Hey everyone! Today I am going to go over a couple of rule changes that were made after a recent playtest. The main goals of these changes were to:

• Reduce “bad luck”
• Shorten the game
• Create more point differentiation (Especially with teacher recs)

All three of these issues have been persistently brought up through playtests. So the following rules address them:

• Drafting cards
• 4 card hands (as opposed to 5 cards)
• Each teacher only gives out one rec

The players enjoyed the drafting since it let them see most of the cards that were going to be played in the round and therefore plan around it. Drafting is great because it removes most of the bad luck that comes with drawing bad event cards. 4 card hands were also fine, since it affected all players equally. I think that it reduced the time it took to play the game a little bit, but also didn’t trade away too much of the meat in the game. The game might still be too long though, and so I am looking at ways to reduce the length further. Finally, teachers only giving out one rec didn’t end up being that significant. I imagined that it could create races to get recs before others could, but as my playtesters pointed out, this often was not worth it as you were guaranteed two recs anyway (just based off of the fact that there are more than twice as many teachers than players in this three person game). Also, the point difference between different recs was pretty small, and not a huge advantage.

I am still looking at a few more rule changes including:

• The ability to steal Clubs from other players by paying their full Friend cost
• Players cannot gain influence in teachers with a Rec in them

These changes still have to be tested further before reaching a final conclusion, but so far they seem to be working as intended. Let me know what you think in the comments, and make sure to subscribe if you like this content!