One area of concern in any game is ‘down time’ – the amount of time other players spend waiting until they get to do something. This is an issue of meta-game balance and is probably one of the hardest areas to get right. Tactical games that involve moving resources around and making decisions based on fluctuating fortunes are particularly prone to players spending time considering their actions more carefully, and this has the inevitable effect of slowing play. This can be particularly frustrating if you are the last player to act in a game turn, so down time is to be minimised wherever possible. Even games that involve complex asset management and no direct conflict with other players fall prone to this issue.
In Mythos Encounters, you have a maximum of five players and a turn sequence with five separate phases. Even though some actions are relatively straightforward – drawing cards, exchanging tokens, reinforcing positions – new players especially will likely take longer to understand some of the subtleties e.g. being able to play cards even when it isn’t their turn.
One suggestion during play-testing was to allow all players to participate in the turn sequence at the same time, so how might this work successfully and is this a good idea?
Currently a Turn includes: Draw Arcana (get cards) – Spawning (get tokens, change token type) – Movement (get to winning condition locations) – Combat (eliminate/slow competitors) – Ritual (attempt to achieve winning condition) – Discard (toss less useful cards in the hope of drawing new ones next turn).
Let’s consider the effects of changing each stage of the game turn and its likely effect on game balance.
Draw Arcana – the mechanic of being able to play cards at any time regardless of whether or not it is your turn, and allowing cards to have multiple uses, means that the Arcana Deck should be expected to turn-over relatively often during play. Trying to hit the ‘sweet spot’ where there are sufficient number of cards, types of cards and they are balanced is the topic of a separate post, suffice to say that the ability to use these cards against other players, even when it is not your turn, means that at key moments e.g. combat, all players at the table have the potential to contribute to the outcome.
Currently players may only replenish their hands up to a maximum of five cards on their turn (ignoring Arcana Cards and Node Counters that may affect this ability). This means balancing whether or not to use cards and when it is most beneficial to do so, and offers a strategic advantage to the player who goes last in a round, as by this stage there will be fewer cards available in players’ hands. This is partly why ‘First Player’ rotates around the table – at least twice if the game goes the full ten rounds – and also so that everyone has the ability to act first in a round of play.
If you move to a system where everyone draws cards at the start of the turn, this strategic advantage will be less important, there will obviously be more cards in play, and the deck will turn over quicker. Players are more likely to use cards which advantage them (e.g. recruitment and movement cards) but do risk experiencing non-beneficial Event cards more frequently.
Cards do multiple things. Unless they are Event (or Elemental Special) Cards, players get to choose when to use them. The first use is as directed by the explanation on the card – however in the interests of allowing Players more flexibility, the cards have three additional abilities: you can cash them in to gain more Cultists during the Spawning Phase, you can use them in order to reduce the difficulty of the dice roll during the Conjunction Ritual Phase, and they can be used to negate the effects of other cards – although at a cost in terms of Cultist tokens.
More cards in play will mean Players will seek to maximise beneficial effects (roughly a third of the deck) or use them to prevent the effects of other cards – but at a balancing cost of Cultist tokens, while some benefits will only accrue when it is their turn.
- Conclusion: While more cards in play sounds fun, it can lead to more chaotic as opposed to tactical play. The benefit to the first and last players is diminished.
Spawning – through the use of the Spawning Deck, Cultists are recruited to occupied Nodes on the board. This is limited depending on the colour of the Spawning Card – which indicates the Alchemical Ring that Spawning occurs in, and a number – which indicates how many Cultists in total may be added e.g. 3 Red – means add three to any occupied Nodes in the Fire ring. If their forces occupy multiple locations, the player chooses how to spread the tokens around.
Currently, First Player turns over the top card of the Spawning Deck and this only benefits particular players – potentially not even the First Player depending on where their forces are located. At the beginning of the game, when players only occupy locations in their own Alchemical Ring, the benefits are unbalanced (in fact there is no Spawning in the first round of play). However, as players move around, there is more of a leavening effect.
