Saturday, June 15, 2008: Successors III Playtest and a little bit of Fury of Dracula

Mark Simonitch has been putting the final touches on Successors III which is expected to come out this summer (July according to Mark, I think). I hosted the final playtest at my house on Saturday. To feed the brave army commanders, Nevin Ball, Mervyn Dejecacion, Mark Simonitch, and myself we had a Chick-fil-A chicken wrap platter, a chicken nugget platter, M&Ms, Chips, Pretzels, bottled water, sodas, tea, and beer.

We played the first two turns taking notes as this would be the example of play in the Successors III rulebook. Nevin provided some great combat examples illustrating how one's fortune can turn with the roll of a die and the play of an event card in two separate battles! Way to go Nevin!

We then played a few turns of Fury of Dracula. Since I and Mervyn had not played it in a while and Nevin and Mark had not played it at all we stumbled through the turns and decided to quit while we were ahead. I did manage, as Dracula, to move such that I had no legal move at one point! I thought we had broke the game, but later found out, after re-reading the rules, that there is a rule that covers that, the "cheating rule".

What is this cheating rule you ask? In the rulebook on page 13:

Crossing His Own Trail
In the unlikely event that
Dracula maneuvers himself into a position
where he has no legal move, he is punished as
though he were caught cheating (see
“Cheating,” on page 25) and then takes his
turn as normal (assuming he didn’t lose the
game).

And then the cheating rule itself on page 25:

Cheating
Hopefully, the Dracula player will never cheat
on purpose. But if he makes a move and later
finds out that he accidentally moved along a
rail route or made a similarly illegal move, it’s
important to undo the damage and get the
game underway again. However, Dracula also
needs to suffer a penalty to make up for the
Hunters’ lost time. We suggest the following
penalty for a Dracula player who catches himself
(or is caught) cheating. Although it may
seem severe, the hope is that the Dracula player
will quickly learn to be more careful in the
future.
• Dracula immediately clears his Trail down
to one card and reveals his current location.
• Additionally, Dracula loses Blood as
though he had just suffered a “Killed”
result in combat. However, if this would
reduce him to 0 Blood, it only reduces
him to 1 Blood instead.

I would still like to give this game another go in the future.