Gen Con bound

In about 5 4 hours Mike and I head up to Phoenix to fly out to Indiana for Gen Con! Last year was an interesting experience... this year we will be camped out in the Game Salute booth along with a few other small publishers. As far as I can tell we'll be spending the week demoing and selling Village, Belfort, and Eminent Domain. I've also done something I've been meaning to do for several years - I've had play mats made!

I got a phone call this morning from Larry Fettinger, who we're staying with in Indiana, letting me know that the mats arrived safe and sound. he opened them up to take a look, and he tells me the quality is phenomenal. I'm excited to see them and play on them tomorrow!

I'll be bringing the following stuff to gen Con with me...

• Eminent Domain: Escalation prototypes (x2)
• Captains of Industry prototype
• Ground Floor prototype
• Kings of Air and Steam prototype
• Exhibit Prototype

After all that I ran out of space in my bag!

I'm also bringing some flyers and Exhibitor Info packets for RinCon to see if I can drum up some business for that. I don't think I've posted the flyer I'd made here, so behold:

Swing by booth 1033 to check out (maybe purchase!) Village, or the EmDo playmats, or whatever other TMG stuff we have. After vendor hours I'll be happy to demo any of the prototypes I am bringing as well!

TMG updates, recent gaming, and Protospiel

It's been a little while since I posted any sort of update, so here're a few things that have been going on...

TMG Updates

* The Ground Floor kickstarter project went well, raising over $116,000! Skyline and Ground Floor are at the manufacturer, and production is underway.

* Michael mentioned in his last update that Kings of Air and Steam has suffered from some art delays, but the art updates we've received have looked great!

* People have received their Kickstarter copies of For The Win, and it seems very well received thus far.

Recent Gaming

* Lords of Waterdeep has been getting a lot of play lately, and I got a copy for Jeremy and Amelia for putting me up while I was in Seattle. I continue to be very happy with it. We've been playing without the Mandatory Quests and without the Lord who rewards buildings. However, after several games with my Seattle friends in which we added that building Lord back in, I am not so sure we need to leave it out anymore. I don't see us playing with the Mandatory Quests though.

* Castles of Burgundy is my most recent game acquisition, and I've played it a handful of times.  I like it, but it does tend to take a really long time.

* Ascension was never my favorite game by any stretch, but after several hours alone with the iPad app, I've definitely grown to appreciate it more.

Protospiel

Last weekend I attended Protospiel for the second time. It turned out to be really productive for me, and a fun time overall. Here are some games I played by other designers:
* A prototype in early stages by Kevin Nunn which he asked us not to discuss. Later in the weekend I didn't play but got a peek at another of Nunn's games which looked more interesting to me. I gave some comments for both which seemed promising, I hope they pan out for Kevin.

* A dice game by Andrew Juell which was pretty cool. It didn't really have a theme, but it reminded me of Dice Works a little bit.

* Pushka by Peter Dast is an abstract game which I thought looked pretty cool. You have different types of units, and you use cards to move them across the board, pushing or trapping opponents' pieces. Score by trapping pieces or getting your own pieces across the board. Later in the con we tried a modification to make it more like a weird game of football, which is a theme that seemed to fit the mechanics.

* I saw a low-bid auction game called Skyline (which the designer said he needed to re-name now that TMG's Skyline is coming out. I didn't play this, or even see it played, but that didn't stop me from talking about it for about an hour with the designer and making comments!

* Gladiators by Sam Liberty and Kevin Spak (Spoiled Flush Games) is a game which will be coming out from Rio Grande since it won the RGG game design contest. Something of a deck building arena game based somewhat on Texas Hold'em.

* Grave Robbers Dilemma is another game by Sam and Kevin. this one is all about double think and simultaneous action. It's very quick, and I ended up liking it a lot better than I thought I would.

* Avast is a pirate themed deck building game that I got the rules for at GenCon last year, and now I've played a few rounds with the designer. I think it's a bit too involved and fiddly as-is, but it had one aspect that I really thought was interesting - the idea that you actually bury treasure. In the airport on the way home I started to come up with one of my typical "this is how I might pursue that idea" things, and I've got my own thoughts about a pirate themed deck builder in which you bury treasure in order to thin your deck and score points. My version is more along the lines of Ascension in complexity, but of course that would be too simple for me, so there's a bit more to it than that.

* A Game of Cat and Mouse by Al Leduc is another simultaneous action double think game where you send your cat to collect mice.

* Beware the Dragon is a set collection game which is sort of like a trick taking game. Each round the 'leader' plays a card face up, then all other players play one face down as an offer. Once revealed, the leader may choose one of the offers to exchange with, or else keep his own card. This reminded me of the main mechanism in Oasis.

And I managed to get a fair number of games I'm working on to the table as well:
* Captains of Industry is a 2013 release from Tasty Minstrel Games formerly known as Titans of Industry, until a few months ago when a Kickstarter project popped up for a different game with that title. I had played that game last year at Protospiel, when it was called Industrialist... At first we were bummed that we had to change the title, but there are some advantages to Captains of Industry, which is what we've decided to go with. I sat out and watched a 4 player game of CoI with Al Leduc, Dave Whitcher, Peter Dast, and Steven Dast. The game (not including rules) took 2:15, which isn't too bad, especially for a con environment (I find that environment adds 10-20% to the game length). The game went well, and the players seemed to enjoy it. We played with a slight modification to the round end dynamic that I've been meaning to try, and I think it worked well. I got some good comments on a few details such as terminology, but the main feedback I got here was on the Captain cards - like Railroad Tycoon's Tycoon cards, the Captain cards confer end-game bonuses based on what you've done in the game. Those and the Advances are what I am really concentrating on at this point in development - the main rules and dynamics of the game are pretty much final.

* I have trouble testing the Escalation, the expansion to Eminent Domain, because in order to do so I really need people who already know the base game. Last year I tried testing Exotic, but I first had to teach the base game by itself, and one player asked why we were playing a published game at Protospiel... This year I was able to put together 3 players who had at least played EmDo before, though 2 of them were only barely familiar with it, while the third was a bit more familiar, but none were really all that experienced with the game. But it was enough that they knew the rules! I sat out while they played a 3 player game with the expansion. I think it went pretty well - in fact it was kind of a lousy playtest, since there wasn't really much in the way of feedback. Gil mentioned that he felt like there wasn't enough to do with Destroyers, and that might be a missed opportunity. Gil did end the game with a few leftover Destroyers he couldn't use, but he also passed up on the opportunity to take some planets to spend them on and stuff like that. It brought up a good question though - should a player be allowed to spend a Destroyer as if it were a fighter? It's a bad deal, and since a Destroyer is harder to get (and therefore "better"), one might expect it can do anything a Fighter can do and more... I am considering allowing that, as I think it won't matter very often, and when it does matter, it'll only disappoint people if they cannot spend their Destroyers like Fighters. I haven't made a final decision on that yet.

* Alter Ego is a game I've been stuck on for a while now. I love the theme and basic idea of the game, but I haven't been happy with the design. I was ecstatic to get not 1, but 2 different groups to play it this year at Protospiel! First, I got a 3 player game going, during which I realized that I had forgotten to remove a number of (about 1/2 of) the Henchmen cards. We cut that game short and talked about it a bit, then we tried again, incorporating some of the comments (and I removed those cards). Unfortunately, the cards I removed (because they were unaligned with the Arch Villains) happened to also be the cheaper Henchmen, AND one of the suggestions was that the display size might be too big - so this resulted in a game where players could only play 4 cards at a time, and the Henchmen mostly cost 5 Fight symbols. In theory this is not impossible, as players can use Teamwork tokens and trophies, but getting there was tougher than it's supposed to be and the game didn't go exactly right.

As that game was wrapping up. 4 other people walked up and inquired about the game, so when the first 3 had to leave, the next 4 sat down and we started again! More great comments and suggestions this time. All in all I probably had about 4 hours of Alter Ego on the table. Very useful!

* I played Exhibit with Sam Liberty and Kevin Spak (Spoiled Flush Games), to test the finishing touches I'd put on that game. Everything worked really well except for one thing, and I'm not sure if that was an anomaly or not, so I'll have to play it again with that rule (lopping off a round by starting the game with 2 tiles in each auction).

* All For One: My biggest disappointment so far in my short game design career is that the first game I worked on that was any good, All For One, never went anywhere. For years it was very well received at conventions by just about everyone who played it, but now it feels sort of, I don't know... old fashioned or something. I have been wanting to revive it though, so I brought it with me to Protospiel. Fortunately I was able to get it to the table late Sunday. There were 5 people interested in playing it, and I'd forgotten that 5 is not the best number for new players because the level of chaos is higher - so we played a 5 player game (I watched). I had thought about not using the guards, but since I hadn't played it in so long, I just left everything the same and figured I'd take comments on what the players thought of the current state. Sadly I forgot the rulebook somehow, but on the up side, my player aids were very descriptive, and I remembered how to play the game!

