I finally made the leap to reduce the number of rounds. This had a knock effect to game balancing, and the components.

I took this version to the next Design Workshop in Wellington...

THE MAIN BOARD

• The new wave number was now reflected on the board.

• Due to the number of reduced rounds, I had to adjust the resource costs for upgrades in the Workshop.

• I reduced the number of steps on the Threat track as well.

• In the last version, I added an area for multiple players to 'lock' their dice, but it didn't really work. A friend of mine (Thanks Luke!) suggested I moved the 'lock' function onto the enemy cards, which i did, but that in turn increased the size of the cards slightly. So I had to move some bits around on the board.

ENEMY CARDS

• With less rounds, I had to reduce the number of enemy cards.

• As stated above, I put 'lock' templates around the damage icons so they could be covered by the players' dice during an engagement.

• I also slimmed down the Shield and Health tracks.

MECH TABLEAU

• I hadn't really messed with the Tableau layout, other than adding the recalibiration functions. However, due to dropping the rounds, I needed to reduce to the number of slots. I never really felt comfortable with the 'Wings' and foot 'Boost' spaces. They were in pairs and it looked odd just adding one at a time. So the no brainer was to get rid of them and add a single 'Core' slot.

MECH MODS

• Because of the reduction of mod slots, I had to revamp all the mech mods peices. Again.

• I also reduced the number of mods down to 108.

• I added a red border around the advanced mods to make them easier to see.

VERSION 9: THINGS I LEARNT

• Again, the design workshop players were fantastic. Paul Tobin from Weta Studios (Also working on a big mech game! - GKR: Heavy Hitters) gave me some great pointers on making improvements.

• The big takeaway was the mech warriors themselves. Up until now, they were lonely portraits stuck at the top of the mech tableau, serving real no function other than adding a little flavor. Paul suggested either expand on them and make them a bigger part of the game, or remove them entirely and let the players 'be' the mech warriors.

• The Threat track didn't bother the players too much during the game. He recommended finding other ways to incorporate it into play.

• Making the resources claimed from defeated enemies static. That way, players could bargain better with each other on what they knew.

• Although the Sidekick die was fun, it wasn't thematically correct. After all, sidekicks don't tend to swap between heroes.