EmDo: Coalition update

 Since my last post, I've played EmDo: Coalition 4 more times, and I've been iterating on a few things. My main goal lately has been to reduce game length, because while it feels pretty good now, it still takes longer than I think it's worth.

Reducing Duration

My friend Steve had a lot of salient suggestions for reducing the games' duration. My first stab at it was to simply reduce the amount of stuff you need to do in order to finish the project. I lopped off a planet slot from each section of the sphere, and I reduced the initial resource slots from 3 per section to 2 per section. In addition to this, I made them resource-specific, because otherwise I think it's too obvious to go for [+1 Action/turn] first every time.

That worked a little, but not enough. My next attempt was to increase the frequency that you get benefits from the sphere. I divorced the technology slots from the resource slots, and where you get your pick of two role icons when you commit a particular pair of planets to the sphere, now you get the other one for committing the level 2 technology in that section. The abilities no longer require the tech, just the 2 specific resources. It occurred to me that to get the resources, you have to first flip planets, then produce, then trade... it takes a while, and it' not even engine-build-y (normally), so this seems like enough work to earn [+1 Hand Size] or [+1 Action per turn].

That's all I've done so far, the only trick I have left up my sleeve might be to use scenarios or something to jump start the players a little bit. But I'm pretty lazy, and that might be tough to design, so I'm kinda hoping I won't be need to do that *fingers crossed*

Endgame Tension

Something that's been a problem all along is that as you fill up the sphere slots with planets (for example), then Survey and Colonize become largely worthless. Similarly, as you fill up the tech slots, Research isn't really needed anymore. Near the end game you get to a point where there are a couple specific things that need to happen, and for several players, there's nothing relevant left to do. This is always disappointing; the game action needs to stay relevant the entire game!

I have two ideas to address that issue, and I'm torn as to which I think might be better for this kind of game:

Option 1. If you win, total everyone's personal Empire scores and refer to a chart to see how you did

Option 2. In order to win, require a minimum number of total Empire points (add everyone's personal Empire score for this)

One thing I like about option 1 is that players who struggle to finish the sphere in time could feel good about just accomplishing the task, and they don't have to worry about how "well" they did, while players who can consistently finish the sphere could still have a higher score to shoot for. Another thing is that you don't need to see the points as you play, which means you don't have to track people's level 2 tech buys so you know they have 2 "invisible" points.

A couple things I like about option 2 are that requiring the condition may keep players involved who prefer a pass/fail sort of game end, but are competent enough to easily complete the sphere. This can also be used as a difficulty tuning knob: for an easier game, use a smaller total score requirement; for a harder game, use a larger score requirement. In addition, this format could allow (or possibly even encourage) plays such as "you are set up to ship a lot, why don't you do that and rake in some points, while we concentrate on completing the planets and techs for the sphere". I don't know why, but that feels cooperative-y to me. On the down side, I feel like I'd want the Empire scores to be state-complete (you could walk up mid-game and count them), and having a level 2 tech in your deck complicates that... so I'd either live it not being state complete, or I'd not count the techs, which seems weird to me.

I really don't know which way to go here. But either way, I think this score reckoning will help keep the game action relevant, even as the sphere fills up. I'm open to other suggestions as well, feel free to leave them in the comments below!

Tension from Aliens

I think the alien tension is kind of OK, I don't intend to change it further - at least for now. I'll probably revisit once I get the duration down and the endgame tension fixed (see above).

Coalition Actions

In an effort to clean up the Coalition tiles, I removed "Action: RFG an alien Spy card from hand" and simply made that an action on the Spy cards themselves. So as an action, you can play a Spy from hand to get rid of it. That's the same thing, but it makes space on the Coalition tile for something more interesting - though I'm not sure what that should be.

I had made some other tweaks as well... with Basic Coalition, you can spend an action to EITHER Bolster OR Repair a card in the sphere. It then goes on to explain what BOLSTER and REPAIR mean, which is reasonable, but maybe another ability would be better (the rules could go into the rulebook). I do like a good player reference...

I tried a version where the tile let you spend an action to commit a card to the sphere. At that time you could commit for free when you obtain the card, or as an action later, as a way to allow players to use their cards for a while and then push them into the sphere. But we didn't waste actions on that, we just did it for free upon obtaining... so the latest rule is that once per turn you may commit one card to the sphere for free (does not cost an action). I think this works better, so it can probably come off the tiles as an action.  

With Improved Coalition, you can both Repair and Bolster in one action, and you can send a ship to defend a stack. I'm pretty happy with the usefulness of Improved Coalition but I'm worried that the Basic side isn't enough -- any thoughts on that would be appreciated!

EmDo: Coalition progress

A while ago I posted about some early ideas I had for a cooperative mode for Eminent Domain. Well, after iterating through half a dozen playtests, I'm happy to report that Eminent Domain: Coalition has come together pretty well!

Since I haven't said much about it yet, here are some details of the early version of the game:

Players have formed a coalition (United Empires?) and are working on some common project - building a Dyson Sphere - that requires players to commit some planets, resources, and technologies in order to complete it. So each time you flip a planet, you choose to either keep it for yourself (to use is abilities), or commit it to the project (to further the victory condition)

Similarly, if you buy a tech card, you can either keep it, or commit it to the project. And if you trade resources, you put them into resource slots in the project board (I imagine a board with slots for all of these things)

Meanwhile, some semblance of "bad guys" (hostile aliens?) antagonize the players - they can put 'curses' into the players' decks, which makes them less efficient, and whenever a curse comes up, maybe that advances a "bad stuff" track, and every so often on that track a bad thing happens, like maybe some progress on the shared project is reversed

Maybe players could use ships/warfare to get rid of these curses, or spend their actions researching them away. If you don't keep the bad guys in check, then they'll keep coming up, and the bad stuff will get worse and worse!

Perhaps the Bad Guys get a turn after each round of player turns, in which they randomly (or algorithmically) remove a card from the stacks to hurry the game timer along, and also resolve some sort of effect

Players win if the project is completed before 1-2(?) of the stacks are depleted, and lose otherwise

Maybe players gain some kind of benefit for completing quadrants or certain portions of the project

How do the Bad Guys work? Maybe there could be a "Bad Guys" deck, and you'd flip a card from it after each round of player turns (or after each player turn perhaps, so it scales?), it could indicate which card to remove from the stacks, as well as what effect or action the bad guys take. Stuff like...

• If it's a warfare card, they power up their fleet (no attack, but increase their strength)
• If it's a colonize card, then they attack the planets in the project -- VP value is their "hit points," and players can defend by discarding VP tokens that they have collected
• If it's a research card, maybe the same thing but they attack a tech card in the project
• If it's a produce/trade card, then they knock out resources that have been placed in the project
• If it's a survey card, then some other bad thing happens

In any case, you'd reference their strength track to see how hard they attack, and maybe if they don't have anything in the project to target, then players take curses to make up the difference

When curses come up in your hand, maybe the bad guys strength track increases

Also, when bad guy cards come up maybe it's like "each player takes a curse for each [Advanced planet] in their empire, so some variable attack-type cards\

As I said, those were early thoughts. When I finally made a prototype. I stayed pretty true to the original ideas, but of course some things changed and evolved since then.

