August 29th Special Playtest Day at Gameology AAR

We had 5 members in attendance for our Special 5th Saturday Playtest Day at Gameology:

We decided to concentrate on two scenarios. First, we set up “Meeting in the Jungle”, a small 5 turn scenario on Board 36 featuring Marine Raiders designed by Dave Myers. Blair Bellamy and Eric Visnowski paired up for one playing and me and Scott Thompson paired up for the other. All of us were quite impressed with this one, and between the four of us we couldn't think of a single criticism or recommended change. What a great little scenario!

After the first set of playings, Scott had to cut out, but by then Kyle Li arrived. Our second set of playtests was an Eastern Front scenario designed by the late Steve Sulzby named “You Dirty Little Serafimovich”. On paper, this scenario didn't look that interesting; a company of German infantry supported by 3 StuG's attacking 8 Russian squads. But we were all pleasantly surprised. It has an interesting board configuration and a nice balance of forces. There's some tough choices for both sides, and we all thought it had decent replayability. This one has a lot of potential.

We had our usual excellent lunch at The Hat, and because the store closed late, we sat around shooting the bull until about 10:30. It was an enjoyable and very productive playtest day.

One last comment relating to playtesting… Our new playtest system is producing some impressive results. We've already moved a couple of scenarios to the 'complete' column, and we have 2 to 3 more that are pretty close. Unlike the playtest process we used for previous Melee Packs, this time the playtesters are… well… playtesting. In previous packs, too much playtester time was wasted working on scenarios that weren't entirely thought through or were undeveloped, and burn-out became a serious problem. The playtesters' job should be to make sure the scenario is fun and balanced, not try to fix broken scenario ideas. Our new playtest system leaves the design and development of the scenarios up to the designers and developers, where it belongs, and as a result playtesting has been an entirely different experience. If you have some time and want to try some playtesting, but can't make to a Game Day or Playtest Day, please let me know. We have some good scenarios that are very near completion.