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Martijn Althuizen
Netherlands
Helmond
Noord Brabant
Yep, that's my company...
Yep, that's me...
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Hi,
The 'official name' of the tiling that I'm using for the forest is called tetrakis square tiling. That's good to know.
So I guess this is my way of paying tribute to the classic game Alquerque.
The basic idea is that there's a grid of a particular size depending on the number of players. Maybe something like this for 2 players:
At the beginning of the game each player has to move one tree to another spot. Of course the destination spot will have to fit the grid. And there's some extra 'rules'. Such as that the tree at it's new position has to be reachable via at least one other tree, that a tree that's already been moved cannot be move again by another player, and that freed up spots have to remain free.
Although I came up with this idea because I wanted something that made the forest look less structured, I now think that I was probably partially inspired by Lino from designer Chislaine van den Bulk. In Lino you also first lay out tiles in a predetermined order and then the players move a certain number of tiles to different positions. There might be more games that use this setup idea. But the only one that came to my mind was Lino. So thank you Chislaine!
Here's an images of the same 2 player forest after 2 trees have been moved to different positions:
And here's the same image with the valid paths (based on the 'Alquerque grid') shown:
After the setup of the forest, players will inhabit it with the snakes and fairies.
Each player will put one snake somewhere in the forest. So there'll be as many snakes as there are players.
After this each player will start to move his fairy into the forest. They have it enter the forest from outside. So these would be valid spots to initially put a fairy:
There can be only one snake at a tree. And only one fairy. But a fairy and a snake can be at the same tree. In this case, the fairy will have to get away from the tree as soon as possible (and not the other way around, moving the snake away from the fairy!). If a player fails to get his fairy away from the snake, he/she will get bit.
I have the idea of giving each player 3 heart meeples at the beginning of the game. Get bit by a snake, and you'll lose a heart. Should a player run out of hearts, he/she will have to trade in a previously collected star for 3 new hearts. If a player doesn't have any stars to trade, nothing will happen, she just won't have any hearts remaining. I can't let fairies die now, can I? But I'm not totally happy with how this ties in to the theme. So I'm still thinking of a different type of penalty in case you get bit by a snake..
Despite the fact that 2 or more fairies can't be at the same tree, it is allowed for a fairy to pass by a tree in which another fairy is already hiding. In order to do this, a player has to have at least 2 movement points available; one to get to the tree, the second to move away from the tree again.
In some way this is similar to a knocked down tree. Fairies can't hide in knocked down trees. So here too they'll have to move past then (again requiring at least 2 movement points); they cannot end their move at a tree that's not standing upright. Similar to them not being able to end their move at a tree in which a fairy is already hiding.
I've done some playtesting yesterday and one thing I wasn't happy with is that each player has to roll 2 sets of dice in his/her turn (the star dice and the movement dice). So I'm considering integrating both in a single set of dice. Possibly D6's with 2 stars on opposite faces, and the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3 distributed across the remaining faces.
Doing it this way means that as the number of rolled stars increases, the number of dice remaining for movement points will get less and less. Then, right after a star has come crashing down, all the dice will be available again...
This would mean I'd be dropping the 'binairy dice' that I currently use for determining the number of movement points available to a player. In the new scenario, any die that has a number on it (0-3) can be used to move a single meeple (your own fairy or any of the snakes). So only a single die per meeple! And not all rolled numbers have to be spent; players are free to choose which dice they want to use.
Let's say there's 5 dice in the game. Than rolling 4 stars would be enough to have a star come crashing down (N - 1). This would mean that there's at most 1 die that can show a number (=movement points). If this is a three, than the player is potentially able to collect the newly crashed star right away (if there are no snakes or other fairies in the way).
If 5 stars are rolled, then the star will come crashing down so fast that the tree it lands at will be knocked over. The current player won't have any movement points to spend, but at least the star is a bit safer as it can only be collected by passing the knocked over tree (requiring at least 2 movement points).
But all these are just thoughts for now. I'll have to do some actual testing to find something that works to my liking...!
Cheers,
Martijn
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Yep, that's my company...
