Henchman Hunches

A couple of weeks back everyone was kind enough to let me inflict my embryonic best-selling game Henchman upon them. At some stage I'd like to do it again (not this week!) and have designed a slightly more pleasing board and purchased some lovely meeples to that end, so aesthetically it should be a more enjoyable experience (though in the short term the Henchmen will still look remarkably like my business cards).

I've been mulling it over and come up with some changes:

There are now just four types of Follower, clearly labelled with their type and value:

B (Bishop) - 6

K (Knight) - 5

C (courtier) - 4

S (sentinel) - 3

The followers no longer have a 'specialist area' where they score more (too fiddly I think) and I've scrapped the advisors. Each player starts with one Bishop, one Knight, two Courtiers and two Sentinels, and it'll be possible to generate extra followers during gameplay (the same Followers you start with will be available 'for purchase' - i.e. another Bishop, Knight, and two each of the less valuable pieces).

There are now SIX areas to put your followers in. The Keep, Chapel, Chambers, Cloister and Court all get you influence (ie victory) points, and there are points for finishing 1st/2nd/3rd in these places. Additionally the Court (no matter where you place) gives you the option of trading in money to raise additional followers. Paying for extra followers costs you twice their value PLUS the number of the current round - - so a Bishop costs 12+1 gold to recruit in round one, a Sentinel costs 6+6 in round six, etc.

So how do you generate money?

You raise money by placing followers in the sixth area, the Treasury, and the money they raise is equivalent to their value; so a Bishop in the treasury would get you 6 gold, a Knight would get you 5 gold and so on.

Apart from the Cloister, there are limits to how many followers can go in each area - Keep (10), Court (8), Chambers (6), Treasury and Chapel (4 each).

Placement remains almost as it was when we played; in player order, as many or as few followers as you want (into one area at a time) and you can return to areas you've already placed followers in to add more. EXCEPTIONS: You may only lay ONE FOLLOWER AT A TIME into the Treasury.

I hope this ups the ante in terms of encouraging people to get more followers - I know we played an abridged version last time but it felt like getting more followers didn't help much - with this new system I think if you don't get more followers you might find your early lead would be exactly that, and nothing more.

Oh, and there's a useable dungeon now. I'm returning to my original idea of Henchman cards sending opposition pieces to the dungeon for one round. (Again, this will encourage more followers). So when you play a Henchman card you send your opposing player's LOWEST-SCORING follower in that area to the dungeon.

Henchman cards are still played in turn order, but now they are played ONE AT A TIME - and you can pass. As before, you can play multiple Henchman cards to the same area, and use 2 Henchman cards for one area as a joker to be played into another. When all four players pass the Henchman round is over - so if you pass hoping to see what others do and they all pass too, you CANNOT lay Henchman cards. Mwah ha ha! - etc.

Finally - you can only pick up Henchman cards by playing a Follower into the Cloister. That's where they hang out, see? There'll still be a display of 4 cards face-up at the start of each round, and you can take from there OR the top card on the deck. And there won't be Henchman cards for the Treasury, so your Followers are safe in there!

Finally the King is still around, and he is worth +4 in court and +2 in any area - except the dungeon, where he cannot be placed, and the Treasury, where he will give the HIGHEST SCORING player an extra 3 Gold. If there is a tie for highest scoring player they get an extra 1 gold each. The starting player places the King but DOES NOT lay any followers - he must wait for his next turn.

I think that's it. This is what I'm mooting for the scoring areas (1st/2nd/3rd)

Cloister (unlimited placement): 6/3/1

Keep (max 10 Followers): 8/4/2

Chambers (max 6 Followers): 9/5/3

Court (max 8 Followers) 10/6/4

Chapel (max 4 Followers): 12/7/5

Ties for position share the points (rounded down).

Treasury: (max X Followers): Does not score.

(X: number of players.)

What I'm hoping is there'll be some levels of intrigue to it, and some different ways of winning that aren't just going after the Chapel every time. But only by playing will we truly know...

When your creations turn against you

Tonight, games night had a slightly different atmosphere. Instead of playing the latest game bought by Sam or Joe in a moment of weakness, we were play-testing Sam’s very own gaming creation, Henchman.

In this game, each player has to gain favour with the King by winning control of various parts of the castle. To do this, each player places his pieces in turn, but the pieces’ identity (and, thus, their scoring potential) is kept a secret until the end of that round. Then, once everyone’s pieces are identified, it’s possible for each player to send in their henchman (in the form of cards you have in your hand) to try and tip the balance in one area. A cross between Stone Age and El Grande, really. The King is dying (yet is still surprisingly mobile) and the winner gets to be the King’s heir!

Once we started, we soon ironed out any unfair, incomplete or unworkable rules in the first round so that the rest of the game ran pretty smoothly. Once I got into it, I started to enjoy it and I liked the idea of just sending a single weak piece into one area with the hope that your Henchmen can force a win. When I was starting player, I had the chance to place the King, so I put him in the Throne Room, hoping that the lure of maximum points would entice the other three players into a big fight while I scored points in the other areas. As it turned out, that didn’t happen and I was able to win it quite easily, giving me a healthy score for that round which carried me through to the end of the game.

Andrew 84
Adam 81
Jonny 62
Sam 45

Sam’s distant last place made him cry out “I’ve invented a game I’m shit at!” which means that he joins Dr Frankenstein (creator of his monster), Dr Faust (his deal with the Devil) and Simon Fuller (the Spice Girls) in creating something that quickly grew out of his control.

But I’m sure that with a little fine-tuning, there’s definitely a neat little game here. There is a dungeon area on the game board, but no real way to send pieces there. If you could do that, then it may add a little spice, as those in the lead get pegged back by those desperately floundering in fourth.

After this, Jonny left and the three of us decided to have a quick leaderboard game because, God knows, we don’t have enough points on there already. Sam and Adam chose Trans America and although I’m shockingly bad at this game, I agreed. For a while (ie, the first round) it looked like my fortunes may be changing as Adam kindly helped me link all five cities. But following that, the game fell back into a familiar pattern as I crashed out in two rounds (scoring eight and six points).

Sam 3
Adam 10
Andrew 14

Meanwhile, the leaderboard continues to reward those who have nothing better to do with their weekday evenings so for just one day, I've decided to order it according to points ratio.

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	12	54.5	4.54
Sally	1	4.5	4.5
Adam	10	44.5	4.45
Dan	2	8	4
Andrew	12	41.5	3.46
Joe	5	16.5	3.3
Jonny	1	2.5	2.5