Northanger Abby: The Ball Game

The game was very amusing to create, solely due the fact that ”The person who has the most balls gets Catherine.”

Now let me elaborate! Our game idea is (loosely) based off of Northanger Abbey, a book by Jane Austen. Now, being 5 rather male humans, none of us have read a single page of a Jane Austen novel.  All of our information is therefore based off the Wikipedia page about the book.  Which I believe to be fine, as in my humble opinion if it was expected of us to read a novel by her just to make a board game based off of it, I’d be a bit peeved. 

I digress.

Now for the idea of the game came when we read that “Catherine liked to attend balls” and then further reading that there was a love triangle involved.  We quickly came to the idea of a territorial acquisition game, with 2 teams based off of the male families.  Whoever had the most attendance at the 38 balls happening that evening (I know, a very busy Bath that night!) would have enough persuasion to woe Catherine.

Oh, but what about the pirate portion of the board game? Well we decided that the odd numbered player would get to run mischief around town the night, causing a handful of annoyances to the balls and therefore opposing players.

This exercise of only basically being told “Jane Austen Novel and Pirates, Go!” was kind of interesting.  Working with other material is always a love-hate relationship for me, as I don’t like doing something about a body of work without feeling like I know it through and through.  Oh well, though.  I sure as hell wasn’t going to read one of her books!

Here are the rules, and a picture of the board.

Northanger Abbey: The ball game

2-5 players

Setup:

Each player takes control of a family member on each side of the conflict, Thorpe, or Tilney.  If there are an odd number of players, the odd player will play as the pirate.

Once team selection is finished, players take turns placing people to attend the different balls over the town of Bath.  Each player will then place their own player piece in attendance at a ball that they are already in attendance at.  This ball will be the player’s “home” and will not be attend able by the other family.

The objective of the game is to have the most people of your family in attendance at the various balls, to obtain popularity in order to impress Catherine Morland.

Gameplay:

Families:

Each family has up to two players; for the Thorpe family, there is John and Isabella; for the Tilney family, there is Henry and Eleanor.

At the start of each turn, the current player may place people at the balls they are in attendance at, limited based on the number of balls their family currently attends.  The player will get one person per ball attended, and a pre-determined amount based on the amount of regions they attend all the parties at.

The families will take turns crashing the other adjacent balls to obtain attendance.  However, the family can’t cross the river to crash, unless there is a bridge.  The crashing party may use up to 2 dice, while the defending family may use up to 3 dice. The winner of the crash is whoever has the highest dice roll, and that family may attend that ball.  The losing family will lose all people in attendance, and if any player pieces are in attendance, they move back the ball they started at.

Extra powers are in effect if a player piece is part of the crash:

·         John and Henry power: Authority, they count as +3 for defending +1 for attacking.

·         Isabella and Eleanor power:  Feisty, they count as +2 for attacking +1 for defending.

Pirate James:

The pirate player draws a card at the start of his/her turn, which determines what they must do that turn.  Whether or not the pirate plays the card, it is discarded at the end of the turn. 

The pirate may move anywhere on the board, within a 6 ball-space area, depending on what they roll on a 6-sided die.

 Winning conditions:

            There are two ways a player may win; the first is optional, the second is mandatory.

·         After a pre-set number of turns, the winner is the family with the most balls in attendance

·         The winner may also be the family with every ball in attendance, except the other family’s “home” balls.

That’s it! A cool game, heavy influenced by risk, but still unique in itself.

-Jordon

Battle Hexagons

Battle Hexagons

Second board game! This one was pretty fun to make, especially because I got my name choice in! Battle Squares, now Battle Hexagons. This game is pretty elegant in design; all you have to do is acquire hex tiles.  We decided to go portal theme in visual style, as this game type didn’t scream anything in particular.

The chance cards we added in to give a little bit of spice into the mix, allowing it to be a bit more complex than just acquire land.

Here are the rules:

Pieces: Laminated game board (prototype; paper game bored), 4 erasable markers (prototype; 4 coloured pencil crayons), 4 player pieces, 2 six sided dice, and Battle Hexagon cards.

Objective: Acquire the most hexagons after 20 rounds.

