mind when I do more playtesting. Obviously I dont want a game that only gets played once! As for the "game will control you", I will also have to watch that during playtest, I can see your point, but I dont think it comes out that way in actual play..... but again it is something I will keep in mind.

This is hard to tell from the rules, but that was the feeling I got.
On the other hand: I tested "The haunted house" (from the same gang that did Zombies) this weekend. The rules looked good but the game was the worst crap I ever played.

// Johan

Tue, 11/09/2004 - 17:13

#13

Zzzzz

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Joined: 06/20/2008

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

Johan wrote:

Zzzzz wrote:
Johan wrote:

My first reaction when I read the rules was that this is a game that I will play once and never more. The major reason for this is that I got the feeling that the game will control you (you have one pawn to move and fight with in a combat game) combined with a 2-hour game length.
Still I believe that you have something that could be really good. The most interesting part of the game is the resource handling system.

Really only one play.... hmmm well I will have to keep that in mind when I do more playtesting. Obviously I dont want a game that only gets played once! As for the "game will control you", I will also have to watch that during playtest, I can see your point, but I dont think it comes out that way in actual play..... but again it is something I will keep in mind.

This is hard to tell from the rules, but that was the feeling I got.
On the other hand: I tested "The haunted house" (from the same gang that did Zombies) this weekend. The rules looked good but the game was the worst crap I ever played.

// Johan

I understand that it is a gut feeling, but it is also a valid statement in my eyes. If you had that feeling from just reading the rules, others might. And if people play the game the first time with this feeling, it might taint their liking for the game.

So in my opinion I think I need to add this to my list of "tester questions", just to make sure I get various opinions. I dont want people to go away with a bad test in their mouth, just from the game rules.

thanks again....

Tue, 11/09/2004 - 20:02

#14

Anonymous

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

First impression: good visuals, interesting theme.

STONES AND FORTS

Are the Megalithic Stone markers different from the "megalithic stone exploration chips"? Same question for hill-forts. (The list of parts includes 20 Megalithic Stone markers in addition to the exploration chips, but no hill-fort markers.)

Related question: Is there a maximum number of forts/stones in the game? If all the hill-fort markers are occupied or still face-down somewhere, are you allowed to build one in an unoccupied location?

VICTORY POINTS

There's no need to say you win by controlling 5 godly talismans - they score 15 points, which wins without a special rule.

Should it take more VP to win when there are fewer players, to balance the importance of exploring vs. combat?

RESOURCES

A region with 4 locations produces 8 wood. Player A controls 2 locations, so he takes 4 wood, leaving 4 in the pool. Player B controls the other 2 locations. Can he take 4 wood (50% of the original pool) or only 2 (50% of what's left) ?

MISCELLANEOUS

I had to stop more than once to check if the "locations" or "regions" were bigger. Other terms might be clearer, like "village" and "province".

Just for fun, please add "flavor text" explaining what megalithic stones and Tuatha de Danann gods are.

Only play-testing will tell how if the resources, VP, map, etc. need to be adjusted, but it looks promising enough that I'd be glad to try it if it appeared at my local game club.

Wed, 11/10/2004 - 08:27

#15

jwarrend

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Joined: 08/03/2008

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

Dave,

Thanks for sharing the game with us. A few comments, in no particular order.

First, the rulebook; the wide margins make it mildly annoying to read for some reason (although this could be because I’ve been staring at my thesis for the last 6 months, which has very narrow margins). Make the margins 1” on each side, and let the rulebook spill onto another page; a 6 page rulebook isn’t that long, after all.

Regarding “the players are gods”; this seems initially like a nice way to define why the players are able to do what they are doing, but in practice, it creates more thematic problems than it solves; why do these “gods” need to harvest resources? Why are they exploring Ireland? Why are they building monuments to themselves? The problem could just be that I’m not that familiar with the folklore of Ireland, but I generally feel that having "the players are gods" is a design crutch that is meant to give thematic justification to their "omniscient" perspective. It may be more organic to this design that I'm appreciating, but there doesn't seem to be much theme specificity in the game as yet.

Therein lies another problem. I didn’t see any strong Irish flavor in the game. I think a game about Ireland is an untapped theme that could be exploited interestingly; is there anything you can do to push the theme more strongly?

As Johan said, the exploration tiles feels like it will program the game in a way that won’t leave all that many decisions in the player’s hands. It seems like there’s a lot of luck in whether you have the good fortune to turn over “Godly talisman” or “megalithic stone” spaces, or the bad fortune to turn over “invading army” spaces, and it’s not clear yet whether that luck evens out over the game. The game doesn’t appear to impose any additional difficulties on you for having turned over the “good” spaces, except, I suppose, making you a target should you start to accumulate several talismans or megalithic stones. In that sense, since the game only ends when one player gets 15 points, this game will almost certainly have a huge “hit-the-leader” problem that will extend the length of the game. Something to look out for in playtesting.

