Physical prototype.

 Some playtesters voiced their concern that physical unit token will be unwieldy to use or impossible to implement. So I designed a two layer tile that is easy to handle even if it holds multiple tokens.

The health markers are flippable 1/2 and 3/6 tokens. This way it is possible to represent 4 health unit with 2 tokens and each point of damage taken with 1 flip or token removal. Units up to 9 health can be represented with 2 tokens. I may need to work on visual representation, perhaps make 3/6 token physically bigger.

Robotic factory - first virtual playtest

 I joined virtual playtesting discord group some time ago and last Sunday I finally got my prototype in tabletop simulator to testable state. I had 2 players listen to the original version of rules and play a few turns and got a few more ideas for rule adjustment to try.

One conclusion was the need to speed up the pace of the game. Also it confirmed my suspicion that advanced deck must be split. Suggestion for guaranteed supply of mobility utilities was raised. But perhaps the main lessons was about organizing playtests.

One playtester was obviously eager to explain his choices as he played and followed what I would call the intended strategy. The second player was more silent and played strategy that was intended to be suboptimal.

During the feedback phase the second playtester told me that my attempts to suggest a strategy almost every turn were unwelcome, borderline rude. This was a surprise to me. I was asking "have you considered preparing to invade neutral territory earlier?" as a prompt to share his decision process. He felt it I was coercing people to play the game in less fun way. Lesson for me, if I want playtesters to share decision process in real time I must ask this explicitly. But maybe big part of the reason second playtester was so annoyed is that his idea of ignoring army for a few turns and just teching to build a robot with massive firepower (which he obviously saw as more fun) simply did not work.

Also I must learn to be optimistic. Originally I asked for 150 minutes, than I doubted that my prototype is mature enough to play several turns and changed it to showcase and play one turn with 70 minutes. At the end prototype was mature enough to be played for several turns and lengthy feedback phase so people who initially committed for 70 minutes had to stay for 150.

I also received much useful advice on TTS on editing player hand zones, on using thick cards instead of tokens whenever possible, on manipulating grids and snappoints.

And once again let me thank my playtesters for providing valuable feedback and boosting my confidence.

Robotic Factory: deck builder board game

Since I first discovered Dominion (BGG) I am huge fan of deck building games. I am also a fan of tactical wargames like Massive Assault. When I discovered Cogmind I soon became obsessed with the idea of creating a board game that combines elements of deck building and tactical wargames and building robots from parts.

Let me use Dominion to briefly explain how deck building games work. You start with a small deck of basic cards. Every turn you draw a few cards. You can use your cards in different ways. Some cards (like Silver shown here as an example) generate gold that allows you to buy other cards. When you buy a card it goes to your discard pile. The cards you played also go to discard pile. When there are no more cards in your deck and you need to draw you shuffle your discard pile and use it as your draw deck. The key idea is your deck
grows as you play and with each reshufle the cards in your hand become more powerful.

Some cards allow you to attack the opponent, for example inserting harmful cards to his deck. Some cards provide victory points but do not provide any benefit before the end of game and only waste a slot in your hand.

Seriously if you love games and do not know what is a deck-builder make yourself a service and watch some youtube.

There are many games, including digital, that followed suit. Ascension and Star Realms are examples of deck building brought to it's purest form. Slay the Spire has strong deck-building elements. Even some tavern brawl modes of Hearthstone are deck-builders. Digital games provided fancy mechanics that are impossible in cardboard form. But it is Dominion that started it all.

Not much can be said about tactical wargames. You carefully choose your army composition to respond to enemy army and terrain. You carefully maneuver your army to gain territory with minimal loses. There was a post (in Russian only) from developer, who is among founders of wargaming.net, that original prototype of Massive Assault was "analog" board game which gives me hope that my idea of doing this in cardboard is not doomed.

Cogmind is a clever roguelike videogame where you build your robotic hero by placing destructible parts into very limited slots. And you cant just slap all the fancy big guns and fire them at once because usable have weight that slows you down heat generation that requires cooling (and you will melt without it) and require energy .

The idea of building units from parts is not new in board-games. For example Eclipse has starships with components and you can not fire your big gun if energy requirements are not satisfied.

In future blog entries I will show how my game is supposed to work and how I expect to balance it.