Hex dominion
Apr. 16th, 2012 09:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackBecause my muse is recaltricent but annoyingly stubborn, it never normally says "lets design a board game!" but a month before my wedding it suddenly does! :)
That's an exaggeration, it's fairer to say "had an idea for" than "designed" because approximately 100% of first ideas don't actually become playable games. But it's still fun to think about, especially if your stupid muse won't let you sleep until you print out some cards and try them.
The basic rules are:
Notes from the first solo playtest:
- Movement over the terrain works very well. The different distribution of movement cards (primarily "Short march. Move one hex of any terrain" and "Quick march. Move up to 3 field hexes", and a couple of others than include field and forest hexes) give a very realistic feel, where you always CAN cut through a mountain if you need to, but it's usually quicker to go around. The terrain is sufficiently relevant that the usual route is usually obvious, but sufficiently random that you can never be sure someone won't suddenly pull a Hannibal and come through the mountains.
- The basic attack cards (one each per starting deck) have either a special ability, or an ability to make a frontal assault on an adjacent army destroying both armies. This works pretty well, because in the early game you attack when you need to, but not all the time. (Rerecruiting armies is not too difficult.)
- The weapon upgrade cards (1,2,3,4 mines = armour, guns, tanks, and airstrikes) work very well, in that they're mechaniclaly simple, but when you have a tech superiority your armies are much more scary, and fun to play, but still vulnerable to attack.
- The school/academy/university cards (draw 2,3,4 cards) seem balanced about right.
- Originally, you have to discard cards from your hand (related to how far apart your resources were) when you upgraded something. This was too complicated and was cut.
- Originally you are supposed to always trash a card when you upgrade. (So your deck just gets steadily better, instead of getting more/less dilute.) I forgot about this, but you definitely need it. The long game slows down too much when the basic movement cards and upgrade cards are a smaller proportion of the deck.
- (Also, I decided not to have some cards have trash in the cost and some not. I'll just try "always trash".)
- When you upgrade, you don't use anything up (except sometimes), you just need to control the requisite number of resource tiles. This seems to work -- the rate of upgrades is controlled by the number of upgrade cards in your deck.
- There are lots of upgrade card piles. I probably want to keep all the ones in the basic deck out of sight, and arrange the others by "number of mines needed" to keep it visually less intimidating.
- The test was quite fun. Red ran away with more armies, but blue got more mines, and I stopped when blue seemed to be winning.
- There need to be some more decisive advantages though. This is partly because I forgot the "trash when you buy" rule, so powerful cards fill less of your deck. But also, there needs to be a more decisive way of eliminating opposing territory. I made propaganda (converting opposite hexes to your side) a bit more effective, added a nuke (cost five mines), and improved a mass communication card.
- It was still a bit fiddly. I simplified several things. There's still some things that didn't come up (forts, roads) that may or may not be cut. It took a bit long when I was doing everything by myself, hopefully it will be better next time.
- It's untested how difficult it is to pick up.
- The idea is that different strategies are entailed by different starting configurations of hexes (like different kingdom card layouts in dominion), but I may need to increase the variance a bit more to make different games play significantly differently.
- There was not that much tactical manouvering to make attacks matter. Hopefully this could be made a lot more interesting by making attacks depend on terrain or relative position of armies slightly more.
A few sample cards:
These are slightly simplified to give the idea without listing rules edge cases. I can post the entire list in a table if people want.
From the starting deck:
Short March. Move an army one hex of any terrain.
Quick March. Move an army up to three field hexes.
Force March. Discard any number of cards. Move any comination of armies that many field or forest hexes.
Propaganda. Raise a new army (if you will control three field hexes per army) OR (details...) add influence counters to some hexes.
Till. Make friendly a field hex (either any one occupied by an army, or any river-adjacent field hex next to a friendly hex).
Attack - Popular Uprising. EITHER: destroy an enemy army on a friendly hex OR destroy adjacent friendly and enemy
Scholarly cards:
Cost one mine. School. Draw 2 cards.
Cost one mine. Academy. Draw 3 cards.
Cost one mine. University. Draw 4 cards.
Weapons upgrades:
Cost one mine. Armour. Play when an army would be destroyed in a frontal attack. Instead it isn't.