Of course it was far from perfect, but I was pretty surprised at just how well the initial prototype actually worked. The biggest problem I had was that it took far too long, and even more importantly, it took too long for players to interact with the Sphere. In retrospect, this made some sense -- EmDo is more-or-less an engine building game, and in any engine building game you first build your engine, then switch over to earning VPs. And in this case, filling up the sphere was the VPs of the game, so it makes sense that the first 1/2 or more of the game players would just build up their own empires, then start to deal with the Sphere. This was lame, and worse it rendered many of the "bad guy" (hostile alien) cards mostly ineffectual for half the game. Sure, they removed cards from the stacks, but many had no effect otherwise until you started actually working on the Sphere

Dysen Sphere

The solution here was simple, but took a few iterations to figure out: make the sphere also an engine building type of thing. I had initially thought it might be good to give a reward for finishing a section of the sphere, but that takes too long. I needed a strong, globally good effect, usable by all players, that would encourage them to engage with the sphere from the get-go (or at least very early in the game). I tried a few things, and in the end (well, currently) I settled on this: in each section, I connected 2 planets into a pair. If you complete that pair, then you get a benefit: all players gain access to a role icon. There are 3 sections of the sphere, and 6 role icons, so I dealt 2 role icons to each planet pair during setup, and now when you complete that pair, you decide however you want (as a group, individually, etc) which one comes into play, and the other is removed from the game

Then I connected the level 2 tech card slot in each section with the 3 starting resource slots, and said that when you complete those, you gain an ability. My first draft was "hand size +1" on each of them, but the current version has just one hand size +1, and the other two are the Streamlining ability (each turn you may remove 1 card in had from the game), and "+1 action per turn." I worry that +1 action might be the most obvious best thing, which would be lame, so it might need a nerf or something, but for now that's what I'm going with

In order to win, you need to contribute 2/3/4 planets per section (6/9/12 total) based on player count, one level 2 tech card per section (3 total), and one total level 3 tech card, as well as 9 resources, plus whatever resource slots are on planets committed. And you lose if the aliens attack an empty stack

Coalition Tiles

Like the Fleet, Mining, and Political Influence tiles from the expansions, I added a Coalition tile to the game -- a reference tile that allows you to do a couple of specific things as actions instead of playing a card. And just like the reference tiles from the expansions, you can upgrade to Improved Coalition via research to improve those actions. The actions on this tile give you a way to remove the 'curse' type alien cards from your deck (in an inefficient way), repair damage to the sphere or bolster it against attacks, and send ships to defend the stacks - if the aliens attack a defended stack, instead of taking a card, they remove the ship defending it. 

Hostile Aliens

The antagonistic force that challenges the players is a deck of Hostile Alien cards. Every so often (originally once after each round of player turns, but more recently I've tried effectively every 3 player turns, using the old Guards mechanism from All For One for 4 players), you draw a card from the Hostile Aliens deck and resolve it:

1. Note the stack that gets attacked. Remove a card in that stack from the game (unless that stack is defended, in which case remove the defending fighter instead). If that stack was empty (defended or not), game over -- the players lose.
2. Resolve effect printed on the card -- increase the Alien Strength track, attack a certain type of planet (in the sphere and in all Empires), attack all cards in a particular section of the sphere, attack the players (giving them all some 'curse' cards), attack permanent techs/techs in the sphere, or reshuffle the discards (and then maybe draw/resolve another card or two).

Whenever the aliens attack you, you take Alien Spy cards into your discard pile. When these come up in your hand, of course they don't help you -- they have no actions or role icons. Also, whenever they are discarded from your hand, you must increase the alien strength track. So they are pretty bad, especially if you ignore them and build up a handful in your deck. Your Coalition tile allows you to remove 1 of the Spies from the game as an action, and of course a Research action can remove up to 2 of them from the game

A newer rule I added in an attempt to disincentive to leaving the sphere empty too long was that they get stronger (advance the strength track) whenever they try to attack some type of card in the sphere, and there is none. I thought maybe that way if players don't build int he sphere, the aliens will get really strong really fast

Damage to the Sphere

My original thought was that when the aliens attacked the sphere, they would do so with strength based on the strength track, they would deal more damage the stronger they were. Then the VP value of the card being attacked would be the card's "hit points" - the damage it could take before being destroyed. But that led to some problems, and things like Bolster and Repair being equivalent

I figured out a better way, so the new rule is that the VP value of a card in the sphere is its defense, and the aliens damage the card only if their strength (per the track) is greater than or equal to the card's defense. Therefore it pays to Bolster -- you might be preventing multiple damage by keeping the card's defense out of reach of the alien strength for longer. And it still pays to repair, assuming that there's some down side to having a damaged card in the sphere

On that note, originally damage meant the card could be destroyed, reversing your progress. This felt pretty harsh, so I looked for something different. Since then, damage has just been something that you need to remove in order to win. So if a card got damaged, then you couldn't win unless you repaired it by the end of the game. But I wanted players to feel pressure to repair damage sooner rather than later, or risk some bad thing happening, so the new rule I am going to try in the next playtest is this: If a damaged card gets damaged again, then something bad happens. For starters I'll try "destroy it"

I'm pretty excited about this new damage format, with reasons to bolster cards before they get damaged, and reasons to repair them if they do (note that you could leave a card damaged for a while, and it's not bad unless that card gets successfully attacked again)

TTS Prototype

That's a long, rambling summary of where this cooperative mode currently stands. I think it's very promising, but it'll take a lot of testing and data to get all the details nailed down, and I have several big comments/ideas from my playtesters that I'm still considering. I'll post again in the future when I have more news about this. In the meantime, here's a screenshot of the TTS mod for the game :)

Playtesters welcome

I'd be happy to have fans of Eminent Domain give this cooperative mode a try! Let me know if you're interested, I could share the TTS mod, and maybe I could put together print-and-play files if anyone were so inclined

Currently Active designs - Taiko Kiri, EmDo: Coalition, The Great Goballoon Race, The Sixth Realm, Isle of Adventure

 I feel like I'm overdue a blog post discussing the games I've been working on lately. Ideally, I'll revisit each of these with a dedicated post in the near future, but here are the most recent projects I've been playtesting:

Taiko Kiri

In this co-design with my friend Steve, players are rebuilding Japan during reunification. It's a tile laying game where each round you place a tile into a common grid, and then either gain resources, or spend resources to start a project. Projects are scoring opportunities who's value depends on the configuration of the shared board. 

You can have two active projects, so whenever you get a third, you must score one of them for its current value. Most of the projects can increase in value over the course of the game, so there's some juicy decisions to be made with regard to which project to take on, when to score it, and when to keep working on it.

In addition, whenever you start a project, you add buildings to the board at the corners of the tiles, creating a network. There's a global network bonus based on the size and configuration of your network.

This game strikes me as having a similar scope to something like Cascadia, or Tiny Towns. I'm excited to think the game might be that approachable, and I hope other people find it as fun as I do. My only real concern at the moment is that it seems to take kind of a long time, but maybe it's not too bad. 

EmDo: Coalition

I thought I was done with expansion content for Eminent Domain, but a few months ago I figured out a way to add a cooperative mode to the game. That seems interesting and different enough that it's worth pursuing. The way it works is that you play Eminent Domain as normal, however instead of counting influence points, there is a group project that you're working on: building is a Dyson Sphere. Anytime you flip a planet or buy a technology card, you may choose to keep it for yourself as normal, or commit it to the Sphere. The players win together if they are able to complete the Sphere in time. Meanwhile hostile aliens are hassling the players, so you must build your engine, fend off the hostile aliens, and complete the project before time runs out.

