Wandering Monster: Saturday morning faceoff

It was a fine day for Wandering Monster. The game has convulsed a bit over the past couple months but definitely came out better. Today it came through an important field trial: the spouse test.

Here's how it went down. As we wrapped up breakfast, she announced, "Let's play your game. Only be quick about it or I'll give up and move on." As you can imagine, this particular playtest scenario is valuable for several reasons. One, the audience is not strictly a regular gamer, so I get to explain familiar concepts in a new way that makes the most sense. Great practice. Two, her expertise as a proofreader make her adamant about clarity and accuracy, so my action cards get a thorough exam. Three, she arrives bloodthirsty and ready to chomp through some adventurers.

All in all it was a good game with no major problems. Given the recent changes it was a bit of a learning game. There were some new things you can do with Sauce, the strategy points, plus a whole new model of action cards. A single deck now includes actions that influence the moves of adventurers, others that mess with your opponents, and powers you can attach to your monster and make it more awesome. This approach came out of a bit of a personal crisis. First Magic the Gathering and then Dominion hit my household and demanded the full attention of all my captive playtesters. This included myself, and led to the crisis, if all I want to play is the endless quest for Estates, Duchies, and Provinces, how can the trolls, ogres, and oozes of Wandering Monster compete?

Side quest. We didn't just want to play game after game of Dominion, we wanted to answer a burning question. Can one, in the course of a normal game, score two of the high value victory cards, the Provinces, in a single round? We started devising hypothetical ways, but wanted to see it happen in action. It actually wasn't that hard.

Now I seek the greater glory: a single round that brings the player three of these Province cards.

But I'm content to return my attention to my own game. A fresh look at MtG and Dominion has helped me refine the card play in Wandering Monster. You can string some impressive combo plays now, and they interact quite well with the monsters, adventurers, and the map. For example in today's game, my wife was falling behind after I picked of a few easy adventurers at the start. She was faced with clusters of adversaries facing all possible approaches. You can't take these guys head on. They will give you a painful and embarrassing schooling. However she managed to put a good string of cards together. One party went packing and another turned down a side passage, presenting it's vulnerable rear quarters, and became an easy meal. This is the kind of dynamic and creative play I love to see.

Still, there are some problems to work out. The main one is traffic jams. The new, simplified method of having the adventurers shuffle around the labyrinth is definitely working, mostly. But when they bunch up, things just get messy. Here is an example, when the party on the left plows into the groups toward the middle and right of the view. I've tried deflecting them out of the jam, or having them bypass it, but the rules start getting unruly.

If you are somebody with ideas about rules for movement and collisions, let's talk!