Weigh anchor and prepare to make more changes!

They say that no plan ever survives contact with the enemy. I think it can also be said that no prototype created by a relatively inexperienced designer survives contact with a decent playtester. This weekend, my latest version of Scurvy Crew, which I was hoping was close to being released and put in front of anyone who is interested as version 0.2, went through a brutal ordeal with my star playtester: my wife.

Sharpies: your best friend for quick changes.

S. is not a regular gamer, so has not internalised all the shortcuts and conventions that I have absorbed over many years of playing board games. She is also used to having her work and those of others put through the intense scrutiny of scientific peer review, and as such is used to spotting weaknesses in an argument (or rule set) and asking very pertinent questions. In particular, if I have a rule that I introduced because it seemed to improve game play options or balance, but doesn't sit nicely with the theme, she will go straight to it like a BS-seeking missile and call me on it.

This is absolutely awesome and really helpful.

In this case, within minutes, we were making modifications to cards with Sharpies, and tweaking the rules regarding what actions are allowed at what time.  I think I now have a much better handle on what is working in the game and, more importantly, what is not.  As a result of this playtest, at the top of my to-do list are the following items...

• There needs to be some sort of hand limit to stop card hoarding. 
• There probably needs to be a limit for number of deployed crew (maybe a characteristic of the ships?) 
• The sailing icons are mostly useless at sea, so we need something to help that -- I thought that maybe a crew can allow sailing to be used in attacks. 
• The balance of prize ships is well off -- too many man o'wars in the deck, and it is pretty difficult (and requires quite a lot of luck) to capture a prize.
• As we have decided that players should be able to transition backwards and forwards between sea and land, more or less at will, I need to find a nice way to handle this.