The Lesser of Two Evils, Winds of Fate v5.0 and MicroCiv v3.0 - More testing and Further updates

Josh Tempkin is a guy from Maryland who comes into Tucson once a year for Thanksgiving. A few years ago he contacted me out of the blue saying he would be in town and asking if there happened to be a chance to do some gaming while he was here. So every year since then Josh will come over for an evening or two for some games, and since he's a designer type, we'll often play some prototypes. So there you go, when going to a new place, sometimes you can contact the gaming community there and make a new friend, just like that! As a side note, last night I found out that I went to high school with his cousin (small world, I guess).

Friday and Saturday Josh came over and we played a few games, including a dice game of his called Lesser Evil, Odysseus: Winds of Fate, and my attempt at a deeper-than-average microgame: MicroCiv.

Lesser Evil

Since this is Josh's game, I don't want to say too much about it (I don't know how public it is). As a dice game, it wasn't my favorite type of game to begin with, and in this case I didn't feel like I had the flexibility I would have liked in using the tools I was given to deal with my die rolls.

There's a dynamic that I dislike in games wherein you are forced to make a choice, then find out later (based on a die roll) if you chose correctly. This dynamic exists in some well respected games such as Stefan Feld titles Macao and Bruges - so it's obviously not a "bad" dynamic... just one I don't care for. Lesser Evil had a bit of that in it.

Finally, as the title suggests, it seems like when presented with a meaningful decision in the game, it's often trying to decide between 2 bad options... which is a feeling I also don't care for.

So all in all, while Lesser Evil was a solid game mechanically, it was really not my style of game, and it served to reinforce in my mind how I don't care for that "insufficient info" dynamic.

Odysseus: Winds of Fate

After the recent playtests of WoF at BGGcon, and the revamping of the game that followed, I was really excited to play the latest version of the game. I spent much of Thanksgiving day updating the prototype, and I was all ready to see a great leap of progress when it hit the table, as I was finally incorporating some of the comments from several years ago that have been percolating but have never been tried.

While some of the additions did feel good, unfortunately the playtest was pretty much a "crash and burn." This was pretty disappointing, because I expected it to work at least as well as last weeks games... though to be honest I did have some reservations about some of it.

Some designers will tell you that you shouldn't change more than 1 variable test-to-test, so that if the game stops working you'll know what broke it. I don't subscribe to that. Not to pat my own back or anything, but I feel like most of the time I can compartmentalize how a given change will (or has) affected the game, and so I don't mind changing multiple variables, and if/when that does screw the game up, I don't mind (I actually kind of enjoy) figuring out which thing (or combination of things) caused the problem. I find that progress is far too slow if I only change 1 aspect or variable at a time. Testing time is a commodity in short supply, and there just isn't time to play a whole game just to make sure one small tweak does what I thought it would do.

In this case, I made several big changes. Some of those did not work like I wanted them to, while others did seem promising. Here are some of the things I tried, based on old ideas from years past, as well as recent comments from BGGcon playtests:

* Change payout for Timeline and Destiny bets.
I had most recently been using 30vp divided evenly between players who bet correctly. Some of last weeks players didn't like how that didn't work the same way a bet on a horse race would work, and they suggested making the payoff based on the total number of bets. So instead of 30vp, make it Xvp divided evenly between players making the correct Destiny bet, where X is some multiple of the total number of Destiny bets placed (correct or incorrect). That way, when placing a bet, you're adding to the prize pool, rather than further subdividing a static number.

I wasn't in love with this idea, as the 30vp seemed to be working the way I wanted it to, and this new system seemed like it would likely be very similar, but more mathy and confusing to explain, but in principle it did seem stronger thematically, so I thought I'd give it a try. While explaining the game I immediately realized it was going to be a problem. The comment had come up late in the game at BGGcon, when there was already a number of bets out there, so there was something to be won by placing a bet. But when there are no bets out there, the incentive to put one out there is very small. There would need to be some starting prize pool, or there's no reason to bet. One solution is to force people to begin the game with some Destiny bets, which might be a good idea anyway. That would seed the prize pool with N bets worth of prize. Another solution to that is to remove the standard 2vp per bet in your inventory, so the ONLY way you can score is by placing that bet... but I don't like that for a few reasons. Another solution is to add a minimum payoff, which is just more pieces and more rules to govern this small piece of the game. A variation on that last solution is to make that minimum 30vp and then never increase it - that is to say go back to what I had that worked :)

* Remove all in-game vp and make it all Bet cubes.
I thought this sounded very elegant, but in combination with another change it caused a bit of a problem. I will see if I can salvage this idea, because if I can avoid a score track, or vp chits, then that would be nice. I'd love to just count up score at the end of the game.

* Cube icon = Get cube OR place bet.
This was a way to get more betting into the game, but in combination with the change above (get cubes instead of vp), there were an awful lot of these icons around, and as a result, players could place an awful lot of Timeline bets and Destiny bets, potentially more than 1 at a time. I didn't like that dynamic, especially if not restricted as to where you can place your Timeline bets. It led to a lot of last second betting on the obviously correct outcome.

* Path bets are all free, and every turn.
Something I tried at BGGcon (in the 2nd game, but not the first) was allowing players to place a 'free' Path bet (from the general supply) each round. This turned out to be a really good addition, and one I'd intended but forgot about. The idea is that path bets communicate your intent and allow for temporary collaboration or alliances between players. When you had to place earned bets as path bets, there were far fewer path bets out there, which was not as good.

Path bets used to pay off 6vp divided between bets, and I liked that level of payoff. However, originally it cost you 2vp because you had to give up a bet chip, so the net payoff was 4vp if you were alone, or 1vp if another player shared your bet. When moving to an "all cubes" payoff/scoring system, the idea was that you would simply collect the cube off the board (which came from the general supply), netting you 2vp. If you were alone in the bet, you get an additional cube (net 4vp). This seems in line with my desired balance. I think I liked this change, so maybe possible to maintain the "score only at the end" format. I might restrict the Path bets to 2 cubes per path, to avoid all players piling on to the same path, further differentiating them, and maybe strengthening the temporary alliance aspect.

* Timeline and Destiny bets are earned, you CAN place Timeline bets where other bets are.
At BGGcon we played that you got a free Path bet each round, AND each round you could place one of your earned cubes onto either a Destiny card or the Timeline. However, I restricted Timeline bets to placing only where no other bet exists. There was some discussion about whether that was necessary. I think it's absolutely necessary at the outset (Troy Encounter) to create player differentiation, but I'm not sure it's really necessary for earned Timeline bets. I still like that restriction though, as it lends a lot of value to the "move Bet" reward tiles, which I even powered up to "move your bet up to 2 spaces" rather than just 1 space.

In this new test I removed the restriction for earned bets, and it became a big problem, especially with the frequency players could earn bets. When it becomes obvious the game will end, you can pile 2-3 bets on the correct Timeline space fairly easily, which is a bit ridiculous - it's supposed to be a long-term, strategic bet. This will get better with more limited opportunity to bet, but I still think I prefer the restriction (especially with the beefed up Move Bet reward).

Rather than giving each player the opportunity to place their cubes as Timeline/Destiny bets each round, I would like to go back to an "earned bet" format, where you have to get some reward allowing you to place those bets. So the main betting will be the free Path bets, and the initial Timeline (and Destiny) bets, and there are several opportunities to place more Destiny bets over the course of the game, just not every turn for all players.

I like that the opportunity allows you to invest early in a particular outcome, but if it becomes clear that another outcome will occur, you can start investing in that one... but if you can get your early investment to come true then you will make out ahead. I don't like multiple Destiny bets at the last minute dropped on to the clearly correct outcome. This will likely fix itself when bet opportunities are reduced.

* Adding God tiles to locations, and gods to the Olympus deck.
A suggestion from the Spielbany group (circa 2009) was to add more gods to the game. They thought there wasn't enough reason to want Odysseus to go to one location over another (which really means my Encounter effects aren't pulling their weight - I've since amplified them, but they're still not enough), and one suggestion to make such incentives was to add god tiles to the locations, which players could collect and score as set collection. I would have preferred if the encounter effects offered players the incentives they needed to drive Odysseus around the board, but I did very much like the idea of adding more gods to the game. Over the last 4 years I'd considered many different ways to accomplish this - restructuring the Help/Hinder decks to include more gods than just Poseidon and Athena, etc.

I finally figured out a way I thought would work better, and I finally updated the prototype to include those god tiles! First of all, the bonus for highest contribution to an adventure is that you get the god tile (rather than a bet chip, or some VP). At the end of the game, each god scores 0/1/3 cubes (which is to say 0/2/6vp) for having 1/2/3 of that god's tiles. In addition, I've added those 3 gods to the Olympus deck (which makes all kinds of sense), and when they come up they trigger an effect for players who hold their tiles: Hades allows the player to choose to have Odysseus lose crew, Dionysus allows the player to choose to have Odysseus gain crew, and Hermes allows the player to draw some Adventure cards.

I like the way this worked, EXCEPT, as evidenced by the speed at which this particular game ended, there isn't enough time to collect these things and have them trigger. So I've got some revisions which I hope will help that out.

There might have been some other details that probably didn't go as well as I would have liked, but that was the main stuff. So here's the new plan, which I already incorporated into the prototype:

* God tiles and stuff...
For one thing, I didn't have a god tile at Troy or Ithaca (and Ithaca is a double adventure), so I made 3 Zeus tiles. Zeus does not give any in-game benefits, but he'll act as a wild for end-game scoring. Maybe I'll limit it to 1 Zeus per 'set,' so you can't get 2 Zeus and 3 Hades and score a bajillion points off of that.

I revised the Olympus deck so that each card has 2 Gods on it. Now each of the triggerable gods appears on 3 different Olympus cards, and therefore will trigger more often.

I added "draw an Olympus card and resolve its effect" to one of the Encounter tiles (I should probably add it to another) to get more triggering in there.

I added Reward tiles that you keep in front of you as a God tile (Hades, Hermes, and Dionysus). I also added Reward tiles that basically trigger your god tiles (i.e. "Lose 1 crew per Hades god tile") which will therefore have variable value for different players.

