Rochester Gamers Community

It's late Monday now, and I'm writing about a playtest that took place on Saturday. Will do my best.

First off: the good (actually, great) news -- we got a full game in in about 60 minutes. I was thrilled with that play time!

Actually, I'm still pretty pleased with it. Brian gunned for an "Amulet" strategy (trying to get points by getting an amulet and then just stocking up icons for that amulet's end-game scoring) but got shut out of the squares he needed to get those icons, so that didn't work out for him. Still, I want to see someone try this strategy again, to prove that it isn't overpowered.

I tried gunning for a Title (bonus points you get for defeating 3 or more of the same monster). I managed to get my 3rd Ogre on the last turn and that was what allowed me to win. It's a gamble of a strategy though, as I could not afford to level up at all during the game (doing so would have cost me one of my Ogre trophies). If I hadn't taken that last Ogre, I would have lost by one point to Curt.

Curt was trying what I'll call an "equipment set" strategy. Used his first two trophies to level up and then went for equipment sets. When he leveled up he chose to go with permanent icons instead of special abilities (actually, Brian and Kevin went with icons, too). I was surprised at this as I thought the special abilities were superior. Apparently Curt and Kevin weren't so sure. Brian had a reason for getting icons, though - if he was hording his cards for the amulet scoring, he'd need permanent icons in order to defeat most of the challenges.

Oh! We hit a game stopper that had to fixed right away. At the end of the game, after I drew and placed the last tile, it was Brian's turn, and he didn't have any claim tokens on the board. We knew immediately that was unacceptable so we changed the rule to say that you can place a claim token without drawing a tile. But now I think that rule might not be necessary. Will need more investigation.

We spent a good amount of time after the game talking about whether it would work with 3 or 5 players, and what changes will have to be made here. I'm a little intimidated when I think of all the consequences.

On the way home yesterday, Curt asked me to email him the files to print off his own prototype. He wants to play test it with his group down in WI. It meant a lot to me that he asked for that.