ARC Playtest Round 1 : a summary

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ngoeminne
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ARC Playtest Round 1 : a summary

Post by ngoeminne » Sun May 22, 2016 09:54

Hi folks,

Last Thursday, for the first time in history a game of WTactics ARC was played.
I printed and cut the three decks 'Economics', 'Uneasy Alliance' and 'Gaian Love for Life'. We started sleeving 'Economics' and 'Uneasy Alliance' and thus the first duel went down between the HoN and an alliance of Dark Legion-Red Banner.

It was soon clear that the HoN deck was way more powerful and cards there were not balanced at all,
but that was kind of predicted since it was put together very fast. It was a good lesson though to explain the rules, the card types, the phases, and the layout of the table. My brother (Economics deck) had fun in beating me (Uneasy Alliance) with my own rules. Meanwhile, I was sleeving the defensive Gaian deck and I was set for a revenge :-)

Great thing about playtesting is that you can change the rules whenever you like. In the first match we found that during a turn where you were paying for the city cost to become active, you couldn't do anything else. The cities and tactics phase didn't engage in the gameplay. So we changed the 'building cost' of a city by putting a 6-sided dice on the gold cost. Any turn you had some spare gold, we could pay a part of the cost, that worked better.

Sleeving all done, we set out for the second game, this time I played the Gaian deck, and the balance between the two decks was way way better, we had a lengthy battle indeed. Although the cities were build sooner and more of them became active, still the competition about the disciplines/tactics wasn't there. We tended to put our creatures in the army part and just attack.

Some nice maneuvers came out of the 'Uneasy Alliance' deck:I had this Majestic Griffin in my army, my bro had his 'Shadow in the dark' in one of my cities, and he played 'Abduction' to move my griffin to that city and used his SiTd to finish it off. Damn strategy worked also for my gigantic 'Sequoia Sapplings'.

He also kept my two regeneration cards out of play. (Botanist and Falconer). Meanwhile I got stuck with two 'Early Springs' cards, which I definitely mislabeled 'magic' instead of 'event', so I could only pump up my trees and flowers during my own turn. Since trees and lowers are 'Peaceful' (no attacking), the card was useless.

Some first conclusions:
- cities were underutilized because it takes a long time to get them active, and compete for the advantages
- we were drawn to army combat instead.
- the player/hero card was more confusing then helpful.
- the resource system worked well (after two/three turns of the first game everyone got it)
- table layout worked, there was no confusion about the areas and residents in cities were easily identifiable. The physical area had the same depth as a typical MtG setup, the width was a bit (c.a. 20%) wider, but very doable.
- card draw went much faster and farther then a typical MtG game, reaching about 80% of the deck.
- face down cities are not good, we just marked cities instead.

I'll change some cards and fix some errors on them. And organize a second round playtesting aiming at better involvement of the cities, following options were suggested:

1. Putting creatures in play can only be done in a city (not directly in an army), this would also make the 'entrance phase' redundant. This also means the cities are populated by default
2. Lowering the cost of the cities; or;
3. Pay for the 'building' cost partly (with unused resources during each turn); or;
4. Make the cost time/turn based; or;
5. Select one city to be active at game setup;

All in all, we could play the game (it was not broken), so its a good staring point.


Kind regards,
Nico
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snowdrop
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Re: ARC Playtest Round 1 : a summary

Post by snowdrop » Tue May 24, 2016 09:21

I'll change some cards and fix some errors on them. And organize a second round playtesting aiming at better involvement of the cities, following options were suggested:

1. Putting creatures in play can only be done in a city (not directly in an army), this would also make the 'entrance phase' redundant. This also means the cities are populated by default
2. Lowering the cost of the cities; or;
3. Pay for the 'building' cost partly (with unused resources during each turn); or;
4. Make the cost time/turn based; or;
5. Select one city to be active at game setup;
Ask yourself what the cities are supposed to add to the game conceptually. After that the question is only if their implementation and rules/mech around them lead to that particular goal.

For instance, in ORC they I want the concept of a) spatiality (location of a creature) to have various effects of the game. I also wanted to give the players a sense of b) progression checkpoints and early/mid/lategame, coupled with a c) changeable conditions on the front. That leads up to regions as I have them currently coupled with movement into combat/resource zones.

If you have the goals with the cities clearly defined it will be easier to evaluate the. I think you have the goals internally in your head since you are doing adjustments already.

