Predicting opponent moves

A simple game, that does not require dice-roll and could be used as a sub-element of any game (and is used in fact in games today - when players compete for a value spending some wealth in secret - "Game Of Thrones")

2-5 (or more) players
Each starts with a predefined number of 'points'.
We go into rounds. Each round player is required to say, how many points will he spend. Person that will choose the highest number of points - wins. If two players are equal - they share the win equally. After determining the winner - points are taken from players and we go with the next round. All finishes, when no-one on board has spare points.

To give an example - three player game, let's name them A, B, C and D. Each has 10 points.

Round 1
A - 1, B - 5, C - 4, D - 10 - winner D (1pt).
R2
A - 1, B - 1, C - 2, D - 0 - winner C(1pt).
R3
A -1, B - 3, C - 4, D - 0 - winner C(1pt).
R4
A - 1, B - 1, C - 0, D - 0 - winner A+B(0.5pt)

And A for 6 games more.

After all
A - 6.5 pt
B - .5 pt
C - 2 pt
D - 1 pt

Just simple as it is. The advantage here also is - it is really, really quick. A bit different topic, but still - a valid one on the blog subject :) How to invent a board game.

New game board... it took me ages. Well, fortunately it is finished. Still - some more need to be completed which makes - completing the game bit difficult. We'll see.

Tokens, tokens, tokens.

Little time left till I will leave to Croatia, where I will hopefully test my new StarTrader design. It will be extremely though test, since we will have really strong competitors - Agricola, Power Grid, Warcraft and Bang (I suppose). To the topic. I've tested few things as well as finished some. First of all - the biggest success is the dice system for trading. Dices do show the planets and the numbers. I also decided not to prepare separate dice for buy/sell - this will be indicated by placing planet dice into a certain location. Believe me or not - it looks pretty good. I'm proud of it - especially when you will consider on - how much time did this consume to me. Another test was performed on using coins as markers - yet another success! And if that is not enough - I have now all the material to crate the boards and related equipment. Aha! I did also purchase two items: a) space ships (48 small ships of 12 differend kinds - exactly what I need) b) poker tokens to be used as money. The only thing that was not perfect - was my printer. It did not print the cards from PDF because of a driver problem. It is not a big obstacle, since I will now print it as image. Having all that in mind, to be ready - I still need to: a) print all the cards b) prepare all the tokens c) finish the dices for trade d) design and print game boards, both for trade and representing space ships e) design and print space board - yes, surprising, but is not ready yet with the current approach and current space ships f) design and print space ship markers to be used in conjunction with the plastic figures. A huge lot of work you say? Well... but it is such a fun!! And what is more - I can't await to see it running than tuned... and than - next games are already in the queue :) Fingers crossed.

Trade in box

Initialy my idea was to set up separate 'tokens' for each action possible. That in fact would create dozens of wooden rounds. Aditionally - it would be a bit complicated to set this up. Now - as a remedy for that - another idea jumped into my mind. Why not using dices? Those do fit perfectly - one action is to buy or sell - first dice, second stands for planet considered in trade, third one is to show the trade good, while fourth and fifth are representing proposed price. All together in a wooden box.The form of the wooden box could be as shown on the picture... but not necessary. I think that it might be good to set up a big trade boxes per player, that would allow multiple trades. Ideal size of a dice will be 8/10 mm.Having this size will allow relatively simple, clear and - easy to hide from opponents setup. If I'm lucky - I might have this done during the weekend. Fingers crossed.

Some light into the design!

Most recently I do have quite a significant improvements. I did finish off all the cards - those are now ready to print!!! (sample is shown on the left). Following my quite innovative thinking at work - I did follow it up to here. And the simple thing is - since I have quite issues with getting all the wooden parts - let's skip them for the moment and see - how it will work without. For this purpose - as tokens I will use old and new coins. Than I will stick some markers to it, as it was originally predicted. Aditionally - I've purchased metal space ships! It was 2.5GBP per 12 small ships - and that I consider a great price. I hope they'll arrive soon since I plan to redecorate 'ship' board to accomodate those little ships.
What I will now concentrate on is to:

• Finish off design for space ship card template
• Finish off design for planet (note - it is different to ones already posted here)
• Finish off all the 'cut lines' for plotter.

I would really hope, that I will be capable of doing some test print (of cards for example) yet this weekend. That will be the first and ultimately - very important step forward. I will probably print out the stickers to the coins as well. Summarizing - I'm almost done in here!! :)

Almost forgot - the PDF counter is also quite nice. For Today - I did only 'pure' paper version. That already helped me in reconsidering the design, that will most probably be now changed slightly, but only slightly. Still - the idea works pretty well - at least for me. What is bothering - is that whole idea would best fit on some 'thick' wood or plastic of a kind so that holding it is quite simple. Well - this is for future.