A friend pointed out to me, over the weekend, that Tiles might not be the best option without some kind of frame to keep them from getting shifted by accidental bumps. He also mentioned tiles would make setup take a bit longer. I like the idea of being able to customize the board with tiles, and I am still very much tempted to get the tiles and see how well they work. I think being able to reduce the size of the board based on the number of players with tiles will be interesting, but can also be solved with a double sided board.
Settlers comes with sort of a frame (the water), so maybe look for something like that?
Hey, so I'm jumping in a bit late and I just kinda got up but was thinking about this last night when reading the thread, only was too tired to post. So if it doesn't apply I apologize in advance.
But I'm terms of the tiles v boards, I don't see why you couldn't have a variety of board tiles, each of which has maybe a 3x3 group of colored tile squares on it, which you would draw from random at the beginning of the game and assemble into the appropriate setup. and if you wanted an odd number of tiles, one could have strip pieces that are, say, 1x3 for the middle; or a cross of 1x wide arms which forms a structure and gets you a center tile. Doing this, the board pieces are large enough to stay put, but small enough to present a crap-ton of possible layouts.
Or am I much confuse, very embarrass?
Edut: looks like you could do well with 2x2 squares? Maybe you make a 'tray' from board stock that one would set tiles into that holds them in place, but they can be popped out at the end.
Basically yeah, seems like the idea may be something along that line. I looked up catan borders because the versions I've always played had just more hexes outside, but apparently some have fixed border pieces that interlock? That's cool.
There is a 2 player version of Carcassonne that has a boarder that the game takes place in. I am not sure how easy or costly from a logistical standpoint something like that is. The one downside with 2x2 or 3x3 or 4x4 grids of squares is that it can mess with the different board sizes (I am trying 8x8 for 4-5 players, 7x7 for 3 and 6x6 for 2), and the service I am using for the prototype doesn't have options like that for tiles. Currently, I have 4 4x4 boards (it was 8, with 4 3x3's) for customization options, but they are printed on card stock and move around way too easily. I think with chip board tiles, it may work out okay. I am more worried about younger players bumping the board.
In the end, the layout of the tiles/squares has little to no impact on the game. The only impact it might have is when you have a large cluster of the same colored square, making it a bit better of a hiding place since your opponents would need that color to place walls down.
Also, I am looking for feed back on the new card borders and lay out. I posted earlier, but here is the link again.
My preferences are my own, but I prefer sans-serif fonts and I would like to see some kind of thin bordering on your cards that kindof segregate the content zone from the color edge a bit. Not that I suggest using bevel/emboss and drop-shadow but... something like that, would help everything pop a bit.
Note how most modern gaming cards use some kind of border effects on the various zones and features as if the cards were constructed from 3D objects. Of course the objective isn't to make us think the cards are 3D, as it is to help the eye distinguish things by using the same cues as physical 3D objects. I could use that heuristic word, but, let's not.
I would also say having a solid color for the extreme border of the card, maybe a neutral black/brown that all cards share, might help a bit just in terms of promoting some uniformity without loosing any sense of color-coding a card has when actually viewed. This is for a few reasons but one is just so that when viewed on-edge there's no chance of color bleed at the border betraying the identity of a face-down card in a deck/hand.
The tiles that I can get are 2x2 squares and the different color patterns go agaims a jigsaw style.
I can go with a slightly smaller font so to pit more room between the words and the border. As far as the borders, it's designed as a quick way to tell what color the card pertains to. The last card on the page with thenew of the game is the back of the card, do there shouldn't be any mistaking the front and back. The font used was/is a better alternative to what I had. If a sans serif font makes it easier to read, I can change it as well. Any suggestion on a better font?
Hmm, I have been on an Avenir kick lately, but it's not a one-stop shop. A serif font may fit your theme better the more I think of it, just needs to be the right one, and I'm not very good with serif fonts.
I know you want color borders, and that's important. I'm just suggesting a mini border outside of that color field, just a little 1mm strip or so of a neutral color that says 'this is the edge of the card.' Another reason for this outside of what I mentioned before with masking the edge of the card's color, is so that when they go to actually cut these cards, they have a tiny bit of wiggle room for the blades to hit the sheets and punch out the cards without color bleed through, which the only other way to do that without bleed would be to have the printer add extra space between each card of that color, but then you probably end up with cards that are spaced further apart on a sheet.