I'm happy to say that this idea seemed to work right off the bat. Of course, I had to iterate a bit to make the details work, but the general format was pretty good. Probably the biggest hurdle, which Steve helped me get over with a great suggestion, was giving players incentive to add things to the Sphere early, rather than just build up their own engines until later, then putting work in on the communal project. The answer is to make contributing to the Sphere it's own sort of communal engine - once certain groups of cards have been added, *all* players gain access to extra icons or special abilities.

The most recent change I made had to do with player scaling... In a 4-player game, with the Aliens acting as another player, I felt like there needed to be more cards in each stack, like there would be in a 5--player game (according to the Escalation setup rules). Fortunately, Rio Grande intends to put Escalation in the same box as the base game, so anyone playing the new edition would necessarily have those 5p cards to add to the stacks. However, what happens if we want to play the co-op mode with 5? Then I had a new thought: borrowing a trick from an old version of All For One, I added an Alien marker to the game. In a 4-player game, it would start with the last player in turn order. Anytime it's your turn, and you hold the Alien marker... GUARDS! You'd resolve the aliens, then pass the marker to your right, so the aliens would get one turn for every three player turns, rather than every 4 player turns. I'm not sure whether to also use it in 2p, 3p, or 5p games, but so far it's worked alright the one time I tried it at 4p!

The Great Goballoon Race

Based on a race algorithm that I originally came up with when thinking of kid's games to play with Corbin, and inspired by the recent award-winning Challengers! (which has decisions punctuated by an algorithmic resolution phase), this game is about a hot air balloon race. But the players are not racing the balloons, rather the various high fantasy denizens (elves, dwarves, etc) are racing, and they have disallowed goblins. So when it's time for the annual balloon race, the goblin clans get together and have their own contest... As chieftain of a goblin clan, your goal is to toss goblins onto the balloons that you think will win the race. However, the more goblins hanging off a balloon, the slower it moves.

I had a little trouble making this mechanism into an actual game until I got that last idea, that backing a balloon actually reduces its chances of winning, from somebody's comment on Discord. Now I think the game actually works pretty well. It's kind of swingy with wild twists of fate, but I think that's good for a game like this.

There are five balloons, and to begin each round you deal an effect card to each. Then players simultaneously choose which one balloon to toss a goblin onto. Once these are revealed, from left to right you resolve each one. Every balloon with at least one incoming goblin has its effect occur once, then the incoming goblins board the balloon. Once all incoming goblins have been resolved, race cards are dealt per my race algorithm: Flip up four cards from a deck of 10 (2 cards for each balloon). For each card that comes up, that balloon moves forward. If that balloon is at high altitude, it moves six spaces. Middle altitude, it moves four spaces. Low altitude, it only moves two spaces. Altitude is determined by the number of goblins on the balloon - 3 or more drag the balloon down from high altitude to medium, 5 or more drag it down to low altitude. This way, adding your goblins to a balloon makes it more likely you'll control that balloon in case it finishes the race, but also less likely it will finish the race first.

At the end of any round if a balloon has crossed the finish line, check to see if anybody has won. The winner is the player with the single most goblins, in total, on all balloons that have crossed the finish line at the end of any given round. If a player has the single most, they win. If not, keep playing. So far it seems at least half the games go until 2 or 3 balloons have crossed the finish line.

The Sixth Realm

Back in November when I first played the heavily developed version of Deities & Demigods, The Six Realm, I was a little worried because not only was the game a lot heavier than what I had designed originally, but it was also kind of messy. I didn't feel like it was really finished enough to be going to crowdfunding that month. 

Fortunately, they had decided to delay this game's kickstarter launch until their previous project had fully shipped, which meant there was more time. I passed on my biggest concerns and ideas to the developer, and he took most of them to heart. I recently received an updated version, the version he says went to reviewers, and it was a lot cleaner. As yet I have not played a full game of The Sixth Realm, because it's taken about 45 minutes for the rules and about 45 minutes to play the first round (of three), and I just haven't had time in my sessions to play a full game.

My original design was kind of like a deck learning game with a common deck. This version eschews the deck of cards, and instead has almost like a rondel mechanism, but the result is similar. Each turn you'll activate one of the guilds (either the active guild, or one of the adjacent guilds if you pay a resource). Each guild has its own set of actions, more or less flavored towards a particular part of the game. For example, the merchant's guild has to do with resources; resetting them, gaining new ones, etc. There are six guilds, and you'll probably be trying to specialize in some combination of them each game.

Isle of Adventure 

I've met with Dan a couple of times about Isle of Adventure, and we've spoken at length about how it could work. There are a few ways that parts of it could go, and the last time we met I think we had a good idea for something to try, now it's just a matter of getting a prototype together and trying it. Dan is working on the prototype cards, and I will be putting it all into tabletop simulator when it's ready, then I'll be able to start testing it at my regular sessions.

Rolling Realms - Jaffee Realms update update

 A couple of weeks ago I posted about updating the realms I'd made for Jamey Stegmaier's roll & write game, Rolling Realms. Well, since then I have gotten ahold of the published version of Rolling Realms, and I have played my updated realms a couple of times each. Here's the news...

Crusaders

This one works well. I went with the edit I made in the footnote of the previous post: for the odd numbers, you get 1 resource per dot, for the even numbers you get 1 star for every 2 dots. One game it felt kinda easy to get 6 stars (plus a handful of resources), so I considered changing that to 3 dots per star... but I'm not convinced that's necessary yet, so I left it alone for now.

I like the way this one works, and I think it feels on par with the published realms.

Eminent Domain

After that last post, I preferred the previous version of the EmDo realm, the new one seemed more fiddly. So I reverted to that, but added stars for each row or column of planets, so you can get some stars for just getting lots of planets. This continues to be based on the thematic feel of the game, not the mechanical feel, which could be bad for players unfamiliar with the game, and it could be forcing the realm to be too complicated.

Today I played a game with this version, as well as the published Pendulum realm, and they happened to be in the same round, so I actually played them side by side. This was fortuitous, because it highlighted an observation I made to myself when reading how the Pendulum realm worked. To put it bluntly and succinctly, I don't think I could have boiled my EmDo  realm down and condensed it half as well as the Pendulum realm does! The Pendulum realm is just like my EmDo realm, if you combined Trade and Research into 1 action, and indicated what you get for Trading/Researching on the planets themselves.

...which is cool! I like the Pendulum realm. But if that published realm is so similar (and more simplified) than my EmDo realm, then I probably need to go another route with EmDo. As I mentioned, maybe evoking the deck learning rather than the thematic or strategic aspects would be better anyway. So here's the new version:

1 column per die value. the first time you use a die of that value, you get 1 resource as indicated. the 2nd time you use that same value, you get 2 of that resource. The 3rd time, you get that resource plus a star. And the 4th time you get 2 stars. In this way, it's like you get better at using any given number in that realm the more you use it.

I was wondering if that would be enough, or if I should try and add just 1 more thing somehow... like maybe awarding a star for using 1 of each die value (nah!), or something crazy like "mark off a box in this realm when you use a die value -- whenever you use that die value again (in this or any realm), get the indicated reward in addition" - then award nothing, 1 resource, 1 star or something like that. So using a number in the EmDo realm would make you better at using that number everywhere, not just in the EmDo realm. That's a neat idea, but I think I'll try the basic version first. The neat thing about Rolling Realms is that the complexity comes from the combination of realms available and the opportunity cost of using a die in one realm instead of another. So the individual realms can (and in fact really should) be very simple and straightforward.

Jaffee Realms 2021, v2.0

Please feel free to try these out and let me know what you think in the comments! I'm going for realms that evoke Crusaders and EmDo, but that fit in with the existing realms in the published game.

