11th Sept 2025 - Show Boat
by Robin. Fri 12 Sept (Updated at Fri 12 Sept)New invention is best thing since sliced bread, says inventor...
I won't bore you with too much of that, but it went pretty well for a first-time playtest: good flow, low downtime, high player interaction, (mostly) well balanced, ran to my estimated playing time of 30min per player to the minute. That's what I think, anyway. For a true read on whether Show Boat is any good, you'll have to ask one of the 5 brave/reckless souls who signed up to playtest it with me.
Maybe not so reckless as all that, though, given the various good playesting experiences that we've had at the club. I know not everyone is a fan of playtesting per se, but we've seen some genuinely good games on our tables under the Play Test banner recently. I didn't manage to try Kristian's game, but I would totally recommend John N's Space Traders, and of course there's the celebrated Barton In Bloom from Dan B which I think we all enjoyed. The only one that didn't go so well was my last offering. Lessons have been learned!
This was the first time I'd actually played Show Boat with other players. I had done a fair few simulated playthroughs with a computer mock-up, playing against myself, so it should have been somewhat balanced already. But then almost as an afterthought I had added a "hardcore" variant with auctions, which I hadn't even simulated. I had planned to playtest the base variant but predictably, knowing our members, I was informed that we would be doing the hardcore one instead. So it really was fresh off the drawing board.
Even so, the only balancing issue that we noticed was quite niche, relating to one specific card, and it didn't have any impact on the general arc of the game. And I came away with lots of good suggestions from most of the others about how to sort it. Paul, meanwhile, who won the game with possibly just a little bit of help from the balancing issue, seemed to think the balance was fine. I will tweak it for next time, but I think if we'd fixed that issue Paul would probably have won the game anyway.
So hopefully we're straight into that latter stage of playtesting with this game, of ironing out the subtle imbalances that you have to play it a few times to detect. And be warned: I'll be taking every opportunity to bring it back, until people stop signing up - or tell me less subtly to stop. Unlike my previous efforts, maybe this one has a future.
For those who were playtesting, I'll just add a bit more here that won't make much sense to anyone else. I think Richard's idea about tweaking the value of the Packet cards depending on the player count is something I should do at some point - there's a couple of cards that clearly pay better with higher player counts at the moment. And David, I really like your idea about the blind bidding; I'll definitely try that one at some point. But the game played well enough that I don't want to make a bigger change than I need to for the moment, and Tim's suggestion of just capping the payouts is the light touch option.
But I had another idea that might be even lighter touch: when the new auction cards are revealed, simply discarding the "+0" ones so that only the remaining ones can be bid on. Paul do you remember how many +0s you picked up? I'm guessing it was about 5, at $3 a piece, which would have brought you down to a less embarrassing winning margin. As I said, if the game was properly balanced you should still have won it, just not by as much. So I think I'll try that for next time, and only tweak the payouts if it doesn't work.
If you have any more suggestions, please let me know. I'd also be interested to hear where you'd all place the game on BGG's complexity rating.
I'm away for the next two weeks, but I'll list it again in October. Huge thanks to all who took part in the playtesting: it was really helpful - and I really enjoyed it!