Crafting the Perfect Strategy Board Game: A Rulebook Overview

In this video, we dive deep into the rules and mechanics of my ultimate strategy board game, a unique blend of Catan and Risk. Join me as I walk you through the intricacies of gameplay, from setting up the board to mastering the art of conquest and resource management. Over the past few years, I've refined these rules to create a balanced and engaging experience, and I'm excited to share them with you.

We'll cover:

The primary goal and victory conditions
The various pieces and their roles
The setup process and strategic placement
Detailed rules for land and naval units
Infrastructure and resource management
Combat mechanics and strategic depth
Whether you're a seasoned board game enthusiast or just curious about game design, this video will give you an inside look at the creative process behind crafting a complex and enjoyable strategy game. I look forward to your feedback and ideas to make this game even better.

Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more updates on my board game development journey. Your support and input are invaluable as we continue to refine and perfect this game together.

#boardgames #gamenight #tabletopgames
#boardgamedesign #boardgaming #imadeaboardgame

0:37 - Part I: the Basics
1:07 - Part II: the Box
2:13 - Part III: Setup
3:03 - Part IV: Resources
3:49 - Part V: Land Units
5:00 - Part VI: Naval Units
5:32 - Part VII: Infrastructure
6:56 - Part VIII: Turns
7:22 - Part IX: Combat
8:35 - Part X: the Journey

#pincer

[arjunheart]

You mentioned the problem of rushing towards the opponent and eliminating them before conquering the defined number of colonies. What comes to mind is what Distraction makers calls the Strategy Circle.
You have Rush, Resource, and Defense. These are the three main archetypes of any strategy game.
Rush beats resource, since resource committed their resources to producing more resources, and Rush just put it all into attacking. This is the secret behind Zerg Rush in Starcraft and the issue you seem to articulate.
Resource beats Defense, since Defense commits resources to not losing, rather than looking toward the future. Eventually, a Defense strategy will be overwhelmed by Resource.
Defense beats Rush, since the defensive options are more efficient than aggressive options and allow the player to not be as worried about the opponent's attacking units.

From what I can tell from this video (it being the first I've watched about your game), the defensive options seem to be more expensive than being worthwhile, especially since your rush and resource strategies almost seem to overlap. When this happens, the game devolves into a mono-strategy. I don't know how familiar you are with Magic the Gathering - the Commander format specifically - but in Commander, the rules changes from other formats (being 4-player rather than 2 and 40 life each rather than 20) have basically denied Rush from being part of the cycle. As a result, the Resource strategy has run uncontested and imbalanced the basic gameplay of most Commander games.
I bring this up as an example of what happens when you neglect one of the three prominent strategies. It can be an intended effect, but you asked for comments.

[thatkid]

Dude when this goes to market I’ll buy it! One thought I had was ether make it 2-4 players or if two friends have the same game they can combine it to make the game 2-4 player. Do what you think best, but I know playing with more people is always fun! Keep up the good work man!

[andrewnewell]

Look at Clash of Cultures for map generation. It uses hexes in 4-hex diamonds, and has rules that causes water tiles to bunch up into rivers and inland seas. Additionally, it has a rule that you can move from water to water around the outside of the map, as if the map were surrounded by an ocean

[MrNicktwin]

This would be an instant buy for me! Looks amazing and really intriguing. Hope this will be going into retail

[ACatienza]

The best way to find solutions to some of your questions would be researching similar games. I'd argue that this game is actually most similar to not risk/catan, but...

- Scythe: Gain resources by putting your units onto the appropriate hexes. Multiple ways of scoring/moving towards the win condition means that you can't go all-in on a single objective. Variable combat elements mean it's risky to do early aggression, better to build up forces and score in other ways.
- Twilight Imperium 4th Edition: Scoring system are randomly revealed cards, that generally require you to spend resources (that you get by controlling hexagons). Because of limited resources, fighting is inevitable. This game has a ton of mechanisms to draw from for some of your design questions, highly recommend.
- Eclipse: Has a lot of interesting technology ideas to draw from, a way to modify units and change up the balance on a game-by-game basis so that X unit build doesn't always beat Y unit.