Basically what I'm saying is that adding a tiny neutral strip around the very edge will make for a cleaner product all-around. Pokemon cards have that yellow edge. Magic has a dark color like brown. Dominion has a black I think. I'd say a black or grey would work, but a white could be effective as well. At worst, it'll be a simple common element of your design. At best, it'll save you money and/or frustration at having cards come out bad.
Certainly you can do without that effect, they can do anything now with print pretty-much (except make the girls real...) so ultimately if it looks like garbage then don't do it.
This weekend I started playing Through the Ages on boardgaming-online. It's not a bad user experience if you know the rules already, and it's a good fit for asynchronous play - you can take 5 minutes on your turn if you play slowly. The asynchronous play only gets annoying when the ancient events give everyone the option to produce a free building, and they all have to confirm it before you can finish your turn. I'm in three games right now that are all waiting on the same person, so someone come start a new game with me. :P
The current cards are set up for a bleed. The template for them includes a border for it. I will take a black border into consideration.
That's great then. Just passing on my experiences trying to get cards and other crap printed and always it being a frustrating ordeal. Printing in general, 2D and 3D, is frustrating on many levels. Only offset by how gloriously satisfying it is when it actually works!
I'd like to play the game sometime. The theme isn't my wheelhouse so to speak, not a wizard guy. But mazes? I can bite into that cheese
The New Science - Thank you UnPub for this free game. It is a worker placement game that uses a tech tree in the same vein as Civ V, the goal is to time when to publish something to get victory points but when you do everyone benefits from your discovery and moves up the tree.
However if you just simply experimented with the subject you can advance up the tree but get no victory points.
The box said 60-90 but it took double that with rules explanation and people not knowing what to do on their turns, I enjoyed it and would play again.
Ingenious - A Kineza game that is an abstract strategy, who would have guessed? Simple quick game where the score of the icon of the LOWEST value is your score, if you get 18 or more symbols you get a bonus turn. Simple game would play again.
Jamaica - Someone managed to pull off the gold hoarder technique and win the game, even with cursed treasure on their ship. Hardly gets on the table but was nice to go again.
Small World Underground - I came in second with 88 points, the winner had 90 and I could not attack him on the final turn knowing that he would leapfrog me in the standings. I think I am done with this game.
Civ V - Managed to play online but more people need to do so with the expansions. If I go vanilla I can be in beast mode with Washington.
Picture: http://www.antoinebauza.fr/?p=3319 Here's a gameplay summary courtesy of boardgamegeek: First, players now work together to build the legendary Tower of Babel. Okay, work together is a bit strong as you're not necessarily trying to help another; in fact, as you build the tower ideally you're hurting others at the same time that you help yourself. At the start of play, players are dealt a hand of tower quadrants, then (since this is 7 Wonders) they draft quadrants: pick one, pass your hand, pick another, etc. During the game that follows, you now have a fourth possible action: Discard a card to build a quadrant, scoring 2 VP for the first you play, 4 VP for the second and 6 VP for the third. Each quadrant has a law on it, for example, each player has access to a particular resource each round, or certain resource cards don't work, or military victories pay out differently; this law affects all players until it's covered by another quadrant, but (since it's a quadrant) it can't be covered until three additional quadrants have completed the bottom level of the tower and it's time to play higher up. If a quadrant hurts your normal style of play, be sure to draft it and sit on it! The second half of 7 Wonders: Babel consists of, if I recall the right word for it, agreements between various groups: trade agreements, military agreements, etc. What this means in game terms is that at the start of each age, you draw one card from the appropriate age agreement deck and reveal. A certain type of cards (commerce, military, etc.) now has an additional cost to be played. If you pay the cost, you take a marker from the agreement card, with the number of markers being one less than the number of players. If at the end of the age, all of the markers have been claimed, each player with a marker gains a bonus for each marker owned; if at least one marker is still on the card, then each player without a marker is punished in some manner.
