Playtest reports

I played Diggity and Yoggity with a game-enthusiast friend last week.  Both were completely new to him.  It went pretty well; in Diggity, I got some good cards at the start and built a lead he couldn't ever come back from, which isn't an ideal first-time experience, but should be somewhat rare.  The gameplay was better; it continues to surprise me that I've actually gotten a lot better at Diggity - I wouldn't have thought of it as having very deep strategy; you have a relatively small number of decisions to make, and there's usually one that seems like an optimal one - but every time I've played recently, I've noted some more subtle strategic decisions creeping in, and I tend to do consistently better (having played it more than anyone in the universe) than my opposition, which suggest there's some kind of skill (or at least an enhanced understanding of the rules) at work.

Yoggity, which I've entered in the Memphis regional of the Rio Grande competition, was much more balanced; I ended up slightly ahead, but the outcome was in question for most of it, and there was a definite impact from drawing cards.  The major strategy in the two player game there is when to collect and use your coins; the 3-4 player game, with item trading, requires much more shrewd deal-making.  The 2-player game is still a lot of fun, but it's just very different from the multi-player version.

The three-cards-before-miner rule that I added in the last rules revision continues to work well, although it is still hard to explain.  Not hard to understand; just hard to explain, which is weird.  I'll have to work more on the phrasing.

Anyway, an interesting (and thought-provoking) couple of games.