Welcome back to my series on my overhaul of the Game of Thrones Board Game, which I have graced with the name A Board Game of Thrones: A Game of Thrones Board Game (or “ABGoT: AGoTBG”), because if there’s one thing George R. R. Martin is known for, it’s brevity.
In this post, I’m going to talk a bit about how I structured the game’s turns, my initial ideas for Scheme Cards, the Battle Phase, and the conscription mechanic, all of which are big departures from the base game.
The Phases
Everyone’s favorite part of learning board games is the multiple steps (or phases) of the Game Round!
My first introduction to phases in a tabletop game was Magic: the Gathering, and honestly, this game is pretty similar: there’s an Upkeep phase, an End phase, a Combat phase, and two Action phase, one before combat and one after. However, two new additions to that formula are the Negotiation and Initiative Phases. Here’s the full list of Phases:
- Upkeep Phase: This is where various game effects are resolved and tokens are changed/removed. This is also when players draw new cards from the House, Battle, Scheme, and Crisis Decks.
- Negotiation Phase: During this Phase, players may give other players a Raven Token that signifies a desire to meet with them to talk in private.
- Initiative Phase: This is where players bid cards from their House Hands to determine the turn order for the Round.
- First Action Phase: This is where players manage resources and perform non-combat actions, such as carrying out Schemes, resolving kingdom Crisis cards, and more.
- Army Mobilization Phase: This is where players move their Heirs, Ships and Units of soldiers. Players proceed according to Initiative Order, and move all the Units, Ships, and Heirs they wish to move before moving on to the next player.
- Battle Phase: This is where players take turns engaging in Battles with one another’s Units.
- Second Action Phase: This phase is functionally identical to the first, but some actions may only be taken during this Phase, such as conscripting Units of soldiers.
- End Phase: This is where various game effects are resolved before the start of the next Game Round.
I found during playtesting of the game that each of the Phases ended up provoking different player behaviors:
- Because players receive their Resources during the First Action Phase, they make a lot of planning decisions with their allies. This is where a lot of inter-player trading happens, as well as strategizing about battles.
- The Army Mobilization Phase is one of the most crucial strategic moments in a Round–I’ve seen entire plans to take over Kingdoms fall apart due to one player moving their Units in an unexpected way. In this sense, it’s almost more important than the Battle Phase.
- The Battle Phase is where everything hinges on a combination of cards and dice rolls. There’s a large element of uncertainty in Battles, and this uncertainty scares a lot of conservative players who don’t want to gamble their plans on the outcome of one decisive battle.
- The Second Action Phase is where the outcome of the entire turn is reckoned: who won what battles, whether campaigns can be continued, and what moves players have made. This is also where new Units are created and plans for next turn are made.
During playtesting, I also found that two major issues with these Phases:
- Players didn’t like the ‘private meetings’ introduced in the Negotiation Phase–instead they preferred to talk openly among themselves and make secret plans by whispering, winking, and so on.
- Winning first or last during the Initiative Phase has almost no meaning–there’s only an advantage to going first or last if you know what your opponent’s are going to do. This made the Initiative Phase most trivial.
When designing the game, I found that I really did need an End and Upkeep Phase for keeping track of the game’s mechanics, especially Conscription.
Conscription
Conscription became one of the key new mechanics in the game. In a nutshell, conscription allows players to create Units of soldiers from their territories. Creating these Units requires 200 Gold and 100 Steel, and supporting these Units each Upkeep Phase takes 200 Food.
To conscript a Unit, players must choose a territory to conscript from. Each territory has a Population number, which denotes how many Units can be conscripted there (most territories can only conscript 1 Unit). The combined Population number of a player’s territories represents how many total Units they can conscript.
After conscripting a Unit from a territory during the Second Action Phase, the player must put a Conscription Token on that territory. Conscription tokens stay on those territories for two turns, and until they’re removed, no more Units can be conscripted from that territory.
Conscription is a particularly crucial piece of games design because it shows how time and space can effect a game immensely.
The reason timing is important is because players cannot create Units of soldiers before the Battle Phase of a Round–they have to wait until the Second Action Phase. Why is this important? Two big reasons:
- All players can see how many Units everyone has before going into the Battle Phase. This makes battle-planning for players easier.
- Players are forced to pay at least 1 turn of Upkeep for their Units, rather than being able to create Units, fight with them, and only pay for the surviving Units during the Upkeep Phase.
Here’s a quick example of play:
Alex creates 3 Units of soldiers during his Second Action Phase on Turn 1. Joe creates 2 Units of soldiers. Neither of them can fight with their Units this Game Round because the Battle Phase has passed, but they will be able to do so next turn.
During the Army Mobilization Phase of Turn 2, Alex moves his Units onto one of Joe’s territories. Joe, seeing this, moves his Units onto the same territory to defend it.
During the Battle Phase of Turn 2, Alex has a Battle with Joe. All of Alex’s Units are destroyed, while Joe has 1 surviving Unit. During the Second Action Phase, Alex decides to create 2 Units to replace the ones he’s lost.
During the Upkeep Phase of Turn 3, all players (including Alex) must pay for the Upkeep on their Units, which is 200 Food per Unit. Alex pays his Upkeep (400 Food) and is ready to fight in another Battle.
Another reason time is important is because those Conscription Tokens take two rounds to be removed. This means those territories are essentially inert for an entire Round. Because players prefer to conscript Units from territories that are the closest to the where they want to go (the easternmost edge of the Kingdom, for example), players will conscript from nearby territories first. This ensures that they can carry out their plans immediately.
However, this is where space comes in: players must conscript Units from more distant territories during the next subsequent turn if they want to reinforce their first Units. Because of how the map is laid out, this can cause problems: Units can only move 3 spaces during a Game Round, and most Kingdoms consist of 4-5 territories.
If a player isn’t careful, their second round of reinforcements may not be able to make it to where their previous Units were, or where they’re needed most. This is especially true if a player is controlling two disparate Kingdoms, like Dorne and the Riverlands.
Together, time and space place limits on how quickly players can react to one another and carry out their plans. With only 10 Rounds, every delay can be game-changing.
Conclusion to Part 2
I didn’t cover Battles and Scheme cards in this post like I’d hoped, but that’s because doing initial playtesting for the game brought up a whole new slew of ideas, issues, and design challenges. I’ll be writing up my full takeaways from the initial playtesting in the next post!