Playtest game board

Here's the first pass at the game board...this would be a typical layout after about 6 rounds, at an average of 5 paraders added per round. As you can see, the natural inclination is to grow your parade towards the center, so the lines quickly run up against one another. Of course the Objective Cards may prevent this, but this seems to be the average path players take.

Those in the middle are more thwarted by those on the outside, which only run up against one on average. This makes the game a bit unbalanced, as who would want to start from Decatur or Rampart if the odds are they'll get squeezed between 2 parade lines?

Perhaps the board should grow to a size at which lines don't run up against one another so easily? I have another board layout which is more square, while keeping the same number of streets. The number of player spaces however increases dramatically, from 402 to 558. The layout in the image features 168 horizontal spaces and 234 vertical. The "square" board features 246 horizontal and 312 vertical, so not perfectly square, but improved. Adding a third row to Bourbon Street would make it 287 horizontal/312 vertical, further improving the starting player distances.

I want the game to feel like a party, with just a little take-that as players may steal paraders from one another. Still not clear how exactly this happens (currently my best thought is to integrate this into the "cash-in" mechanic of playing First Line card combinations to gain Paraders...play a particularly loud Brass combo and draw all Musicians on that street to your line, etc. This would be marked on one Brass card, combine with others to trigger its effect).

I should add that I've incorporated a rule that player's lines must always maintain at least 1 space between them, simply to tell them apart! If 2 run into one another, it could easily be forgotten whose paraders are whose, and who is going which way! Seemed like a simple enough fix for that...

Still lots to do...but I figured you guys may like to see where I'm at in the design!