I have decided (tentatively), to make the Statues, and associated mechanics, a modular part of the game, instead of a part of the main game. One of the reasons, is for prototype costs. A modular game will allow me to test the main game faster, and cheaper. Another reason is for stretch goals, and the future of the game. Most games, if successful, come out with some form of expansion. I personally feel that Modular expansions are better, as they add variety for the money. Also, it will allow me to introduce statues, as well as living statue mechanics (stun beams, auras, etc), as well as the cards that build, move, and destroy statues into the game as modules too.
I also have made the decision to go with tiles over a board, as it would allow for modules as well, and adds some variety to the game without drastically altering game play. The cost is a little bit more, but in the end, I think it will be worth it.
I have also been fooling around with making a prototype with art on the cards, so see how everything would fit on the card, and thus, make the cards more attractive as well.
Looks like the game comes out in May? And that may only be in Europe. Hopefully, we can get it over here in the US by Prime. The translation of the blurb at the bottom of the photo via google translate is:
"Repos Production has right now in Nuremberg next extension of 7 Wonders, "Babel." An overview of the content in the photograph above. The illustrations are temporary .. Expected release in Europe in May 2014."
So, Here is a PDF of a new version of the game. A few cards are changed, I have changed the layout of the cards (although I could easily go to a more basic look), and added art (all of it is borrowed at the moment).
This pdf copy of the game would be all of the cards needed to play, if some one wanted to print it out and cut out the cards (110 card stock or better works best).
Mainly, I am looking to get some feedback (again). This obviously is a prototype (and I am not much of a Graphic Designer), but I feel it would work as a copy to send to people for playtesting, before getting super serious about design and layouts. If anyone does want to print it out, I will be working on the rules (though they haven't changed too much since the earlier version, just minus the statues in the base game), and I can provide a sheet with the tiles that can be printed and cut out as well ( I am working on that soon as well).
Current card count, without the Statue cards would be 53 (3 pages at printer) and adding the module would add a 3rd page and bring the total cards to 68.
Glass Road - This is going to be the new standby. All the nice things about Ora et Labora, less than half the time. Pick 5 cards out of 15 for your hand, place one face down, on your turn reveal your card.
If anyone else has that card in their hand they get in on the action AND reduce the action for both players. Ideally you want to have two cards to do this with and then play the other 3 cards in your hand for maximum benefit.
It goes 4 rounds, whoever gets the most points by either building buildings or producing special resources, did I mention it is a DOUBLE RONDEL game?
Terraformers - This was created during the Analog Global Game Jam and it was ok. The goal is to either build all your bases, hit your secret goal, or blow everyone else out of space. The game was rough and I was mathematically eliminated by the 4th turn since I was unable to go and hit any of the achievements. Nice game that still needs some work.
Fresh Concentrated Orange Juice (FCOJ) - Do you remember the ending of Trading Places?
This is that in a board game form.
There are two teams, the industrialists and the Financiers. As an Industrialist I need to make deals that will benefit me and the Financier while screwing the other Industrialist. The same goes for the other way.
There are two winners, the best Industrialist and the best Financier, the game goes 3 rounds in which you can produce goods, get loans, buy factories to drive demand up, cause unemployment to close down said factories. This is from the person who brought us City Hall and Captains of the Industry and well worth keeping an eye on.
Post Position - Another round of this horse racing game that is actually about the stock market and the positioning of who will win the Horse race. I asked to get a copy of this game so that I can run it at conventions, it goes up to 12 people REALLY easily.
New Bedford - Warning: This is going to be a big seller jump on this. \
You are building New Bedford by creating buildings and fishing for whales. The longer you are out at sea the more likely you will catch bigger whales.
You need to get the material to build your boat, the food to send the boat out, and the money to sell the whales for victory points. In addition to the building costs to build in your literal corner of the town.
This is a great introduction game that I can teach to people not familiar with board games as well as savvy people alike.
I am sadly missing the list so another part is needed to do the final recap.
