Got a game in with Paddy on Thursday of The Most Worshipful Companies, my toy design for a 2-player euro. Very happy with how it all went, the game is playing more or less as I wish it would as a skeleton.
Feedback from him was surprisingly similar to the Feedback herself gave me when we played a while back - Mainly stemming around wanting the theme to be more apparent. As is, the game is just blank cards with the rules essentially, and while I have some theming in mind around the event cards in particular, the rest does feel a bit bland right now.
The biggest change I had made for this version of the rules was the addition of some of the Dynasty Cards, objective cards essentially, as having a tableaux element. When completed, these have ongoing passive, or active effects associated. For example, one card moves all your shipping tokens twice instead of once every round, and one will give you gold, and then an opportunity to place your pawn after everyone else has placed for that additional action. These added a huge amount to the game, and really opened up the play a lot more. Paddy in particular took advantage of synergies from his tableaux to absolutely demolish me by the end of the game, and this was his first game.
The Auction mechanic still isn't quite where I want it to be, and given that this was a virtual playtest, I'm not sure if this is because I should have taken the time to set up a true hidden area where each bid could be placed before comparison, or because it needs to change form. I have been thinking about perhaps changing the trade tokens to be cards instead, and so instead of getting more trade when you use the longer tracks, that instead you get a choice of, or more cards, when using those longer tracks. I am going to try this out next, but I feel that maybe the introduction of yet another set of cards to the game in place of a simple cube resource may make the tactile nature less fun in reality.