Week 9 Remixing & Modifying: Tic-Tac-Foot & Tyrannical Oil Monger

This week we had to modify the game of Tic-Tac-Toe so that there is an element of luck.

I made a couple simple change that I have found through playtesting make the game more interesting and still add that element of luck required for the assignment.

Name of the Game: Tic-Tac-Foot

Number of Players: 2

Time to Play: 15 - 30 minutes

Setup:

1. 5x5 Grid (as opposed to the 3x3 grid)
2. One player is Xs the other is Os.
3. Get a coin. Tails represents X. Heads represents O

Rules:

• Who ever gets 5 in a row of their shape wins.

One Round:

• Flip a coin to determine which shape you will draw on your turn. If its heads you have to place an O on the grid. If its tails you have to place on X on the grid, regardless of what shape is yours.
• This means a player can be the shape X but if they flip a coin on heads they have to place an O on the board.

Playtesting:

I found that during playtesting the game actually took longer to play than regular Tic-Tac-Toe, not only because of the size of the board, but because when a player had to place the opposing player's shape on the board they took more time to think about where they were placing it. Because of the element of luck it also means that players can't do the same thing every time they play (like in regular Tic-Tac-Toe). The size of the board was important because at 3x3 the game ended too quickly with my rule change, but the 5x5 dimensions suited it perfectly.

We also had to modify a game we previously made in class to shit the focus of the original game entirely to either skill or chance depending on the original focus of the game. I decided to change the focus of the territorial acquisition game Moazzam Pathan and I made, Supreme Oil Monger, such that it is based entirely on luck.

Name of the Game: Tyrannical Oil Monger

Number of Players: 2-4

Game Bits: 4 sets of pipes (150 tiles each); 1 for each player. 12 wells

Time to play: 30 - 60 minutes

Object of the Game: Connect the refinery to the most oil wells with your pipes to win.

One change that I've made to the board is that the spaces alternate between grey and white like a checker board.

Setup:

1. Players pick their colour and take their set of pipes.
2. Split the wells evenly between each other
3. Place wells on the board. Wells must be at least one space apart, and there can only be one well per quadrant.
4. Each player must shuffle their set of pipes. 

How to Play:

  2 Players:

1. If it is your first turn draw 5 pipes. Otherwise draw until you have 5 pipes.
2. Flip a coin. Heads is grey, tails is white. You may place your next piece on the space of the corresponding colour.
3. Place those pipes on the board. Your first pipe must be placed such that it is connected and adjacent or touching corners to one of the spaces around the refinery located in the centre of the board. After connecting your first pipe to the refinery, you may connect an additional pipe directly to the refinery, or choose to do so later on. 3 of 5 pipes must be placed on the board

 3/4 Players:

1. If it is your first turn draw 4 pipes. Otherwise draw until you have 4 pipes.
2. Flip a coin. Heads is grey, tails is white. You may place your next piece on the space of the corresponding colour.
3. Place those pipes on the board. Your first pipe must be placed such that it is connected and adjacent or touching corners to one of the spaces around the refinery located in the centre of the board. After connecting your first pipe to the refinery, you may connect an additional pipe directly to the refinery, or choose to do so later on. 2 of 4 pipes must be placed on the board.

NOTE:  Your pipes must be placed such that it is touching another pipe. Pipes can be oriented in any direction. More than one person can connect to a well.

Pipes are still drawn from a deck to maintain the element of chance, however players no longer choose exactly where to place their pipes; a coin is flipped to determine what color space the player's next pipe can be placed on. The only choice I have left for players is the option to choose which pipe to place. If I took out this choice, there would no longer be any meaningful decisions in this game.

Playtesting:

During playtesting I found that the game was now indeed more based on luck now. It was much more difficult to place pieces in such a way that everything connects. At first the rule was that all pipes must be placed on the board. I playtested this way once and found that it was too difficult to the point of frustration. I decided to adjust that rule to give the player a little more freedom, and made it so that they only have to place a fraction of the pipes they have. This way, the game was still based on luck, but the player also still felt they at least had some control and made them feel less frustrated.

