BGG News

SPIEL '17 Preview: Lining Up for Michael Kiesling's Azul

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/685…ng-michael-kieslings-azul

by W. Eric Martin As is often the case at Gen Con, I played almost no games during that convention, and of those games that I did play, one of the three was under embargo since it's a SPIEL release about which not much information had been released. Thus, on the Wednesday prior to the start of Gen Con 50, I tweeted this image:

Now the truth can be told...

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3718275_t.jpg]The game is Azul

, a Michael Kiesling

design from Plan B Games

that fits firmly in the publisher's Spiel des Jahres-friendly line of games with beautiful bits that work for both families and more experienced gamers, a niche that started with Century: Spice Road

and continued with, um, Century: Golem Edition

. Okay, I'm not sure that one game — even mirrored the way Century

has been — can establish a line, but based on two plays I feel comfortable stating that Azul

is in the same wheelhouse as Century

. Let's see whether you agree once we get past the basic info that Plan B Games has already released:

Introduced by the Moors, azulejos (originally white and blue ceramic tiles) were fully embraced by the Portuguese when their king Manuel I, on a visit to the Alhambra palace in Southern Spain, was mesmerized by the stunning beauty of the Moorish decorative tiles. The king, awestruck by the interior beauty of the Alhambra, immediately ordered that his own palace in Portugal be decorated with similar wall tiles. As a tile-laying artist, you have been challenged to embellish the walls of the Royal Palace of Evora.

In the game Azul, players take turns drafting colored tiles from suppliers to their player board. Later in the round, players score points based on how they've placed their tiles to decorate the palace. Extra points are scored for specific patterns and completing sets; wasted supplies harm the player's score. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Azul

is for 2-4 players, and at the start of each round, you fill up five, seven, or nine discs (depending on the number of players) with tiles drawn at random from a bag, then place a first player marker in the center of the table.

On a turn, you choose either a disc or the center of the table, then collect all the tiles of one color from this space. If you choose a disc, you push all the remaining tiles into the center of the table; if you're the first player to choose the center, you also take the first player marker. You then choose one of the five rows on your board — with those rows having 1-5 spaces in them — and fill as many spaces as possible with those tiles. Once you have a particular color in a row, you can place only more of that color in the row (until it is filled and emptied). If not all the tiles fit or you took the first player marker, place the excess tiles or the marker in a discard row on the bottom of your player board.

Players take turns until all the tiles have been claimed. Each player looks at the rows on their board, and from top to bottom they move one tile from each completed

row into the grid on the right, placing all other tiles that helped you complete this row in the game box. In the basic game, the grid boxes have images on them, and you must place the tile in the matching space; in the advanced game, the grid boxes are blank, so you can place the tile in any empty space in the grid row next to the tiles — except that you cannot repeat a tile color in a row or column in the grid.

Each time you place a tile in the grid, you score points for all the other tiles in the row and column of the grid that are connected to the tile just placed. Thus, in the image above, I'll place a blue tile in the second row, then score 3 points for the connected tiles in that row and 3 points for the connected tiles in that column. When I place the black tile in row #4, I'll score 4 points for the column, followed by another 5 points for the column when I place the red tile. After you score all of your just-placed tiles, you lose points for the first place marker and any discarded tiles. All incomplete

rows stay as they are on your board!

You then draw more tiles from the bag to set up for the next round, adding discarded tiles to the bag when needed. The rounds continue until any one player has placed the fifth tile in a row in their grid; since you can place at most one tile in a grid row each round, the game must last at least five rounds. After scoring for this final round, players score bonus points for each completed row and column in their grid as well as for each set of five matching tiles. Whoever has the most points gets to watch all of the other players eat a tile as punishment. (Legacy game!)

I played the game twice with final tiles and non-final game boards and other pieces, both times with the same three opponents. The rules weren't clear when we started the first game, and we futzed around a bit, asking questions and clarifying how the flow of the game works. We finished and were like, okay, sure that was a game.

After we finished playing something else, I insisted upon playing Azul

again because I like playing things multiple times. Playing a game once from a position of ignorance is fine for learning how a game works

, but it's not great for learning how a game plays

. In this second game, now with the advanced board, I was already playing smarter, paying attention to what others were collecting in which rows to have some idea of which tiles I could possibly float around the table, Magic

-draft-style, to pick up on the next turn. I could better anticipate what others might do and plan accordingly.

The problem is that everyone else was playing better as well. All of us scored higher in this game compared to the first one. Taking the first player marker wasn't seen as a drawback, due to the automatic -1 point, but instead as a valid option to take what you needed before too many tiles piled up that would cost you points. You could see opportunities for sticking people with tiles because when someone starts a round with multiple half-filled rows, they have room to take far fewer tiles, so you're happy to force them to swallow a half-dozen tiles at once, especially when doing so keeps those tiles away from someone else.

Like Century

, Azul

strikes that family/gamer balance in which you can play casually or thoughtfully, and the game will work equally well in either case. Just expect to get soaked until you can start smartly lining up your plays in advance...

New Game Round-up: Llamas in Altiplano, Castles in Minute Realms, and Artificial Intelligence in the Future

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/685…iplano-castles-minute-rea

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3720608_t.jpg]• Orléans

designer Reiner Stockhausen

of dlp games

has announced his new release for SPIEL '17, and you can be sure that this llama on Altiplano

will be popping up in people's hands throughout the fair. Complete rules are posted on the dlp games website in German and English

, but to get you started, here's an overview of the game:

Altiplano, a bag-building game along the lines of Orléans set in the South American highlands of the Andes — the Altiplano — is not a simple game, presenting players with new challenges time and again. There are various ways to reach the goal, so the game remains appealing to try out new options and strategies, but success or failure also depends on whether your opponents let you do as you like or thwart the strategy you are pursuing. The competition for the individual types of goods is considerable — as is the fun in snatching a coveted extension card from under another player's nose!

Aside from building up an effective production, you must deliver the right goods at the right time, develop the road in good time, and store your goods cleverly enough to fill the most valuable rows with them. Often, a good warehouseperson is more relevant in the end than the best producer.

At the start of the game, players have access only to certain resources and goods. This is due to the different role tiles that each player receives and that provide everybody with different starting materials. At the market, however, a player can acquire additional production sites that give new options. The numerous goods — such as fish, alpaca, cacao, silver, or corn — all have their own characteristics and places where they can be used. Whereas silver makes you rich, fish can be exchanged for other goods, and the alpaca gives you wool that you can then make into cloth.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3721454_t.png]• Minute Realms

from Stefano Castelli

and dV Giochi

is billed as "the most compact city-building game ever", and while Castelli has informed me that the first word in the title is pronouned "mi-nit", I love that pronouncing in "mi-noot" also works for this description of the game. In any case, here's an overview of this SPIEL '17 release:

In a handful of rounds, you have to build up your realm and make it grow by spending your riches. Will you yield splendor to your lands with refined buildings, or will you defend them with imposing bastions to repel the upcoming fall of the invaders?

A king's life is not easy. Every decision is crucial to the fate of the realm — and every single move makes the difference between victory and defeat!

• Speaking of confused readings, Apotheca

designer Andrew Federspiel

has announced a new title from his own Knapsack Games

line, with Masters of Mutanite

due out in 2018 and with this game not being about people trying to master minutiae not matter how much I want to read it that way. ( Tristam Shandy: The Board Game

?) Here's a summary of what to expect:

Save or terrorize the city as a hero or villain! Mutate your character to gain new abilities. Gain fame and new traits by thrashing your opponents or rescuing/knocking out civilians! Light the city on fire, freeze and poison your enemies, and throw cars and trees to your heart's content!

Build your character in Masters of Mutanite by creating unique synergies of powers each game — go from zero to superhero!

• Another recently announced 2018 release is Artificial Intelligence

from the familiar team of Nuno Bizarro Sentieiro

, Paulo Soledade

, and Italian publisher What's Your Game?

. Here's the brief right now:

The year is 2090, and the world has witnessed the biggest — the last? — event in human history. Knowledge is the fuel that powers the engine of the new revolution.

Technological Singularity changed everything. Human labor became obsolete; automation and machine learning are the new reality. Machines, run by a flawless artificial intelligence, control production and research, self replicating the answers to problems civilization did not know existed. While prophets whisper the end of time throughout the streets, corporations thrive, pushing boundaries and ignoring old rules. The rush to control the new A.I. era has begun and there’s no time for ethics. Is there time shut down the A.I. Box. Was there ever one?

Artificial Intelligence is an action selection game in which each player plays the role of a big investor pulling the strings from various corporations in order to make money and increase the power of both investor and corp.

SPIEL '17 Preview: Amun-Re: The Card Game, or A New Kingdom for an Old Game

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/686…-card-game-or-new-kingdom

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic547986_t.jpg]

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2748305_t.jpg]

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3674774_t.jpg] Reiner Knizia

's Amun-Re

holds a special place in my gaming heart as (I believe) it was the first game I played at Guy Stuff Gamers in Attleboro, Massachusetts in 2003. I had played a random assortment of modern games for years — Lost Cities

being the biggest hit amongst those — but I wasn't following new game releases; I just ran across games in random locations and bought whatever looked interesting. But then someone saw me playing Lost Cities

with a friend during a break between rounds at a Magic: The Gathering

prerelease, put me in contact with GSG's Mark Edwards, and *boom* I was suddenly part of a great group of gamers, with the then brand new Amun-Re

introducing me to a much wider range of games — well, that and Mark's jam-packed game library.

For many people, Amun-Re

was the last great Knizia title. The following year he released Ingenious

, a runaway hit that was likely denied the Spiel des Jahres only due to Ticket to Ride

also hitting the market in 2004, and that game seemed to signal a turning point in Knizia's design career, with him moving away from "games for gamers" and towards designs aimed at a mainstream audience.

The mid-2000s also saw Knizia start to focus more on branding, with him releasing numerous titles that were spun off of existing designs. The Euphrates & Tigris

card game was released in 2005, followed by Medici vs Strozzi

and Blue Moon City

in 2006 and multiple Einfach Genial

(a.k.a. Ingenious

) titles in 2007 and 2008. The biggest remakes of them all — Lost Cities: The Board Game

and Keltis

— appeared in 2008; that latter title won the 2008 Spiel des Jahres, which spurred multiple Keltis

spin-offs, including Keltis: Das Kartenspiel

, which led to people accusing Knizia of eating his own tail. A card game based on a board game that was derived from a card game? What nonsense!

The secret, of course, is that game design is not a Platonic activity. The kernel of an idea is merely that — the kernel, the essence of something that can be cultivated in many different ways — and while that kernel might itself qualify as something pure and unchanging, you can't bring that to the table and get someone to play it. Instead you take that central idea — being forced to play something, but only following a certain direction — and interpret it in many ways.

Amun-Re: The Card Game

, which is scheduled to debut at SPIEL '17 in French and English from Super Meeple

, is the latest example of Knizia reframing an earlier release. What's the essence of Amun-Re

, the core that drives action in the game? The auction at the start of each round. Yes, you want to build pyramids and have fertile fields and fulfill the goals of powers cards, but all of those desires are funneled through the auctions. The provinces up for auction provide guidance on what people might want to do in the round — lots of caravans? everything on one side of the river? only one province with a decent number of power cards? — then the auction plays out and you carry on from there.

In more detail, Amun-Re

features a multiunit auction. A number of provinces equal to the number of players is revealed, then players take turns bidding on these provinces; the bidding track for each province uses triangular numbers (0,1,3,6,10,15,21,...), and if you're outbid on a province, on your next turn you must make a legal bid on a different province. Eventually everyone will be a separate province card, at which point people pay for their bids, then start doing other things. After three rounds, you score points, then time passes, removing all the farmers from the fields and leaving only the pyramids behind. You then have three more rounds of auctions, with every province now being valued differently thanks to the pyramids and bricks that already lie in those spaces.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3722900_t.jpg]

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3722901_t.jpg]

Amun-Re: The Card Game

keeps that type of auction at its core, with those results driving everything else. The game lasts three rounds, with three auctions in each round, followed by other actions, then a scoring. Each player starts the game with money cards valued 0-8, and at the start of the game, everyone chooses money cards that sum to 14 (with the 0 being included) and lays those cards face up on the table. Province cards equal to the number of players are revealed, and players take turns bidding on provinces by placing exactly one money card next to one province, outbidding an opponent if someone else has already bid there; if you're outbid, you take back your money card, then bid again on your next turn. Eventually everyone will have bid on separate provinces, after which you discard the non-0 bids, then lay out new province cards and run through two more rounds of bidding.

Province cards show different numbers of pyramids, ankhs, and fields, with a caravan possibly being visible as well. Whoever has the most ankhs visible is Pharaoh, going first in each action with ties broken from the Pharaoh going clockwise.

After three rounds of auctions, players will have some amount of money (possibly only the 0) still in hand. Everyone simultaneously makes an offering of gold, and the sum of the offerings determines how much the Nile floods, which determines how much money players will earn from fields. If the sum is 10 or less, players with caravans receive 10 gold per caravan. Whoever offers the most gold receives three pyramids to place on their province cards, with others receiving two and one pyramids.

In player order, players determine their income level, then spend gold to build pyramids on their cards (distributing them as equally as possible), then they take money cards into their hand to account for any income not spent. They then score points for sets of pyramids, for having nine or more fields, and for having the most ankhs.

The second and third rounds of the game play out similarly, except that when you claim cards following the auction, you place these province cards on top of your previous province cards so that only the imprinted and acquired pyramids are visible. Everything else is buried in the sands. You score again at the end of each of these rounds, then the player with the most points wins.

Anyone who has played Amun-Re

will recognize much of what's described above. The auctions lead off a round, and the result of those auctions — who gets which provinces? in a game with fewer than five players (and Amun-Re: The Card Game

accommodates 2-5 players), which provinces are in play? how much money do people have in hand afterwards? — drives everything else. How this game plays out and differs from the original will become clear only once the game is released in October 2017...

SPIEL '17 Preview: Manhattan Rises Again, Far More Colorfully Than Before

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/686…n-rises-again-far-more-co

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic180499_t.jpg]

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3573055_t.png]The hobby game industry has grown a lot since I got into it heavily in 2003, and each year new people come into the hobby only to discover that hundreds of fantastic games were released in years past and they're now no longer generally available.

And yet for the most part those games keep coming back. Ravensburger announced reprints of Notre Dame

and In the Year of the Dragon

in late 2016, for example, and people cheered since they would now be able to easily discover these "old" games for themselves (without paying more than MSRP for used copies). A fourth edition of Twilight Imperium

debuted at Gen Con 50, and new versions of Endeavor

and Fireball Island

were announced at that show. Almost everything returns to print, and when these games return, they're new for a large percentage of the audience that has heard about them but not easily had access to them.

Andreas Seyfarth

's Manhattan

is one of those new-old titles for me. Manhattan

won Spiel des Jahres, Germany's game of year award, in 1994, the year before Settlers of Catan

set the gaming world on fire, and despite me knowing about the game I had never played it. Korean publisher Mandoo Games

will release a new version of Manhattan

in late 2017 with art by Jacqui Davis

; the setting now seems to be a tropical island of some sort given the sand dunes and lush forests on the game board, but the gameplay remains the same as the original edition as far as I can tell.

I've now played three times on a press copy sent to me by Mandoo Games, once each with two, three and four players. Gameplay is simplicity itself. Each player has 24 buildings, with the buildings being 1-4 stories tall. At the start of a round, players choose four or six of these buildings (depending on the player count) and place them on their personal board.

On a turn, you play one of the four cards in your hand, then place a building from your personal board onto one of the six blocks in the position indicated on the card, then you draw a new card. Each block is a 3x3 grid, and all of the blocks are identical at the start of play. As the game develops, you start feeling possessive over this block or that, with you fighting against one person here and another person there; one block turns into skyscraper central, while another is more like the suburbs, with every space occupied with squat little buildings. For convenience's sake, though, let's refer to every constructed space as holding a skyscraper.

The only restriction on placement is that after placing a building, you must have at least as many stories as each other person who has built in that skyscraper. This is important since the player whose building is on top owns the skyscraper (just as in real life, right?), so this rule prevents you from sniping someone who's invested a lot in a skyscraper by capping it with a one-story building.

Once everyone has placed all their buildings for the round, the player who owns the single tallest skyscraper scores 3 points. In each block, whoever owns more skyscrapers than each other player in that block scores 2 points. Finally, each player scores 1 point for each skyscraper they own. You then take four or six more buildings from your reserve, rotate the start player marker clockwise, then continue. (In a two-player game, you control two colors of buildings, build either color on your turn, and sum points for both colors at game's end.)

After four or six rounds of play, whoever has scored the most points wins.

In most ways, Manhattan

is a basic area majority game, something ideal for introducing those new to hobby games to what exists in the larger world of games. You can learn the game in a couple of minutes, then dive in and start fighting for space. You quickly start elbowing others out of your way since covering someone else can both cost them a point and earn a point for you — assuming everything stays that way at the end of the round, of course, which is rarely the case. You can't dominate every block, so you choose your battles, feign innocence when you start to compete in blocks held by others, and keep turn order in mind since the players going later in each round have final say over who will score for what.

The scoring system pulls you in multiple directions, challenging you to make the most of each placement. Can you both take a majority and deny someone else a point? Can you compete for the tallest building and make that space work toward a majority? The deck contains five copies of each card, and each player plays cards relative to their own position, so playing a card that would place a building in the upper-right corner from my perspective would allow my left-hand opponent to place in the lower-right corner from my perspective. I suppose you could attempt to track card plays by everyone to have a better sense of who could play in which spaces, but I find that a gut feel gets you 90% of the way towards what you could reason out, so I go with my gut and leave it at that. Yes, I made up that statistic, but I've found it holds up well for me over hundreds of different games played.