A41 went over well, everyone seemed to like it. There were some suggestions which I liked, and some I'm not sure I agree with - some players didn't like how you can duel to affect the game end timer (and thereby end-game bonus), and they especially didn't like that you could start a fight (with a Demand action) intending to lose. Thematically that might be a very valid point, though if players are sort of storytellers, then it stands to reason that they can manipulate the characters like that. It might be good though to make it such that the Active player does not have any incentive to tank a fight.

Thanks to everyone at Protospiel who played my games, and to those who showed me theirs. I had a great time, and look forward to the next event!

Yet Another New Game

Finally, as I mentioned, some of the hours in airports and on planes on the way home from Protospiel I spent outlining my version of a pirate themed deck building game based on the idea I got from Avast. I'm calling it Scourge of the High Seas. Maybe I'll get some cards together for it and give it a try, but I'm not sure if or when that will happen.

I'm trying to make this game along the lines of Ascension, sort of. There's a "center row" like Ascension has, only there are 2 of them: displays from a Tortuga deck and a High Seas deck. Each turn players will first visit Tortuga, where they can upgrade their treasures into better treasures (like combining 3 Copper into a Gold, to use Dominion terms), spend treasure on Crew, Equipment, Ship parts, Rum, and Treasure Maps. Then they will go a-plunderin' on the High Seas, where they'll spend Crew and stuff to plunder ships, or they'll spend Treasure Maps to find Buried Treasure. When these things are done, they'll confer some booty (some combination of treasure, goods, rum, maps, etc), any or all of which the player can take into their discard pile. Finally, the player will visit their Island Hideout, where if they choose, they can bury any number of Treasure cards, setting them aside in a score pile. However in doing so, they'll have to take an Island Hideout card into their deck, which is completely useless. I suppose this could be simplified to 'players BUY Island Hideout cards of a particular value with their Treasure by returning the treasure to the supply. Anyway, the more often you do this, the more useless cards will be in your deck, so the idea is to get treasure, maybe combine it into fewer, higher value treasure cards, then build up a hand of those and then bury them.

I expect Ships my have treasure value on them, so you can use them to buy stuff - allowing you to bury the treasure in your deck. I also foresee "goods" which you would be able to turn into Treasure if you have the right cards (Avast had something like this as well), to offer a strategic path there (If you have the cards which allow you to Trade Goods, then you go after/keep Goods cards, otherwise, maybe you let them sink rather than take them as plunder). Rum is for activating better abilities on some Crew cards, allowing players to either ignore it, or get some rum and crew with good Rum abilities. I think there will also be a Hold on your ship which allows you to hold over 1 card (plus 1 more card for each Hold Ship Part you have obtained) - which should help players build up a good hand for either plunder, or a hand full of treasure to bury.

I'll let you know if this pans out at all, if I ever get around to making cards for it!

KublaPros and KublaCons

Last weekend I attended KublaCon, as I've done every Memorial day since 2005. Most years I log about 30-40 games played, and I've developed a long list of people who I see only once or twice a year. It's been a few years since I've been eligible to enter the Kublacon Game Design Contest (or as I call it, the "KublaContest") - but I still choose KublaCon for my Memorial Day convention over the closer, cheaper to get to, Gamex convention in Los Angeles. This year KublaCon was a little different for me - here's a brief account of some of the pros and cons of my trip this year:

Pros
Right off the bat I had a nice opportunity - I had bought a direct light to SFO, and they said they needed someone to bump. I generally don't like to do that at the beginning of my vacations because I want to get where I'm going. This time however thy were able to route me through LAX with a short layover (which gave me time to eat), and for $311 in flight vouchers I arrived just an hour or so later than originally planned!

I got to visit with a number of friends who I never get to see - this year that included Andrew, Paul, Rick, Helen, Marlin, Fred, Miguel, Peter Hansell (TableStar games), Leah and Matt, Ceej, Chris and Susan McKinley Ross.

This year I got to spend a lot more time than usual talking to James Ernest, which was fun (he's a funny guy!), and I met the special guest from the convention, Martin Wallace. I've never met Martin before, and for some reason I expected him to be standoffish or something. I don't know why I thought that, but I'm happy to report that Mr. Wallace was a really nice and friendly guy! I also met the Game Whisperer himself, Richard Bliss, and spoke briefly with Doug Garret and Scott Alden as well. I even met Evan Denbaum, who would have been a part time employee of Tasty Minstrel Games, if not for receiving a position at Electronic Arts. Finally, I met Dennis, a $250 supporter of Eminent Domain (he named a planet after his daughter: Echo Rose).

Oh, and I got a chance to see a game by Candy Weber which sounds like it will be published soon! Congrats Candy!

Cons
I don't mean to complain, but this year was not the best for me. Mostly it's my own fault - I feel like I was underprepared for the con this year. First off, the night before every convention nowadays I seem to have trouble sleeping. I don't know if it's anxiety, or anticipation, or what. This time I was up all night creating a final art prototype of Ground Floor to take with me, and I only got 2 hours of sleep (if that). With how little sleep I tend to get at conventions, it would be nice if I could at least get a good night's sleep before the convention!

I normally head out to KublaCon on Thursday night, so that I can enjoy the con all day Friday. By contrast, the Strategicon conventions in L.A. tend to not really get started until late Friday afternoon. I suspect that's what I had in mind when I was shopping for plane tickets, and I ended up with a flight arriving at about 4pm on Friday. When I arrived at the hotel (about 5:30pm - see above) it occurred to me that I was actually a day later than normal, and I'd missed out on most of Friday!

For the second time in a row now I appear to have forgotten to pre-register for the convention!

While this convention was a good one for me socially, it turned out not to be a very good one game-ially. I only played about 8 games, 2 of which were Yahtzee Free-For-All, and none of which were on my list of games I really wanted to play while I was there. Here's what I played at KublaCon:
Battle Line with Miguel
Alter Ego playtest with Miguel
Castles of Burgundy with Evan Denbaum
Eat Poop you cat with Miguel and company
Yahtzee Free-For-All with Chris and Susan McKinley Ross
Yahtzee Free-For-All with Andrew, Elmer, and Andrews other friend
Glory to Rome with Andrew, Elmer, and Andrews other friend
Unpublished Martin Wallace game

In addition I did demo Ground Floor several times, and Eminent Domain: Escalation once. But while it's important, demoing games is not the same as playing games!

I would have preferred to be better prepared going into the convention - if I'm going to demo games, it's better to get them on the schedule, have specific times for the demos. Also maybe I'll try harder to arrange specific games if I want to play them - I didn't really play anything on my list this time. It never seemed to be a problem before, but I think there are more demands on my time nowadays, so I would do better to plan ahead a little more.

Tasty News from Tasty Minstrel, and other stuff

Here are a few things that are going on in Tasty Minstrel Land:

Ground Floor preview video by Tom Vasel

We sent a copy of the prototype with the end artwork over to The Dice Tower, and Tom Vasel did a preview video of Ground Floor.Check it out if you'd like to see how to play, and catch a glimpse of what Tom thinks of the game.

Ground Floor Kickstarter status

The Kickstarter project for Ground Floor is going strong. With $30,388 in funding now (624 copies of the game!), and 38 days left in the project, the 3rd Stretch goal has been met - so all backers will receive the first three Stretch rewards:

1. 2 additional Specialty tiles: Social Media and Inheritance
2. 2 additional Economic Forecast cards: Great Depression and Windfall
3. Niche Market TI

And now we're shooting for $35,000 to add goal #4: 5 Economic Forecast Scenario cards. I think that we are likely to get to the $75,000 needed for Skyline, but we aren't there yet...  we still need you help!

Michael Mindes "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit

Reddit is a social news site similar in function of Digg, and people have been doing these "AMA" things on there. AMA stands for "Ask Me Anything," and in practice people can come and ask whatever questions they want of the person holding the AMA. By the time you read this it might be over, but you can read the thread here.

Mike says he will be devoted to answering from 1PM-4PM PST, but throughout the day he will stop in and still provide answers, so go ask Mike those burning questions you've got on your mind!

Eminent Domain: Escalation

Formerly "Warmonger," the EmDo expansion is about done. I'm still making final tweaks to some of the cards, but the gameplay is determined, and the art is underway! Eric Carter and Ryan Johnson are on board again, and after their awesome illustrations in the base game I'm really looking forward to seeing what their work for the expansion (spoiler alert: so far, it's AWESOME!). Gavan Brown is on board again as well, so I'm looking forward to an all around awesome looking expansion :)

Alter Ego

I'm on the verge of wrapping up everything that I need to do for Escalation, Kings of Air and Steam, and Ground Floor (in fact, the final art files for Ground Floor just went to the printers! Horray!) - and I'm looking forward to getting back to my other designs. Next on the list is Alter Ego. I'm really excited to finally get back to working on that game, as I think it really has a lot of potential, not only potential to be a fun game, but also potential to have really cool art, and e very well received by players.

