... or at least some more thought.

I keep on wanting to make a compelling, shorter version of Rail Baron.  Don't ask me why.  My brain works that way.  I want less railroads, easier payouts, quicker turns and more strategy.

Looks like I can get three of the four pretty easily.  Unfortunately, it kills whatever fun I would have had in the game.  Which is probably to be expected as Rail Baron is not the attention grabbing game it was in the 1970's.  Still, more thought to go behind it.

I also tinkered with a delivery game where the cubes increase in value as they are delivered but it plays too much like a poor man's Age of Steam.  And that won't do either.

So, more time to tinker in the days ahead.  

Another donation from the BGG community might be in the works!

I think Downturn is my favorite game I've done so far and no one else really likes it.  Maybe art will save the day.  Or maybe the game just stinks.  Anyhow, check out the drafts for the cards by Brett H (logicalgambit) and see if you like what you see.

 

Very quick thoughts on the latest playtest.

A very smooth run of the game.  Scores were close to the tune of 62 to 60 with decisions made at the end on the last hand by both players that tilted the game either way up until the end.  Hard choices along the way on both sides. 

Quick rules thoughts:

• The final dividend round was interesting in that I hadn't thought about how to handle the extra cards at the end.  I opted not to reshuffle the discarded cards and again elected to think on the fly again.  I decided to leave the exposed cards in view from the community draw pile and whoever decided to "go out" first ended the game. I also had to decide what to do with the final hand in that there were cards still laying around and I wanted those carried over as well. 
  
  I think what I will do in the future is kill the cards from the hand from the end of the 4th dividend and let the players start with their 8 cards from prior as their hand.  I don't think it would have changed the final results much but keeping too much held over from the second to the last hand would skew the final hand.
  
  That said, it was neat to have that card drafting at the very end.  A couple cards proved pivotal in the end that were carried over from the very beginning.  I wish there was a way to do this from the very start.  I'm sure there's a way, but I don't want it this game to be a card drafting game like others that are out now - although I now see the allure of playing those games.   The mechanic of saving 2 cards as you go worked out very well in keeping scores from going too low too early on as well.  That said, starting at 10 VP felt fair.
  
  
• A few card effect clean ups need to be done.  Most of the card effects worked as expected.  A few one-of-every-suit plays were made and the different contracts available contributed to route building.  The Strike! cards at certain points are just plain nasty.  Plopping Rivers and Mountains works well.  They kill stops but sometimes allow players to capitalize on their rich resource wealth should they play the right cards. 
  
  
• Switching to regional colors removed some of the "go-fish" feeling from before.  I thought the deck would be too loose after reducing the number of regions but it worked out well.  I may elect to add a few wild cards back into the mix, although, again, with playing three-of-each-suit, this might not be necessary.
  
  
• The mathematics on the scoring are almost dead on for what I want to do.  The purchase price for railroads in terms of adding/substracting for completing/not completing worked as I had wanted.  Made for interesting purchase decisions later on in the game.
  
  
• I will probably kill the final 5D train and make it a 4D train.  4D's didn't even come out although, again, that too might be enough in a close game to win.
  
  
• The other thing to think about is drawing that dividend card.  I thought about killing any bonus midway, which I applied retroactively.  It still felt cheap.  I thought about allowing players to earn the VP based on the card value, but the possibility of earning anywhere of 2-10 VP for doing nothing seemed wrong to me considering that players are almost always going to draw two cards at all times to advance their hands.  I think what I will try next is allow the dividend triggering player a chance to perform a free move with his hand at that point.  That should provide enough incentive for players to get rid of bad cards (via drafting) or using them immediately without being penalized too heavily.
  
  
• Game time, again, was almost 1 hour bang on the dot.
  
  
• I'm still trying to figure out a way to drop the size of the deck a little.  A thought was to allow some cards to have multiple effects for whatever dividend they were in, but this seems only appropriate in a solitaire mode and makes holding cards that much more difficult.  Don't know.  The game feels balanced and tweaking the deck at this point feels like it would be a bad idea.
  
  
• Speaking of holding cards, I think I want to make some cards where the effects/numbers/etc. are on the bottom of the card as well.
  
  
• I managed to squeak out a first version of rules which will have to be altered and modified and cleaned up, but the general feel of the game is out there.

