I've made a game for 4 teams of 4 people.
The current flow, which is very open to changes, is as follows:
Play:
1) Each player has an objective that require a particular frequent action for them to win, ie a team can lose but some on it win.
2) Each player in the team roll a die.
3) Each player's dice is paired with an action card and placed facedown on a map. A maximum of two cards/die are on a map square.
After all teams have done this a round of scoring happens.
Scoring:
1) Two cards on a square are picked up and when placed side by side showing which card, both or neither wins.
2) Depending on what is show on the die depends on how well they score for that action.
3) Scores are recorded and tallied at the end of the game.
The die suggests a particular action for optimum points but you can intentionally play for less than optimum points using a different action.
There are six different actions and the die is a d6.
I want keep the bluffing/tactics element but speed up play. Areas of interest are the card/die placement being sequential and the sequential scoring of 32 card pairs.
The game is played as a land grab/conquer. Square a usually temporarily taken but can be maintained or retaken with different actions.
They get to choose the action card out of all six.
The die roll is random.
They got different points depending on the pairing of dice roll and card. Because the die roll is public and the card hidden, the die suggested what they might be doing (for maximum points) and others would try to stop them, but they might not be able if they play an un-winning action card against them.
Why did I do this? Because I didn't want to print and cut 4 teams x 4 players x 36 cards = 576 cards to play this game with each player getting their own deck of all point/action combinations. Then each turn get to draw a random hand to choose from. 4 teams x 4 players x 6 actions = 96 cards and then using dice was easier/cheaper/quicker. This was not intended as a commercial game where I'd send out stuff to get printed. lolz.
The board is cleared of dice and action cards each round (but not the affects of what those cards did, such as erecting a settlement/castle.) I made plans for 10 rounds we played 8 within the time constraint.
I left a lot out of the description to keep things as simple as possible for alternative mechanic suggestions.
The game ran relatively smoothly at the youth group last night. I'll be running it again for my friends next week, with each friend representing a team. They were supposed to be the beta test last week but 3/5 were ill.
The first round of the scoring was slow but after that it was a lot quicker but less than ideal. What I would've liked having seen this played would be if the winning cards were stacked and then points counted at the end, however that would mean 10 rounds x 6 actions worth of cards per person for 600 total, removing the different scores and some of the bluffing part.
This game would've worked a lot better for 4 players than 4 teams of players, but I needed a game for many with some depth that was new.