Crafting the Perfect Strategy Board Game: A Rulebook Overview

Dude when this goes to market I’ll buy it! One thought I had was ether make it 2-4 players or if two friends have the same game they can combine it to make the game 2-4 player. Do what you think best, but I know playing with more people is always fun! Keep up the good work man!

This is a very interesting concept! I have a couple of questions/ideas. Have you thought about player mats with upgrades? A game like Windward comes to mind, or Root. A board that explains most of they rules and helps you organize materials. This would also give the option of using resources for upgrades. Like making 2 roads per stone, calvary can sack a walled city, being able to attack from a warship like a cannon and move back (so it can attack units near the water), calvary moving an extra hex, also an upgrade that makes it so the enemy needs 2 canons/ships around to sack. These sorts of upgrades could make defending easier and could help defeat the 'blitz attack' strategy that you were talking about in the video as being a possible problem. This would also allow you to get rid of the cards and instead have resource trackers on the mats, and of generating constant resources. Making the game have a little more of a resource management aspect. This could also incentivize some colonies to become really juicy targets. The colonies or settlements could even be numbers (on the board piece) and correlate to a mat that shows what the colony is producing for you. Do you have any thoughts of expanding this game for more players? I could see this as a VERY fun game with 3 players or more. Though I am sure how a map is made would need to be redone. In fact, I wonder if the random tiles is a good idea as it can lead to heavily unbalanced games over just creating a couple of maps to use over and over? People could create or print their own if you give the proper dimensions... this would allow reprints and new map packs to come out. As for 'special tiles' that would be important to get. You could always add mines, that can get you gold that can exchange as any other resource? Or a high point that is harder to take, like it gets the rules of being 'walled' naturally? I like the concept of the game. I look forward to being able to play it!

This would be an instant buy for me! Looks amazing and really intriguing. Hope this will be going into retail

Awesome, it's certainly looking good and the nice pieces certainly help its table presence. I also love some streamlined board game rules and the simplicity is great as well. And additionally as everyone else here I'll just toss in my 2 cents... Aesthetics - Sea vs land needs more contrast, as does Stone vs Iron Comeback Mechanism - Infantry killed respawn in a colony or next to a colony, When an opponent builds a colony draw a card, If there's a 3+ player mode a respawning comeback mechanism is necessary as in so many classic wargames the first person to lose is dogpiled which is no fun Incentivizing Expansion - First colony is cheaper? Start with cavalry? One resource is much rarer than the others? Nerfing Cannons & Blockades - When captured they're permanently kept by the other player, When surrounded by an Infantry & Cavalry they're Immobilized (incentivizes unit diversity), And imo but the economic deprivation tactic is maybe too brutal so for each turn blockading you must discard a card Map Variety - Perhaps a hex that just gives 1 VP? A Deep Water Port which gives double harbor bonus, Impassable Mountain which creatures chokepoints, Or perhaps make 1 of the resource hexes much rarer than the rest The Heretical Suggestion, Reintroducing Dice - Units can always take another single unit, but can roll 1d6 to take on two units but if it fails it's destroyed (obviously), taking on an Infantry + another on a 4-6, Cavalry + Cav/Cannon on a 5-6, Cannon + Cannon on a 6. Imo this would only add to the combat experience because it allows someone unpredictably to push their luck or be reliable & transparent, Maybe just put a "adding dice variant" in the back of the rulebook and giving the game a few d6 wouldn't add too much to its cost

Hmmmm for taking care of the early game rush. I have two ideas, exclusive of each other: 1. Friction rule - no combat until both players have 2nd colonies. The early game turns into developing and massing armies, eventually til conflict becomes inevitable. Alternatively you could do: No combat until either player creates a second colony. 2. State carrying capacity - players can only build 3 units maximum until they have a 2nd colony.

Going to have to watch this one on the way home from work tomorrow.