Recent Gaming

I recently got a few new games. It's unusual for me to buy games, but there were a few I was interested in playing, and when my interest hit critical mass, I went ahead and picked up a few titles...

• The Manhattan Project
• Lords of Waterdeep
• Venture Forth

I have yet to play Venture Forth, but I did play it once at Gama last year (before it was published) and I enjoyed that play. I really, really like The Manhattan Project, and I also very much like Lords of Waterdeep. Two very good Worker Placement games that people are comparing lately - both are worth playing!

That's about it for now. Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave comments!

Ground Floor: Live on Kickstarter!

This morning marked the beginning of a 55 day long Kickstarter campaign for Ground Floor - a game I've mentioned before in this blog.

I think it's fair to say that Michael has learned a lot about running a Kickstarter campaign, and it shows in the superb organization he's got going on this time, and the incredible support the game has garnered in it's first hours! At the time I'm writing this, the project is at 177 backers, and $10,940 in support! That's really awesome, and I offer a hearty "thank you!" to everyone who has pledged for a copy of the game already.

If you haven't pledged, then what are you waiting for..?

I didn't know it was live!

Well, now you do! If you don't want to be left out in the cold in the future, consider signing up for Tasty Minstrel's newsletter - you'll receive all the inside info you'll require about upcoming TMG releases and deals. You'll also be offered the opportunity to join sub-lists for specific projects (such as this Kickstarter project), so the extra project-specific emails only go out to those who want them, not the entire TMG mailing list. I think Michael does email marketing right!

What is this game about?

This description is copied verbatim from my blog post (December 2009), and it remains a good description of the game:

Ground Floor is a game about being an Entrepreneur. Each player has just started a company. All they have is 7 Information, their ground floor office (representing certain basic actions they can take), $9 income per round from investors, and their time (4 marker discs representing units of time). As the game progresses, players can hire employees (which reduce your $ income but increase the number of time units you can use), upgrade their ground floor actions, and add floors to their building, gaining abilities and Prestige. To finance this, players "do business" in town by scheduling meetings, advertising, shopping at outlets and making products to sell to the public. They must do this in the face of a volatile economic atmosphere - in a Boom economy more products will sell, but noone will be looking for work. In a Depression you will be hard pressed to sell any products, but the job market will be full of potential employees who can be hire on the cheap. You can see the Economic Forecast, but can never be sure exactly how many consumers to expect in a round, so how you price your products matters a lot, as does your popularity level.

The crux of the game is balancing 2 resources - money and information. In the early game players have an income of $9, and it's difficult to get an appreciable amount of info. As you hire employees though, your income goes down (you have to pay their salaries), and the only really good way to make money is through selling products. Selling products is tricky, as it depends heavily on your popularity, the amount of products being sold by players, and the number of consumers for the round. You need to find a way to make both money and information because it costs a significant amount of each to add on to your business. Your score (Prestige) will be based on the floors and abilities of your company. A 6 story skyscraper is more impressive than a 3 story building for example, but there's something to be said about having a better operation on your ground floor as well.

I've never heard of Ground Floor - how do I know if I'll like it?

Well, if you're reading this blog, it's possible you've heard of the game here before. But even if that's not the case, there are several resources available to learn about the game:

• Official rulebook
• Print and Play prototype files
• Session Reports and Reviews on BGG
• Video overview of how to play by designer David Short

Please check out those sources of information, and if Ground Floor looks like your kind of game, then please take a moment to check out the Kickstarter Campaign and pledge your support by pre-ordering a copy (or three!) of the game.

Why pre-order instead of waiting for the game to come out and then buying it online at a discount?

Good question! There has been a lot of discussion online about Kickstarter, who should be allowed to use it, and whether people should be charging full price for products being kickstarted. In this case however, you can get 1 copy of Ground Floor for $50, or if you go in with a couple of friends and get 3 copies, they're only $40 apiece! Retail price of this game will be about $60, so these prices are already discounted - on the order of what you'd pay online, and if you live in the US then that includes shipping!

On top of that, Kickstarter supporters will receive all of the overfunding incentives as the project raises more and more funds! Michael has a number of cool extras planned, which will come for free with your copy of the game if you are a Kickstarter. Most of these have not been announced, but he did mention that if the project raises at least $75,000, he'll be including a copy of a whole nother game! David Short has created another game called Skyline - a lighter dice game which shares the theme of constructing buildings. If the project hits $75k, that other game will be included for all of the supporters!

*Check your funding level - at the time I wrote this, it was true for all of the levels, but it's possible more have been added since, and they may not all qualify for the overfunding goals!

So as you can see, it's a really good deal. And I can tell you that it's a really good game as well. David has come up with a lot of clever mechanisms, and I've put a lot of development work into the game. We're both very proud of it, and if you follow my blog, then I think there's a good chance it'll be your kind of game too! Check it out, and tell your friends!

Tasty Minstel Games - A Retrospective So Far

In a Gen Con recap post I said:

"...We had a booth, and brought 6 different games to sell, including Eminent Domain, Belfort, Martian Dice, Train of Thought, Jab: Realtime Boxing, and Homesteaders 2nd Edition. Our booth was rather busy all 4 days of the con, and we did many, many demos. Looking up and down our booth at all 6 of our offerings I noted that, while no game is for everybody... within their target demographic, each of our games is really very good. They are the highest quality game, and the art and production (now that we've moved to Panda) are also the highest quality. I felt proud to stand behind each and every one of them! Even Martian Dice, which is the type of game that generally doesn't interest me at all, is really very good for what it is - I heard people saying it was better than Zombie Dice (a similar quick filler)."

I stand by that comment, I really am proud of the games that Tasty Minstrel has published. Even the out of print Terra Prime, my first published title, stands out to me as a quality game. Yes, I'm a bit biased there, but lately I've been seeing more and more people on BGG making positive comments, and looking forward to a potential reprint (with expansion included). Let me take a moment to look at each Tasty Minstrel title and mention how I currently feel about it:

• Terra Prime: I have a soft spot for this game, seeing as how it was my first published title. As I said above, I'm happy to see that people are finding this game and enjoying it, and I'm starting to feel a real demand for a 2nd edition. Hopefully Tasty Minstrel will decide to reprint (with Panda's excellent production quality) and include the expansion I've designed. That might happen in 2012, you never know!
  
• Homesteaders 2nd Edition: Homesteaders is an excellent strategy game. I dragged it around with me to every convention I went to for 3 years, and even submitted it to game publishers for Alex in an effort to see it published. When TMG decided to publish it I was ecstatic - and when the manufacturer did such a bad job, I was heartbroken. Now that the 2nd edition is out, and the manufacturing is truly top notch, I want very badly to get a 2nd edition copy (I don't have one yet) and play Homesteaders again!
  
• Train of Thought: Train of Thought is my absolute favorite party game. I love Times Up!, I like Taboo, and I've had fun with Catch Phrase and other similar games... but Train of Thought immediately supplanted them all the first time I played it. I played this a couple of weeks ago, and it holds true - it's still a lot of fun for me to try and figure out how to get from word A to word B!
  
• Jab: Realtime Boxing: Jab is a truly unique game. I like the idea of real time games. Indeed, I made one myself! The first time I heard about Jab, I knew the potential was there - I immediately suggested that TMG publish the game. Jab does an excellent job of keeping the players on their toes. Many gamers are not fond of real time, or don't like games that force them to react physically - preferring to ponder their move for a while. Well, this game won't be for those players. But for anyone who grew up playing Spit, Speed, Egyptian Ratscrew (like me)... Jab is just the game for them.
  
• Belfort: Belfort has turned out so beautiful that it's a wonder to behold. I have always liked the game, ever since I played it for the first time (twice) at GAMA 2009. After many plays (BGG says 15, but it must be more than that!) I still think it's a very solid worker placement / resource management / area control game in the euro style... i.e. just my type of game!
  
• Eminent Domain: What can I say - no bias here! I am thrilled at how EmDo came out, and I'm thrilled to read the positive comments coming in from people who have played the game. I have played over 120 games of EmDo, and I still like it and would play again right now. I can't say enough good things about this game - so don't get me started!
  
• Martian Dice: I'm not the kind of player that really enjoys light filler dice games such as Martian Dice. But I continue to find that as a light filler dice game, Martian Dice really seems better to me than any other similar game out there. The additional layer of choosing not just whether to roll again, but also which type of die to set aside really pushes this game into more interesting territory without feeling any more complex or complicated than simpler press your luck games.
  
