On Friday, I ran several playtests of Clash of Empires at Awesome Con. The playests were quick demos of the game that were designed to test the core mechanics of the game, and make sure the game was easy to learn.

Comments

Rule clarity

• “Make it clear that certain cards are actions and that certain cards are treasures”.
• “Make it clear that prestige refers to victory points”.
• “It takes time to get the game”.
• “Make the General action card more clear”.
• “Make the rules for troop placement more clear”.
• “Add a written reference sheet”.
• “Make rules on Forced March card more clear”.

Other comments

• “Game is like Trains”.
• “I don’t like the timed mechanics. A more organic end condition is needed”.
• “The mechanics need polishing”.
• “I’ll playtest the game again, but it is not ready for publishing”.
• “I like it. I’m a huge fun of Dominion, and I liked the map, and the fact that it was different from a typical deckbuilding game”

Changes

I plan to spend time creating player aids and implementing other changes to make the rules more intuitive. Many playtesters were confused by the cards, and did not fully understand what they were doing.

I also plan to make it very clear that attacking early game, and deckbuilding are both viable strategies to avoid perceptions that the game is imbalanced due to the way people play the game. For the playtests, I focused on a strategy of attacking early and not spending too much effort on building up my deck. This allowed me to gain an early lead, and we never played enough rounds to allow the players with better decks to catch up because we were playing an abbreviated game. I am concerned about this because in a multiplayer game, players often tend to focus on opponents with an early point lead, which gives the player going for long-term points a major advantage. In Clash of Empires, this will lead to the players who are focusing on deckbuilding early game to win, and cause players to think that deckbuilding is much more powerful than it should be.

Today I playtested Clash of Empires with the deckbuilding element.

I played the game with two other people and the game was surprisingly close despite the fact that we followed different strategies. I focused mostly on building my deck and buying victory cards with a few attacks, while the other players mostly focused on controlling map regions.

Comments from the game

• “Good concept”.
• “Too many Dominion cards”.
• “Make your hands more meaningful”: The player did not like the fact that your hand was meaningless if you played an action on the board. He suggested allowing players to play cards from their hand, and then taking an action on the board.
• “The cards add more depth to the game”.
• “I like this better than Risk”.
• “Make game look more professional”.
• “Add backing to the cards and add sleeves.”
• ” Improve balance” .

Future plans

Overall the playtest went well because the players liked the mechanics, but they felt that the game needed more polish and balance.  Below is a list of what I will be focusing on over the next few weeks.

Gameplay

• Rulebook updates.
• Turn sequence modification: Each player will have two phases on their turn.  During the first phase, a player can play a card or take an action. During the second phase, a player may buy a card.
• Modify region bonuses so that they are easier to get.

New Cards

• Mines:  Can be played during the first phase of your turn instead of an action to give you money.
• Scorched earth:  Gives extra ruin cards to attacking players.
• Upgrade: Allows players to trash a card for a better ones.
• Extra action cards: These can be played to allow a player to gain multiple actions.
• Card draw cards: These can be played to give a player more cards.

Aesthetics

• Make cards look more professional.
• Modify board to make borders, terrain, and territory labels more clear.
• Change terminology to make sure it is not identical to Dominion.