You want to encourage others to snipe amongst themselves and leave you alone, but that's not going to happen. Pick your battles, and ideally you'll have cards in hand that allow you to retaliate in blocks where others mess up your plans. Luck of the card draw will obviously have an impact on what you can do, but not allowing you to do everything you might want to is what pushes this game to be appropriate for newcomers as well as more experienced gamers. You can't do anything; you must decide from among these choices, then see what you can do next.

One possible difficulty with this new edition of Manhattan

is that the yellow and orange pieces are distinct when they're on the table or stacked on other colors, yet somewhat hard to distinguish when they're stacked one on another. Aside from that, the only complications with building in Manhattan

come from those others who want to trump your buildings with their own. Don't let that happen!

SPIEL '17 Preview Update — 500 Listings and Counting

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/687…500-listings-and-counting

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1068166_t.png]BoardGameGeek's SPIEL '17 Preview

now contains more than five hundred listings, and I'm almost caught up on all the SPIEL '17-related email in my inbox. Only a few dozen more messages to go! (Sorry!) That said, many more messages are likely to arrive during the upcoming week, and the messages will undoubtedly continue to pour in for the next seven weeks until I head to Germany to see what this "SPIEL" nonsense is all about.

Invitations to schedule demo time in the BGG booth during SPIEL '17 will go out in mid-September, and I'm sending them only to publishers that have games listed in the preview. After all, if I don't know that a game is coming out at SPIEL '17, then why would I schedule time with that game's publisher? Thus, if you plan to demo or sell games at SPIEL '17, please send me info about the games, the prices, and your booth location to the email address in the BGG News header. I'll get to that message as quickly as I can.

One note about the new convention preview format: In years past, I typically listed promo items that were being released at the same show as the base game in the "Other Information" box on a game listing; I didn't want to add more listings because users couldn't hide them easily. Now since users can more easily hide listings than in the previous GeekList-related format (thanks to the new prioritization options) and since it's more difficult to include images in the current listings (due to our desire for speedy downloads), I'm listing all of the promo items individually. Mark what you don't want as "Not Interested" and they'll disappear from your search results along with the base game.

As for other requests related to the new convention format, I have nothing else to report at this time. I'm focusing on what I can do and will coordinate with Scott and others when possible on any potential changes.

In other news, I'm quietly pushing out the game overview videos that we recorded at Gen Con 50. In previous years, I'd tweet video links at all of the publishers and post all or some of the videos in BGG News to draw attention to our coverage of the most anticipated games, but this year I'm mostly publishing on YouTube and moving on so that I can make sure we're all prepared for SPIEL '17. Should you care to check out overviews of Fallout, Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition, Photosynthesis, and other new and upcoming games, head to our Gen Con 50 playlist on YouTube

, which currently contains 98 videos. I'm not even through day two of the convention, mind you, so we'll easily top two hundred videos when I finally put a bow on it.

Now back to work...

Gen Con 50 Museum: An Homage to the Rise of U.S. Gaming

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/687…eum-homage-rise-us-gaming

by Beth Heile

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3666789_t.png]In between filming game demonstration videos at the BGG booth during Gen Con, SPIEL, and other conventions, we occasionally get to roam free in the hall and film more unusual fare: notable displays, costumes, events, or exhibits. It was my pleasure to make the considerable walk over to Lucas Oil Stadium and view the Gen Con 50 Museum, which created in honor of Gen Con's 50th anniversary by Paul Stormberg and Jon Peterson.

While roaming, I was lucky enough to snag a couple of minutes with Mike Carr

, the only known attendee of every, single Gen Con for all fifty years. He attended the first Gen Con at age 16 and has a long history within the gaming industry since then, notably as vice-president of game design at TSR

and designer of Dawn Patrol

.

Mike was kind enough to donate a few minutes to speak on camera, but I wanted to highlight a number of interesting facts that I gleaned from him, from the museum, and from other attendees:

• Gen Con is named for Lake Geneva, Wisconsin where the first event was held, and the event was originally called Lake Geneva Wargames Convention. The name is also a derivation of the Geneva Conventions

, since the international agreement is a common theme in early war games.

• Gen Con was first held at the Horticulture Hall in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. The Gen Con 50 museum mapped out a space on the field of Lucas Oil equal to the dimensions of the original building.

• While Gen Con has been hosted in a variety of locations, the three locations it is most known for are Horticulture Hall in Lake Geneva (1968-mid 1970s), Milwaukee's Convention Center (1985-2002), and its current home in Indianapolis (2003-present).

• A new major gaming influence has arisen roughly every ten years at Gen Con, with a matching rise in attendance: war games (mid 1960s - mid 1970s); D&D (mid 1970s - mid 1980s); indie RPGs (mid 1980s-mid 1990s); CCGs, as started by Magic: the Gathering

(mid 1990s - mid 2000s); and Eurogames (mid 2000s-present).

• Although Gen Con LLC has not publicly posted the attendance numbers for 2017, casual estimates put the amount greater than the last high-water mark of ~61,000 in 2015. The past seven years have seen the same amount of attendance growth as seen in the previous 43 years combined. (Editor's note: In an August 21, 2017 press release, Gen Con reported "an approximate attendance of 60,000 unique attendees", while highlighting "its ninth consecutive year of record turnstile attendance, reaching 207,979, an approximate 4% increase over 2016". —WEM)

All in all, the museum was hosted with great love and genuine respect for all things gaming, and the influence this annual event has on the U.S. gaming market. I walked through twice on Sunday, and both times I was stopped by museum staff asking whether I had questions or wanted to know more about an item or display.

I'm personally fascinated by my family's history and genealogy, and I got the same feelings cruising through this museum. I started attending Gen Con in 2005, which was already well-settled into its space at Indy, and found my modern-day memories deepened by learning of Gen Con's history. (I originally wrote "Gen Con's origins", but that gets us confused with Origins, and that's another story!) I don't know whether the museum will return in future years, but I highly recommend the experience if it does. My new dream is for someone to get the same idea at SPIEL in Essen, Germany so that we can get a sense of the history of gaming events on both sides of the pond.

SPIEL '17 Preview: The Castles of Burgundy: The Dice Game, or Yes, I Understand That The Original Game Has Dice, But This Is Different, Okay?

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/688…burgundy-dice-game-or-yes

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3733374_t.jpg]I need to start this preview of The Castles of Burgundy: The Dice Game

with a confession. Despite my love for almost all games created by Stefan Feld

, I've yet to play The Castles of Burgundy

.

I know, right? How could that have happened? I love Roma

, Macao

, Notre Dame

, and In the Year of the Dragon

, and I even like Rum & Pirates

far more than most people. As I recall, in early 2011 when CoB

was released, my son was two and I was busy with dad things for months on end and I was still finding my way with BGG (for which I had just started working a few months earlier) and we were preparing to move, so I was boxing our life in my spare moments instead of playing. Then we moved, and I had new games to preview, so that was that. Boo hoo, poor me. New games to play instead of six-month-old games...

I did play Feld's Trajan

, which was released in late 2011, then the magical quartet of Bora Bora

, Bruges

, Rialto

, and Amerigo

in 2013, then La Isla

and Aquasphere

in 2014, etc., but I somehow never made it back in time to Burgundy

.

In any case, here we are in 2017 with The Castles of Burgundy: The Dice Game

already available in Germany and with the game scheduled to debut in the U.S. at BGG.CON in November 2017 ahead of a January 1, 2018 retail release. This game, co-designed by Christoph Toussaint

and published as usual under Ravensburger's alea

brand, is labeled as a 1-5 player game, but I think that upper limit is listed solely due to the box containing only five pencils. In practice, any number of people could play this game simultaneously.

To start, each player receives a two-dimensional duchy, with the pad of scoring sheets containing four different duchy designs colorfully labeled A, B, C and D. Every player needs the same duchy design so that you can imagine yourselves competing on alternate Earths to become the duckiest Duke or Duchess of all. Naturally, you value your worth in points, and for the most part you acquire these points by filling in empty spots in your ledger, just as the dukes of old, who charted their wealth on paper while the farmers and peasants did all the physical labor behind the scenes.

To start, each player Xs a city (for which 1 point is already recorded in the first round area), then circles the benefit of that city. Here's how you might start in Croissant, as I've named my duchy:

Each turn, one player rolls all five dice, then players use those dice to mark off something adjacent to anything already tagged as your turf. First, though, you mark one or two spaces in the round tracker depending on whether the hourglass die shows one or two hourglasses. Here's the first roll:

So what now? Pair one color die with one number die, then write the number in the appropriate space. To fill a blue space, you need a 5 or 6, so that's out — unless you want to spend the circled orange power that allows you to change (solely for yourself) the pip value of a die. Seems early to spend your one special ability, so why not fill the adjacent orange space with a 1 or 4?

Moving along to turn 4, and the dice show nothing you can use. Hmm.

If you don't mark something off, then you circle an orange bonus for use on a later turn, but you don't want to do that if you can help it. ( TCOB:TDG

life lesson #1: When someone is sad, give them an orange. It might not improve their disposition, but it will protect them from scurvy.)

Thankfully you didn't waste that orange bonus earlier, so now you can change a die to 5 or 6 to mark either adjacent blue space or you can change a die to 5 to mark the city. Note that you can mark a city only when the die value matches the number in any adjacent space. (They're really big on adjacency in Burgundy. No one dared mess with the Bureau d'Adjonction in the 1400s as they ruled with a perfectly formed iron fist.)

Let's go with the city plan. This gives us 1 point for completing the city and a blue commodity that we might be able to sell at some future date. You might notice underneath the round tracker is a points legend for completed regions. The earlier you fill in the all the spaces of a region, the more points you receive for that region — except for single-space regions, of course, because how much of a challenge is it to fill in a single space anyway?

Moving on to turn 6:

Turn 6 lets you complete the gray region, presumably a mine or digging pit since the image vaguely looks like a cave, but let's go with "gray region" for simplicity's sake. Completing that region nets you 4 points and lets you circle the gray bonus. On a future turn, you can X that gray nugget to use two different dice combinations on the same turn.

Every completed region gives you a bonus this way. Orangeville (each space of which must be filled with a different value) gives you an orange bonus, which as previously noted lets you change the pip value of a die. The purple bonus lets you change a die's color. Each yellow bonus scores you the value of that region twice, points being their own reward. The blue bonus is the previously mentioned commodity that still sits unused.

Turn 7 introduces something new:

The double hourglass has you mark off two spaces in the round tracker. Ah, life is passing so quickly! Little Etionette is now large enough to join you at the window as you yell at the peasants to work harder. Her high-pitched squeak gives the commands a grating quality that you couldn't previously achieve on your own. Magnifique!

With all this time at hand, every player can sell all commodities they've circled, scoring two points for each while also gaining a gray nugget in the process. Blessed nugget, it's time to put one to use to mark off two spaces at once! After crossing out the nugget, you can use the blue with one 5, then the blue again with the other

5 to mark both

spaces in the blue region, thereby gaining you another commodity in addition to 4 points for that region. Progress feels good, especially when others are sweating on your behalf. After all that work, here's how your duchy now stands:

Alas, you pushed everyone too hard, and turn 8 in the first round brought this result. Each space in a yellowtown needs to be filled with the same value, and thankfully for all of our mathematical efforts throughout history (but sadly for you now), 3s are neither a 1 nor a 5, so the final turn in this round hands you an orange in compensation along with a sum of 12 points.

Rounds 2 and 3 progress the same way. You don't have much in the way of special powers at hand — only one orange and one nugget — and you haven't even seen a purple die all game, so if one does show, you had best complete the one violet space to the east of the river (or nugget that dice roll, if possible, for either two-space purple region). Time and again, both in competitive games and when playing solo, I've found myself short of a plum bonus and unable to change the color of a die, which then leads to me getting another orange, which does you no good if you don't need the colors at hand. ( TCOB:TDG

life lesson #2: Colors are more important than numbers.)

Did I mention playing solo? I did, and the only rule change is that each round lasts precisely eight turns (instead of varying between five and ten depending on how many double hourglasses show up). What differs when playing competitively versus playing solo? Other than the varying number of turns, not much except that everyone so often someone will shout at the end of a turn, "I've completed all of the blue", and you'll curse them for doing this before you because they'll score the higher number of bonus points for this color (4), leaving you only 2 points to scrounge up — assuming someone else doesn't beat you to second place.

As you might gather, The Castles of Burgundy: The Dice Game

is very much a solitaire game. I'm marking things on my sheet, and you're marking things on yours, and sometimes I score a bonus first and sometimes you do and sometimes we both complete the same colored region on the same turn and we both score the higher number of bonus points. Huzzah! I've played six times on a press copy from Ravensburger — three solo and three three-player games — and the experience hasn't differed much. You might look at another player's sheet and see they've filled one orange space more than you and have as many nuggets as you, so you realize that you're unlikely to beat them to the bonus, so you fill in a purple space instead of an orange one this turn. At least you can call purple your own...

The play sheets differ in their arrangements of the land masses, but they feel the same during a game, the values and colors on the dice being more important than the colored patterns on your sheet. I initially thought commodities were the way to go when choosing a starting city, but in my most recent game the double hourglasses were constant, with the entire game lasting only 18 turns (with the full range being 15-30 turns) and therefore kiboshing my "long-term" strategy of parlaying commodities into nuggets into double turns.

No matter — I have dozens of duchies still to be developed, and should I find a willing opponent, we can compete on opposite sides of the sheet at the same time, perhaps introducing a new form of head-to-head competition in the process, with me pushing my pencil through the paper to jab their hand as they attempt to write something down. En garde!

A Brief Pause in the Action

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/68933/brief-pause-action

by W. Eric Martin I've been working on the SPIEL '17 Preview

and little else the past few days, partly because I want to knock out as many titles as possible before sending out invitations to publishers to schedule demo time in the BGG booth during SPIEL '17 — something that will likely start later this week — and partly because we have guests in the house who are staying longer than expected since they were supposed to fly to Miami after visiting us. That flight was cancelled several days ago, so we're hosting them for several more days. I expect to return to regular posting soon, but in the meantime it's good to have a few more game players around the house...

New Game Round-up: Doctor Who and Dirk Gently Say Hello, Android: Netrunner Gets a Reboot, and 7 Wonders Celebrates Seven Years

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/689…-and-dirk-gently-say-hell

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3737938_t.jpg]Having worn my SPIEL '17 blinders for several weeks now, I'm not sure what's new to people and what isn't any more, so let me run through a handful of game announcements and you can make use of what's useful:

• Doctor Who Fluxx

will be the next standalone version of Andy Looney

's Fluxx, with this item appearing in retail outlets on November 23, 2017, the 54th anniversary of the first episode being aired. Publisher Looney Labs

hasn't officially announced the game yet, but the D&D Online

website DDO Players somehow picked up the news early

and a Looney Labs representative has confirmed the details for me.

• In other BBC-related game news, six days after Doctor Who Fluxx

appears — time not being relative for most of us — IDW Games will release Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: Everything Is Connected

, based on the BBC series

of the same name. Here's an overview of this 3-8 player design from Matt Fantastic

and Arvind Ethan David:

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency: Everything is Connected is the first in a series of "Everything is Connected" storytelling games in which the mysteries are only as looney as the players.

In this game, a detective and a holistic detective put together the clues, accuse a person of interest, and tell their assistants the story of the crime. The assistants then process the two versions of the case and simultaneously select which version of the truth is more believable. To solve the case, you have to think on your feet and remember that "everything is connected".

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3738560_t.jpg]• Fantasy Flight Games

has announced

the impending release of a "revised core set" for Android: Netrunner

, with this item containing cards from the original Core Set released in 2012 as well as cards from the Genesis Cycle and Spin Cycle series of Data Packs. For details on which card have been removed from the original Core Set

and why, head to this BGG thread

.

• With Conspiracy Theory

, which hits Kickstarter on Sept. 13, 2017, Steve Jackson Games

takes a crack at the black card/white card party game format originated by Cards Against Humanity

and continued by everyone and their grandmother. At least SJG is staying true to its roots as in this Steve Jackson

design, the judge presents a conspiracy-related question, then everyone else answers it in the way they think will best please the judge. (Hint: Every white card reads "It's the Illuminati".)

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3738553_t.jpg]

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3738470_t.png]

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3738474_t.png]• Portal Games

has announced a new army pack by Michał Oracz

for Neuroshima Hex!

, with both the HQ and some units in the Iron Gang

having a new "chain" ability that allows two chained tiles to target and hit any opponent that lies on the straight line that connects these two.

• To celebrate 7 Wonders

' seventh anniversary, Antoine Bauza

and Repos Production

are releasing two small expansion packs to add more variety to the game: Leaders Anniversary Pack

and Cities Anniversary Pack

, with each containing fifteen new cards for use with the base game and the expansion included in its name.

Distributor Asmodee North America has listed a November 2017 release date for these two packs, which each carry a $9 MSRP.

SPIEL '17 Preview: Okanagan: Valley of the Lakes, or Bidding to Be the Best in Canada

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/690…n-valley-lakes-or-bidding

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3606137_t.png]I started playing modern strategy games in the early 2000s, and one saying that sticks with me from that era is that every game is an auction game. At first glance that saying seems ridiculous, but with a little translation of game terms, you realize that tons of games meet this definition:

• In Carcassonne

, you use small wooden figures to bid on landscape features. In most cases, the winning bid is 1, but sometimes you outbid another player or rejoice in your shared auction victory, with the value of the lot being determined as the game progresses. Repeat this argument for every area control game, making modifications where needed.