I added cards to the Help/Hinder deck that you keep in front of you as God tiles as well, so it should be much easier to get God tiles (there are a total of 6 of each), as well as cards that trigger your god tiles (which you would play as a special action instead of contributing to the Help/Hinder total). Side note: I wanted those special actions to count against your personal contribution (toward the bonus, now a god tile), but not necessarily count against your overall contribution to the Help/Hinder total. So what I think I'll try is that if you play any card face up for the special action, you are simply disqualified from the bonus altogether, then there's no confusing negative numbers in there. And of course the value on the face up card becomes 0 as well.

So in the end I think I'll reward 0/1/3/6 cubes (that's 0/2/6/12vp) for 1/2/3/4+ god tiles. I could maybe go on another step and reward 10 cubes (20vp) for 5+ god tiles of a type, but that seems like an awful lot, especially with how much access I've added now.

* Reward tiles...
As I mentioned, I added gods to the reward tiles. I am unsure which way I want to go, so I actually added 2 sets... 3 tiles with just the gods and 3 more with the triggers, and then another 3 tiles that act as both (take this as a god tile, then trigger your god tiles of that type). The latter seems really busy, so I'm leaning toward the former.

A suggestion from a player came up that actually reverts back to one of the original ideas for determining crew loss... instead of all of the reward tiles contributing to crew loss, I could reveal N+2 reward tiles, and have only the unclaimed tiles contribute to crew loss. This does a couple of things...
- It allows players to simply grab the tile they want (then deal with it and discard it back to the supply), which is an instinct that many players have had.
- It allows for later turn order players to get more choice of reward, rather than being forced to take something that may not be useful. This may backfire - if there are enough "good" tiles to go around, then players may just pass early. I guess we'll see. This might be why I moved away from that mechanism.
- It allows players to influence crew loss more directly, especially later turn order players. If you want Odysseus to die, maybe leave the reward tiles with larger numbers. If you want him to survive, maybe prioritize those. I expect this consideration to be secondary much of the time, but it could be really interesting, and it harkens back to one of the original mechanisms which got removed somewhere along the line.
- It might also allow for simpler setup, as if there's always N+2 tiles, then there's a constant average crew loss over the different player counts, so there could be the same starting crew across all player counts.
- With this sort of control over crew loss, maybe it would be wise to simplify the Crew Loss rules to say that no matter whether Odysseus wins or loses, he always loses crew according to the unclaimed Reward tiles... rather than "Lose 1 if he wins, X if he loses."

Another thing I did was add an "Advance Round Marker" reward tile, and a "Place Timeline Bet" reward tile. I'm tempted to keep the restriction of placing where no other bet exists, but as this may be the only way to actually add timeline bets now, maybe it would be acceptable to allow placing where bets already are. Should it be disallowed to bet immediately in front of the round marker (like Path bets are disallowed immediately in front of the boat)?

* Destiny.
There are still 2 Reward tiles which offer a Destiny action, and I've added a special action in each deck which allows a Destiny action as well. I added Destiny actions to 3 of the encounter tiles (each player in turn order would take a Destiny action), and I hope that doesn't lead to players all piling onto the same Destiny card. I guess we'll see. I believe I will return to the 30vp prize pool for both the Timeline bet and the Destiny bet.

* Stranded at Sea.
There's always been a concern that it might be much harder to strand Odysseus than it is to kill him or get him home safe. There are several ways to advance the round counter: 1 card in each deck, 1 Encounter that advances it, one encounter that advances it twice, and 1 additional advance each time Odysseus revisits any number of face down encounter tiles in a row. I'm not sure why that isn't "for each" face down encounter tile - I probably thought that would be too much advancing of the round counter. Well, I thought I'd try changing that, and adding a Reward tile to advance the counter as well. Hopefully now the game end will be approximately evenly split between Stranded, Dead, and Home Safe.

* The Death Spiral.
The board includes a "death spiral" - a series of encounters that, once visited, create a loop, and if revisited (by definition taking a Stormy path) will result in the game end, as Odysseus will lose all his crew, 1 by 1. With the addition of an hourglass symbol (which advances the round marker) to the backs of the tiles, now that death spiral does not have an obvious effect. Sure, if he enters the loop the game will be over, and Odysseus will not make it home, but it's not clear on which round the game will end, nor whether it will end due to the crew dying, or due to the round counter flying off the track. I mean, it'll be calculable when it happens, but the point is that depending on the game state (what round it is and how much crew Odysseus has left), the Death Spiral could support either a Dead result or a Stranded result, and it could end the game on a variety of rounds.

MicroCiv (v3.2 PnP PDF)

Wow, that got long. I actually started this blog post to talk about the updates to MicroCiv! I played a few games of it with Josh and also Dave and John, and I like the direction it has gone. However, I still felt like certain things weren't right. After the latest games and discussion I have updated the prototype again (see link above for v3.0 PDF). Here's a summary of changes:

* Territories.
I like the mix of Territories, but I thought the 2-cost ones weren't good enough, and 2-cost is almost trivial, while 3 cost requires a little more investment. So I changed all the 2-cost Territories to 3-cost, added a Population (1vp) to each, and gave them colors as well.

I like the 2 different 4-cost territories, one that gives +1 defense but no extra points, and one that gives a lot of scoring potential, but has relatively low defense. I thought it would be good to add a 3rd 4-cost into the mix, which gives a straight 2 Pop, and has 5 defense.

* Techs.
I'm pretty darn happy with the techs, but the +1 Pop tech seemed like something to be avoided, just not attractive enough to give up in-game benefit for. Josh suggested making it 2 pop, but I thought it would be much more interesting (and possibly better thematically) to make it a City instead. So now it's worth 0-2 points, depending on how many Politics cards you've got. Maybe it would be interesting to make it *2* cities... maybe that's a metropolis or something, worth 0, 2, or 4 Population. Too much?

* Cards.
For the most part I'm happy with the cards. I did think it was a little too easy to double up on the Discover action, especially with a Discover icon available in the tech, so I upped that to 4 icons required. I feel that puts it more on par with the big Explore and Conquer actions.

The Politics card (Scout) that says "play another card" - I realized that what I really meant was "play another Action" (in other words, instead of playing a card, you could choose to pick up your discards). So I've made that change. I also added "play another action" to the Culture card that lets you swap with the supply. It seems like that card isn't as useful as I'd hoped, and now it allows you to grab a card that you want and then use it right away, maybe that'll make it useful enough.

The other Politics card (Trade) that attempted to allow a player to trade Territories or Techs with another player or the supply just did not work right. I have redone that card, based on a suggestion from Josh... apparently there's some game which has a similar mechanism, and it has a card that allows you to swap the card with a card from your opponent's discard pile. So why not try that? I am not certain I like it, and I think it'll mostly be used at the last minute to grab up good scoring card (or snatch one away from the opponent), but maybe that's ok. As a Politics card, it also permanently reveals a Territory (owned or not).

The Culture action that lets you sweep the supply just doesn't seem to get used. I beefed it up in the last update to add "play another card" (and of course by that I mean "action"), but I still don't see it being used much. As a complement to the "swap with someone's discard" card, I have tried adding this "While this card is in your discard pile, you get +1 Defense." I'll see how interesting that is (it seems like a really interesting dynamic). Note also that when picking up your discards, you'll lose that defense! Of course you can get it back the following turn.

Finally, for potentially thematic and potentially logistical reasons, I swapped the Culture actions on the Yellow and Green cards. Probably not a big deal.

New print and play files are available, if you are so inclined. I think the game is really shaping up, and is almost "done!"

MicroCiv update

I got several chances to play and revise MicroCiv while I was in Dallas, and with each iteration I believe the game has become better.

I have updated the file linked from my previous blog post (and since updated the game further - it is now called Eminent Domain: Microcosm) to reflect the current version. Please feel free to try it out and tell me what you think. It's only 18 cards and 15 tokens.

For those following this game's development, here's a summary of the changes I've made since the last post:
* Changed the "Pop" icon to a "City" to avoid confusion with Population terminology (originally the "Pop" cards simply scored 1 point, now they score 1 point per card and Territory of a particular color)
* Added 2 cards (Scout and Trade actions which let you peek at the back of a face down Territory (owned or not)). These cards score for number of Cities.
* Changed Technology to less of a tug-of-war. Now the Tech tokens have icons for Explore, Conquer, Discover, +1 Defense, and +1 Pop. With a Discover action, you can take the one you want, or make an opponent discard one back to the supply.
* Drat, I forgot I was going to change "Discover" to "Invent" or some other term that is more different than "Explore". Oh well, maybe next update.
* Significant changes to the Territory tiles (now there are 4 1-cost, 4 2-cost, and 2 4-cost, with more interesting benefits)

That's probably about it. If you print it out and try it, please leave a comment below to let me know what you think. Enjoy!

Odysseus: Winds of Fate - revived and updated!

Odysseus: Winds of Fate is one of my favorite designs. I love the theme and the whole idea of the game, but while I've had playable iterations of the game, I've never found a version that I was totally happy with. It's been a while since I have even thought about O:WoF, and I hadn't really tried the latest changes and ideas I'd had.

This week I dusted off the game and brought it to BGG.con with me, and I got in 2 playtests with some folks (Matthew O'Malley, David Chott, Adam McIver, Peter Wocken, John Clair, Steve Behnke, and Chris Johnson). It was great getting to know the game again, and I got some good feedback. I have a good idea now the direction I'd like to take and what I'd like to try next:

An old playtester comment was that there wasn't enough reason to want Odysseus to go to one location over another. Things I've done and considered to combat that include...
1) Allow a free Path bet each round for each player. The Path bets are the way players communicate their intentions, so the more of them that happen, the better.
2) The Spielbany group suggested adding more Greek gods to the game, and associating each encounter with a specific god (3 each of 3 gods). They suggested putting a god tile onto the encounter, and the bonus for biggest contribution to the adventure would earn the god tile for that encounter (rather than a bet chip, which is the current bonus), and there could be some sort of set collection scoring for getting multiples of the same god tile.

