Hello folks!
I had a post on here a little over a week ago that got the ball rolling on this. Now, I've done nothing but expand on it, and even wrote out quite a bit of card text to prepare for playtesting.
This thread will have a series of posts going over the premise, the rules (as they stand), and some example card text to illustrate some of the things you're able to do. I'll also include a list of all of the inventions I've come up with so far, the most important part of the game (currently at 41 but I hope to get it closer to 100).
Players take on the role of Mad Scientists trying to take over the world. Each player starts the game with a player sheet that gives them a unique character background, starting inventions, starting resources, and their start location (HQ). They also have special abilities for their character.
Next, a look how the board is set up, and what you do each turn towards achieving your goal for world domination!
The game is played on a board with a map of the world, similar to boards found in games like Risk (regions of the world separated by borders). On one side of the board is a deck of cards (Inventions) with five spaces in a track next to it. Throughout the game, there is a face up card in each of these spots representing the inventions available to build.
During a player’s turn, they take 4 actions. The following are available to them:
1) Move. Move your character to a connected region.
2) Henchmen. Deploy one Henchman figure on the board in your scientist’s current region. Then, you may move each of your Henchmen on the board to a connected region.
3) Resource. You may gather resources once per turn per region. Each region of the map has a collection of symbols representing Alloys, Energy, and [another resource?], representing how much someone gets if they use that action.
4) Threat. Choose a region where you or your Henchmen are present. Place 1 threat for each Henchman there and 2 if you are there.
5) Build. Build an invention by paying the cost of the invention (located at the top of the card) and placing that invention in front of you. Then draw a new invention to takes its place on the track.
6) Action: You may perform any “Action:” effect you have, typically found on Inventions.
At the end of a player’s turn, if they are in a region with another player, combat occurs. To resolve combat, the players choose a weapon of theirs to use, then rolls a die. They add whatever bonus their weapon provides, plus extra bonuses for their henchmen, if they are in their HQ, etc. The higher total wins, and the winner places additional threat in the region.
Threat is how players win the game. Each region has a threat limit, and once that total limit is reached, the player with the most has “control” over the region (i.e. a region has a threat limit of 20, and player A, B, and C have 5 threat in the region while D has 6, so D has control). A player wins the game when they control a certain number of regions.