Again, all in all, a great playtest.  I liked the weight and feel of the game.  I'm not sure how it will play as a partnership or 3 player game, but as 2 this feels about as complicated as I want it to be.  I'm sure it's no Union vs. Pacific, but it was never really meant to be.  It plays quick, feels very tactical, has some end game strategy and a littlehand management and limited resource management as well.  I think with some simply art and a little more work, it'll be ready to try out in the wild.  Very satisfying. 

It's amazing how some things just naturally seem to come together and others just take too much work.

More playtesting this week from the road.  If I'm really bored, I could corner-punch the cards but I really don't want to kill my thumbs.

Thanks much.

Playtest #3...

The third playtest of a two player version game of the train card game ensued a couple days ago after work.  Like the other playtests before it, this was a solitaire affair with me playing both hands.  Also like the other games so far, some tweaking of the rules happened in real time.  However, unlike the prior runs, this game finished within an hour.

All in all, things went well...  The pace on this game was a little slower than games past.  I'm not sure exactly why other than cards just weren't dropping into place as easily as I'd liked.  A lot of later route cards played early.  Left started up the C&O and built.  Right started up the CP.  Both companies played what they could.  Scoring stayed low and a few cards were played pretty well that restricted hands, took cash away and made things miserable for the front runner.  Train rush moved well.  The final score was 29 to 26 with 5-Trains making it out on the scene.

Stuff to Tweak:

- The one change I made that I wasn't happy with was dropping visible cards from the draw pile from 5 to 3.  I liked having the other cards out there.  Back they go.

- Partial Owner Cards:  As much as I want these to work, they seemed too powerful and too arbitrary.  I thought about their initial function which was to level the field a little bit.  The boost they were intended to give was small and temporary - VP piggy back for a dividend and to help with track building on multi-player games.  However, since there's no shares in this game, there's little incentive to do that except to play a lesser value destination on an opposing railroad.  There simply aren't enough working parts in this game to justify such a card.  Out they go.  Sniff.

- Scarely Used Resources:  Another issue that keeps coming up is that the resources are almost never used.  I'm thinking that a player could trade in three alike resources or three of the same resources from their hand to purchase one wildcard route for a railroad or to cancel effects.  This would force some bad routes out of a player's hand and give another option for resource cards to be used.  The resources in general haven't been used that much at all because of the small payoff until later in the game, but in the grand scheme of the game, the route-building and hand management is the thing.  So this is in the back of my mind but doesn't bother me greatly.  It is fixable.

- Cosmetics:  Most of my ideas mid game for improvements were cosmetic.  I'm thinking a small 'stop sign' next to any card that counts as a stop in order (since stations and towns do not count).  I have had bigger ideas since regarding the card layout (see below).

- Card Mix:  The card mix needs to change.  The Build! cards can go away for the most part since the 3 card sets are going to come in.  My initial effect cards were supposed to be limited in nature to simplify testing.  I think I'm ready to try different things now, so I'm not too worried about this.

- Railroad Limits:  One rule I came up with on the fly involved just running 2 incomplete railroads.  This further elevates the smaller companies to be taken up quickly.  In short, I liked it.

Stuff That Worked Right:

- Trains!:  I liked the train rusting.  I liked having the trains being available after first in class was purchased.  I liked the decreasing cost of the trains and it pushed them to come out a little faster than merely phasing them out would with rusting.  The costlier trains emptying out hands of cards is an interesting decision - but a necessary one to win.

- Building Roads, Buying Trains versus Events:  If one part of the game froze up, other stuff opened up.  Can't build routes?  Add a train for later!  There was stuff to do and effects to play even if routes weren't being built.  It was an alternate story line.  I liked this aspect.

- Pacing:  The game has a subtle dance of timing, phases and sub-phases.  Initial runs to build routes, times to build your hand up, times when you'd pitch a fit because someone would make you kill your hand.  There's a lot there in this pack of cards.

- Scoring:  Scoring was tight.  Although the bulk of points is in RR management, other tactics during the game affected point totals.  I liked that too.

Bigger Stuff To Try:

- More effects.  Empty stops, added topography, (rivers/mountains/etc), temporary train bonuses, broken trains, bonuses for highest resource totals on routes, more payment cards, etc. are all possible.  The game is too solitaire but this element would add some interaction.

