“All Hands Lost”
11×14, pen & ink on Bristol
Center-spread fold-out for “Li’l Mermaid Has Something to Say”
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Here’s a quick little game I whipped up to give to trick-or-treaters this year: Grave Robber!
Players randomly place 25 grave markers on the graveyards, then pass their board to their opponent. Then you take turns rolling a pair of dice, removing any one gravestone that matches the total rolled. But look out! If you reveal a Ghost, your opponent gets to place a new grave on your board! First player to remove five graves in a straight line wins!
Grave Robber!
Grave Robber in action!
I’ll have the pdf of this game available after Halloween so you can download and make your own set!
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During my own recent play-test to decide if I wanted to expand or restrict the availability of Repairs when landed on a Planet, I began having thoughts on some more… fundamental… aspects of the gameplay. I found myself going through the motions of the play, taking each of my four Racers’s turns, drawing cards, playing cards, discarding. Each player facing roughly the same challenges and obstacles, struggling to get through, and it all just began to feel really tedious.
To clarify, I was getting bored playing my own game.
The one part of the game I’ve always enjoyed is the endgame, when all the racers are in the final leg, passing that last Planet, and speeding on to the finish line (or at least trying to). When fixing repairs is the least of your concerns, and you just want to lay on as much speed as you can, even if it means blowing out your engine. When all the other players suddenly gang up on one or two of the leaders, in the hope that they can pull ahead on their next turn. I wished there was a way to make the rest of the game that exciting and action-packed.
In that recent playtest I’d been toying with the idea of Maneuver cards, which give a temporary, one-time boost to the player in specific circumstances. One card gives the Racer a couple extra spaces during the Drift phase, the other gives the player a +5 speed boost when Breaking Orbit. I started to wonder what the game would be like if players could play Status and Remedy cards at any time. What if there were other special Instant cards that had to be played immediately, and had more dramatic effects either just on one player or on the entire board?
Let’s say a Racer wants to play an 11 Speed card. They would lay the card down, making it clear that’s their intention. All the other players, starting with the player to their left, have the opportunity to play a Status card that would reduce the speed they played by 2, 4, or 8. The original player could then play a Remedy card to resolve that status immediately, or take the speed hit. If the next player to the left had a Status they wanted to play, they could as well, continuing around the table until someone chooses not to, or can’t play a card to affect the player.
These new status cards would be only temporary, affecting the player only for the current turn. It is immediately resolved when the turn is complete, and all the cards go into the discard pile. No players will keep Status cards on their ship unless the Card explicitly says so. Also, with so many potential Status hits in play, I’m planning on increasing the lowest-level Speed card from 2 to 5, and adding some cards with 13 Speed as well.
There could also be new cards that affect players only during specific phases – cards that temporarily increase or decrease the amount of Drift a player can take, cards that cause a Racer to lose their homeworld, or to choose a new one; Cards that allow a racer to jump into the lead, or which force a racer into last place; Cards that allow a Racer to take an extra turn (even when not in last place), or which cause another player to lose a turn; A piece of Equipment that allows a player to steal 1 card from another player on their turn, and cards that have temporary effects on players with specific pieces of equipment.
I’d also like to play with the Racer’s Drift speed, giving them a maximum Drift of 4, and allowing for certain cards that will increase or decrease their Drift throughout the game, not as a temporary effect, but long-term. A ‘Friction-Free Hull’ piece of equipment that gives them automatic Drift of 4, and an ‘Inertial Enhancement’ card that knocks them back down to 1.
I realize that even opening the game up in this way will cause the size of the deck to grow tremendously, as there will be a lot of new kinds of cards. But it also allows for more flexible gameplay, I think, and leaves a lot of possibility for future expansion. My hope (and it still requires testing) is that all of these new, different kinds of cards will ultimately make the game more engaging for all of the players, not just the one in the lead.
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts, especially if you’ve downloaded the existing components and played the game already.
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Holy cow! I keep forgetting I have a blog what needs updating from time to time.
It’s been a while since I’ve updated on StarSpeed 17, but have continued to be busy working on artwork for it. All of the planets for the Alpha set are now complete, and the racer dashboards are about 60% done (the only element needed for these are images of each rocketship, but those will take some time to finish). Haven’t really playtested the game much since PAX last month, so there’s not much to add there.
Except that, before PAX I would have said that the game is pretty much finished, ready to ship once the art is complete. Afterward, however, I realize that quite a few of the rules are just patches to fix problems with the game. I’ve been looking more at some of the underlying basics of the gameplay, and trying to define what the actual problems are. Then, once I’ve got those defined, figure out if the rules in place actually resolve the problems, or if they just overcomplicate things.
For example, the ability for players to buy repairs when in orbit at a planet. This is something that made sense at the time, but in more recent tests, I find that players rarely take advantage of this ability. Originally, the problem this was supposed to solve was that it was difficult to get the repair you needed just from the deck. But this was also back when a single Status card on your racer would completely cripple your ship. Now, however, you can have multiple Status cards, and each one only slows you down some. Even with three Status cards on your dashboard, you can still continue along the course by playing some high speed cards. Plus, the planets offer so few repairs each that it’s unlikely a racer will need the repairs being offered when they’re in a position to buy them.
So, I feel like with this rule, I have two options:
1: Add more repairs to the planets, making it more likely that the repair a player needs will be available (the extreme here would be to simply make ALL repairs available at any planet).
2: Remove the repairs offered at planets altogether, since players tend not to use them anyway.
An option I’ve considered is giving players a ‘Pit Crew’ marker, which can be moved to any Planet (except rival planets, naturally) on a turn, allowing players to buy any repair needed wherever their Pit Crew is. This would be similar in this way to the Home Planet marker, except it wouldn’t affect the escape velocity at the planet. This piece might make the remedy cards completely unnecessary, though, as players can simply limp to the next planet and buy their repairs there. Still needs to be tested.
I’m also looking to add in some special Maneuver cards, which could be played in specific circumstances. Lots of testers have suggested the ability to use the planet’s gravity to Slingshot your racer for bonus speed, so I’m thinking of adding in a card that lets you do that when Breaking Orbit. I’m looking at some other cards that would give you bonuses as well, like a ‘Ride the Comet’ card that would give you a couple extra spaces on your Drift phase. Another card that I’d like to try out would be a ‘Timeslip’ card that you play on an opponent which causes them to lose their next turn.
The last thing that I’ve been playing with has to do with choosing Home and Rival worlds. I’ve come up with what I think are some pretty good rules which prevent too many racers from picking the same worlds. For instance, a player who picks Home world with the lowest Escape velocity must pick the Rival world with the highest Escape velocity; no more than two players can pick the same Home or Rival world – if the one you wanted is full, tough luck; the player who picks their Home world last gets to pick their Rival world first; etc. These rules, along with some additions to the section on building the course to accommodate these requirements, will go a long way toward making this a useful strategic addition to the game.
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StarSpeed 17: Rocket Racers of Galaxy 5000
Thanks to a bunch of great suggestions over at the BoardGameGeek forums, I was inspired to mash together this mouthful of a name. It’s got all the campiness I was hoping for, plus it can be abbreviated to just StarSpeed 17, which sounds like an 80s sci-fi movie, which is excellent.
Now that I’ve got a name, I can start posting info over at the BGG database, and hopefully that will soon include finished art for the cards! I made a list today of all of the assets I’m going to need, and there’s over 80 things to draw! Ugh! I’m going to try to do a couple each day until they’re finished, or until my arm falls off. We’ll see which happens first!
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