The free Path bets each round helped a lot, and I'm not even sure the god tile thing is necessary... but I'd like to give it a shot anyway - I think adding gods would be great thematically, and I finally have an idea of how to do it in a pretty simple way (I think): I've already got an Olympus Deck, from which a card is flipped at the end of each Adventure. Currently there are only Athena and Poseidon cards in the Olympus deck, which help or hinder Odysseus, respectively. I think a nice way to get more gods into the game is to make this Odysseus deck into more of an Event deck, with more gods represented, each with some effect as well as a help/hinder contribution:
Zeus: +4 Hinder. Reshuffle Olympus deck.
Hera: +4 Help. Reshuffle Olympus deck.
Poseidon: +3 Hinder
Athena: +3 Help

Hades: +2 Hinder. Odysseus loses 2 Crew.

Dionysus: +2 Help. Odysseus gains 2 Crew.

Hermes: Each player draws 2 Adventure cards.

I'm not sure the best reward for collecting multiples of the same god tile... it could be as simple as just collecting 1/3/6 points (or bet chips) for 1/2/3 matching god tiles. It might also be cool if the different gods behaved differently - that could potentially be accomplished by adding some effect on the Odysseus cards. For example, instead of the above it could be:

Hades: +2 Hinder. Each player may choose to have Odysseus lose 1 Crew per Hades god tile in their possession.

Dionysus: +2 Help. Each player may choose to have Odysseus gain 1 Crew per Dionysus god tile in their possession.

Hermes: Each player draws 2 Adventure cards (1 of each type) per Hermes god tile in their possession.

I would like to try that - the effects in the Olympus deck, as well as the scoring.

Speaking of the Path bets... currently the payoff for a successful Path bet is 6vp divided between the bet chips placed there. A great suggestion from John Clair was to instead reward the bet chip to the player... so now each round players would place bet chips from the general supply onto the board, then if Odysseus passes over them, the players take those chips into their personal supply where they are worth points, or can be placed as Timeline or Destiny bets. That's nicer and more elegant than having to track VPs throughout the game. Similarly, the rewards for passing are currently 4vp/2vp for the last/penultimate passer... that could be changed to 2/1 bet chips instead. Then all scoring would be simply based on bet chips at the end of the game.

I am fairly confident that these changes will pan out, and I'm excited to give them a try.

I see in my prototype that I used to have an Adventure card value range of 2-4 or 2-5. At some point I changed it to 3-5. I wonder if that's too narrow a range. I think I'll open it up and make it maybe 2-5 or 2-6. I'd like player who wins the bonus and the player who passes last to be different players much of the time! 

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?

MicroCiv (my attempt at a microgame)

I mentioned in my last post that Michael has gotten very interested in microgames. The other day I thought I would see if I could make an interesting game with minimal components, so after giving it some thought I have put together a prototype on Friday, solo tested it that night, and got a chance to try it out with a couple people at the Ides of Gaming game day Saturday. This is just a first draft, and I can already see several things I'd like to update, but for a first draft the game certainly worked, and for the most part I think it worked pretty well. Here's the gist of it:

MicroCiv

A tiny, epic game for 2 players
(PDF)

EDIT: Files have been deleted - game has been updated and set in the Eminent Domain universe and is now called Eminent Domain: Microcosm.

Components:
16 MicroCiv cards
10 Territory tokens
5 Technology tokens

Setup:
* Shuffle the 16 MicroCiv cards and deal 3 face up into the supply.
* Mix the Territory tokens face down.
* Give 2 Technology tokens to each player and place the 5th token in the center.
* Randomly determine a start player.

Game Play:
Beginning with the start player, take turns adding cards to their hand and playing actions to explore and conquer territories and make discoveries to increase their Population. On your turn, you do the following:

1) Draw a card from the supply, then, if cards remain in the deck, re-fill the supply from the deck.
2a) Play a card from your hand and resolve the action printed on it, then place it into your discard pile. Some actions allow you to reveal additional icons (from your hand, Territories, or Technology) in order to get a better effect.
OR
2b) Return all cards from your discard pile to your hand.

Game End:
When the deck is exhausted, continue play without refilling the supply when cards are drawn. When the last card is drawn from the supply, the active player finishes their turn and the game ends. Players collect all cards from their hands and discard piles and determines their Population (score):
* Each card has a scoring condition at the bottom, indicating its Population value:
** 1 Population per Territory controlled,
** 1 Population per Territory in Spoils,
** 1 Population per Tech advantage (your Tech tokens minus your opponent's Tech tokens)
** 2 Population
* There are 4 cards and 1 Territory in each color. For each color, count 1/3/6/10 Population for 1/2/3/4+ items (cards and Territories) in that color.
* Some Territories indicate that they score additional Population.

The player with the most Population wins!

The Actions:
Explore:
Reveal Explore icons and take a Territory with that cost. You may look at your Territories, but keep them face down. You may reveal a Territory at any time to gain its benefit.
Conquer:
Reveal Conquer icons. Choose a Territory (owned or not) and reveal it. if your revealed Conquer icons meet or exceed the Defense value, put the Territory into your Spoils. You do not gain the benefits shown.
Note: Territories owned by players benefit from 1 additional Defense!
Discover:
Take 1 Tech token from the center OR opponent discards 1 Tech token to the center. Reveal 3 Discover icons to repeat this process.
Any time you have more Tech tokens than your opponent, take the Technology Advantage tile. Technology Advantage gives you 1 Conquer icon, 1 Explore icon, and 1 additional Defense for all of your owned Territories.
Culture:
There are 4 unique Culture actions.
* Swap this card with a card from the supply.
* Pick up and immediately play 1 card from your discard pile.
* It there is a Tech token in the center, take it. Return 1 card from your discard pile to your hand.
* You may play this action before or after drawing a card. Move any number of cards from the supply to the bottom of the deck in any order, then replace them with cards from the deck.

Dungeon Roll Winter Promo, TMG goes "micro", and "pay what you want"

Michael has been fascinated by the idea of so-called "microgames" for a while now. Ever since Love Letter met with great success and people started saying that games with minimal components are the wave of the future he has wanted to figure out how to produce and market them in a way he was happy with.

As those who follow TMG probably already know, we have a Kickstarter project going on right now for a Dungeon Roll Winter Promo - 4 new Heroes and a punchboard of Treasure tokens - and it's doing very well. There are just 2 days left, and we're over 5,000 backers! This performance has given Michael confidence in the format, and in researching this promo pack he's decided that he's comfortable shipping out microgames as well.

A year or so ago Michael, with microgames in mind, started working on a partial information, deduction game of his own. It's called Templar Intrigue, and it's in the genre of Werewolf and Resistance/Avalon. It plays much faster than other similar games, and uses just 10 cards. At one time the plan was to make Templar Intrigue available as a print and play game, and if it proved popular, Michael could use Kickstarter to print a higher quality version and sell it at a low price. Well, plans changed a bit... Templar Intrigue is on Kickstarter right now, and has over 2400 backers.

Both of these Kickstarter projects have a few common elements. For one thing, they are very short duration Quickstarters, a format that I like a lot for KS in general. Another common thing is the price structure. Michael is asking people to "pay what they want," with a minimum of $2 ($3 internationally) just to cover postage. This has proven to be a fairly popular price structure, and while some people are most certainly taking the opportunity to get the games at the minimum price, enough people are chipping in extra that the average per unit pledge is about $4.50 or so. This is only a tad under the "suggested" price of $5 (what the games would sell for normally).

I know Michael's got a few more microgame projects planned for the near future. The idea of microgames is interesting - in today's age of busy-busy-busy, interesting games that don't take a lot of time or space are a welcome thing. Often there's just no time for a bigger game experience. However, in most cases I find that I prefer a deeper experience than a microgame can offer, so I hope that the gaming world doesn't migrate entirely to these small, quick games... I'm sure it won't. In fact, TMG has another full size game project coming to kickstarter soon. It's for the hottest euro-style game you've ever played: Scoville!

I'd like to do something new... but what?

A few weeks ago I had some game design thoughts, but I never finished the post. Here it is now... I probably meant to write more, but I haven't really thought about it since.

It's been a while since I really did any new game design - with an exception being the game design retreat I hosted last July. Today I thought I'd like to do something new... but what? In general my M.O. is to put tried and true concepts together in new or unique ways, but I kind of want to do something more unique. Something that won't be derided as "derivative" on BGG.

I started thinking about that a little bit today, and so far all I've got is the beginnings of an idea. Imagine a game where you do well by helping an opponent do well. There have been games in which players must cooperate against the game system (lest they all lose), and yet are in competition with each other. One major issue with games like that is that if a player finds they are out of the running to win, they no longer have incentive to cooperate vs the game. In some cases a losing player can decide to bring their opponents down with them, so to speak. My thought is a bit different, more like a game where players are out to better their own position, but also score points based on the ranking of their opponents in various aspects of the game.

For this to work, there would have to be several different aspects of the game at which players could compete or excel. As a player, your score would be the combination of your own performance at each of these, and the performance of specific other players as well. For example, if I were playing a game with Russell, Michael, and Mandy, I might score for Russell's performance in one particular aspect, Michael's performance in another particular aspect, and Mandy's performance in a third aspect.

Civ games tend to have various different aspects, such as Military, Civics, Agriculture, Technology, etc. So maybe that is the way to go. I had mentioned before wanting to re-use the main mechanism from Eminent Domain, possibly with a historical civ type of game. Maybe this is a good fit. I realize I just said I wanted to do something "new" - but the Eminent Domain's "deck learning" mechanism is original, and therefore maybe acceptable to use. I think the desire to help your opponents might be novel and new - I don't think I've seen it done before.

I like the deck management aspect of the Deck Learning mechanism, and maybe there's a way to entangle that with an interactive trading mechanism. Suppose in addition to the cards in your deck/hand, there is some kind of income you receive, or rather resources you get access to via trade. Like Settlers, suppose you could offer to trade a card in hand for a card in an opponents' hand - but rather than exchange actual cards, each of those players would take the card from their hand and place it on their board (face down probably) on a space in their tableau matching the card they're trading for. So you lose the card from your deck, representing a constant export of that thing, and you gain permanent access to whatever you just traded for. Thus you need not fill your deck with that thing in order to use it.