During early covid days, I made a similar concept. Catan, but with some improvements on the luck of resource accumulation, and initial placement and also adding in combat similar to risk. It used a regular d6 die to collect from a space around each settlement corresponding to a 1 for the top right hex and then going around in a clockwise rotation for all 6 hexes surrounding a settlement. This gave you more resources and that made it perfect to spend on troops. Troops rolled different dice and sometimes had different rules like horses had more movement, priests convert enemies when they roll higher instead of killing them, wizards roll a d20 but can’t be on the same space as other troops to form an army, and other fun little things. Plus each player could choose different fantasy factions (dwarves, gnomes, goblins, Sasquatches, etc.) and there were special peoples cards to give more bonuses. Definitely had some issues but was fun! Hope your game can answer some design flaws in my system and give the world its long awaited risk-catan hybrid

The best way to find solutions to some of your questions would be researching similar games. I'd argue that this game is actually most similar to not risk/catan, but... - Scythe: Gain resources by putting your units onto the appropriate hexes. Multiple ways of scoring/moving towards the win condition means that you can't go all-in on a single objective. Variable combat elements mean it's risky to do early aggression, better to build up forces and score in other ways. - Twilight Imperium 4th Edition: Scoring system are randomly revealed cards, that generally require you to spend resources (that you get by controlling hexagons). Because of limited resources, fighting is inevitable. This game has a ton of mechanisms to draw from for some of your design questions, highly recommend. - Eclipse: Has a lot of interesting technology ideas to draw from, a way to modify units and change up the balance on a game-by-game basis so that X unit build doesn't always beat Y unit.

I like this idea a lot! For what it’s worth, I think the chess like battle mechanic is brilliant. At first I was thinking it was just a Catan copy until that mechanic. The combination of the two makes me really want to play it! Good job!

This is very intriguing. My son and I play all sorts of board games, and frequently attend Protospiel. The win condition is combat centric. It would be difficult to consider alternative win conditions without that playtesting. It would be nice to see you put out a playthrough video... though... you may be holding off at this stage for proprietary reasons. Regarding the water tiles... perhaps rather than individual hex tiles... you could have all water tiles connected as a group of 3. So anytime water tiles are placed, there are always 3 water tiles connected minimum. Again... without playtesting it is hard to make suggestions... and that's okay. I feel like the outside edges of the map would see less action and therefore less importance. I'd love to be able to build lumbermills or stone quarries in resource tiles outside my colony to boost resource gathering... and perhaps tie a victory condition to some sort of expansion of your empire with a certain number of them. Just brainstorming! I subscribed so I can keep tabs on your progress!

TL:DR "What if I remade Catan but it didn't suck" Only kidding, I try to absorb as much game dev as I can on youtube. Actually finishing one of my game ideas is on my bucket list for sure~

Man I am hyped! Looking forward to regular uploads ;)

Very cool. I like how the resources are built into the tiles, a genius decision for sure. I’ll continue to watch, looks very fun.

I did a ten minute prototype once in a similar direction but I used Carcassonne mechanics, making tile placement and "exploration" a part of the experience. I bring it up because one iteration might be helpful for your setup step: each player started with a home tile and then expanded from there. We color-coded tile edges to indicate the types that could be attached, essentially blue was water, red was mountain or hills and green was anything. Our water tiles either had 3 blue sides connected to each other opposite green sides or 2 blue sides with a shared vertex, or 2 blue sides opposite the hex. We had the most of the 3 blue sides ones, because those were basically "beach fronts" This mean you could create long and meandering rivers or coastlines easily or you could create narrow passageways and straits with the parallel blues. Simple edge highlighting for color coding can help control the logic of a map while not locking it into a given orientation.

This looks great! I love the production value of all the tiles and pieces, they look fantastic. I also like the simplicity of it, it looks really intuitive to play but I can imagine you'd get a lot of interesting strategic depth out of it. Couple of minor bits of feedback 1. The Mountain tiles look quite similar to the Stone tiles - maybe add some more snow on the Mountain tiles to make it easier to differentiate? 2. For fixing the water setup so they clump together - maybe use larger groups of water hexes (e.g. groups 4 connected water hex tiles) instead of individual water tiles. I would still use randomised placement for these and a mix of random hex group shapes but this would mean there are no landlocked individual water tiles and every water tile has a few connected water tiles. 3. It might be interesting to see if this system could be expanded to more than 2 players? It would lose the chess-like nature of 2 player but I can imagine playing this on larger board with 4 players would feel really epic!