• In Formula D

, you compete against others to be first to reach a predetermined bidding amount, but the amount you bid each turn is decided somewhat randomly — and if you bid carelessly, you can damage your credit rating, which limits your bidding ability on future turns. Repeat the argument for all racing games.

• In Wizard

, you each bid one card each turn, with the player who makes the highest bid winning the pot. Repeat for all trick-taking games.

• In Modern Art

, you use money to bid on works of art. (Okay, this one doesn't need much translation.)

The idea of translating all games this way is somewhat silly, but if you're a fan of topology, such transformations can prove entertaining. You're peeling away the layers of the game to reveal its core, to recognize similarities and differences with other games, to see how a designer twists a familiar formula or discovers a new approach to what seems like old news.

At heart, Emanuele Ornella

's Okanagan: Valley of the Lakes

is an auction game, but most people won't see it that way. They'll see the tile-laying and put it in the Carcassonne

box, yet the laying of tiles during play is merely a way for you to place bids on various reward tokens — and the collection of these tokens is what the game is really about. Well, that and the desire not to waste your bids by placing them on lots that never close.

Let's look at turn six of a game in progress to see how this shakes out:

You're playing white, and you plan to place the tile shown in the lower-left so that you close out the mountain area. When you do this, everyone who has bid on this area will be looking to grab a share of the reward tokens; these tokens match the images in the mountain area, and you can see that two forests and a field have already been closed.

Each time you place a tile — matching the landscape on adjacent tiles, natch — you then place one of your wooden bidding markers on that tile. The silo grants you a bid of 1 in all territories showing on that tile, the long warehouse places a bid of 2 on two such territories, and the farmhouse places a bid of 3 on a single territory. Thus, in the mountain purple currently has a bid of 3, red a bid of 2, and yellow a bid of 1. Which piece do you want to place on this tile? That is, how much do you want to bid?

Before you answer that, let's consider why you might have placed that tile in the first place. You hold in hand — secretly, mind you — these three objective cards:

Everyone received five goal cards at the start of the game, then discarded to three. These three overlapped nicely, so no fool you, you kept them. For each set of those three round tokens you collect, you score 7 points at the end of the game. For each round fish token, you score 3 points.

The game includes one public goal card as well, with you netting 4 points for each set of four differently colored reward tokens, whatever their shape.

If you place your farm in this mountain, you'll tie purple for high bid. What's more, since you placed the tile, you can break ties however you want, so you can win the auction with a bid of 3. As the top bidder with a bid of 3, you can take any three of these reward tiles. (You always take tiles equal to your bid — except if no tiles remain, which would the case here since purple would take the remaining three tiles and red and yellow would get nothing.)

If you place your silo, you'll tie yellow for low bid of 1 while claiming a stake on the two other territories on that tile. If you choose to beat yellow, then you'll get the lone tile that remains after purple and red grab stuff. If you choose to make yourself last in the bidding, well, there's a special prize for going last:

The last-placed bidder takes the bonus action of their choice from those shown at the top of the tile stacks, with the choices here being to take a nugget card, have each other player give you one token of their choice, or take two round fish. You want fish, so that might be good. Whoever collects the most nuggets gets a 10-point bonus at game's end, so that's

good. Depending on which tokens opponents have already collected, that action might be best of all! (If you're the lone bidder on a lot, you can either claim tokens or take a bonus action. No doubling up!)

Finally, if you place your warehouse, you'll be second or third in the bidding since red also bid 2 and you probably won't have the best choice of tiles, so that's probably a stupid choice. Don't do that.

After the low bidder takes the special action (then moves that tile to the bottom of the stack to bury it), and players take tokens from high bid to low, you must take a tile to place on the next turn. That one on the left looks nice since you can almost complete the lake at right, but if you don't want that one or either of the other two, you can take one from the top of a stack to surprise everyone — including yourself — with an unknown arrangement of landscape and tokens next turn.

And that was turn #2. You take 10-12 turns total in a game depending on the number of players, and at the halfway point you draw two new goal cards, then again discard down to three. If those fish haven't been flopping your way, maybe it's time to gather peaches instead. At game's end, you reveal your cards, tally points for nuggets and goals, then see who's the Okanaganest.

I've played Okanagan

four times on a preproduction copy from Matagot

, thrice with three and once with four, and as you might expect in an auction game like this, the randomness of the cards and the tiles can drive you bonkers. In my most recent game, I had three goal cards that overlapped perfectly — then I saw my neighbor collect eight of the tokens that I wanted before I had collected anything! Ugh, time to change courses. I took a bonus action that allowed me to draw two goal cards, then discard two. Good! A new direction!

And yet the pain continued. I was last to choose on a lot or I received less than what a bid "should" bring or the lots I had bid on never closed. I managed to place tiles around a huge field in such a way that it was impossible to close, thereby costing everyone else bids on that lot, and somehow it didn't matter as I was losing more than they were. Everything went south, and I ended the game with one-third of what the winner had — the winner being the neighbor who had been snatching my

tokens and lining them up for perfectly overlapping goal cards.

Other playings have gone my way, and I'm not sure yet whether I'm playing more smartly in one game compared with another or my opponents are playing more dumbly or the bonus actions have broken my way or I've read the minute differences in the reward token/landscape layout better — or whether it's somewhat random and that's that.

The bonus actions give you lots of avenues for advancement, so you're happy to let a silo net you something from those stacks, whether a hexagonal (round, square) tile of your choice, or the ability to swap two tiles for tiles of the same shape but different color (or same color and different shape), or a token swap with an opponent for tokens of your choice. The ability to flush the tiles on display seems like a useless ability so far, but maybe I just don't know the tiles well enough to realize that I should dig for the perfect tile for my situation. After all, sometimes the best way to win an auction is to put up for bid only the goods that you

really want.

Designer Diary: Claim, or To Claim a Kingdom and Honor Thy Trick-Takers

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/690…laim-kingdom-and-honor-th

by Scott Almes

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3714302_t.jpg]The inspiration for Claim

started with a love of trick-taking games and a sadness that there are very, very few for two players. My family traditionally has played a lot of card games, and trick-taking games are my personal favorite of the classic card game genre. Oh Hell!

is my personal favorite because I love the bidding, but Euchre

is also a family staple. Sadly, neither of these are functional for two players without clumsy variants.

Thus, the quest to make Claim

was born, driven by a want of a two-player trick-taking game — but there was something else underneath that. Creating a new trick-taking game is almost a rite of passage for a game designer. It is a design space that has centuries of development behind it. A trick-taking game offers a unique challenge that differs from most other designs because when you design a trick-taking game it's not only a new design, but it is also an homage to the genre and its history.

Like any modern trick-taking game, Claim

was inspired in part by another trick-taking game. Classics like Wizard

and Sluff Off!

are rooted in Oh Hell!

and other bidding games. Clubs

and Diamonds

were developed to fill the spiritual gaps between Spades

and Hearts

. Haggis

and Tichu

derive from climbing games like Big 2

. (You may direct your arguments on whether climbing games are trick-taking games in the comments below.) Trick-taking games are designed to be a heartfelt love letter to the genre, all while trying to make your own mark in the busy design space. I wanted to do the same: Give homage to trick-takers past (and in this case, mostly forgotten) while bringing an update to the modern age.

For Claim

, the mechanical inspiration was the Whist

series of games, specifically German Whist

, which has a unique twist in that the game is played in two phases: 1) You play "tricks" to draft a hand of cards for the second phase, then 2) you play your drafted cards, with the player who collected the most tricks winning. This is a cool mechanism, but has its flaws. The first phase can feel a bit boring. You aren't playing to win tricks, but rather cards, and you get no immediate excitement from doing so. In the second phase, it's possible to know who the winner is before the round starts based on which cards were collected in the first phase. These two problems meant the game could be very hit or miss.

I wanted more from this game. It was clever, but not robust enough for a satisfying play every time. From playing this game, and my journey through trick-taking games in general, I wanted to take what I thought was fun and build a whole new game around it.

The theme came first. The original name of the game was "King of the Kingdom", which was later switched to Claim

by publisher White Goblin Games

. The idea was that the King had died, so now you were trying to win the throne. I pictured two candidates vying for control and influence for the throne. The game would be played in two phases: First, you draft followers from one of the five different factions in order to fight for you. Then, in the second phase, you go head-to-head with the other player with the followers you've acquired.

That had a nice flow, giving a thematic anchor to the game on which I could build. This theme led to a unique winning condition. Most trick-taking games require you to win a certain number of tricks, or simply the most. I wanted which cards you won to matter; the game wasn't just about winning tricks, but which

tricks.

From that idea, I decided that the game would have five factions. At the end of the game, each player would have a pile of cards that they'd won in tricks, but the total number of tricks wouldn't matter; what would matter are the factions themselves, specifically the number of cards you have in each faction. If you have the most, you win that faction's influence. Win the influence of three of the five factions, and you have won the quest to claim that throne.

Those parts of the game came together quickly. The theme felt right, and the win condition felt unique. One of the issues with the original game of German Whist

is that the best strategy tended to be to dominate in a single suit, then run with it. That was no longer the case in Claim

. You needed to do well in several suits to win. It was a lovely twist that bucked the norm of trick-takers.

The game was pretty fun at this point. The fact that you needed to have majority in three out of five factions was already cool, giving an almost "area control" feel over the game. It felt like you were doing more than just collecting cards. But I wanted these five factions to feel unique, so I decided to play around with special powers and that's when things would really get turned on their head — and the most development time came into the process.

I wanted just five powers. I didn't want a lot of card text. I didn't want cards within each faction functioning differently. I wanted each faction to play differently, but be easy to learn and play. Having fun the first game is important. I didn't want a bunch of different exceptions for each card. I wanted this to be a game that any lover of card games, whether they enjoyed modern games or not, could step into and learn quickly — but unique powers are tricky like that and are hard to master.

There was a core concept for these factions, and that was related to the end game condition. You win by gaining influence in three factions. Thus, I wanted each faction to have a unique strategy to win it, almost as if each suit had a unique mind game to collect them. This is how Claim

turned into something special.

The Goblins and the Knights came first. They were fun to play off one another. Knights could instantly beat Goblins, which was simple to learn but tricky in practice. Since you have to follow suit, your opponent can pull Knights out of your hand early before you can use them to capture tons of goblins.

With the Knights having a distinct advantage over Goblins, the Goblin ability was tricky. I didn't want a circular rock-paper-scissors concept in which each faction had a priority as I find that's hard to track. In the end, I went thematic: Goblins aren't special, but there are a lot of them. This was balanced by putting in fewer Knights. So you have lots of Goblins and few Knights, but Knights instantly beat Goblins. This had a great flow and gave an extra twist to you needing to win a majority of the factions. A few Knights can win you a faction, but Goblins take a lot of work and planning.

The Undead were next. I wanted a faction that played around with the first phase of the game. The first phase is when you play tricks in order to win your cards for the second phase. Those cards are typically discarded — fodder for the drafting phase — but not the Undead. The Undead are the only ones you are able to collect for the end game scoring in the first round. This is super fun and added more meaning to the first phase. Now, if you want to win the Undead, you have to start thinking early, or else you'll start phase two already behind your opponent!

The Dwarves were a slightly evil twist since you can collect them when you lose. Thus, if your opponent is running away with a suit, you can play Dwarf cards and collect them for the endgame scoring. The winner of the hand still gets any non-Dwarf cards, and this adds a way to collect cards even when you are losing. Winning the Dwarf faction is something challenging but fun.

Last were the Doppelgangers. These are wild cards, so they match the suit played. This keeps all the other factions on their toes, and these cards are a hot commodity. You can use a Doppelganger to get a match in a faction you need during play, but they count as their own faction at the end of the game. Once again, a very tricky faction to get hold of.

With those developments, the end result was this lovely little two-player trick-taking game called Claim

. It’s rooted in traditional trick-taking games, but it creates a fun little niche all its own. What I'm most proud of is how the winning condition of needing to gain majority in three of the five factions plays out. It's not as simple as trying to gain a bunch of hearts or spades in play. You have to start thinking during the drafting phase, and each faction has its own little puzzle to solve in order to win it, yet these puzzles conflict with each other. If you think you can win Dwarves, you need to lose tricks — but you need to win tricks to beat other factions. And, how many Knights can you spend to ensure you win Knights, while also holding some back to defeat Goblins? Do you want to use your Doppelgangers to boost a faction you already have, or do you want to lead with them to ensure they are on your side at the end of the game? These five abilities added to a streamlined ruleset make for a fun and quick game, and one I am proud of and still enjoy playing. I hope it's a game you'll all enjoy playing, too!

Scott Almes

Take to the Air in Small World: Sky Islands

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/690…r-small-world-sky-islands

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3740948_t.jpg]If you bother to take a look around, you can usually find new places you've never been, even in familiar lands. Designer Philippe Keyaerts

, in combination with co-designer T. Alex Davis, has done this once again with Small World: Sky Islands

, which publisher Days of Wonder

will debut at SPIEL '17 in late October, ahead of a likely November 2017 release in Europe and a December 2017 release in North America.

Here's an overview of this expansion for 3-6 players, which carries a MSRP of $30/€28:

Small World: Sky Islands introduces seven new races and powers to the Small World base game, but it also gives those races — and all the previously released races — new territory in which to fight for control.

At the start of play, place the Sky Islands game board so that it shows either two or three islands in the sky (your choice), then use the Small World game board as if you were playing with one fewer player, i.e., use the four-player board when playing with five players. Next, place access points to the Sky Islands — the beanstalk and the stairway — on different regions on the game board. Whenever a race stands on one of these access points, they can try to conquer the space on the sky islands that shows the matching symbol.

Races can start their conquests in the Sky Islands unless their power specifically allows them to do so. At the end of a turn, if you control all of the regions on a Sky Island, you gain one additional coin.

New Game Round-up: Fight the DEA in Breaking Bad: The Board Game, Fight for Honor in Battle for Rokugan, and Fight a Familiar Enemy in Specter Ops: Broken Covenant

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/690…breaking-bad-board-game-f

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3741705_t.jpg]Now that SPIEL '17 info is

vaguely under control, let's run through another batch of game announcements that might be new to you and might be something I've overlooked in the past few weeks.

• At Gen Con 50, Edge Entertainment

— which is part of Asmodee — had a space cordoned off for Breaking Bad: The Board Game

, a space barely occupied during the show. We didn't film an overview of the game as part of our coverage, so I can offer only this overview now of the Antoine Morfan

and Thomas Rofidal

design due out in December 2017:

Based on the critically-acclaimed TV series, Breaking Bad: The Board Game propels you into the treacherous underbelly of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Will you play as a member of one of the criminal factions (Heisenberg, Los Pollos Hermanos, or the Juarez Cartel), trying to amass a fortune by manufacturing the biggest stash of Blue Sky while eliminating your rivals? Or will you join the ranks of the Drug Enforcement Administration, ready to slap the cuffs on the lawbreakers who would dare peddle their poison in your city?

In more detail, when playing a criminal faction, your goal is to produce Blue Sky, then sell the quantity needed to win before your opponents can. You can also win the game by taking out all of your opponents by using cards to bomb, shoot, or otherwise eliminate them. As the DEA agent, your goal is to seize the criminal factions' labs (by playing DEA Raid cards). You can also win the game by taking out all of your opponents, either by killing them or putting them in jail.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3741716_t.jpg]

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3741713_t.jpg]• Fantasy Flight Games

plans to make good use of its purchase of Legend of the Five Rings

, announcing

in late August 2017 a standalone game by Tom Jolly

and Molly Glover

called Battle for Rokugan

, the short take of which is this:

Conquer the realm and bring honor to your clan in Battle for Rokugan! This turn-based strategy game of conquest and mayhem puts players in the role of Rokugan daimyō struggling for control over the rich land of the Emerald Empire. Leaders must balance their resources, plan their attacks, and outwit their enemies to ensure their clan's victory. The land is there for the taking. The most honorable daimyō will win the day!

For the long take, click on that FFG announcement linked to above.

• Z-Man Games

will release the second edition of Andrea Chiarvesio

and Luca Iennaco

's Kingsburg

in the U.S. in late 2017. This game was first released in 2007, and the new edition includes all the modules previously released as expansions as well as a new sixth expansion module. BGG recorded an overview of this new edition with originating publisher Giochi Uniti:

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3741729_t.jpg]• Also due out in late 2017 is Specter Ops: Broken Covenant

, a standalone game by Emerson Matsuuchi

and Plaid Hat Games

that's set in the same universe as the original Specter Ops

, but it's not clear from the publisher's offered description how this differs from the original game:

Specter Ops: Broken Covenant puts two to five players in the middle of a war that's fought in the shadows.

Corporate secrets linger within the corridors of Raxxon's abandoned headquarters and, even though the base is empty, it is not forgotten. In this tense cat-and-mouse showdown, a lone A.R.K. agent stalks the shadows of the facility, attempting to complete secret objectives while hunters from Raxxon's Experimental Security Division try to pinpoint their location and destroy them. On one side, the agent must use all their skills and equipment to succeed. On the other, the hunters rely on teamwork and superhuman skills to locate their prey. No matter who you play, you must use strategy, deduction, and stealth to win.

Z-Man Games Invites You to Save the Netherlands in Pandemic: Rising Tide, Then Relive the History of the World

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/690…save-netherlands-pandemic

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3742452_t.jpg]In a post earlier today

, I mentioned the second edition of Kingsburg

coming from Z-Man Games

before the end of 2017. Turns out that's only one of many new releases on their schedule for the next three months.