• Ground Floor: Art is underway for this one, by Ariel Seoane (the guy who did Homesteaders) and it looks fantastic! A much different style than Josh Cappel's work, but no less awesome in any way. I haven't played this one in a while - too many other things to work on - but I've loved it for years. I first played it in October 2009, and I had a blast working on it with the designer David Short. This game scales incredibly well from 2 players to 6, and does a great job representing the balance between time and money. I'm really happy with it, though with it's theme and weight I fear the audience will be smaller than the game deserves. I guess that's where marketing comes in!
  
• Kings of Air and Steam: We're getting close to crunch time for KoA&S - art is underway, and pretty soon TMG is going to kick off a Kickstarter campaign for it. There are a few rules details that the designer and I are still trying to decide on the best version of, but in any case the game play is still awesome! I may like pickup-deliver/routeplanning games more than the average Joe, but to me this game is a lot of fun.
  
• For The Win!: Unless you religiously follow my blog, you probably don't even know what For The Win! is... and frankly, even if you do follow it you may be confused as it used to be called Mosh Pit. It's a game by a local guy here in Tucson (Michael Eskue, who happens to be David Short's brother in law). It's an abstract game, like Hive, but it's got some neat stuff in it budgeting actions being probably the biggest thing which sets it apart from other similar types of games. I haven't played this one in a while, but it's pretty darn good - I think if you like Hive, you'll love For The Win!
  

Spring Spielbany 2011

4 years ago I attended the Spielbany game design meetup and got a chance to see and play a number of prototypes as well as meet in person several people I see online all the time. Last weekend I decided to do it again. I flew out Friday and returned Monday, and over the course of the weekend I managed to play 12 games (5 of them my designs or designs I'm developing) and have some good design talk and just hang out with some people I don't normally get to. I brought the following games with me, but didn't get to all of them:

Spaghetti Western - a prototype that had been submitted which I was simply returning to the owner.
Caravan Imperative - another prototype I had intended to return, however I forgot to give it back to Andy!
Eminent Domain, with Exotic expansion
Kings of Air and Steam
All For One
Dice Works (or Dice Werx, not sure about the spelling on that)
Alter Ego - not much of a prototype really, just an assembly of cards at the moment
Jab - manufacturer's sample to show off
Brain Freeze - current (almost final) version of the iPad app
Chrono Gallery: Museum of Lost Time - partial prototype of the liar's dice bluff auction game

Here's what I played and how it went:

Ice Weasels - a cute, quick kid's game about collecting sets of frozen weasels. The game was inspired by Otter Pops, you have a line of various colored Weasel cards, and on your turn you can either claim a card off of either end, or you can break the line wherever you want (minimum 2 cards in each 'half'). The idea is to get triplets of the same color and then "thaw' them (score them), giving you another turn. Everyone has a 'favorite' color which scores more points for them, and there's a color that's bad for everybody (well, bad if you don't get a whole set and thaw them).  I took a copy of this home with me to show Mike and his kids.

Eminent Domain - I got a 5 player game of Eminent Domain in - the first time I've played with 5. I did not include the Prestige, Utopian, or Exotic planets, and in fact used the Learning Game variant so I removed the 3 Advanced planets with Research icons as well. As a result I noticed that with 5 players the Planet deck ran out, which either means the 5p game needs to include expansion planets, or else for 5 players the planet deck running out should be considered a game end condition. I hadn't considered that for 2-4 players because by the time that happens, the game is over already. But with 5 players puling planets out of the deck, it can run out pretty quick. I think that's acceptable, that for 5p the Planet deck running out could be an additional game end trigger.

I also played with 1 or 2 (forget offhand) extra cards in each stack, and the game dragged on a little longer than I thought it should. I'm not sure if that's to do with using the learning Game variant, or just 5 players in general, or if I really didn't need to add extra cards to the stacks. I'll need to test that some more and find out. Generally speaking though the game seemed to go over very well.

Honor and Glory - A short, cooperative adventure game that's supposed to give the feel of an RPG. Each player has a character sheet with a Class card and a couple of Trait cards. When 'adventuring,' some encounter cards are drawn which each show a specific die result, and 1 or 2 Traits. For each Trait present, if a member of the party has that trait, they get an additional die to roll. The goal is to roll the specific number indicated on the card. Before rolling though, the group chooses one of the characters to be the leader, and therefore their leader ability is in play for that encounter.

Altogether a neat idea, though there were a lot of comments made about the leader abilities, how they work, and whether it made sense for them to only matter when that player was the leader. For example, unless chosen as the leader, the Warrior character was exactly the same as the Cleric character. Seems like they should behave differently even if neither one is the leader. I would like to see each character have a thematic "always on" ability which is a small but beneficial effect, as well as a Leader ability which comes into play if they are the leader. And I'd like to see that Leader ability be something you can count on, not a triggered ability that only works if someone happens to roll a 6. There's an opportunity cost of choosing 1 leader bonus over another, and for it to not come into play sort of cheapens that whole leader choosing decision.

Another comment that came up was that each Encounter should feel like progress toward the end goal. A solution discussed (which I think the designer implemented the next day) was to put prizes (equipment) into the Encounter deck, and when one comes up, it's replaced by another card, and it counts as the LOOT for the adventure, so the heroes will become more powerful over time, allowing them to have an easier time against the boss at the end.

Finally, each round of combat that the group doesn't defeat the bad guys, they take damage. They are allowed to choose who takes the damage. I'd like to see that be wrapped into the choice of Leader - the Leader is out front, they should take the brunt of the attack - maybe they take all the damage. Or maybe each player takes 1 and the leader takes the rest or something.

I would try that game again, with those changes implemented. I could see it being pretty fun.

Sword Merchants - At BGG.con a while back I played Gil Hova's game called Pax Robotica. A theme (and title) I rather enjoyed, and I liked the game for the most part too. Players were Arms Dealers, selling weapons (in that case Battle Bots) to different sides of various conflicts. To an extent you didn't care who won the battles, you would supply Bots to whoever would pay for them. One of the biggest drawbacks of that version of the game was the combat resolution which was obtuse, and a side effect was that the theme seemed to make people think it was a game about fighting robots, not about building and selling them.

Since then Gil has changed the game a lot, stripping his unique auction mechanism (from Wag the Wolf) and changing the theme to a fantasy setting. now Orcs, Kobolds, Dwarves and Elves are at war, and each race will purchase Swords, Axes, Pole Arms, and Maces from the players. There's a dynamic by which the more battles a race loses the more desperate it becomes, and the more desperate a race is, the more money they'll pay for weapons. In addition, there's an end game bonus for having supported the team that lost the fewest battles, which Gil found a nice way to do since Pax Robotica.

I think the game was pretty solid, though some of the numbers were off. The most important changes that were suggested were to give everyone level 1 technology in each weapon (normally you have to buy that) so that no matter what you can always build at least a really crappy weapon of each type (which can turn out to be important for another part of the game), to adjust the values and rates of change of numbers (of course, in a prototype the numbers are often off), and I made an additional suggestion to start with less money so that players can't afford to do as much from the start. I find that games are cool when the players are only able to do 1-2 of 3-4 different things at the start, because then they naturally diverge in player posture - making the rest of the game interesting. I hope to see this one again soon.

Nottingham - Originally designed for the Robin Hood themed Game Design Showdown at BGDF, Nottingham has been expanded into a cooperative game with a traitor that plays 7. The players are on Prince John's side, except the traitor who's in cahoots with Robin Hood. A great theme, and an interesting take on it if you ask me!

The game had a lot in common with Shadows Over Camelot, and any coop game with a traitor will draw that comparison. I did think that this game felt different because you seemed to have more to do in it. The learning curve was a little high, as there were a TON of unique cards, but that's kind of how thematic games go. The designer (Richard James) played the game twice over the weekend, and he was telling me some of the stuff he was planning on changing. It all sounded like steps in the right direction. I'd like to try this one again once the designer gets a chance to polish it up a bit. I'm a sucker for a Robin Hood theme :)

All For One -It's been a long time since I've done anything with All For One, but I was happy to get it to the table. We played a 4 player game (the game has always been best with 4), and I finally tried it without the guards altogether. I don't think I missed them. Some of the same old comments reared their ugly head - and I'm starting to agree that the voting mechanism using the mission cards is not the best idea. Some suggestions were made, maybe the best of which was to relax the hand limit, and to allow players to play any number of cards in a duel (irrespective of which ones), and choose either Offense or Defense. So a different kind of voting, where you sort of bid with your cards to support the result you want to vote for. I might try that next time.


Another idea that came up to promote interaction between characters (which may translate to player interaction) is to forget carrying capacities and simply force a character to pick up each token he walks over. This way more often players will need to move Plot Tokens from character to character via Transfer or Demand actions. Galloping on a horse would still mean skipping Plot Tokens of course.