One of those "Aha!" moments...

This morning I had one of those infamous and elusive "AHA!" moments. It's a small idea for a game, but it feels like a big step forward. It went something like this:

There's a game I'm working on for TMG - kind of a follow up to Dungeon Roll. I say follow up because it's a dice game, and it's similar in scope to DR, but it is otherwise completely unrelated. I suspect some of the people who enjoyed Dungeon Roll might enjoy this as well.

In the game, you roll some dice (obviously). Each turn you use some, and re-roll the ones you used but not the ones that went unused. Kinda like I have done for EmDice (Eminent Domain: the Dice Game). This mechanism has a tendency to build up certain die faces until you use them, but if the die face that builds up is not one you want to use, then you have a problem... unless of course you're allowed to re-roll things in some way. The latest rule was that you COULD re-roll some dice, if you sacrifice one of your dice forever. Or possibly score 0 points for the turn.

In addition, there are some cards in the game which can help increase your score for the turn. Originally three was going to be a sort of draft to get these cards, which I'd hoped would allow players to get good synergy out of their cards... but based on the scope of the game, it's quicker and simpler to just deal out the cards. My concern of course was about fairness, and especially the perception of fairness. In a light game, players aren't going to do math or analyze everything to see if the cards are fair, they're just going to either feel like their cards were as good as their opponents' cards, or not. So more important than the cards actually being fair, there has to be something to compensate a player who got a "bad hand."

My first approach to this was to award bonus points for cards leftover... generally speaking you would do better to actually play the card, but if you got a card you couldn't use, at least you get something out of the deal. That seemed OK at first, but in reality that doesn't solve any problems at all, and it introduces questions such as what's a fair compensation? And at what point is it actually better to NOT play the cards? No, that wasn't the right solution. But what is?

This morning I had a minor epiphany about this - one of those "Aha!" moments you read about. There does need to be some compensation for being dealt a card that, in theory, could be completely useless... but rather than points, why not allow players to discard any card they want to re-roll their dice? Like most Aha! moments, after having this idea it seemed so obvious it's tough to imagine NOT thinking of it. As it stands, sacrificing a die to get a re-roll is an awfully high price to pay, but you'd do it a couple times at the last minute to score a few more points, or possibly once early if your roll is atrocious (though that's probably just asking for trouble). So more ability to re-roll would be welcome, and if you have been dealt a card you know won't be useful, then you can happily spend it for a "free" re-roll! If you ave a card that could be worth +1 point, you might even consider whether a re-roll would be worth more than that (based on what you have).

At any rate, I'm pretty happy with this realization. Aha moments feel good, no matter how minor they are or how obvious they feel after the fact. I look forward to testing this game again with this new rule (as well as the updated cards I recently made) :)

What Aha! moments have you had in your designs?

If you build it, they will come. And if they come back, you'll have to rebuild it...

I've been complaining all week on Twitter, FaceBook, and I.R.L. (is that still a thing?) that my house was robbed (again), and this time the worst thing they took wasn't my TV, or my Laptop, or my iPad... it was a bag full of prototypes! I don't know what use thieves will have with a bag full of prototypes, but be that as it may, they are gone. Probably in a dumpster somewhere by now. And I got to spend much of last weekend reconstructing prototypes for the following games:

Rockin' Roll (follow up game to Dungeon Roll)
* 144 die face stickers to adhere to 24 dice
* 36ish crowd token stickers to adhere to circular tokens
* 50ish 1/2 size cards to cut and sleeve in mini sleeves
* Box (small US Flat Rate box works really well for most prototypes)

Eminent Domain: the Dice Game
* 4 player boards
* 1 Tech board
* 66ish planet tile stickers (I still need to get something to stick them to)
* I still need to collect tech counters in player colors and something to use for Resource/Fighter tokens
* Box (again, small US Flat Rate)

Kings of Air and Steam: World Fair
* 45 Technology cards
* 8 Characters (4 teams)
Sadly, KoA&S was in the bag as well, and I only had that one copy. And we're out at the warehouse. So I need to track down another copy of the game before I can play the expansion again.

Dungeon Roll
* 4 Holiday Heroes
* 8 Hero Booster #2: Legends (under construction)
I had a really awesome Minotaur figure in the dungeon Roll box that was taken, not to mention one of those nice playmats people like so much. Now they're gone.

Exhibit: Artifacts of the Ages
* I had left my original prototype with the European publisher who is now interested in publishing the game. I made myself another prototype, but I didn't have any more color spot dice, so I used regular d6s (which was pretty lame). I finally ordered some color dot dice (a little different, these actually have 1-6 on them, and each side has different colored dots) and I put together 2 prototype copies of this, each one including:
* 5 player boards
* 1 two part folding auction board
* 5 player screens
* 40 Auction tiles (I need to make the 2nd set of these)
* 5 Grant tiles
* 25 player markers
* Box (this one is set up to use a Jab or Train of Thought sized box)

Captains of Industry and City Hall
* Since this one is going to print, I don't think I'll be replacing the prototypes

Chimera Station
* A designer had just left a game with me when I saw him at Rincon last weekend, and it was in there as well. That totally sucks. I believe the designer is working on some changes and ideas I mentioned, and after the next update maybe I'll get another copy.

If anyone knows me, then they probably know if there's one I like less than actually having to do something, is having to do that thing again! That said, rebuilding these prototypes wasn't all that bad. Fortunately I had files that were more or less up to date, and this gave me a chance to update any that weren't.

So that's what I was up to all weekend - what were you up to?

Michael Keller Double Feature funded - Captains of Industry and City Hall going to print! So what's next?

Last month I mentioned that we were running a Kickastarter for two games by designer Michael Keller: City Hall and Captains of Industry. That has wrapped up, and we finished with just under $50,000 in funding to print those two games. I put quite a bit of development work into Captains of Industry, and I'm looking forward to its debut! Art for both games is being finalized and sent to the printers for pre-press.

Thanks to everyone who backed the project, I hope you all enjoy the games as much as I do, and for the cost of the Kickstarter pledge you can't really go wrong - I'm sure there will be people who missed out on the project and will want the games when they arrive.

While we wait for those games to go through the long manufacturing process, we will be starting another Kickstarter in November for a game called Scoville, by Ed Marriott.

Scoville is a game about planting, cross breeding, and harvesting peppers to fulfill orders or mix into chile recipes. It's a fun game, and it's been universally well received by every group I've played it with. Ed puts a lot of work into game design, and it really shows in his work. There was almost nothing I felt I needed to tweak in this design, which makes my job a lot easier! I'm looking forward to this one as well, and we'll have demo (prototype) copies with us at BGG.con in November, while the Kickstarter is live, so if you're going to Dallas you can give it a try before pledging.

So watch for Scoville on Kickstarter mid November, and I'll see you all at BGG.con!

Captains of Industry / City Hall - Keller Double Feature

Captains of Industry / City Hall - Keller Double Feature

 The other day TMG launched a new Kickstarter project for 2 upcoming titles:

Captains of Industry and City Hall

In this project you can get either game for about 30% off MSRP (save $20)... OR you can get a package deal and get both of them for $70! That's 46% off - save $60... that's 2 for the MSRP of one!

That's a pretty ridiculous deal, and if you are into economic euro style games (and if you're reading this, the chances are good), then this might be the project for you!

I said euro style, and I meant it. But for euro style games, both of these are very interactive. Neither one feels like a solitary experience.

In Captains of Industry the players set the market prices, and they buy goods from each other. This makes the game very interactive as players compete directly with each other on prices, and every game plays out differently.

In City Hall players auction off actions, or pay to take the action themselves. This requires a lot of resource management, evaluation of the actions, and paying attention to what your opponents have been up to.

I like these games, and if you're reading this then I bet you will too. I suggest you check them out, and since it's such a good deal you might consider taking a chance on them. We have some resources available to help you make up your mind - I'll link to the rulebooks below, and there are game play videos and reviews for City Hall online from the previous project. A game play video for Captains of Industry should be ready soon as well.

Thanks!

City Hall rules
Captains of Industry rules

Strategicon recap

Just a quick recap, for those interested in what I did at Strategicon. In no particular order:

Special Guest Vlaada Chavtil
I always like meeting the big names in game design, and if you don't mind a name drop or two, I have met such big names as Reiner Knizia, Richard Breese, Bruno Faidutti, Martin Wallace, James Ernest, and Antoine Bauza at various conventions. I also know other, maybe lesser known designers such as Tory Niemann Sebastian Bleasedale and others from the BGDF forums, and of course all the designers I've worked with through TMG (David Short, Scott Almes, Jay Cormier and Sen Foong-Lim, etc). I've met some RPG designers as well (Mark Truman for example), but as I'm not much of an RPG player, I don't worry about that too much. I do enjoy expanding my name dropping ability by meeting th famous board game designers though, and I hope to one day be considered a name that an upcoming designer might drop when posting along these lines in their own blog!

The special guest at Strategicon was Vlaada Chvatil, designer of a wide variety of games (in a wild variety of styles) from the Check Republic. I didn't spend as much time with Vlaada as I'd have liked, but I did check out his new prototype - an abstract game (I'm not really into abstract games) where you place pieces into play trying to satisfy specific patterns which allow you to play cards. These cards have bigger/better effects, and you use them to try to satisfy the conditions on the available scoring cards. It looked like an interesting game, but as I mentioned, I don't generally care for abstract games, and this was pretty abstract. Also, I'm not a big fan of 2 player only games, and this one looked like it was best with 2, if not really a 2 player only game.

Scribes Arena
Jason Chan came all the way from Hong Kong to his first ever US Game Convention to promote his game, Scribes Arena, which will be on Kickstarter, maybe as soon as later this year! Scribes Arena is billed as a cross between magic: the Gathering and Hangman. I'm not sure that's accurate, it's really more like a Hangman card game - the similarity to M:tG is that it uses cards (called "spells"), resources ("energy") to pay for the cards, and some of the cards ("Counterspells") cancel the effects of other cards.

