Blood and Bronze: Actual play! Woo!

[blankshield]

(well ok, playtest)

Blood and Bronze passed the first test with flying colors: It was fun to play. Everything else is details.

The cities were Corinth, Argos, Athens and Thebes. One thing I really like about writing down the histories is that it gives a great account of play. And when we read them out at the end of the game we had an audience that said it was really fun to listen to the stories.

Corinth:
(boasts)
The army of Corinth razed Sparta to the ground and sowed their fields with salt.
Sisyphus built three temples to Apollo, a palace to glorify his name and mighty walls about his city. All were forced to acknowledge that he was truly a king without peer.
(The age of Legends)
Year one: Belleraphon promises to ride with the priests of Hermes to burn Athena's temple at Athens.
Sisyphus, offended by Oepidus' treatment of his parents, swears to see him dressed in rags and hung from his own walls, but is thwarted when Oedipus finds allies in every other city of Greece.
Year two: Inachus promises to wed his daughter to Inachus of Argos.
Instead, when he sees Theseus in front of his walls calling out Bellerephon for his arrogance, he gives his daughter to Theseus instead. (Treachery!)
Sisyphus acheived his dream, and hanged Oedipus from his own walls.
The army of Corinth swelled from the ranks of Thebes, and became without peer!
Year Three:
Sisyphus scorns Inachus for his anger over a mere woman, and burns down his hall.

Argos:
(boasts)Perseus disdains mortal work, and only performs tasks ordained by the gods. He is truly without peer among heros.
Inachus vows to burn the temples, halls and mightly walls that Sisyphus has built.
(the age of Legends)
Year one: Argos will accompany Corinth in their war against Athens.
Perseus calls Herakles out and beats him like a dog.
Year two: Agrees to marry Sisyphus' daughter to heal the rift between them.
When Sisyphus instead gives his daughter to Theseus, Hera is wroth at the insult to her king, and sends Perseus to chastise Corinth. Belerephon gets in the way and is sent back to Sisyphus battered and bleeding.
Year three: Agrees to assist Athens make war on Corinth.
Hera whips her people into a frenzy and they burn the Corinthian temple of Apollo to the ground.
Year four: Perseus teaches Theseus to keep in his place.
Bragging: Argos has never lost a war!

Athens:
(boasts)Our army pisses on Spartans, we are without peer!
Athena has no need of oracles or messengers, she is warrior and wisdom in one. She is without peer!
(the age of Legends)
Year one: Attacked the feeble army of Thebes and destroyed them!
Year two: Theseus will be blessed by Hermes when he rides to task Bellerephon for his arrogance.
Theseus is seen from afar approaching Corinth, and rather than lose his hero, Sisyphus offers Theseus his virgin daughter instead. Theseus is appeased. (peanut gallery comment: Score!)
Athena attempts to chide Hermes but is laughed from the halls of Olympus by a well-timed comment.
Year three: The army of Athens will lead an alliance of the cities to attack Corinth, who grows prideful.
Treachery! Instead, Theseus rides out alone and thrashes Bellerephon.

Thebes:
(boasts) none recorded
(the age of Legends)
Year one: Agrees to assist Corinth's assault of Athens
Visits the Oracle at Delphi: a sea bird will rise, and from it will burst a new star.
Hermes calls upon alliances mortal, and his priests fight to the very steps of Athena's temple in Athens before being pushed back. (stalemates a without Peer!)
Oedipus also holds fast in the face of Sisyphus' oath to see him hung, and the contest is indecisive (stalemates another without Peer!)
Year two: Hermes agrees to bless Theseus when he goes to chastise Bellerephon
Loyalty! Hermes blesses the son of Athens as he rides out.
When Theseus fails to carry through on his promise to humble Belleraphon, Hermes is angered and leaves a mark on the cheek of Athena. When Athena tries to take him to task for this, she is laughed from the halls of Olympus.
Year three: Agrees to help Athens attack Corinth
the fates of Blood and Bronze deny Argos any wars this year.

------
Mechanics-wise, the game worked fairly well. The hiccups that did appear were easily thrashed out on the spot. The game did show a general trend for tokens to attrite rather than build up, which is not what I'd intended, but I think that's a fairly straightforward numbers fix.

Things tweaked:
The oracle as writ, was rather pointless. Fix: in addition to added 10 to one side of any fight, the Oracle can counter without Peer! and turn that war into a regular 'count the tokens on each side'. Still only one fight in that year.

If you are without peer in an arena, and forget (ie: you call for allies in a war), you immediately forfeit your status and throw the without peer token into the common pot.

The Wars and accusations phase is begun by one of the players taking a token and throwing it back in the pot. Each individual war is concluded the same way, with the accuser player doing the toss. We had a couple situations where a new war started before the last accuser had finished writing the results in history, or rearranged tokens.

If you start a war, and then a betrayal (or loyalty) makes the war impossible (your opponent flips to the same color), it doesn't conclude. however, it also doesn't use up the accusers war for the year; he can start another one later.

To fix the attrition problem, winning a war (excepting if you're without peer) gains the full number of tokens on the losing side's primary arena. The losing side still only loses half of the winners primary arena. Hopefully this will counter the slow spiral to helpless.

We did run into the problem in year 4 where every arena for all the players showed bronze. Should this situation come up, skip the rest of the wars and accusations phase and keep going. Betrayal and Loyalty are your only hope, folks.
This shouldn't happen very often, and was made much more likely by the attrition problem mentioned above: by year 4, no one had tokens in all 4 arenas any more, and there were only 9 arenas with tokens at all.

The only gameplay concern that I'm not sure quite what to do about (or if it needs fixing at all) is that there were a lot of attacks from without peer. It's a tricky one, because while it's really strong right now, in the long run it doesn't get you closer to winning the game. It's possible I just need to make that point in a strategy article or something.

I'll be working these changes into a v1.1 of the rules. Anyone who wants to play Blood and Bronze, just e-mail or reply here, and I'll make sure a copy of the updated rules makes it's way to you.

thanks,

James

[Rossum]

Congrats! It's a great feeling when everything comes together.

About two weeks ago, Judson (Nyarly), Clinton, myself, and two others playtested City of Brass. It overall went pretty well as a playtest. We found some holes and fixed them, so look for a revisted edition from El Clinton soon.

I was tempted to start an IRON GAME PLAYTESTER thread, but felt that was overly ambitious. Who else has gotten a chance to play any of these games?

MDK

[jmstar]

I was *this close* to talking my group into playing The Dinner Party but they chickened out.

[Tobias]

Why?

If it's too scary for them, have them play Companion Fever instead.

In all seriousness - I am curious about tDP play.

[Doug Ruff]

[jmstar]