Finally, the really innovative idea here is the community resources concept, but I don’t think I fully understand how it works. The idea seems to be that resources are harvested to the board, and you can avail yourself of as many resources as the percentage of resource spaces of that type that you control. But, isn’t that sort of the same as giving each player their share of the resources at the start of the turn? If you can’t use more than your percentage, it seems like the community resources concept isn’t fully fleshed out; there certainly isn’t an element of sharing or contributing to the common good or anything like that. (It could be that I haven’t fully appreciated the implications of community resources, though.) Moreover, similar to my comments to Richy about “Barbarian’s Wrath”, I feel that the resources aren’t terribly well differentiated, and that questions why the different resources are needed in the first place, although you do have a spatial aspect of your game that he didn’t have so maybe that is motivation enough.

Overall, I think you’re off to a good start, but I think the game needs some sharpening and some focusing in on the original bits. I would expand the role of community resources and make that the centerpiece of the game, since it’s the most original aspect. I’d also consider playing the game to a fixed number of rounds, rather than to a preset score; it will rein in the game length a lot.

Good luck with the game!

-Jeff

Sat, 11/13/2004 - 00:59

#16

Zzzzz

Offline

Joined: 06/20/2008

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

offcenter wrote:

First impression: good visuals, interesting theme.

STONES AND FORTS

Are the Megalithic Stone markers different from the "megalithic stone exploration chips"? Same question for hill-forts. (The list of parts includes 20 Megalithic Stone markers in addition to the exploration chips, but no hill-fort markers.)

Related question: Is there a maximum number of forts/stones in the game? If all the hill-fort markers are occupied or still face-down somewhere, are you allowed to build one in an unoccupied location?

Yepp the stone markers are different from the stone chips. The chips are really used to define the board and define locations at which players can build megalithic stones and hill-forts. Once you explore and discover a megalithic stone exploration location, the construction of a megalithic stone will allow the player to place a megalithic stone marker on this exploration location to indicate that they built a stone.

Yes there is a maximum, 25 hill-forts and 20 megalithic stones. But not all of these can be on the board, since the board only uses 40 of the 60 exploratoin chips. So the number of hill-fort and stone locations should vary each game.... and if locations are unoccupied, as a result of a talisman, follower or invasion chip, the location is empy and nothing can be built there (though this might change with additional playtest, since it might be nice to have a player flip an additional exploration chip, from the left over chips, when one of the talisman, follower or invasion chips are found.).

offcenter wrote:

VICTORY POINTS

There's no need to say you win by controlling 5 godly talismans - they score 15 points, which wins without a special rule.

Should it take more VP to win when there are fewer players, to balance the importance of exploring vs. combat?

I agree that stating that controlling the 5 godly talismans as a victory condition is not needed. A one point it was needed, but I updated the VP for the talismans, which makes the statement unneeded.

The balance of the VP are still under construction/modification until I have completed enough playtesting. I would agree that VP might need to be alter/based on number of players. I will keep that in mind during additional testing.

offcenter wrote:

RESOURCES

A region with 4 locations produces 8 wood. Player A controls 2 locations, so he takes 4 wood, leaving 4 in the pool. Player B controls the other 2 locations. Can he take 4 wood (50% of the original pool) or only 2 (50% of what's left) ?

Both players would get 4 each, though I would point out that initially a region with 4 location only produces 3 resources until a hill-fort or megalithic stone is built. Thus if the 4 exploration locations contained 4 constructed hill-fort, the region would produce 3 plus 2 for each constructed hill-fort which would be 10. (actually 11, but regions max out at 10)

offcenter wrote:

MISCELLANEOUS

I had to stop more than once to check if the "locations" or "regions" were bigger. Other terms might be clearer, like "village" and "province".

Yeah I noticed a couple of potential issues with wording like this, it might be a good idea to use some terms like village or province to help a player understand from prior knowledge.

offcenter wrote:

Just for fun, please add "flavor text" explaining what megalithic stones and Tuatha de Danann gods are.

Yeah more flavor text is on the way, I just wanted to get the main mechanics of the game up on GDW for review prior to any additional flavor. Want to make sure the rules and game play well before adding in additional text like that.

offcenter wrote:

Only play-testing will tell how if the resources, VP, map, etc. need to be adjusted, but it looks promising enough that I'd be glad to try it if it appeared at my local game club.

I am gld to hear that it might be a game you would try if it showed up locally..... I just hope I can get it playtested enough to work on the problems...

Sat, 11/13/2004 - 01:28

#17

Zzzzz

Offline

Joined: 06/20/2008

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

jwarrend wrote:

Dave,

Thanks for sharing the game with us. A few comments, in no particular order.

First, the rulebook; the wide margins make it mildly annoying to read for some reason (although this could be because I’ve been staring at my thesis for the last 6 months, which has very narrow margins). Make the margins 1” on each side, and let the rulebook spill onto another page; a 6 page rulebook isn’t that long, after all.