Another thing I noticed was that perhaps the Bonus tokens should be worth MORE VP than the Required tokens, not less. When doing a mission with only the Required token, you get more VP/token than if you also get a Bonus token - it's often not worth your time to get the Bonus tokens. Also, with the way the Story Tracks are bumped upon completing a mission (which I like), having to bump the 2nd track is often a detriment, so that's another deterrent for going after Bonus tokens. It just makes sense to make the Bonus tokens worth more, so next time I'll switch them - 2vp for the Required token, 3vp for each Bonus token, and I think still 4 VP for arranging a Meeting, and maybe 5vp for the Any Character, 2 Required token missions because they're harder. These VP values could easily be printed on the cards so they need not be remembered.

There have been a few comments along the lines of placing missions face up rather than keeping them in hand, but I think that's just begging for people to disrupt other player's multi-turn efforts, which I think would feel crappy. I'm excited to make these changes and try the game again.

Dice Works - At first I liked the goofy spelling of "Dice Werx" - but I'm not so sure anymore. Maybe "Dice Works" is better. I keep waffling back and forth. Either way, I played a 3-player game on Saturday and it seemed to work fine. I have changed the Scrap Efficiency Upgrade (for even progress on all tracks) to 4/3/3/2 for 1 rather than 4/3/2/1 for 1. I don't ever want anybody exchanging 1 for 1, that's just lame. I like the feel of 3-for-1 though, so that's a reasonable upgrade. Also, I think I'll allow players to use that new exchange rate as soon as they get it, rather than starting next round.

In Ruins - Andy Van Zandt had told me a little bit about his post apocalyptic card drafting game and I was interested to play it. I like the theme, and Andy's designs are always very well thought out and thorough. I enjoyed In Ruins overall, but the unique drafting mechanism I thought had something fundamentally inelegant about it. The idea is cool, you put new cards out, then you get a chance to place your Squatter token on something that you don't want anybody else to take. Sadly, this means you can't take it either - and I wonder if that's just something I will not like about that mechanism (not something wrong with it, just a mechanism I simply don't like). The inelegance was caused by each turn, EACH PLAYER having to be asked to reevaluate which card they want to squat on, often only to decide they liked where they were.

A suggestion was made to instead have each player move their Squatter only on their own turn. The idea behind the Squatter is to keep players from being able to topdeck the perfect card, it gives everybody a chance to stop a lucky draw. The proposal is to have the player draw the new cards at the END of his turn, and then choose to move his squatter - allowing him the chance to block one of the two cards that just came up. I think this would smooth out game play tremendously, and cut down on down time and game length. Andy said he was 100% on board, so I'd love to play the game again with that change the next time I see him.

Currently the game is something like 90 minutes, which I think is a little long for what it is. If this could help cut the length down closer to 1 hour, I think that would be great.

Kings of Air and Steam - As I've mentioned, I'm developing a pickup/deliver game with a Steampunk theme called Kings of Air and Steam. The game supports 2-6 players, though I'd never played with 6 before. I was able to do so this weekend, and it was very informative. I had forgotten the exact setup of market tiles for each player count, so I just used all the Market tiles I had (6 of each color) and drew 4 out per turn. That's what you'd do for a 5 player game. For 6 players it was supposed to be 7 of each color tile, drawing 5 per turn. The game worked well enough, but in retrospect it did seem like the board was somewhat bare most of the time. I think the proper number of tiles would have been better. I had hoped to simplify setup by using the same setup irrespective of player count, but I just don't think the game will work very well that way. As an easy way to handle it though, I am thinking that the appropriate player counts should be printed on the backs of the tiles (2+, 3+, 4+ 5+, 6), and rather than sort them, each tile can be discarded as it's drawn if it's not appropriate for the current game.


Everybody seemed to like the game, and I got a couple of questions answered. For example, everybody agreed that the requirement to ship on 50% your own track was unnecessary. As for the look of the game, everybody was all for the theme, and one player suggested unique ship molds for each player - at first I thought that would be more expensive, but then I realized we could just make 1 mold with all 7 ships on it (6 for the game, plus 1 promo ship we've got planned). Also, Andy suggested a great player power - the ability to create a new link on the board between cities. One player could be given 5 or 7 track tiles (straight on one side, gentle curve on the other), and as an action they could be allowed to place them between 2 cities creating a new link - paying $1 per tile placed. This would come with a Depot on that link, and of course other players could build depots on that link as well. I really like that idea.

Alter Ego - To tell you the truth, when I heard about Midnight Men (which I never knew existed) being picked up by a publisher, I got a little discouraged and didn't really feel like working on Alter Ego anymore. But I do like some of the mechanisms and basic ideas behind the game - of managing your Alter Ego life, and the more recent pre-programming of card play, so I brought my pseudo-prototyp with me hoping to chat about it with Andy or whoever. I ended up talking to Richard James about it, and he asked some questions the answers to which I guess I knew, but hadn't really solidified. That was a big help, and also he got me to tweak how the icons on Henchmen work - once in play, rather than giving you that icon to use, they could work more like Eminent Domain where they boost the cards you play. So if I get a $ icon into play, it doesn't give my any $ to use unless I play a job card. This is a small difference, but it has a significant impact - as Rich pointed out, I had built a mechanism which undermined my original design goal. Currently, once I have $ icons in play, I no longer need to worry about playing a Job card as much. This proposed version instead amplifies my desire to play a Job card over a Hero card, which is what I was going for.

We also discussed how some of the Coop mechanisms would work, and in describing them to him I am more confident in exactly how I want them to be now. So I think that design is back on the front burner! I'm curious to see how Midnight Men pans out, seeing as how it's ALSO a superhero themed, cooperative, deck building game.

Hard Wired - I had seen the beginnings of this game discussed in BGDF chat, and was interested in it from the outset. I was glad I got a chance to try it this weekend. I love the idea of creating circuits and improving circuits, but in the current incarnation of this game you are able to steal the opponent's win condition, which to me feels like a long, drawn out game of hot potato. It's like Munchkin, where everyone stops the other guy from winning, drawing out the game, until someone manages to finally win.

When someone suggested that players be allowed to steal Circuits instead of the Light cards, that sounded perfect to me! you could "improve" their circuit by creating the same effect with fewer cards, thereby taking their cards for yourself - as a way to draw more cards at a time. It doesn't hurt the opponent, but it does something useful for you. In fact, if smallest circuit is tiebreaker, then it kind of HELPS the opponent, but you'd do it anyway because it gets you more cards in 1 action than drawing.

So my proposed change, which I hope Ariel tries and I hope works out for him, is that players on their turn can either PLAY a circuit (minimum 3 cards or so), adding a new light to their line, or IMPROVE a circuit by playing any number of cards to replace a longer circuit in play, taking the old circuit cards into their hand. Then they could draw 1 card (I like that as it otherwise might feel like it takes too long to build back up after playing cards). The object is still to either get 1 of each color light in play, or else have the most lights when the deck runs out.

I also liked the idea of another mode of play, where there's just 1 big circuit in play, and each player starts with a set of 1 of each colored light. You win by adding all of your lights to the circuit, or else by having the fewest left when the deck runs out. In this version on your turn you could either play a new circuit (min 3 cards?), Improve a circuit, or simply draw 1 card. Or I guess it could be the same (Play or improve a circuit, then draw 1).

I'd like to try this game again with the changes.

Love Means Nothing - I hadn't played Love Means nothing for a long time, and Ariel had a new version. The new version made the decisions a bit more strategic, but the game was much more slow and tedious. I don't think that's the right feel for a sports themed game, I missed the older, more streamlined mechanics. I was wondering how the decisions could be made more interesting with the old mechanics, and I jokingly said "maybe what it needs is a chess clock, like Brain Freeze!" - and then immediately realized that maybe that's not such a bad idea. the idea behind Brain Freeze was simple decisions + time pressure. Maybe a chess clock with 60 or 90 seconds on it would force people to make their simple decisions a little faster. I think that would feel more like a sports game. Maybe I'll dig up the old copy of Love Means Nothing that I have at home and give that a try.


On Monday morning I also got a chance to talk to Ariel about what each part of Ground Floor will look like. I originally thought the player boards would look like blueprints, but he had a different idea that's been really growing on me. I think it could come out really nicely!

General update

It's been a while since I've posted, so I thought I'd give a general update as to what's going on in the Gaming life of Seth Jaffee - to give my fans (both of them) something to read on a Thursday afternoon...

Vacation:
I just got back from an 11 day trip to Seattle in which I played a lot of frisbee, did some gaming, and hung out with a lot of friends. By way of summary...
Friends visited on my Seattle trip: Jeremy, Amelia, Emily, Aaron, Renee, Matthew, Jonah (my 13 month old nephew!), Mohan, Rif, Runjith, Chris Rao, Sean, Alex.

Games played on my Seattle trip: Magic: the Gathering, Eminent Domain, JAB: Realtime Boxing, Race for the Galaxy, Dominion, Ground Floor, Alea Iacta Est, Wizard's Tower, Fermat, Forbidden Island, Innovation, Tsuro, Train of Thought, Cyclades, Galaxy Tucker, and Alex's semi-coop prototype Witch's Coven.

