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.

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.

In order to add more decision making to Clash of Empires, I am considering a card-driven variant. Throughout the game, players will create a deck of cards and play them to influence their pieces on the board.

The mechanics have been influenced by the following games.

Rules changes for deckbuilding variant.

Setup

• Each player draws 5 copper and 5 ruin cards.

Game turn

• Do one of the following.
  • Play an action card.
  • Take a basic action defined by the basic Clash of Empires rules.
  • Play money cards and buy a card. Purchased
    cards go into your discard pile.
  • Remove a ruins card from your hand.
• Discard cards and draw 5 more.

Scoring

• No scoring from region bonuses.

Card list

• Ruins: Gained every time you take a territory.
• Cleanup $4: Return all ruin cards from hand.
• Copper $0: Gain $1
• Silver $3 : Gain $2
• Gold $6: Gain $3.
• Quick move $2: Move any number of troops from one territory to another territory up to 2 regions away.
• Teleport: Move any number of troops from one territory to any other territory you own, or an enemy territory adjacent to one of yours.
• Surprise attack $3: Same as basic move except that you may remove 1 enemy troop from a territory that you are attacking.
• Mass attack :$6 Same as basic move, but remove 2 enemy troops before resolving combat.
• Teleport $5: Move you troops from one territory to any territory on the board.
• Deploy $4: Gain +2 troops directly onto your board.
• Mass recruit $6: Gain +3 troops in any territory.
• Parade $5: Gain +1 VP.
• Crystal ball $4: Take a basic action and draw two cards.

Today, I ran a playtest of Clash of Empires. Here are notes from the playtest.

Results

• Red: 94 points.
• Blue: 87 points.
• Yellow: 97 points.

Observations.

• Players figured out how to play quickly.
• Turns were fast.

Playtester comments

• Players were all hardcore board games.
• Attacking to gain majorities is good.
• Rules were simple to learn.
• Not having dice is good.
• Random setup makes the game too dependent on luck.
• Scoring is tedious.
• Out of the 3 players who played, two players said they would not want to play again. One of them said that if he had time, he would prefer Risk.
• It is necessary to have an incentive to attack before all reinforcements are played.
• It was too easy to knock over troops.
• There is no incentive to attack until you lost your troops.
• Scoring is tedious.
• Random scoring intervals are annoying.

Suggestions for improvements

• There needs to be more tension between deploying and attack.
• Spend points to buy reinforcements.
• Have dice represent troop counts.
• Add cards to represent actions.
• Make sure each player is guaranteed reinforcements.

Based on the suggestions,  I will be focusing on changes that fix the following issues.

• Lack of incentive to attack.
• Add base reinforcement value to each player regardless of territories controlled.
• Add more decision making.