Since last time I’ve been following up on the idea of having the searchers be affected by terrain, so that tracking everywhere would be more interesting. The new rules for this variant are simple: players are not affected by terrain, but the searchers are. Hence, searchers have to expend two squares’ worth of movement to advance whenever one or more of the squares they would occupy after moving contains terrain.

Overall, this variant has proven mediocre at best. My hope was that the game would revolve around getting the searchers hung up on terrain so that the players could sprint past them. Instead, the searchers hang themselves up all the time, and the players mostly just waltz to the finish line.

Furthermore, the effect of the searchers being stuck is so powerful that tricking them becomes largely pointless. It’s not worth fighting for a near-miss when you can just lead searchers through terrain and neutralize them for three turns.

I still think there’s an idea here, but it’s really a totally different game that will require a lot of development. Back to work on the main project!