[forestfilms]

I would highly recommend to bring the design to tabletop simulator, my game saw rapid improvement as to how quickly I could change things in playtests.

[philippersson]

I like this idea a lot! For what it’s worth, I think the chess like battle mechanic is brilliant. At first I was thinking it was just a Catan copy until that mechanic. The combination of the two makes me really want to play it! Good job!

[SeanBoyce-gp]

I did a ten minute prototype once in a similar direction but I used Carcassonne mechanics, making tile placement and "exploration" a part of the experience.

I bring it up because one iteration might be helpful for your setup step: each player started with a home tile and then expanded from there. We color-coded tile edges to indicate the types that could be attached, essentially blue was water, red was mountain or hills and green was anything.

Our water tiles either had 3 blue sides connected to each other opposite green sides or 2 blue sides with a shared vertex, or 2 blue sides opposite the hex. We had the most of the 3 blue sides ones, because those were basically "beach fronts"

This mean you could create long and meandering rivers or coastlines easily or you could create narrow passageways and straits with the parallel blues.

Simple edge highlighting for color coding can help control the logic of a map while not locking it into a given orientation.

[carloreytansiongco]

Hmmmm for taking care of the early game rush. I have two ideas, exclusive of each other:

1. Friction rule - no combat until both players have 2nd colonies. The early game turns into developing and massing armies, eventually til conflict becomes inevitable. Alternatively you could do: No combat until either player creates a second colony.

2. State carrying capacity - players can only build 3 units maximum until they have a 2nd colony.

[didelphidae]

Going to have to watch this one on the way home from work tomorrow.

[PatatP]

I have some ideas,
1) allow players to playertrade if they are 3 or less tiles away, encourages building closer to other players, or if you have a road leading to them
2) allow pieces on tiles with roads move an extra tile since its easier to move on roads
3) expand the board to allow 4 players
4) new ship, the galleon, a ship that replaces the attacking role of the friget, costs 2 wood 1 iron and a cannon, can attack the same way as a cannon but only move 1 tile no return, it cannot transport units, to compensate the friget can transport inits, is more manuverable and if withing 1 tile of a port can allow trade with the player who owns the port
5) a new way of combat, pieces can only be attacked by certain pieces,
A cannon by a galleon, horse or cannon
A galleon by a cannon or galleon
A friget by a cannon or galleon
A gunguy by anything
A horse by anything but a galleon
This balances combat so that you need a bit of everything

[juancarlosmarcos]

I love the idea, I have to print it on paper and try the combat strategies to give you some feedback. The game looks easy enough to learn how to play and, it would put players into interesting situations where decisions have to be made.

Some Ideas that come to my mind:
- Bigger map + more players: This could be a nightmare in balancing and combat mechanics. For 3 players it is always complicated.
- Towns and improvements: every time the player builds a town they can select a special power card that improves some actions. (Stonemason: Every time you have to pay 2 or more stone resource cards, one of them may be of any other resource)
-Tactic card: Every time you build a wall you may learn a tactic for your armies. Tactics allow special movements for your units, like flank attacks, retreats, and some others.
-Factions: Factions may change a bit some units, buildings, or other rules to add more variety to every game and make it more replayable.

All those suggestions add more complexity to the game, which I don't know if that's something it needs.

[palmermcmath]

Awesome, it's certainly looking good and the nice pieces certainly help its table presence. I also love some streamlined board game rules and the simplicity is great as well. And additionally as everyone else here I'll just toss in my 2 cents...

Aesthetics - Sea vs land needs more contrast, as does Stone vs Iron

Comeback Mechanism - Infantry killed respawn in a colony or next to a colony, When an opponent builds a colony draw a card, If there's a 3+ player mode a respawning comeback mechanism is necessary as in so many classic wargames the first person to lose is dogpiled which is no fun

Incentivizing Expansion - First colony is cheaper? Start with cavalry? One resource is much rarer than the others?