• The highlight of the Z-Man Games release calendar might be Pandemic: Rising Tide

, a new standalone Pandemic

game from original designer Matt Leacock

and Splotter Spellen's Jeroen Doumen

. Let's learn something about the setting and gameplay:

It is the dawn of the Industrial Age in the Netherlands. For centuries, the country has relied upon a series of dikes and wind-powered pumps to keep it safe from the constant threat of flooding from the North Sea, but this system is no longer enough.

In Pandemic: Rising Tide, it is your goal to avert tragedy by constructing four modern hydraulic structures in strategic locations that will help you defend the country from being reclaimed by the ocean. Storms are brewing and the seas are restless. It will take all your guile to control the flow of water long enough to usher in the future of the Netherlands. It's time to get to work.

Containing the water that threatens to consume the countryside is your greatest challenge. Water levels in a region are represented by cubes, and as the water containment systems currently in place begin to fail, more water cubes are added to the board. With water levels constantly on the rise, failure to maintain the containment system could quickly lead to water spilling across the board.

To successfully build the four hydraulic structures needed to win a game of Pandemic: Rising Tide, you must first learn to predict and manipulate the flow of water. Failing to maintain safe water levels throughout the country can bring you perilously close to failing your mission. Fortunately, water can be corralled by a strategically placed dike or slowed by pumping water out of a region. Correctly identifying and intervening in at-risk areas can get you one step closer to victory.

Why this game and this co-designer in this country? In 2016, Leacock partnered with Spanish designer Jesús Torres Castro for Pandemic: Iberia

, a limited edition release set in Spain to coincide with the location and timing of the Pandemic Survival: World Championship in Barcelona. For 2017, the tournament has moved to the Netherlands, so Leacock and Doumen have created a "pandemic" that's more thematically appropriate for that country.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic287451_t.jpg]• The other big news from Z-Man HQ is the impending release of a new edition of History of the World

from designers Gary Dicken

, Steve Kendall

, and Phil Kendall

. These designers first published History of the World

under their own Ragnar Brothers brand in 1991, with Avalon Hill subsequently picking up the game for editions in 1993 and 2001. Here's the summarized description of this new edition from Z-Man Games:

Take a ride through humankind's history with History of the World, a game of conquest and cunning for three to six players. Expand your empire as you command mighty empires at the height of their power from the dawn of civilization to the twentieth century. Each game offers an epic experience as great minds work toward technological advances, ambitious leaders inspire their citizens, and unpredictable calamities occur while empires rise and fall.

This remastered edition of History of the World contains a beautifully illustrated board, revised rules to streamline the experience, and everything you need to etch your name in the annals of history.

Given the mention of "revised rules" in this "remastered edition", I've created a separate listing for this new release, figuring that we can merge them later should history turn out to be 98.3% the same no matter you look at it.

This cover art is glorious:

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3742448_t.jpg]• Z-Man Games also announced a late 2017 release for Marco Teubner

's My First Stone Age: The Card Game

, an English language version of what originating publisher Hans im Glück

will release at SPIEL '17 in October as Stone Age Junior: Das Kartenspiel

. This is a standalone expansion for the 2016 Kinderspiel des Jahres winner My First Stone Age

— standalone expansions being the rage these days — and here's a barebones description of how it works:

My First Stone Age: The Card Game is a card game version of My First Stone Age. The players try to fix their houses with three different resources. These resources are hidden in grass, and the players try to find them with Martin the mammoth. The first player who builds three houses wins.

Assistant Designer Diary: Sidereal Confluence, or TauCeti's Shadow

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/678…sidereal-confluence-or-ta

by Jacob Davenport

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3476762_t.png] Editor's note: This story serves as an addendum to or parallel retelling of the events in TauCeti Deichmann's Sidereal Confluence designer diary on BGG News. —WEM

Introduction

I walked over to see what game Kristin Matherly was playing at the Gathering of Friends. She said, "Sit down, you need to play this." She introduced me to TauCeti and Doug, and TauCeti taught me this negotiation game called "Trade Empires". Wait, did you say "negotiation game"?

Like many gamers, my first non-kid board game was Monopoly

. Monopoly

is a terrible game in which the first thirty minutes are spent rolling the dice and buying every property you land on. Then you have five minutes of negotiating to get color sets that you can build on, and then two hours of rolling the dice to see who wins. I loved the five minutes of negotiating, and if I could get a game which was all negotiating, I was there. Kristin knew this.

Kristin wisely gave me the bankers (Eni Et) on my first game. I took to it immediately and saw the essence of the game, even if it wasn't perfectly presented. In that first game, I noted two rules I didn't like and I subverted them immediately. TauCeti had this rule that you could not negotiate with a player you were not "connected" to, and sometimes I was the connection between two players. I could have demanded tribute on each deal they made through me, but I didn't like the connection rule and suspected I'd want to avoid a tariff on myself in this game or others, so I imposed no tariff at all.

TauCeti also had combat in the game, and when Doug decided to attack me to steal a colony, I told him I'd not make any deals at all with him for the rest of the game if he did attack.

"You're just saying that. You'll make deals with me later", hoped Doug.

"No, he's not bluffing", said Kristin.

Thus, no combat. Even in this first game, I was focused on what I wanted from "Trade Empires": constant negotiation with all players.

I think I won that game. It was awesomely fun.

Second Game

Kristin and Doug and TauCeti had just finished playing "Trade Empires" when I spotted them. I was disappointed that I had missed it, but they were willing to play again. I think we started at 11:00 p.m. and finished at 3:00 a.m. Nobody was tired.

This time I asked for a race completely different from the bankers and was given the mob (Zeth Anocracy). I didn't need to be told that I was to bully and intimidate the players into giving me free stuff to avoid my attacks. I think I won that game, by a lot.

The next day, TauCeti was headed home, and I went over to talk to him. I was prepared to ask for files so that I could print my own copy of his game, but secretly hoped he'd give me his prototype. He did the latter, and I was very pleased.

Playing in Maryland

After lots of emails with TauCeti about rules questions, I finally put together a group of people to play this game. I'm well aware that negotiating games are not everyone's favorite, but people were willing to humor me. They were fun games, which led to more rules questions and suggestions, but I was worried that the nine races you could play were not balanced. I mean, I lost my third game — to a 14-year-old. Can you imagine me

losing?

What quickly became apparent to me was that TauCeti was a game designer willing to try out my outlandish suggestions. That is startling. Most game designers don't want to mess with their baby and are not really interested in suggestions from playtesters, and many game designers realize that playtester suggestions usually point to a problem, but the suggestion itself is terrible. But TauCeti was open-minded and enjoyed talking game design as much as I did, so hundreds of emails went back and forth between us about "Trade Empires".

Simulation

I decided to figure out whether the races were actually balanced, but with nine races and so many combinations of three to seven players, it would not be possible to play enough games to know. Thus, I wrote a computer program to play the game for me. To simulate trades, my program would randomly generate thousands of possible trades, and each race would evaluate whether it liked the trade or not. If both sides agreed, the trade happened. This well simulated human players. Simulating combat was important, and decisions about which research to go after or which colonies to take were easier. My program could play a complete game in about one-tenth of a second.

For several weeks, I'd set the computer to simulate all possible games a hundred times. It would take all day, and when I got home from work, I'd load the results into a spreadsheet to see which race was doing too well and which was getting crushed. Sometimes I'd just change my program to play better, and often I'd make a tiny change to a race to bring it back in line, then I'd set the program to run overnight and I'd wake up in the morning to check it again. Checking twice each day to see how the simulations went, I had all the data I needed.

Every time TauCeti updated his rules, I updated my program and ran it over and over. I sent him many spreadsheets with long discussions about the tiny tweaks I made.

Massive Changes

After a six-player game with some friends, all of whom are good game designers, we made some radical suggestions.

We officially came out against combat. Players did not use it to go after the winner; they just went for targets of opportunity. That was officially No Fun™ and we wanted it out. We suggested instead that some ships be for colonizing, others for research.

We suggested that each race not have a board, but instead a small deck of factories, and that factories can be flipped over to the improved side with some inventions. We suggested those factories can be traded, but must be returned after each turn.

And TauCeti listened to us and seriously considered all our changes. Unheard of! He essentially accepted all those changes, and adjusted the rest of the game to fit. This man is open-minded in a way I can only hope to be.

Simulation, Again

These changes required rewriting my simulation software from scratch. Every few days I'd send TauCeti a new spreadsheet and lengthy commentary about how to change the cards to work. It's amazing that I managed to squeeze in work, sleep, and eating with all the effort I was putting into "Trade Empires".

I even wrote a separate program that would take the set of cards and create PDF documents with them, ready to be sent to a professional printer. I had at least four full sets of the game printed, which at several hundred cards was a lot of printing.

Less is More

Time and again in game design, the best final product takes the good original idea of a game and strips out everything that gets in the way or is unnecessary. The final game: no hand limit of pieces, all players can trade with any other player from the beginning, one kind of ship, no two-way factories, no multi-choice factories, no points for colonies, only two kinds of factories at all (white for economic engine and purple for upgrades), and no damn combat. Just two hours or so of glorious negotiation.

How I Play

I have a confession. I love games because I love systems. I want to see systems work well, and while I also enjoy pitting my wits against others, in "Trade Empires" — now called Sidereal Confluence

— I have a different goal. I want all the systems to work brilliantly. I don't want any resources to sit idle; I want them to be used as efficiently as possible, including those resources owned by opponents. My scores are regularly over 60 points, but I feel great if I can get everyone else's scores just as high. As Doug says, "Trade Empires" rewards the player who cooperates the most. If I play poker with you, I'm going to con you out of your money. If I play Sidereal Confluence

with you, I'm going to offer you a fair deal, and I'm going to work with a third player to get just a bit more out of that cool factory that a fourth player has, giving us all a tiny bit more resources to work with.

Unless I'm playing the Zeth Anocracy. Then you are screwed.

Jacob Davenport

Crowdfunding Round-up: Consenting to Board Vasty Rockets

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/691…nting-board-vasty-rockets

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3710609_t.jpg]I haven't posted a crowdfunding round-up in weeks, perhaps even months although I'm not going to check.

Let's press forward! Time to dump the inbox filled with hopeful messages from designers and publishers who wanted to tell me about something that might or might not have succeeded — messages that I shooed aside in the run-up to Gen Con 50 and the subsequent frantic buzzing of SPIEL '17 that's been expanding to fill every centimeter between my ears. Sorry, folks! You missed out on hearing about the "Lycans vs Vampires" fantasy backgammon collection

, but perhaps you'll have another chance to back this game of the future in the future.

At least you can still back

Fog Monster, a miniature fog machine that makes "continuous real fog that creeps and crawls across your game terrain". Every playing of Kingdomino

can benefit from that!

• In any case, let's kick this off with Tim Fowers

' Now Boarding

, which features the damn coolest logo I've seen in recent days. Beyond that, the graphic design of the box itself is a winner, copping a movie poster look that's selling an aesthetic and not merely a game. I've seen more than my share of game covers over the years, and at this point I'm most excited by game covers that don't look like game covers. Graphic designers should take a wider variety of approaches to their work. After all, we know that something is a book because it has pages that you can flip through; you don't need every book to adopt the same style of graphic design so that you know at a glance that it's a book. Game publishers should take a similar approach. ( KS link

)

As for the game itself, here's an overview:

Now Boarding is a real-time cooperative game in which you work together to fly a fleet of airplanes. You must to deliver all the passengers to their destinations before they get too angry — and new passengers are constantly arriving! Upgrade your plane to fly faster and carry more passengers to handle the load. The twist: All players take all their turns at the same time! This allows for clever hand-offs of passengers. It's a whole new level of pick-up-and-deliver game.

• And even should you not care about Now Boarding

, you might want to check out that project since Fowers is also funding a third edition of Wok Star

, another real-time cooperative game that he first released on his own in 2010 and is now bringing back to print through his Fowers Games

brand.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2716343_t.jpg]

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3694371_t.png]• Chuck Stover's Vasty Wilds

from his own Made by Wombat

has one of the gentler post-apocalyptic settings out there. Humans have faded away from Earth, and now tiny woodland creatures compete for space with their neighbors, apparently having learned nothing from the misfortune of man. So it goes. ( KS link

)

• And why might humanity disappear? You might find that subject discussed in Steve Jackson

's Conspiracy Theory

from his own Steve Jackson Games

. This game mimics the black card/white card format of Cards Against Humanity

and its endless sludgepump of copycats, but with a PG-friendly approach so that kids can also suggest reasons that Bigfoot has never been captured. (Answer: Ninja training.) ( KS link

)

• Our obligatory miniatures game in this round-up is Champions of Hara

from Walter Barber, Ian VanNest, Andrew Zimmermann, and Greenbrier Games

, with this game having both competitive (arena-style combat) and cooperative modes of play, with the latter challenging you to defeat monsters to contain destructive energy so that the world doesn't die. ( KS link

)

• Another competitive/cooperative creation on Kickstarter is Ragnar Brothers

' Darien Apocalypse

, with this being the second "Quantum" game from Dicken, Kendall, and Kendall, a Quantum game being one in which you're meant to relive multiple versions of actual history events, affecting them along the way with your actions. The history in this case is the Kingdom of Scotland's ill-conceived efforts to found a colony on the Isthmus of Panama. ( KS link

)

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3677319_t.png]

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3710115_t.jpg]• I wrote about

Flatlined Games

' new edition of Mark Gerrits

' SteamRollers

in July 2017, noting that Flatlined is adopting a unique approach to its crowdfunding efforts. If a project succeeds, that game will not be available to retail outlets — other than those that back the KS campaign — for at least one year after the end of the campaign. Flatlined's Eric Hanuise is essentially saying that you can get it now or you can lament your reluctance to do so, although the game will be available from Flatlined directly or at conventions. Will this matter to backers? Is this a negative approach meant to spur a supporter's FOMO? A positive approach to reward those who do support the game's existence with something unavailable on the general market?

As for the game, SteamRollers

is a dice-based, network-building, pick-up-and-deliver game that originated from Gerritts' attempt to make something that would resemble a dice version of Age of Steam

. ( KS link

)

• Babis Giannios' Alexandria

from LudiCreations

has a great premise: The Great Library in Alexandria has been set ablaze, and you must try to save as many works as possible. ( KS link

) BGG shot an overview video of the game at SPIEL '16, at which time it looked far different than it does today:

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3719798_t.jpg]

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3683645_t.jpg]• Gil Hova

of Formal Ferret Games

is funding The Networks: Executives

, an expansion for his well-received game The Networks in which you attempt to land new programming for your television network. Now, in addition to two other modules, you'll get to have a unique executive on your team with advantages and disadvantages specific to this individual. ( KS link

)

• Grail Games

has released several titles new and old from Reiner Knizia

, most notably a fabulous looking version of Medici

, and currently the publisher is funding a new version of Knizia's excellent rail-and-stock game Stephenson's Rocket

, a game that will likely be new to 95% of the people reading this post. It's amazing sometimes to think of how many people have entered the hobby since this game first debuted in 1999. Heck, I didn't enter it with gusto until 2003! What's old is new again... ( KS link

)

• I've written to designer Naomi Clark

several times to ask whether Consentacle

, a two-player game "that represents consensual sexual encounter between a curious human and a tentacled alien", will ever be available again and have yet to receive a response. Imagine my surprise when I discover that Consentacle

is on Kickstarter now, and if you pledge high enough, you can receive two tentacles from the game's debut exhibition in 2014. Few games offer such treats. ( KS link

)

Editor's note: Please don't post links to other Kickstarter projects in the comments section. Write to me via the email address in the header, and I'll consider them for inclusion in a future crowdfunding round-up. Thanks! —WEM

Designer Diary: Five Fable Games, or What Was I Thinking? I Am a Stupid Idiot — So Much Work!

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/688…-games-or-what-was-i-thin

by Friedemann Friese

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3086825_t.jpg]I am used to being involved in time-consuming and exhausting projects (and even to finishing them): I did 504

, for example, and I had a five-year project called " Freitag

", but...

After finishing Fabled Fruit

, which already was more work than expected (because it is "only" a 25-minute game, but needed 59 different card actions to be designed), I was ready for the three games I had in the pipeline for SPIEL '17. But Fabled Fruit

became a big success and the fable concept cried for more, so I moved the planned projects to 2018 and had the idea for the " Fast Forward

" line: Fable games without a rulebook that can be learned while playing.

But this concept needed to be started as a series with at least three games at once. (IMO)

The main problem with fable games: Testing is more difficult. You have to play the same game several times in a row with the same group, and you cannot recreate the effect of a surprising change with the same group. You need a lot more different gaming groups.

Classical games you can test a few times, make some changes, test again, and so on. With fable games, it is difficult to see how a small change in the first game might influence the game five games later. You have to test this change a lot more — and I do not want to lose all my testing players (a.k.a. friends).

But "Fast Forward" is awesome!!!

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3652028_t.jpg]The inspiration came to me one evening while playing Dead Man's Draw

. I was a bit exhausted from the day and just wanted to start to play. I said to my gaming group, "Just start this one, it is easy enough to be learned while playing. Starting player, please turn the top card face up." Without realizing it, we were suddenly in the middle of a game. Afterwards I was thinking that games should be designed that way — and having the fable concept, I could start with a very simplistic idea and from game to game add more "game" to that idea.