Scribes Arena is a really cool game. I am pretty bad at Hangman (though usually decent at word games in general), and this one definitely has a unique twist. On your turn you draw a card and get 1 Energy, and then you play cards (which give you chances to guess letters), and finally you get 1 free guess (letter or word) for your turn. If you guess all the letters of a word, you move on to the next one, and if you uncovre all 3 of your opponents words before they do the same to you, then you win.

I look at it like you're dealing damage to the other player. At most, you'll need to deal 26 damage to "kill" each word (guess all 26 letters of the alphabet), but you can do much better by 'aiming' your shots - deducing which letters are likely in the word and guessing those. Guessing the correct letter feels like getting a sort of critical hit, because while it's only "1 damage," you only need so many correct letters before you can guess the word and get a finishing blow.

Jason has obviously put a lot of work into this game, and when it does hit Kickstarter I highly recommend you take a look.

Scheduled games:
I only played 2 scheduled games this time, which is 2 more than I've played in the last several years combined... Brass, and Village.

I haven't played Brass in a while, and I really enjoy it. I thought I was doing poorly, as every time I had a great plan, I'd end up distracting myself with something else and someone would beat me to it. So I did nothing spectacular, but a lot of solidly good stuff. I managed to win (barely!), and because it was billed as a large tournament I received 10 Dealer Dollars for my efforts!

I've played a fair bit of Village, though none before TMG imported the game, so I am at no real advantage over anyone else who's played a fair bit of Village. Except I'm apparently pretty good at the game, and as it turns out, that's something of an advantage. :) The person running Village didn't really pull her weight, leaving me to teach the new players while she played in the neighboring Thurn and Taxis event. I have done my share of teaching games, and while I hadn't signed up for this event in order to teach it, at least I am well practiced at it. We had 7 players, so 2 tables, and the top 2 from each moved on to the final round. After teaching the game and playing twice, it was a fairly large time investment, but at least I came out on top and was rewarded with another 5 dealer dollars (this one was billed as a Small tournament).

Dealer Dollars and Maximum Throwdown
It has been a while since I collected enough Dealer Dollars to matter, and unfortunately there was nothing in the dealer room I was really interested in. I ended up getting a copy of Maximum Throwdown, a dexterity game where you throw cards into play. I like to throw things, so I figured it was worth a shot. We tried it at Brian's house the following game night, and it was wildly mediocre for us. i was awful at the throwing - in the beginning I missed altogether, and later my cards slid underneath those already in play rather than landing on top of them. nobody was too terribly thrilled with the game, but I think the group isn't one to really get excited about dexterity games to begin with.

Scoville, Battlecruiser, and other TMG playtesting
I played 1 game of Scoville at Strategicon, and managed to win by a mile... but everyone seemed to enjoy the game a lot. I used a new feature which I'd just gotten from the designer, and I liked it a lot - I think it will probably make the final cut of the game. In fact, with that new feature, one of the rules was able to be streamlined away, and I always like when we can do that!

I played a couple sessions of Battlecruiser, one of which was great for comments afterwards - we tried lots of different combinations of cards, and discussed the wording, intent, and ramifications of most of them. I got some great feedback for the designer on that one, and much of it has been addressed in the latest version of the game.

I also playtested a future TMG dice game, which isn't coming along as well as I'd like, but based on the tests and comments, Michael and I were able to theorize a better structure that should work out better (sacrifice one of YOUR dice to re-roll anything you want, not one of your scoring opportunities!) Also, we're thinking that an up-front draft of all the cards (instead of 1 card per round) would be better as well. Sorry to be cryptic about this one, I'm not sure how much info I'm really allowed to put out there for this one just yet...

Hanabi and party games
I didn't play much Hanabi, but I did play some. As for Party games, I finally tried Reverse Charades. It was fun, but I really think the ideal team size is 3-4 people. We had 5 people per team, and I think it was too many.

The 8 hour drive wasn't too bad, with the company of my friends Jeff, Elisa, and Brian. I wouldn't mind doing it again, though I also like the expediency of air travel, especially when the convention is so conveniently close to the airport.

Now Boarding
I met up with Tim Fowers briefly on Sunday, and we played our design from the Design Retreat: Now Boarding. It's a cooperative optimization puzzle with time pressure, and this time we used a different version of time pressure - we timed each Departures phase (1 minute), and the rest of the game was un-timed. It seemed to work really well, and it automatically synchronized people and kept them from getting out of phase with each other.

It was nice to see many old friends, and make some new ones... some of whom may be coming to Rincon next month :)

T - minus 3 hours... headed to Strategicon!

I don't know how or why this happens, but as usual I'm awake mere hours before I have to get up and leave for a convention. This time I'm driving (or riding) to L.A. for Strategicon - mostly because I never got around to buying plane tickets, and now they're ridiculously expensive.

But after the 22 hour drive to Indiana, this 8 hour trip to L.A. should be no big deal :)

I have been so overwhelmingly busy leading up to this convention that I have done no preparation for it whatsoever. No plane tickets, no pre-registration, no scheduling of games... I was pretty close to deciding to just not go. But I'll be there, and I spent all day today preparing some prototypes to take with me.

I'll be bringing 8 prototypes - 9 if you include new Heroes for Dungeon Roll:

Captains of Industry, and City Hall, by Michael Keller
Two great economic games, both coming soon from TMG. Watch for a Kickstarter for these two in about a week!

Scoville, by Ed Marriott
A 2014 release from TMG about breeding peppers :) Cross primary colored peppers to get secondary colored peppers, and cross those to get even better peppers. Fulfill orders and complete recipes to score. So far just about everyone I've played this with has loved it. Watch for a Kickstarter project for Scoville this November (to coincide with BGG.con).

Battlecruiser, by Philip DuBerry
A quick card game, reminiscent of Libertalia, but much simpler and quicker (and therefore I like it better).

Rockin' Roll (in house TMG production)
A follow up to the very successful Dungeon Roll. If things go well we should have a Kickstarter project for this around the end of the year, and hope to deliver in time to debut the game at Gen Con.

Exhibit: Artifacts of the Ages, by Seth Jaffee
The Bluff Auction game. This one is not a TMG game, but it has gotten some foreign publisher interest. However, the publisher has become very busy, so it hasn't moved forward in a while.

Now Boarding, by Timothy Fowers and Seth Jaffee
A cooperative optimization puzzle, which may or may not have some time pressure. I'm having trouble identifying whether players will tolerate a real time game clock.

Eminent Domain: Exotica (and Escalation), by Seth Jaffee
Exotica is just about done, and I'll have my Escalation prototype with me as well. I'll also have the color proofs for Escalation (and Belfort: the Expansion Expansion) to wave around.

Dungeon Roll: Legends Booster and Holiday Heroes
We're working on the next Hero booster pack for Dungeon Roll - Legends. These heroes are more powerful than the original heroes, so they don't level up. These are first drafts, so they're not done yet, but they will likely have flavor and story text on the back, as well as some personal achievements a player can try to accomplish with them.

We've also got a holiday promo planned, with some holiday themed heroes such as Klaus, Saint of the North (Santa Clause!). I have these heroes (also first draft) in case anybody wants to give them a try.

So if you're at Strategicon this weekend, come by and say "hi!" I'll be in the boardgaming ballroom pretty much the whole time. Hopefully I can score a table and just set up all these games to teach to whoever wants to try them.

I'm also hoping to play some games that I didn't have a hand in. I played 1/2 a game of Spyrium at Gen Con (the only published title I even looked at all weekend) and I wouldn't mind playing a full game of that. I haven't played much Hanabi in a while. I picked up The Scoundrels of Skullport expansion to Lords of Waterdeep, but haven't tried it yet. I'm sure there's some other stuff I've been missing out on recently as well.

Ok, maybe there's time for a REM cycle or two before I have to leave. See you in L.A.!

Holy GenCon, Batman!

A little thing called Gen Con happened last week, and I thought maybe people would like to hear about my experience - nay, my adventure in Indiana this year.

I've been to Gen Con twice, the last two years. In 2011 we had a booth, and it was our first time at a big con as a vendor. It was pretty wild, and we didn't know what to expect. We did decently well, and I remember looking across our table and seeing all the titles we had, and thinking that while not all games are for everybody, each of the TMG titles, for its category or genre, is really top of the line. I was proud of that.

In 2012, TMG products were for sale in the Game Salute booth, which gave me a lot more time to experience the con. I played a lot more games, and I met a lot more people. On the down side, with the TMG products sort of buried in the Game Salute booth, I don't think it was a great financial success.

This year we went back to having our own booth. In fact, this year Michael went BIG. We had a 20'x20' space, with 6 or 8 demo stations set up to show our new dice game Dungeon Roll. We had a table (or 2) full of other games (Belfort, Kings of Air and Steam, Ground Floor, Skyline, Martian Dice, Rialto, Village, Village Inn, Il Vecchio, Magnam Sal, and Alba Longa) which ended up selling out, but we focused the demos on Dungeon Roll, as it's much easier and quicker to demo. It turns out that having people commit to sitting down for a full demo of a eurogame is a hard sell, and it's terribly inefficient. Games like Dungeon Roll are much better to demo (at a standing table) as it's quick, easy to demo, and almost every time leads to a sale.

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

On Friday August 9th I flew to Utah, where Michael has moved. He picked me up at the airport and I got to see his new house (which is gorgeous!). Saturday we went disc golfing, and then packed some things into Mike's truck - only to find that the volume of stuff to pack exceeded the volume of space in the truck! Somehow we fit almost everything in, and we only had to leave behind 1 box of folding chairs, and instead of a 6' table we brought a square card table. As it turned out, we could have left behind more chairs and that table, we didn't end up using them.

Sunday we headed out on our +/-22 hour drive. This would be the longest road trip I've ever been on, and it was just me and Michael in the car. I wasn't sure how well this would go... We drove about 14 hours on Sunday, and it went surprisingly well! We didn't get board, we didn't get on each other's nerves, and we made great progress! We also saw an awful lot of corn on the side of the road :)

Monday we finished out our trip with about 9 more hours of driving, and by the end of that I think we were both ready to be done driving. Luckily we got to our hotel around then :)

Tuesday we had some work to do. It costs a fortune to use the unionized company to bring your pruduct in for you, so our product had been shipped to a warehouse, and we had booked a Uhaul with which to get it to the convention center. We picked up the Uhaul and brought it to the warehouse without any problems, but it was a challenge to get 5 pallets of product into the truck. It wouldn't fit! So we put 3 pallets in, and then we un-palletized the other 2 and placed the boxes into the truck by hand. We got a loading dock without hassle, but of course the Uhaul isn't the same height as the trucks they build the docks for, so rather than using a pallet jack or anything, we had to break open our pallets and take the boxes out of the truck by hand and bring it to our booth space.I took a photo of our booth after Tuesday's efforts...

