Playing Again!

Tuesday night I went to my friends house to play Taipan.  I brought over the newly printed Game Crafter version of Taipan and set it up.  We BSed and ate dinner for about an hour and go started around 8PM.

I blame the bad picture on the 21 year old Scotch. Mmmmm...Glenfiddich!

I had two new people who had never played (TJ and Sean), so it was good to get some fresh eyes on the game.  Right out the gate I got very lucky where I fought off 3 pirates and got two gold cargo.  This would have resulted in me earning 22 coin on the second turn of the game.  In my continued attempt to minimize the huge random swings of the game I adjusted the rules only allowing players to choose 1 cargo from any Pirate victory.

The Start of the game using the new Game Crafter set.

Over the course of the game we found several other issues that need to be addressed.  TJ got himself into a bad position where he had no money and lost most of his cargo when he got into a fight with Pirates.  We came up with a new rule that allows a player to stay in port on his turn to earn 2 coins.  I might change this to if he takes no Port Actions, he gains two coin.  This will prevent players from loosing a turn and falling behind the other players who are earning much larger amount of money.

In addition, TJ also took Rasheed which did not help his situation any.  After talking about it we have determined that his ability (Repair any two damage for free) is purely a defensive ability and playser can rarely win a game by playing all defensive.  I will be revisiting that character to change his ability in some way.

Clearly Sean and Bryan have had way too much to drink.

I had a good lead for a long while, but in the end, it was Bryan who won.   While I spent the game slowly paying off my debt, he built up his ship so that he had Max Sails and Hull.  In combination with Markus Seawell (Move into and out of Port once per turn for free), this allowed his to make big buys and massive sells and pay off his debt in the last four turns of the game.  This is a good strategy and the one I think all expert players will take, but it makes it very binary and appears to be the only correct choice.  We talked about reducing the number of Ship Upgrades from 3 to 2, but my fear with this is that it will slow the game down.  The game took 2 hours, and that is the perfect amount of time in my mind.


I think I am going to change Marcus Seawell so that he will be able to take advantage of specially marked short cuts on the Sea Map and Rasheed will become the Harbor Master allowing him to move out of Port for free, but not into port.  There where a few other issues, but nothing to major.  Some art issues on the cards, and some missing details and typos in the rules.


Cant wait to have time to make the changes and do it all again.  Maybe this weekend I will get to dive back in.   Until next time, happy gaming.

And the Results are in! Play test #2

The second play test of my game went great.  We met at a local cigar shop, smoked stogies and drank 15 year old scotch...I can think of no better way to play.  We played the full 12 rounds in just under 1 1/2 hours and had some great discussion about it after.  I will talk about the play test more but first things first, what did I change in this game from the last?

1.) Cargo remains in the city after selling and at the end of each turn 1 cargo is removed.  The Cargo on a card reduces the sell price making it much harder to have profitable runs that can be run over and over.

2.) I removed the different types of ships.  Ships start with a 2 in every stat (Sails, Cargo, and Cannons) and players can upgrade their ship as they play.

3.) At the end over every Turn, a Pirate Token was placed randomly.  I removed this.  I also changed Movement to stop if you come in contact with a pirate.

The Start of the game, I made a quick run to the North where wood was selling cheep.

Having the Ships only move at a speed of two felt frustratingly slow, especially after the first game where we started with ships that moved at a speed of 5.  But very quickly we upgraded our sails and had a good appreciation for how good the Sail Upgrade was.  So good in fact that by the end of the game, most players had several.  

Based on this, Bryan recommended that I should make each player have a turn that consists of 1 action that starts with an Event Card and can be followed any one of the following:  Move or Port Action.  Bryan felt that every player having an Event, a Move, and a Port Action makes the game take longer. On top of that, it favors players with a faster ship by allowing him to both move and take port actions.  I agree with his logic and will be trying this in my next version of the game.  In doing this, it should speed up that game allowing me to try having the game last the original intended duration of 24 turns.

About halfway thought the game, I am in last place.

