| SW on V

Hey Elrock: We should try Summoner Wars over Vassal sometime! Here's a guide on how to work it: http://www.plaidhatgames.com/sum_forums/showpost.php?p=13079&postcount=1
Haven't tried it myself, but we both know the game is basic enough to probably be pretty painless. It's also how Colby and his team playtest the new factions. You still need to "own" the game to know the setups, but I can just give you that info for the factions I have from the starter box.

Hey Jael: Be safe in Taiwan! As far as the game goes, I feel like already you have way too many mattes. I don't know how you're visualizing things, but I think a central board and maybe 1 player board per player is about as fiddly as it should get. Anymore than that and it'll look like Agricola (which I like, but I wish didn't sprawl so much). Also, what do you have in mind for combat? You mention dice. I love dice, but I think it's a fine line between random luck fest and something fun and meaty.

One idea that pops to mind that could be fun is the more you train a fighter, the higher you risk injuring him before he even makes it to the arena. OR, if you increase certain stats (or even just his fighting +bonus on a die roll), there should be a trade off in either his health or stamina or some other crucial stat. Because otherwise, you'd just train them to max stats.

As far as this being a completely "original" game, I don't think you're going to be able to completely avoid influence from other games. There are just great basic mechanics that resurface all the time and you don't need to run away from them.

BONUS EDIT: I'm bored here at the end of my shift and I was playing with fake d6 as far as trying to find a cool balance of hits/miss/defends for a fighting game. First thing I thought of was the dice from Zombie dice which come in 3 colors, green yellow and red - they represent difficulty in that the green easy die are mostly positive outcomes while the red hard dice have more bad outcomes. Also thought of some kind of "deck-building" aspect towards making your fighters. Like, each fighter you get has his own deck of cards which hold moves - and if you want to buy nicer moves, it will cost you more - then when you fight, you battle it out with the different fighter decks. That might be too deck-buildy, but I'm less excited for dice. Example, all beginner dungeons/crack fields fighters have the most basic attacks and defenses and could THEORETICALLY beat a more advanced fighter, but not likely. But if you spend time and money to train your dude up, his deck will have more sweet cards in it. If you wanted to make it even simpler, it could be something like Slapshot, Gladiator edition. :)  Slapshot was fun.