Game Variant: Rook & Hearts

Game Name: Rook of Hearts
Designer: Brendan Coallier

In my game there are two teams of two. The goal of the game is to not get any points. The team that gets to 300 points first loses. To start every hand the dealer deals out the entire deck and makes sure to have five cards in the kiddy. Next everyone looks at their hand and chooses three cards and gives them to the person to the left of them. This is a time when people can give their good (high) cards to their opponents. Next the person to the left of the dealer chooses trump. In this game they will most likely want to choose the color that they have the least of and make it trump this way they will not win many hands. In my game if a color is led then the people following the lead have to lay that color if they have it. Also the suit of trump trumps over every other color. The cards go in this order from high to low: 1,14,13,12,11,10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,Rook.

In my game the scoring is the same as in Rook. 1's are worth 15 points, 14's and 10's are worth 10 points, 5's are worth 5 points, and the Rook card is worth 20 points. In playtesting my game I decided to take out the bidding aspect of the game. I found that it was too hard to bid and to not get set. However I did decide to keep the kiddy in the game for two reasons. One because then every person gets the same number of cards and also it gives a little bit of chance into the game. No one knows what is in the kiddy until the last hand is played. Which ever team wins the last hand they also win the kiddy. This can be bad because there might be points in the kiddy.

There is a comeback mechanism in my game. If a team wins all the points then they stay at whatever they were at and the competitors go up 180. Overall I believe that this game is a lot of fun and it worked out really well. I like how it takes hearts and adds teams to it this can be hard but makes it more fun because you do not know what your partner has in his or her hand. The game also takes the kiddy and keeps it apart of the game.

Ticket to Ride: Trading Edition

Variation of Ticket to Ride Original (US version)
Designer: Sam Ipema

This variation of Ticket to Ride is different in several ways. First, as shown in the title, a trading element was added to the game. This did not replace the players turn and could only be preformed on the individual's turn.

Another added element to the game is the option to remove another players train. In order to do this, a player must use his or her turn and have double the amount of cards required for a "normal" route. This action only removes and does not replace. It also can only be done if the route has not been completed by the individual who is having the train removed.

Bonus cards were also added as a catch up mechanism so that players could gain extra points by going through a city without having the points potentially count negatively against them. This action can be done while picking new destination cards. Any combination of bonus and destination cards can be used as long as the maximum picked up is 3.

The last edition is "Special Effects" cards that a player has the option of buying with a wild card. These are also different forms of catch up mechanisms incorporated. There are three options:
Double turn: player is allowed to do two actions in one turn
Die roll: the player rolls the die and the number that appears is the amount a player may select from another's hand.
Five points: these points count towards the end totally.

The board was not altered in any way so the picture is just of the cards/new rules.

New Game: Prism

New Game: Prism
Creators: David Noa, Nick Vanderkolk, Seth Vanderkooy, and Joshua Maguire

     Prism is a strategy piece laying game similar to Blockus for 2-3 players. Players draw a hand of 3 Sierpinski triangles (four triangles making one bigger triangle). Each of the four triangles has either a star, square or circle. Then players take turns placing their triangles on top of each others and across the board. Triangles must be placed with at least one shape matching one on the board, and at least one shape must touch the surface of the board (not overlap a different triangle). This forces the board to expand and eventually fill up.

(early prototypes. Triangles were small and blew away when players sneezed or bumped the board)

 (beginning of the game, players overlapping opponents)

(End game, board filled out, lots of overlap, little overlap in corners)

     Players score single points for every showing smaller triangle, an extra point for the white special shapes, and for biggest clump (largest clump of triangles touching edge to edge rounded down/2). In the above picture, Red won. Red was also the second player to place, showing that going first or third doesn't improve your chances of winning as the board fills up at different rates every game. 

     The game felt like it was missing something until we installed the toothpicks to hold the triangles in place. Before that, we kept trying to add new mechanics but always removed them as simplicity is golden. Once players didn't have to worry about keeping the board neat and accidentally bumping it, they could focus on the light amount of strategy: Covering up opponents, overlapping your own pieces in order to get a big clump, going for corners (especially with white special shapes), and going for the current leader. 

     The hardest part was trying to think of game mechanics that were fun, fair, and simple. We actually decided to switch to this game after the first week of working on Space Triangles in Space, a triangle tile laying dungeon crawler game like Dungeon! We bagged it because we lacked the time to ever finish it and because we felt we weren't getting past the brainstorm step. With such a large game, a lot of thought is needed before you can actually start getting a physical grasp on the game. 

New game: Takeover

Game title: Takeover
Game designers: David Hauck, Sam Van Kooten, Nicole Reenders

Takeover is a new game that involves game elements found in Settlers and Risk. It is for 4 players (2 against 2). Gameplay involves exploring turned over tiles, buying new land, building cities and roads, and attacking/defending your territory with armies. It is mostly a strategy game, and the only element of chance comes from the fact that you don't know what the board will look like every game, because all the tiles start face-down.