Cost two mines. Guns. Destroy an adjacent enemy army. (Armour doesn't help.)
Cost three mines. Tanks. Play when an army in a field hex would be destroyed by any card with lower tech level (ie. fewer mines in cost) and it isn't. OR destroy an adjacent enemy army in a field hex.
Cost four mines. Airstrike. Destroy all armies and influence counters in any hex, and put a depletion counter on it.
Cost five mines. Nuke. Like airstrike, but hits one hex and also every adjacent hex!
Introductory strategy
Choose start hexes where you can expand into many riverside field hexes, because the more field hexes you have, the more armies you can have, but you don't need an army to settle riverside hexes.
Also try to have starting hexes where you can reach two forest hexes and as many mining hexes as possible.
Settle two forest hexes, buy the "mining" card, then settle as many mines as you can.
The weapons upgrades and the scholarly upgrades are well worth having.
Usually discard your entire hand every turn because you will get to the good cards faster. But if there's a card you particularly want (eg. an attack, if you expect an enemy to come adjacent to you, or a mining card if you expect to move onto a mine next turn), keep it back.
If you fall behind, try rushing an enemy settled hex and propagandising it to your side or razing it. (Depleting it, so you get a one-off injection of resources.)
Buying more "till" cards or more "upgrade" cards may well be worth it but hasn't been tested yet.
That's an exaggeration, it's fairer to say "had an idea for" than "designed" because approximately 100% of first ideas don't actually become playable games. But it's still fun to think about, especially if your stupid muse won't let you sleep until you print out some cards and try them.
The basic rules are:
You have 100-200 hexes. 1/2 field, 1/2 divided evenly between forest, mountain and water. Six of the mountain hexes have mines one. Shuffle them face-down into a big blog and turn them all over.
Each player starts with three settled field hexes, and one army.
You have a starting deck of cards, like in dominion. The cards let you:
- move armies
- settle new hexes
- destroy opposing armies
- buy better cards
A turn consists of:
1. At the end of the previous turn, draw until you have 5 cards.
2. Play any number of cards. Everything else you can do is instructed on a card.
3. Discard or keep any number of unused cards.
The last player with any hexes or armies left on the boardloseswins.
Notes from the first solo playtest:
- Movement over the terrain works very well. The different distribution of movement cards (primarily "Short march. Move one hex of any terrain" and "Quick march. Move up to 3 field hexes", and a couple of others than include field and forest hexes) give a very realistic feel, where you always CAN cut through a mountain if you need to, but it's usually quicker to go around. The terrain is sufficiently relevant that the usual route is usually obvious, but sufficiently random that you can never be sure someone won't suddenly pull a Hannibal and come through the mountains.
- The basic attack cards (one each per starting deck) have either a special ability, or an ability to make a frontal assault on an adjacent army destroying both armies. This works pretty well, because in the early game you attack when you need to, but not all the time. (Rerecruiting armies is not too difficult.)
- The weapon upgrade cards (1,2,3,4 mines = armour, guns, tanks, and airstrikes) work very well, in that they're mechaniclaly simple, but when you have a tech superiority your armies are much more scary, and fun to play, but still vulnerable to attack.
- The school/academy/university cards (draw 2,3,4 cards) seem balanced about right.
- Originally, you have to discard cards from your hand (related to how far apart your resources were) when you upgraded something. This was too complicated and was cut.
- Originally you are supposed to always trash a card when you upgrade. (So your deck just gets steadily better, instead of getting more/less dilute.) I forgot about this, but you definitely need it. The long game slows down too much when the basic movement cards and upgrade cards are a smaller proportion of the deck.
- (Also, I decided not to have some cards have trash in the cost and some not. I'll just try "always trash".)
- When you upgrade, you don't use anything up (except sometimes), you just need to control the requisite number of resource tiles. This seems to work -- the rate of upgrades is controlled by the number of upgrade cards in your deck.
- There are lots of upgrade card piles. I probably want to keep all the ones in the basic deck out of sight, and arrange the others by "number of mines needed" to keep it visually less intimidating.
- The test was quite fun. Red ran away with more armies, but blue got more mines, and I stopped when blue seemed to be winning.