Wednesday we had some help, as our demo team - a handful of college students organized by Chris Schreiber, as well as some other friends of TMG arrived and helped finish putting together the TMG booth. Here's what it looked like after Wednesday's efforts. Here's our booth, ready for the onslaught!

One thing I was kind of excited about was the idea of having a giant Dunegon Roll box in our booth. Here's a pic of the oversized treasure chest prototype I made as proof of concept:

I got artwork sized properly from the artist (Rob Lundy), and dropped it off at an Office Depot Wednesday morning. I was able to pick it up later that night and assemble it. Here's the final treasure chest, full of treasure (Dungeon Roll boosters) as it appeared in our booth. I think it came out great!

I was really impressed with our booth setup, and we got a few compliments over the course of the con as well. Tuesday and Wednesday were tough, and we didn't eat or rest until dinnertime... but fortunately I managed to eat better over the rest of the week.

Thursday morning the floodgates opened, and we were non-stop demoing all day long. our booth was very popular, and we were helping as many customers and fans as we could. Really, that pace didn't let up all weekend. We sold a lot of games, and had several podcasters come by and talk to me and Chris Darden, designer of Dungeon Roll.

Saturday I had an appointment with BGGtv, and recorded 3 sessions, showing off Dungeon Roll, Village Inn, and some upcoming TMG stuff that's not out yet. I haven't seen the video yet, so I'm interested to see how I did!

After hours I spent a lot of time with some friends: Andy Van Zandt and Oliver Kutnik who I spent most of Protospiel with last month, and Ken Gruhl and Quinten, who I've met at previous Prototspiel events. I also attended a Designer - Publisher Speed Dating event where designers set up their games on tables, and publishers would sit for a 5 minute pitch. Then a bell would ring and the publishers would move to the next table. It was an interesting event, but really long. I was there for about 4 hours, during which time I heard about 40 pitches. Of those, maybe 5 or 6 were interesting to me, and even those weren't all TMG material. I don't want to say it was a waste of time, because I think it was actually a really good event, especially for the designers... but I'm not sure it's as valuable to a publisher/scout. James Matthe put the event together, and he was talking about improvements for the next time, which included a shorter timeframe.

Congrats to James for putting together that event, as well as a Designer/Publisher meet and greet!

I didn't get to play any published games, except 1/2 a game of Spyrium demo at Asmodee's booth. But I did see a number of games from Ken and Quinten that were fun little fast games, as well as some of Andy's stuff (which I'd seen before). I also showed those guys a few things I'm working on and got some good comments on those.

I didn't manage to meet Bruno Cathala, but I did have a couple chats with Antoine Bauza, who I met last September at Strategicon in L.A. He's a great guy, and right now he's very popular as a designer, after 7 Wonders won the KSdJ in 2012 and Hanabi won the SdJ in 2013! Speaking of Hanabi, I only briefly saw Nyomi and Sean, who I met playing a 12 hour Hanabi marathon last Gen Con. they met that day, and got married a couple of months ago! I wanted to introduce them to Antoine, but we couldn't find him at the time.

Finally, the convention wound down on Sunday, and of course there were things I didn't get a chance to do. Michael, Chris and I retired to our hotel to relax, and the next morning we would pack up and head out on our 2-day drive back to Utah. One good thing about these 2-day trips is that they provide good "forced meeting" time, where Michael and I were able to go over quite a few things for TMG, from scheduling, to strategy, to game design. Again, the trip back was much easier than I expected, and we were able to get all the way home without getting on each other's nerves or at each other's throats!

Tuesday night at Michael's house I signed a bunch of posters for Dungeon Roll kickstarters - those posters look awesome! Wednesday I headed out to the airport and flew home, and I've spent the entire rest of the week catching up on emails and things that I hadn't been able to do while we were at Gen Con.

So that's basically how my last 2 weeks have gone... what have you been up to? :)

Now Boarding - The Board Game: A cooperative, real time airport rush for 3-4 players

Now Boarding - The Board Game

A cooperative, real time airport rush for 3-4 players

In Now Boarding, 3-4 players will control airport hubs (and eventually cities as well) and manage randomly drawn passengers, sending them to each other's hubs en route to their specific destinations. Time is of the essence as passengers' patience run low and the days draw to a close. Work together to service as many passengers as possible, and try not too let too many run out of patience and storm off in a rental car!

Components:
88 Passenger tiles (22 each in 4 player colors)
4 International Hub ("A") boards (1 each in 4 player colors)
12 City boards (3 each in 4 player colors, labeled B, C, and D)
4 Jet tiles
XX Upgrade tiles (Concessions, Commuter planes, Gates, New Planes)
Countdown timer

Setup:
1. Give each player the International Hub, 3 Cities, and 22 Passengers in their chosen color. All Passengers should be sorted by Destination.
2. Each player places their International Hub "A" and City "B" boards in front of them, and shuffles their "A" and "B" Passenger tiles into a face down supply in the center of the table. City "C," City "D," and their associated Passenger tiles are set aside - they won't be used until later.
3. Give each player 1 Jet to place on the Gate on their International Hub board, and 1 Commuter Plane tile to place below their boards.
4. Set the countdown timer to 5 minutes. If you like, you may use more time per day as a handicap for new players, or less time for expert players.

Return any unused components to the box. You are now ready to begin.

Game Structure:
Now Boarding takes place over three days, and each day is comprised of a series of rounds. During each round players will play simultaneously, managing the Passengers in their airports and sending them to each other's hubs in order to take them to their destination cities. Each round follows this sequence:
Step 1: Departure
 - Draw new Passenger tiles
 - Load and depart planes
Step 2: Arrival
 - Receive planes
 - Score or age passengers
Step 3: Purchase
 - Spend scored passengers to purchase infrastructure

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Players must sync up their play at each step of the round. 

No player may move to the next step until all players are ready to do so.

This is very important! Things get very confusing if any player gets ahead of the other players.

Let's look at each step of the round in detail...

Step 1: Departure

The first thing that happens during the Departures step is that each player draws new Passenger tiles from the supply in the center of the table. One Passenger is drawn for each airport, and is placed into that airport in its starting orientation, with the text on the tile aligned vertically (as it would be read normally).

NOTE:

If a Passenger is drawn for an airport that exactly matches their destination, that passenger is returned to the supply face down and another is drawn in its place.

After drawing, players simultaneously manage their Passengers by loading them onto planes in their Gates, or by loading them onto their Commuter tiles.

Jets: The starting Jets have Capacity = 2, meaning that 2 Passengers may be placed inside that plane.
* Orientation of Passengers is very important and must be maintained at all times!
* Passengers in an airport may only be placed into Jets that are currently in Gates at that airport. Passengers may not be placed into Jets on a Tarmac or Runway.

Commuters: Commuters have Capacity = 1, meaning that only 1 Passenger may be placed onto a Commuter at a time. Each player starts with 1 (2?) Commuters, and unlike Jets, the Commuters can only shuttle Passengers between a player's cities and hub. Commuters can never be used to send Passengers to another player!
* Remember, orientation of the Passengers is very important!
* Commuters do not use Gates, they are virtual shuttles that are constantly moving back and forth between airports. 

* Passengers from any airport may be placed into Commuters.
Also during Departures, Jets in a player's Gates or Tarmac may be sent to other players' International Hubs (with or without passengers in them). Players each start with 1 Jet which has Range = 1, meaning that it can fly to a neighboring player's Hub. Later in the game, Jets may be upgraded to Range = 2, meaning that they can fly to the Hub of a player 2 seats away.

To send a Jet to another player, place it onto their Runway. Remember, orientation of the Passengers is very important, so it's useful to place the Jet so that it is oriented properly for the receiving player.

Once all players have completed the Departure step then it is time to move on to Arrivals. Remember, all players must move to the next step at the same time! Note: when moving to the Arrivals step, no player should have any Jets in any of their Gates*.

* During Departures it is legal to move a jet, with or without passengers, from your gate onto your own Tarmac. You would do this if you want to add a passenger to that jet next turn before sending it to another player.

Step 2: Arrival
The first thing that happens in the Arrivals is that all players receive Jets on their runways. Move all Jets from all runways to the Tarmac. from the Tarmac, jets can be moved into Gates. Each Gate can hold 1 Jet, so if a player has more Jets on the runway than Gates, some will have to wait on the Tarmac.

Next, all Passengers in Commuters and Jets in Gates (NOT Jets on Tarmacs) deboard and are placed in the airport.
* Passengers deboarding a Jet are placed on the same airport where the Jet is located.
* Passengers deboarding a Commuter may be placed into any airport.
* After deboarding, there should be NO Passengers on any Commuters or in any Jets in Gates. There may be Passengers in Jets on Tarmacs. There should also be no Jets in Runways.

Now each Passenger will either score or age.
* If the Passenger is currently in the location printed on the tile, congratulations! You have successfully delivered that Passenger to its destination! Score that Passenger by placing it aside, face up, in a personal score pile. Note: Passengers on the Tarmac do NOT count as being in the airport, they never score!
* If the Passenger is in ANY OTHER LOCATION (including the Tarmac), instead of scoring, age that passenger by rotating it 90 degrees clockwise. passengers have colored edges (Green, Yellow, and Red). This indicates how much patience they have left. When a Passenger's patience runs thin, they get sick of waiting and storm off in search of other transport (a rental car, or another nearby airport). The color along the TOP of the Passenger tile is important - Green means the passenger is just fine. Yellow is a warning that the passenger's patience is wearing thin. Red means that the passenger is just about fed up... any time a passenger is rotated off of it's red side, place that passenger aside in a Lost pile - that passenger is lost and will never be scored this game!

