ARC Playtest Round 2 : a summary

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ngoeminne
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ARC Playtest Round 2 : a summary

Post by ngoeminne » Sat Jun 11, 2016 13:10

Hey Folks,

Last Thursday we sat down for an other ARC playtest. We used the ARC as basis and started with the following setup: 20 Life Points, 10 Victory points to win.

Keeping our first playtest round in mind, we changed some rules:

The Draw (& resource phase)
=========================

During the draw a player has three options (and must select one before the draw)
1. Draw two cards, play no resources
2. Draw one card, play one resource,
3. Draw zero cards, play two resources

This made bootstrap of the game much more flexible, and gave a different tempo for each player (according to his strategy). The card rotation was still very high, the hand depletion went to 3-4 cards in the mid game, and this felt right. We now drew into the 60-70% of our libraries during one game. This rule really makes you think about resource management (especially during the start of the game, as in MTG resource management becomes less important towards the end). I think this is a keeper, it is much better than a default 2 card draw.


New Resource visualization system
==============================

In the ARC we have different kind of resources (one for each faction). When playing a resource card it is played face down in the corresponding factions resource row. However doing so, led to unclear visual separation. What was a red banner resource? What was a dark legion resource? It also took up a lot of table space.

So here we changed to a new visualization (snowdrop's suggestion). Whenever you play a resource card, you put it face down on a pile/stack, and you take a gem/counter and place it next to the stack. For each faction you have one stack (pile of cards looking like your lib).

To use pay 1 resource you place 1 gem on to the stack. So the gems left over are the (mana) resources you have left. During your unmark phase, you move all gems from all resource stacks next to it (so you can use them again).

We'll in words it sounds much harder than it looks. It's a very visual and clear way. Fast as well (with one sweep you have unmarked all the resource cards). It's compact as well (2 physical card slots on the table per faction). A huge fan.

Building Cities
============

We started out with the cities in play marked, and allowed to unmark one per turn. This worked better then paying for their casting costing to unmark (even compared to the spread pay over turns). I'm starting to wondering if we even have to have them marked at all. Since their advantage cannot be triggered unless there are some creatures there. They are inert as well at game startup.
I still would like to keep their casting cost, and allow players to put additional cities in their deck.

(Granted, to snowdrop's expertise, this was something he kinda predicted, but noting goes over a real try out)

Casting creatures (Entrance phase)
==============================

In our prev playtest round we could cast creatures everywhere (in a city, in the army), and this made us lean towards the simple MTG style combat and leaving the cities out of the game play.
So we decided to cast creatures only inside a city (during the play phase), at the same time we removed the entrance phase. This made sense, because creatures in the cities cannot attack anyway. They could be moved (recruted) to the army the same time they were cast (but moving cause the creature to mark, so it is useless this turn anyway) Again I think this is a keeper.


Move limits
==========

The arc limits the movement of creatures at one per turn. This made the game slow (maybe to slow). So we decided to ease up just a little, instead of one move limit per turn, we changed it to one move limit per city. (So the a single city can only be once the source or destination of a move per turn). This allowed us to recruit up to three creatures in the army (one from each city).
It's still limiting enough to think about where you need to put your creatures, yet gives you some more tactical maneuverability. Again, I feel that's a positive evolution.

Gaining Victory Points
===================

Last time around, we could gain victory points by winning a city advantage, or by unblocked damage on an army (all leftover damage turned into VP). This time we changed it to 1 VP if there's some unblocked damage.


Conclusions : the pro's
====================

With these changes we went to play, and the thing actually started to act and feel as a game (and a gameplay). In the prev playtest we just followed the rules step by step, trying to do something. This time we actually started building a strategy, and thought about a gameplay, how to accomplish something (kill of a creature, render a city unusable, using the cities advantages)

This was a game indeed :-) (and I finally won one with the Gaian deck)

Conclusion: the con's
==================

- The player card is not of much use (as predicted by snowdrop)

- The single VP in army battle win didn't give us incentive to attack the army.

I'm not even sure there needs to be both victory points and player life points, it adds complexity but for now little more gameplay. Maybe two win conditions are sufficient : destroy all enemy cities, or gain a fixed set of victory points.

The idea of VP is that you can win games with defensive/non combat decks without doing damage. This is not the case in Mtg as you need to get the life total of your opponent to zero. So gain a lot of life yourself doesn't make you win the game. Just make you not lose it.

A suggestion is that you start with a certain amount of VP e.g 15, if you receive combat damage you lose VP. If can also gain VP (e.g. wining an advantage). If you reach a certain amount you win the game (e.g. 30). So here both defensive as offensive decks and strategies can be build. Plus there is only one counter left.

- Winning a cities advantage : the weenie. To win a city advantage one has to mark more creatures that you opponent. If you're playing a weenie deck, you always win against a deck with huge creatures. You just draw more cards and cast them at a higher rate tempo then the other player.

So an alternative is: each creature adds his 'casting cost' to the bid, instead of the number. So a 4/4 flying costing 6, would add the same amount as two 1/2 costing 3 each. Since we have this algorithm for the attack/defense - cost ratio it would be balanced better.

That was all for now folks,
Kind regards,
Nico
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snowdrop
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Re: ARC Playtest Round 2 : a summary

Post by snowdrop » Thu Jun 16, 2016 16:05

Whenever you play a resource card, you put it face down on a pile/stack, and you take a gem/counter and place it next to the stack. For each faction you have one stack (pile of cards looking like your lib).

To use pay 1 resource you place 1 gem on to the stack. So the gems left over are the (mana) resources you have left. During your unmark phase, you move all gems from all resource stacks next to it (so you can use them again).
My original idea was to just have one single resource stack, no matter what the currency you produce, you just pile them all up on top of each other. It could be to the right of the draw deck, or wherever.

Keeping separate stacks eats surface and I'm not sure it fills any function beyond that(?), except for allowing you to re-check if somebody is cheating with tokens or not by counting number of green tokens and comparing with number of resource cards in the green resource pile, to use colour currency as an example. If there is no core rule and mechanic built into ARC around the separate piles, then it makes sense to just keep one around.

Same goes for tokens: If player uses tokens of different colours or shapes, and each colour or shape representes one currency, then there isn't a need of 5 different piles of unused currency tokens, and 5 piles of used currency tokens - there's just a need of two separate spots on the table with all currencies next to each other in them. One of the spots would keep the unused currencies, the other one, separated by distance on the table, the used ones. You will always be able to see with ease how many are left or have been used if the tokens don't look a like.

So we decided to cast creatures only inside a city (during the play phase),
If some kid of advantages can be won by having creatures in a city then this still forces the player to do some thinking about where to place the creature.

I'm not even sure there needs to be both victory points and player life points, it adds complexity but for now little more gameplay. Maybe two win conditions are sufficient : destroy all enemy cities, or gain a fixed set of victory points.
You're correct - there isn't ever a need of several win conditions at all unless they somehow are both disparate with "opposite force" between them and at the same time tie into several of the games mechanics in such a way that they offer the different viable strategies.

Just having a win condition around to add complexity doesn't add anything to the game, as complexity in itself is actually bad, and tells us nothing about the inherent design of the game (is it complex but in a way which adds something to the game, or is it complex and adds little or even takes something away, why is it there to begin with etc). Common mistake is to mix up complexity with strategic depth, when there in reality is no such connection between the two.
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