Matt A showed up first this week, so he and I pulled out my prototype for Gene Pool. The tweaks on this was have been much less noticable than others, but they have improved it leaps and bounds. It was a close match after the first round, but Matt quickly outpaced me with many 5 point scores to win the game. In the middle of our game, Matt L showed up, so he and Laura played Lost Cities, an "exploration" game with set collection and lots of math.

Laura was off to study, so Matt, Matt and I got in some more playtesting on Ultra Violets. Matt went for his "stay in one deck" strategy, and it seemed to work out for him. It was a smoother run with the new deck, and I think the redistribution of cards makes it more competetive for getting the cards you want. We chatted after the game about some strategies to try next time, weighting of points, how you can't really collect an even number of plants without a huge penalty, so there are some tweaks to make before the next run.

It felt good to talk about strategies and effects of different points and actions instead of trying to fix broken parts of the game. I'm also hunting for a new theme that might be more appealing than African Violets, but I'm not sure how far that will go. I'm getting closer to having two working games ready to submit to the Hippodice amatuer game design contest later this year.