Heya Tempo!

I played a game last Saturday with some avid gamer friends of mine and we felt the game had the following issues.

The win condition is a little extreme. While there are cards that GIVE you says, if you have to backtrack you're pretty much SOL. If you got a bad land lay, even with looking at the map itself, you can forget and you can run into problems.

The event cards were neat but also a little random and predictable at times. While I know this is in the "nordguard" universe, changing things up couldn't hurt. A lot of the challenges we faced were gun checks, and with Lindon and Pi we never ran into that problem and the other characters didn't seem to get to do much.

We were also confused about using items like Rope, Booze, Shovel, Climbing Gear. Do we discard these? Do we keep them?

If someone gets to pick up an item do they get to hold three even though their character slot only holds two? Do they have to discard?

The binoculars are also a little overpowered I felt. Yes, you only get to look at the adjacent tiles but there needs to be some kind of cost to this otherwise SOMEONE is always going to be forced to pick them and use them and there shouldn't be an item where the players should HAVE to take it to make the experience easier. The binoculars are just a personal opinion, too.

I feel like there needs to be more "checks" besides gun checks. As I said before London and Pi have that area covered where as someone whose playing Nickel doesn't get to roll the pretty dice nearly as much ( or feel important I think. Each character should bring to the table something special and equal that makes the players really struggle as to who to play).

That's all I can think of for now. We may play again soonish and I can gather more feedback but all in all its a good start but it needs to feel less like one or two people get to do all the fun stuff and more like a unit of people and depending on their own individual traits and abilities. A good example would be something like Arkham Horror or Battlestar Galactica boardgame where characters have bonuses and even weaknesses. An example could be "Nickel gets to scout ahead and look at one tile in any direction. Roll a die, if die roll is 1-3 Nickel sprains his ankle and cannot scout for the next three turns."

Anyway, my two cents!

All points we definitely considered in game development, especially the player interaction bit.

However I'm going to point out that this game is one that changes drastically every time you play it, so if you have only played it once (which is what I can discern from reading your post) you should probably try it several more times yet, as some of the things you pointed out are actually addressed, such as varying event cards (not all of your challenges are gun rolls, not even 50% of the deck is gun check challenges, actually).

I'll let tempo answer some of the more detailed questions, but I just wanted to urge you to play a few more games and see what you think. The game can be vastly different each time you play, and that's by design. Sounds like on your first playthrough you got a very stray-heavy map with stray-heavy events. Good thing you had both Pi and London!

As for the turn limit -- it's intentionally strict. There are quite a few ways that you can gain turns, sometimes a quite significant number of turns, and suddenly it looks like you can't lose. At the same time though, something can crop up and block your planned route, forcing you to change strategies (and perhaps go into territory you had not prepared for).

The time limit is set in such a way that if you set up a planned route, and are able to stick to it with your prepared gear without too much in the way of unplanned interruptions, you will win the game.

If you get some of the events that throw a wrench into things, that's where things get interesting, and you have to re-route.

Thanks a bunch for the feedback though! We appreciate it! I will urge a third time though, play more than one game, I think you'll find the experience changes drastically. :)

Going to add one more thing for everyone reading:

If you're playing the game and you get hit with a series of events or challenges that seem to "fuck you over" -- DONT GIVE UP!

There are a LOT of cards that help you as much as cards that hurt you. Heck, even something like the "storm" cards can end up helping you by re-arranging the playing field.

I've had games in playtesting where we were down to 1 turn remaining and were 3 squares away from the end, seemingly an impossible task, but on the next event we drew a card that added 6 turns and the square we were on gave us an item we needed to pass a challenge that had been blocking our progress. We won 3 turns later.

This is true, I've only played it the once so I didn't feel it was enough to evaluate the game. If anything I almost held back writing this because of that, but I figured SOME feedback is better then none.

I definitely do want to play it again to try things out, but my concern with items is still there. I'm not sure what happens with them once they're used or for a skill check like "need climbing gear" etc. Or when a player is given the offer to pick up an additional item. When we played we weren't sure so we just took it literally.

