First Test play for this version

So I got a chance to play feint wars today.

Sadly, I forgot to take pictures. Maybe this is a good sign, because it means I was absorbed in playing the game.

Some thoughts:

The Feinting Mechanic
The feinting mechanic still feels a bit clunky. The person I was playing against said it felt random. I tried to guess what the opponent was playing but I failed badly at it.

I'm not sure how to balance being able to have enough information to make informed decisions on
what cards are still out there. Maybe I need to lower the number of cards (currently it's 27).

A deck has 3 suits, with 2 of each suit of cards 1-3, and 1 of each suit 4-6.

Modified Damage

I'm considering dropping modified damage (that is, doing more damage based on how much you beat the defender by) and making it so you only do damage equal to the unit's damage value.

On the one hand, I like having it, The person I was playing with pointed out it discouraged really playing low cards, since there's no reason not to always play the highest card on your attacks, you're not really wasting anything.

One other solution would be to make a maximum damage, based on your base damage value.

There was a bit of a miscommunication on how I explained the rules and the other player was adding their speed value to their attacks, so they might have felt this way because they were hitting so frequently. I want to do more tests before dropping this.

Contested Movement and memory

Doing contested movement is a little hard to remember. (When you move out of of through the range of an enemy you play the card being used to move face down, and it's used as a defense against an attack of opportunity)

There were times when I played a card face up and then remembered it was contested and had to take it back and play a card face down. Maybe this is just a thing to get used to. I didn't want any special attacks or anything to use extra cards because I felt that slowed the game down, and so I wanted to sort of blend in the movement action with the "attack of opportunity".

I'm not sure i like how the card played is exactly your defense, since in order to move further you have to have a higher defense from the attack of opportunity because you have to play a higher card. Basically it means you always get a sort of bonus for charging. Maybe you subtract squares moved, but I was trying to avoid adding unnecessary math.

Abilities in general seem a bit hard to remember. I kept forgetting to play defense tokens for my shield ability for example on my knights. I also need better explanation on how defense tokens work since they should last during your opponent's turn.

The person I played with said the game is a good start. Now I need to work on refining this game more. I'll try to remember to actually take pictures next time.