Walk through the Grove

Continued from Exploring Verdant Grove

I made some rough prototypes using the  Medium Hex Tiles template from The Game Crafter. Holding them in my hand, it becomes apparent that they are very medium indeed. They will need to be the Large Hex Tiles in future iterations. But that learning is part of the reason to make these physical prototypes.

I used the same picture I’ve used on the Scenic Cards, the Icons that I came up with to signify race and location, and I put a blank spot in the centre for making notes during this design phase. You can still see how the cards fit together, but there will be room to keep track of things whilst sorting out the mechanics. I also added a purple edge to the sides of the cards that don’t touch other cards. This will make a ring of purple around the negative spaces where the Naiads are to be found.

At the moment I think the board gets expanded as the characters explore Verdant Grove (like any Tile Placement game). A red pawn here denotes a Gnome, who is starting on the Water/Gnome Tile. He then moves into the Tree/Gnome Tile and it gets added.

Moving to the Earth/Gnome Tile next, and he has completed a set of Gnome Tiles. I don’t know what the advantage of this is yet, but I want something to tie to the game play of Scenic.

Perhaps it’s not about making a set, but you gain the resources of the tiles that are connected to yours. So in this instance, the red pawn gets access to a Gnome/Water resource (a plant for Naiad food?) and a Gnome/Tree resource (lumber to make a crate?)

Player 2 is a yellow pawn, which denotes a Sprite, and is starting on the Earth Sprite Tile. I think it should start as it’s own separate tile, rather than get attached to the Earth Gnome Tile, that the red pawn is currently sitting on. As the Sprite moves down, the Tree/Sprite Tile gets added. Then it moves down, and the Tree/Gnome Tile is moved from the its original position, as there is only 1 copy of each tile.

Now the red pawn no longer gets to collect the Tree/Gnome resource.

On the next move, the red pawn moves back up to the Tree/Gnome tile, so the tile is replaced to his group of three, and as the yellow pawn is standing on that tile, it comes along with it.

The yellow pawn is now separated from its previous tiles, so that it no longer has access to the Tree/Sprite resource, or whatever other benefit that tile offered.

Does it have access to the resources of the tile that it is now connected to? Seems best that the answer is no. Do we need a way of keeping track of what tiles you are connected to at the end of your turn, so that you can see where you are when it’s time to collect? Maybe little coloured chits that match your pawn, that you place on the tiles? Is that going to be a pain? Being able to hold the physical tiles and actually play with them has shown all sorts of different things that had not occurred to me when I was just thinking about it in an abstract way.

Here’s the 9 tiles all in play, with a blue pawn representing a Nymph.

Once all the tiles have been interconnected in this way, the spacing for them should be set, but they can still be moved. For example, if the red pawn is trying to enclose one of the negative spaces to find a Naiad, he would move to the left, to the Sprite/Water tile.

And separate the yellow pawn from all the other resources. The red pawn then moves down to the Water/Nymph tile to completely enclose the negative space, and try to collect a Naiad.

However, on the next move the yellow pawn moves up to the Earth/Nymph square, which takes it from it’s current space, breaking the circle and bringing the blue pawn up to the top of the newly configured board.

I actually think this could be really interesting, because if the blue pawn was trying to do something with the tiles where he was situated (and obviously it was, because we’re playing a game), they can’t simply move the tile back to where it was to carry on. They need to either move back down through Verdant Grove to where they were, or recreate the tile layout again, by moving up and bringing all the tiles to the top. The board will definitely have the capacity to move around the table.

Time to work on the resource and Naiad collecting mechanics.

Continued in Modular, but Static, Hex Board

One Reply to “Walk through the Grove”

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