Talk:Dragonflock

Some thoughts from a few solo games I played recently:

The only issue I have with the game is with flocks moving enemy dragons back a space. If the first player moves a dragon into either the second or fourth space in the middle row on the first turn, the other player is forced to only move dragons on the other side. Otherwise, whichever dragons are moved will just get bounced back in a few turns. It feels like this dictates the early turns for both players since no other play seems worthwhile.

I really like the theme and everything else, though. I think it would work really well if not for the forced mirroring at the start.

One situation wasn't covered in the rules - what happens when a flock moves into a space with a single enemy dragon? I played it that the single dragon is displaced by the flock's controller. - brilk 02:51, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the useful feedback! I'll be pondering your remarks about "forced mirroring." You're right about the lacuna regarding flock movement: a moving flock can displace a stationary lone dragon. I'll have to make that explicit in the rules. --Carthoris 04:13, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I've been contemplating alternate setup configurations to solve the "forced mirroring" conundrum. One that occurred to me is to take the two dragons in the third file and set them up initially as a dispute in the center. That would "motivate" the larger conflict between the clans, and force players to choose between contesting the center (and winning back a dragon from the dispute), or working the wings. What do you think? --Carthoris 14:15, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

I just tried this, and it seems like the first player gains an advantage by flocking in the middle. If he does, it actually prevents the second player from forming a flock at all for a long time. I'm not sure that this is really a problem, though, and the game definitely felt better starting with a dispute in the middle.

This game was also the first one where I tried to return the dragons to their starting side, since I somehow missed that in the rules. I always stopped when the last village was burned. The returning part doesn't seem to work right now. It's always possible to keep at least one enemy dragon in a dispute so that it can't move. Disallowing disputes once one player has lost all three villages or making it so that dragons only have to get away from the two enemy rows are some potential options to fix this. - brilk 23:23, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Maybe the goal should be limited to destroying the towns and getting out of the hostile dragon territory: i.e. none of your dragons can still be in the far rank of the board. You can declare victory at the end of any turn. One thing I've noticed with the current victory conditions is that all towns are always destroyed by the end of the game, which is kind of cute in its way, but lacks variety. --Carthoris 13:57, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I've done a little more playtesting, and I'm sure that both of these changes are improvements. It seems to me like the original "full retreat" requirement doesn't give any real chance of winning to the player who devastates his enemy's towns second, but does raise the hazard of stalemate. Better to just have it as a shorter and more decisive game, I think. --Carthoris 01:21, 3 March 2012 (UTC)