Week 3: Territorial Acquisition Board Game - Supreme Oil Monger

Name of the Game: Supreme Oil-Monger

Number of Players: 2-4

Game Bits: 4 sets of pipes (150 tiles each); 1 for each player. 12 wells

Time to play: 30 - 60 minutes

Setup:

1.  Players pick their colour and take their set of pipes.
2. Split the wells evenly between each other
3. Place wells on the board. Wells must be at least one space apart, and there can only be one well per quadrant.
4. Each player must shuffle their set of pipes. 

How to Play:

  2 Players:

1. Draw three pipes.
2. Place those pipes on the board. Your first pipe must be placed such that it is connected and adjacent to one of the spaces around the refinery located in the centre of the board. After connecting your first pipe to the refinery, you may connect one more pipe directly to the refinery, or choose to do so later on.

 3/4 Players:

1. Draw two pipes.
2. Place those pipes on the board. Your first pipe must be placed such that it is connected and adjacent to one of the spaces around the refinery located in the centre of the board. After connecting your first pipe to the refinery, you may connect one more pipe directly to the refinery, or choose to do so later on. 

NOTE:  Your pipes must be placed adjacent to another pipe. Pipes can be oriented in any direction. More than one person can connect to a well.

Object of the Game: Connect the refinery to the most oil wells with your pipes to win.

We found that our game was similar to Ticket To Ride in that players must connect their pipes from a refinery to wells. We found it similar to Blokus in that we use pipes in a similar fashion such that when players lay down their pipes they can block other players from accessing parts of the board and they can then spread around.

Week 1: Board Game Review - Ticket To Ride

Name of the game: Ticket To Ride

Number of players: 4 Players (would have been five but a piece was missing :o)

Time it took to play: We played for around 20 minutes but we didn't get close to finishing.

Object of the game:
The object of the game is to score the highest number of total points. Points can be
scored by:

• Claiming a route between two adjacent cities on the map; 
• Successfully completing a continuous path of routes between two cities listed on your Destination Ticket(s); Completing the longest continuous path of routes.
• Points are lost if you do not successfully complete the route given on the Destination Ticket(s) you kept.

Rules:
Each player gets 4 train cards and 3 Destination Tickets. The rest are put aside in a stack. At the beginning the players can look at their Tickets and decide which ones to keep (they must keep at least one).
Each turn the player can either:

• Draw train cards: The player can draw two train cards; 2 face-down, 2 face-up, or a mix (if they pick a face-up wild-card they can only get one card or if they pick a face-up card and it's replaced with a wild card they can't pick it up.
• Draw Destination Tickets
• Claim a Route

Major Observations:

Things I Liked: I liked the fact that the game was a territorial acquisition game as that is my favorite type of board game. I liked that there is an as equally strong emphasis on strategy as there is on the luck involved with the cards you pick up. The game requires you to plan ahead as opposed to other territorial acquisition games such as monopoly which I've found is generally based around luck and how much money you have.

The fact that the player with the longest route gets extra points is a nice addition to the game as it allows players to adapt different playing styles; you can play dangerously and take the longest routes possible to get points but run the risk of being blocked by another player or you can play cautiously and claim routes taking the shortest route possible but run the risk of not getting the longest route. This creates an interesting dynamic as the game goes on because you'll find players have to change their strategies if they get blocked or if they don't have enough train cards to claim the longest route. Players may also aggressively block one another as opposed to trying to create their own routes. There's many different ways to play and the game allows you to adapt accordingly.

I also appreciated the addition of the rules limiting players from picking up wild-cards, because otherwise this would create an extremely unfair advantage for a player whose turn happens to bring out multiple wild-cards.

Things I Didn't Like: I didn't like the fact that it takes very long to get into the game itself; it takes time to get your routes set up and it seems like you could wait very long to gather the perfect hand such that you can claim large routes. The rules were also very simple, but I feel that the rule book makes it seem more complicated than it really is. I also found the mechanic of claiming a route slightly confusing, but after watching a short round on YouTube I understood that mechanic better.

Something I Would Design Differently:
I would allow the player to pick up three cards on every turn as opposed to just two. The reason for this is because it takes quite a bit of time to get enough matching cards to lay down a route, and that means a good player can be stuck for quite some time due to bad luck. I feel that this would speed up the game slightly more so that players can begin claiming tracks earlier, and it would give players a higher probability of collecting the right cards. This might make players more aggressive in their style of play, but that would also make it more fast-paced and still maintain the strategic thinking required by the game.