The Teardown

So Adrago was chugging along, making cool progress, but also picking up a lot of baggage along the way. I realized that I was at a pivotal point in the creative process. Do I push forward blindly and hope for the best? I thought about potential tweaks I could do to improve the game but no amount of little changes could get me to where I wanted with Adrago. I assessed what was worth keeping and cut away a lot of features that I thought were key to the game. I'm going to continue to be kind of loose in describing some rules because a lot is out of date and not worth going to heavily into detail, so bear with me.
Big change 1
In early Adrago, to score points you would try to complete rows/columns and hope that you filled it with positive stuff before other players dumped in junk. So I switched from completing rows to building a radius for points. It not only made more sense with the theme, most kingdoms spread out in a radius not in big long lines, but also played a lot better. Previously players each had their own starting board but there wasn't really a sense of creating your own space, there was just too much sprawl. Changing to a radius based game led to another change, no more squares.

Hex based radius levels

Big change 2
Hexagons, in my opinion are vastly superior to squares. They are much more organic and allow for a freedom of movement that squares can't give. Just thinking about a hex based Carcassonne gets me all a flutter. So if I like hexagons so much more than squares why wasn't I using them from the beginning? I think it was mainly me worrying how it would work to make the pieces to the game. Squares are easy to make at home, cut cut cut cut, you have a square, they can be cranked out with a couple big cuts at a time. Hexagons are jerks to produce, despite that I made a couple modular hex based boards.

Hex boards being all sexy

Only after I made them did I realize that combined with some of the other new rule changes I wasn't ever going to use them. So I ended up going to one big board, but with modularity built in.

the newer version is a lot easier to read than this

By using a standard six sided die with colors instead of numbers along with a 20 sided die (D20) you are able to place a couple starting icons in different areas each time you play. Say you roll a green on the D6 and a 8 on the D20, that means you'd put a starting treasure/mine on that spot.

Big change 3
Do you remember the old action boards? Forget 'em (or don't bother to go find em) actions have been added, severely reworked, or been cut entirely.

the already outdated "new" action board

The first change to the actions was instead of 6 different tiers for each action there are now only 2. A bonus for the person who selects the action and a weaker variant for all other players.
Knights were absorbed into the Advisors creating multi use Court cards.
Market cards got dropped entirely, having to buy 'em and never knowing when to use their weird abilities just bogged the game down.
Knights on the board now could move around the field.
The numbered tiles finally got updated into themed areas.

Big change 4
Each new themed tile also had even more new rules tacked on.
There were now 6 main tile types, represented by primary and secondary colors, along with two special areas represented by Black and White.

sure this is outdated too, but it's pretty right?

Instead of just a score upon completions for having a tile each area now produced supplies. A farm supply would be worth 4 action points during the game, getting you a lot of options for actions when compared to something like a swamp and it's measly 1 action point. But once the game ends those supply chits change to their value of Victory Points. Suddenly that stockpile of yellow chits don't really do you much good compared to that big pile of blue chits Player 2 has. This change also helped in escalating the game as rounds went on. You would have to work for it but now a player could build up a lot of action points and then make really big plays later in the game.
Each area has a movement cost to cross. It's easy to zip through the blue ruins with reckless abandon but if a red volcano or purple swamp is in your way you have to decide is it better to spend a chunck of action points to cross or should you just go around.


Big change 5
The addition of actual combat.
With knights able to move, instead of simply creating a passive effect you can march your units and steal chits from other players or even take control of another player's castle.

Big change 6
With a game named Adrago, I finally managed to put a Dragon into the game. Basically the dragon is a piece that moves around the board consuming chits. This is important because instead of rounds the game ends when a certain number of chits run out. The at the end players are able to make a last ditch attempt to slay the dragon and claim all the chits in it's belly (a little bag)

So that gives you a rough overview of the big changes. As always, a lot of these features already have been refined and changed but we are getting close to the current version.

Next time, talking about board game art