In addition to the Spawning Deck, Arcana cards may be cashed in for tokens providing that a player occupies a Node in the same coloured Alchemical Ring at the time First Player turns over the top card of the Spawning Deck – effectively a bonus ranging anywhere from 1 – 3 additional tokens (the maximum equivalent of a Servitor token).
- Conclusion: The presence of more cards will not benefit the First Player as much as it will the others who would otherwise be waiting to make their hands back up to maximum. Multiple uses of the Spawning Deck has the effect of watering down its use as a limiting variable i.e. more tokens in play too easily. The game is supposed to mirror capricious effects and this immediately makes the acquisition of otherwise precious tokens more banal.
Movement – is another limiting variable. Normally units may only move one space at a time, although several Arcana Cards and Node Counters break this limit as does the acquisition of Nodes in the Ether ring which adds +1 Movement for each occupied Node (this also has the effect in the early rounds of allowing the Yog-Sothoth player to move more easily around the board – see the post about Sympathetic Magic). Again the presence of more cards will allow for some additional movement, but as there are few cards of this type in the deck (therefore making them valuable commodities around which to build surprise strategies), the overall benefit appears limited.
Allowing all Players to move counters during this phase, when normally it is limited to once per turn, will precipitate more discovery (uncovering Node Counters), more conflict as players inevitably seek to engage other players for contested spaces, but therefore necessitates an extended Combat phase and overall more combat throughout the game.
- Conclusion: More cards in play will have a limited effect on Movement. More Movement of tokens will lead to more discovery but also much more conflict. The question is whether more conflict makes for a better game?
Conflict – in a game which is essentially a land-grab, space is a valuable commodity and combat a logical necessity. The game is deliberately designed to pit players against one another in a race to be the first to meet the winning conditions of their set of Constellation Cards. The combat system is designed to burn through Cultist and Servitor tokens with a replenishment rate that is slow enough and expensive enough to give players pause for thought when entering into unnecessary or malicious battles and make it more risky and hopefully more exciting and challenging. This is another area of meta-game balance and quite delicate as early play-testing revealed a fairly brutal tit-for-tat mentality amongst players and resulted in a change to the winning condition – allowing for players to collect spaces and ‘bank’ Constellation Cards – as opposed to having to hold all Node locations until the end of their turn.
As noted above, if you allow everyone to move, you accept the potential for significantly more combat. More combat also will make the game longer. If you assume every player has at least one round of combat for each turn of the Cosmic Clock – there should be a total maximum of fifty rounds of combat (in fact there may be slightly more as players may choose to engage multiple opponents in each round). However, if every player moves and then fights, there may be as many as five times this amount of conflict to resolve – it will certainly make the game longer, but not necessarily better.
- Conclusion: More conflict will lead to a longer game. Combined with a tit-for-tat mentality which may make the game more chaotic. It may also mean that Players spend a lot of time rebuilding their forces and this is limited by the Spawning mechanism or access to Recruitment cards. If you choose one, it will necessitate more of the other.
Ritual – every time a successful Ritual of Conjunction occurs, a Player adds the appropriately coloured token to their Great Old One Card to signify that they are one step closer to meeting their winning conditions as evidenced through a unique set of Constellation Cards dealt out randomly at the beginning of play. The ritual involves a dice-roll which may be attempted at any stage by any player who moves to control a Node, but the odds of success can be altered in their favour through (among other things) the use of Arcana Cards. For example, Elemental Special Cards allow the highest bonus, greatly increasing the success of the dice roll and as a maximum of one Arcana Card only may be used in the Ritual, the presence of more in a player’s hand will slightly increase their chance of a higher valued card (cards range in value from 1 – 3).
- Conclusion: Allowing every Player the opportunity to conduct a Ritual will also speed the game towards conclusion. This will be greatly assisted by access to more cards during the Draw phase and tokens during the Spawning phase.
While seeking to reduce down time is both admirable and recommended, other methods of allowing players to interact should probably be emphasised before deciding to go down the road of allowing every player to complete all aspects of the turn phase. Once you do, you become committed to a longer game where the benefits do not on first appearance outweigh the drawbacks.