Many of you have played the few different versions of this map and I'm just not sure what the final verdict should be on it.  I don't really care about it except that, if I put it to review, I will probably write a description which could be fun.  Does anyone who has played it have any preference as to what I should go with?

Reduce Ship bonuses?

Limits on craps or not?

Total fog or medium fog?

Card scale?

I've seen good and bad things about all of them so I am putting it out to you, the Wargear public to decide what I should do with the map.  Remember, trashing an idea I don't care about does not bother me.

Or how's about changing it up altogether and starting everyone in the ships with nothing in the crabs, not having the ships be capitals but you only get a Horde! if you own a ship?
You'd get double Hordes! with more than 1 ship but nothing if you don't have one. I'd have an increasing card scale to give people a comeback chance.

P.S. I really like my new pic!

RiskyBack wrote: Or how's about changing it up altogether and starting everyone in the ships with nothing in the crabs, not having the ships be capitals but you only get a Horde! if you own a ship?
You'd get double Hordes! with more than 1 ship but nothing if you don't have one. I'd have an increasing card scale to give people a comeback chance.

That seems to make sense, and may even goes with the theme even better.  Would be quite a hit if you lost your ship (and thus all your bonuses) though, which is both good and bad. 

That's a lot of continents too!

RiskyBack wrote: Or how's about changing it up altogether and starting everyone in the ships with nothing in the crabs, not having the ships be capitals but you only get a Horde! if you own a ship?  You'd get double Hordes! with more than 1 ship but nothing if you don't have one. I'd have an increasing card scale to give people a comeback chance.

I like it, but wouldn't the first person to get two ships probably win?  Maybe a negative bonus to partially offset the extra hordes bonus?

In the spirit of doing something for no apparent reason whatsoever, how would the placement go if I used BAO territory selection with 5 players and only 5 territories? Everybody would select their order and then when turn order is picked out people would get their selection based off of their turn order, rights? I don't know if that is interesting or pointless.

As far as WW's point....yeah, I don't know. Inspiration will hit me about that while I am doing the bonuses or maybe if I go out drinking tomorrow night. Can you believe that I get a lot of map ideas when buzzed? Except Congress vs Ninja. I was sober then, just bored.

RiskyBack wrote: In the spirit of doing something for no apparent reason whatsoever, how would the placement go if I used BAO territory selection with 5 players and only 5 territories? Everybody would select their order and then when turn order is picked out people would get their selection based off of their turn order, rights? I don't know if that is interesting or pointless.

The order is the same, but who goes first for territory selection is Random.  So it's pretty much Random anyways, might as well just leave it Random and not BAO.

Example:

Turn Order is Player A, B, C, D

Territory Selection could be A, B, C, D or B, C, D, A or C, D, A, B or D, A, B, C

I'm still not a huge fan of this logic (or I think it should be expanded): http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/483

RiskyBack wrote:

Many of you have played the few different versions of this map and I'm just not sure what the final verdict should be on it.  I don't really care about it except that, if I put it to review, I will probably write a description which could be fun.  Does anyone who has played it have any preference as to what I should go with?

Reduce Ship bonuses?

Limits on craps or not?

Total fog or medium fog?

Card scale?

Possibly reducing the ship bonus might allow for more even games. as it is now there's a serious flaw (was going to PM you this wknd about it).

i kinda like the limit of 10 on the crabs. didn't think i would at first, but kinda do now. but it also makes it difficult to gain the ship from someone. so maybe a limit of 7ish on the boats if you're going to keep the 10 limit

HAVE to have the total? fog (where you can't see the crabs unless you own them). pointless to be able to see the crab next to you. its a geometric placement so it's not tough to figure out where the crabs are. and if all else fails look at the design page. HAVE to keep it lookin Riskay!

Haven't run into cards as a factor on the board yet, they never take that long.

would be an interesting trial to see the 5 start out in the ships and go from there...

New version testing on the Games Page. Start with 20 in the ships, ships are capitals with max of 20, crabs have a max of 10, return to attack and placement, Total Fog.
Do you think you can handle The Riskiest Catch?!

I think instead of writing an about section I may just make a video of me doing a Mike Roe impersonation and splice in scenes from the show along with clips from games. That would be funny! I just don't know how to grab movie clips of game history on this site. The way I did it on ToS doesn't seem to work.

sounds like an awesome idea Risky!

There is a new version up for beta testing in the new games list. Did some gameplay and graphical enhancements.

