StabCon and Carpe Astra Prototypes

After a good weekend at StabCon, I've spent the day working on Carpe Astra again. StabCon was good fun, I got to play a lot of games, mostly new to me, but not many prototypes. I ended up spending pretty much the whole weekend gaming with Steve, Paul, Andy and Richard (to various degrees - it was a fluid group with people dropping in and out), so we mostly played games that people had brought and wanted to play. I think in hindsight, I'd have been better off setting up on my own table and trying to collar a load of passers by instead if I wanted to get more playtesting done.

I did manage to get Codename: Ancient and Carpe Astra to the table and got some good feedback about both. Codename: Ancient went down well, so well in fact that Steve placed an order (I've not even picked it up yet) and said he'd even buy it without new artwork, which is pretty cool. Carpe Astra was played by Steve (who'd played it before at Beer and Pretzels) and Andy & Toby who hadn't played it before. The feedback was good and Steve thought it had improved in the last couple of months. I'm fairly happy with the scoring now (finally) and I was going back to some old rules regarding the number of pieces allowed on a hex. I think it's better the old way - it's certainly easier to keep track of your network if there's only one agent on each hex.

I've spent today in Adobe InDesign mocking up a new prototype for Carpe Astra. It's high time my version got updated (my one is done mostly with biro and colouring pencils), and this means I can print out a bunch more, for Ted and another playtest group in the US. It's still placeholder art, but it'll give an idea about the layout I'm considering. I've done what I need to on the computer today, tomorrow I'll print it out and then assemble it. I think it's going to be Wednesday or Thursday before I can post the US-bound copies, as I need to do some more spray gluing, for which I'll co-opt my friend's garage again.

In other news, the much delayed June Report will get done tomorrow, honest!