Starting was kind of easy. I designed a mixture of Dead Man's Draw

and Diamant

. The first test was amazing: My gamers played the game nine times in a row and did not want to stop playing (but had to because of some minor changes I needed to do). But I needed to promise them that they could continue to play it during the next game session exactly where they stopped.

So after that start, I needed two more "Fast Forward" games to have the series of three titles I wanted to release. The first of these two new games became FEAR

, and the other did not progress any further than being an idea in my computer; it was never tested. But I already had two games in the pipeline! I then had an inspiration to make a game about "capturing the flag" and this turned out to become FORTRESS

, which is not about capturing a flag anymore, but if you know where it came from, you can still see that connection.

Thus, three "Fast Forward" games were developed. I was happy.

But there was a problem with the three games: One of them was weak. The first one and FEAR

were creating very similar experiences of the three, but FEAR

was better. I managed to look at it as objectively as possible and accepted that I needed to not publish the first one. There are too many press-your-luck games, and the game was not better than Dead Man's Draw

, so it was removed from the line. It was early in 2017 and once more I had only two "Fast Forward" games. I was about to accept releasing only two games when I got the idea for FLEE

, which is completely different from the other two and very appealing. It had to be done.

Now, I am happy to have three very different "Fast Forward" games, all three connected by one great concept. The easy game FEAR

is very good to learn the "Fast Forward" concept, and a great game to play with the complete family and casual gamers. And FORTRESS

is the next step, more complex without being complicated, a game with a lot of great surprises. And finally FLEE

, a game in which you really have to focus to solve the cooperative puzzle. This game feels a bit like an escape room — a really difficult escape room!

But I said five fable games, not only three...

The series of three fable "Fast Forward" games seemed not to be enough, three games to be tested hundreds of times in ever-changing game groups. But the game starting it all was still successful, so I needed to expand Fabled Fruit

. One gamer in our group played it a lot with his daughter and after finishing, they demanded more. Why not? Let‘s make an expansion!

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3666296_t.jpg]In theory, Fabled Fruit

is easy to expand; you need only to add more locations, but I already designed 59 different locations and I ran a bit out of ideas — and the end game of Fabled Fruit

was designed to be a real end game, with no chance to "open" that again to continue with more locations. That said, giving gamers only twenty new locations to play a separate set of games of Fabled Fruit

was boring.

Adding limes to the game was the central idea. Green fruits, very good. Now every fabled juice card must be paid for with at least one lime. At the start of each game, limes are not shuffled with the other fruit cards and must be acquired differently. Adding these new location cards after the second half of the normal Fabled Fruit

locations was the connection to the base game.

Twenty new locations meant that you could play 8-10 consecutive games to finish this new campaign. Thus, this has the same problem as with all fable games: A single game itself is short, about half an hour, but the campaign is loooong. You need about three hours to play it once.

Keep smiling, it could be worse!

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3668676_t.jpg]I smiled and it got worse. The annual question came up: How to expand Power Grid

this year. Easy, just make a fable campaign for Power Grid

, a campaign with only three consecutive games (with fifteen cards to be revealed during the three games) could not be too difficult, right?

But the Power Grid

base games each have two maps (classic or deluxe both use similar regions of the world: Europe (or Germany) or North America (or USA)), so why not develop three games per map with two separate sets of fifteen cards? Let's see: 3 games per map and 2 maps = 6 games to play. A single game of Power Grid

in this campaign is played in two hours (a bit longer than normal because you're changing the rules while playing), so I needed to test two new prototypes with six hours of playing time each...

At least I was happy that our sixth release for 2017, the solitaire game Finished!

, was already finished as of April 2016. No further testing of that game!

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3666307_t.jpg] Finished!

is a game in the vein of a classic "patience" game like Klondike

, just a game about sorting a deck of 48 cards with a twist, played with a cycling deck. Discarded cards are placed under the deck to be drawn again later. After seven cycles, you need to have sorted the complete deck. The name of the prototype was "Bubblesort: The Game". It is not an implementation of the well-known bubblesort algorithm, but you sort cards in bubbles of at least three cards.

Now, all six titles are in print, so new topics on my schedule include work on the new games for 2018 and some plans to be realized for the 25th anniversary of my company, 2F-Spiele

.

The most important thing for now: I like the resulting games and expansions, and whoever wants to play them all needs only 25 hours net playing time.

-> It's your turn now.

Friedemann Friese

SPIEL '17 Preview: Venice Connection, or Close That Loop

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/691…-connection-or-close-loop

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3728946_t.jpg]When we think about minimalist game design, we often point to Seiji Kanai's Love Letter

as the source from which a thousand envelope-sized games were delivered. While to some degree that's true, if we want to honor the grandfather of game design minimalism, we need to look to the works of Alex Randolph

.

I've played only two handfuls of Randolph's games, but each of those games can be described by at most four words:

• Big Shot

— use ties to attack

• Mahé

, a.k.a. Die heisse Schlacht am kalten Buffet

— hop on opponents

• Die Osterinsel

— count the rocks

• Raj

— bid without tieing

• Ricochet Robots

— move efficiently

• Schachjagd

— race with chess moves

• Square Off

— build a path

• Twixt

— build paths with horses

• Worm Up!

— block other worms

• Xe Queo!

, a.k.a. Museum Heist

— dupe or be duped

The secret to Randolph's design principles is no secret at all, as he explained to Bruce Whitehill in a 1999 interview

:

I asked him what a game needs to have in order to be good. "It must be easy to enter into the game immediately…(it must) offer surprises…(it must have) a clear objective, (clear enough so there is) no arguing or questioning…(it must be) endlessly repeatable, always different."

For some of the games above, the action described is both how to play and what will win you the game: If you move robots most efficiently, you will win. If you hop on opponents, you will win. If you build a path first, you will win. Whereas some designers take the skeleton of an idea, then dress it up before presenting it to players, Randolph offers the skeleton directly.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic295228_t.jpg]My latest experience with one of these atomic Randolph designs — Venice Connection

— mimicked my earlier experiences with his games. Venice Connection

was released in an earlier edition in 1996 by Drei Magier Spiele, winning a special Spiel des Jahres award for being a beautiful game, and now new Korean publisher OPEN'N PLAY

has brought this two-player game back to market while keeping the graphic design of that Drei Magier edition.

As with the other titles mentioned above, Venice Connection

has a short description: Make a loop. The first player to do this wins. If you make a move such that a loop is impossible, you lose.

Venice Connection

consists of only 16 tiles, each of which features a straight canal on one side and a canal with a 90º turn on the other. On a turn, a player takes 1-3 tiles, places them in a straight line with canals not intersecting buildings, then places this line of tiles adjacent to at least one tile already in play (again, with the canals not intersecting buildings). On the first turn, you simply place the tiles on the table since you have nothing else to place next to. Possible starting positions include the following:

Some of these positions are better than others. The position second from the left is terrible since the opposing player can win instantly by mirroring these tiles and completing a canal loop:

So let's not start with a C-shape; start with something else:

If your opponent were to make the following move, you could then respond in a way that would guarantee your victory. Can you see it?

Your opponent is no fool, however, so they have actually made this move:

So what do you do now?

In case you haven't recognized it, Venice Connection

uses the same style of play as Nim

: You want to make moves that force the opponent to respond in a particular way. You want your hand up their back so that you control what they do and force them to make moves that are advantageous to you. Nim

is an interesting game to learn because it presents this system in so skeletal a style: Have three or more heaps of objects, and take turns removing any number of objects from one heap; whoever removes the last object wins.

Unfortunately, once you learn more about Nim

, the game becomes less interesting. Based on the number of heaps and objects in those heaps, a winning strategy exists for one of the two players, and it's (relatively) easy to see how if you start from the winning condition and work backwards. If only one heap exists, the active player wins, so don't make a move that leads to only one heap. If two heaps exist, the second player can mirror my moves to force me to remove one heap before they have to, which means that I want to be the second player when the third heap is removed. And so on. All the moves in Nim

lead to an empty table, so the goal is fixed, and everything else is working backwards from that goal to see whether you have a winning strategy or not.

Venice Connection

lacks this fixed endpoint because any closed loop wins the game for the player who made it, whether it's made from four tiles, six tiles, eight, etc. on up to sixteen tiles. If an opponent makes a move that would require more than sixteen tiles to close that loop, then you say "Impossible!" and wait for them to fail to make the loop to claim your victory.

I've played Venice Connection

seven times so far on a review copy from OPEN'N PLAY, and that probably constitutes no more than twenty minutes of playing time. The game isn't something you'll do for an evening, but it does fit on an airplane tray or fill time while waiting at a restaurant. Even with its more flexible endzone, I would imagine that if you apply yourself, you can work out all the possible tile configurations and find Venice Connection

as dead as Nim

. Randolph did aspire for designs to be "endlessly repeatable", but with only sixteen tiles, clearly you have limits in what you can place where.

I have no idea where I might be on the scale of full knowledge of Venice Connection

, but if I ever get there, I can just ship the game to someone else....

Designer Diary: Bios: Megafauna 2

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/686…er-diary-bios-megafauna-2

by Andrew Doull

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3493249_t.png]I've never designed a game, and I don't consider myself a game designer. The closest term I'd agree to is game developer, but what I do to games isn't really developing them in the traditionally understood way as much as modding them.

So when Phil Eklund

approached me about doing a design for an intermediate game between his Bios: Genesis

and Bios: Megafauna

series — called at various points during the design process "Bios: Paleozoic", "Bios: Pangaea", "Bios: Fauna" and "Bios: XX" — I was initially cautious. For a start, I had already designed a "Bios: Paleozoic" which was a mod to Bios: Megafauna

that allow you to start the game earlier in the Paleozoic era. More importantly, I didn't have the confidence to build a design from scratch.

However, I do have some previous experience with procedural map generation, so I decided to concentrate on building a game which procedurally generates the map by using craton movement instead of tile-laying. Jon Manker

also came on board the project with the offer of mentoring me and acting as a co-designer, but our actual contributions would evolve substantially throughout the course of the project so that Jon ended up in a developer as well as designer role.

My initial proposal to Phil was as follows:

... I've figured out a non-climax based tableau. I'm going to attempt to model plate tectonics instead
The idea will be cards consisting of super continents (spanning two cards), mountains, landmasses (reverse side is ice), archipelagos (reverse side is ocean). Each card will have a drift number and direction and represent a plate. Colliding plates will either subduct or form mountains or super continents. Rules to be determined.

My reasoning for eliminating climaxes was to cut down on the recognition factor of having to read climax numbers off the map. This part of the original Bios: Megafauna

makes creeples ( Megafauna

's creature meeples) on the lowest climax location significantly more vulnerable to elimination by a new biome being introduced. Improving game state legibility became a central tenet of the new Bios: Megafauna

game, and we eliminated DNA, acculturation, roadrunner genes, and a separate size chart for very similar reasons.

Phil insisted very early on that we were going to model skeletal types rather than dentition, and that there be six named cratons. This meant I was working with 2x2 cratons to keep to approximately the same playing area size as Megafauna

. I built an event-driven craton movement model that allowed for the formation and separation of a Pangaea supercontinent by giving cratons a direction and using rotation and advance actions to move them on an underlying tile map.

This system was ultimately abandoned as it was prone to have the cratons fly off in any direction and never collide. To fix this required carefully stacking the event deck so that cratons would move in similar directions with a bias to collide and that any variation in movement order was tightly controlled.

But stacking the deck made getting the events work in such a way that Jon and Phil never completely understood it. (Knowledge transfer over the internet is a hard thing to do.) Phil recommended that we go with a horizontal collision model with some vertical movement, and the craton movement has been much more robust and largely unchanged since that suggestion.

Going to a horizontal collision model was driven by another Phil requirement to use hex instead of square cratons, and that requirement was driven by something that had become more and more obvious as development for Bios: Genesis

wound down and we began working on the new game in earnest: There wasn't enough design space for a Bios: Genesis

that ended up with terrestrial creatures, Bios: Pangaea

which did something with those creatures, and a planned Bios: Megafauna 2

that allowed those creatures to grow to enormous sizes.

We made the call to fold Pangaea

and Megafauna

into a single game. This decision effectively meant that we would be redesigning Megafauna

almost from the ground up instead of keeping it largely unchanged. Adopting hexes allowed us to dynamically generate the hex-based Bios: Origins

map by using craton movement in Bios: Megafauna 2

.

Being a direct sequel to Bios: Genesis

meant we could do a lot of the simplification by simply adopting the decisions that had been made in Bios: Genesis

and extending them into the new game. This meant organs instead of DNA, with Phil deciding to introduce a fifth organ type to represent cold resistance, and promotable mutation cards, although we innovated by having the promoted side in one of two possible origins to represent specialization of base organ types in various ways (with a large amount of latitude in how this occurs in practice).

One mechanism that survived a long way into the game design process but which was ultimately cut was the intended replacement for BMF 1's acculturation abilities which were called ecomorphs. These would have allowed for everything from the development of various tools (now subsumed into the emotion system) to acting as a keystone species such as a beaver or prairie dog as well as a variety of hunting methods. But a third row of cards in the market made ecomorphs problematic to begin with, and they were completely eliminated when we realized that putting special rule text on the cards ran counter to the improving the legibility of the game state.

Contrast the elimination of ecomorphs about midway through the design process with the carbon cycle tracking. As a part of the craton movement, I had suggested that we eliminate event-based CO₂ modeling and go with a counter-based system with CO₂ reservoirs being placed on the map by outcomes such as continents colliding to form mountains. Phil expressed cautious interest in the idea, then ruled it out, preferring a more conservative event-based CO₂ system that was recognizably similar to the first edition of Bios: Megafauna

. But in one of many redesigns of the event system (no other system had more changes to it), Phil adopted my initial suggestion, adding the tracking of O₂ (which I had abstracted out) and water, which could fill up the atmosphere (representing greenhouse gases) or clouds (causing precipitation).

Given I am in the most junior of the designers involved in the creation of Bios: Megafauna 2

, it is remarkable how many of the systems I initially proposed survived in the final game. However, Phil has definitely owned the design in this instance, which he should do given that he ultimately lives by the success of his games. And he would often pose me a challenge, such as coming up with a way of defining emotions or horror plants in the game, then take a seed of my initial suggestion and take the design in the direction he wanted to go. The tempo of development largely seems to have been that I would build version 1 of something, Phil would flesh out and build the final version, and Jon would ensure that the fun has been put in the game.

I am quietly optimistic that we've been successful in ensuring that Bios: Megafauna 2

is more fun and more of a game than its predecessors. The collision of species expanding on the map is incredibly enjoyable, and lends a "knife fight in a phone booth" feel to the whole proceedings. The climate and tectonic engine lends enough randomness and arbitrariness to feel like a Sierra Madre

game, and the personification of Medea as player controlled means that the microscopic world of Bios: Genesis

never feels too far away. There are simulationist elements that were in Bios: Megafauna 1

that are missing in the successor game; the climax and biome interactions are simplified and abstracted and that is the loss I feel most keenly, but the games of Bios: Megafauna 1

I played during the development of Bios: Megafauna 2

just highlighted how little direct control players had in the first version.

The art by Johanna Pettersson is beautiful and evocative, and Phil's collaboration with Karim Chakroun continues to pay off in information design and display. I hope you will enjoy playing Bios: Megafauna 2

as much as I have enjoyed making it.

Andrew Doull

Designer Diary: Dragon Island, or From Wyvern to Dragon Island, a Very Short 23 Years

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/692…and-or-wyvern-dragon-isla

by Mike Fitzgerald

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3587105_t.jpg]In 1994, my first game, Wyvern

, was published. It was a trading card game with a mythological dragon theme. I loved doing the research for that game and told myself I would revisit this theme sometime.

All of a sudden it is twenty years and sixty published games later when I finally decide to get back to that dragon theme. I wanted to design a game in which all players are focused on the same thing rather than multiplayer solitaire with individual boards or hands of cards for players. This led me to do my first game that is not card driven: Dragon Island

. I wanted to create a game state that changed with every player's turn and in which every player's strategies would be altered by each play. To do this, I chose tile-laying as the mechanism. The tiles are double-sided and players start each turn by adding a tile to the island.

Each player is a wizard involved in discovering Dragon Island. Players get energy from the island to help them build things and capture dragons, and they tame some of the dragons to help them explore the island. They also discover treasure maps that can lead them to hidden treasures on the island.

In my first version, I had a movement system I really loved. Each wizard had one terrain as their native terrain, and they could move through these tiles for free. Then I made a wizard pay a gold piece to get through a tile that was not their native terrain. It is an important lesson in game design that sometimes you have to give up on something you like a lot to help the real "fun" in the game come to the fore. Figuring out where a player could move on their turn became a tactical chore. Players would want to do some of the fun things in the game without having to brain burn to figure out the movement. It was the playtesters who showed me that the game had plenty of things to ponder without adding the movement complexity. I went through a period with no movement restrictions at all. I knew I would come up with some movement restrictions eventually, but I wanted them to come from the theme of the game and not just a mechanism.

Gold led me to the answer. After all, dragons love gold. This love was at the center of the Wyvern

design, and I wanted to make sure it was in Dragon Island

as well. I came up with a way that wizards can maneuver the dragons around the island by tempting them with gold. You pay 1 gold piece and can move a dragon from one tile to any other tile. The only thing you can do with gold is influence dragons.

