An Alien Defense Board Game

Been inspired to recreate the XCom: UFO Defense base building and financial engine aspects in a board game. If I ever take one of these games out of the idea phase, it would probably be something simpler, this is a good thought exercise and elements from it might pop up in other places.

The basic premise is for each player (2-4) to have start with a basic base, a few personnel - soldiers to fight, workers to build projects and scientists for research project. Each would start with an income as well as immediate finances.

UFO will pop up, players would need to intercept and shoot them down with fighter jets, then send in soldiers to grab artifacts.

Taking these artifacts back to their base, players would research them to gain money and special abilities that would make certain things easier, and give access to new buildings.

Eventually a game end event will occur, such as a mother ship showing up and players would have to work together to defeat it before checking who has made the most points, or something similar.

One of the interesting ideas that came from this exercise is the building / research mechanic: each project would start with a certain number, higher for bigger complexity. Each turn a worker/scientist on the project would place a counter, once the number is reached, the project it done.

Placing more workers would shorten build time, but increase cost, making it an important choice. 

Worker Placement Deck Builder - Now With Auction!

Last couple of weeks have been a little stale as far as my thoughts go on games. Probably the recent job, new classes and with playing Burnout 3 on the PS2.
A game night and some Dice Tower videos have made me think board games again, with some new possibilities on my deck builder - an auction mechanic.

This may not be exactly compatible with previous iterations on the idea - trying to incorporate too many elements for a diluted experience, but it might be worth looking into.

What I am imagining specifically is players building a deck of various resources (wood to lumber, seashells to beads, whatever) and cards enabling them to make these various resources. As each turn passes, a travelling merchant piece is moved forward. When it reaches a predetermined spot (perhaps aided or hindered by certain player actions) a number of new options are put up for auction. Players will then use the resources they collected until that point to bid. While they will gain various improvements to the way they play their deck, or to final scoring, they will bid on what they had earned so far, thinning out their deck of the resources  they still need to continue playing, thus needed to find the right balance.

This auction will occur several times throughout the game until final scoring.

Building a Village

Sketched out a rough idea of how the game could work. How a player wins made a big contribution to this.


The game would start with only a few places to populate with workers: A central hub (village center) which can hold any number of workers in it, and will perform some sort of general action everyone might need to do at some time. I'll need to think on what that might be, probably something to do with excess goods.
There will also be a number of areas in which a player can add raw good cards to his deck.
With enough raw goods, a basic factory could be built corresponding to each raw resources, allowing to pull processed good cards. If a forest produces wood, the sawmill will make planks, ore from mines to steel, etc.

With enough processed goods, the advanced buildings (selected by players before the game began) may be built next. Advanced building will allow to pull cards with various abilities, such as pulling more resources, linking cards together or improving worker abilities.
A player will want to focus on his own buildings, but can use buildings his opponent built to improve his deck. Perhaps I will award the owner of the building.

Once a player builds all his advanced buildings, he will need to focus on building his (or her) totem (or monument, temple, etc.) The first to finish this final building is the winner.

Card Ideas

Been thinking of the cards for my facebook worker placement deck builder.
The Dominion formula has players buying cards with currency. My idea has a player drawing cards from sending his worker to the appropriate spot.
Certain cards (character) will give you the ability to relocate your worker, enabling the player to pull more cards into his deck, as well as giving special abilities and allowing for combos.
A different type of card will be resource. These will be needed for expanding the tableau from which you can build your deck.

An example would be playing a villager from your deck, moving him into the sawmill to draw a wood card. On the next turn, a builder card will be played, moving that worker to the city hall to build a forge, from which you could draw steel cards.

These cards may need more abilities to offer deeper gameplay and prevent skipped turns.