The time limit thing hit us during our play through. We lost a day and we were running out of time and we got a day but still ran out by one at the end. Again, the evaluation only came from one play through.

You guys DO have something here and I REALLY like it a lot. Thanks for addressing some of my concerns so quickly. :D I'll be sure to share how another game goes.

Absolutely! Thanks for sharing the feedback! I hope your future games are enjoyable. We're looking into ways to engage players more. That's one of my primary goals as the mechanics designer.

Hmmm. Sounds a bit like you got a stray-heavy map without a lot of other Location types.

The game can indeed be a little bit merciless (we wanted the game to reflect the graphic novels' harsh setting), but there are ways to travel faster. For example, the Wheel Dogs can bypass basically ANYTHING in the game one time. Nickel scouts and keeps you from getting lost (meaning: keeps the board from being scrambled). McKay keeps you from being booted back to Waypoints and gets to pick new Items more often. Oleg, if played correctly, can make the laws of commerce/probability/conservation of mass stop working.

That said, gun checks appear on 8 Event cards (16% of them) and 6 Location cards (12%), so they're roughly equal to the occurrence for other Item uses. However, it's entirely possible (and valid) that the team may be choosing to cross hostile territory rather than spaces that require Climbing Gear/Kayak/etc. Gunning your way through is a legit play style. Might not work with every map, however.

Things only get discarded when "used up", "given up", "discarded", etc. Dynamite should always say it gets used up, though no one has assumed that's reusable yet. X) We're working on giving this mechanic a more consistent wording. X)

Characters can't hold more Items than they have slots--much like a video game.

Binos do have the limiting factor of costing you a day if you scout more than one Location a turn. Considering you get to see the map before you start, we found in playtesting that this usually didn't turn out to be a massive advantage. (Interestingly, not all players found Binos as useful.)

We've totally been talking about the possibility of checks with non-gun Items. (In fact, Oleg's original wording gave him extra uses in Booze checks instead of free Booze.) Open to ideas for how this could be implemented.

We did look at Arkham Horror; will have to see if I can get my paws on BSG! (Also, Nickel actually has the power to scout any square, not just adjacent ones.)

I noticed you mentioned Nickel several times. Did you feel he was less fun to play than the others?

Which Characters the most/least fun?

*research*

Alas, only one play through but Nickel was actually NOT played on our play through which surprised me since he's a crowd favorite in the comic. I guess, to me, it didn't feel like Nickel brings enough to the table in comparison to the others. Especially if you have the binoculars. Again, this is just with ONE play through.

I had fun playing London and my friend Pi, but then we got a lot of checks for our weapons where as our friend playing McKay didn't get to do anything but use his med kit once. He just looked "bored" considering London had the binoculars, the rifle, etc.

*nods* Ok. I'm adding this to our playtest data. :)

Hmmm. We considered adding med kit checks, but that made things a lot more complex. What if there were an Item that read the following?
Field Kit
If the team would be forced to retreat, you may roll a die. If a non-Medic rolls a 6, the team does not retreat. If a Medic rolls a 3-6, the team does not retreat.

That would make McKay a lot more valuable to the game, in my opinion. I think London and Pi are VERY solid and well done. I wouldn't tweak them. Olaf...well, as I said from only one game, we never came into a position where if he HAD been on the field he would have been needed. The wheel dogs were nice because of all the items they carried BUT I think they need something a little more defining. However, I'm the type of gamer who LOVES characters to have amazing abilities but at a cost.

Hey Tempo,

We were discussing the game again and thought up some things you may like (or dislike) to make the game far more dynamic and fun!

First of all there should be more resources in the game. I'm not talking about micromanaging everything but the day counter should be static. There shouldn't be a mechanic to add days because, if this mission is so critical, how do they gain a day and yet still complete the mission on time?

To address this, instead of making the time limit two of the sides of the board it should be three. This would give players more time to experiment with the route and come across challenges. There could be more skill checks involved that lose days.

