Race to the End: The Wizard Race

This post will cover the development of my board game 'The Wizard Race'. This game is a simple race to the end game. Each player takes control of a wizard from one of the 5 wizarding schools and their goal is to complete the race and claim 'The Golden Wizard Hat'.

Rules:

How to Play:

Each player selects a token to represent them. Decide who goes first by following the rules laid out below. Each player follows the steps for his turn.

Players:

 This game is for 2 - 5 players. Each player will randomly pick one of the 5 wizards. The player who last read Harry Potter goes first and play moves to the left. Unless someone at the table has read Twilight, in that case that player goes last and the player to his or her left goes first.

Game Length:
The game should take between 30-60 minutes based on my play testing and depending on the number of duels that take place.

Turn Steps:

Roll the die, and advance your token

Resolve any event tiles

Resolve two players on the same tile

Board:

The board will consist of 70 tiles in a winding path.

Scattered around the board are event tiles.

Game Length:

The Game normally ends when the first player reaches the end, but you may add additional loops if desired.

Events Tiles:

When a player lands on a event tile, resolve using the following table.

Troll under the Bridge: Roll a die, on a 1, 3, or 5 you get knocked back by his club three spaces, on a 2, 4, or 6 you dodge his club and may advance 3 spaces.

Magical Forest Path: A Magical Path opens in the trees creating a shortcut.

Get Lost in the Swamp: You take a wrong turn in the mists and wander back 3 spaces.

Living Vines: Vines entangle you causing you to miss a turn while untangling yourself.

The Trees are Alive: The trees close in around you blocking your path; you must go the long way around causing you to miss your next turn.

Forest Sprits:  Friendly spirits appear and guide you along your way, advance 3 spaces.

Your old Rival: your old rival appears, you must fight him to pass. See Fight Table except follow these rules for win/loss: If you lose you miss your next turn and go back 5 spaces, if you win advance 5 spaces.

An Ill Wind: An Ill Wind picks you up and carries you backwards.

Water Spirit: A water spirit helps you across the lake.

Resolve Tiles with two wizards:

If two wizards end their turn on the same tile then they must duel resolve using the fight table.

Fight Table:

When a duel occurs, it is resolved using the fight table below.

The player who was on the tile first gets to decide if he wants to go first or second. Unless the player is fighting his rival then the rival always goes first.

Each player has 3 hit points; each spell that hits a player will reduce that by the spells strength minus the Block strength. The first player to have 0 hit points loses and must go back three spaces, the winner moves forward 3 spaces.

Roll	Offensive Spell	Defensive Spell Response
1	Spell Fail (strength 0)	Spell Fail (strength 0)
2	Geyser (strength 2)	Counter (strength2)
3	Wand Burst (strength 1)	Counter (strength 1)
4	Wind Storm (strength 1)	Counter (strength 1)
5	Fireball (strength 2)	Counter (strength 2)
6	Conjure Boulder (strength 3)	Counter (strength 3)

Development:

The initial idea for the board came fairly quickly, by the time class was over I had already written the game treatment in my head. Upon arriving home I quickly recorded my thoughts and began organizing them into a better structure. The weekend did not go as planned thanks to an unwelcome common cold. This meant the weekend was mostly a wash and led to the the first few features being cut do to production time. Thankfully the cold had mostly abated and I was able to get down to actually creating my board. This leads onto the next section below.

Board Creation:

I started out drawing a rough line that represents the middle of the path, then I divided it up into rough tiles as seen below.

After that I moved onto smoothing out the path and drawing the edges.

Once the path was complete I added some themed sketches that synced with the events on the board.

Finally, I colored all the tiles in a repeating pattern as well as colored in the sketches.

Afterword:

When I was originally planning this I had a much grander plan in mind for the features I wanted to include. These included having random event cards that would be drawn as well as spell cards which players could use to help or hurt each other or themselves.

As the deadline approached I had to cut down on the features due to the production time on them being so high.