Eminent Domain is online at Board Game Arena!

I'm happy to announce that as of yesterday, my card game, Eminent Domain, is available for online play at BoardGameArena.com! Check it out, it's free to play, and they did a great job with the implementation.

I've been playing a lot of games at BGA over the last couple of months, including:

Eminent Domain
I got early access and did some testing for bugs. The implementation is gorgeous, and the game holds up! They've included the 5 scenarios that came with Eminent Domain: Microcosm, and very soon they might add the 6 from Escalation that only require base game cards to use.

Tzolkin: the Mayan Calendar
An old favorite that I hadn't played in a while. The timing aspect of the placing/retrieving of workers is ingenious. After playing a lot (and watching the top players' games), I'm actually a little disappointed in the game balance, but it's still a very fun game.

Stone Age
A classic worker placement game that I haven't played in a long time.

Russian Railroads Another good worker placement game that I haven't played in a while. It's neat how you score point income rather than just points, so rushing to scoring conditions can really add up! You can also pull of some fun combos with the reward tiles.

Dice Forge
This "dice building" game is a new one for me. I find it well balanced and fun. I like it best head-to-head, and I wish there were more cards to choose from each game (and more variety in what they do), but I hear that might be coming in an expansion.

Sobek
I own this, but haven't played it in years. Another good one for head-to-head play. I didn't even realize it's by Bruno Cathala!

Eminent Domain, Redux on Reddit

To be honest, I don't spend much time on Reddit. I find it somewhat not-user-friendly, and at times abrasive, and I just haven't committed the effort to make it a regular internet stop.

However, every once in a while I interact with Reddit, like hosting an AMA (when Yokohama was live for example), or when my game Eminent Domain was Game of the Week in Reddit's GotW forum.

Today I found out that Reddit also has a Game of the Week, Redux forum, where people look back at a previous game of the week and talk about how it's held up over time. And guess what... This weeks GotW,R once again features Eminent Domain!

First of all, let me say that it warms my heart to hear that people are still discovering, playing, and enjoying Eminent Domain.

In addition I'll point out that this is timely, as I have just secured an illustrator and a graphic designer for my long-awaited-by-me final expansion, Eminent Domain: Oblivion. The deadline to get files to the manufacturer in time for a game to debut at GenCon is coming up soon, and I was sort of expecting that to be when things would be due, but a deadline kind of sprung up on me quicker than that when Mischa at TMG lined up a foreign partner who is interested in co-publishing the expansion, maybe along with other EmDo products, because they need time to localize the cards.

So I've been scrambling to secure the artists, which I have done. They're getting started in the next couple of days while I further scramble to make last minute tweaks and design decisions so I can write and edit the final rules. Nothing like an imminent deadline to get things moving!

So if you're following Eminent Domain, or the Oblivion expansion, or just me in general, then pop into Reddit and make some comment or ask some question, so we can use this opportunity to let people know about the greatness that is Eminent Domain! :)

Eminent Domain: Still good!

Last weekend was RinCon, and I'll probably write a separate blog post about that. This post is about one thing I did at RinCon...

Old college friends Becky and Chris ran an Eminent Domain tournament, and they billed it as a Play With The Creator event. The idea was that ahead of the tournament I would teach the game, but I had a scheduling conflict, so my friend John taught it instead. I arrived in time to play, and so as advertised, players got to play Eminent Domain with the creator of the game!

There were 10 players other than me, and most of them had never played EmDo before. John is a shark, besides me he's probably played more EmDo than anyone in the world! And he's very good - he said that when he and I play, results are probably 60% in my favor. I think another player had played once a long time ago, the rest were brand new.

With 11 players, we had two 4p games and a 3p game, and the winner of each went on to play in the finals against me. Also, if I won the 1st game, then the 2nd place player from my table would advance.

It has been a REALLY long time since I've play Eminent Domain, and it's been EVEN LONGER since I played the base game without Oblivion expansion stuff. The first game was really interesting, as one of the new players seemed to grasp not only the rules, but perhaps a more advanced strategy... She took a Produce role in the 2nd or 3rd turn, right after colonizing her start planet - a move I usually warn against when teaching the game, because it puts a Produce/Trade card into your deck, which are mostly useless early in the game. While this may be considered a mistake, it's not the end of the world, and this player got a few more planets into play and called Produce and Trade rolls left and right, quickly getting to a P-T cycle of 3 or even 4 resources! Seeing this, and drawing some planets with Produce symbols on them, I tried to pivot into a P/T engine as well, though for some reason it took me a little while to get there so I wasn't able to capitalize on it too much. In my penultimate turn I did a produce role, fully expecting that opponent to fill up her resource slots, but lucky for me she only had 1 of her many P/T cards in hand! In the end I beat her by a single point, a margin which may have easily been reversed with just slightly more efficient play in the early game, or even just a better draw on that previous turn!

The finals ended up being that opponent and myself, John of course, and a guy named Taylor that I used to know 20 years ago from when I played Magic. In this game I started with an Advanced planet, and I happened to get more Advanced planets off the top of the deck, 2 of which had Research symbols (I;m sure John was jealous, those are his favorite). I went quickly and heavily into Research and obtained the level 3 adaptability tech with several rounds left to play. Online some players complain that this tech is too good, because if you get it early then you dominate the game. Well, in this case I didn't feel like it really helped me very much, apparently I didn't have a high concentration of standard Research cards. I only used it about twice. but the fact that it was worth 5 points was a big deal, and I was able to get a big Specialized trade off on the last turn for another 4 extra points, and I ended up winning by a wide margin. Of course John came second, then Tyler 3rd and the other opponent (I'm sorry, I forgot her name!) was last.

TMG had donated a couple copies of EmDo and each expansion as prize support, and I of course passed down any prizes. John already has EmDo and Escalation, so he only took Exotica. Tayler already had the base game as well, so he took the other Exotica and an Escalation. So even in fourth place, the other opponent walked away (very happy I might add) with copies of EmDo and Escalation in hand!

Everyone seemed to really enjoy the game, and I had a great time playing EmDo again. Man, that game holds up. I really am proud of it, and I feel like I should promote it more.

So if you still haven't tried it, play Eminent Domain!

Old news... a comment on Reddit about Eminent Domain (and a little Under The Hood about EmDo)

  About a year ago Eminent Domain was featured on Reddit as "game of the week", and I answered a bunch of questions there.

  I don't spend a lot of time on Reddit, but I logged in just now to set up an AMA about Yokohama (TODAY, 7/15, at 10am Mountain time!) and I noticed a reply in one of those threads that I never saw.

  That thread has been archived, and I don't think I can reply anymore, but it was a good question and I feel bad for not responding. Also, the person asking the question (Alex Churchill) is a friend and fellow game designer, with whom I worked developing Steam Works for TMG. Alex reads this blog sometimes, so I wanted to take a moment and respond to his old comment.


  In reference to my saying that Colonize and Warfare are early game actions in Eminent Domain, and that the point of the game is to hustle into the mid-game, Alex replied:

How can Survey and Colonize/Warfare be the early game? Getting points from planets is more effective than getting points from Produce/Trade 90% of the time, so people are doing it right up until the final round. I'm guessing the "mid/late" game you refer to must be Produce/Trade? But by the time you've got more than 1 or 2 symbols, your deck is full of Colonize/Warfare/Survey cards, diluting the Produce/Trade, which makes it much more natural to continue to focus on points for planets rather than try to switch focus and lose out on the follows.