The following points aren't criticizing, but genuine questions I have about the design choices: Why not just have cannons to have "1 ranged attack" instead of moving then retreating? It seems more intuitive. Isn't the game going to be too slow and samey for the first turns? This is quite a "trait" people kinda of tolerated with Chess (but "solved" with chess 960) but it is seemed more as a problem on games like Scythe where people can just to the same thing every match. I think there should be some kind of threat early or some variation in addition to the setup or people might get bored. You also could borrow some of the infrastructure ideas from Pandemic, specially Iberia, where you can "teleport" units from port to port by discarding resources or to any other city by using pre-built railroads. It is one of the better uses I've seen of this mechanic. Another problem I can foresee is the Runaway problem, the player loosing won't have any blue shells and will probably experience a painful slow death like in games of Risk or Monopoly. The "wait a whole turn to capture" siege mechanic can lead to a bit of annoying bookkeeping. The harbors also can be a bit of a nuisance having to recalculate everything. I know those can just be minor issues, playtesting may be necessary. I also think you can explore multiple win condition possibilities so you can increase the variety of strategies, including adaptability, freedom and, ultimately, replayability to your game. Finally, MY PERSONAL PREFERENCES, from games I like: I really tend to prefer war games where combat is more of a tool than your only option to overcome challenges. I would really like to see a version where direct combat is a bit better for both sides so anyone be encouraged to do it, while also being a threat to both players. This balance can lead to some pretty neat decisions (see Eclipse). It just being winner-takes-all kinda of kills its own purpose in the game, as players will be too much calculating to just take the wars they can win. I hope this makes sense haha. But, as always, great video and great content! I really hope this succeeds! So many interesting concepts. Very entertaining and interesting to watch.

One simple rule to add to make sure all water titles are connected in some way, is add in the 'Construction Phase' "All Water tiles must connect at least one side to another water tile." This way players can assemble the board however they please, while also keeping the water connected so that navel battles across the map can be an option. I'd also recommend adding to the rulebook sheet for the game a couple colored pictures of pre-made tile formations. Similarly to Catan where players can get a feel of a balanced game by having pre-made tile maps that gives them a good idea of a balanced game. I would also love a google doc of all the rules, since I'm curious about how resource generation is done. Since that can have a very Huge factor on the gameplay and thought pattern of players, and also the feel of the game's tempo when playing. And if you want, since you already feature a dice, you can add numbers on it so that players can roll them for first turn.

I would highly recommend to bring the design to tabletop simulator, my game saw rapid improvement as to how quickly I could change things in playtests.

Idea for Resources: Leverage resources against waging war.... So that war is very costly. When troops are not fighting, they are harvesting/collecting resources. So, there is an equilibrium/balance. Whatever that number is, let's say 5 war units = 5 resources that can be collected (10 total). So, if you increase one more troop (now 6), you can only collect 4 resources, etc. Because you are drafting from the pool of workers. But that's not all. You must have 10 units total at all times for the max balance. You can have 1 war unit, and 9 worker units (not represented by figurine, but perhaps by a side token), but if you go to war and lose 2 units, the total now is 8 (from original 10). You continue the game that way. Those two lost war units can be replaced from a pool of 6 work units remaining for example (if you had 2 war and 8 worker units). It might sound complicated, but having a side token counter of war and worker units can help. A sliding ruler/line can also track the total units that are left as a full resource. If the ruler goes down to 0 available units, even if you have resources, the war is over. That means the country has to wait years to repopulate the land.

When this is ready I will definitely buy it! Looks so good. I am creating another game that is similar in mechanics, but not so similar. I love Catan and love strategic and wargame boardgames, so this is really appealing to me.