Boogie Five is Alive!

Version 0.5 of Boogie Knights is up and running, and after giving it a test with a table of players who hadn't tried it before, I'm pretty sure it is an improvement over the previous iteration.  The main changes for this version were that accessories had been fully done away with, along with the special moves, and I had added possibility of playing a face-down piece of equipment for a "quick change" (when you are challenged, you can choose to swap your quick change card into your equipment).

In addition, I had tried to speed the start of the game up a little by allowing players to discard and replace as many of their initial hand of cards as they like, and then play a card into their quick change slot before starting.

Oh yeah, I had some new kit cards too!

After playtesting we had a really great discussion with lots of suggestions flying around. While the game is basically OK, everyone spotted something that just didn't seem quite right for them.  Possibly the row of face-up cards in the armoury didn't feel like it added much to the game.  Or the magic cards didn't seem good value (and also seem a little incongruous in the setting).  Or the fact that the "challenge anyone" cards are strictly better than the "challenge left/right" ones might have been irksome.

So I ended up with a load of notes, and have been working in my head on ways to improve the game.  I had a load of thoughts about what to do next, and was intending to make a couple of minor changes and then getting on with more testing, working in a slow, incremental way.  I mean, I am planning to attend another testing day in London this coming Sunday, and I only have so much time until then, so can't really do anything major...

But then an idea that has been at the back of my mind for a while clambered to the front and has been clawing its way into my brain and refusing to go away...

So the idea develops from a simple thought that, instead of amassing tokens to count towards victory, players' progress is marked on a score track.  What this allows now is an easy way to see who is in the lead, and that suggests something thematic: surely there is more glory to be had from defeating someone who is more renowned than you than someone who is behind you on the track.

I won't go into all of my thinking right now, but where I have ended up is on a plan to scrap almost all of the challenge cards and only have "challenge anyone" cards for the two disciplines.  Then, if the person who wins is behind their opponent on the score track, they win two prestige, otherwise they win one.  Right away I suddenly have a simpler game with a lot less to explain and, potentially, added some more interesting decisions to make.  Plus I think this should address several of the issues that have been raised over the last few months.

Ah, sod it!  I can get this sorted before the weekend.  In fact, as I write this, I'm nearly done -- it mostly required deleting stuff out of my data file that I feed into nanDECK to construct my cards.

As a small aside, I'm also replacing the magic cards with "Dirty Tricks" cards, which allow you to swap two cards and then issue a challenge.

Time to get that card cutter out again...