Then it hit me: What if you could make a dragon your pet? Then the dragon could fly you to its own native terrain from anywhere on the board. This became the key to movement. If you do not have a pet dragon, you can move only one tile on a turn. (This was later amended to allow you to teleport to the Wizards Keep starting tile and stay there or move one tile from there.) To tame a dragon to be your pet, you must be on a tile with only one dragon and offer the dragon three gold pieces. They will always become your pet for the gold. You place the three gold on the pet card and put the dragon on the card. Each pet offers the flying service to its native terrain as well as an ability to help you in one of the strategic areas of the game. At the end of the game, each gold on your pets is a game point, and there are ways gold pieces can be removed from your pets. I am happy with how the movement in the game turned out and very glad I listened to my playtesters.

All the tiles have actions you can do when you are on them. The problem is that first you must deal with any dragons that are on the tile. In addition to making them your pets, you can capture them, spending 10 active energy in order to capture all the dragons on that space. You get fame and remove the dragons from the board. Once you are on a tile with no dragons, you can now do the action the tile allows you to do. Then, you still can discover treasure there if a treasure map you hold shows that treasure is located there. I was inspired by Takenoko

when coming up with how you would know where to find a treasure. It is not the same idea but comes from loving that game.

As you can tell, there are a lot of things you can do on a tile. The fun comes from the fact that you can do them all on one turn. You will find yourself trying to set up a few big turns in the game by maneuvering dragons around so that you can deal with them to get fame, do the action on a tile, and discover treasure all at the same time.

The one part of the game that never changed during the design process was how you get your energy. I did not want a separate system of gaining resources; I wanted it to come out of one of the basic actions in the game. I did this by making it part of your tile placement, which is the first thing you do on a turn. You place a tile on the board and gain one energy of the tile you placed and every tile that is touching it. This makes where you place tiles critical because every time you are doing something in the game that requires energy, you can pay only energy of the tile on which you are doing the action or every tile touching that tile. This is what "active energy" means. This creates lots of interesting decision space in where you place tiles and where you travel on the board to take actions.

I have not told you everything that happens in the game, so some surprises still await you. At its heart, Dragon Island

is a midweight Eurogame that gives you an adventure theme and treats dragons with the respect I believe they deserve.

Mike Fitzgerald

SPIEL '17 Preview: Bandido, or Close That Loop

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/692…iew-bandido-or-close-loop

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3118226_t.jpg]Game designer, escape room expert, and director of the Brantford Games Network

Scott Nicholson recently tweeted the following:

How true! Rare is the game that includes rules like "The player who just opened the box has won." or "Whoever has the largest hands wins." (Exception: Start Player

) After all, a game that doesn't push you around is hardly a game at all. The rules of the game constitute an artificial environment, and when you undertake the playing of a game, you submit yourself to those arbitrary, yet ideally internally consistent rules that comprise that world. You lay down cards that punish you, move into spaces that deny you, and contemplate choices that discomfort you — all in the service of trying to come out ahead of your fellow travelers.

Almost every game presents you with choices, and your willingness to engage those choices is what it means to play a game. Even the simplest games — in this case Bandido

, by Martin Nedergaard Andersen

and Swiss publisher Helvetiq

— are driven by a designer's choice to make your life more difficult. An (apparently invisible) bandit is attempting to tunnel out of jail, and you and your fellow players need to stop him.

Why would you do this? This bandit doesn't even exist, and even if he did, you're probably not employed by a law enforcement agency and have no responsibility for maintaining this person's incarceration. On the off-chance that you do belong to a fictitious police agency, you'd probably gas the tunnels with a sleeping agent or tear gas to render the bandit unable to attempt any further tunneling.

But no, that's not your way. Instead you will each take three cards in hand — cards that represent both the tunnels being created and the dead ends that prevent further movement — and you'll take turns laying down a card to extend (or stymie) this tunnel network. You might not want to play one of the cards, but you must. You have engaged this game, perhaps even on your own since solitaire play is possible, and now you must follow through.

Naturally as you take turns, the tunnels must observe some minimal level of verisimilitude. You can't abut a tunnel with a wall of dirt. If you could do that, you could negate play by stacking the deck of cards on top of the bandit and asphyxiating him. Follow the paths, narrow the routes to freedom, and hope to plug the holes.

As the game progresses, you realize that in some ways you're simply counting holes. How many ways can this guy reach freedom? Five? Can I make a play to cut that number down to four? Can I keep the holes close to one another so that someone else can bring that number down to three?

Bandido

is a simple game, marketed for players aged six and up, and I've now played the game on a purchased copy a half-dozen times, with players counts from 1-4 and with players as young as five. You might think about figuring out the odds of making this play or that, but I've hardly memorized the deck after six plays, and you're just playing the odds over and over again anyway. Maybe the next player has a card perfect for the situation and maybe they don't.

The rules are silent on whether you should talk about what's in your hand or indicate where someone might want to play, and while that absence will surely annoy some, I figure that each group will do whatever it prefers, which might be what they would have done anyway. I've played with adults in silence and with kids in total cooperation with face-up hands. It doesn't matter. You do what you want to do, and as long as all the players agree, then you're taking on the burden of those difficult lives together, each suffering the same burdens and part of the same world.

The number of tunnels shrinks and grows. You might see the net closing, then someone shrugs — perhaps you — and says, "Oh, well" as they triple the number of tunnels in play. Sometimes you benefit by narrowing the bandit's options. If everything becomes gnarled underground, you might be unable to play at all, in which case you can place your hand of cards on the bottom of the deck and draw three anew. Will you find better choices or a tunnel you'd never want to play, but must?

If your life wasn't difficult enough previously, you can give the bandit six starting tunnels instead of five. Why didn't he dig six starting tunnels in the first place? I don't know; why'd you lock him in a jail surrounded by loose dirt? I suppose you just wanted to make things difficult for yourself...

Designer Diary: Frogriders, or Leapfrogging from 1687 to the Present Day

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/678…-or-leapfrogging-1687-pre

by Asger Sams Granerud

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3326905_t.jpg]Tracking a game's origin back to 1687 is quite a feat as the game would be almost as old as what we call modern chess today. It is even rarer if we limit ourselves to games that are still played to this day. The game I'm referring to, and the game that inspired Frogriders

was Peg Solitaire

.

Before I'm beheaded by internet warriors, I am aware

that Peg Solitaire

is probably closer to a puzzle than a game, by any modern definition. However, I'll posit that at its core Peg Solitaire

has a couple of features that makes it ideal to use as a template for a modern game. I firmly believe that Daniel Skjold Pedersen

and I have expanded upon these core strengths of Peg Solitaire

to make it a viable 2017 title. I hope you will agree, and if you want to learn why I believe so, read on!

Frogriders

is a 2-4 player family game for players aged 8+ that takes 20-30 minutes to play. Each player is a member of a different tribe of elves that also ride frogs. The game takes place around the elf's tribal pond, and represents a mock battle, reenacting the bold maneuvers of times past.

At its core, though, Frogriders

is a straight forward abstract, with some modern mechanisms added: shared and hidden scoring, set collection, and light engine building. Its weight lends itself to a fast filler for the hardcore gamers (best at 2) and a full game experience especially for youngsters (best at 3-4). The gameplay is straightforward, and even if you can't spot the best move, you can always jump a frog and keep it.

The first time I remember seeing Frogriders

was on a Thursday evening after bouldering (climbing), which is when Daniel and I had our weekly design session. He turned up with this new game called "Frog N Roll" and a very rough prototype. We went back and forth on the game for a couple of weeks, without any major breakthroughs. There were too many different card decks, and they weren't in use quite often enough, plus the game ended with some analysis paralysis because 95% of the scores were open.

Despite all of these initial troubles, we had a gut feeling we were on to something. We have a few playtesters in our family who aren't actual gamers like the vast majority of our testers. In general, when they get hooked on one of our early prototypes, despite all its flaws at that stage, we know we have to push through with it. For this game it was Daniel's cousin Martin Holst. For Flamme Rouge

, it was my wife Malu — though it should be said that Malu asks more often for Frogriders

than Flamme Rouge

, with the finished copy on our shelves.

The next thing I remember was having a 70-80 minute car ride with Daniel in which we had decided to brainstorm solutions/changes. I can't remember exactly what was decided in this car, or more generally in the following weeks, but from there the game clearly had the identity it maintains today: a stripped back focus on set collection through the basic action of jumping the frogs.

We definitely cut away some of the different card decks, and we also introduced hidden objectives. This last part both helped reduce AP, as the score couldn't be calculated precisely at any given point, and created the "reveal" at the end, ensuring there is excitement in the wrap-up — and possibly even surprise winners! That was the right direction to go with Frogriders

as it is now much more of a fast-flowing tactical game for families than a brain-burning experience for gamers.

In the first iterations of Frogriders

, the direction you jumped in each turn also mattered, as did four zones on the board. The current version focuses your attention on your main goal much more clearly — which frog is best to collect this round, and how do I mess with everyone else — whereas the first ones simply had too many differing agendas fighting for your attention.

Earlier I claimed that Peg Solitaire

had some features that were ripe for use in a modern board game. The features are the board and the basic move that removes a piece each turn. (There aren't many other features left...) As the board starts full of pieces, there are few legal moves and hence you are eased into the gameplay. A couple of turns into the game, the options explode, and each move creates numerous new options for the next player. Towards the end, however, the pieces become so scarce that legal moves start decreasing again, and you are likely looking for that one frog you need to complete your collection. It even becomes feasible to calculate a couple of moves ahead, if you're so inclined.

This simple core mechanism allows for three distinct phases when you play Frogriders

. It naturally and gradually changes from opening game through midgame and onto endgame. Now I don't want to oversell this point as the game moves so quickly that you might miss these phases if you blink, but they are certainly there. On the first move, only four options are available; on the second, six moves; then eight, etc. It doesn't actually progress in a linear fashion, though, and then there is the tipping point. When you get into the endgame, the options start decreasing, and thinking ahead to influence how rapidly is certainly feasible.

When the basic action you're doing each turn is the same, it is important that the game evolves in other ways to keep it interesting and varied, and Frogriders

(in my opinion) achieves that without introducing extra rules to force the issue. I also think it is a huge plus for a family game that when you're trying the game for the first time, the options up front are quite limited.

One of the things Daniel and I are most proud of with Frogriders

is the pace at which it plays. Of course there might be gamers out there for whom analysis paralysis becomes an issue, but we haven't quite experienced it yet. When we pitched the design to publishers at SPIEL 2015, we played a three-player game in all the meetings where we showed it, despite having only 30 minutes AND showing other games. The first review that was live on BGG

also shows this well as it has both a brief rules explanation, a two-player playthrough, and a mini-review in under 15 minutes!

Frogriders

is published by Eggertspiele

, and the game wouldn't have been anywhere near as polished without the work of their excellent lead developer [user=vittorioso]Viktor Kobilke[/user] and illustrator Alexander Jung

. They did an outstanding job on both the illustrations and the graphic user interface, and we are proud to work with these talented people on new projects. Of course, the ever fantastic Stronghold Games

is the U.S. publisher.

Asger Harding Granerud

New Game Round-up: Old Ones in AuZtralia, Explorers in the North Sea, and Sarahs in the Timeline

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/693…auztralia-explorers-north

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3713520_t.png]• I'm a sucker for time travel, so when I see a game (or a book or a movie or an opera) on the topic, I pay attention to it. The latest design spotted in this category is Sarah's Singularity

, a Thomas Gutschmidt

design that Daily Magic Games

will Kickstart in October 2017 for a planned Q4 2018 release. Whether I'll ever play the game is an open question, but know about the game's existence is the first step — unless events change retroactively and this section of my post turns into an introduction to Sarah's Singed Reality

, a cooperative game about a woman's attempts to survive an apartment fire:

Future Sarah has fractured the timelines and it's up to you, an earlier-version Sarah, to solve missions and set things right. Bring dinosaurs to Ancient Egypt and ComiCon panelists to Feudal Japan while trying to rescue lost companions scattered in time. Put companions to work in their own times to complete missions. You've got seven time jumps to complete as many missions as possible, but watch out for paradoxes; if two or more Sarahs meet in the same time zone, everything about them will change in an instant and all your plans could go up in smoke.

In Sarah's Singularity, players select an assortment of time periods from prehistoric Pangea to ComicCon 2012 and establish a set of missions for each period. Stranded companions from far-ranging times are scattered among the chosen periods and each player gets a "Sarah Card" with special powers. Finally, players choose two secret objective cards for hidden endgame scoring and a Chronologist is selected from the gathered players.

Each round, Future Sarah visits a time period to strand another companion and the players simultaneously and secretly select a time period to jump to where they hope to solve a mission by matching icons on the mission card with icons on the stranded companion cards and the icons on their own hand of helpful companions. Typically, when the selected periods are revealed, they're resolved in chronological order. However, if two or more Sarahs (including the Future Sarah) land in the same time period, they paradox! Those player immediately turn in their Sarah Cards and get a new one at random, losing the special powers they may have planned to use to help solve the mission. The Chronologist then decides the order in which the paradoxing players gets to take their turns. The paradoxing player who goes last gets to be the new Chronologist.

Players claim solved missions as victory points. They also gain bonus points and a wild icon token for rescuing a stranded companion and hidden endgame points through their secret objective cards. After seven rounds, the points are tallied and a winner is announced.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1924148_t.jpg]

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2793289_t.jpg]

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2825869_t.jpg]• In June 2017, Renegade Game Studios

announced

that it would bring Shem Phillips

' Raiders of the North Sea

to North America, and now it has placed a Q4 2017 release date for the two other standalone titles in the series — Shipwrights of the North Sea

and Explorers of the North Sea

— as well as The North Sea Runesaga

, an expansion that can be used with any or all of these games.

• Renegade also plans to release a new edition of Wei-Min Ling

's Planet Defenders

, which debuted from Taiwanese publisher EmperorS4 at SPIEL '16. In the game, players take turns moving characters (guided by restrictions on the board that constantly change) to collect energy and move among the planets to repel invade robots. Renegade's version of the game replaces the cardboard standees with 3D miniatures.

• I thought that I had posted about this title, but no, that was only in my mind. In mid-2017, New Zealand-based publisher SchilMil Games

announced a two-year deal with designer Martin Wallace

that will include a game set in Middle-earth, a co-designed game about which no details were given, and the 2018 release of AuZtralia

:

Ever since 1180, for seven long centuries, the Old Ones held full sway over the riches of the Earth and the affairs of humankind. All that changed in 1888. For in that momentous year, Sherlock Holmes and a clandestine fraternity of intrepid Victorian heroes succeeded in vanquishing these monstrous tyrants and driving them from their lands. Humanity had triumphed, but the countries of Europe and America were in a terrible state. The land was poisoned and food shortages were a constant scourge.

Other parts of the planet had not yet been explored as the Old Ones had enforced a draconic ban on exploration. Humanity, enjoying its new-found freedom, sent ships out to explore the world. A vast new continent was discovered on the far side of the world. At first called Terra Australis, it quickly became known as Australia. Brave prospectors and surveyors came to explore the new continent. They were followed by pioneers and settlers who constructed ports and built railways into the vast interior, developing farms and shipping the produce back to the hungry masses they had left behind. Untold riches in coal, iron and gold were discovered in the hinterland — but that was not all that awaited the pioneers...

There was a reason why a ban existed on exploring this part of the world. Unbeknownst to all, hidden in the outback of the land, the Old Ones had created a secret base. Following their defeat the surviving Old Ones and some of their loyal human allies made their way to their holdfasts in the arid plains beyond the Great Dividing Range. As the colonists spread, so the Old Ones began to stir, hell-bent on driving these irksome intruders back into the sea. Terrible creatures bred by the Old Ones started to move across the land, destroying everyone they encountered, blighting everything in their path.

Faced with this horror, the pioneers pinned their hopes on the one advantage they had: the power of modern military technology, which was now so much more advanced than in 1888 when mankind was last called upon to face against the Old Ones.

Inspired by Martin Wallace's A Study in Emerald, AuZtralia is an economic/adventure game set in an alternate reality 1930s in which Australia is waiting to be explored. As well as riches from the land, darkness and insanity lies in the outback. The game meshes themes of exploration, adventure, and economy (farming and mining), with battles against fantastical Old One creatures who act as an in-game player. It also boasts a randomized board set-up, an innovative combat mechanism, and a surprisingly tense solo play mode.

• RWBY: Combat Ready

is a board game based on the RWBY animated series

created by Monty Oum and produced by Rooster Teeth. U.S. publisher Arcane Wonders

is handling development of the game, about which no details have been announced (as far as I can tell).

SPIEL '17 Preview: Azul, or Tiling Up Your Hopes and Dreams

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/693…tiling-your-hopes-and-dre

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3718275_t.jpg]I've already posted an overview

of Michael Kiesling

's Azul

, which Plan B Games

will debut at SPIEL '17 in October, but now I've played the game many more times since then — ten total on a pre-production copy and a review copy, four times with four players and six times with two — so let's talk about it some more.

In a recent preview

of a new edition of Alex Randolph's Venice Connection

, I talked about that game's Nim

-style gameplay. Nim

is extremely basic: Start with three or more heaps of objects, then take turns with another player to remove any number of objects from precisely one heap; whoever removes the last object wins. Unfortunately, Nim

is also solved, which makes it uninteresting to play — but the framework of Nim

gives you a great structure upon which other better

games can be built.

Azul

is one of those games.

Now, the premise of Azul

is ridiculous. You're supposed to be a tile-laying artist who has "been challenged to embellish the walls of the Royal Palace of Evora" in order to impress King Manuel I, but at most you'll complete a 5x5 grid of tiles and in most cases you won't have more than a couple of lines of tiles on that grid with numerous holes throughout, and I daresay that only the daftest of kings would be impressed by such a half-assed display of tilery. Perhaps that 5x5 grid is meant to suggest some larger tile-pattern that will be used throughout the palace, but even then you think the king would look at your unfinished work and suggest that you'd be better off as a sheep herder.

