Sunday, September 9, 2012

Fixing Megaman NT Warrior Battle Net Board Game

I've got a copy of this game

I bought it years ago because it was only a few bucks and the figures were awesome and dammit I love megaman exe. Unfortunately, the game was quite flawed, but there were some elements of it that I really liked.
 One of those elements is the battlechip system. Each player has a different PET device to plug the chip cards into, so some cards work better for specific characters. Its a very cool gimmick.
Unfortunately, my copy of the game had a production error making megaman and protoman's PET devices the same.
(see the two on the right)
Obviously I couldn't let this stand, so after comparing the stats of a bunch of the cards I decided protoman should be the one to modify.
there. all better.

With my component woes out of the way it was time to turn next to the most glaring flaw in the game's design; awful Roll-to-move gameplay.
In my opinion this game is a definitive case of roll-to-move ruining a game.
Look at this gameboard. I assume the purple spaces in the middle are starting points. (nothing actually specifies where the starting points are, so I can only assume) If you roll low there is no way you are going to win this game. There's no in-between detours you can take if you ever roll less than 4. It's just terrible.

I decided to remedy this by adding 2 supplementary rules.

1. If you roll a 1 or 2, you may move and add 2 to your HP.
2. On your turn you may sacrifice HP to move extra spaces, 2HP=1move.

The HP in this game is important, but not as important as getting around the board. Its an easy fix and adds some decision-making to what would be just bland navigation.


Now Ive got an improved boardgame that I can playtest later, but whats this? The box takes up so much shelf-space! Even though the board folds down to a 4th of the size!


Much better. everything fits nicely with no chance of pieces getting crushed, and that's literally half the shelf-space. Hooray!

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