  Alex has a point, if you invest (and especially if you over-invest) in Colonize or Warfare int he early game, then it looks like changing to a Produce/Trade or Research path mid-game would be inefficient, and so there's a temptation to just continue flipping planets. Indeed, this could be your strategy, and if you do a good enough job with it you might pull out a win. I'll note however that "doing a good enough job" against good players will likely involve targeting specific technologies to support your strategy (things like Survey Team, Fertile Ground, War Path, Improved Warfare...), as well as good timing of plays and correctly reading and reacting to your opponents' roles (as well it should).

  Therein lies the rub. That point of view is kind of a "n00b" outlook, and even if it sounds counter-intuitive, you can do better by minimizing the number of times you call Colonize or Warfare, making good use of following your opponents, and setting up a research or trade engine as quickly as possible. Level 1 technologies help you do this, as they have 2 different role symbols on them, which helps combat the dilution effect Alex mentioned. Using research to keep your deck slim is also a potential strategy there.

  The thing to note is that once you get 3 or 4 resource slots in play, a Produce/Trade cycle is actually more efficient than a Survey/Colonize/Settle or Survey Warfare/Attack cycle. Once you get a trade engine going, the longer the game goes on the more you'll outpace planet flippers. Mix in a well timed Genetic Engineering, Specialization, or Diverse Markets, and you can really pick up those Influence tokens in a hurry, possibly curtailing the game before your opponents get a chance to make their big endgame play (researching a level 3 tech, or flipping that last planet).

  Eminent Domain is not just a Role Selection game with Deck Building in it, it's a Deck Management game as well. The whole point is to find a way to make your deck perform better :)

  I hope that answers Alex's question, and I hope some players still find this kind of thing useful. It warms my heart to think that people are still playing Eminent Domain!

Treat the problem, not the symptom

Things go wrong in playtests all the time. When something goes wrong in a playtest, it may just be an anomaly of that particular game -- but if the same thing comes up in multiple plays, then it's probably indicative of some kind of problem with the design. As designers, it's our job to identify these problems and fix them.

This may be harder than it sounds though. Sometimes the issue experienced in a playtest is merely a symptom of a deeper problem. While it may be worthwhile to fix the symptom, what we really want to do is determine the underlying problem and fix that, or else another symptom is likely to rear its ugly head before long.


By way of example I'll illustrate what I mean:

When I was originally testing Eminent Domain, instead of the 5 different role cards in the game there were 6. Produce and Trade were separate cards, not combined into one card. Produce/Trade cycles had the potential to be more lucrative than other scoring paths, but the logistics behind having to take the two separate roles, and having cards for each in your deck, were supposed to balance that out. However, in practice I found that Produce/Trade strategies were frustrating to pursue because it was hard to score well off of the cycle. So hard in fact that players would ignore that strategy altogether.

At first I tried doubling the value of a Produce/Trade cycle, thinking that with higher rewards, players would pursue the strategy. In theory that worked, I could keep increasing the value of trading until it was worth going for. But that solution treated the symptom, not the problem. The more valuable I made trading, the more variable and swingy that strategy (and the game) would become... a player trying to produce and trade might never get their cards in the right order, and when they did they'd get a disproportionately high reward, like a slot machine. The real problem here was that it sucked to have to fill your deck with 2 different cards that were terrible on their own just so that MAYBE you can use them to collect lots of points.

Fortunately one of my players (thanks Wystan!) suggested putting both roles on the same card so that whenever you draw that card, it'd work for either the Produce role or the Trade role - whichever you need at the time. This solution ignored the symptom and went straight for the throat of the underlying problem. As soon as I tried it I immediately knew it was the right solution. And as a result of solving the problem, it eliminated the symptom as well.

So let that be a lesson to you. When something goes wrong in your playtests, don't take it at face value. Make sure to look and see if the issue is merely a symptom of a bigger problem, then do what you can to fix the underlying problem.

Eminent Domain: Oblivion progress

By way of update:

I have had the opportunity to play about a game and a half of EmDo with the new Oblivion stuff, and so far it's worked pretty well. Here's what I've made so far:

* Clout tokens: I have about 32 tokens with Politics icons on the back and a random role icon on the front. These are drawn randomly when following a Politics role, or as an action using the Market tile:

 * New Planets:
- 1 each of Fertile, Advanced, and Metallic with a Politics icon
- 2 Prestige planets with a replenishing Clout token

* Agenda board which goes "around" the Central Card Display (maybe easiest in the end to just replace the CCD with a new board that incorporates everything):

(I think I want to increase the costs by one, 3/4/5/6/7 rather than 2/3/4/5/6. Also, I'm not sure if I need 5 up at a time.)

* Agenda cards, with global effects which players can bring into and out of play:
- Gain +1vp when you trade at least 1 Food
- Gain +1vp when you trade at least 1 Water
- Gain +1vp when you trade at least 1 Iron
- Gain +1vp when you trade at least 1 Silicon
- ACTION: Discard 1 Food and 1 Iron to collect 3vp
- ACTION: Discard 1 Water and 1 Silicon to collect 3vp

- ACTION: Discard 1 Iron and 1 Silicon to collect 3vp

- ACTION: Discard 1 Food and 1 Water to collect 2vp and 1 Clout token
- Each player gets: Hand size +1 for each Permanent tech in their empire

- Each player gets: Hand size -1 for each Permanent tech in their empire (min 3 cards)

- Advanced planets are worth +1vp
- Fertile planets are worth +1vp

- Metallic planets are worth +1vp
- Warfare costs are reduced by 1
- Warfare costs are increased by 1
- Colonize costs are reduced by 1
- Colonize costs are increased by 1
- Research costs are reduced by 1
- Research costs are increased by 1
- Each player draws 1 more card per Survey role
- Each player draws 1 fewer card per Survey role
- When activated, return an Upcoming Agenda to the bottom of the deck. Agendas cost 1 less Politics icon to activate.

Additional ideas for Agendas:
** Whenever a player collects Influence, remove 2 Influence in the supply from the game as well.

** Players may spend Influence to boost or follow any role (return it to the supply)

** Player may trade Clout tokens as if they were resources.
** Each player draws 2 fewer cards per survey role. Each player may keep 1 additional planet per survey role.
** [POL] -> [SURVEY] 

** [POL] -> [WARFARE] 

** [POL] -> [PRODUCE] 

** [POL] -> [TRADE] 

** Discard [POL]: [POL]->[RESEARCH] this turn or ACTION: [POL]->[RESEARCH] this turn

** Discard [POL]: [POL]->[COLONIZE] this turn or ACTION: [POL]->[COLONIZE] this turn

* Market tile with the following abilities:
Market
* ACTION: Draw 1 Clout token
* ACTION: Trade 1 resource for another (the new resource does not need a resource slot)
Improved Market
* ACTION: Draw 2 Clout tokens then discard 1 Clout token
* ACTION: Trade 1 resource for another (the new resource does not need a resource slot)

* ACTION: Trade 2 resources for 3 other resources (the new resources do not need resource slots)

* Get +1vp when trading at least 3 different types of resources in one Trade role

Thoughts after playing with these:

* Some of the agendas need to be more potent. For example, instead of reducing research costs by 1, maybe it should reduce by 2... making research VERY hard to do while that Agenda is in play.
* I might have too many trade-centric or resource-centric, agendas. Do I really need the 4 that say "Gain +1vp if you trade any of ~this type of resource?"
* The Market tile could be simplified. Specifically, Improved market doesn't need to generate additional resources - it can just let you trade 1-for-1 twice, and it vacates the resource slots, which is handy.