- There need to be some more decisive advantages though. This is partly because I forgot the "trash when you buy" rule, so powerful cards fill less of your deck. But also, there needs to be a more decisive way of eliminating opposing territory. I made propaganda (converting opposite hexes to your side) a bit more effective, added a nuke (cost five mines), and improved a mass communication card.
- It was still a bit fiddly. I simplified several things. There's still some things that didn't come up (forts, roads) that may or may not be cut. It took a bit long when I was doing everything by myself, hopefully it will be better next time.
- It's untested how difficult it is to pick up.
- The idea is that different strategies are entailed by different starting configurations of hexes (like different kingdom card layouts in dominion), but I may need to increase the variance a bit more to make different games play significantly differently.
- There was not that much tactical manouvering to make attacks matter. Hopefully this could be made a lot more interesting by making attacks depend on terrain or relative position of armies slightly more.
A few sample cards:
These are slightly simplified to give the idea without listing rules edge cases. I can post the entire list in a table if people want.
From the starting deck:
Short March. Move an army one hex of any terrain.
Quick March. Move an army up to three field hexes.
Force March. Discard any number of cards. Move any comination of armies that many field or forest hexes.
Propaganda. Raise a new army (if you will control three field hexes per army) OR (details...) add influence counters to some hexes.
Till. Make friendly a field hex (either any one occupied by an army, or any river-adjacent field hex next to a friendly hex).
Attack - Popular Uprising. EITHER: destroy an enemy army on a friendly hex OR destroy adjacent friendly and enemy
Scholarly cards:
Cost one mine. School. Draw 2 cards.
Cost one mine. Academy. Draw 3 cards.
Cost one mine. University. Draw 4 cards.
Weapons upgrades:
Cost one mine. Armour. Play when an army would be destroyed in a frontal attack. Instead it isn't.
Cost two mines. Guns. Destroy an adjacent enemy army. (Armour doesn't help.)
Cost three mines. Tanks. Play when an army in a field hex would be destroyed by any card with lower tech level (ie. fewer mines in cost) and it isn't. OR destroy an adjacent enemy army in a field hex.
Cost four mines. Airstrike. Destroy all armies and influence counters in any hex, and put a depletion counter on it.
Cost five mines. Nuke. Like airstrike, but hits one hex and also every adjacent hex!
Introductory strategy
Choose start hexes where you can expand into many riverside field hexes, because the more field hexes you have, the more armies you can have, but you don't need an army to settle riverside hexes.
Also try to have starting hexes where you can reach two forest hexes and as many mining hexes as possible.
Settle two forest hexes, buy the "mining" card, then settle as many mines as you can.
The weapons upgrades and the scholarly upgrades are well worth having.
Usually discard your entire hand every turn because you will get to the good cards faster. But if there's a card you particularly want (eg. an attack, if you expect an enemy to come adjacent to you, or a mining card if you expect to move onto a mine next turn), keep it back.
If you fall behind, try rushing an enemy settled hex and propagandising it to your side or razing it. (Depleting it, so you get a one-off injection of resources.)
Buying more "till" cards or more "upgrade" cards may well be worth it but hasn't been tested yet.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-16 09:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-16 10:22 am (UTC)impossible suicide chess
OK, that would make a great domain name :) But yes, you're right, I switched sense of the sentence half way through and matched the sides up wrongly. The obliterated side loses :)
In fact, possibly there should be some intermediate goal, so you don't have to hunt the remnants of the opponent's hexes down at the end, I'm not sure.
I'm not sure how a misere version would work. It's easy to destroy your own hexes (raze them for the resources), but there's basically no way of forcing your opponent to destroy your armies if he doesn't want to. (Assuming two friendly armies can't fight.)
If you can raze your hexes faster, you could frontal-assault the opposing army, destroying both but leaving them with a hex. But most likely they'd be able to raze their hexes before you can corner their army, and then it would be stalemate. (You can rebuild, but your opponent will probably fight you as soon as you do.)
I think the only reliable way is to get four mines, build an airstrike, and then blow up all your own armies. So the first half of the game would be about the same, as you'd have to fight each other to get the airstrike, while being careful not to end up with more armies (if they have fewer armies, they can fight you then blow up their hexes). But it would probably lead to stalemates with both sides putting armies on three mines each, and having no way to dislodge the opposing ones without killing them :)