So, I post again, asking for a favor. I have revised the rules to my game. I also decided to use the Statues, and their associated cards as modules, along with a 5 player variant. I added an event deck as a separate module when using the statues, that adds some more randomness to the game. I am mainly looking for feedback on the rule sheets. I will also post links to the cards, including the new event deck. I am hoping to order a prototype copy of the game soon, but want to make sure my rules are coherent first. Rules for the base game Statue Module rules Tiles Game cards Statue event cards
So, I ordered a copy of my game, as I figure revisions can come as they need to, but I wanted to get a nice looking copy into my hands. It's not cheap, but hopefully it will be worth it.
Comments
But I'm terms of the tiles v boards, I don't see why you couldn't have a variety of board tiles, each of which has maybe a 3x3 group of colored tile squares on it, which you would draw from random at the beginning of the game and assemble into the appropriate setup. and if you wanted an odd number of tiles, one could have strip pieces that are, say, 1x3 for the middle; or a cross of 1x wide arms which forms a structure and gets you a center tile. Doing this, the board pieces are large enough to stay put, but small enough to present a crap-ton of possible layouts.
Or am I much confuse, very embarrass?
Edut: looks like you could do well with 2x2 squares? Maybe you make a 'tray' from board stock that one would set tiles into that holds them in place, but they can be popped out at the end.
In the end, the layout of the tiles/squares has little to no impact on the game. The only impact it might have is when you have a large cluster of the same colored square, making it a bit better of a hiding place since your opponents would need that color to place walls down.
Also, I am looking for feed back on the new card borders and lay out. I posted earlier, but here is the link again.
Note how most modern gaming cards use some kind of border effects on the various zones and features as if the cards were constructed from 3D objects. Of course the objective isn't to make us think the cards are 3D, as it is to help the eye distinguish things by using the same cues as physical 3D objects. I could use that heuristic word, but, let's not.
I would also say having a solid color for the extreme border of the card, maybe a neutral black/brown that all cards share, might help a bit just in terms of promoting some uniformity without loosing any sense of color-coding a card has when actually viewed. This is for a few reasons but one is just so that when viewed on-edge there's no chance of color bleed at the border betraying the identity of a face-down card in a deck/hand.
I can go with a slightly smaller font so to pit more room between the words and the border. As far as the borders, it's designed as a quick way to tell what color the card pertains to. The last card on the page with thenew of the game is the back of the card, do there shouldn't be any mistaking the front and back. The font used was/is a better alternative to what I had. If a sans serif font makes it easier to read, I can change it as well. Any suggestion on a better font?
I know you want color borders, and that's important. I'm just suggesting a mini border outside of that color field, just a little 1mm strip or so of a neutral color that says 'this is the edge of the card.' Another reason for this outside of what I mentioned before with masking the edge of the card's color, is so that when they go to actually cut these cards, they have a tiny bit of wiggle room for the blades to hit the sheets and punch out the cards without color bleed through, which the only other way to do that without bleed would be to have the printer add extra space between each card of that color, but then you probably end up with cards that are spaced further apart on a sheet.
Basically what I'm saying is that adding a tiny neutral strip around the very edge will make for a cleaner product all-around. Pokemon cards have that yellow edge. Magic has a dark color like brown. Dominion has a black I think. I'd say a black or grey would work, but a white could be effective as well. At worst, it'll be a simple common element of your design. At best, it'll save you money and/or frustration at having cards come out bad.
Certainly you can do without that effect, they can do anything now with print pretty-much (except make the girls real...) so ultimately if it looks like garbage then don't do it.
This weekend I started playing Through the Ages on boardgaming-online. It's not a bad user experience if you know the rules already, and it's a good fit for asynchronous play - you can take 5 minutes on your turn if you play slowly. The asynchronous play only gets annoying when the ancient events give everyone the option to produce a free building, and they all have to confirm it before you can finish your turn. I'm in three games right now that are all waiting on the same person, so someone come start a new game with me. :P
http://store.steampowered.com/app/251210
I'd like to play the game sometime. The theme isn't my wheelhouse so to speak, not a wizard guy. But mazes? I can bite into that cheese
The New Science - Thank you UnPub for this free game. It is a worker placement game that uses a tech tree in the same vein as Civ V, the goal is to time when to publish something to get victory points but when you do everyone benefits from your discovery and moves up the tree.
