This month, I made the changes to Clash of Empires in order to problems with the deckbuilding and board portions of the game working well together.

• Players get most of their points by buying scoring cards: Before, players scored points every 5 rounds. This mechanic did a poor job of tying the deckbuilding and board elements together and interrupted the flow of the game.
• Players mostly get troops by playing cards from their hand: Before, players would get troops every 5 rounds, which also interrupted the flow of the game.
• Various balance tweaks to the cards: In previous games, there were some cards that nobody purchased, and that was an issue I wanted to address.

The idea of combining a deckbuilding game with a board was well-received,but there were several issues that came up during the playtest.

Difficulty attracting players.

This points to an issue with generating a positive first impression of the game. In order to fix this, I  plan to spend time improving the theme and visual appeal of the game components.

Ruin cards detracted from gameplay because they discouraged board activity.

A major part of the game was the fact that players gained ruin cards every time they took a territory that just clogged up their deck. As a result, players avoided playing on the the board and taking territory.

In order to solve this,  ruin cards should have some sort of positive effect or they should be removed from the game.

Players did not like the idea of having to buy point cards.

The mechanic of buying point cards seemed like it was a tacked on idea that did not integrate well with the rest of the game. To fix this, I need to find another way of giving points.

Too much complexity.

The game had several rules which added complexity without adding much to the game, which confused players and made it difficult for them to understand the issue. This also means that I need to be careful about adding complexity when fixing the gameplay issues I mentioned.

Players were not having fun, and were distracted easily.

This is a result of the other gameplay issues I mentioned above, and it is something I need to fix.

Possible changes.

 

Gain a card representing a region into your deck when you take it that gives you some sort of bonus action and/or points.

This mechanic would go a good job of giving players an incentive to take regions on the board, and it would do a good job of tying the board and deckbuilding elements together.  Also, giving victory points for regions will eliminate the need to have purchasable point cards.

However, this mechanic will add additional complexity to the game.

Add a simple supply system and the ability to claim territories anywhere in a manner similar to the board game Go.  To compensate for the added rules, players will no longer be able to build troops and ruins will be removed from the game.

Go manages to have a signficant amount of strategy with rules that can be explained in one minute. If properly implemented, this would do a good job of fixing the gameplay flaws I mentioned.

However, properly implementing this idea would require signficant gameplay changes. Also,  I’m not sure if players would like this idea.

Special thanks to the Break My Game group for helping to organize the playtesting event.