New ideas: No tech cards, and annexing planets with political influence!
I am toying with the idea of not including any new tech cards in Oblivion... I feel like there are too many techs out there. But I have some effects I want in the game such as RECONing the Agenda deck, messing with Upcoming and Active Agendas, and interacting with Clout tokens. I was going to make just a couple of tech cards - maybe 2 of each type, to keep from bloating the tech stacks any more than necessary. 

But maybe I could do without adding any new techs at all. In Escalation I introduced Bustling planets, planets with Actions in their game text space... they all cost a Destroyer to attack, or 4 colonies to Settle. Perhaps I could put the effects I want in Oblivion onto Bustling planets!

However, I am designing each expansion to be usable with the base game only - I don't want people to be forced to use Escalation (and the Fleet tile) in order to play Oblivion. So I cannot have these new Bustling planets cost a Destroyer to attack. I could just give them "normal" warfare and colonize costs, but that seems boring. Thinking about it, I do have a new resource in Oblivion... maybe I could have these new Bustling planets cost Clout to flip! It'd be like you're annexing planets with your political influence!

So, how to do this? Here are some options that come to mind:
* Put POL icons in both the Colonize and Warfare costs, and explain in the rules that you flip these by doing an "attack" or a "settle," and boosting it with the correct number of POL icons (from Clout tokens, Politics cards, or planets in your empire)
* Replace the Colonize and Warfare costs with a new "Annex" cost (in POL icons), and explain in the rules that the way you flip these planets is by using the Politics role (use all Politics icons played to either: 1. activate an Upcoming agenda, 2. remove an Active agenda, or 3. Annex a planet)
* Like the previous bullet, but have the Annex cost in addition to the regular (higher than average) Warfare and Colonize costs - so they are expensive planets, but you could do better via Politics.
* Have an Annex cost (in Politics icons - either in addition to or instead of Warfare and Colonize costs), and then have the Market tile (change the name to Political Influence tile?) say "ACTION: Annex a planet" (explaining in the rules that that means splaying the required number of POL icons).
* On that note, have such an action, and explain in the rules that ANY planet may be Annexed, where the Annex cost is equal to the Warfare cost + the Colonize cost (in most cases this is 9). Then I wouldn't need to print a separate Annex cost on the planets (though I could still make new planets with an Annex cost that's either instead of or that's less than the normal Annex cost for the planet).
* I'm sure there are other ways to do it as well, but I will stop here.

Please let me know what you think, especially about the new idea for Annexing planets, and putting actions on them instead of making new tech cards!

Eminent Domain Origins: Terra Prime

Those following this blog may recall my first published game: Terra Prime. You may also recall the production issues that plagued the print run. Only 2,000 copies of Terra Prime were printed, and some of those were thrown away due to extremely poor alignment and die cutting, and potential for mold inside the box.

Needless to say, that was a disappointing start to my game design career. It was also a disappointing start to TMG's publishing career. Thankfully, Michael persevered, and TMG has grown into a well established, well known, and well loved board game publisher, and along the way I've grown as a designer and a developer as well.

But when it comes to Terra Prime, I've always wanted a sort of "do-over." The game is now almost 10 years old, but I played it again recently and I still think it's a solid, fun game. Over the years I have romanticized doing a re-print, updating the rules, using a high quality manufacturer, and including the expansion I already designed. Occasionally Michael has mentioned that it's not out of the question to do a reprint, but the priority is never high, and he's very concerned that the fact it's a reprint of a game that (automatically) didn't sell well will hurt it's chances in the marketplace. I've even toyed with the idea of kickstarting it myself so Michael and TMG wouldn't have to worry about that part of it.

Since Terra Prime was published in 2009, I (and TMG) have enjoyed a little more success with my next game, Eminent Domain. In 2010 we successfully kickstarterted that deck-learning game, raising over $48,000. Since then we've reprinted that game twice, successfully funded an expansion for over $100,000, and are currently funding a 2nd expansion as well as another game by Philip duBarry in the EmDo universe.

EmDo is a franchise that's done well for TMG, and Michael likes the idea of setting other games in that universe. Battlecruisers is the first, but may not be the last. Recently Michael mentioned the possibility of setting a Terra Prime reprint in the EmDo universe, and I think that would be a fine way to go.

I would absolutely love the opportunity to clean up the rules to Terra Prime, set it in the EmDo universe, and see it kickstarted and made into a reality. I imagine the title would be Eminent Domain Origins: Terra Prime, and the setting would be well in the past, before the players had carved out sections of the galaxy to rule over, they were all part of the same faction... vying to ascend to the Leadership of the Federation.

All the planets would get swapped out with Fertile, Metallic, Advanced, and Exotic planets. The resources too would be swapped out - no more Bluium, Greenium, Yellium, and Brownium - but instead Food, Water, Silicon, and Iron. The cartoony, retro sci-fi art (that wasn't too well received) would be replaced with the sleek EmDo art (that's gone over very well).

What do you think? Would you want to see Eminent Domain Origins: Terra Prime become a thing? Would you support such a kickstarter project? Let me know in the comments below!

Eminent Domain: Oblivion - prototyping

I've been doing some prototyping this week - in addition to updating all my Alter Ego files, I've finally gotten to work putting together a prototype for Eminent Domain: Oblivion!

Here are some pics to prove it:

 Clout Tokens

Agenda Display

In case you don't recall, the basic idea of the Oblivion expansion is that there are Agendas, which are global effects that apply to everyone. You can bring them into and out of play via the new Politics role.

When choosing the Politics role, you will reveal a new Upcoming Agenda from the deck, placing it in the leftmost (most expensive) slot in the Upcoming Agendas row (above the Central Card Display) - sliding other Upcoming Agendas down to make room. Return any Agenda sliding off the rightmost space to the bottom of the Agenda deck.

You may boost the role as normal with Politics icons, and other player may follow (playing Politics icons of their own), or Dissent (drawing a card as normal). After all players have Followed or Dissented, you may use ALL Politics icons played (by you and your opponents) in order to EITHER:

1. Activate one of the Upcoming Agendas, moving it to the leftmost (most expensive) slot in the Active Agendas row (below the Central Card Display) - sliding other Active Agendas down to make room. Return any Active Agenda sliding off the rightmost space returns to the bottom of the Agenda deck.

OR 

2. Remove one of the Active Agendas, returning it to the bottom of the Agenda deck.

In order to do either of these, you must have the required number of Politics icons, printed on the board in the Agenda's current slot. Again, you may count ALL Politics icons played by yourself and your opponents.

In return for offering their Politics icons, opponents who Follow your Politics role draw 1 Clout token from the supply. Clout tokens depict a Politics icon on the back side, and one of the other role icons on the front. These tokens may be kept until spent to boost or follow either a Politics role, or whichever role the other icon applies to. For example, a token with a Produce icon on the back may be spent to boost a Politics role or a Produce role.

I expect that sometimes players will Follow a Politics role because they want to hep the active player get a particular Agenda into or out of play, and I expect that other times players will Follow just to collect a Clout token. Still other times I expect players to Dissent, perhaps because they don't want to help the active player out, or perhaps because they need better cards for their own turn.

My current draft of Agendas might not be spectacular. I just wanted something to test out. I think many of them will need to be more impactful things that really stand to help or hinder someone's strategy.

In the lower right corner of that 2nd pic you might even be able to see the Market tile I mentioned before. For a first draft I went with the following version: 

Market:
Action: Draw 1 Clout token, then discard 1 Clout token.

Action: Exchange 1 resource for another (store it in the same slot the traded resource came from).
Research: Spend 3R to upgrade to Improved Market.

