Hello again interwebs.
I'm a little tired but I wanted to do this while it was still fresh in my head.
The cards were largely a success and resulted in fewer invalid orders and less confusion, however the internal notation was still confusing and the slot arrangement created confusion about separation. The lower ease of use on the cards also artificially slowed gameplay. One suggestion was to replace the eight slots with 3 slots and then stack tokens inside them.
Symbolic order explanations were largely a dud, as were the token requirement lists, but these may be attributable to lack of explanation and no legend. I'll try it again with better documentation.
The lack of the film reel does not appear to be a problem. Players can understand the turn order as they arrange their own cards. In general the system now has a learning time of about 4 rounds.
The increase in the number of units (now 5 per team), the size of the board and the new order sets have made the game more playable and more interesting. Archers are now among the more powerful units, however infantry are still under powered. The shot saving system needs to be closely evaluated to avoid over stacking. It might be ok with better clarification, or it may need to be nerfed.
What definitely needs to be nerfed are the base damages for the archers. Originally I wanted archers to always be able to deal some damage, but now I think it may be wise to move both the base damages to 5 and force players to use larger bonuses to overcome armour. Speaking of which, bonuses are much clearer with the new cards. There has been some concern about the range of archers on a small board but I believe that the damage reduction should fix this and future versions should add more units to distract them.
The size of the board does keep coming up as a lingering problem, even with the increase to a standard chess board. However the amount of wall has made for an interesting defence against cavalry and in general, I think it actually adds to the depth of strategy. Also, a lot of the problems revolve around the archer's ability to hit the entire board in most cases, which will be less of a problem when archers are less powerful.
As mentioned before, infantry still seem to be a waste of space. They're getting more useful though (I saw a knight get shredded by clipping two threat zones before it had a chance to hurt anything. This seriously tilted the late game). The biggest waste with infantry right now is the ready order which adds only a tiny bonus to OOPs. Currently OOPS are always carried out after the attack of the unit, but a strong argument has been made that they would be more useful if the OOP went first. I think this will be the key point in the new ready order.
Cavalry stopping needs to be ironed out. Mostly its the case where the final slot is occupied that seems to be the problem. I think in this case, it will have to count as a block, unless the target unit would be terminated, in which case it's position will be freed for the cavalry to occupy.
You may have noticed that I'm talking more about strategic implications and game phases now. This is because these things are becoming major factors as the meta game begins to develop. And so far, the game appears to be even deeper than I imagined. I talked to one of the testers for almost half an hour about the costs and benefits of tactics on a small board and the ideal unit choices. There really is that much to talk about.
The two play throughs I'm basing these observations on were very interesting, and very different from each other. In the first, the person who seemed to be having more trouble understanding the rules during the explanation turned out to catch on faster than their opponent once the game started. In fact their opponent surrendered just 4 rounds in. I thought it was too early to call it and took their place claiming I could turn the game around in just one round, and that I did. It was still a great game though and it proved that experience and knowledge really do count towards a players success.
The second game showed the change in the game over time and also saw the first use of formation play. Cavalry were useful at the start, which made them high priority targets, but toward the end of the game, archers became the dominant units as a dwindling number of targets leads to a guaranteed het with a shoot unit order.
In general reviews were good. There's a lot of potential here. Everyone seemed to like the game, or at least find it interesting. Some people really liked it. If nothing else, I'm now sure it can find a market. Special thanks to Emily, Josh, Karen, and Wilson for playing.
Now the todo list is getting a bit clearer. The next prototype will definitely need a finished rulebook. I think I'll make that tomorrow's project. I also want to add the remaining game components: group orders, terrain, and cover. After that there's no excuse not to move to a digital prototype.
For now, there's enough information to start an implementation. It's definitely time to start outlining the back end. I've got a lot of work ahead on this.
But first, sleeping time. I can rest well knowing that today was a huge success.
P.S. Please comment. I know people are reading this from the statistics, but I have no certainty about who they are or what they think. I'm also very lonely. So please leave something. All I have right now is one from Nick G about my hair. that's just not enough for me anymore.
Okay, I'm done begging. Goodnight!
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