Questions I have when looking at it are for example:
  • Why do cities, design wise, have a gold cost that the player needs to pay at all? What does that add/what function does it fill? (From now on "the why & what")
  • Why have cities populated by default? As a way to redirect action from one zone to another? Wouldn't the players then still move away from them if there are no incentives to stay? Why aren't they attractive in the first place? (If it is because of building time, then that alone might solve the issues and no further changes needed)
I'm asking the questions not as an indirect way of saying that something is broken. They're just there to heighten awareness of what, I think, we would have to know the answers to as designers. I myself can sometimes not answer such questions when it comes to ORC, and in the cases I can't, it is most likely a bad design decision by me that needs to be solved, especially if you design by the notion that nothing should be in a game if it fills no actual purpose that is in line with the overall design goals and philosophy.

card draw went much faster and farther then a typical MtG game, reaching about 80% of the deck.
I'd say that's good - gives a sense of more rapid action, and a higher chance to actually get card x + gives you more choices every turn.
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Ravenchild
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Re: ARC Playtest Round 1 : a summary

Post by Ravenchild » Wed May 25, 2016 06:09

Sounds like you had plenty of fun experimenting with the first set of cards+rules. That means we are getting to somewhere good :)
ngoeminne
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Re: ARC Playtest Round 1 : a summary

Post by ngoeminne » Wed May 25, 2016 18:30

Hi Ravenchild,

Yes, it was kinda fun, but also sometimes a bit confusing.
Next Sunday we are holding a follow up and some new players are joining.

Slow but steady progress.

Kind regards,
Nico
ngoeminne
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Re: ARC Playtest Round 1 : a summary

Post by ngoeminne » Wed May 25, 2016 18:56

Hi Snowdrop,

Thanks for your input.
snowdrop wrote:
Ask yourself what the cities are supposed to add to the game conceptually. After that the question is only if their implementation and rules/mech around them lead to that particular goal.

For instance, in ORC they I want the concept of a) spatiality (location of a creature) to have various effects of the game. I also wanted to give the players a sense of b) progression checkpoints and early/mid/lategame, coupled with a c) changeable conditions on the front. That leads up to regions as I have them currently coupled with movement into combat/resource zones.

If you have the goals with the cities clearly defined it will be easier to evaluate the. I think you have the goals internally in your head since you are doing adjustments already.
The cities conceptually are designed to serve different goals:
- As in the ORC, they serve the concept of spatiality
- but they also serve as strategic decision making opportunities for the players, and thus influence the game play
- they do not serve (nor are they intended to) to have different gameplay in start/mid/end game,
although the order in which you build them may very well result in the same effect.

So to a good degree they serve similar purposes, as the ORC
snowdrop wrote: Questions I have when looking at it are for example:
  • Why do cities, design wise, have a gold cost that the player needs to pay at all? What does that add/what function does it fill? (From now on "the why & what")
  • Why have cities populated by default? As a way to redirect action from one zone to another? Wouldn't the players then still move away from them if there are no incentives to stay? Why aren't they attractive in the first place? (If it is because of building time, then that alone might solve the issues and no further changes needed)
All good questions.

The gold cost was there initially to 'build' the city, and give the opponent an opportunity to try to put up a defense/strategy. So cities would become active gradually, preventing a direct win/loose situation at the start of a game (due to the advantages of a city).

Why have cities populated by default? From the playtest, we were drawn towards the MtG combat in the army and not using the cities at all (because of the gold cost). So we hadn't really a change to play around with the strategic advantages.

So we'll just try this little variation. It would also remove the awkward need for the 'Entrance Phase'. We had a lot of times that we put out a creature, oeps, forgot we need to play a magic spell or engage a combat. It has proven annoyance. Casting creatures into cities alone removes the need for that phase, and still has some of the effects of 'summoning sickness', since creatures in cities cannot attack.


I'm asking the questions not as an indirect way of saying that something is broken. They're just there to heighten awareness of what, I think, we would have to know the answers to as designers. I myself can sometimes not answer such questions when it comes to ORC, and in the cases I can't, it is most likely a bad design decision by me that needs to be solved, especially if you design by the notion that nothing should be in a game if it fills no actual purpose that is in line with the overall design goals and philosophy.

Players will still move the creatures to the army to attack, but the buildup will be a bit slower.

All in all, I was quite happy with the first playtest, and some good insights came along.
I hope that in the following playtest rounds things will become clearer still.
For the ARC I feel the basic components are there, but they need to be fine tuned.

All that being said, I steel feel grrrffff, that I lost the first couple of games of my own rule set and my own decks at the hand of my brother :-)

Kind regards,
Nico
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