Improved Market:
Action: Draw 1 Clout token, then discard 1 Clout token.

Action: Exchange 1 resource for another (store it in the same slot the traded resource came from).
Action: Exchange 2 resources for up to 3 other resources.
+1vp whenever you Trade 3 different resource types in 1 Trade role.

I intend to make a few techs that interact with Clout tokens and Agendas, maybe swapping the locations of Upcoming or Active agendas (making them more/less expensive to activate/remove, or making them stick around longer) for example. I think I will keep the tech to a minimum though, since I've added so much in the other expansions. I think this one will be mainly about the Agendas.

Now, to playtest!

EmDo resources - differentiating them... is that a thing?

Ever since Eminent Domain came out, there have been people who were disappointed that the 4 resource types in the game are not more different from each other. While there are a few techs that reward you for either trading a variety of different resources or for specializing in one resource type, other than that Food, Water, Silicon, and Iron are equivalent.

This has never bothered me in the least - the resource type is merely a reflection of the type of planet that produced it. I could have used a generic "resource" token, but I opted for the more flavorful resource names and colors. I was a little surprised when people complained about that, citing it as one of the reasons the game was "obviously not finished" (the differently sized ship tokens being another such reason), though I guess I shouldn't have been.

When working on the first expansion to Eminent Domain, I wanted to address the complaints people had. As you can see in Escalation the different ship sizes have meaning, putting the complaint that "they're different sizes but all just 1 Fighter" to rest. I explored the possibility of using resource costs to differentiate the resources, but I realized that (a) tech cards already have planet requirements (which is the same as specific resource requirements), and (b) it was PHENOMENALLY painful to try and recall which cards cost which combinations of resources.

So I've been of the opinion that differentiating the resources is not a thing that matters at all, and I haven't tried to do it - with the caveat that in the future Oblivion expansion (the political agenda one), there could be agendas that reward trading a particular resource (again, that just rewards trading if you have a certain planet type in play).

Today I had an idea that may go along with those types of agendas, and focus on there being some meaning behind which resources you have...

In Escalation we have a Fleet tile, and in Exotica we have a Mining tile. Perhaps in Oblivion we can have a Market tile which allows you to trade one resource for another. That way, no matter which actual planets you have in play, you might be able to make use of those types of agendas. It could look something like this:

Market:
Action: Exchange 1 resource for another (store it in the same slot the traded resource came from)
Research: Spend 3R to upgrade to Improved Market

Improved Market:
Action: Exchange 1 resource for another (store it in the same slot the traded resource came from)
Action: Exchange 2 resources for up to 3 other resources
+1vp whenever you Trade [with a qualifier - like maybe when you trade 3 different resources, or when you trade 3 of the same resource perhaps. Or maybe just whenever you lead Trade?]

The thrust of Oblivion is supposed to be agendas and clout. Agendas are global effects that players can bring into and out of play via a new Politics role. Clout is like role symbols you can save up to be used later. I plan to have just a few techs in the set, dealing with the Agenda display and with clout. But I think there could be room for a Market tile in the expansion as well, to allow players a way to take advantage of some of the Agendas that have to do with trading particular resources, or potentially to use in conjunction with those few existing techs that reward diversity or specialization. Improved Market might be nice just as a way to produce resources as an action!

I like the sound of this, so I wanted to jot it down so I don't forget. If not a Market tile, I'd probably want some kind of Lobbyist tile or something that dealt with Clout or Agendas in some way. I hadn't really thought about that yet.

Exotica is underway, and how about this new Start planet?

Over the last few months, artist Eric J. Carter has been cranking on Tech Card illustrations for Eminent Domain: Exotica, and I'm loving the images he's been coming up with. You can see some of them on his facebook page, and I'll share one of my favorites here:

This illustration is for a tech card called Space Station, which is a permanent tech you could get that acts like a copy of any Asteroid in play.

Speaking of Asteroids, I was looking at the number of components that will be in Exotica. Based on the size of the box and punchboard, there will be 8 tiles in the game. 5 of those will be mining tiles, and the rest can be Start planets. I had 2 Exotic start planets, and I had also come up with a couple of promo-style Start planets (a Utopian planet and a Prestige planet). Having 1 slot left for a Start planet, I was going to just use one of those promo style planets. but the other day I had a better idea...

Exotica is all about 2 things: Exotic planets (with civilized aliens), and Asteroids. I had Exotic Start planets... why not try an Asteroid start planet? That could be interesting, but what does it mean exactly?

Well, Asteroids are kinda like low-value prestige planets in that they don't count toward technology pre-req's. So I could make an Asteroid start planet, it could cost 2/2 like all the standard Start planets, and it could have a Crystal resource slot (Crystal is a new resource that can be found on Asteroids and Exotic planets). But a standard Start planet would count toward one of the tech stacks, so an Asteroid Start planet would be at a bit of a disadvantage... the same was true for the prestige Start planets in Escalation. For the Prestige planets I added Role icons -- what could be added to an Asteroid start planet?

The solution presented itself fairly quickly: "Ignore planet requirements on Asteroidal technology."

The whole point of Asteroids, and the thing that makes them different than Prestige planets, is that they count as "Asteroids." There are a couple of cards in each tech stack with the word "Asteroidal" in the title, and they get better the more Asteroids you have in your empire. So it makes sense to me, both thematically and mechanically, that starting with an Asteroid as a Start Planet that you could access those technologies.

I'm getting excited about this one again, as graphic designer Ariel Seoane got to work this week on putting the package together. If you're interested in where the game is out, or want to give the Print & Play files a try, check out this forum on BGG.

EmDo 3rd expansion... what's in a name?

I've been getting back into Exotica lately, soliciting outside playtesting to help finalize and wrap that expansion up. Pretty soon I'll dig up the ideas I've had for the third (and final?) EmDo expansion - the one with the Politics role, Agendas, and Clout tokens.

That said, I might as well choose a title, or at least a code name, for this final expansion - that'll help me refer to it later. I'll ask for feedback on the following thoughts:

1. Eminent Domain: Oblivion

2. Eminent Domain: Corruption

3. Eminent Domain: Despotism

4. Eminent Domain: Agendas

5. Eminent Domain: ??? MAKE A SUGGESTION!

Remember, the thrust of the expansion is the Politics role, through which players will bring global effects (Agendas) into play, and they will use "clout" tokens (I imagine this as throwing around your political clout) to help boost roles.

I kinda like Oblivion ("the state of being unaware or unconscious of what is happening") as a bit of a joke or comment on politics, and it sounds ominous and cool.

Despotism ("the exercise of absolute power, especially in a cruel and oppressive way") sounds cool for an EmDo expansion, but maybe not one about a Politics role...

I'd love to hear what you think about this, and I'm excited about the prospect of working on new EmDo stuff!

More Deck Learning?

I've mentioned before that I've wanted to explore more uses of the Deck Learning mechanism from Eminent Domain, and I've had a couple of general ideas as to what kinds of game I'd like to try with it...

The other day I started putting some real thought into how a Railroad Tycoon style network building/pickup-deliver game driven by a deck learning mechanism might work. I ended up with some interesting, maybe clever ideas as to how to do cities, connection costs, and deliveries in a certain way, and on the airplane yesterday I fleshed those ideas out pretty well, but I did run into an issue. More like a question, really...

Does the Deck Learning mechanism necessarily require Role Selection? Or is it enough to use the stacks and card drafting outside of a Role Selection game?

