My work-in-progress, called The Castle War for now, is a 2-player card game that could be described as a "lane battler", where forces line up at 6 locations (castles, natch), vying for dominance. It's based on the 12th century war in England between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda and, while it isn't a historically faithful game, it does take a lot of cues from the history.
One point gives a little asymmetry between the sides. Matilda didn't take a direct part in most military operations, while Stephen did his kingly duty of personally leading troops, something that cost him his liberty at one point, though this game is not about that specifically. Matilda's player has a special ability which takes a little work to activate, when this has been done, she gets a little extra control over movement and activity restrictions. On the other side, Stephen is represented by a card that can provide big bonuses in combat, but if a conflict that he is directly involved in is lost, his player loses the game instantly due to his capture.
 |
| King Stephen is at a Devizes Castle, having been revealed in a previous turn. |
This makes the Stephen card powerful but vulnerable, and there is a possible "fool's mate" type situation that can happen very early in the game - plausibly on turn 2. The situation is as follows:
The Matilda player goes first (they always do!) and play a couple of cards to a castle. Most turns involve playing one or two cards from hand, usually face-down to line up at castles.
The Stephen player plays the King Stephen card plus a military unit card.
The Matilda player chooses to trigger the conflict at that castle, so all cards there are revealed. Matilda has a unit and one of Stephen's loyal leaders on their side, which means that the leader is ransomed: Stephen takes the leader into hand and Matilda takes one of her foes cards from the castle; she is not permitted to take Stephen, so takes the unit, leaving King Stephen unprotected. Matilda wins the conflict and as Stephen was there at the time, wins the game outright.
Since it became part of the game, I have enjoyed the powerful-but-risky nature of the King Stephen card and have been resisting watering it down, feeling that it is a strong feature of the game. However, on a couple of occasions, playtest feedback has pushed for a change after an early disaster happened. I believe a lot of players of this sort of game enjoy the tightrope walk, but it is clear that some players who are tripped up early are certain to have bad feelings and never give the game a second chance.
I was discussing this with a game designer friend who has played the game quite a few times, and it felt like I might have to just give up on my preferred rules, when inspiration came, which I think was partly shaped by a rule in the friend's game that we had played earlier. The solution was that, while originally the King Stephen card started in his player's initial hand of cards, it could start on the table and out of play, and taken into hand on the first occasion the Stephen player has to draw cards. From then on, the game just proceeds as before.
The down side to this is that the Stephen player needs to remember to pick up the card at the appropriate time, but this can be reinforced on the player aid and on the card itself, and I think is acceptable in this style of game. The up side is that we still have the fragility I like, but players are likely to have seen 1 or 2 conflict resolutions (they happen whenever a player takes their turn to refill their hand) and a good number of different cards before King Stephen can be put at risk, meaning that even new players will have a better idea about how everything works.
It's still early days with this rule, but playtesting so far suggests it works OK.
No comments:
Post a Comment