At the Design Crossroads
The Banker, a Merchant Character
CHOOSING A PATH
A brief recap of development since last year: edicts like Sumptuary Law made the Council Chair too powerful in a way that favored Clergy and Nobles, leaving Rebels and Merchants struggling to get Freedom on the scoreboard. After Gen Con, I attempted to address this through the Fall Balance Update, a reworked set of Edicts and with few buffs to the Rebels. After about a dozen tests of that update, early results were promising.
Writing has a funny way of clarifying one’s thoughts. The day after I finished writing my last design journal, I felt a discontent growing within me. The Fall Balance Update seemed pretty darned balanced, but I felt that the game had lost its edge, and that the Chair had been defanged. There were benefits to being Chair, sure, but the battle over the Chair wasn’t nearly as intense without the deadly Edict combo of Sumptuary Law/Donate in the early game.
So, mere days before BGGCON, I decided to try out something different: what if I used the “broken” set of Edicts from Gen Con, but gave the Rebels the tools to fight through it? Rather than dialing down the power of the Chair, why not dial up the power of our Freedom fighters? We’ve gotten in more than a dozen tests with these reworked Rebels, and results are extremely promising. At this point, I’m confident that this is the right direction for Coalition.
REBEL REWORK
As a refresher, here’s what Sumptuary Law does:
“The Council Chair guesses a player and a Virtue. That player reveals their hand, then discards all Influence of the chosen Virtue. That player then gains Influence equal to the number of cards discarded this way, but may not gain Influence of the chosen Virtue.”
This is a choice tool for an oppressive Council Chair. Savvy Noble and Clergy players understood that, to continue reaping the benefits of the Council Chair, that they needed to avoid Freedom Edicts, which is easily accomplished by using Sumptuary Law to purge Freedom cards from the Merchants' and Rebels’ hands.
Fighting back against such oppression means being able to recover from other players messing with your hand. This is the new Rebel ethos: Rebels can sculpt their hands in such a way that lessens the impact of hand disruption.
Here’s a peak at the new version of the Spy, which illustrates my point:
“During negotiations, you may exchange Role cards with another Rebel player. This card may be exchanged this way only once per round.
On your turn, you may exchange all the Influence in your bid with all the Influence in your hand.
At the end of each round, you may discard 2 Influence. If you do, gain 2 Influence.”
Note the end of round ability. This allows the Spy to sculpt their hand in preparation for the next round. It also lessens the impact of being on the receiving end of Sumptuary Law. Let’s walk through an example:
A Cleric is the Council Chair and resolves the Sumptuary Law Edict. They choose a Rebel at their Council, and guess “Freedom.”
The Rebel reveals their hand: they have 3 Freedom Influence and 3 Justice Influence. They must discard the Freedom cards and replace them with Justice. This is favorable for the Clergy - without Freedom Influence, the Rebel would have a hard time working with the Merchants in the next round.
After the Edicts are resolved, the round ends, and the Rebel player reveals their Spy role card to use its ability. They discard 2 Justice and gain 2 Freedom. Now, they have one fewer Freedom Influence than before they were targeted by Sumptuary Law, instead of having none at all.
Most of the other Rebels have some sort of similar trick up their sleeve. The Iconoclast now gains Influence after an Edict forces them to discard or give away Influence. The Revolutionary allows herself and an ally to gain Influence whenever the Council Chair changes, which often happens at the end of the round if the Chair is the Highest Bidder. Notably, this situation happens after Edict resolution, meaning that it would dodge Sumptuary Law.
The Smuggler has a new ability to give the Merchants a similar Sumptuary-dodging capability. We thought this was a good fit for her, since she is naturally the most rebellious Merchant:
“Discard up to 3 Order and/or Justice Influence: Choose a player. That player gains 1 Influence for each Influence you discarded, then immediately adds all Influence gained this way to their bid.”
This allows the Smuggler to turn Order/Justice Influence in her hand into a different type of Influence in the bid. The following example illustrates exactly how this could be used to get around Sumptuary Law:
Last round, the Clergy and Nobles used Sumptuary Law to purge Freedom from the Rebels’ and Merchants’ hands. The Merchants and Rebels want to pass Freedom this round, but Freedom Influence is scarce.
The Smuggler asks an enterprising Rebel to give her 3 Justice Influence to fuel her ability this round. The Rebel agrees.
On her turn during the Council Phase, the Smuggler uses her ability. She discards the 3 Justice Influence and chooses herself. She gains 3 Freedom Influence and immediately adds it to her bid.
Notably, the chosen player must gain Influence and immediately add it to their bid. This means that the Smuggler could also use her ability to cause a player to “over-bid” and become the Highest Bidder. In this way, she can opportunistically get rid of an unfavorable Council Chair.
LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE CROSSROADS
Though I ultimately decided to abandon the Fall Balance Update, this months-long design detour proved extremely valuable. First, it clarified my vision for the game: the Council Chair should be important from the outset. A powerful Chair adds an interesting texture to the negotiations, and an urgency for the Freedom parties to ensure that power changes hands.
Second, the Edicts rework allowed me to experiment with the Influence economy. I arrived at an important innovation that will be carried forward into the final version of Coalition: all Influence generation should be tied to Edicts and Role abilities. I am axing the end-of-round step where players gain 1 Influence. It is too fiddly and easy to forget - I have done so myself many times. Instead, most Edicts will generate at least a little bit of Influence to ensure that it continues to flow.
The above change has me thinking about how to sand the other rough edges in my design. Here are a few more problems that we are playtesting solutions to:
Greater Order/Freedom Edict Fiddliness: These Edicts create situations in which a Council might send an extra player away at the end of the round. This created some fun and chaotic scenarios in which, in the late game, one Council gains many players, while another dwindles down to two players. However, those Edicts have consistently been a pain in the ass for people to understand. We are currently testing alternatives that don’t create such situations.
Round 4 Runaway Leader: In the majority of games of Coalition, there is still plenty of competition going into the final round. Sometimes, though, the penultimate round sees one Party pull so far ahead on the scoreboard that the others are all effectively playing for 2nd place. I think such a situation is more likely to crop up in games with newbies, which is not good. We are testing an alternative end-of-game trigger, rather than having the game last a set number of rounds.
Edict Setup: The Edict system isn’t terribly hard to understand. You always resolve two each round: a Wealth/Justice Edict and an Order/Freedom Edict. Whichever Virtues are ahead on the Scoreboard determine which Edicts are resolved each round. If there’s a tie, the Edict tile flips. However, there is a slightly confusing exception to these rules: what happens if there’s a tie, and there haven’t been any Edict tiles placed on the Council Board? In this case, the Council Chair chooses which to resolve. I think this exception is fiddly, and comes up way too often. We’ve modified the setup rules to start with Edict tiles in play.
EARLY INDICATORS
Results of 14 playtests post-BGGCON
Note: the above graphic does not reflect a single, stable version of the game. It does collect versions of the game that are pretty darned similar. These were all played using the Gen Con Edicts, or a slate of Edicts that are very similar to the Gen Con Edicts, but with quality of life improvements as described in the previous section.
In these last few months before our Kickstarter, I will continue to sand rough edges and collect playtest data. I’m happy with how the game has been playing recently. At this point, there are a few “buttons” I can push to nudge the game balance in one direction or another if necessary: simple changes to role cards, setup rules, or Edict text. I look forward to seeing how the winrates shape up in our playtesting!
Lastly, as always: if you have a group and/or event ripe for playtesting, reach out to us! We may have a prototype to spare for you!