When all players have scored or aged each of their passengers then it's time to move on to the Purchase step of the turn.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Remember to age all passengers in Jets (on Tarmacs) in addition to passengers in airports!

Step 3: Purchase

During the Purchase step, players may spend money printed on face up passengers in their score pile on upgrades and infrastructure. Passengers used to pay for these things are turned face down, but kept in the score pile for now. No change can be given, so when using a $2 and a $3 passenger to purchase a $4 item, $1 will be wasted.

The items and upgrades available to purchase and their prices are...

$3 Concession (Place at an airport. Each round 1 passenger at that airport does not age.)

$4 Commuter

$5 Gate (be able to deboard additional Jets)

$6 Upgrade Jet (turn the Jet to the back side)

$7 New Jet (see below for possible non-standard Jet)

$8 Upgrade a City into a Hub (comes with a Gate and a Runway - other players may send Jets there now)

Additional ideas for items to add:

$? Helicopter (Range = 1, Capacity = 1, Does not require a Gate)

$7 Jumbo Jet (Front: Range = 1, Capacity = 3 Back: Range = 1, Capacity = 4, Passengers do not age)

$4($2?) Commuter Train (Place between 2 adjacent airports. Capacity 2)

When all players are ready to move on, the next round begins with another Departure step.

Rounds continue like this until the countdown timer (started at the beginning of the first round of the day!) runs out. The timer running out signals the end of the day. After the current round is complete, the game will progress to day 2.

During the Purchase step at the end of the day, players MUST purchase until they can no longer afford anything. Then, all face down passengers from all score piles are shuffled back into the face down supply in the center of the table. Note that players with an extra $1 passenger face up may keep that passenger!

As time goes by and players service passengers, their regions grow and new airports open up nearby! Before the next day begins, each player places their City "B" board in front of them alongside City "A," and adds all of their "B" Passenger tiles to the face down supply. Mix the supply well!'

Reset the timer and Day 2 is ready to begin. NOTE: Now that players have 3 airports, they will each draw 3 new passengers during the Departure step - 1 for each airport!

Day 2 plays just like Day 1, though with more passengers and more destinations it will be a bit harder. Hopefully the players will have built up some infrastructure to help deal with all of the customers.

At the end of Day 2, each player adds another new City ("C"), and all of the "C" Passenger tiles, and the processes is repeated 1 last time.

Scoring:
At the end of Day 3, each player adds the total value of all passengers in their score pile - both face up and face down (so it doesn't matter if you've 'spent' them on upgrades). Add each player's total together and divide by the number of players to get a final score. Go ahead and round up. Refer to the chart below to see how well you did:

00-10: Keep trying!

11-18: Notable

19-24: Great

25-29: Epic

30-32: Legendary

33-41: Mythic

   42+: PERFECT

Game Design Retreat

This weekend I did something new and cool. It's something that's crossed my mind before, and in some ways it's similar to Protospiel - a design convention I've gone to for the last 3 years, only a bit more focused perhaps. Here's what happened...

I met Tim Fowers, designer of Wok Star and the recently-kickstarted Paperback, at OrcCon last February. We got to talking, and he had been wanting to do what he referred to as a Game Jam or Game Design Charrette, something I guess they do in the video game world where a handful of designers get together and discuss design, work on specific problems, playtest games, or whatever. I thought it sounded like a lot of fun, and I told Tim I'd love to join him - and if he wanted to do it here in Tucson, I'd even host it. This seemed like a good plan, as it would save hotel money.

So that's what ended up happening. Last Thursday Tim, James, and Brent flew in, and we ventured out to a 4-bedroom house on the outskirts of town. After some introductions, we got right to talking about game ideas and design stuff. Tim mentioned some thoughts he'd had about making a sort of board game version of his online game Now Boarding. It reminded me about all the thoughts I've had while waiting in airports... So I shared those thoughts, and we talked up the idea and how it could work - I felt like I wanted to prototype the game and try it right then and there!

Friday morning we did just that. We cut some index cards into 1.25" squares and put some data on them to make Passenger tiles, we made Hubs and Cities for each of 4 players, and we brainstormed a list of upgrades you could buy... and then we gave it a try. We went through a series of iterations very quickly as we came to see how the game felt - free form, turn based, with and without time pressure... It was great! It was a mix of analysis on one hand, and trial and error on the other. It quickly coalesced into a game experience that worked and was fun! over the course of about 5 hours we had created a working, fun, cooperative game from scratch.

Later that night, David Short was able to join us, and we showed him the game, and it held up. That is to say that it still worked, though we all had thoughts on how to improve it. Saturday we took the game to SAGA's Ides of Gaming event and played a couple of games with players there. With the exception of 1 player, everyone was able to play well and succeed. Since then we have refined the game a little bit further, and I look forward to getting home and making a nicer prototype to continue testing.

In addition to creating Now Boarding (tagline: "Now Boarding - now boardgame"?), Brent got an asteroid mining game idea together and we tried that as well. It was a very early (maybe first) draft of the game, and we all had lots of ideas about changes to make before moving forward. We implemented some of them and tried again, and it was definitely a step in the right direction.

Over the course of the weekend Tim got some valuable feedback on Paperback and Wok Star, both of which he's finalizing now that they have funded on Kickstarter. I also got several prototypes/submissions to the table, such as Shadow Puppets by Scott Almes, and Captains of Industry by Michael Keller. I also taught the guys Eminent Domain, which they'd never played - something I wanted to do so that I could discuss my thoughts on the upcoming Political expansion.

James had an idea for a game based on Dominion, but rather than drawing cards and playing them to add more cards to your deck, you move a pawn around a board and activate the spaces you step on. So it was kind of like you took your Dominion deck and laid the cards out in a grid, "drawing" them in the order that you want. That was the basis of the idea, but as he, Brent, and I discussed it the game  quickly diverged from just a modeling of Dominion to something fairly unique, with a shared geography which seems like it could lend a fair amount of interaction to the game. He got some great ideas to carry that game forward as well.

David Short and Den Keltner came by again last night and got a test of their current version of Bomb Squad - specifically the Training Missions - and I think they got some great feedback on how the Training Missions ought to be set up.

All in all I think it was a very productive weekend. I look forward to doing it again sometime, hopefully soon!

Eminent Domain - getting ahead of myself (Political Expansion thoughts)

Last night I met with Mike Watne, a big fan of EmDo who did a lot of playtesting of Escalation for me. At this point he's pretty much an unofficial member of the EmDo team. It was great to meet him and his wife Holli (sponsors of the Hostile planet Odonata, which you'll see when you get Escalation). Among other things, we discussed some ides for the upcoming and final EmDo expansion... the Political expansion. I don't have a name for it yet, but it would be amusing to choose a subtitle whose first letter is symmetric so it fits the scheme of ED:E and ED:X... maybe ED:B, ED:C, ED:D, ED:H, ED:I ED:K, or ED:O? This is really not a big deal, it's just something that comes to mind when I think about what to call the expansion...

The thrust of the final EmDo expansion is intended to be Politics. To an extent, this has been planned from the very beginning. I intend to have a new role stack (Politics role), filled with cards very similar to the Politics cards that already exist in the game. The only difference might be that they also have a Role box which says 

"Select Agenda. Leader: +[Politics symbol]"

Agendas are intended to be global effects that players will have some control over how, when, or whether they come into play. I was planning on doing some kind of voting mechanism based on following (you follow with symbols to cast your vote, or you dissent and effectively abstain from the vote). That still may be interesting, but I think there might be a smoother way to do it. In the conversation with Mike, this is what came up, and it's sounding pretty solid to me:

The Politics role could work just like the Survey role does in EmDice- pay 2/3/4/5 Politics symbols (leader bonus = +1 symbol) to put an Upcoming Agenda into play from the display, OR pay 2/3/4/5 Politics symbols to discard an Active Agenda from play. Agendas would come into play in the 5 slot, bumping older Agendas down to the next lowest slot, making the older Agendas easier to dispose of.

When following a Politics role, the leader would get to use your symbols, making it easier to afford higher valued Agendas - allowing players to work together to get an expensive Agenda either into play or out of play. In return for your support, you would get 1 Clout token for supporting the leader (whether they need/want your support or not). A Clout token has a Politics icon on one side, and a random icon on the other, and can be spent to boost or follow as either of those icons.

New tech cards can mess with Agendas, making them cheaper or more expensive to get into/out of play, translate icons to Politics (L1?) and Politics to other icons (L2?), and could let you draw Clout tokens - stuff like that.

I could add planets of each type with Politics icons on them (Political Planets?) (inc. Exotic, and an Asteroid). Maybe a bustling planet that lets you discard a Clout token to search for one of your choice, or just get one of your choice as an action, or discard 1 for 2 of your choice, or something. Maybe planets with Politics "translators" as well.

That sounds to me like a decent structure for the expansion. I think it would integrate very well with the game as it is, so players won't have to figure out how to play again, but the global effects could really shake things up and force players to play differently. Now I just have to design Agendas that shake things up and force players to play differently :)

City Hall avatars!

The Kickstarter for City Hall will only be running through Friday, and we've got a ways to go before we fund.

Here's a heartfelt video from the designer Michael Keller, thanking you for your support thus far.

In an effort to help spread the word, I've got these handy dandy City Hall avatars - if you could spare the effort and change your FaceBook/Twitter/BGG/etc avatar to one of these just through Friday, that would help us out a lot!

City Hall is a great euro-style game, and I'm certain that fans of TMG eurogames will really enjoy it. I hope we are able to reach our funding goal so we can bring this game to our fans - and more selfishly, so I can play it myself!

Thanks for your support!

Beyond EmDo

I played Eminent Domain again yesterday - teaching some new players. I continue to be very pleased with how that game turned out! I'm excited for the upcoming Escalation expansion, I'm happy with the following Exotica expansion thus far, and I look forward to working on the future (and final) "Agendas" expansion.

I mentioned before that I put some thought into an Eminent Domain Dice Game, and that came together quickly. I'm happy with EmDice, and I think it's likely to be published soon.

