Bog Buffet: Feast of the Blood Moon - a new twist on worker placement

Hi all,

Well I finally have a prototype of my game and am tinkering around with the idea and the rules still (not ready for prime time just yet). My dilemma is that I'm not sure the niche for this game: it's a little longer and more brain burning than most filler, but it's a card game so it will likely earn the disdain of a large swath of eurogame purists. On the plus side, it's not another deck builder.

I'll post the complete rules once I've done a little more internal playtesting and syntax crunching (they're currently 10 pages without the visual aids), so this is more just me asking, "Is this a game that you would get interested in?"

Here's the short version:

Bog Buffet: Feast of the Blood Moon is a competitive card game for 2 to 6 players that plays in about 60-90 minutes. The players are Bog Chefs competing for the best buffet table at the Feast of the Blood Moon. Each Bog Chef has asymmetric starting abilities which combined with your band of Toady recruits and hand of Bog cards add up to a fusion of eurogaming strategy, thematic medieval fantasy conflict and simultaneous actions to limit downtime.

Components
12 tarot sized Bog Chef cards
32 tarot sized Meat cards
24 tarot sized Hunting Party/Plating cards
72 Bog cards
48 Toady cards (including 8 Swag cards)
40 Recipe cards
8 Shadows & Crows cards
6 Bog Water cards
50 red Beef Tokens
50 pink Pork Tokens
50 white Poultry Tokens

Gameplay:

Toady Draft
• 6 Toady cards, take 2 and simultaneously pass to the left, discard the last card (end with 5 in hand).

The Great Hunt
• Divided up into 3 Nights each with 4 Meat Cards to hunt.
• Play Hunting Parties face down assigned to the Meat Cards.
• Reveal Hunting Parties at each Hunt one at a time resolving Hunts in order from 1 to 4.
• Each Hunt:
o Bog Card Action: each player with a Hunting Party assigned to the Meat Card gets to play 1 Bog Card simultaneously.
o Determine Lead Tracker and player order for the Hunt.
o Lead Tracker’s Track vs. Meat Card’s Evade to find the Meat Card.
o Total Overwhelm vs. Trouble. On a loss choose one Toady to be discarded.
o Flip the Meat card and harvest Meat or discard it to draw Bog Cards.
o Subsequent Hunting Parties encounter either the live or corpse Meat card once the first party is done.

• Once all Hunting Parties have finished a Hunt, then move on to the next numbered Meat card and repeat until all 4 Hunts have been resolved.
• Predawn: Foraging (draw Bog Cards), discard Meat Cards and pay Upkeep for Toadies.
• Repeat for all 3 Nights.

Plating
• Organize your Meat tokens, Garnish and Recipes on the 4 courses of your Platter and/or Recipe cards.

• Highest Taste score wins the game.

So far my biggest challenges are balancing the Bog Chefs and trying to make it less fiddly with all the face down cards you have to keep track of. Also the theme of hunting down anthropomorphic animals, killing them and butchering them for recipes may be construed as a bit too gruesome and macabre. That said they do have names like Princess Tenderloin and Sir Hamalot, so they're almost asking for it.

The original idea was a spin on the classic fantasy "adventurers wander into the bog to kill things" trope which meant the Meat cards were people (and dwarves and elves), but my wife convinced me that it was a little too disturbed for more than a tiny audience of deviants who are probably waiting for the release of The Donner Party: the Board Game. Ironically I really like that idea and am working on that game too now (but don't tell my wife that).

Anyway, any and all comments/criticism are welcome-- I'd rather iron out things as much as possible before the real playtesting begins!