What can I say? I’m a sucker for alliteration.
The concept of this Empire of Venom & Silk board game originally came to me as a random game idea with the following elements:
Mechanics: Cooperative Play, Trading
Theme: Uprising
Victory Condition: Fill in all the spots
Clearly, this is a game about various groups of humans working together to drive out the invading spiders. (I mean, what else could it possibly be about?)
Components
- Game Board: The board represents a large region of Shunadar which has been conquered by the invading spiders. It’s divided into spaces (which are probably hexes in the initial prototype, but might be more organic when it’s done). Some spaces contain resources, which the players need in order to retake the land. Resource include:
- Population: You need people to fight spiders.
- Food: You need food to feed the people.
- Metal: You need metal to turn people into soldiers.
- Milk of the Earth: You need milk to create potions.
- Troop Counters: These counters represent each player’s troops. The counters are color-coded by player and may have stats on them. There are probably multiple types of troops.
- Spider Counters: These counters represent the alien spiders that have invaded the land. There are at least two types of spiders—basic and advanced.
- Nest Counters: These counters represent spots on the board where the spiders have created their nests. This is where new spiders come into play.
- Resource Cards: These cards represent population, food, metal, and milk. Each has its own deck, and players draw them as they collect those resources.
- Spider Cards: These cards drive the game’s “A.I.” and determine how spiders on the board move, gain reinforcements, or perform special actions like casting spells.
- Dice: Your basic six-sided dice, used for combat resolution.
Playing the Game
The game is played in rounds. Each round has a number of phases, which are played through in order.
Resource Phase: For each resource space they control, players simultaneously draw resource cards of that type into their hands.
Turns Phase: The players take turns performing one action per turn, until everyone passes. On your turn, you may do one of the following:
- Trade with another player any number of your resource cards for any number of theirs.
- Spend people, iron, and milk resources to put units into play.
- Different units have different stats and resources costs.
- You may put into play as many units as you can afford for one action, but must put them all into the same space which you already control.
- Spend X food to move X units from one hex into an adjacent one.
Combat Phase: If player units and spiders are in the same space on the board, they fight! (I admit I’m not sure exactly how this will work, but basically, players roll dice based on what types and quantities of units they have in the space. If they roll well enough, some of the spiders are killed and any survivors are pushed out of the space. If not, the player units are killed and/or pushed out of the space. I clearly need to figure this out for the next iteration.)
Spider Phase: Finally, draw and resolve a number of spider cards equal to the number of players. Each spider card says how many spiders to add to the board (such as , “Add two basic spiders to each nest!” or “Add an advanced spider to any empty nest”), and instruction for how they move (“Any spiders adjacent to players units move into those units’ spaces”).
Game End and Victory
Like all good cooperative games, this one’s on a timer. The players lose if the last spider card is drawn. They win when there are no spiders on the board.
Analysis
This design is even rougher than most of the random games that appear on the blog. As I worked through the process of inventorying the components, I realized there was more to the game than I’d originally thought–in a good way; it’s got some serious depth to it. But it means it’ll take more than a couple blog posts to whip into shape. I’ll continue to hack away at it for science of course. Just don’t expect brilliance by the end of the week.
