Play mod
The Buzz Tour (Bumblebees)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Use of This Year's Theme | #12 | 3.488 | 3.579 |
| Creativity/Uniqueness | #17 | 3.796 | 3.895 |
| Clarity of Rules/Mechanics | #25 | 2.719 | 2.789 |
Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Includes Law of Root?
No
Includes PnP?
Yes
Includes TTS files?
No
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Comments
Really happy to see that you've made a submission here, and you did a phenomenal job!
Your game plan is intuitive and easy to follow, since it's supported so much by storytelling!
They recruit a ton, because they're swarms of bees! As such they like to stick together, and they each can sting you but only the once in a battle! And they wanna sightsee, so your main scoring mechanism is looking at specific sights. But things will get stale if you see the same things!
I basically just simplified some of their gameplay :P but that's just cause it's so easy to remember and follow along with, and I think that's a plus for anyone going against them too! You've also made them contribute to the board state with lots of cardboard and warriors which is always fun.
The sightseeing scoring mechanic is fantastic, and you've built in a lot of contingencies for different maps, player counts, factions etc. A faction that changes sooo much depending on each of these factors is truly special.
Fantastic!
Thanks Tin, I very much appreciate you taking time to share your thoughts here! Yeah you nailed it, that is a super-concise summary of what they are supposed to be doing.
It's true, their recruiting is certainly a strong point of the faction. I hope it is sufficiently countered by their weakened battling due to the Stingy ability, otherwise they could easily become a super-strong policing force despite their theme. Certainly something to keep an eye on and maybe adjust if it were to not work as intended.
Thanks so much for your kind words, means a lot!
For sure, I'm hyped to see if you continue to develop them!
Great job here! The scoring method is simultaneously brilliant (fits the theme perfectly) and user friendly (where can I go to hit as many tokens on the right). It makes me want to go on my own Buzz Tour and see how things shake out!
"Stingy" is a fascinating idea that seemed overly punishing at first, but I can see why it needs to be there. Just curious why you would ever choose to battle, since it mostly seems detrimental to you (unless you were picking off some defenseless cardboard)?
Hi & thank you for your feedback, great to hear your thoughts on the faction.
So I envisioned them as being mainly a peaceful faction (kind of reminiscent of Ghandi in the COIN game), given their thematic role as tourist rather than warriors. Stingy is my attempt of a compromise to give them the opportunity to pick up points from battles and kill of lone warriors where they need to, but not let them be a huge policing force which would be inappropriate for a crowd of sightseers (and which they could be due to warrior count and recruiting prowess).
Thanks for taking the time to sharing your comments, much appreciated!
Love the way these guys score - very clever that if you sightsee a thing the next time it will be woth fewer points
Thanks for the feedback, your compliments are much appreciated!
I love the sight token track and the way it scores, it's super creative! I've not seen anything like that before in a faction and it's very unique. My only suggestion is perhaps it might be worth considering adjusting it based on player count, maybe the lower sections of the track are only used in higher player counts to account for the fact there's more stuff to score from?
I'm not sure if it was intentional, but moving into clearing matching your revealed card is also kinda funky as typically factions like the Birds and Badgers tend to move out of clearings matching cards. I'd be curious how that would play out!
Something else I am curious about is there's no way to get rid of trash tokens currently other than hope other factions destroy them, which other factions might not want to do given how useful card draw is for the bees. Maybe could be something to look into?
Very cool faction thanks for submitting!
Thanks a bunch for your feedback, much appreciated! I did consider adjusting the scoring track based on player count, but I ended up not wanting to over-complicate set-up. It's a very good point thought that it might be worth revisiting something like covering up the first spots of the track in lower player-count games. I'll keep it in mind, thanks for the suggestion!
Matching revealing cards to clearings you move into is very much intentional given the theme that they are looking at the clearings they want to visit next, not the ones they leave behind.
Thanks also for your feedback on trash tokens... it might be something to look at, but the idea there is that how many will be left on the map is going to be a balance between card draw and recruiting... although some fine-tuning might very well be needed. The intention is for them to sometimes be easy point fodder for opponents, given that the bumblebees can't leave warriors behind to guard them due to their ability forcing them to take all warriors when moving...
I'm very grateful for your in-depth feedback, thanks for taking the time to look into the faction so closely! Best of luck for the jam to you
Nice! A tourist faction buddy! I really like the idea of moving around and leaving trash behind as the tour progresses. I think I understand the scoring, you want to go to the clearings that are on the rightmost space of the sight track and once you score that sight is worth 0 vp until you score other sites. Does that mean that mean that in some games the track won't reach all the way up to +3 victory points depending on whether there are landmarks or hirelings in the game?
Anyway really cool faction!
Thank you so much for the comment, I do appreciate you taking your time to share your thoughts!
Yes, that's a perfect summary of the scoring system! In a way, it works like Ark Nova's action selection system. You are correct, unless it's a 6 player game with landmarks and promoted hirelings (a wild idea), the higher spots of the track will remain empty.
Thanks again for your kind words, much appreciated! I'll make sure to check out your entry as soon as I find the time.
Being able to have 18 warriors across the board on turn 1 (6 from setup and 3 revealed to recruit) and ending the turn with 6 cards in hand seems like it might be a bit much, but I love the puzzle of getting to the high value places first, and it provides clear signaling of where you might be going next.
Wow, you guys are so fast with your feedback! Thank you so much, it's very much appreciated.
This is indeed a concern - I'd argue that you would then have spent an entire turn without doing anything for scoring, plus they aren't exactly supposed to be an aggressive faction anyway given that there is Stingy, but you are of course right that 18 is scary. I'll certainly take it into consideration, thank you for your comment.