Today, I ran an informal playtest to test a deckbuilding variant. There were 3 players who each followed different strategies.

• Player 1 (Brown) focused on attacking early and did not buy many cards
• Player 2(Pink) built up a deck of offensive cards and then attacked mid game
• Player 3(Green) focused on improving their deck for most of the game and attacked during the end game.

Observations

• Ruin cards did a poor job of slowing down Brown because they didn’t buy many cards. On the other hand, ruins significantly hurt Pink and Green because it clogged up their decks.
• Buying too many money cards is not a good idea. Green ran into trouble during the late game because they could not use money cards to attack.
• Battles with large numbers of troops did not happen until the game was almost over.
• By the end of the game,  Brown was in a weak position because of the inability to play cards and would have lost if the game had lasted for more rounds. On the other hand, Green and Pink were in strong positions because they had better cards.
• Cards that gave bonuses to combat were more valuable.

Scoring

Round 5

• Brown:  21
• Pink 14
• Green: 13

Round 10

• Brown: 42
• Pink: 29
• Green  26

Round 15

• Brown 53
• Pink 29
• Green 35

Round 20

• Brown: 62
• Pink: 40
• Green: 46

Round 25

• Brown: 69
• Pink: 52
• Green :61

Round 30

• Brown: 78
• Pink:  65
• Green: 75

 

Changes

• Find a way to make money useful during the end game.
• Make the cards that do not involve combat boosts cheaper.