However if you just simply experimented with the subject you can advance up the tree but get no victory points.
The box said 60-90 but it took double that with rules explanation and people not knowing what to do on their turns, I enjoyed it and would play again.
Ingenious - A Kineza game that is an abstract strategy, who would have guessed? Simple quick game where the score of the icon of the LOWEST value is your score, if you get 18 or more symbols you get a bonus turn. Simple game would play again.
Jamaica - Someone managed to pull off the gold hoarder technique and win the game, even with cursed treasure on their ship. Hardly gets on the table but was nice to go again.
Small World Underground - I came in second with 88 points, the winner had 90 and I could not attack him on the final turn knowing that he would leapfrog me in the standings. I think I am done with this game.
Civ V - Managed to play online but more people need to do so with the expansions. If I go vanilla I can be in beast mode with Washington.
The UnPub stuff will be later.
I also have made the decision to go with tiles over a board, as it would allow for modules as well, and adds some variety to the game without drastically altering game play. The cost is a little bit more, but in the end, I think it will be worth it.
I have also been fooling around with making a prototype with art on the cards, so see how everything would fit on the card, and thus, make the cards more attractive as well.
"Repos Production has right now in Nuremberg next extension of 7 Wonders, "Babel." An overview of the content in the photograph above. The illustrations are temporary .. Expected release in Europe in May 2014."
This pdf copy of the game would be all of the cards needed to play, if some one wanted to print it out and cut out the cards (110 card stock or better works best).
Mainly, I am looking to get some feedback (again). This obviously is a prototype (and I am not much of a Graphic Designer), but I feel it would work as a copy to send to people for playtesting, before getting super serious about design and layouts. If anyone does want to print it out, I will be working on the rules (though they haven't changed too much since the earlier version, just minus the statues in the base game), and I can provide a sheet with the tiles that can be printed and cut out as well ( I am working on that soon as well).
Current card count, without the Statue cards would be 53 (3 pages at printer) and adding the module would add a 3rd page and bring the total cards to 68.
Glass Road - This is going to be the new standby. All the nice things about Ora et Labora, less than half the time. Pick 5 cards out of 15 for your hand, place one face down, on your turn reveal your card.
If anyone else has that card in their hand they get in on the action AND reduce the action for both players. Ideally you want to have two cards to do this with and then play the other 3 cards in your hand for maximum benefit.
It goes 4 rounds, whoever gets the most points by either building buildings or producing special resources, did I mention it is a DOUBLE RONDEL game?
Terraformers - This was created during the Analog Global Game Jam and it was ok. The goal is to either build all your bases, hit your secret goal, or blow everyone else out of space. The game was rough and I was mathematically eliminated by the 4th turn since I was unable to go and hit any of the achievements. Nice game that still needs some work.
Fresh Concentrated Orange Juice (FCOJ) - Do you remember the ending of Trading Places?
This is that in a board game form.
There are two teams, the industrialists and the Financiers. As an Industrialist I need to make deals that will benefit me and the Financier while screwing the other Industrialist. The same goes for the other way.
There are two winners, the best Industrialist and the best Financier, the game goes 3 rounds in which you can produce goods, get loans, buy factories to drive demand up, cause unemployment to close down said factories. This is from the person who brought us City Hall and Captains of the Industry and well worth keeping an eye on.
Post Position - Another round of this horse racing game that is actually about the stock market and the positioning of who will win the Horse race. I asked to get a copy of this game so that I can run it at conventions, it goes up to 12 people REALLY easily.
New Bedford - Warning: This is going to be a big seller jump on this. \
You are building New Bedford by creating buildings and fishing for whales. The longer you are out at sea the more likely you will catch bigger whales.
You need to get the material to build your boat, the food to send the boat out, and the money to sell the whales for victory points. In addition to the building costs to build in your literal corner of the town.
This is a great introduction game that I can teach to people not familiar with board games as well as savvy people alike.
I am sadly missing the list so another part is needed to do the final recap.
A little recap as well as some things to come.
Rules for the base game
Statue Module rules
Tiles
Game cards
Statue event cards