So I submitted this for review and we played a game and I have watched the movie and I still don't know what to say about it. There is debate about whether the Southern Boats have an advantage because they are isolated or a disadvantage because they are so close to each other they get attacked right away. I would think those things should balance out but it is hard to tell.
Wallace used Return to Placement beautifully after getting lucky and stumbling on 3 elims in 1 turn! That's just good playing there! He was in the Southern most ship but I don't think that had much to do with his win as Vataro in the Northern most ship was dominating if not for some great play by Wallace.
Anyways, the issue here is that the Reviewers aren't sure and I am not sure and I am also not sure if more playing will prove much. I've played 6 games on it in this version and I think it works but it all depends on the players.
Any thoughts by anybody on what is the direction we should take here? Should it stay in review until we are sure or, since there is a debate, should it be opened up and let the public complain and then I'll do something?

I think you're too passive when it comes to Reviews of your own games. Most other board designers just say "I think this works" and their boards get promoted with a handwave. So I suggest you take that approach.

Wallace went ahead and passed it so the Free Market will decide.
I just try to use the review process correctly. I play test games and when it seems to work I put it up for review and when there are concerns I do state my case about it but if there is no solution, I move on. Rent isn't as pretty as I would like it with all the annoying arrows, but I am very happy I get to play it in open games.
Now, Episode I has been panned in reviews for being unbalanced. I don't really agree with it seeing as how a winning strategy isn't really a bad thing if people would just use it and not go around waving a flag saying "Look what you can do!". Being able to win a map because you've figured out a flaw is a cudos to you, not really a wag of the finger to the map maker. Anyways, I am testing a new version of it now taking suggestions from the reviews and am gonna "Fix" the "Broken" map. Seems to be working and I've eliminated the "Winning Strategy".
P.S. I am using actual Air Quotes as I type this because I live my life out loud!

Do you have four hands, or can you type with your feet?

RiskyBack wrote: Being able to win a map because you've figured out a flaw is a cudos to you, not really a wag of the finger to the map maker. Anyways, I am testing a new version of it now taking suggestions from the reviews and am gonna "Fix" the "Broken" map. Seems to be working and I've eliminated the "Winning Strategy".

As you have said above, being able to break a board should be kudos to the breaker, but then why was there such oppsition to Five (the break was not easy and required intelligence and no specific sequence would actually win, black had to be adaptive).

Even with that said, I am glad to see that you will "fix" episode one (as Five has been "fixed") because the idea and gameplay on the Episode 1 is great if the break is not used.  Once a break to a board has been found I think that it is in the interest of the site, board, and board designer for the designer to fix it so that it is not exploited and still fun to play.

This is more of a general comment to any who care to respond, not directed at Riskyback or Episode 1.

Alpha wrote:
then why was there such opposition to Five

What opposition? You smarties had a field day with figuring it out and hammering away at the best openings for each side, and then once the winning sequence was figured out, steps were taken to correct for it. Aside from my occasional whining about being too stupid to play it well, it seemed to me that feedback to Five was all positive.

I think, without opening up a whole other can of worms, that the issue is that Super Mario Brothers for the Original NES doesn't suck just because there are secret strategies and secret bonuses that people figured out. If someone used the 1st level warp while we were playing, I just adopted it myself, but I didn't read about it in the NES Newsletter, I saw someone do it who had figured it out before I did.
Having a winning strategy for a map is a good thing and you should use it. You'll teach other people by beating them and so on and so on. New players will figure it out and the Circle of Risk will continue. Isn't part of a strategy based game to come up with a winning strategy?
As long as 1 player doesn't start with 100 more units than the other or something like that, I am of the mind that a map that has a winning strategy isn't broken, it's just been solved.
Anyways, I don't want to get into this because I have many times and I just end up getting called a Lazy Map Maker or something to that effect. Actually, I find it encouraging when there is a strategy to my maps other than Wait for Cards, Cash, Eliminate, Win.

Alpha wrote:

As you have said above, being able to break a board should be kudos to the breaker, but then why was there such oppsition to Five (the break was not easy and required intelligence and no specific sequence would actually win, black had to be adaptive).

My opposition to Five was that it involved 0 dice luck, so black could actually never lose, whereas with Episode 1 there was some element of dice luck in which if the Rebels failed at taking the TEP on turn 1, then that could pretty much result in a huge break for the Empire and quite easily lead to an Empire victory.  I'd say there is more strategy involved in a board when there are dice than when there are no dice.

Darts is just about in the same boat I think (although I haven't seen the winning strategy so I haven't re-rated the board), but that is one reason why I rated it lower as well.  Spy vs Spy is similar but with the element of actually rolling dice and obtaining bonuses, for me, it resulted in a higher Rating (a 9).

Thanks for responding, without saying anything more, lets move on or move to a different location since this should be about Risky's The Riskiest Catch and I hijacked the thread.  Sorry Risky.

(I suspected and respect the view-point that a game without dice luck is not for everyone.)