Zeppelin game design continuing and cowboys rolling dice

So we had another play test with the beast. It remains a beast, but everything is gelling. The airships had to be modified (they have to be airships due to the thematic timing). What we noticed playing again was the presence of several strategies that are all viable. Woo-hoo! The next tricky part is how are the enemy cards going to affect play. It seems obvious that some of the PvP stuff will drop off as a strategy. Players may want to look at diplomacy as an option. We also discussed boarding parties as an option for play. At this time it isn't, but that's not to say it couldn't be.

In addition to the airship game, I have also been working on a dice game with cowboys. The trick is going to be making it different enough so it does not draw comparisons to Dice Town, Pony Express or Bang! I don't think it feels similar to these games at all. The redesign process continues along the right line. It was a bit of an Ameri-Euro hybrid, then it got pushed back toward Euro too much and it stopped being fun. Now the pendulum has swung back to the American side and there is a lot more direct player interaction with the required duels every turn. I don't feel it will slow the game down too much, but it will add a nice game end condition and a good way to allow a distinctive win instead of making it a race to collect 12 cards.