The object of the game is to win by one of two ways:
1) Collectively own 28 tiles with your partner, thus the majority of the land
2) Control and complete the tower in the middle by building each layer with resources

The game starts with all 48 resource tiles (ore, brick, wood, grain) face-down and one tower tile in the middle. Then 5 tiles in each corner are flipped over. Players take turns picking which corner will be theirs to start with, and they place a city on the centre square. The resources adjacent to that city will be their available resources.

As players gain gold and resources, they can progress to explore new tiles and claim them. Every turn, a player can "explore" - flip over a tile adjacent to their claimed land, and then choose whether to buy it or not. If they choose not to buy it, it gets flipped back over, and everyone hopes to remember what it was. They can also build more cities to get more resources and generate more gold, as well as roads and armies. It might look something like this: (except I don't have any city, road, or army tokens at the moment... use your imagination!)

Players will attack other cities and defend their own with armies. Teams work together to be the first one to take over either the land or the tower.

Variant of Blokus: King Blokus

Variant of Blokus: King Blokus
Game Designers: Hannah Mason, Hannah Borst, and Nate Postmus

Description:

Players: 2-4

Objective: To gain the most victory points by placing all tiles on the board and/or earning victory points from connecting tiles or drawing a KB card.

If you place all of your colored tiles on the board you earn 89 victory points (one point per square). You can gain more victory points by collecting KB cards that have victory points on them or by connecting tiles. The game ends when there are no more tiles or actions that can be played.

The game contains one rule/objective card, four strategy cards that explain the added ways to gain victory points or KB cards, 16 KB cards, and three sets of victory point cards. If a player connects 4 of their 5 blocked tiles in a row they have the option to gain 3 victory points of choose a KB card. WHen they connect 3 of their 4 blocked tiles in a row they earn 2 victory points or may pick a KB card. Lastly, if the player connects 2 of their 3 blocked tiles they gain 1 victory point or pick a KB card. The KB cards say anything from gain extra victory points at the end of the game, pick a player to loose a turn, add an extra tile on your next turn, place a tile anywhere on the board, etc...

We play tested the game a few times and found that the KB cards and the added victory points help with a catch up method if someone gets too blocked in and doesn't have a lot of options for tile placements. We made some modifications when play testing such as removing KB cards that had a negative impact on the person who picked it. We found that people were less likely to draw a KB card if they had the chance to loose a turn or had to remove a tile.

Victory Point Cards to keep track of additional points for final scoring.


An example of one of the KB cards that could be drawn.


Example of connecting three 4 blocked tiles in a row to gain VP or KB card.

Betrayal and Acquire

The games I taught in the course were Betrayal at House on the Hill and Acquire, both games that require a bit of luck, patience and skill. Through teaching them, I realized some of the things I could improve on when introducing people to things they are unfamiliar with is be a little more clearer in how I explain thing; I usually start saying things without thinking all the way through how it might sound, and it can sometimes come off confusing. I also have a habit of speaking very quickly, which can make it difficult to keep up with all of the rules I'm trying to get across.

The first game, Betrayal, is a coop game that is based around tile exploration. As the game proceeds, more of the house is explored and after a certain point the "haunt" begins and one of the players usually turns against the others, with a horror-theme twist attached. This is one of my favorite games because there are 50 different scenarios that come with the game that can play out depending on what occurs in the game, and I've never played the same scenario twice. There's luck, strategy, and teamwork involved if you want to win, and I love how it can change halfway through to open up or close different strategies.

The other game, Acquire, is a bit more complex and is focused on creating companies and buying stocks of them to create payouts when they are merged with larger companies. This one is also tile based, but is randomly chosen and is played somewhat similarly to Scrabble by placing tiles in a row to grow companies and make them more wealthy. There are many different ways to win, and I always feel like there's a slingshot effect going on; you could be losing one round and come back to win the next!

Werewolf

Friday we played werewolf which is basically an expanded version of mafia (that's what I gathered anyway). I've never played Mafia so it was fun to learn the game I had heard so much about. The  difficult thing for me is that I don't know the people in the class that well to be able to start accusing someone or convince others that I'm a villager. There were the people that obviously felt comfortable enough to talk in front of everyone, but it often made it seem like they were a werewolf. Once we added in the extra roles it added a bit more of strategy to the game because the werewolves then had to try to kill off certain people they thought had special roles instead of just any villager. They may have to choose between a villager that could be on to who they are, or a person with a role that could eventually kill them as well. I noticed on the site that it said it could be played with up to 75 people. How in the world would you play with that many people?! I feel like nobody would be able to decide for a long long time. Maybe the rules are different to help move the game along, but I thought that was crazy. I learned that I don't like to accuse someone unless I know for sure they are a werewolf, but it's always a guess so I never really wanted to say anything. I also learned that people like to jump on accusing someone once one person points someone out. I felt like the game really showed who is okay with putting themselves out there and who would rather watch and listen.