Points of Conflict

About the Game

Points of Conflict is an asymmetric strategy game played by either two players or two teams of two. It takes place on a point to point map made up of five territories – four corner territories where players can establish HQ's and outposts, and the central territory which holds the Pyre, an ominous tower that's a source of tremendous power. A player or team wins by either holding three of the four HQ locations or by capturing the Pyre twice over the course of a game, or three times in the case of a 2v2 team game.

What Sets Points of Conflict Apart

When I created Points of Conflict, there were two elements that I wanted to make sure were present in it:

• As a player increases the size of their army, their ability to manage it decreases.
• The concept of command and control is represented, limiting a player's ability to influence different territories.

To achieve these, I implemented two game mechanics that interact in simple yet impactful ways:

First, you can only activate your board tiles using action tiles. You start the game with one universal action tile that can be used to activate any one of your tiles anywhere on the board. In addition, your starting HQ grants you an action tile for the corner territory it sits in. This means you have two actions per turn when the game starts. You gain further action tiles by claiming an outpost, which gives you one action tile that can activate a unit in either of the two territories it's adjacent to, and by capturing an additional HQ, which gives you another action tile for the territory it's located in. A player can have up to four action tiles, three of which are geographically restricted.

Second, every unit has two states – ready and exhausted. Players can only activate ready units using their action tiles, and any activation will exhaust them. Aside from special abilities, tiles will only refresh in one of two ways: if, at the start of your turn, all of your tiles are exhausted, you refresh all of them for free; second, you can skip your entire turn to refresh all of your exhausted tiles.

These two mechanisms work together to force a player to plan their turns thoughtfully and to give careful consideration when they bring new troops onto the battlefield. A player with too many troops in play will have to wait several turns for their free refresh, making each unit they control very slow to maneuver. This can be sped up by acquiring additional action tiles so they can activate more tiles on their turn, but even those will be locked into one or two territories. This means players need to not only account for the total number of units they have in play, but also which territories they're located in. Without solid planning, a player may be stuck with only a single action on their turn when they have three or four action tiles available to them. It's also worth noting that there is no tile connected to the central territory, which means a player must depend on their single universal action tile to give their units in the center orders. The net effect of these two rules is that larger armies aren't always better. Sometimes a small, nimble force will be much more effective. Of course, a force that's too small won't be able to exert influence over a large enough area to win. That balance is a large part of the strategic puzzle players must solve.

History of the Game

I started on Points of Conflict as I was finishing Gambit: The Pyre Wars. I wanted to create another two player, semi-abstract game with a similar theme. From the start I saw it as a part of the “Pyre-verse” family of games, and it's not hard to see how the games relate to one another. Even so, I wanted it to have a clearly distinct identity.

Where Gambit takes place on a tight 7x7 square board, Points of Conflict is played on a marginally larger, but more tactically complex, board. The point to point movement allowed for a more intricate design, and the five distinct territories create inherent movement friction that doesn't exist in Gambit. When you add in the fact that combat is of the “one hit one kill” variety and that there is very little hidden information and no card play, the games have completely different feels. Possibly the largest change, though, is that players choose entire factions rather than drafting individual pieces. When a player chooses to play The Kingdom, The Hive, The Undead, etc., that's the only choice they have to make as each comes with its own HQ and units, each with distinct special abilities and a wholly unique approach to the game.

What I did very intentionally maintain in Points of Conflict was the strong connection between each piece's theme and its mechanics. Knights jump (again), vampires create more vampires, goblins ride wolves, and spiders spin webs. If anything ties these two games together, it's this.

Points of Conflict is still a work in process. While the underlying rules of the game have been solidified, there are some elements that are still being adjusted and faction balance is ongoing.

Sample HQ's and Tiles

While the game is still being worked on, here's a sampling of the HQ's and units for three of the game's factions.

The Kingdom

The Kingdom specializes as working as a cohesive unit and controlling the exhausted/ready state of its units.

The Mystics

The Mystics make use of an area called the reserve, which serves a unique purpose for every faction other than the Kingdom, which doesn't use it at all. The Mystics send their troops to and from the reserve to move them around the board at a speed no other faction can manage.

The Hive

The Hive spread throughout the board by implanting larvae into their own units, who then spawn them as new units. The Hive creeps across the map to swarm their enemies.