Developments in Korash - July 2020

Art, design, rules, byzantine legal considerations and the complications of not having hands!

We progress on to alpha version 0.40.

Firstly, new art. The ever-talented and professional Mr. Paul Takahashi of Twinscale has provided finalised Chrome Hand images, as well as those for the Sandship (aka. Eternal Nomad), Korashi Stronghold & Dust Flag's Wurming-Rig. Images below - aren't they beautiful?

More of Paul's work here: https://www.instagram.com/paul.takahashi/.

Next, design. I've finished the next iteration of designs for the tactic and territory cards. Creative Commons media (non-attribution, reusable for commercial purposes) is truly a gift from the many (or one?) gods (god?). The lovely paper, metallic & desert textures you see below are examples of such media, and mean that light-pocketed amateur designers such as myself have a chance in hell at produce semi-quasi professional items. All in all i'm quite happy with them. They're borne out of the rounds of playtesting that v0.3 underwent, and the consistent feedback that the old greyscale designs where just too hard to interpret and distinguish between. Here's hoping these solve some of those issues.

You'll note that 'Pay X' (a term that meant 'tap a unit' that turned out to be baffling to the point of unintelligibility for my poor playtesters) is now replaced with a little slanted 'E' symbol - more on that below...

Onto rules, and issues legal.

So, a thankyou to my learn'd playtesters and the https://boardgamegeek.com/ community in informing me that 'tap' - the term for turning a card 45 degrees to indicate that it is being in some way temporarily expended - is actually legally patented by Hasbro... Or wizards of the Coast... Or Richard Garfield... Or it was patented, but that patent has expired...

Clearly, there is some confusion - largely on my part - about the specifics of this issue. While the consensus amongst friends and the wider community seems to be that although said patent (whoever it is that might own it) is indeed expired, in matters legal one shouldn't test fate. As a result, the established wisdom is that one simply should not use the term tap in their card game (lest you risk Richard Garfield manifesting bodily in your home and dealing you 20 points of unpreventable legal damage).

As a result, 'Tap' in Tribes of Korash is now 'Exhaust', and 'Untap' is now 'Ready'. In addition, you'll see on the cards above that 'Pay X' is gone (which is probably for the best), and a slanted 'E' replaces it - this is the new symbol for Exhaust. Personally, I quite like it; and incidentally, all custom font designs (including the new Exhaust symbol) in ToK I created with the help of Glyphter, a fine in-browser font design tool which I highly recommend - https://glyphter.com/.

Finally, hands. Oh how useful they are.

An issue which I thought of far too late with the new Chrome Hand art is thus - 'how the devil do wheeled units of this faction do anything?' In a game where one third of the the time your units are interacting manually with the objects at various locations - opening doors, pulling levers, digging ore, and so on - units such as the Highway Drone and Destroyer (both wheeled Chrome Hand units) are at a disadvantage in that they DON'T HAVE HANDS.

Why this didn't occur to me as an issue earlier, I do not know. Possibly it did, and I never wrote it down for my future self to consider (designers: always take notes). The result is that i'm now left with perhaps three potential solutions:
A. Leave it be, and hope that players never question how a limbless wheeled robot opens doors.
B. Go back to Paul and commission some amendments to the original pieces, possibly adding articulated, serpentine robotic 'tentacles' (think Dr. Octopus) to these units to make them capable of object interaction.
C. Make these units 'Simple.'

'Simple' is a unit ability I wasn't intending to introduce until at least game complexity 2 (the alpha and the early complete game version it will develop into are complexity 1), and reads as follows:
"Simple: This unit can't use territories' abilities."

The ability was originally conceived to cover units such as hounds, wurms, and, indeed, certain robots, that lacked the dexterity, intelligence and/or inclination for the complex interactions that using territory abilities entail. If I do introduce it into complexity 1, it will be with the note that Chrome Hand is a faction to be chosen once you've played a few games already - something of a 'complexity 1.5' faction (similar to how the 'Eternal Nomad' platform is currently regarded as an 'advanced' choice over the more basic 'Korashi Stronghold').

Based on earlier playtesting, adding additional rules, even those as basic as 'simple', can add a layer of unnecessary complication to the game when players are new, and already grappling with a fairly complex ruleset. What I will decide, I am not yet sure - though am currently leaning towards option B (return to Paul).

Korash continues to form from the mists of creative endeavour and forward blundering. More soon.

- Eskalat (aka. Paddy Boylan)