225394
I aim to give this a shot with my board gaming friends when I'm able! thanks for sharing
Level 29 Chipist
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Strategy in Pants
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Rock Paper Siege
Rock Paper Siege is an abstract strategy game that mainly my wife Jen has worked on/enjoyed playtesting with me and our local game group in the last couple of years. You can print off and cut out the counters for yourselves, or designate other things to work in place of each of characters with whatever you have to hand.
Jen hasn't touched the game much in recent times because of increased busyness and getting more into other creative endeavours.
In the past, we have had different ideas on how to approach the endgame because somethings things get stuck, and I'm sure that we wrote those modifications/mechanics down somewhere and tried them out, but I could only find this earlier iteration of the rules on our computers, so whatever improvements we made are now sadly lost to the annals of time!
So, if you playtest and find that the endgame bit is a little skew-whiff do feel free to make your own rulings to decide how it plays out, no option is invalid!
You more than welcome to see us play it here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlpW02LZEk4
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225516
The concept is great but rock seems a little OP. Just being able to push cards you don't like off the board if they made a straight line is a cool mechanic, but a little overtuned. If you take a capture action, that just lets you get rid of 2 cards in one turn. Other than that, the game seems very well balanced.
The win condition is very easy to understand and I like how even with just 6 possible actions per turn to play you can create a lot of depth.
The win condition is very easy to understand and I like how even with just 6 possible actions per turn to play you can create a lot of depth.
225642
Unfortunately I have not been able to playtest this with real people, but I did play against myself and it seems like a fun and well designed game! The surrounding mechanic reminds me a bit of Hive.
In my playtesting, it didn't seem to me that rock was OP, since it's balanced by paper being able to capture it the following turn.
One could say capture is OP because it's pretty much always better to capture if you can, but that seems to be an intentional part of the design. The game feels very "swingy" as a result, since every move makes a big difference.
I think I would have to play a few games against real people to really get a feel for if one player has an advantage over another, or if a particular strategy is overpowered, but for the moment it seems pretty well balanced to me. I could see skilled players getting into stalemates at the end, kind of like tic tac toe.
The way rock works wasn't quite clear from the rules to me:
* if you deploy rock in between two tiles, do they both get pushed in different directions? or do you pick which direction to push? can you choose to *not* push anywhere?
* if you deploy a rock but the grid is full and can't be pushed, what happens? does the rock just go there without pushing? or is it an illegal move?
I like the simple but effective design, and portability. Did Jen do the graphics too? I dig the medieval style.
In my playtesting, it didn't seem to me that rock was OP, since it's balanced by paper being able to capture it the following turn.
One could say capture is OP because it's pretty much always better to capture if you can, but that seems to be an intentional part of the design. The game feels very "swingy" as a result, since every move makes a big difference.
I think I would have to play a few games against real people to really get a feel for if one player has an advantage over another, or if a particular strategy is overpowered, but for the moment it seems pretty well balanced to me. I could see skilled players getting into stalemates at the end, kind of like tic tac toe.
The way rock works wasn't quite clear from the rules to me:
* if you deploy rock in between two tiles, do they both get pushed in different directions? or do you pick which direction to push? can you choose to *not* push anywhere?
* if you deploy a rock but the grid is full and can't be pushed, what happens? does the rock just go there without pushing? or is it an illegal move?
I like the simple but effective design, and portability. Did Jen do the graphics too? I dig the medieval style.
225775
Following up more generally on agargara's question: what happens if you capture a piece and then that piece has no legal move? Does it stay in your hand and end your turn?
For example, a situation that came up naturally as I was messing around with the pieces:
WKing - BScis - BRock - BKing
If white plays a rock on the black scissors, they can't insert the scissors anywhere, so do they just hold on to them?
For example, a situation that came up naturally as I was messing around with the pieces:
WKing - BScis - BRock - BKing
If white plays a rock on the black scissors, they can't insert the scissors anywhere, so do they just hold on to them?
225776
I think the rulebook could have improved clarity and formatting, but I really like this game! The rules are simple and elegant, and it is highly portable. The double-sided tiles is a very clever idea, and I like that each type is deployed in a different way. I will be printing this out and playing it with my friend next week.