Nerfing Cannons & Blockades - When captured they're permanently kept by the other player, When surrounded by an Infantry & Cavalry they're Immobilized (incentivizes unit diversity), And imo but the economic deprivation tactic is maybe too brutal so for each turn blockading you must discard a card

Map Variety - Perhaps a hex that just gives 1 VP? A Deep Water Port which gives double harbor bonus, Impassable Mountain which creatures chokepoints, Or perhaps make 1 of the resource hexes much rarer than the rest

The Heretical Suggestion, Reintroducing Dice - Units can always take another single unit, but can roll 1d6 to take on two units but if it fails it's destroyed (obviously), taking on an Infantry + another on a 4-6, Cavalry + Cav/Cannon on a 5-6, Cannon + Cannon on a 6. Imo this would only add to the combat experience because it allows someone unpredictably to push their luck or be reliable & transparent, Maybe just put a "adding dice variant" in the back of the rulebook and giving the game a few d6 wouldn't add too much to its cost

[milovegas]

During early covid days, I made a similar concept. Catan, but with some improvements on the luck of resource accumulation, and initial placement and also adding in combat similar to risk.

It used a regular d6 die to collect from a space around each settlement corresponding to a 1 for the top right hex and then going around in a clockwise rotation for all 6 hexes surrounding a settlement.

This gave you more resources and that made it perfect to spend on troops. Troops rolled different dice and sometimes had different rules like horses had more movement, priests convert enemies when they roll higher instead of killing them, wizards roll a d20 but can’t be on the same space as other troops to form an army, and other fun little things. Plus each player could choose different fantasy factions (dwarves, gnomes, goblins, Sasquatches, etc.) and there were special peoples cards to give more bonuses. Definitely had some issues but was fun! Hope your game can answer some design flaws in my system and give the world its long awaited risk-catan hybrid

[Halrax_]

Thinking about gameplay loops, where positive loops help players who are ahead and negative loops help players who are behind.
Generally games should have negative feedback loops either helping behind players or hurting ahead players in order to prevent snowballing.
Some ideas:
Colonies should be destroyed rather than captured, forcing the attacking player to defend the tile long enough to rebuild the colony (and any walls and/or harbor).
Starting colonies should have walls to prevent rushing and taking it.
Having to move a long distance to eliminate players means players who are behind can instead focus on troops rather than roads or ships.
Limiting hand size to ten cards (or some other fixed number) means players with three colonies will likely have to discard cards after harvesting, and so have more choice of what to do but can’t completely outproduce players with one or two colonies.

Side note: might want to change name to settlements, outposts, or another name with less problematic connotations.

[Space-]

I absolutely love the system you have for resource harvesting. My biggest gripe with Catan was no matter if I put it on something that's statistically likely to be rolled a lot or not, I never seemed to get much of anything in a lot of games. This system seems much more consistent, really only punishing players that don't sprawl out to get a bunch of resources.

I also always love seeing / hear game developers express excitement to see how players play the game!

[DaigotsuSoetsu]

TL:DR "What if I remade Catan but it didn't suck" Only kidding, I try to absorb as much game dev as I can on youtube. Actually finishing one of my game ideas is on my bucket list for sure~

[JCPRuckus]

The answer to the water problem is either to build the water first, or after building everything move swap all water tiles not in the largest body of water with the closest tile adjacent to the largest body of water starting with the furtherest (with any luck this will connect some of the closer ones without having to move them).

[CarlToonist]

What if the water hex tiles were on a seperate board that gives an outline of where the land tiles go? Possibly a neoprene mat. Then place the land tiles on top of the water mat. This would make the land tiles more stable (they wouldn't slide around on the neoprene) and it should eliminate the battle issue that comes with randomizing the tiles. You could build two main (or more) islands with an ocean in between them. I believe this would also give a cool 3D effect as having the water lower than the lands. Just a thought. Nice production and explination. I wish you all the best with your game design.

[MBHpower]

Oh and for a victory condition I recommend another faction maybe yellow their are 3 victory types conquest where you take all your enemys land or build victory with 4 or maybe 5 Of your own settlements not conquered settlements