Dragon Dance Art and Playtesting

I've mostly been focussed on Dragon Dance again this week. After a busy January finishing off the physical copies of Zombology it felt good to crack on with Dragon again.

I made a second version which replaced last week's hand-scribbled version on the train on Tuesday on my way down to Sheffield for my now six-monthly hospital visit. It was pretty much the same as the hand-scribbled version, with a couple of tweaks based on the games I had at Newcastle Playtest and then again with Gav in the office.

On Thursday I got to try out the new version with Amaury, who had played the 2014 version a couple of weeks ago. Unlike Gav (who preferred the new version), Amaury preferred the old one, he found the new one less strategic. In a good discussion after our three games we came up with some ideas, in particular to give the dragon more exciting options (the dragon cards are the moment are all pretty similar).

Interestingly, giving the dragon more exciting options was some of the feedback I received back in November 2014 when I was making the first few versions during NaGa DeMon. Clearly, I need to pay more attention to the feedback I'm getting.

Later in the week I had an evening to myself while The Wife was out and I started getting to grips with some artwork for the new version. With separate cards now for long and short range I can make the card backs a bit more informative, so I want the cards to represent what your opponent sees when you initially play them face down. So the short range cards are a knight's helm (see below) with the eyes peering out, and the dragon's eye up close, while the long range cards are a full view of the knight and the dragon.

Obviously this is a very early work in progress version, but I'd like any feedback you have.

In other news, I'll be in Milford, Massachussetts all of next week for work. I've set myself a goal of getting the Print on Demand version of Zombology finished in February. Thanks to being up around 6am (or slightly before) most days in the UK, I'm likely to wake very early while I'm in the US, so I reckon I can finish off the graphic design on the computer in my hotel room between the hours of 3/4 and 7am every day, so hopefully that might be a second goal successfully ticked off this year! I've not got any travel this week, so I can try to either do another version of Dragon or get a headstart on the Print on Demand Zombology one night this week.