People seemed to like Eminent Domain and Ground Floor, which is reassuring. I finally tried some of the new expansion stuff for Race for the Galaxy (prestige) which was not all that spectacular. The Warfare stuff never came up in our games, and I think it feels like more trouble than it's worth. I remember kinda liking Alea Iacta Est when I watched and played it at KublaCon 2009, but it seemed pretty bad this time. Fermat has been picked up by a publisher (not Tasty Minstrel, darn it!) and will come out this year under the name "Got It!" Forbidden Island is another cooperative game by the guy who made Pandemic - I'd heard good things, but nobody mentioned that it's EXACTLY LIKE Pandemic only easier! I don't think Pandemic needed to be easier, so I didn't like Forbidden Island at all. Innovation is "wild and crazy" - way moreso than Glory to Rome by the same designer. I LOVE Glory to Rome, but I don't think I love Innovation. Maybe just 2 player, after both players are super-familiar with all the cards it will become more strategic, but in the meantime it's very chaotic and somewhat silly as far as I'm concerned. Cyclades was a neat game and I love some the mechanisms at work, but the board play isn't really my type of game. I generally don't like war games much, though the war game part of this game is sort of minor. The fact that only 1 player per turn can attack (for the most part) is interesting, you could leave yourself undefended if you can expect to win the Ares auction next round... the game was cool, but the Pegasus card certainly seemed to be a game changer. I'm not sure how I feel about games in which you are forced to play around a particular card coming up, because what if it doesn't? Or what if it comes up at a bad time for you, even if you were prepared for it every other turn of the game?

Alex's prototype was interesting - I liked it a lot better than I thought I would. It's actually a worker placement game (I had thought it would be more like Battlestar Galactica for some reason) where you have 2 different types of workers - your Witch and your Familiar. The Witch actions are generally more powerful than the Familiar actions, and there are only 4 rounds in the game, meaning you get only 4 of each type of action! The goal is to collect the ingredients needed to create the Potion of Power, but the trick is that to win you must exclude at least 1 of the players from the Coven. The idea is to (a) make yourself indispensable, and then (b) try and make another player unnecessary. There's something odd about the endgame and forming that coalition of players who win, but it seems pretty solid. Alex said he'd send me files so I can print it out and try it around here.

Mohan also told me about an idea he's working on for a Solitaire game - a dungeon crawl based on the mechanics in typical solitaire games such as Spider Solitaire or Klondike. It was a pretty neat idea, and as he mentioned it would probably work even better as a digital game. We chatted about that for a while, and I also told him Jeremy's idea from last year about a World of Warcraft game - not about actually playing World of Warcraft, but rather about running a WoW guild, and dealing with all the drama involved.

Add some frisbee to that (including winning our pool at Potlatch) and it makes for a pretty sweet vacation!

Game designs:
I've been playing Eminent Domain a lot, and I'm pretty happy with it as-is. There are a few things I'd like to see though, one of which is more reports from the 30+ people who volunteered to print-and-play the game. Of all the people I gave access to the cards, I think I've only heard back from about 3 of them with any real playtest reports. In the future I think I'll try to set up a more organized process for getting access to a game for print-and-play, which will involve follow-up communication.

I have been thinking that I would like to add some Warfare cards to the supply to bring the number up to 18 or 20. I think that especially with 3 players, it's too easy for that stack to get burned through too quickly. There's something attractive about just having 20 of each card, but I don't know if that's the most economical thing. The only other thing I would like to work on is the tech abilities - especially the level 2 techs. There are some I really like and that I think are appropriately powerful, and there are others that never seem to be chosen. I want to make sure they are all potentially useful, even if not in every single circumstance. Ideally they'd all be situational. On the other hand, they're all worth 2vp, so once you get the tech or 2 that you really want, maybe you still want to research for the VPs, but I would like to make sure all the level 2 techs are useful and attractive. It's possible one or two of them are TOO powerful, but currently I haven't had a problem with that. Michael suggests that the "take 2 Role cards into hand" is too powerful, but I haven't seen it used in any way I don't like yet. I'd also like to have names for all the tech cards, but I don't know how easy that will be. In a separate post I might solicit names for the techs (Didn't I do that already?)

I haven't been working on any of my other designs, the most recent of which was Alter Ego. I would like to get back to that, and of course Winds of Fate, Dynasty, and Hot & Fresh... isn't that always the case?

Game development:
Belfort and Ground Floor are pretty much good to go. I am supposed to (and would like to) write up a Development Diary sort of thing for them, talking about the development process, maybe the specific things I did to change each of those games and why. This info will be published around the time of each game's release. Mike and I are working on developing a better process for internal stuff at Tasty Minstrel so that hopefully things will go more smoothly and we can be more efficient and put more programs into place!

KublaCon 2010

I just got back from KublaCon 2010, another great weekend of fun and games in San Francisco! I applied some lessons I learned from last year... After arriving late Thursday night and not finding anyone I knew, I spent way too much on a Burger and Fries at Knuckles. Friday for lunch however, I went with Ceej again to Chipotle (Sean and Andrew - not Schoonmaker, another Andrew from L.A.) and ran into Lucky's for some turkey, french rolls, and cheese. I also picked up some Mountain Dew, cookies, and doughnuts. I ate far too much of the snacks, but the sandwich stuff was a great idea! I ate turkey sandwiches for the rest of the weekend for a pittance compared to the hotel's price gouging!

David Cunkelman pointed out a deal the hotel has which might be worth looking into in the future - for something like $30 per night added onto your room you can get access to a fancy lounge on the 9th floor where they have free internet as well as free food at mealtimes and desserts and drinks... sounds like a pretty good deal if you have enough people in the room!

After my ridiculously overpriced burger (which was at least tasty and filling) I watched some people playing The Adventurers - a game I've not played. I got to learn it by watching, and it looks like a light, fun little game. I probably wouldn't enjoy playing it more than once though. Then I headed up to bed.

Friday
Mosh Pit
Friday morning I started out with a game of Mosh Pit with Andrew Schoonmaker, with whom I again split a room. Mosh Pit is a game by a guy here in town, it's an abstract game kinda like Hive. I tend to dislike games like Hive (2 player abstracts), and I'm not sure why. I like this one quite a bit better, and I think it might be because in Mosh Pit you get 1 or 2 actions on your turn, and each player gets a maximum of 5 actions each round. Thus if you budget your actions, only taking one at a time while your opponent takes 2, you can end up finishing the round with 2 actions in a row, then starting the next round with up to 2 more actions in a row! getting 2, 3, up to 4 actions at a time really opens up the potential for a clever or tactical play, which makes it a lot more fun for me. I think the action budgeting in Mosh Pit is brilliant!

Terra Prime
Next I ran into Miguel, Aldie, and some friends of theirs, and chatted for a bit. Everyone was anxious to play a game, and Miguel suggested that I teach them my game, Terra Prime. I generally don't bring published games to conventions, but I did bring Terra Prime because I have the expansion for it. I sat out and taught Terra Prime as a 4 player game because I think it's a better experience 4 player than 5 for new players. It went pretty well, with most of the players figuring out what to do, until Tricia - who was doing very well at the time, decided to run recklessly into a red tile. I suggested she not do that, because if it were 3 Aliens they would hit her at least twice and as many as 5 times - and her shields were down to 2 energy... but she did it anyway (balls to the wall!) and sure enough, a triple alien managed to roll 3 hits for a total of 5 damage - knocking every module off her ship, INCLUDING the shiny new Thruster she'd just bought the turn before! It was an unfortunate turn of events, but hey, at least it turned out EXACTLY the way I predicted. *sigh* maybe some day players will treat Hostile Aliens with the fear and respect they deserve.

Eminent Domain
Those guys had some place to be, so next I found another group of players and introduced them to Eminent Domain. That game seems to be holding up, I think it's "about done."

Africa
I saw some of Steph's friends: Jeremiah and a woman who's name I always forget (who I met at BGG.con) and Ted Alspach, and another local woman. They were playing Africa, an old game by Reiner Knizia which I'd never seen. I watched and learned how to play, and when they decided to play again they offered me a seat. The game was pretty simple, there are a bunch of face down tiles all over the (hex grid) board (1 per space), and on your turn you may either teleport across the board (and that's it), or you can Move and do an action, then move again and do another action. The actions are essentially all just "flip up a tile adjacent to you and do the appropriate thing with it." Some tiles you keep for endgame bonus scoring and some you move adjacent to other like tiles elsewhere on the board and score points based on how many it's touching. There's 1 or 2 more small things you can do, but that's essentially it. Of course all your decisions are based on what will score you points. I thought it was an OK, though dry and somewhat boring game. I did manage to win by a fair amount though, so that was nice :)

Eminent Domain
After Africa, I ran another 4 player game of Eminent Domain for that same group of players. I played that (or ran it) a number of times over the weekend and it seemed to be pretty well accepted. In a couple cases it was VERY well received, in others it was only generally well received, but in no case was it disliked that I noticed. This time they mentioned that it was a little overwhelming at first, but about 2/3 of the way through the game they really started to 'get it.' I suspect there might be an expectation issue - if people go into Eminent Domain expecting it to be light and simple like Dominion, then they may be disappointed to find that there's a lot more going on than that. If they go in expecting something along the lines of Glory to Rome, then their expectations should be reasonable. Thus, I think I ought to stop billing it as a "deck building game" and instead call it "Like Glory to Rome, with Deck Building in it" or something. because that's what it is, a role selection game with deck building, not a deck building game.

