2nd Playtest - Fleet Calamity

Welcome back!
 
Yesterday I had Matt Oberdalhoff over and my friend Greg.  We had a few goals in mind for the testing: Ensure that the game ran smoothly enough so people can play the game from start to finish, make sure the instructions were clear enough and minimal enough to get people playing and not needing us to clarify multiple times. Lastly we wanted to see how balanced our slapped together decks were.

 

Playing the game all the way through was not a challenge at all. We had a good idea on what will happen for various decisions being made and this play though just reaffirmed us.

When Greg and Matt sat down to play it was a little rough on what to do, for Greg, but quickly Greg started to destroy Matts fleet.

I had some concerns about the fog of war before this play test that were made less concerning. Before I dive too much into that let me explain the fog of war within my game.

 

(That's Greg acting calm and collected in front of the camera.)

The fog of war within my game is visualized by the divider between the players boards. Each player can't see the other players flotilla. After 10 moves the fog of war is removed and the players can see each other.

Its just like battle ships if you could remove the top board after so many turns.

So why is this a concern and why do we eventually remove the fog?

Answer: If no one can see each other there is a possibility that no one will find each other. The players could be going in loops forever trying to find the opponent.

Well, with four flotilla on the field people tend to rush the enemy and find them within 2-3 turns, especially with the ability to warp. If one player doesn't move and the other only moves forward once a turn it will take them 6 turns to find the enemy. However, all this doesn't really account for a player with only one flotilla.

Hence the fog of war is removed after so long (currently 10 turns). This allows for the players to end the game and not circle around the map forever.  In other words if Greg were to continue on his path of dominating destruction against Matt's feeble deck then Matt couldn't just run away constently and make the game last forever. Instead Greg would know exactly where he is and choose to warp to him and take him out.

Currently, out of the two play test sessions, no one has needed the fog of war to be removed. But longer play test sessions may prove that the fog of war may need to be removed sooner too.

In addition, We will make cards that prolong the fog of war, shorten the fog of war or even bring back the fog if it is already gone.

Ok, so I talked enough about did the game play smoothly and yes it did. But what about the instructions?

Well, that needed to be made slightly more clear. Greg had not played this game before, at least not more than one battle, taking over for some one who had to leave. So he was pretty fresh to the game, especially the beginning of the game.

Here is how we explained it  (or approximately how we did)

1. At the start of the game place your flotilla within the first two rows closest to you.

2.  At the beginning of your turn you may draw 7 cards.

3. You may now choose to warp and end your turn, or continue your turn. (he chose to continue)

4. Discard cards to gain resources. 1 discarded card = 1 resource.

5. Deploy vessels, traps or upgrades.

6. Move one hex.

Generally he understood fairly easily. The only thing he got confused was the discard for resources and the deploy vessels. And here's why: We had intended that you discard all your unwanted cards first, then you deploy various things. However, some cards would allow you to gain more cards after playing them. With the way we explained it Greg and Matt couldn't discard more cards to bring out other cards after their initial discard and deploy phase.

Solution? Simple, Make steps 3-4 your 'Main phase' in which you can contently do those actions over and over until you no longer can.

Once a battle broke out we then had to explain how that worked, which got a bit more confusing. Here is how we explained it:

1. You are now in battle and the game switches to territory mode.

2. Place your vessels within the 3 rows closest to you.

3. Whoever didn't start the battle goes first (because moving is the last thing you do in your turn).

4. Draw until you have 7 cards.

5. Main phase.

6. Move/orientate.

7. Attack.

8. Your goal is to attack and destroy his flotilla (which is on the territory map).

The first thing that threw off Greg was the Territory mode. He didn't understand why we were changing the map. Thus we explained that Territories are like a micro version of each hex within the Sector mode.

He then asked 'Whats sector mode?'

I then replied that Sector mode was the last screen he saw, with all of his flotilla.

Once that was explained he seemed to get it and move on with his turn.

He then got confused again by us saying Move and orientate. So I explained to him that vessels will shoot in a straight line, thus you have to choose which direction they will fire. Also, just like flotilla, you can move them one hex to better position them. I had also explained that the flotilla within the territory map can also move but only one hex at a time.

From there Greg played like a pro.  He knew what cards would work well and actually found some nice strategies within the cards that we didn't know existed. There was just one thing we forgot to mention and explain. We didn't tell him that flotilla can warp out of battle, but takes two turns to do so. (you can imagine this by having your vessels deployed. To warp you need to bring them back into the flotilla and warm up the engines. Then, next turn you can jump). Greg never warped from battle, but Matt did.

 

Now for the last bit of business, the decks. They were terrible.

Why? well Matt and I spent little to no time making these decks. We had created a series of vessels that were fairly weak and easy to bring out along with a few more difficult ones. We also added some more thought out upgrades and traps and slapped them all together. We didn’t put much thought into this because we wanted to see the game in action as fast as possible. The decks still worked for their intended function though.

The issues were that they were unbalanced, favoring the humans. Mechs had none of their abilities that made them a formidable force and the upgrades and traps didn’t work very well with how we changed the game to work.

We knew these cards weren’t going to hold up for long and we have been preparing for the switch. Now that we have some hours under our belt playing the game and making it run smoothly we can finally address the decks and make them enhance the experience and work with the game rules.

Next saturday we will have a play test party with brand new decks that Matt hand picks. Along with those we will print out several extra cards so people can swap in and out cards to change their strategy or just try new things.

Lastly, one new bit of info!

We have a programmer! His name is Ryan. Right now he is just reading the GDD and card lists to get an idea about the game. Next Saturday he will see it in action and then begin his work on making the game digital. I can’t wait to see his progress!!

If you are interested in helping out leave a comment or find me on facebook, twitter, or google+. My name is Matthew Hagen and I thank you for reading!

Take care