Play testing Witchin' Hour some more.
Last week I played some more Witchin’ Hour test games. The rules seem to be solid enough so that most of the games run smoothly and there are just minor changes or clarifications needed.
Last weekend I turned 41 and invited some friends over for beer and games. The perfect excuse to let them test Within’ Hour. I had set up 2 tables, one with some fantasy scenery and one with a more Caribbean/Piraty – look.
Matthijs and Jan Willem played on the pirate table with Matthijs as a pirate captain/witch hunter and his crew versus Jan Willem’s native witches and henchmen. Since their table had a lot of water and hills they encountered some problems with the swimming and climbing rules which needed to be clarified and/or re written. Furthermore they found some minor errors in the finer details of the shooting rules and a probable unbalance in some of the spells. But apart from that the game went well (although Matthijs’ crew was kind of wiped out).
Me and Jacob played with standard fantasy gangs. Jacob brought his old Mordheim witch hunter gang along so I played the witches. We also found some minor flaws in the details of rules that needed clarification or adding, but the main goal I had here was to see how the flying broom and some spells would work and if they needed some adjustments in terms of points cost and descriptions. The witch on her flying broom was shot down in the first turn, so what I learned from that was how NOT to use that particular item.
Flying witch… dead witch. 
Henchmen. 
Dogs are eating one of the cultists. 
The witch hunter and priest lead their henchmen onwards.
One of the biggest changes we decided was needed was for players to pass their turn over to the other player. After some discussion about how this would work we came up with a workable solution that I could use.
All in all we had great fun and it was very productive. Jan Willem also had a nice surprise: he had designed tokens for the game and had them made. Whoohoo!
A few days later Arjan came over for another test run. He had played the game once before and was eager to test the witches some more. We could profit from he improvements made earlier that week so the game worked even better than before. Still, we found some finer detailing would be needed here and there and I had to take a serious look at spells/items and their points cost. These changes have all been implemented in the past couple of days and I am currently re-working the layout of the document. I am hoping some more players will want to test the rules (try to break them actually) so that I can refine them even further before I start writing the scenarios.
Archer with townfolk. 
They move into position. 
Townfolk vs. Fireball.
