Long time no post... long time no design!

It's been a couple weeks since my last post, and I still haven't gotten to some of the things I said I'd post about... like those Strategy and Tactics articles Oh well, such is life. Here's what has been going on:

Playtesting: I've finally gotten a playtest group started, we meet at my house on Sundays from 11ish until frisbee time. The core has proven to be myself, Aric Jack (shrike on BGDF), and Eric Flood, with a few others who've been once or twice each. So far we've been testing several of Aric's card games, as well as All For One, Blockade Runner, and a game of Eric's as well.

Gaming: I went to PhoenixConGames last week - it was mediocre relative to KublaCon and BGG.con, but it was worth the trip. I played a handful of board games, mostly with people I play with at home anyway. I did meet a couple guys from Phoenix, and a couple of Bo's friends as well, and hang out wih my friend Chris who lives in Phoenix as well. At RTeam game club I've gotten to try Notre Dame finally. I was disappointed at first by some aspects of the card drafting mechanism, but the game is growing on me.

Game Design: I haven't done much with design lately. I had decided to postpone new design ideas and work on "finishing" some of the many I have already. I had resolved at New Years to get All For One "in line to be published" this year. Blockade Runner is allegedly going to be published by Shifting Skies games, working on contacting people about a license right now. Wizard's Tower got 2nd place in the KublaContest (it's not actually called "KublaContest", but it ought to be ;) ) and both the contest director Julie Haehn and Aldie from BGG wanted a copy. Julie said she knows an up and coming publisher, and wants to show them Wizard's Tower and All For One, and Derk and Aldie said I should submit Wizard's Tower to Z-man games... I guess that's a step in the right direction! I have been agonizing over a way to combine my current "ID" version of All For One with David's current "Story" version in a way that accomplishes the goals of the story version but maintains the good aspects of the ID version... and I think I've finally done it. I need to get that finished up and sent off to Julie so she can show her publisher friend! I also told her she could have a copy of the game, since she likes it so much - I just have to make another prototype now...

Aside from the All For One version stuff, I haven't done any real design work at all in the last who-knows-how-long. I've all but forgotten about that Time is money thing, which may be my next project when I get back to designing. Either that, Kilauea, Dynasty, or Hot and Fresh.