Our biggest idea is actually doing away with the die counter for the "days" and making a "day deck," where the deck is the counter. When you get to the bottom of the deck you are out of time and the game is over. The mechanic we discussed would work like this. There are multiple cards, and duplicates such as "Sunny Day," where its just a sunny day. There should also be Blizzard card where the card reads "Blizzard! Play this card for the next three days, put those cards face down into the day discard pile." this way the players aren't sure if there's another blizzard lurking about or if they just lost their sunny days. There could be other cards like "Snow storm, any body of water is now frozen and can only be passed with a canoe or kyak" etc. Clearly this idea needs to be more refined but could be fun and removed the RNG from the only resource in the game.

Another idea we had was adding another resource to the game. Right now days are it and that's fine, but as stated above it doesn't quite make sense. The idea we had would be adding rations. Say you start out with as many rations as days you have and events can be passed like "Savages! You can either do a gun check or pay two rations to pass, or lose a day" and as such you now have another resource to manage and gives players a choice. Do they want to risk the food or the day? This idea could be applied to the other items like "equipment" and "Weapons/ammo" but we agreed TOO many resources wouldn't be fun because its a lot to remember for a card game.

We were discussing characters having dynamic abilities. While they DO exist, making them a lot more appealing should be something you guys should consider. An example we thought up was for Pi. "Leader. She Makes the Call," which is fine because she's diplomatic and clearly listens to her team but at the end its her choice and she can ignore the other players. London should have what he has now, Nickel's is good but may be tweaked. Geri's should be "Strong Dog! Can make any weapon check +1" and McKay's could be "Makes all healing skill checks +1" or something like that. I don't know how much you guys want to look into your mechanics so I'm not going to write EVERYTHING we have, more like give you the jist.

While there should still be events they shouldn't be "Impassable cliff," because that removes the idea of the "map" from the game. The land cards themselves should have the checks. Such as mountains being impassable on a snowy day or during a blizzard (referencing day deck)." Or rivers where they can be crossed, unless its snowing or blizzard and is frozen. Team may take one extra day to cross or roll a die. If such and such forefit two rations." etc

Anyway, these are what we were thinking. We spent a good few hours discussing and we're all avid tabletop and boardgame players here and we understand not all our ideas would work, but we all agreed the pacing of the game feels off. It's too RNG and that should be addressed. Give players more of a choice and that will dramatically increase the fun of the game.

Anyway, hope it helped!

Tibs

I haven't played it, but I did get a chance to watch a game. Turned out super easy this time around, though we were told things could get super hard as well. (The word "super" might not have been used, though. =P) I hope I get a chance to play it sometime! Seems like an interesting game, and possibly a fun way to spend a couple hours.

Super! ;) You can always PM me about the game too.

I'm still waiting to get my game, but I assure you that if you want constructive feedback I will do my best. I may send it in notes though since I don't usually think I word my feedback very well and I'd rather not mess it up. If I can get my point across then perhaps once we have figured out a better way to state it, I will post it here just to keep things in one place for you. Up to you. I'm still super duper excited about getting mine and I'm dancin around the house in anticipation!

Awesome. Can't wait to hear what you think.

.....this wouldn't be "one of the surprises [you're] working on before [you] come visit," would it?????

Hehehe, yuppers! Well, wasn't really going to be a surprise, but I wanted to make sure it came in before I told you about it. I just got it today and am working on putting sleeves on the cards to protect them now. Actually. Hehe.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Well, the sleeves idea isn't gonna work. Box is too small for cards and sleeves. Heh. Oh well, I'm sure they'll be fine without card condoms. I can't wait to visit ya!

