Planar Conflict: Still Playtesting

Just wanted to let you know I'm still playtesting the Planar Conflict rules. I found some early issues with the setup of opposing Strongholds...there weren't enough of them, which caused bottlenecks and stalled the flow of movement (and thus stalled the game). I've added more Strongholds, but that made them easily vulnerable to player Shields, which quickly reduced them to rubble since they were unguarded. I had to decide whether to give the Infernals a larger opening draw (to allow more Vassals to be drawn and thus placed on Strongholds as defenders), or to start the game with Vassals already on the Strongholds.

I also found there weren't enough Shields and Planar cards in the deck, so these were increased. And I found that it was worthless to have Infernals move out from behind their Strongholds, as creatures and Guardians could swarm them and easily take them down.

Finally, many creatures have abilities tied to primary attacks, border color, etc. and these become useless with Vassals not having borders and having only 1 Vassal under a Shield. I considered cutting down Vassal Vitalities to allow for multiple Vassals under a Shield. While this is not an issue when a player is running the Infernal, trying to automate the placement of creatures under Shields for a solo game or multi-player (without someone playing the Infernal) is problematic. It has me a little frustrated. These details, which seemed small at first but have grown into big obstacles) are what I'm currently trying to work out, while preserving as much of the main game as possible. There are some real advantages to having other members of a design team to bounce ideas off of...unfortunately I don't have that luxury...