After too long testing by myself I finally got to see the game played with real players (the promise of pizza seems to help gather willing participants). This friendly test didn’t go to completion – unfortunately only about 4 hours of slow play – but it did go a long way to helping me understand how some of the different elements are utilized by the players. Oh, and how important it is to triple check the manual. We stumbled as I had written “sum” instead of “average” for the share price calculation during a merger. Weeding out these issues is important but I’m kicking myself as I had hoped basic things like this wouldn’t creep in so we could concentrate on the overall experience. That will come with time I suppose.
The great part of playtesting, and gaming in large, is to see the different strategies employed by the players. I was particularly intrigued by the Waterloo start position taken by a regular gaming friend, a place I thought would be better suited to late game but was made to work rather successfully as an initial starting point. I guess, even though I have been scrutinizing, playing on and changing the map many of my original thoughts on good locations simply didn’t update with it. So I continued with my “tried and tested” starts.
As it stands right now it is a complcated beast. In part 1817, with added functionality. Subsidiaries add a whole new level of depth, plus operating costs, etc. And we didn’t touch on many of the other possible options that will be available. I’m in two minds as to whether this is good or bad though. I like the complexity. But I can easily see it putting a number of players off.
I’ve got a lot more experimenting to do before I ask the players to endure a second playtest. One thing I’d really like to try is removing tight bends, at least until the greens drop and even then only from major stations. This would make planning out track much more important plus I think it would make the map more aesthetically pleasing (and perhaps believable) by not allowing the zig-zags as seen in the center of the above game.
Overall, I suppose the test was fairly successful. The players did their part perfectly but I messed up with some poor planning (and writing). Hopefully I’ll get things better organised for next time.
Cheers,
J