This was our last playtest using the completed cloth board and newly printed cards. The game has a more professional feel now and the updated visuals assist in explaining play. The board can be used to wrap up the cards and pieces in a bundle, which resembles a secret package or a piece of contraband.

Play testing Notes:

• A few UB Students tested the game and found it overall enjoyable. They stated that there were flaws in the mechanics but those flaws did not hinder the gameplay.

Highlights:

• The game was easy to understand - simple mechanics and straightforward objective.
• There seemed to be an imbalance between the opponents at the beginning the game. Because the resistance started out with an extra resource, that player was able to make more advantageous moves earlier in the game.
• The beginning of the game is slow and then later in the game, the players just spend up as much of their resources as they can to make moves. It takes away the feeling of importance of resources and allows little room for a comeback, especially towards the end.
• Our game needs more sense of a dramatic climax. They offered up an idea in which special cards distributed every few turns would greatly affect the game. Another possibility would be the addition of political influence cards.
• Artwork should be improved.

After our formal playtest, our playtesters gave us feedback using google forms. Here are some observations we made from this feedback.

[When political influence runs out and resources continue to accumulate, double or triple the cost to play a second propaganda card.] We decided to allow the play of more than one propaganda card at an increased cost for each subsequent card played.
[If there are more than 5 cards in the player’s hand at the end of the turn, discard one card of your choice in order to maintain a default hand of 5] Instead of following this suggestion, we allowed a larger hand. This is balanced by the fact that if you use many cards in one turn, you need to wait to accumulate cards, or save them for a combo.
[“Lightning Round”: Once PI cards run out, double the cost of all propaganda cards.] To avoid this, political influence cards can be re-shuffled when they run out. This prevents play from becoming monotonous in the endgame.
[Do something to give the player with the resource advantage, an actual advantage. One card limit and max cost of 3 makes it easy to counter the player who has the upper hand.] In this iteration, the dictator always goes first, but the rebellion gets an extra resource to start. This turned out to be unfair, so instead the dictator does not draw on his first turn while the rebellion does.

For this playtest, we expanded the field of the ideological spectrum and added a new mechanic in that to move citizens outside of your opponent's side, you must spend resources to "unlock" that zone. This is a metaphor for how ingrained in an ideology propaganda can make a person. We also created a resource accumulation mechanic that gave a "stockpile of resources" to the players that would increase at the beginning of every turn.

For this playtest, our goal was to determine a proper deck composition to balance propaganda card appearance. We also created a resource associated with political influence and had a few effects of those cards to test. This was meant to shake up the game and make more interesting player vs player choices. 

This iteration scrapped our previous idea of asymmetrical play. We came up with a new structure based on moving citizens along a singular ideological spectrum between a dictator and a singular rebellion. Our propaganda cards included three values, the amount of citizens you can move, how far you can move them, and how many miscellaneous resources must be accumulated and spent to use that card. Resources are harvested by citizens depending on how they are arranged on the field. When one play has a majority of citizens on their end of the field, they win.

This playtest felt very successful, and we feel like we have a more solid framework to build from.

In this iteration, we included zones that functioned as bases to place units. Still working with a framework inspired by "Magic," we found that the factions were too unbalanced, and with too many moving parts, it didn't feel like a game that could hold itself together.

We playtested mechanics related to a new iteration still working with the theme of a dictatorial regime. This version used an asymmetrical, 3 faction system consisting of the dictator, the aristocracy, and the dissident rebels all competing for power. Each faction would use a different set of resources to perform actions against the other two.

• The Dictator utilized the low class citizenry to accumulate "blind loyalty." With enough of the latter, the dictator can achieve a win condition of having support to build a nuclear weapon and crush the rebels and aristocracy. If loyalty was reduced to zero, the dictator loses and is removed from the game.
• The Aristocracy focused on the accumulation of wealth in order to gain achieve the win condition of overthrowing the dictator and appeasing the rebels through a capitalistic control of culture.  The aristocrats lose when their few numbers are assassinated by the dictator or the rebels.
• The Rebels gain supporters by converting the dictator's citizens to their cause through "anti-propaganda." They need to recruit a certain number of rebels to start a revolution and overthrow the reigning factions. However, if their numbers are wiped out, they lose.

Considering the asymmetric application of resources and mechanics, this iteration had flaws in terms of balance. We are looking into the resource management of the Magic: The Gathering card game, as the actions each faction can use rely on a similar system to mana cost. We are also going to include the idea of a board that represents the country in question, giving bases of influence to each faction that affect how their human resources are distributed and interact with each other.