I'm very proud of the 'deck learning' mechanism, and while it's done wonders in Eminent Domain, I don't know if I'm done with it. I've had some thoughts on other ways to utilize this mechanism. Here are 2 examples of possible games I might try to make based on EmDo's deck learning mechanism...

Railroad Tycoon style train game
I played Railroad Tycoon today - first time in a long time. I really, really like that game. I've considered a game based on Railroad Tycoon, using a deck learning mechanism to drive it.

There would be a board with cities and hexes, like Railroad Tycoon. Using your deck of cards you would build track to connect cities, deliver cubes, upgrade your engine, complete specific routes, etc. Main strategies would involve expanding your network and making deliveries, and like EmDo, I envision that early game players will need to add cities to their network, then at some point players will have to decide if they'll concentrate on continuing to expand their network, or if they'll transition to making more deliveries for example.

Historical Civ game
EmDo is basically a civ game set in outer space. I had originally intended to set it in a more common, historical, terrestrial civ game setting. I can imagine doing a civ game in such a setting with deck learning in it, and a game board, perhaps similar to Eight Minute Empire. Or perhaps like Princes of the Dragon Throne, with colored regions and cities (or locations) of each color within each region.

I imagine 2 rows of "tech cards" - each row a display from a shuffled deck (like Ascension's center row). One row with a money cost, the other row with an Influence cost. Perhaps one of these rows has cards which go into play (like EmDo planets) while the other has cards which go into your deck. Or perhaps cards of each of those types are shuffled all together. Maybe both rows even come from the same deck.

Actions/Roles would be things like:
Recruit: Move units from "provinces" (general supply) to "court" (personal supply)
Place: Place units on the board
Move: Move units around the board
Get "tech" card type A (based on Money)
Get "tech" card type B (based on Influence)
Trade(?): Get money somehow
???: Get Influence somehow

City Hall - now by TMG - back on Kickstarter!

Last November I posted about a game called City Hall, by Michael Keller. I had a chance to play it at BGG.con while it was on Kickstarter and I really enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, Keller's Kickstarter project fell short of the funding goal. But we here at TMG thought it was a strong game, and deserving of publication, so we offered to publish it!


Here's a brief overview of City Hall:

Stakes are high in the Big Apple. 

In your bid to become Mayor you will send your staffers to the seven City Hall offices and auction off their benefits to build parks and buildings to secure the votes of the populace.
You can accept your rivals influence, or pay your own to keep the benefit to yourself. Leverage your money and influence to win the voters' approval and become the next Mayor of New York!

City Hall pits 2-4 players against each other in a bid to build a thriving city and gain the approval of the voters in order to win the Mayoral election.
There are seven Offices in City Hall. Each has a distinct function. Some of these offices help build up the city, while others only benefit the player who controls them.
On your turn you will choose any Office that hasn't already been chosen, and put it up for auction. Your opponents will bid influence, trying to wrest away control of that Office. You can accept the highest bid, or pay that much of your own influence to the bank and maintain control of the Office and use its power for yourself.

The Offices in City Hall are...
Tax Assessor: Collect money according to the population you have brought to the city
Campaign Manager: Pay money to increase your Approval Rating
Surveyor: Purchase a plot of land
Lobbyist: Convert money to Influence and vice versa
Zoning Board: Build property on a plot of land you own
Deputy Mayor: Advance in turn order
Health Commissioner: Bring new population to the city

The game ends when one player's Approval Rating is high enough, or when enough properties have been built, and at that time there's an election for Mayor! You'll multiply your Approval Rating by your Population to determine how many votes you get - the player with the most votes becomes the Mayor of New York and wins the game!

After a thorough rules rewrite (not rules changes, just clean-ups), TMG has now put City Hall back on Kickstarter - effective TODAY! We're trying another short run "Quickstarter" with this title, so the project only lasts 9 days. Since the game was already done, we do not have any stretch goals planned, we just want to see the game published. But we'll need your help if we're going to be able to afford it.

As a backer of City Hall, you'll get a significant discount compared to MSRP (20%, comparable to some online prices), including shipping inside the U.S. Unfortunately Canadian and overseas shipping costs more, but we do have the usual bundle prices which make it more cost effective outside the U.S.

We're not big fans of exclusive game content, however for our backers we will have a special limited edition  box, and we'll add some wooden star bits to use in lieu of the normal cardboard ones.

Perhaps the main incentive to get in on the Kickstarter this time is because TMG won't be publishing the game without sufficient support! Unlike some of our other projects, we're not planning on just doing this game anyway. So by pledging your support you will...
* Help ensure the game is produced,
* Get a copy at a reasonable price,
* Be among the first to receive the game once the production run arrives.

I hope you'll take a look at City Hall, and consider backing the kickstarter project to get yourself a copy!

Recent Gaming

What have you been playing lately?

Here's what's been hitting my table:

Tzolk'in: the Mayan Calendar
After playing Tzolk'in at BGG.con last November, I was excited to play it again. My friend knew I would likely pick up the game once it became available, and at the time people were really getting into painting the gears. He offered to paint my gears for me as a birthday gift when I got a copy. Unfortunately it took quite some time before he got a chance to paint them - but I finally did get to play my copy! I've played a handful of times now, and I have been enjoying it.

A couple of my friends think that buildings just aren't lucrative enough to be a winning strategy - they think the game is all about the God tracks. While it's true that the God tracks are good and should be ignored at a player's own risk, I have won my share of games concentrating on buildings. Last weekend I played a game where all I did was build! I maxed out the resource and architecture tech tracks and built a total of 11 buildings plus 2 monuments. One of the monuments gave me 2 points per building/monument for a total of 26 points! I ended up with 95 points, 25 ahead of 2nd place. That game I even begged for food 3 or 4 times, scoring NEGATIVE 3 points off of God tracks at midgame, and only about 7 God track points at the game end.

So it seems that buildings can be a viable strategy after all!

Bora Bora
I have played a couple games of Bora Bora recently. People have described games like Bora Bora as "victory point salad" - often using the term as a criticism, citing that a player can "just do whatever, get points for it, and see if they win." But anyone who's trying to win cannot simply "do whatever." The whole point is to find synergistic actions that maximize your points. The fact that everything is worth points simply acts as a way to evaluate actions and gauge how well you're doing. I for one enjoy games like that.

I've enjoyed Bora Bora so far, but I don't get to play it too often because my normal play groups don't have access to a copy.

Terra Mystica
Terra Mystica has been very popular lately as well, though I've only played it once - and I'm not sure if I liked it as much as I thought I would. Compared to Bora Bora, in Terra Mystica you have a bunch of options and none of them are worth points directly, so it's actually harder to tell how much progress you're making!

That's exaggerated a little, but it's kinda how I felt after my first game. I wouldn't mind playing again, but I haven't sought it out, maybe because it seemed to take a really long time.

The Manhattan Project (with Second Stage expansion)
I pledged for the Second Stage expansion to The Manhattan Project a while ago on Kickstarter, and the other day it arrived. Since then I've only gotten it to the table once, and we used all the different parts (each one is optional). ere's what we thought of them:

Role Selection: There are 7 "personalities" to choose from, and every time you vacate (use your turn to get your guys back) you must choose one. While you have a personality in front of you, you gain the benefit of that personality. These benefits are "immune to espionage," "Each turn collect a Fighter and a Bomber and take a free Air Strike action," "Once each turn you may use a Laborer as a Scientist, or a Scientist as 2 Scientists," and stuff like that. This aspect was pretty awesome, we all liked it a lot.

Hydrogen Bombs:  There's a new type of bomb, called a Hydrogen bomb. You can get one instead of a normal bomb, and to play it you'll need 8 or 9 workers and a handful of Lithium Deuteride - a new resource that comes from LD Mines (new buildings in the deck). The effect of the H-bomb is to double the score of one of your already made Plutonium bombs (not Uranium).

In our game, LD Mines didn't come up until very late, so nobody even thought about using an H-bomb. I guess I can see why the H-bombs aren't just shuffled into the bomb deck, but is that really necessary? I'm not sure. I don't mind playing with the H-bombs, but I wonder if anyone will ever really build one. I suppose it's efficient enouhg, as long as an LD Mine shows up.

Rockets and Rocket Factories: Also instead of a bomb, a player can choose to take a Rocket Factory. This is a building that creates a new kind of "plane" - a rocket. Like Bombers, Rockets can be used to load bombs and to damage buildings. In fact, rockets can damage buildings even if the target player has Fighters! I guess that kinda makes them strictly better than bombers...

One player in our game decided to go straight for those and he did so with a vengeance! He got 3 Rocket factories (no bombs!) and just damaged the crap out of all of us. He started with me, for no really good reason - that probably cost me the game. Then he moved on to Russel, even though Mandy was winning. Finally, Russel convinced him to aim his rockets at Mandy, which slowed her down enough that Russel eventually won (the turn before Mandy and I each could have). It made for a fairly interesting, if unrealistic game. The attacker wasn't really even trying to win. None of us were particularly fond of the added Air Strike abilities in the expansion.

Nations Expansion 2: There are new Nations to play. For some reason they have different backs than the first Nations expansion (what?). Most of the Nations powers don't seem all that great, some are OK, and a couple seem really, really good. This is how we feel about the first Nations expansion as well.

Firenze
We've slowed down on this one now, but a little while ago we were playing Firenze pretty heavily. By the same designer as Hansa Teutonic (which I like, even if I haven't played it in a long time), Firenze is a pretty solid game about building towers. While it would fit in my self-defined category of "Mediocre Euro," it would be among the top of that genre. I feel like I used to be pretty good at that game, but my performance lately has been miserable.

Captains of Industry
I have been playing Captains of Industry pretty heavily lately - pretty much every chance I get. I've been finalizing a few aspects of the game for publication, as artwork is being done and the game will be hitting Kickstarter within the next few months.

I believe I've finally got a Progress configuration which I like. Adding a 10th card (6 City, 4 Recycle) seems to have made the probability of 4-round age acceptably low. I'm still finalizing the Advances, but I think they're almost done as well now.

TMG submissions
I have tried a few TMG submissions lately. Of those, we will be publishing at least one! There will be more info on that when the time comes.