Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• This game was a challenge to get to the table but we did it! The game played well overall and did not have too many hiccups as far as play went. We had a mix of gamers and people who are either more casual with their boardgames or don't play much at all and everyone was able to pick it up. The game was highly social as expected, and people definitely needed to work on the "together" theme to try and succeed, not just with the end game condition but also with achieving their own goals. I think people worked together a little too much, honestly, though that is a comment more on the playstyle of the group we had than on the game itself. I know the game is meant to be a bit freeform, and the rulebook is already pretty beefy at 21 pages, but I think it would have benefited from a little more direction on how certain things like combat, invasions, and trade routes actually worked out mechanically rather than entirely relying on players to come up with a narrative that supports or hinders their arguments for certain actions. It really was pretty much anything goes as long as you could convince the judge you were right. Having just 1 action per coalition felt too limiting. I feel like adding in a second or even tertiary action per coalition would help things and let people, particularly multi-player coalitions, feel like they were achieving more. Actions do not need to be equal, you could easily have actions divided into categories and having secondary or tertiary actions be less powerful or less impactful things, or possibly even just break actions into categories, say 1 military, 1 political, and 1 domestic action per turn per coalition or something like that. Testing would be necessary, as I do see how adding more potential actions could drag out the game time which is already rather lengthy. This game would benefit from the elimination of random factors to determine events. If you could take the dice out of it somehow I think it would help. The dice make the most sense for deciding if the entire sector is going to be invaded or not at the end of the game based on stability, but I think games like this are really at their best if they have, ideally, no random elements. I really liked the backgrounds on the factions and having them feel different on a cultural level just based on what their physical or social form was. I do have concerns about replayability, however, so maybe look at a way to somehow generalize and then randomize some goals for factions may help there. Maybe an overall goal to work for would be good that everyone could just generally want to achieve for their own civilization. I get that the main goal of the game is to not be invaded, but really at least as we played thats kind of a secret goal no one is aware of and is just supposed to happen to them at the end of the game, so from a roleplaying perspective it felt like it shouldn't actually be focused on as an objective. This game reminded me a lot of the original Diplomacy, and also of the more recent game Westphalia by Hollandspiele ( https://hollandspiele.com/products/westphalia-1?_pos=1&_sid=a0a874571&_ss=r ) This game also really reminded me of a megagame, or perhaps a megagame in development that would become something bigger potentially. If you are not familiar with megagames you may want to look into them. There is a well respected one, Den of Wolves, that is going to be played in West Philly this upcoming May 18. ( https://www.philadelphiamegagames.com/event-schedule/den-of-wolves-megagame )
• I like the concept of this very much, and it is amazing how much was able to be done in just a short game jam period. I love the concept of collation building over competition and that everyone can lose. That said I just find the game play a little overly complicated and hard to jump into. For example, I feel like there is a lot I as a novice player just wouldn't know where to begin with in doing a speech to sway people to my side. It's a cool idea, it just feels like there is a lot of onboarding that would need to happen here. Once people are in the "world" though, I think it could be a rich experience.
• At first glance this game seemed overly ambitious and complicated. But upon playing, it got much more accessible. The game was highly social and encouraged players to work together. A little more restriction on potential actions I think could help guide players along to perform the right actions. The point/counter point aspect of actions was very interesting and an easy way for players to visualize what is typically a behind the screen GM though process. There was some confusion about what actions would send certain fleets, open trade routes, just happen with no tokens, etc. So maybe restricting actions to a smaller set. But overall, the players had a great time playing once they learned how it all worked (which was faster than expected).