To start off: Supports 2-4 players.  Each player picks a corner to start off, then each player roles a die, highest roll goes first, then clockwise thereafter.

At the start of the players turn, they roll two six sided dice.  From there, the player move their piece along the board that number of hexes, converting any white (blank) hex to their colour. You may not re-colour non-white hexes, so be careful! Don’t get cornered, as you are not allowed to travel across anything that isn’t either your colour, or unclaimed.  Below include the rules for any further situation.

These are “wild hexes.”  When you cross them, draw a card from the wild pile.  This hex is now claimed, and you may walk across it 3 times before it becomes spent.

 

These are “Portal hexes.” Once used, you may travel to any non-claimed portal hex.  Once used, it can only be used to travel back and forth between portals.  Any further portal hexes acquired can be linked into the player’s portal network.

These are blank hexes. You claim them by walking over them with your player piece.  Once claimed, no other player except for you may walk over them.

Here are the wild card effects:

Simple game, but when we played it we enjoyed the simplicity and none of us have played a game similar to it.  Was an enjoyable exercise!

Game Battle Hexagons designed by:

Jordon Mattison (myself)

Alexander Golenishchev

Siddharth Panchal

Jason MacKenzie

Aperture Science logo & Portal logo are copyrighted by Valve  and are used by fair use.

-Jordon

Battle Squares

Alright, so now that i have this blog hooked up into the system, time to put our my secound blog post.  Introducing, Battle Squares!

I know, it's not very pretty, but i am not an artist.  When you only have 4 days to make a board game prototype, I don't exactly have an infinite amount of time for the art on the board!

The game tested pretty well considering the cards were just RNG into the mix, as at play test time there were no actual physical cards. We used the table below with a personally made program to hand out cards.  Pretty easy fix.

So there's the board, below are the rules, and below that are the cards.


Objective:

Get to the end of the board first.

Rules:

i)                    Roll the 6 sided die and add your victory bonus per turn to move.  You start with 0 victory bonus. Everyone starts with 1 equipment card.

ii)                   When you land on a red square, you get an equipment card.  These equipment cards are used to battle. Read about battling in the battle square description

iii)                 When you land on a blue square, you get an effect card.  These effect cards are played on your turn.

iv)                 When you land on a yellow space, nothing happens.

v)                  You may save progress instead of rolling the die that turn.  You still may place effect cards during said turn

vi)                 When you land on battle squares, if you are the first to pass or to land on this square, nothing happens.  If you are the second or thereafter player to land on this square, you may choose to fight anyone who’s stepped on or passed the square.

To battle, you each select 1 equipment card, and put the others back down. You show each other the equipment card at the same time. To determine who wins, read as followed:

There are three stats to look at on a card.  Special, attack, and defence.

If the special qualifiers are met, that card wins, otherwise if the attacker (the person who initiated the fight) has more attack on their card then the defender has defence on their card, the attacker wins.  If they’re tied the defender always wins.

The winner gets a +1 victory point and gets a +1 to their die roll for their movement. The loser gets sent back to their last save before that battle point. If the defender was pulled back to that battle point, they may move back to where they were before the fight.

IE) battle point 1 is 20 tiles into the board, and you save at a tile 21. You also have a save at tile 41. You are currently at tile 42. If player 2 battles you at battle point 1, and you lose, you have to go to spawn.  If he then battles you at battle point 2, and you lose again, you'll go to tile 21.

At the end of the battle, the used equipment is discarded and to be shuffled back into the deck may you need more equipment cards.

vii)               If you get to the end tile, you must wait till it is your turn again to claim victory.

Quantity in deck	Attack	Defence	Special
15	2	1
15	1	2
7	3	2
6	0	4
3	0	5
2	5	0
6	2	2	Win if enemy attack is less than 2, otherwise no effect
3	0	0	Win if used to defend and is behind attacker on the board
2	0	1	Sucks to be you
1	-	-	Win

Quantity	effect
5	Move player 1 space forward
5	Move a player 1 space backwards
5	Delete save
5	Plant a save between your location and the next battle square.  Can’t use card and move in the same turn.
1	Move past a battle square

Mentioning a point with the effect cards, they are intentionally open ended.  I like the idea of more advanced players making their own cards for the battle system.

-Jordon