1. Simple dexterity - City player usese blocks to build buildings and defenses in some fashion. Monster player gets some turns to flick a monster token into them, or otherwise do something dexeritous to try to knock them down. Carnage! Fun!
2. Channel-Based Dexterity - A little trickier to describe, but the board would have some channels in it, little lowered grooves, that the defender uses to flick units onto the board, from the side. These would be layed out like streets, with raised, vulnerable buildings between them. The monster player tries to flick along the flat surface, avoiding the defenders that have been flicked into place, to knock down buildings. Seems like the gameplay might be too simple for the expense of producing some insane shit like this.
3. Flick/Magnets Dexterity - The monster player flicks the monster around on the board, while the defending player uses a magnetic stick to control his units from below, trying to impede the monster's progress. This might even be real time!
4. Closed-eyes drawing - One more dexterity one, these sort of lead one to the next to the next. There's some board game that uses this for ship navigation. Basically, the monster player closes their eyes and traces a path across the board, as their move. Depending on what the City player has done, this might present some negative effects, places where the monster player's turn might end, or allow the city player to screw with the drawing process in one way or another. I like the way that the monster might be stiffled for turn after turn, but then just bust out and wreck everything in one splashy go.
5. Memoir 44 Lite - Now lets move into non-dexterity ideas, just a couple for now. The city player has cards that allow them to activate different kinds of defenses, in different ways, in different parts of the city. For example: each plane unit on the board can move any number of spaces in a straight line; move any tank squad up to 4 spaces; fire a big bomb on any space (damaging the monster and any surrounding buildings). The monster, meanwhile, has a series of basic and special moves. For example, move 5 spaces in any one direction; knock over an adjacent building; grab an adjacent unit and throw it at any other unit in sight, destroying both.
I generally like this card model for these reasons:
- A way to differentiate and balance asymetrical sides
- Limiting a player's options on a given turn, allowing for many possible effects with a mimimum of anaysis being possible.
- Similarly, allowing for a wide variety of moves, by being able to summarize their effects on the cards.
- That does-he-have-the-card-he-needs-to-wreck-me calculations.
That last one leads me to the big sub-decision of this approach, whether to have a predictable deck or not (see previous post). There could be big splashy decks with lots of splashy effects, but ability to strategize about your opponent's possible reactions would sure be hurt, especially early on.
On the other hand, it could be sort of a compelling strategy game with set decks, where you had to reason whether your opponent could reasonably be holding a 9 or 10 card, after all the chances he had to use one in the last few turns, for example. Not sure what predictable decks would look like in a game like this. Perhaps something like this for the city player:
- 3 each of Tank-1, Tank-2 and Tank-3. Each allows you to select and move the appropriate number of tank units and attack with them. Similarly, there would be Rocket and Jet cards, 1-3. The 1 cards might provide some bonus to that one unit, to allow for those cards to be more tactically interesting.
- 2 each of 2 kinds of special cards. Bombs, which hit the monster and wreck everything nearby, and Assault, which allows you to choose any 4 units, move them each one space, and attack with each.
You could do a monster deck this way, with move cards 2-4 spaces, charge in one direction cards 4-6 spaces, jump 3-5 spaces, with a couple specials, but it doesn't feel right. It seems sort of boring, especially because you only have one guy to work with. There could be some hybrid solution, where the city player has a hand of 5 fairly standard cards, from a 30 card deck. Meanwhile, the monster player could have a 2-card hand, basically 2 choices on a given turn, from a mere 10 card or so deck, and the city player has a reminder sheet about them. And each provides an effect with far more options left to designate afterwards.
I mean, we are getting deeply asymetrical now, but I think building this concept around a clean-as-possible core could provide a really interesting experience, doing justice to how different it really is to be a rampaging monster, versus a general in charge of the defending army.
Aside: Pacing Philosophy
I wanted to raise 2 underlying principles when I think about this design, at least with regards to its non-dexterity versions. I like the idea that the City player will eventually win, if the game goes on long enough. They just need to thwart the monster long enough, until either the monster is slain via accumulated damage, or some timer harkens the arrival of magic technology or a savior defender monster, or whatever. So they try to contain and control the monster, while the monster makes increasingly desperate gambits to destroy the key building, or break through to the other side of the board, or otherwise achieve some goal that might be achieved at any moment.
The second principle stems from this, and that is that the City player should never be truly sure that their line or formation or plan is safe. They might feel like they have set things up pretty well, but should be saying "as long as he doesn't...", and must strategically decide which risks to take. Perhaps this might be enacted with a 15 card monster deck, 5 of which are removed from the game, and the game is over after 10 turns, when the monster has used the remainder. For example, just a thought.
6. Asymetrical Robo-Rally - After that marathon, one last one. Each player has their own deck, draws some number of cards, chooses some subset of them, and commits face-down, in order. Each player, then reveals their first card and enacts them simultaneously. So, yes. Roborally.
Philisophically, it is similar to the previous suggestion, in that each side has a very different deck, and wondering what cards your opponent has can be cause for worry. It also adds an additional level of outguess each turn, and it allows for more big, splashy turns, improving on the inching-along, I-move-a-little, you-move-a-little, feel of the previous direction.
Not sure what the deck composition would be here, but it would likely be fairly predictable, with a couple splashy special cards worked in to keep people on thier toes. Certainly, each player should have some reasonable notion of what is in their opponent's deck, and what they need to worry about.
I think there might be a good game here. Some of the dexterity games could be fun, but sort of trashy, lacking in depth and replay value, as least out of the fairly primitive things I've come up with so far. There are still a lot of little details to square away in the more traditional approaches, and it might be difficult to keep those designs elegant in the face of such a tantalizing thematic situation, but I like both of those directions in some intuitive sense. Asymetry is fun, if you can pull it off.
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