Today, I ran several playtests with modified rules to simplify the game and add strategy for picking territories to expand to.

 

Here are the major changes.

• All your territories must be able to trace a supply line to an empty territory or your capital. You lose control of any territories that cannot trace a supply line.
• Claiming territory does not cost troops, and you can claim any empty territories on the board.
• In order to take an action on the board, players must play an action card.
• Combat is resolved by playing a combat card from your hand and picking the highest value.
• Each territory can only have one troop.Overall, things went well, and players enjoyed the new mechanics. For the next playtest, I plan on fixing balance issues.

Here are some of the comments

Gameplay

• “Great game feel”.
• “Combat feels off”.
• “It felt like playing Go with a combat subgame”(The area control mechanic is very similar to the one used in the board game Go).
• Combat felt like a stalemate.
• Combat had too many draws
• “Ties are weird”(The combat mechanics had a lot of ties)
• Add a better end condition.
• Improve theme.
• The game ended too quickly(Players did not have enough time to build up their deck).
• As the game ended one player said: “I feel we are getting to the interesting part”

Ease of learning

• “Make territories more clear”.
• “Change colors”

Suggestions

• Add an action to upgrade cards in deck.
• Add bonuses for controlling territories.
• Increase incentive to attack.
• Give bonuses to territories.

 

Changes for next version

• Figure out the optimal starting deck.
• Change map so that is it bigger,and the territories are more clear.
• Improve theme.
• Have a better end condition.
• Figure out a way to deal with a useless hand. In one game, I ended up having a hand without any actions for several turns, and I had to come up with an immediate fix for that.