GDCU Level 3 Game – Supply!

Monday saw the publication of the third lesson in the Game Design Concepts class. The homework was to design a game with the following (there were three options of difficult, I chose the hardest):

The theme must relate to World War I. The primary objective of players cannot be territorial control, or capture/destroy.

You cannot use territorial control or capture/destroy as game dynamics. That is, your game is not allowed to contain the concepts of territory or death in any form.

As above, and the players may not engage in direct conflict, only indirect.

As it turns out, I’m not at all versed in table-top wargaming except for a wee bit when my first step-father tried to get me to play him in some American Civil War games (no matter which side I chose I always lost… typical me). The good thing is is that this isn’t a territory game, but the hard part was how not to create direct conflict, especially since the required theme is World War I. After some thinking, I realized that war isn’t about acquiring bigger guns and killing people; there’s also the help aspect. I came up with the idea of providing supplies to a base, with hexagonal tiles providing both a fog of war as well as affecting the player’s movement as they make their way towards the supply base.

Supply!

Players

Number of players: 2-4

Players choose one of 8 countries that they will represent:

• Allied
  • France
  • Great Britain
  • Italy
  • Serbia
• Central
  • Austria-Hungary
  • Germany
  • Ottoman Empire
  • Bulgaria

The player then takes the base tile which corresponds to their selected country.

Board Layout

The supply base tiles are stacked and placed in the center of the playing area.

Board tiles are tiles which affect the player’s ability to move, and can affect their turn. Below are the tiles in Supply!, the number in the game, and the effect they have on the player:

TILE TYPE	# OF TILES	EFFECT
tree	25	no effect
road/track	3	+2 movement
river	3	-1 turn
mortar attack	3	player returns to base or supply base, depending upon where they started
gas attack	3	-1 turn
trench	7	player’s next move is parallel to trench
enemy infantry	5	-1 turn
ally infantry	5	+1 turn

Board tiles are placed faced down and mixed, then placed on the playing area in the following configuration:

• Yellow = player base
• Blue = board tiles
• Black = supply base tile stack

Rules

Players determine who goes first, with turns going clockwise.

Play begins in the player’s home base. The player selects the tile adjacent to the base and turns it over to reveal the type of board tile he landed on. Player follows the outcome as indicated by the tile type (e.g. if the player reveals a river, gas attack, or enemy infantry tile he loses his next turn; if he reveals a mortar attack tile he returns to base; if an ally infantry tile is revealed he goes again; if he reveals a road/track tile his next turn results in two moves. Trees do not effect a player). At the start of the player’s next move, he removes the tile he revealed from the board and replaces it with a randomly selected face-down pile; he returns his original tile face down to this pile.

When a player has successfully reached the supply base, he removes one supply token from the stack. He must then make his way back to his base using the movement rules outlined above.

Win State

A player wins a game when he is the first to collect four supply base tokens.

Special thanks to Kevin for discovering the mortar attack bug!
Link to forum post.