No matter. The premise of the game is mere window dressing on what's going to get you to the table — the wonderfully chunky colored bits — and keep you coming back to the table after that first playing, that being the Nim

-style gameplay alluded to earlier.

At the start of each round, you fill up five, seven, or nine discs (depending on whether you have two, three, or four players) with four tiles drawn at random from a bag, then place a first player marker in the center of the table. You take turns choosing a disc or the center of the table, then taking all tiles of one color from this location and placing them in a single row on your personal player board; if you chose a disc, then you push any remaining tiles into the center of the table. If you're the first person to choose the center, you take the first player marker along with your chosen tiles.

If you can't fit all of the titles into your row of choice, with the rows being 1-5 spaces in length, then excess tiles "fall" to the bottom of your player board, with you being penalized for such waste at round's end. You can add more tiles to a row you've already started as long as all the tiles are the same color.

You take turns choosing tiles until they've all been claimed, then for each complete row on your player board, you move one of those tiles into the matching-colored space on the same row in the 5x5 grid. You score points for each of these moved tiles, and if you can cluster those tile placements, you score more points. Tiles in incomplete rows stay where they are, while all excess tiles from completed rows are placed in a discard pile. Continue to play rounds this way until someone completes a horizontal row on their grid. At the end of this round, the game ends and you score bonus points for completed rows (not much), completed columns (worth more), and completed colors (the best of all).

That's it — Azul

in three paragraphs, three dry paragraphs that don't get across the wonderful tenseness that develops during the game. In that first round, you're mostly trying to grab whatever seems best. Can you take three tiles of the same color? Then do that. Can you take only two? Then do that. But wait? Which tiles are being pushed into the middle, and how many of them lie on other discs? Which color did the player before you take, and are you giving them a gift of tiles on their next turn? You feel things out, take this or that, then the round ends, you score a few points, then the game picks up from there.

Now you all have investments, whether tiles in your grid or rows of tiles in waiting, and those claimed colors — both by you and everyone else — start affecting everything else that you do. Does the player behind you need two yellow to complete a row? Take them for yourself! Make them take actions to scratch out only a single tile each turn, thereby possibly dumping multiples of colors in the middle that you can then scoop up.

The same number of tiles are put into play each round (except possibly in the four-player game when the bag runs low because so many tiles have been used), but those tiles needn't be distributed evenly. You want to grab great globs of them for yourself so that you can complete those four- and five-space rows quickly and repeatedly. If you let those rows drag along half-filled from one round to the next, then you have little hope of completing columns or grabbing five tiles of the same color, and that's where you land the big points, so be greedy at the expense of others, and the only ways to be greedy are to:

1. Pay attention to who's taking what, and

2. Take tiles from the right places at the right times.

This latter aspect of the game only starts emerging after your first couple of rounds. You realize that if you had taken that one red tile from the center instead of the final disc then someone else would have taken a tile from that disc, possibly allowing you to grab three blue tiles instead of two since one blue was dumped into the center. Or you see three blue already in the center and realize that everyone else either already has blue in their fourth and fifth rows or is at work on some other color and can't

take blue, so you let it sit a round to build up to four or more tiles so that you can complete a row in one go. Anyone who's drafted in Magic: The Gathering

or other games will recognize this tension: How long can you wait to take something? Will someone else snatch it first? What's more, can you wait longer so that the pot builds?

I picture the ending of each round in Azul

as the moment in The Matrix Revolutions

when Neo and Trinity briefly rise above the clouds to spy sunlight they would have never expected to see — only to then plummet downward into the thick of battle once again where fresh tiles have been laid out and everyone is fighting and you're not sure what's going to happen. (I apologize for making you think about The Matrix Revolutions

.) The rising tension mimics that feeling of when you're reaching for cards in a new round of a trick-taking game: What's possible this time? How can you score what you need and dodge the rest of the time?

Azul

is even tighter at two players because you know that whichever tiles you don't get, the other player will, and this makes the Nim

comparison even more evident: If I take this tile, then you'll likely take those two, which means I can take these and possibly set myself up for those the turn after. I might want to take these four tiles, but if I can leave them and force you to take them when you have no room, then you'll lose six points, which is pretty much the same as me gaining six points.

You can still do such things with four players, though, and this can be even more satisfying. You see that the next player likely wants a black tile and the person after that a yellow, so if you take this blue (when otherwise you might not have cared which color you took), then player #4 gets stuck with lots of tiles they can't use. Yay, collaborative kneecapping! We used similar tactics in my most recent game to ensure that a player couldn't grab two black tiles to complete a row and therefore trigger the end of the game. (He was the only player who had four tiles in a row.) We hadn't counted out the endgame bonuses, but that player seemed to be in the lead, so we wanted more time and took turns pushing him away from the door.

I haven't even mentioned the gray variant game board — not advanced, mind you, but "variant", although I'd advise playing on the colored side for your first game or two. When you play on the gray board, you place tiles under the same restrictions, with each row and column of your 5x5 grid allowed to have each color only once, but outside of that you have the freedom to place a tile anywhere in a row.

What has happened in my games is that scores are higher since you can cluster the tiles as soon as you place them, but you also tend to box yourself into corners that will be increasingly unpleasant as the game continues. In the image above, I'm on my way to completing a column — assuming that I can finish the second and fourth rows before the round ends (or the game, really) — but if I place black in the fourth spot in that column, then I'll need to place black in the fifth spot of the adjacent column, but I can't even start working on that black row until I clear out the yellow, and that yellow's not going to score my much anyway, but I've started it, so now I need to end it. If I instead place the black in the fourth spot of the middle column, then I can't place both the light blue and yellow in the second column or else I doom myself to never completing the column since black would have to go in the fourth spot and can't.

Whenever you take tiles, as with those yellow in the bottom row, you can choose to dump them on the floor instead of placing them in a row, but that's like purposefully stepping on a nail. Better to get small points than negative points, right? Maybe?

My only regret with Azul

right now is that I have many more games to preview ahead of SPIEL '17, so I won't be able to play it as much as I want. I realize that might sound like bragging rather than an actual regret, but it's not. To do a good job in this space, I can't post over and over again about the same game, but thankfully Azul

will wait for me until I call once again. That waiting time for the tiling shouldn't be a problem given the king's low expectations...

Artist Diary: Lisboa, or "That Game Is Too Blue!"

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/674…y-lisboa-or-game-too-blue

by Ian O'Toole

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3209553_t.jpg] Lisboa

is my third collaboration with Vital Lacerda

and Eagle-Gryphon Games

, following The Gallerist

and Vinhos Deluxe Edition

.

However, it was actually the first game I worked on for Vital. Having first started to discuss working together, Vital asked me for a sketch of the game's cover, which for almost two years was the sole indication of Lisboa

's visual style. But I had barely started when Vital asked me to work on The Gallerist

, then Vinhos Deluxe

. It was a couple of busy years before returning to Lisboa

.

From the start, it was evident that this was a game Vital was passionate about. While all of his games are well researched, the enthusiasm and knowledge with which he spoke about the history of his city was infectious. After much discussion and a perusal of the many, many reference images that Vital had gathered, I wanted to make this a visually unique and authentic game. I wanted people from Lisboa to recognize their city in every part of the game.

For me, there was never a question as to where the visual direction of the game should go. The unique style of Portugal's Azulejos painted tiles leapt out at me immediately. I knew straight away that we weren't going to find anything that was more distinctive or authentic to the theme. There was also a striking visual link between the delicate artistry found in these tiles, and the fact that many are now chipped, cracked, and broken. This ties in beautifully with the theme of constructing a great city from the ruins of a natural disaster. In addition, the style is both historical and representative of modern Lisboa as these incredible pieces of art can still be seen throughout the city.

To help get my head around the task ahead, I printed out one of Vital's earlier prototypes and played the game with a patient friend. This is absolutely essential when designing a complex game as I need to see how the pieces interact, how the stacks of counters need to be placed, and where the sticking points in the gameplay are. While the game was running pretty well at that stage, it was apparent that development work was still to be done, so I decided not to start with the board. The Azulejos style would demand a lot of time-intensive detail, and changing it significantly as gameplay evolved would create problems. I decided to start with the iconography instead.

The graphic designer in me always tends towards clean, simple iconography. However, it was clear that this approach would cause problems here as I wanted to stay as true as possible to our chosen style. Because of this, I approached the icons as miniature illustrations, using key signifiers to tie groups of them together. All of the resources and the icons related to them (such as Produce) have a circular base. Both of the main institutions in the game, the clergy and the treasury, share a diamond-shaped base. All of these icons, as with everything else, began life as thumbnails in a sketchbook before being fully rendered digitally.

The next task was to work on the cards, both political and decrees. While the four decks of political cards are largely separated only by color, design elements such as the decorative flourishes vary from deck to deck to further distinguish them.

As I moved on to the ship cards and began considering how they operated on the table and in conjunction with the player board, a nagging issue that wouldn't go away began to surface. The original player board (called your portfolio) was a simple rectangular shape, and cards played to your portfolio were laid beside it in two rows. This caused a number of issues for me. First, it used a lot of table space. Second, once the cards were played to the table, only the top icon was relevant. All of the other information had no further effect on gameplay.

Mulling this over in my sketchbook, I decided to strongly recommend we make a big change to how this all worked. The idea was to obscure the information on the card that became irrelevant by tucking it under the player board, simultaneously saving on table space. This isn't a new idea obviously, and it's one that my own favorite game, Glory to Rome

, uses well. However, I also felt that we could aid the player in learning the rules of the game by doing this.

Each card has a benefit that the player receives immediately when the card is played to the portfolio. By making this icon the one that got tucked under the board, we were able to introduce a simple general rule: "When you cover something up, you receive it." Adding arrows to the area behind these icons to remind players where (top or bottom) each card should be tucked also helped during the learning process.

Consequently, ship cards became a bit of a challenge as the original mechanism had players flip the ship cards once they sailed away after having been filled with goods. Not wanting to force players to lift the cards from under their portfolio every turn to flip them, I devised the "dock" area on the player board that serves as a space to store goods. This had a number of positive effects. First, it changed the ship cards from portrait to landscape, which serves as a clear indicator to every player of how many ship cards are currently in play. Second, it freed up most of the ship card, which goods would previously have covered, to show the illustration, as well as clear indications of the ship's hull size and selling bonus. The goods spaces also now act as a track of sorts, with the ship card itself indicating the maximum amount of goods that can be loaded onto it.

This redesign of the entire manner in which the player's portfolio operates was probably the biggest turnaround we had during the process of creating the visuals for Lisboa

. A lot of discussion and convincing was necessary, and a lot of rules rewriting resulted (apologies to all involved!), but I feel that the result is a good solution for the game.

Then began the long process of creating the board. The first step was to lay everything out in simple shapes without any illustration or thematic elements. This creates the core functionality of the layout. The key elements at this stage are flow, clarity, and hierarchy of information, as well as ergonomics in regard to pieces that will be placed onto the board.

A change that was made at this stage was to move the treasury track to the center of the board so that it was more related to the noble offices, the ship yard, and the city itself, all of which it affects. Once this bare-bones version was complete, I printed it out full size to move components around and make sure it felt right.

Another change I wanted to try out was having a standard tile for the stores, but having a cut-out "entrance" that would indicate which street the tile faces. This would have the positive effect of reducing the number of tiles needed from 40 down to 24 (since they would no longer be color-specific) and would also make set-up easier and faster. You can see here my rudimentary prototype that I presented to Vital, who liked it enough to give it the go-ahead.

Once the layout was working, the process of illustrating the board began. There are no real shortcuts here; it's just focusing on each section in turn and trying not to go mad in the process. The drawing process took about a week to complete. Once the main elements were in place, the iconography was added, and I started to introduce color into areas to differentiate them. This is a fine balancing act. Too much color betrays the style we're working in and distracts from the icons during play.

The box cover was the next big task, but time was beginning to run short. This and a number of other unrelated factors led to the cover illustration being completed in just two days — two long, long days. Thinking of the box as a single piece of design (rather than as a front cover and four sides), I liked the idea of players picking up a chunk of rubble, with the painted tiles still attached to the front. The fact that I knew the final box would be pretty heavy helped to reinforce the concept.

Once most of the elements were complete, I made a full prototype and organized to play it with a few different groups. The reason for this was to uncover issues that don't become apparent until new players sit down with the game. I always make a point of not using a player aid during these playtests at it puts the burden of communication on the board and other components.

These playtests proved invaluable, and a last round of updates were made for further testing by Vital and approval by the folks at Eagle-Gryphon Games, the publisher.

There are many, many more elements to this game that needed individual attention, such as the thematic custom meeple designs and public building illustrations, as well as the task of splitting the player board into three separate levels of cardboard before production.

It's been a long road since that cover sketch I created in an afternoon in 2014, but a hugely rewarding one. I hope I've managed to do justice to the amount of passion that Vital has poured into his game, and it's not only one of the projects I'm most proud of from a creative standpoint, but also a game I really love to play. I hope you will, too.

Ian O'Toole

P.S.: Sorry it's so blue.

SPIEL '17 Preview: Iquazú, or Majorities on the Falls

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/694…quazu-or-majorities-falls

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3744088_t.jpg]German publisher HABA

kicked off its family game line in 2015

with Adventure Land

, Spookies

, and Rüdiger Dorn's Karuba

, which went on to pick up a Spiel des Jahres nomination in 2016.

The company released more family games in 2016, and for 2017 it's going even bigger, releasing Karuba: The Card Game

(as well as a Karuba Junior

for its traditional audience of younger players), the somewhat traditional roll-dice-to-get-stuff King of the Dice

(to be previewed later), the abstract-ish card-laying game CONEX

, the firecracker-tossing Boom, Bang, Gold

, and the game I'm talking about today: Michael Feldkötter

's Iquazú

.

A glance at the cover of Iquazú

might have you thinking of Avatar

, but the gameplay is set in the Iguazú Falls located on the border of Argentina and Brazil. I'm guessing that "Iquazú" is how Germans spell "Iguazú", although the name change might be used to indicate that the action in this game takes place on an alternate Earth, one in which the Inox tribe — which includes you — wants to hide their gems for safekeeping behind the Iguazú waterfalls. To do this, they have called upon their water dragon Silon to temporarily block the flow of the river so that they can embed their gems in the rocky walls behind the falls.

All of which is a familiar genre premise to set up the somewhat fiddly, yet extremely cool mechanism that represents the falls, which can be seen below in this set-up for two players:

Okay, that shows you the bits in the game: a box of gems in four colors with each player using only one of those colors, a box of wooden water droplets, cards in three colors, a scoring track, and...something in the middle that isn't exactly clear. How about we look at this close-up image instead?

Yes, there we go! The colored spaces on the rock wall represent holes where you can stash gems. Why are these spots in three colors? Because otherwise you wouldn't have much of a game. In terms of the setting, I'm not sure what these colors are supposed to represent — perhaps the different colors of vines down which you must rappel in order to reach this location — but whatever it is, these colors matter during the game, so pay attention to them.

On a turn, you either draw four cards from the deck (with these cards showing one of the three colors on the rock wall) or you play 1-5 cards of the same color to place a gem on a hole in the rock wall of that same color. Why 1-5 cards? Because the more cards you play, the farther to the right you can place that gem.

What's the point of all this? Distracting yourself from the terrors of the outside world? Perhaps so, but more specifically you want to place gems in a better way than your fellow tribe members, and the only way such things are measured are in points.

More specifically, each column of the rock wall will be scored once during the game, and when it's scored, the player with the most gems in that column scores the most points available for that column, the player with the secondmost gems scores the secondmost points, and so on — but note that in a game with n players, only n-1 players will score points in a column. If players are tied in gem count, then the player with the bottommost gem breaks the tie. Let's assume that they took more chances rappelling down the rock face and are now being rewarded.

But wait, there's more! Whenever a column is scored, you also look for majorities in each row, with a bonus token being given to whoever has the most gems in that row; ties are broken by whoever has the gem farthest to the right, with the bottommost right position being the final tiebreaker. These bonus tokens net you:

• Points, which can be hidden for now and added to your score at game's end for a "surprise" ending

• Cards, with you spending those tokens whenever you choose

• A joker ability so that you can fill a hole by discarding the right number of cards without care for their color

• An extra turn, which is the best bonus of all, so fight for these!

You can use as many bonus tokens as you want on a turn, and since the points for each column escalate as the game progresses, you'll likely want to save these for critical turns in the future.

That's almost the entire game. All of these components assembled in this elaborate structure are in the service of you either drawing cards or spending cards to place a gem each turn — with one exception. The last player in turn order at the start of the game holds a box of water droplets, and at the end of this player's turn, they place a droplet in the highest empty space in the leftmost column. The dragon is moving slowly across the falls, and the water is starting to drip down as it moves.

This drip-drip-drip functions just like any other drip-drip-drip you've encountered in music or movies. It's a timing device, something to ensure that the game keeps moving; more importantly, the drips pressure you and influence what you want to do because they will fill open spaces in the current column, perhaps locking in majorities that you wanted to challenge, whether the lone vertical column that will be scored or the five bonus actions available when that scoring takes place.

As much as Iquazú

is about majorities, the game is also about timing. I've played five times on a preproduction copy from HABA — four times with two players and once with four — and the more you play, the more you start paying attention to the rhythm of the game. You know that 0-n gems (or possibly more due to bonus turns) will be added to the board each turn, along with one water drop; you see what everyone is fighting for, whether due to intent or due to them having certain cards; you know that in at most x turns the column will fill, the waterfall will advance, and bonuses will be distributed, so what will you do in those turns?