Yeah, it's kind of a one-or-the-other at the moment. Basically, if you start using it often enough that they're going to wear out, I'd switch to sleeves. :)

I've played it many many times. First started with just four players. Ran the game twice and it turned out great. Game two we sorta shuffled the deck and ended up running into the strays near the end which hindered movement greatly, but we didn't give up and eventually after like what seemed forever and the dice gods hating on us (LOL) we made it through. All instructions were easy to follow. Gameplay is a bit on the fast pace side and the larger game I held with up to seven players loved how they didn't need to pay too close attention to turns. xD (We were drinking too, just fyi lol)

Now the most challenging of this game was when we put together four decks. I calculated all the dice totals and ran with checkpoints (Every 3 waypoints became our refresh stops, and our stopping to stretch and what not. I've got pictures of this game but haven't had the time yet to upload them, believe me I will soon enough. We dished out even higher amounts of the items and proceeded with just only the original sled team, however since we had more than enough items, I multiplied the slot spaces by four just to make it fair. I think in the future when we play another large game like this I will decrease the slot spaces to only x3 then down to x2 and work through to see if it is possible to beat.

My experience with the game is amazing each time I play. Besides myself, many others in my local fur group loved playing it and they really like the artwork. The concept of the game is easy to learn, not hard to figure out and pretty straight forward like many board games. Get from point A to point B with challenges tossed in and so forth. I have to say this is a game turned out to be everything I was looking forward to and can't wait for expansions to follow!

That's wonderful to hear! *wags* Did you start by reading the card instructions, the sheet instructions, or both?

Interesting solution. Like I said, you are the first people on THE ENTIRE EARTH to play with 4 decks, so I'll be very interested. Please explain how the "every 3 Waypoints" rule--did you visit all the Waypoints? And did you get new Items for free at them?

How long did the 4x game take?

Was it worthwhile to put someone "in charge" of the turns/board?

Also, were some of the Characters more fun to play that the others? Why?

Yes we read the instructions completely before we played, both card and sheet instructions. Well we set it up to where since Nickel can scout any card on the board that he would use that to scout out automatically 3 Waypoints. It does spend his 3 turns on his ability but we even x4 those so that it would be fair and equal so gameplay wouldn't become too questionable. In times of turmoil several waypoints were revisited. The game itself took well over an hour and half if not a bit longer. We set it up so that when we reached a Waypoint that we could stand up and stretch and whatnot. With the 3 Waypoints I wanted them to be in random locations but also where we had to follow not so much as a specific path but you had to reach each Waypoint.

The way the Waypoints were set up was as if someone played a 7x7 map, Waypoint 1 would have been destination. The inbetween and "hidden" Waypoints were also included but each necessary Waypoint was drawn at random from the stack of Waypoint locations and set aside. So it wasn't so much of a confusing concept to pull off it did however provide more challenges since one location card is left out in a 7x7 game. This way all location cards are used up and only 3 Destinations are left out.

It was a great idea to leave the Lead Dog Pi (whomever chose to play her) as the person in charge of asking questions. Each decision was a group made one. No one was allowed to just say go that way. Using abilities and having them times by 4 was tricky. Although you are allowed a certain amount to use per map, I let the players decide if they wanted to go over that limit into the next map. If they happen to run out of ability points well they would hear it from the rest of the team (players). lol

With a massive map as such, it was really interesting to see just who would be more useful than the rest, we actually ended up having to use all 7 characters to make this happen. I liked playing as Nickel since I have a crush on him. x3 Not ashamed to say this! But I did let others play him too so that I wasn't hogging him to myself (though I really wanted too hehe)

I tried the game a few times with my friends just after AC.

The major problem we found was some vagueness with the instructions. I assumed you guys tried to keep them as concise as possible, which is a good policy, but we felt that it wasn't exactly clear how to set up the game. Trouble occured when and where event cards came into play, and when we tried to resolve them. I think, as a result, we completed the game to quickly with far to little a challenge. We did have a lot of fun with the game, but the only thing that put us off was the fact that we didn't quite know if we played by the rules.

I understand setting rules is a balancing act, conciseness is king. Overall they aren't bad, but I'd still like to see further explication of event cards and game layout. Having read this thread has also been very helpful, you already answered a number of problems we ran into.

Would it help if the first line of the instructions sheet read something like "Please see the Rules cards for how to play. Refer back to this sheet for more in-depth answers."?