- Dividend Idea - Delayed Card Drafting:  Give VP for who draws last (1 or 2 VP) and let players stash a couple cards for use during the final dividend round.  It lets players get rid of higher price cards for use later in the game, reduces scoring penalty, encourages hand management and allows players to stash some cards for later.  I like combining this with reshuffling the discard deck, taking the top ten cards and letting the players go at it in the final dividend round.  Reminds me of 1960 a little bit.

- More players - I think this would be an interesting partnership game.  A three player game with seven railroads to fight over might be interesting as well.  Not sure how the deck breakdown works with that regard.

- Backup Wildcard - I'm thinking a way to produce a $0 value wildcard consisting of all three resources would be good.  Simply place one of those spent cards upside down on the route and you've got yourself a stop.  One per railroad.

Meta Game:

- Scoring:  Scoring seemed to be about right.  The notion of going into debt to charge back is an interesting one in this game.  VP's are about in the range I want them to be.  Finishing RR's is big and even the B&M can be a worthy company to own since it builds quickly and counts for 2 VP at the end of the game.  Playing resource cards may also help get someone over the top.  I like the balance of screw the opponent versus playing cards to your routes.  Ultimately, its your own score you want but it was amazing how some cards could decimate an opponent's building by removing a delicate balance of cards to build to the next region.  

- Negative Scoring:  Related to scoring is that the game tends to go into negative VP for a couple rounds.  I like this from a theme stand point (think loans, starting up, etc) but makes scoring a complete bear as the human mind just doesn't like negatives.  I think starting with 10 VP and forcing players to stay above 0 or getting kicked out of the game works well.

- Interaction:  This game is too solitaire at the moment.  Again, more cards with cooler effects.

- Effect Canceling:  I am really liking the idea of the 3 of the same suit/3 different suit (or $5?) to cancel a card effect.  It forces flushing of bad routes from player hands and gives players further decisions to make regarding losing VP or cards to a player versus discard.

- Deck Recycling:  For the 2 player game, it seemed to work well to have the deck split into three dividends and then ending the game after one shot through.  I'm thinking that one extra round would be good, but I think it would extend the game too long.  However, the other idea I'm thinking a round where discards are reshuffled and the first 12 cards are placed at the bottom for the final round.  Not sure about this, but I like the idea of discarded destinations being allowed back into the game.  

- Retheme:  It may make sense to "color-code" the regions and force cards to be played in color order with generic railroads to be used.  I like this on several reasons.  One big reason is the deck at this point is unwieldy and for a print and play game, smaller is better.  The notion of sticking with 18xx's colors of yellow, green, brown, gray and red and building railroad systems does have an allure that makes the game more interchangable - instead of upgrades, they would simply be the regions and building out (or upgrading earlier stops with the next color region later on).  It would make creating fictional railroads more interesting and craft game balance a little better.  It also makes the game easier to theme into something else if so desired.

- Deck Size:  The deck feels too big to me even though I like the dividend cycling based on drawing into quarters.  If I can retheme the game down and go through the deck twice, that may work. I wish I could get down to a 54 card deck, but I don't see it seeing how much building I like to see in the game, but that's a lot of cards to trim for print and play.  I have to tinker.  We'll stay big for now.

- Stocks and Shares:  Finally, with a retheme, it may be possible later to introduce a share game.  Not sure exactly, but it seems easier to do.  The notion of each company with its own cards in its "bank" similar to Monopoly Deal has an allure to it as well at least for a solitaire variant.

- Strategy:  Finally, yes, building routes is the name of the game - but does it pay to be defensive?  Hoard cards?  Buy excess trains?  Invest in smaller railroads or get bigger ones?  Upgrade routes?  I think there is some room for strategy although the game is admittedly more tactical than I would like.

Final Thoughts:

All in all, I'm happy with how the design is flushing out.  I like game designs that have different directions in which they can go and this design is breathing and moving about on its own.    It is definitely breaking out in different ways than I expected and I am really enjoying this particular design.  It feels more complete than my last shot through with tiles for 18XX.

We'll see.  I see myself putting together a new deck tonight!

Compared to my presidential election game, it went better!