I agree the margins might be to small/wide, I will fix this for the next version of the rules.

jwarrend wrote:

Regarding “the players are gods”; this seems initially like a nice way to define why the players are able to do what they are doing, but in practice, it creates more thematic problems than it solves; why do these “gods” need to harvest resources? Why are they exploring Ireland? Why are they building monuments to themselves? The problem could just be that I’m not that familiar with the folklore of Ireland, but I generally feel that having "the players are gods" is a design crutch that is meant to give thematic justification to their "omniscient" perspective. It may be more organic to this design that I'm appreciating, but there doesn't seem to be much theme specificity in the game as yet.

I think adding in additional flavor text would help this out, which I will do once the game seems "done" from a mechanics aspect. Much of what I included is from the irish lore about the Tuatha De Danaan people of the mythological days of ireland. Though it might make more sense if I extended the information a little more..... I will work on this.

jwarrend wrote:

Therein lies another problem. I didn’t see any strong Irish flavor in the game. I think a game about Ireland is an untapped theme that could be exploited interestingly; is there anything you can do to push the theme more strongly?

Not sure what you mean by "strong", but the hill-forts, megalithic stones for one are a large part of Ireland History. The hill-forts are consider the current burial or doorways to the otherworld. Where the Tuatha De Danann people are said to live to this day.
Along with that, the invasion chips tie in additional history of the "Fir Bolgs", "Nemeds", "Milesans" and "Gaels" which are all various people that invaded ireland in these early days. Though I did not include all of this information, which would be part of the additional flavor text.

jwarrend wrote:

As Johan said, the exploration tiles feels like it will program the game in a way that won’t leave all that many decisions in the player’s hands. It seems like there’s a lot of luck in whether you have the good fortune to turn over “Godly talisman” or “megalithic stone” spaces, or the bad fortune to turn over “invading army” spaces, and it’s not clear yet whether that luck evens out over the game. The game doesn’t appear to impose any additional difficulties on you for having turned over the “good” spaces, except, I suppose, making you a target should you start to accumulate several talismans or megalithic stones. In that sense, since the game only ends when one player gets 15 points, this game will almost certainly have a huge “hit-the-leader” problem that will extend the length of the game. Something to look out for in playtesting.

I will keep these ideas in mind for playtesting.... It can see you point about limiting decisions, but until I see the game in additional playtest, I am not sure how I would change this right now.

jwarrend wrote:

Finally, the really innovative idea here is the community resources concept, but I don’t think I fully understand how it works. The idea seems to be that resources are harvested to the board, and you can avail yourself of as many resources as the percentage of resource spaces of that type that you control. But, isn’t that sort of the same as giving each player their share of the resources at the start of the turn? If you can’t use more than your percentage, it seems like the community resources concept isn’t fully fleshed out; there certainly isn’t an element of sharing or contributing to the common good or anything like that. (It could be that I haven’t fully appreciated the implications of community resources, though.) Moreover, similar to my comments to Richy about “Barbarian’s Wrath”, I feel that the resources aren’t terribly well differentiated, and that questions why the different resources are needed in the first place, although you do have a spatial aspect of your game that he didn’t have so maybe that is motivation enough.

You have many good points here.... not sure how I would answer them right now. Why does Settlers have sheep? Sorry that is a bad answer, my only point to make right now, is that the players will control the various pieces of land. As a result they will get a share of the resources for the region. Other players can effect the resources produced in the region, by not building up the exploration locations. Thus reducing the overall resources for the region. Also keep in mind if you build some hill-forts in a regions in which we both control locations, you are helping me to gain additional resources. this will be something you have to consider when constructing hill-forts and megalithic stones.

jwarrend wrote:

Overall, I think you’re off to a good start, but I think the game needs some sharpening and some focusing in on the original bits. I would expand the role of community resources and make that the centerpiece of the game, since it’s the most original aspect. I’d also consider playing the game to a fixed number of rounds, rather than to a preset score; it will rein in the game length a lot.

I agree that things need tweaking and that will occur as additional playtest can be completed. I have not considered a fixed number of rounds, but that might be interesting to playtest.... I will keep it in mind.

Thanks for the input, I am really at a point that requires a lot more playtesting, but time is limited for playtesting these days. I think through playtesting I will solve a lot of the resource issues and will think of ways to help improve the irish theme. The flavor text will come down the road when I feel the game is worthy of spending enough time to do some additional creative writing....

Sun, 11/14/2004 - 22:26

#18

Zzzzz

Offline

Joined: 06/20/2008

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

Just want to say thanks to everyone for the input. I enjoy seeing other people share their comments and opinions, and I will keep everything stated in mind during future playtest and iterations of the game.

I have truely grown from this GDW experience!

Thanks again,

Sun, 11/14/2004 - 23:12

#19

sedjtroll

Offline

Joined: 07/21/2008

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

Zzzzz wrote:

Just want to say thanks to everyone for the input.

Thanks to you for putting your game up for criticism. :)

- Seth

Game #50: Invasions: Tuatha D? Danann by David Tome (Zzzzz)

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