That could be helpful. All in all it seemed like a pretty striaghtforeward game. I'm hesitant to ask for longer rules. I've played games that try and overexplain things in rulebooks the size of Russian formalist novels. Too many rules can be intimidating, especially when booze is involved, which it often is on game-night:)

Ok! Most people don't seem to need the full rules sheet unless they run into a specific rules question, so we'll probably do that with the new printing.

I haven't had a chance to yet sadface... need to get a group of people together! o_o

D: You totally do!

When I do I'll leave a review :)

I haven't actually been able to find any information about it. Can't seem to find it anywhere.

It's on sale here: https://www.sofawolf.com/products/n.....uard-card-game

And Blotch has previews for it here: http://www.nordguard.com/about-the-comic/cardgame/

Any chance we will see a how to play video posted at all?

Yep! It's in the works. :)

Good to hear! I am looking forward to seeing them.

I've had a fair few games and afterthe first 2 or 3 me and the ones playin noticed an issue with the game, as my friend worded it 'it felt like a routine'.
Altho I still find the game enjoyable a bit, the move I have to make always seems like an obvious 1. It feels like there's only 1 right move to make each turn

In our playthroughs most of the time it was a process of taking a diagonal path, checking 1of the directions with binoculars, if we can go that way then we would, if we couldn't we went slightly different way to get around it and then repeat.
There were some intresting moments in the playthroughs when this proces didn't work and we had to take a slightly longer path, or if there was a space very close that could provide the equipment needed or an event ethen we would get it. but it still felt that there was still only 1 'right' move to make the most of the time.

Overall I still enjoy the game but I feel that there shudnt be just 1 'correct' path for most playthroughs

Were you actually moving diagonally? Because in the standard rules, you only move North, South, East, or West. :)

No we were moving in the right directions xP
The overall path was diagonal not each movement :3

I'm running this stuff past our playtest data guy.

So why was that consistently the best path?

because it was the one that had the least amount of risk, because if u meet an obstacle on the path u cannot clear, you either will have scouted it and changed path acordingly to go around it, for example yur goin north, east, north, east, and u meet an obstacle when goin north, u would simply go east 1 more time and then north twice, which would not reduce your amount of turns at all with this alternate route
but if u were to go north north north east east east, and stick to the edges of the map rather than the center then an obstacle could cost u more turns, for example yuve gone all the way north then u start going east, u meet an obstacle that u cannot get past and, to get around a space u cannot enter u would have to go south, east, east, north rather than just east, east.

so meeting an obstacle would cost u 2 turns if u are at the north or east sides of the map. so the diagonal path through the center of the map was always the one taken because it carried the highest chance of success

This is the nature of a rectangle. The quickest path across it will always be the diagonal.

Now, the game adjusts for this by introducing challenges and unforseen obstacles.

The challenge and point of the game is to do your best to plan for these things and overcome them as they come. Sounds like you're accomplishing that fairly well.

This is why the turn limit is very restrictive to start with. You have maybe 1 or 2 turns more than the amount it would take you to cross the diagonal on a "best case". Things can remove these turns or add to them as you progress, but to start with you are on a very tight timer, and if there were no things that improved it, you would lose if you hit any obstacle that you couldn't overcome.

i know that this is the point and its a good objective the main issue is that its gets easy to pick out the single option with highest chance of success, where as in other games for example mtg,(i know its a different type of game but just for example) u have a variety of options and at several occasions u can end up in positions where u have to really think about each move yur about to make, its never really fully certain, but in nordguard i find there are very few occasions where i have to carefully consider which option to take.

Actually, Darkdragon and I just busted out the actual game and tried this. Indeed any path through a grid is the same distance so long as you don't doubt back. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_geometry

But there totally are more roughly diagonal paths through the map, vs. the two that lead around the edge. And I do agree that taking one of the middle paths provides you with more options.

So anyway, if you were to suggest a fix for this issue, what would it look like? :)

im not sure exactly X3 but mabe give some sort of slight benefit to bein on those 2 edges of the map idk
give players a reason to change or take different route rather than sticking to the safer diagonal route, so the outer edges could say give benefits but the tradeoff being that obstacles u cannot clear will hurt your time limit more than normal. as for what benefit would be im not really sure xP