After cutting out 130+ cards (108 of which are used for the bulk of the game), I simmed a two player game for a while.  The game took place for an hour and I ended up calling it short because it was late and I had learned enough from the first part of the test to end things there.

In general, there's some potential to the system.  I had suboptimally put some information on the destination cards.  The spur cards ended up being more trouble than they were worth, so they were gutted in order to provide for towns (think of the dotted tiles in 18XX).  Some of the cards were pretty worthless and I swapped them out with some other powers.  On the other hand of things, the 'Short Sell' card (now renamed 'Partial Owner' worked really well at leveling things.  I will probably add some more special cards on top of the exclusive 'money' cards if need be, but I wanted to see how fewer effects would interplay.  Finally, I formally added descriptions to the cards to kind of remind myself how things went and also included abbreviations of the regions (Eastern, Centra, Midwestern and Western) and fixed a couple cards.  I also had the idea to include end game scoring to include finishing the route for railroads and limiting a hand to 7 cards.  I also dropped the Dividend cards for now and will make it so that random cards are turned sideways in the deck at semi-regular intervals (4 dividends before the end of the game).  The final change was to base train obsolesence on dividends instead of route building which should make it easier to keep track of when to clear out those 2 and 3 Trains.  And finally (jeez!), I'm going to dig out some cubes for markers for the partial owners so players can use that although I suppose I could dedicate some further cards to that endeavor as well.  We'll see. Forgot I killed the "Draw 2 More" cards as well as they were kind of pointless.

In short, it played way too long for a card game.  I'm willing to stretch it some because it is a train game.  I'm aiming for an hour for two players, but ideally want it clipped to anywhere from 30-45 minutes.

Another play tonight, hopefully, to try out the new ideas.   I think they will make it a little faster and a little more interesting.

For those of you who have casually followed this blog over the past year or so, you'll know I do a lot of thinking about train games.  One of the leading publishers of this niche is Winsome Games and they have done a number of great titles that I'm hoping to get my hands on at some point if my cash flow ever improves.  Regardless, the entry for Union vs. Pacific at BGG has always interested me.  An 8+ hour train game based on cards?  The logistics of building track, moving resources back and forth?  That's a long, long time to play a train game.

So, while waiting for this to be released as part of John's Essen set, I took yet another look at my unending fascination with the industrial northeast with an eye towards making yet another train game - this one with cards.  Bindle Rails is a card game at heart, but it has a fair amount of denseness to it.  Union and Pacific at its core could also have that kind of complexity although I've yet to try it.

At the same time,I am drawn to make a card game that my girls would actually want to play.  I tend to make complicated designs.  I can't help it.  Complicated things usually interest me.  Simple things don't.  Anyways, one of their favorite games for a while was the $5 Walmart special Monopoly Deal Card Game.  It's not my favorite, however, it moves relatively quickly and has enough screwage in it that is essential for my 11-year-old to enjoy any game of any type.  :)

So, with those two aims in mind, I'm bringing together a fusion of what I imagine Union vs. Pacific and Monopoloy Deal would end up being, with a touch of the original Ticket To Ride and yes, a little 1830.  I have my cards prototyped and they will be cut out and ready to go with 108 regular cards plus 27 train and RR cards and a few extra rules summary cards to boot.  The sucker's gonna be somewhat big and still need some markers I imagine and at least a scoresheet.

For those of you following at home, the object of the game will be to build successful railroads.  Railroads will be purchased and need to build in cities represented on city cards sprinkled through the deck.  Stations and spurs can also be built.  Trains can be purchased (2, 3, 4, 5 trains sound familiar guys?) based on what region the leading railroad is building to.  Track cards are required to build to the next region.  Wildcard cities are also available as well.  Anyhow, these route cards will have coal/goods/wood icons and these could count for bonuses later on.  There are other cards which can be used as money to build routes, buy trains, buy new railroads, etc as well as special effects of strikes, labor negotiations, dividends, etc.  The game ends when the deck is exhausted twice.  After each round through the deck or a dividend card is played, VP are tallied by using the trains to serve up from the home city the number of points they can achieve for every railroad you own minus the value of the cards in your hand.