Wizard
Next they pulled out Wizard, a game a loath, but since they were nice enough to try Eminent Domain, I couldn't complain too much. Andrew had arrived to see the end of Eminent Domain, and he joined up for Wizard. I REALLY SUCK at Wizard!

Flea Market
I seldom buy board games, and I seldom find good deals at the Flea Market. Last year I bought Railroad Tycoon for $50, which could be a good deal depending on how you look at it. In retrospect (considering I haven't played it since I got it) I probably should have instead waited and gotten Railways of the World and some of the expansions for it. Then I wouldn't have had to carry that heavy freaking box home from San Francisco! This time I did find a bargain though... Gardens of Alhambra for $2. I was taken aback when I asked the price, maybe she'd said $22 and I'd misheard? Nope, she just wanted to get rid of it, so she sold it for $2. I didn't like Alhambra, but I suspect this offshoot might be more enjoyable, and at $2, how good does it really have to be? If nothing else, I have some friends that do like Alhambra, and this could be a gift for them if I hate it. I also saw someone selling the first couple seasons of BSG on DVD for $20 apiece. I thought about getting them, but it wasn't the whole series (just the first 3 seasons), and only the first 2 were really that amazing anyway. However I have recently been thinking of trying to watch that show again, the first season anyway, so in the end I picked that one up.

Innovation
Sean McCarthy, a friend from Seattle, arrived. It was a surprise that he was coming at all, and it was even cooler that he brought Innovation with him because I've heard him talk about it and I've wanted to give it a try! After the flea market Sean, Aliza and I played a 3-player game of Innovation. When I'd first heard of the game I was really excited by the sound of it. The meld/splay mechanism sounded brilliant (and it is), and the tactical combos sounded fun. I love Glory to Rome by the same designer. The more I heard about the game though, the more I started to suspect that perhaps Innovation is TOO chaotic, and I was bummed to find out upon playing that it's not the amazing, awesome new thing that I hoped it would be. The effects are so sweeping that the entire board can easily change before you get another turn, and every card on the table is likely to effect your board position and the things you'll be able to do on your turn. It's almost as if every card in the game is really in play at all times, and to an extent you have to consider that - because for all you know, by the time you get a turn, any given thing might have happened. Therefore planning ahead is difficult to the point of absurdity, and at some point the game becomes less of a strategic contest and more of a crazy luck-fest not dissimilar to simply rolling dice to see who gets a higher result. It's true that with more familiarity with the cards, you have an easier time deciding what you can do and maybe even what you should do, but even if you know every card in the deck, while it may reduce the AP and down time, it doesn't change the fact that the game is totally chaotic.

I think I'm disappointed in Innovation, which is too bad, because I had high hopes for liking it.

Saturday
After Innovation it was time for bed. Saturday morning I woke up in time for a playtesting event put on the schedule by Candy Weber. I started out by playing Rick Holzgrafe's Railways of the Western U.S. expansion for Railways of the World (which is a remake of Railroad Tycoon). Rick had made a train game inspired by Railroad Tycoon called Hammer and Spike, which I rather liked. The publisher of Railways of the World ended up trying it and liking it, but though it too similar to Railways to publish separately - instead he commissioned Rick to take certain ideas out of Hammer and Spike and use them to create an expansion to Railways of the World. The result is Railways of the Western U.S., and potentially another expansion combining the eastern U.S. map and the new one for a Coast-to-Coast expansion. The Coast-to-Coast expansion takes something like 6 hours to play, which was deemed too long so we just played the Western U.S. expansion.

I'm happy to report that not only is Tucson, Arizona on the map, but it's even a colored city while Phoenix is gray :) Ont he other hand I'm sorry to report that I performed TERRIBLY at the game! My initial chosen strategy hod hijacked by another player (the player to my right no less), and I never bothered to figure something else out. I finished dead last by a lot.

Terra Prime w/ Expansion
After the train game, Rick and the guy that hijacked my plans played my Terra Prime expansion with me. Rick has played TP a couple of times, in prototype form as well as the published version, and I wanted to know how he thought the expansion compared. I managed a healthy 1st place finish, but that's to be expected since I've got a lot more experience with both the base game and the expansion, but my 2 opponents finished within 8 points of each other. I think they both said that the Expansion improves the game, so that's good. They seemed to like it.

Spacial Delivery
It only seemed fitting to follow Terra Prime with Spacial Delivery, Rick's space themed delivery game that won the KublaCon Game Design Contest 2 years ago. It was under review for publication by a European publisher for 18 months, but was recently turned down. I played the game once, before it was in it's current form, and had given some relatively extensive feedback to Rick afterward. I don't recall in depth what the game was like last time, so I was interested to see how it went this time.

I think some of the same things that bothered me the last time still bothered me this time, and added to that there were a lot of fiddly costs I don't remember being there before. I got the impression that I might have liked the game better last time, and even then there was a list of things I thought needed work. Rick mentioned that while he had thought the game might be done before, more recently he was getting a nagging suspicion that it's really not, and later in the weekend he said he'd been thinking about Spacial Delivery pretty much non-stop since our game of it. I hope Rick gets that game to a point he's happy with, because I think it's got a solid foundation.

Eminent Domain w/ Gareth
Gareth McSorley had contacted me on BGG about trying Eminent Domain, and he found me at the con so I played a 2 player game with him. He took to the rules right away, not really even using the player aid. It was only a couple of turns before he had the mechanics down, and I think by the end of the 1st game he was already thinking about some strategies. He said he liked it very much, so I asked if he wanted to play again now that he knew how to play. We played a second time and there was clearly marked improvement in his play.

Bananagrams
I happened upon a group of people playing Bananagrams and I played a few fun rounds of that.

Time's Up!
Every year I like to get in on the Time's Up! tournament, so Andrew and I talked 2 of the Bananagrams players to join us for it. Tricia was my partner and she was hilarious! I had a lot of fun, even though we got smoked by Andrew's team - who went on to win the final round as well :)

Zendo
After Time's Up I played a little Zendo - or tried to anyway. I am no good at that game whatsoever! I think it's because I never know how specific a rule might be - so when I DO figure it out, I think I haven't because I think of all the other possible things it could be.

Galaxy Trucker
Fortunately, some of the Zendo players wanted to play something else, so even though it was Galaxy Trucker, I was happy to join them. I have never played Galaxy Trucker, but never really cared too much to try it. It was nice to give it a shot, but I really didn't know all the stuff on the cards so I had no idea what I was putting on my ship. I went ahead and looked at the cards you're allowed to look at, but much of the info didn't make sense to me. I got pretty wrecked, but it was kinda fun. I'd play it again, but I wouldn't run out and buy it or request it myself.

Sunday
Corte de Lorenzo
Sunday morning I met up with David Cunkelman and I talked him and Sean into playing one of the submissions I'd brought with me. We played Corte de Lorenzo, and then we chatted a little about how to evaluate a submission. I'm new to this, so it was interesting to talk about that.

Ground Floor
As an example of a game that really grabbed me right away, despite the flaws it had when I first played it, we next played Ground Floor. Ground Floor is intended to be published in 2011 by Tasty Minstrel Games, designed by David Short, a guy here in Tucson who I met at RinCon last October. I really like Ground Floor, and have been working on developing it with David for about 6 months and at this point I think the game is really solid.

Sean McCarthy, David Cunkelman, and a friend of Davids who's name I didn't catch played a 4p game of Ground Floor. Our game went well with the slight exception of David spilling his soda on Sean's player board - could have been a lot worse! Only lost 1 player's worth of Ground Floor tiles and 1 Specialty tile - easily replaced!

David made some skeptical comments early about game balance, but at the end I think he saw how for example my large money advantage early didn't necessarily equate to a large positional advantage in the end. He did have 1 comment that hadn't come up and which might be an issue - that the last player in the randomly determined turn order may be a little screwed when it comes to popularity and rewards... I don't know if this is a problem though, and I think it could be taken care of via some easy method.

After the game, I went upstairs with Sean to get a sandwich for lunch, and he asked me what specifically I did to develop Ground Floor, so I got a chance to go over it and see what I contributed. That was a fun discussion for me, and hopefully interesting for Sean too.

