First Playtest Results

So, as you may have seen from the pictures Nick posted a few days ago, we successfully completed out first playtest! We now have our main mechanics down, but there is still work to be done. At the end of the first playtest, we weren't happy with the game's pace (we felt it was too slow), the fact that landing an attack was too hard, and the fact that the game just wound up being "Let's meet up in the middle of the field and smash the crap out of each other!" There were also some issues regarding the balance of some of the characters in each faction that needed to be ironed out.

After the meeting officially adjourned and Cory, Riley, and Dan left, Nick and I stuck around to implement some of the changes and ideas that the group came up with to see how they turned out.
The bruisers, casters, and tanks are no longer unique and they no longer have unique abilities. Instead, they all have 2 abilities at their disposal (for this playtest, we went with the abilities each unique character had and put them on the same character). We also placed unpassable terrain in the middle of the board to force players into two different lanes instead of bumrushing eachother in the middle of the board. We also increased the attack of every character, because it turned out that it was too difficult to land an attack, and that made the game too slow. The objective of the game was also changed from "defeat your general" to "wipe out your whole army."

Those changes stayed more or less consistent through both of the runs Nick and I did. We tried two things regarding movement of units, though. The first thing we tried was to allow every character to move and attack (if able) every turn. This wound up being WAY too fast for our game, and the result would basically turn out to be whoever could land the first hit.

The second thing we tried was restricting movement to only three units every turn. (Given that you start with 7 pieces on the board, we felt this made sense.) We found that this was a nice middle ground between the lightning pace of every unit moving and the piece-by-piece movement we originally went with.

I, personally, am extremely happy with how the game went after we rolled out those changes. I felt it was very engaging throughout the entire match, and throughout the entire match, there was no clear winner or person with an advantage. Even at a point where I lost my general and thought I was done for, I still was able to fight the good fight, and even somehow managed to win using a tank against Nick's general.

I had an absolute blast playing our game with the revisions implemented. Apparently it took an hour and a half from beginning to end, but it sure didn't feel like it. As glorious as it was when my Sleeping Giant finally brought down Ezreall, the Traitor, we still have some concerns to work through:

• Is the board too big? There was some space that went unused in all the playtests.
• Perhaps the general should have an ability that buffs him, in addition to one that buffs his minions?
• Do we want more impassable terrain than just the middle?
• Balancing all of the factions so that way one isn't more powerful than any of the others is a constant concern.

Overall, I think we're in a good place, but there is still lots of work to be done. We're all meeting up tomorrow for this game, so here's hoping for progress tomorrow!