So there's a lot here. The idea of buying trains, watching how many cards are in your hand, when to play cities, when to play onto other people's railroads, etc. are all part and parcel.  One of the more interesting cards is the Short Sell card which allows a player to gain half the profits from a railroad until the dividend round comes up.  Additional cards for resource revenue are in the mix.

Pictures to follow once it is assembled and a trial run is performed. 

It has potential to at least be interesting and hopefully be a relatively fast game to play. I am picturing it as a 1 and 2 player game but perhaps more could get in on things since there are 7 railroads.

Is it a true train game?  No.  Everything I make is a hybrid.  But the mechanics on this one could fit this card game in 30 minutes or less.  An hour at most.  We'll see.

Happy good afternoon...

The latest map for Open Rails features a swath of land from Lake Erie to the highlands of West Virginia.  I ended up playing with regular rules with two players.  The map played a little flat on the base rules, but I wanted to get a feel for how it would go to just play it that way.  The map seems very balanced between the off board areas in the south and the urban centers of Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo.  The off board areas are guarded by mountain ranges.  The railroads seemed pretty balanced all in all with very little contention unless there is building towards other areas or collusion between pairs of railroads.

So, it played okay.  Nothing terribly exciting.  Game played pretty static with two.

The rule change I'm thinking of adding is adding the notion of shares of industry.  The idea is to take a certain aspect of the map which is a different slice of the game action that promotes another game goal without explicitly throwing victory points.  On this map, coal was a major driving force, came from the mountains and was brought east or to the port cities on Lake Erie.  I'm tinkering with the idea of a "sixth" company that deals with the notion of the coal industry.  Basically, there are no trains or moving parts to this company... however... revenue from the company is based on the amount of mountain track from all railroads on the map.  As opposed to the regular railroad company shares, each share receives a portion of the final income similar to how Chicago Express handles it shares.  So, for example, if there are 10 cubes in the mountains and three shares have been purchased, each share would be worth $4, rounding up.  The value of each share in a future round would be worth $4.  Money earned from this industry can then be put into any participating company in that company or it goes right into the shareholder pocket.  These shares would sell for $1 if someone needed the money.

Another idea I had was to include a second industry (mail, maybe) which would encourage connected railroads from each map edge by any railroad.  I also like the idea of having only 3 shares available of each industry to force a little more contentious bidding.  Another idea I was tinkering with was the idea of "construction" companies which would make plowing through certain areas or terrain a little less expensive.  Money is tight in the game as it is and this would accelerate the train rush a little more too.

Need time to tinker.  Unfortunately, with the way my next two weeks is looking, I doubt I will have the chance to play around with things much as there is some major programming to do for the primary job, hence the April time frame.  Maybe I'll luck out and catch a break...

Just a very quick update that rules clarifications continue for Open Rails Origins.  I'm hoping to have something more cohesive this weekend.  I'm working on non-board game stuff (read: real job stuff) and my time to the hobby has dropped off considerably this month.  Nonetheless, I'll try to pull through at least the rules changes.

I've also had the chance to start a PBEM game of Steam Barons.  We'll see how that goes as well.

Thanks for following!  I've had a few other ideas for games, but I have not had a chance to flush anything out..... not enough hours in the day.

I spent time handcrafting a VASSAL module for Steam Barons this week and it looks like there is enough interest in getting a game going!  I'm excited as this game is really interesting to me and I'm looking forward to seeing some other train gamers go at it from around the globe!

Slightly updated rules for Open Rails Origins have been posted.  I will be working on a new map for the game as well as a VASSAL module for people to play other remotely.

Other than that, gaming wise, not much going on.  18Card will see more development in the next few weeks to see if there's anything salvageable.  I ended up round cutting the corners on all the cards to get me more in the mood of trying it.  I'm thinking of coming back to the election game I had been working on as well just because it was so demoralizing.  I'm hoping to meet up with North Coast Gamers in the future more as well - just hasn't been time.

Otherwise, just sledding and working my tail off, trying to stay out of trouble.

Mom was very kind in her giving this year and I got some games designed by people other than me!  Yay!

They were Steam Barons (which I tried out solo here a little bit ago and it looks great!), Revolution! and Power Grid.  I'm going to try Revolution! with the girls next and we'll see how that goes.  Power Grid is probably too meaty for home, but hopefully I can find some other gamers to give it a try sometime.

Merry Christmas!