Super Villains - New Name, Same Great Taste

We had a very productive round of playtesting of my supervillains game over the weekend. Thanks again to Jeff for his good ideas and enthusiasm for the game. I'm feeling good about the core mechanics of the game. Now its just a matter of balancing all of the variable components, like Headlines, Heroes, and Menace cards.

One major issue we've come across is that the reward for a Destroy action is way better than the reward for a Steal or Ransom. Destroy rewards more Infamy (a lot more), and has become the clear path to victory. It's important that the other choices in the game are also valid paths to victory. I could increase the reward for other types, but more Cash (Ransom) and better abilities (Steal) is never going to trump raw victory points (Infamy from Destroy). To balance the additional Infamy for a Destroy action, Jeff suggested increasing the damage taken from Heroes. I like this idea, and will try it out. In order for it to work, a bunch of other changes will have to cascade to other parts of the game. The Hero deck was working as a time limit for the game. If players draw a variable number of Hero cards for each Plot, I will need to use some other device as a time limit or else the game length will be too random. Headlines are the obvious choice. The size of the Headlines deck (it's 60 cards, way more than one needs for one game) was causing problems due to the randomness of the deck -- a game usually requires a fairly even mix of card types, or else the game can favor one player over the others. Reducing the number of cards used for one game will eliminate the possibility of drawing ten cards of the same type in a row, ensuring a more even mix. I can use a smaller Headline deck as a time limit, and basically kill two design problems with one stone.

Oh yeah, and the name of the game! I'm changing it to MENACE, which I think works better than Villains Wear Spandex. Now I've got to go back and change the labels of all my earlier posts...