Innovation
David wanted to play Fresco, but we couldn't find a copy of either. Doug Garret's copy was sitting there in his tub, but we couldn't find him to ask his permission to use it, so instead we played Innovation while I used my social resources to try and track down Doug. This game didn't make me feel any better about Innovation, though I did win by 1 turn this time instead of losing by 1 turn.

Fresco
Fortunately, my social networking came through, and we got permission to play Doug's copy of Fresco - which it seems was nominated for the SdJ (German game of the year award). I have played twice before, bot only with all the optional rules on. This time we played with NONE of the optional rules, only the very base game. I think I prefer the optional rules, which aren't much more complicated, but I did note a distinctly different feel to the game without them.

Eminent Domain
After Fresco, I bumped into Scott Caputo and chatted with him about general games-being-published stuff, since his Kachina and my Terra Prime just recently came out. Then Scott, JT Mudge and I played Eminent Domain - I wanted to know what they thought of it. They liked it (JT won pretty handily), and they said that they thought it was my most polished design that they'd played (they played and liked Wizard's Tower a year or two ago, and they might have also played All For One that year).

Jab
(BrainFreeze - broken clock :( )
At this point I wandered around a bit and ended up chatting with Brian Powers, who had entered a game in the Design Contest. He was short on time, so I showed him a quick game - BrainFreeze! I haven't played BrainFreeze! in ages, and as it turned out the chess clock was broken! :( Hopefully I can fix it. Meanwhile I showed him the second quickest game I had with me, Jab: Realtime Boxing. We played 1 round but then he had to get into a game of Power Grid.

Eat Poop You Cat
I found the Zendo group playing Eat Poop You Cat, and they invited me in for their last round. That's a fun game for late night gaming!

Monday
Triplets
I went to the Game Design contest award presentation so I could scope out the games and see if anything looked interesting. I walked away with 2 prototypes to bring home and play - one was Heroic Deeds, a card game about being a superhero and solving crimes... the interesting concept in it is that you have to worry about your Alter Ego and what your Heroic Deeds does to your everyday life. I fully suspect it to be a rehash of last year's Tomes of Knowledge, a neat foundation with a "Take That!" card game on top of it... But I'm really curious to see how they've approached this aspect, and who knows, it could be awesome!

The other prototype I walked away with was Triplets, an abstract tile laying game which has a similar feel to Set. The designer is a friend of Ricks, and so he, Rick, Aliza, and I played a game of it after the awards presentation. Triplets was one of 2 winners of the contest (they couldn't choose between the 2 so they crowned both games winners). The other winner was called Destroy Atlantis, another tile laying game, and the designer of that game will be sending me a copy.

Mosh Pit (Aliza and Karlo)
By this time the convention was winding down. Karlo (from the BGDF chat room) was hanging out, along with Aliza and Andrew. I wanted to get Mosh Pit played once more, so I taught it to Karlo and Aliza so they could play a 2 player game of it.

Lord$ of Vega$
While they were playing Mosh Pit, I noticed that James Ernest was playing a game of Lords of Vegas, a game coming out from Mayfair later this year. I saw a GIANT prototype of it at GTS in March, this one was much more reasonably sized. I was happy to be explained the game while watching, and it looks really, really good!

Eminent Domain w/ Aliza and Andrew
Finally, I had about an hour before I had to leave for the airport, and Aliza, Andrew and I played a final game of Eminent Domain (mostly so I could show Aliza because she was interested in seeing it). It went pretty fast because both Andrew and I dug into the Warfare stack, and it got down to 2 cards very quickly. However, Aliza was winning, so neither of us wanted to take that second to last Warfare card! The cleaning staff needed to take down the table, so rather than fight tooth and nail to come back, Andrew went ahead and chose Warfare. I did what I could to get points, but I couldn't quite catch Aliza so she was able to end the game in the lead. She said she thinks her RftG group would get a kick out of it so she may print up a copy to play with them.

Ground Floor - Playtest at Gamesmiths

There is now a Game Design 'club' in Tucson called Gamesmiths. Mostly it's just me, David Short, and Michael Eskue, but Simon Stump from BGDF has been at both of the 2 meetings so far, and April's meeting had a few other faces as well, and there are a couple people we know of who say they'll come but have yet to be able to make it. Phil Eklund might join us next month, time permitting as well.

The Prototype "in the fire" for April was Ground Floor, a worker placement game by David Short that I'm helping him develop for Tasty Minstrel release in 2011. I've posted about Ground Floor before, and as far as I'm concerned it's in really good shape right now. Pretty soon we'll be getting Blind test kits together to solicit blind testing on the game.

David posted a detailed session report of our 5 player game from Monday, which really does the game justice. I look forward to playing the game again, and to seeing its release!

The Gamesmiths

The inaugural meeting of the Gamesmiths, a newly formed Game Design Club, occurred last night at Hat's Games at 6:30. Michael Eskue, David Short, and I were in attendance - we'll have to do some better advertising next month.

To start with we played Eskue's abstract game called Mosh Pit. MP is a bit like Hive in that you place tiles on the board and move them around in an attempt to assemble a particular configuration. In this game your tile types are each one of the stereotypical internet Memes: Ninja, Pirate, Monkey, Zombie, and Alien (which could be Robot instead). On your turn you can do 1 or 2 actions, and you get a total of 5 actions each round - so you can do more up front if you want, or stall and save up for a larger action later. Each round the start player shifts, so in a 2 player game you can actually get 4 actions in a row if you budget your actions carefully!

The 5 actions you can do are pretty simple:
1. Place a tile
2. Move a tile
3. Shove a tile (which is like moving actually)
4. Turn a tile face up
5. Activate a tile

Each type of tile has a different effect when you activate it, and activating the tile turns it face down. The effects will move tiles around the board or flip them face up or face down.

The goal is to make a contiguous group of your face up tiles including 1 of each type.

In general I do not like this type of game - I played Hive a couple times and I am not a fan - mostly I'm not too fond of abstract games and I'm also not fond of 2 player games. I have to say I was skeptical going in that I would like this game at all. However I'm happy to report that I did like Mosh Pit, a lot more than I thought I would! I don't know if it's because the chaos/craziness of the abilities allows for more sneaky, tactical play, or maybe it's the ability to take more than 1 action in a row that allows for setting up a chain of moves to surprise your opponent. It certainly wasn't the theme! I am not a fan of Hive's theme, but I also don't care for the internet memes much, nor the pasted on "galactic concert at which these characters are moshing, and want to mosh with their buddies." It's not like I could think of a better theme though, and it didn't kill my enjoyment of the game or anything.

I think if using the internet icons, it would be good to somehow include that in the theme (and title) of the game. I ended up suggesting Meme Mosh Pit, which sort of does that, and phonetically sounds kinda funny, like imagine the title in a talk bubble from one of the Zombies, sounds kinda like he's stuttering or something. I don't know, it's a lousy pun that kinda amused me.

After Mosh Pit, we set up Eminent Domain. Simon Stump showed up just in time to get in on the game, which was perfect timing. We played a 4 player game and I used a record sheet I'd made to record each player's turn.

For those that don't already know, Eminent Domain is a civ building card game with a deckbuilding central mechanism - as you take actions, cards for that action go into your deck, making you "better" at doing that action (or at least, more specialized at it). The theme right now is sci-fi/outer space because it was initially supposed to be a sort of card game version of Twilight Imperium. I would like to re-theme it to a more classic (ancient?) civ theme.

In Eminent Domain, your turn consists of a Action phase, a Role phase, and a Cleanup phase. For the Action you may play a card from your hand for it's Action effect. For the Role phase you MUST choose one of the 5 roles in the game, taking a card for that role from the respective stack. You can boost the Role by playing additional cards of that type from your hand. After you resolve the Role effect, each player has the opportunity to also partake in that role by "Following" it - playing cards from their hand of that type and receiving the Follow effect (mostly the same as the Role effect). If a player does not wish to Follow the current Role, he may draw 1 card instead. Finally, in the Cleanup phase you discard any unwanted cards from your hand, then reset your hand to 5 cards. There are some planets which you can eventually get that increase your hand size.

This game may have been the most interesting multiplayer game of ED yet - 2 players were using Warfare, 2 were using Colonize heavily. Only 1 person (me) did much Research (ended up with 2 2vp tech cards), and 3 people were harvesting and trading. The game ended via VP exhaustion, and the final scores were all very close: 22-19-18-16!

David continues to be disappointed in the randomness of the Survey action, but everyone else thought it was fine. I am still on the fence about changing the system out for one which separates the planets into piles by type, and sort of mirrors the Technology/Research part of the game.I see pluses and minuses both ways.

I'm still struggling with/worried about the game end conditions. I think they're evolving toward something good, but it's not easy to figure out how many cards should be in the Role card piles or how many VPs should be in the supply!

All in all a good test I think!

Afterward, David and I chatted about how a Ground Floor card game might work. Sounds like it could be very doable!