Equilibrium Playtest

Then I got in a couple 4-player games of Equilibrium.

Overall, I think it went really well.  In the first game, the new players were still learning the mechanics and understanding what it took to win.

There were initially some concerns that it was too difficult to control what your deck composition was like at the end of the game.  We played another game right after that, and those concerns were proven false with one game under their belt.

In the first game Brandon got a great kick off a couple "ALL Score" cards that Angie played to get a nice win.

The second game was a lot tighter.  They knew what was going on and put some plans in action.  We actually all chose to quit at exactly the same time in the second game.  I stayed simple and just scored a couple "13vp for 5+ of 3 colors".  Due to all the attacks, I only ended at 10 vp.  Brandon and Ang missed some key score cards though and ended a little negative.  Cayla ended at 7 VP, but was only 1 card short of hitting a 4VP card that would have given her the win.


Overall, I enjoyed it a lot with 4 players.  I'm excited to try it some more that way.  A couple ideas came out of it:

1. Let people over-pay for cards if they want.

I'm not against this.  I'm just not sure it's needed.  In the last couple turns I could see wanting to dump some fluff, but generally your deck is pretty concentrated by that time anyway.  We tried it in the second game above, but it was only used a couple times.  Of course, the player who did do it came in second...

2. Let people have more than 1 copy of each permanent.

I'm actually not against this the more I think about it.  You could get free 3-cost score cards with enough discounting permanents.  But those discounting permanents aren't free and even "free" score cards still make you trash a card at the end of your turn.




It was interesting to see how much impact the attack cards have in a 4-player game.  It's not that they are harsher, it's that there is a much higher chance of at least one hitting play each turn.  I think it shortened the game by at least 2 turns.  Of course, I'm not actually against that since a 4-player game would usually stretch out a little bit longer just due to logistics of getting 4 people to make decisions.