I'm not sure I know the answer to that yet, but my first thought was that the Role Selection provided almost all of the interaction in EmDo, so the only way I could use the deck learning in a non-RS game would would be to use some other form of interaction.

So with the ideas I have right now about this rail game (what should I call it? Manifest Destiny... ha ha... Or how about Eminent Do-Train? EmTro? EmTrak? Man, I amuse myself!), my first thought was to use the Role Selection, and each player would build up their own little mini-map. But my current thought is to have a common board where players compete to build cities onto the map and deliver cubes from city to city, and try it without Role Selection.

As a player, would you expect a deck learning game to work more like Eminent Domain (using Role Selection)? Or no?

Eminent Domain: Exotica -- Back in motion!

With Eminent Domain: Microcosm all wrapped up (until next month, when we'll release a PnP version for players to try while a Kickstarter project is underway), I've finally gotten a chance to start wrapping up Exotica. I have updated my prototype files, and now I'm soliciting illustrations and planning on getting this game ready for a GenCon 2015 release!

Now that I have updated prototype files, who among you would like to print and play with them?

Email seth at tastyminstrelgames dot com with the subject EmDo: Exotica Playtest and I'll send you the PDFs. All I ask is that you play a few games and then respond with any general comments you might have, as well as answer a few specific questions I have.

I look forward to your feedback!

Presenting Eminent Domain: Microcosm

Some of you reading this may actually follow my blog on occasion... and of those, some may have seen some posts I made on my attempt at a microgame, MicroCiv.Well, the news is that I developed MicroCiv, set it in the Eminent Domain universe, got some sweet art and graphic design done by the very talented Ariel Seoane, and long story short (too late...), I present:

Eminent Domain: Microcosm

The galaxy just got a whole lot smaller...

Two mighty empires are about to collide. Play your cards right and become the ultimate ruler of this microcosm!

Eminent Domain: Microcosm is a quick-playing two-player card game which brings you all the thrill of building a space empire in just 15-20 minutes. Each turn you take a card into your hand from the supply, then you either play a card and carry out its instructions, or pick up your discard pile to refill your hand. Each card also has a scoring condition on it, and to win you'll want to maximize those conditions.

As in the grandfather game Eminent Domain, actions you take can be "boosted" by revealing other cards sharing the same icon. Colonize and attack planets, do research, and take advantage of politics to score the most influence by the end of the game!

That's right, apparently all I can do is design Eminent Domain over and over again :)


I will have a final art prototype copy (or two) of Microcosm with me in the TMG Demo Room at GenCon this week, so if you want to check it out, swing by and challenge me to a game!

New Eminent Domain content! Microcosm, EmDice, and new stuff!

Long time no post...

EmDo News

I have some news on the Eminent Domain front. I've posted in the past about Exotica, EmDice, and MicroCiv. The news is that TMG is moving forward with some of these!

One of our excellent artists, Ariel Seoane, is putting together art for Eminent Domain: Microcosm (formerly MicroCiv), and will then be doing art for Eminent Domain: The Dice Game.

Eminent Domain: Exotica is still on the list, and will likely be a 2015 release.

Anyone interested in playing the latest version of the game, you can print the files out here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4093/My%20Games/Eminent%20Domain/EmDo%20-%20Microcosm/EmDoMicro3.2.pdf

I've changed the language to refer to cards instead of tiles because in the final game the planets and techs will also be cards to make the game more portable.

If you play the game, please let me know what you think by leaving a comment here!

In addition to those EmDo products, I've been working on some new, fun stuff for the Eminent Domain base game: New Base Game Scenarios, and something I'm calling Emperor Avatars.

Base Game Scenarios

In Escalation I added Scenarios to Eminent Domain, and they have been very well received. People get excited about asymmetric starting positions, and really like the jump start that Scenarios add to the game. 6 of the Scenarios in Escalation used only cards from the base game so that players could play with Scenarios even if they didn't have he expansion (perhaps by looking up the details of the Scenarios online). Michael asked me to create additional Base Game Scenarios, so I've gone through and made 6 more Scenarios using cards from the base game, and so far I've really enjoyed playing with them.

Emperor Avatars

While working on the new Scenarios I had another idea that sounded interesting... so I created something I'm calling Emperor Avatars (though honestly that title doesn't make a lot of sense). Originally Avatars were going to be very similar to Scenarios, but rather than starting you with a Level 2 tech, it would simply give you an ability. The idea was to expand the Base Game Scenarios with abilities from the expansions. However, that quickly evolved into something else.

What I ended up doing was making 12 small abilities and putting them on 24 tiles - one each on "left half" tiles and one each on "right half" tiles. At the beginning of the game, player will draft these, and will end up with 2 abilities, a left-half/right-half pair. The combination of 2 abilities can lead to many different possible setups, and being able to draft them is a fun way to customize your position.

If you are interested in trying the New Base Game Scenarios or the Emperor Avatars, the files can be found here:
New Base Game Scenarios: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4093/My%20Games/Eminent%20Domain/Scenarios%20-%20new%20Base%20Game.pdf
Emperor Avatars: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4093/My%20Games/Eminent%20Domain/Emperor%20Avatars.pdf

Note that the icons in the upper left are from my old prototype files - they are a Survey icon, a Produce icon, and a Trade icon.

Enjoy!

Packing for BGG.con - What are you bringing?

I just packed up a backpack with some games to take to BGG.con with me this week. Plane leaves Tuesday, T-minus 36 hours!

I don't like to bring published games to conventions - other people have published games - con libraries are full of them. Bgg.con in particular has a Hot Games room, which is where most of the game I'll want to play will probably be located anyway. What people won't have is prototypes... not my prototypes anyway. That's why I like to bring the games I'm working on.

So here's what's in my backpack right now:

Odysseus: Winds of Fate is an old favorite design, and one I feel has real potential, but that I never was able to "finish." I brought it up at Sasquatch last week in conversation with David Chott, and it made me realize how long it's been since I've even thought about the game. David thought it sounded interesting, so I've dusted it off to bring to Dallas with me. I recall wanting to make certain changes for a new version, but I don't believe I've done that yet - so if we play it it'll have to be with the old version.

EmDice, my dice game based on Eminent Domain is probably as done as it's going to get. I rebuilt the prototype recently (following the unfortunate robbery of my prototype bag). I haven't played it in a while, but if anyone's interested, I'll have it with me in Dallas.

And of course I'm bringing EmDo with Escalation, it's no longer a prototype, but the ship bearing the production copies of Escalation doesn't arrive for another week, so my advance copy may interest some EmDo fans :)

Belfort: the Expansion expansion is on that same boat, so I'm bringing that with me as well. It'll require a copy of Belfort from the library though, because I'm not schlepping one of those with me!

Rockin Roll, a dice game follow up to Dungeon Roll, is getting closer to finished, but still isn't quite there yet. I'll have the current version with me, and I'll be looking for opinions on what to change (I already have some changes I'm considering)

I've got a current prototype of KoAaS: World Fair expansion, in case anybody wants to see what's coming up for that game in 2014.

MicroCiv, my newest idea - an attempt at a "microgame," with just 16 cards and 15 tokens, this 2 player civ game seems to be working out so far. I'm hoping to find out if people like it or not.

Battlecruiser, by Philip DuBerry, is a card game that plays like a microgame, but with a lot of variability from an abundance of different cards (of which you only use 5-8 per game).

And finally, I've got a prototype of Exhibit: Artifacts of the Ages, my bluff auction set collection game which I'm happy to say has been picked up by a european publisher :)

So, what are you bringing to BGG.con this week?