Halfway thought the game, some Pirate Tokens have made their way onto the board.  This became a problem because I changed the rule about contact with a pirate token. This was now a very big deal so everyone avoided the space because it effectively caused them to loose a turn, even if there was randomly no pirate encounter.  

I want the pirates to be a threat, but I would also like it if a player could choose Pirate Hunter as a strategy.  Right now, that is just not possible, pirates don't really show up until the end, and when they do, you are crippled by having your movement turn ended.

I have won, but just barely.  Alex would have won if I hadn't got a lucky Event Card.

The random nature of the Event Deck creates a lot of chaos and uncertainty about how the board is going to be laid out.  With more players having each player draw an event card created so much change that cities and information was completely different from one round to the next.  Also, some cards are so drastic that they can effectively knock a player out of the game at the last minute creating what we the in the video game industry call "Mario Kart Effect".  The game is so random that you might as well flip a coin to determine who is going to win, and then go play something else.

A big thank you (from left to right): Ryan, Alex, and the famous Bryan Pope of Mage Wars

Unfortunately, the pictures are a bit dark.  The cigar shop was not the brightest place for taking pictures on an iPhone without a flash.  All in all, it was a great night and everyone had a really good time.  I got a lot of positive feedback and some great suggestions on ways to fix some of the problems we had this time around.  I fully expect to have another version ready to play by the weekend.  I am hoping that a few of my friends will have some free time to come hang out and play.


Until then, happy designing!

The NaGa DeMon is complete!

On Saturday, some friends from work came by to help me play test Taipan.  I am very grateful to both Kannon and Avalos for playing my prototype with me and giving me some much needed feedback. With this post my challenge is done and I have come out victorious.  My game has a lot of problems but it was playable and there was some fun to be had.

First of all, it went great.  We played about 6 turns before devolving into discussions about whats going wrong.  At that moment in time, Kannon had found a perfect path to victory that we could never catch up.  We started talking about that, and before I knew it we were moving some of the cards that were "in play" into our discussion.  Pulling city cards to explain some idea.  Moving Cargo Counters to show how cities should hold cargo that is delivered to represent the demand being fulfilled. And after long, it was clear we would never get the game back to the way it was.

Nearing the end of the game we start moving pieces to help explain ideas.

Issue #1: 
One of the issues was the Ship Cards I added to the game.  Kannon, being very good at math picked up on the cargo of the Merchant Ship being able to hold 5 cargo.  This made it so he could quickly make a lot of money on fairly short trips.  He didn't have to pay much to get the ship, and he never had to worry about loosing it.  I also had an Upgrade mechanic that let players modify their ships.  This just muddied the decisions of whats the best thing to do.

Issue #2: Pirates, Combat, and Salvage

Players really didn't have to fear the pirates attacking them since they could just run away.  Even if they did take damage, it was so minimal they always had enough money to repair it.  Killing pirate ships just wasnt worth it. It took too long to get to a pirate in the hopes there would be a pirate there, in the hopes that when you killed one, it dropped any cargo of any real value.   It just didn't have a big enough payout to be worth doing as a strategy.  In the end, the players didn't feel like the "Pirate Hunting" strategy really belonged in the game about "Merchant Trading".

Issue #3: The Perfect Path

Kannon started making trips with his Merchant Ship and once he made this trip once, it was clear to the rest of us that we were behind.  If we were ever going to catch up, we would have to do the same thing, but by the time we got across the board to do it, he would have done it at least once or twice more and then he would be so far ahead of us in points, it would be a loosing battle.

Kannon contemplates how he is going to crush us.

In the end, I took two pages of notes and will be making changes and updates soon.  I also talked with my friend Bryan Pope of Arcane Wonders.  He is talking about getting together on Thursday to play Taipan at a local cigar bar he hands out at.  That should be fun.  Scotch, Cigars, and the latest version of Taipan.

I will continue to work on Taipan and upload my thoughts and notes on the game design process.  I expect that in another month I will have what appears to be a fairly solid game and I can move on to a new project.  Until then, please stop by and share your thoughts, ideas to make us all better game makers.