Hey everyone! After the changes to Integrity and a couple of the classes, a new player board was in order. English II and PreCalculus now give +5 Teacher Influence instead of +4. The Integrity Track now does not have any RP symbols on it. TOP Physics and TOP Biology swapped places on the track so that Hectare is now a senior year teacher. And finally, there is a new change, perfect grade bonuses! If you manage to get 4 A’s in a year, you get additional RP based off of which year it was.

One thing that play testers identified through playing the game was that there wasn’t a lot of incentive to get A’s. While it made sense to focus on classes needed for essays or for teacher abilities/recs, correcting “unneeded” classes to an A was often a waste since teacher recs or clubs often provided more RP value. With the perfect grade bonuses, this changes a bit. Having all 16 classes as an A now provides 41 RP. For comparison, most games have players end somewhere in the 50-60 RP range.

This being said, straight A’s has only ever happened in the previous system where players started with 5 card hands. With 4 card hands, it is extremely difficult to pull off straight A’s over all 4 years. This offers an interesting dilemma for players. Perhaps, instead of grabbing 2 A’s Sophomore year and 2 A’s Junior year, it makes more sense to “skip” Sophomore year and get 4 A’s Junior year. Or maybe it makes sense to ignore clubs that can pay dividends in the future in favor of correcting classes sooner for the perfect grade bonuses. Regardless, this now makes the strategy of focusing on grades a lot more viable.

What are your thoughts on these changes? Let me know in the comments below! Thanks for reading, and make sure to subscribe if you enjoy this content.