Codename: Wardens

Wardens of Retallion is the board game that I am working on. Besides being a real board game it is also a game played within the world of my book. This is combinging my love of worldbuilding game game design into one project. This game has a combination of mechanics from some of my favorite games, Carcassonne and Tablut. Both hold very dear places in my heart. I was introduced to them after high school when I spent a year abroad and they always conjure fond memories of that time. 

For those who have never played either of these games, Carcassonne is a worker placement game where each turn a player gets to add a new tile to the game board and expand it in any direction they choose. Tablut is an ancient game played by the Vikings and throughout Scandinavia before the rise of chess in the area. All pieces move the same way but each player has a different objective. Either to get the king piece to one of the corners of the board or to capture the king.  I love the map building aspects of Carcassonne and how the game board is different each time I play. With Tablut I like the simplicity of the rules but the depth of strategy is really fun, anyone can learn it in just a couple of minutes and be playing. These are two aspects I am trying to bring to this game.

Wardens of Retallion, as I am calling it for now, plays similar to Carcassonne at the start of a turn. It is a two player versus game with one player playing as the Wardens and the other player playing as the Wretched. Both players on their turn get to draw a random tile and place it to extend the game board. Next they may place one of their tokens if they wish. Where things change is instead of placing a token they may choose to move one of their tokens instead. The Wardens may move any distance along a road in a turn, the Wretched get to move any distance through the forests in a turn. Tokens may be captured by either side and removed from the game. For the Wretched they must move into a flanking position on opposite sides of a Warden to capture them. The Wardens only need to move into the same tile as a Wretched to capture them. The objective of the Warden player is to keep their Regent token moving and avoiding capture until they draw and place the harbor tile. That is the goal and destination of the Regent. The Wretched player is trying to capture the Regent before they can reach the harbor.

That's it for now. That is a basic outline of the design of the game at the moment. Simple to learn (Hopefully) but hopefully entertaining for beginners and experts alike.

So far I have done two playtests and created a paper prototype. This early in development things are subject to change, and they will change. They always do in game development. In the first playtest I used Carcassonne pieces the pieces divided into two decks one for each player. The forest was represented by the cities and the Cloisters represented special pieces like to start and the objective. I ran into a few issues in the first playtest and made notes for fixes in the next test. 

Setup for first playtest

For the first playtest of the game I just used Carcassonne pieces and made sure to take lots of notes on how it was playing

In the next test I used my paper prototype. This included many differences in pieces. There were more forest pieces and few more pieces with roads. I included more options on the starting pieces and included some road pieces that traveled between forests. This playtest felt more fluid and the turns past pretty fast. One of the issues that I noticed was that there were too many Warden tokens there were not many choices when it came to their movement as there were enough tokens to cover most of the pathways. Because of this the Regent was pretty stationary and not very threatened by the Wretched. For my next playtest I plan on reducing the number of Warden tokens and the player has to move either a Warden or a Regent token.

Second playtest with paper prototype

The paper prototype has been much easier to playtest with, I don’t have to remember which pieces are special

One of the things that I am considering in the design of this game is that I am not an artist so I am trying to keep the game’s art simple and within my capabilities. Since the game is basically a map I am planning on using Wonderdraft to design the tiles. I am not wanting to spend much money on the development of this first board game so I likely won’t be commissioning artists, but that is something I have considered doing for potential future games.

Mock up of tile design

This is a quick mock up I made of what the tiles in the final game could look like. There are a few changes I plan on making. The scale is too msall and the path is way to narrow.

Something else I am considering is selling the game. If I think it is good enough in the end and there is interest shown I am thinking of putting up on The Game Crafter for the public to purchase. I’ll discuss this more as I document more of the development. If you think that it would be something you are interesting in buying please leave a comment on this post, or if you have any other question or comments on the game.