Friday, March 06, 2009

Terra Prime (cont.)

Tonight I played Terra Prime with the new game end condition I discussed yesterday. In short, I liked it. Here's the longer story:

A couple of days ago I posted a few things that were bothering me about the game. I've addressed each and I'm feeling much better about them.

With the updated shield rules I don't mind the automatic damage from aliens. I was hoping that would be the case. The big issue though was the game end trigger. I did like the communal game length track. It did the job of coordinating all players efforts toward ending the game, which was the idea. Now each time any player takes a scoring action, they hasten the game end.

I decided instead of a simple track I would use rewards on tiles, like I talked about. In tonight's game I used the following rewards:

Green tiles: $10/Weapon/Cargo Hold/Shield (with 1 Energy)/Brownium
Yellow tiles: Variable VP (1-3)
Red tiles: nothing, but 3 of the 5 said "end" and 2 "end" tiles end the game.

Reflecting on the game and discussing it with my friend I think I would like to change some of that. Here's what I'll try next:
Green: $10+Brownium/$10+Brownium/Weapon/Cargo Hold/Shield (fully charged)
Yellow1: Bluium/Bluium/Greenium/Greenium/Cargo Hold
Yellow2: Thruster/Yellium/2 Greenium/2 Bluium/2 Brownium
Red: Yellium+Greenium/Yellium+Bluium/Greenium+Bluium/2 Yellium/3vp

With 3 of those Red tiles indicating "End" as I mentioned before, and 2 (maybe 3) "End" tiles means game over. This mix takes VPs off of the tiles and instead gives players "stuff" which is useful. I tried to arrange it so that the "stuff" is appropriately useful for the stage of the game in which you get it. I will be testing this some more, but so far I like it. I do worry a little that getting free stuff subverts the need to make money and bu stuff. I guess we'll see. If that turns out to be the case then I can just remove the rewards and just use a generic communal timing track for the game end.

Edit: I think I will go for all 3 of the "End" tiles coming up indicating game end. Also, while making the tiles I switched up some of them, I've updated the list above to match the prototype.

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