After the Sierra playtests I had the following concerns with the revised version.

• The number of different tokens to search through took a while and extended the playing time more than it should.
• The Sierra deck had a big discrepancy in the two plays, and I have to wonder whether I got lucky on the first attempt and then overdid upping the difficulty afterwards.
• I wasn’t completely happy with the new site path as it wasn’t randomised enough and was more fixed now. I have some ideas about changes, but I want to wait until the second Teiga play before I decide on them.

Teiga Deck

I’m not really a Muna player and so I went online, found a winning Teiga deck on 39cards.com and copied it. The exceptions were for the Unique cards. Alas I had to fill it in with my terrible Muna unique cards, which would have lowered the power level considerably.

First Run Through

The Teiga deck had a very back start. Although I won the first mechanical event, I think went on to lose the next three events – a magical one, followed by two battle events.

This led to a real struggle for the deck to get both the hero and the companion to the centre. I nearly ran my deck out of cards doing this and I went through a lot of the B events to do so as well. The deck was really battered by the time the ceremony started. I ended up with three battle events, a people event and two magical event to overcome. This meant that I had just eight mana and a difficulty of 12 plus three lots of boosted 3/3/3 druids and a boosted recruit. This was a difficulty of 26, which you can guess I couldn’t even get anywhere near to.

Changes for Second Test

I decided for my second test to make a few changes. Firstly, I decided to keep the changes for failed events I’d made in place which seemed to work. The region events I felt were a problem as some of the happened every noon. This hurt the deck consistently over several turns, which was an issue. Also, I struggled to remember to do them every time and there just seemed to be more complexity than there needed to be.

So instead, I decided to reduce those number of events and simplify the components at the same time. I decided to use two sets of standard region cards and have a modified layout. Where the region only has one terrain type, we now add a tumult event, which is faction specific and recorded on a card beside the board.

I also updated the tokens to reduce their number and make them double sided so it was easier to find what I needed.

The Second Test

The second test got off to a bad start, failing the first two events – a magical event and a battle event. Then the deck started to get going, just managing to beat the goat event. Once it was in gear, I was able to keep anchoring a Sneezer shroom and had anchored a unique Kitsune as well that I later had to sacrifice. However, I was able to get two double moves towards the end with a mammoth sized Sneezer Shroom. This has been boosted each turn and then again by my Spindle that I got into play near the end. Playing out more plants, I was able to then finish off the ceremony with an Ogun which brought my mountain to 20 and my water to 22. Even with the 3/3/3 druid and a difficulty of 12, the Ceremony was easily beaten.

Lessons from the Tests

Depending on how the events and the deck performs can really change how it plays. Decks that really get into the swing of their strategy can do very well. After the second test it seemed a bit easy again. However, I wonder whether I just got lucky on the second play through. Once I could start to re-anchor the Sneezer Shroom it got big really quickly.

Removing the many additional region events has cleaned up the mental load on the different abilities that you need to track BUT may have made things a bit easy for the decks. Next time I need to see whether the regional Tumult events are tuned to low in helping to slow down decks once they really get into their stride.

Most of the events seem to be pretty cleaned up now. I was also happy with the reduction in the token numbers by having tokens being double-sided so that they can be found easier. In general, the reduction of the component numbers worked really well and a single token sheet with the deck now simplifies the project.

Double Check on Goals

The goals that I started with are starting to come together.

• Create a fun solo immersive experience for an Altered player in 45 minutes or less – Mostly MET. The Muna games were more around an hour to play as the decks took longer to get going. It’s not way out, but it’s worth noting that it’s a little longer than I want and may need further looking at.

• The game needs to be challenging but not impossible to win at – MET, but more testing required with different heroes after a bad loss and a big win.

• Make the experience very different to a normal Altered game but still mostly using the Altered rules so that I’m not replacing how Altered is played – MET

• Tie the game into the Altered lore as much as possible – MOSTLY MET. I’d like more immersive events. I will still look at getting a few more made and balanced once I’ve finished the next two tests.

• Make it a product that has less than 45 cards and a few tokens for easy print & play – MET. This is getting better and working well now.

Conclusion

The testing seems to be bringing the challenge ‘about right’ but I need more and more testing with different factions. One of my big worries is that I’ve only tested with the higher end decks. I think I’d like to test with something lower down the power decks. Next time I’m going to try with my janky Nevenka deck. I may institue a formalised system of different challenge levels to accomodate different deck powers.

I’d love to hear feedback from people trying it out for themselves. How did you do? Did you win or lose and with what heroes? The latest file version Musubi Meeting v0.05 is here – Musubi Meeting v0.05.