Timing plays out in multiple ways during the game. If a column fills and scores, and the next column is already full, then it will score as well — but only after you've slid the waterfall right, hiding the leftmost column of gems and revealing a new set of bonus tokens to be distributed. Yes, more bonuses! The cost to place gems in the rightmost columns is high, but they'll factor in to you winning bonus tokens multiple times, probably more than paying back that investment although you don't know what the bonuses will be until the waterfall moves.

The final three columns score all at once, with a huge payoff for the leftmost column and middling (yet still meaningful) points for the two remaining rock columns. The final two columns of bonuses are nothing but points since other rewards hold little interest by that point. You should have already spent your collected bonuses for cards, extra turns, or (far less rarely) color-changing joker powers. Leave nothing in reserve!

In short, Iquazú

plays out like multiple, old-school overlapping area majority games, with the moving waterfall shifting the balance of each player's holdings over the course of the game. Despite its straightforward gameplay Iquazú

takes a while to set up, but the waterfall structure is ingenious, exemplifying the effort that HABA puts into a design to create a particular experience during play.

Designer Diary: 250+ Plays of Iron Curtain, or How to Measure Replayability

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/679…iron-curtain-or-how-measu

by Daniel Skjold Pedersen

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3576654_t.jpg] Iron Curtain

is a short and brutal microgame cramped with tough decisions in a 20- to 30-minute time frame. You play as the U.S. or the Soviet Union, map out the Iron Curtain to your advantage, and control the most countries and regions on your side of the curtain.

Playing Iron Curtain

well is no easy ride. We have made an effort to include as many interesting and tricky decision points as possible in the slight twenty-card framework. You will play cards that aid you greatly, but also open new opportunities for your opponent to take.

The Journey that Began 13 Days Ago

Before I continue, let's pause for a minute. I feel this is the time to thank all of you who played 13 Days

, our first Cold War game, and shared the love and wonderful stories. I can positively say that Iron Curtain

(and 13 Minutes

) would not have existed today had 13 Days

not been so well received. We are immensely grateful. This is why we design games, so thank you all.

The Third Cold War Game

When 13 Days

came out, it was branded the Twilight Struggle

filler game. I used that moniker myself, not knowing if it would come back to haunt me one day. I still don't know.

13 Minutes

, which was released in early 2017, is the 13 Days

microgame. It boils down the experience of brinkmanship in a box.

Following this line of thinking, Iron Curtain

could be said to be the Twilight Struggle

microgame. I may be going out on a limb here...again. Time will tell. Iron Curtain

shares some game concepts with the 13 Days

/ Minutes

titles, but it very much has an identity of its own.

Different Game, Same Cold War

I asked on social media for topics to discuss in this diary, and the question that came up the most was how we decided to make Iron Curtain

different from previous Cold War games. Three games in fairly short succession will beget that question.

The short answer is that there is no "13" in the title.

The artistic answer is that Iron Curtain

by intent has a distinct look with more vibrant colors and layout. The message we are trying to convey is that this is not 13 Days II

…or III

…or whatever! We hope Iron Curtain

will stand on its own legs and be judged on its own merits, good as well as bad.

The game design answer is that Iron Curtain

offers a different core experience from the other games. I will highlight two key experiences below that were design goals of ours from the outset. There are more, but I will leave that for you to explore.

First Design Goal: Building the Iron Curtain

Iron Curtain

has a proper in-game geography, something that wasn't present in 13 Days

/ Minutes

.

Cards double as actions and as key countries during the superpower struggle. When you play a card, it immediately goes to the table next to countries of the same region. As the game progresses, the world map is built one country at a time.

How you build the world now matters a great deal. When you want to expand your influence later, you are limited by your current presence on the table. Except for certain events, you may move only into adjacent countries, so some countries are within easy grasp, while others will take much greater effort to reach.

This is a feature you may — no, let me rephrase — this is a feature you should

use to your advantage. How so? Be the first to drop two or more cubes onto a country to control it and create a temporary safe haven behind that line where you can drop cards. Play the first card of a new region so that you have the freedom to place that card where you have easy access to it and your opponent does not.

Second Design Goal: Adding Doses of Suspension and Agony

Iron Curtain

has no scoring cards of the type with which you might be familiar in Twilight Struggle

and no hidden agendas as used in 13 Days

. In fact, every card is a potential scoring card.

A region scores when all cards of that region are played to the table. So should you play early to jump ahead in that region, or wait to control when the scoring will happen? Or perhaps abandon the region entirely, discarding the card at the end of the round? Managing and sequencing your hand of cards is the single greatest challenge you will face in this game.

What all this means is that you will see scoring approach all over the table — at the same time. You are constantly trying to pre-empt your opponent's moves in, say, Africa and Europe, yet you also want to put pressure on them in the Middle East and Asia. The card you want to play allows the use of only two cubes, so what do you prioritize?!

250 Plays and Counting — A Playtester's Perspective

We always intended Iron Curtain

to be a highly replayable microgame with layers of depth, a game you can play over and over and still learn new tricks.

The question is: How do you measure replayability? How do you know when you've succeeded? This would be the perfect moment for me to derail the designer diary and go on an analytical rant, but I won't. Instead I sat down to talk to Sagad Al-Serjawi, a most dedicated playtester who has played an insane number of games of Iron Curtain

.

You could say I am turning this designers' diary into a playtester's diary.

Daniel:

Hi, Sagad. Thank you for joining this designer diary. So tell me, how many games of Iron Curtain

have you played?
Sagad:

I don't know! I stopped counting after 250 games. I played with everyone from friends to family to strangers at a bar one time. You can say I got addicted...

D:

Why do you think you went on to play such a huge number of games?
S:

It's a fun game, and no turns are the same. There is always a new challenge to figure out. The game takes place during the Cold War, and you can really feel the pressure from your enemy; whether you play the USSR or the U.S. you will always find new ways of winning (or losing).

D:

Do you prefer to play a particular side?
S:

Hmm, I'd say U.S. for no particular reason. Both feel balanced.

D:

Do you recall a cool move you made during a game?
S:

Well, my friend had taken Cuba and invested a lot of energy in holding it. I was playing USSR and got the Brazil card at the right moment so that I could use the ability to remove his cubes from there, thereby making it possible to enter.

D:

With all those plays did the experience change over time?
S:

It sure did. To be honest, the first time I heard about Iron Curtain

I did not believe it would be something for me, but to my surprise it is now one of my favorite games. The first time you play Iron Curtain

everything will be a surprise. You don't know what the different cards do and what tactics to use, so the first game is usually quite slow. Then you get the flow.

D:

How many games had you played at that point?
S:

After around five games I understood how the game is built. I began planning bluffs like placing some cubes in Asia while my sole objective was to conquer Europe. At this point I also planned which cards to throw away in the Aftermath, and where to invest influence cubes. I personally loved this state since there were still room for mistakes. The best way to learn is through mistakes. That changed at a later point.

D:

How did it change?
S:

Once I hit the point of mastering the game, everything turned from kids play into hardcore thinking. It was fifty or so plays in. At this point I started thinking several moves ahead and I knew all cards in and out. I had no room for mistakes — any little mistake could cost me the game. The tactics changed as well. You start building scenarios in your head and learn when to drop off the opponent's cards.

D:

Thank you, Sagad, and thanks to everyone reading all the way to the bottom of this diary. Have fun with the game.

Daniel Skjold Pedersen

P.S.: If you are at SPIEL '17, swing by the Ultra PRO

and Jolly Roger Games

booth as Asger

and I will be there to say hi and demo/sign games on Friday, October 27 at 13:00-14:00 and on Sunday, October 29 at 12:00-13:00.

SPIEL '17 Preview: Multiple, or Saved by Zero

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/694…ew-multiple-or-saved-zero

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3708334_t.png]Many games from amateur Japanese designers seem to be born from the notion of taking an idea and saying, "Can we make a game out of that?" Then they do it. The quality of the games can be all over the place, but I love seeing the creative spirit in action, particularly because the ideas are often ones you wouldn't find elsewhere. Plus, I love trying card games of all types, and no one delivers card games like amateur Japanese designers.

Takashi Yamaya

's Multiple

from doujin publisher KUA

seems to have been born along these lines. The number deck consists of four copies each of the numbers 0-9, the addition sign (+), and the subtraction sign (-). Players receive seven cards at random and place them face up on the table in front of them. Be the first player to rid yourself of cards, and you win the game — but you can't just throw the cards on the floor. Oh, no, you must get rid of them by creating multiples of target numbers.

How does this work? One player takes the mission deck, then reveals the top card, which shows something like "Multiples of 5". If possible, this player then creates a multiple of 5 using one or more cards in front of them, then discards those cards. You can use a single card (which isn't possible here), two cards to create a two-digit number (again not possible), or multiple single numbers that are connected by one or more addition or subtraction signs. Success! You have both 9 - 4 and 7 - 2. Which do you want to use?

If you can't or don't want to use your cards to create a multiple of the target number — which will be 3, 4, 5, or 7 — then you draw a new card from the number deck to give yourself something else that you need to discard. That's the opposite of progress, sure, but that's how games work, by making things difficult

.

You can't create a multiple that someone else has already used for a mission, so if you have choices, look around the table to see who you can block. You also can't use 0 as a multiple, which seems reasonable given that while 0 is indeed a multiple of all numbers, creating a 0 to rid yourself of cards is lame.

A couple of missions force all players to draw a card, then the active player must draw a new mission. Anti-progress strikes again!

I've played Multiple

three times on a review copy from Japon Brand, which will sell the game at SPIEL '17, once each with two, three, and four players. After playing, one of the players joked that it was almost a game, yet when we played again with someone who had just arrived at the game table, I did far better than I did the first time.

In the first game with two players, our number card counts bobbed up and down like corks on a wave, but in the second and third games I had an idea of which mission cards remained in the deck and I played to those probabilities. You can still be thwarted in that effort by the "draw a card" mission or the missions that prohibit you from using the addition or subtraction signs, but even so, you can play better than you did the first time. You realize that you can string together multiple signs to create a target, e.g., 8 - 4 + 1, or that you might want to save a 5 or 0 in case a "multiple of 5" card is revealed. Okay, you probably don't want to save a 0; they seem terrible, aside from making an easy 30, 40, 50, or 70, in which case they're golden.

I'm probably overthinking this, aren't I?

SPIEL '17 Preview: Minute Realms, or A City-Builder By Any Other Name...

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/694…ealms-or-city-builder-any

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3721454_t.png] Minute Realms

from Stefano Castelli

and dV Giochi

is billed as "the most compact city-building game ever", but I think that statement does a disservice to the game because if you're like me, you have certain expectations when it comes to city-building games. When you play something in this genre, you probably expect (1) adjacency to matter in some way, such as when you're rewarded for building a park next to a playground or punished for building a slaughterhouse next to the kindergarten, and (2) expansion opportunities for things that already exist, such as being able to place additional floors on a building or upgrade a school to a college.

Minute Realms

doesn't have either of these elements, and while technically each player is building their own city, they're building a city in some undefined medieval-ish time period when it might be good to have a monastery (depending on your particular circumstances in the game), but you don't care where it goes and the monastery isn't going to be altered once you plop it in whatever random spot seems best.

Instead I'd classify Minute Realms

— with "minute" being pronounced like the unit of time, not like something extremely small — as a set-collection game, and the elements of those sets are city buildings from some undefined medieval-ish time period. Assemble — one might say "build", but I'm not that one — the best collection of buildings, and you win the game.

More precisely, Minute Realms

is a set-collection game with a tight money management system. You will likely always be hustling for coins, and if you're not, then you're probably doing something wrong.

Taking a big picture look at this minute game, each round you add one card to your city, and at the end of eight rounds you tally the points in your city to see who wins. Most cards have a fixed point value, while some score based on how many buildings of a particular category (e.g., production or clerical) you have and a handful have special scoring rules, such as the bank in the image below which is worth 1 point for each coin you hold at the end of the game or the market that nets you 6 points for each pair of the indicated categories you have.

That's simple enough, but how do you acquire the cards? At the start of each round, one card is dealt face up in front of each player and two cards are placed in the center of the table. The round's starting player can take the card in front of them or they can swap their card for any other card revealed this round — but only if they can complete the trading requirements shown in the upper right corner of the card. (You ignore these requirements on the card in front of you, and this is important for several reasons explained later.) A red dot means you have to pay the cardholder (or the bank if the card is in the center of the table) 1 coin, a green dot means you receive a coin from the bank (since these are mostly production and residential buildings which supply resources and labor for your city), and a dude means you place an invader token face down on the round tracker board.

Wait, invaders? Yes, you might get sacked by invaders twice during Minute Realms

, and this element does have you scratching your beard (or clean-shaven chin as the case might be) and thinking, "Maybe this is something of a city-building game after all", before you reject that notion and plant your foot firmly in the category of set-collecting. Let us maintain rigid categories against all reason!

At most one invader token can be placed in the round tracker each round, and these invaders have strength ranging from 0-2 so they're not overwhelming, but you're a wimpy

set collector, so a 2 is plenty strong enough to knock you on your back. You don't look at these tokens now; just let them set menacingly on the board while you get on with other things.

Once you've decided on a card and fulfilled any trading requirements needed, you can decide to pay the coin cost in the upper-left corner and add the card to your non-city or you can flip the card face down to provide 2 units of defense against invaders while also earning 2 coins from the bank. Why do you receive money when you build defense? Perhaps the burgess is paying you to pay the people manning the walls? I'm not sure, but I think it boils down to "This makes the game better". Some buildings cannot be turned down, however, and these are typically the ones you most want to turn down, but that's life in Minute Realms

.

Once everyone has taken a card and either built it or faceplanted it, you throw away the two cards in the center, rotate the start player position, advance the stack of invaders on the round tracker board, then do it again. At the end of the fourth round, you reveal any invaders who have showed up, and any player who doesn't have enough defense to match the strength of the invaders must flip one of their flippable buildings face down. The invaders burnt it down, so you made the best of the situation by turning the rubble into a bastion. You then do this four more rounds, then face the invaders once again, this time summing all the invaders who popped in over the course of eight rounds.

As a card game, Minute Realms

has all the ups and downs that you'd expect of such. Sometimes your purse is empty, and a fountain that will give you four coins as a trading requirement lands on the table as a gift unto you — and then sometimes that fountain lands in front of you when the trading requirement is void. No coins for you! Sometimes you're skirting on the edge of probability and hoping that lone invader token is a 1 or 0, and you're able to take the card in front of you to remove the lone invader icon from play so that no one else can trade for it and direct the invaders to your door — and sometimes you can't.

I've played Minute Realms

seven times on a pre-production copy from dV Giochi — once with five players, twice with three, and four times with two — and while that number might seem excessive for someone just previewing a game, it turned out to be a great experience. The deck scales to match the player count, so with experience you always know the buildings that comprise the deck; they come out at random, of course, but after a few playings, you start to know what's in the deck and you can anticipate what might be coming out in the rounds that remain. You get a feel for the rhythm of spending and collecting coins, although I can't pretend to be good at it or even think there's an ideal way to do it.

Best of all, I was surprised in the seventh game when one of my opponents morphed into an attack strategy halfway through the game. The other two of us initially laughed about him repeatedly choosing cards that featured invaders, but we didn't conceive of it as a strategy until near the end of the game when we both realized that we had been building defensively while he had just plowed ahead with a face-up building strategy, being content to lose one building when the horde of invaders came because that would still leave everything else standing — and even with the defenses we had built, the other player and I still

took a hit from the invaders, giving our attack-heavy friend the victory.

I've harped plenty of times on the value of a reviewer listing how often they've played a game, and this experience was yet another example of why that's important. After five playings, I thought Minute Realms

a decent set-collection game, albeit somewhat dry with two as you had only four choices available each round and you were often content to take an action that would hurt the opponent as a way of helping yourself, but then I finally played it with three players and found it brisk and more lively, then again with three to discover this new approach to the game. Sometimes you just don't know what you're going to find in a game until it hits you in the face and flips your building upside down, so best not to pretend that you've figured everything out; instead, be up front with your audience as to what your experience has been and let them figure out for themselves what they think about the game.

Designer Diary: Kaiju Incorporated, or A Kaiju By Any Other Name Would Be a Cable Car

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/623…rporated-or-kaiju-any-oth

by Eric Vogel

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3763896_t.jpg] The Thing I Miss Most Is My Memory...I Think

Fair warning that this designer diary may be a little vague in spots. Once in a while, a game of mine has such a long and convoluted path to publication that I have forgotten the beginning of the story by the end of it.

According to my files, I started prototyping the game that eventually became Kaiju Incorporated

back in September 2011. That would have been about the time that Cambria

and Hibernia

hit the market, and I was seeing early indicators that the company that published them was having difficulties, so I was mostly trying to design games I could potentially self-publish in the pre-Kickstarter era.

This game began as most of my games do, with an idea for the core mechanism. Players would draft a card from a random row, then either pay to add it to their tableau or discard it to trigger income in the suit of the discarded card. This is the kind of mechanism I like to build a game around: a simple choice but with a lot of factors that influence a player's thinking about which choice to make. I think I fiddled around with the number of suits before settling on three as the most functional. The game was initially just vaguely themed around city construction.

Because I was thinking in terms of self-publishing, I wanted to create something like my previous game at the time, Armorica

, that is, something card-based without the need for bits to represent resources. Because of this, the first iterations of this game tried to use unconstructed game cards as money, similar to Race for the Galaxy

. However, I recognized at a certain point that this limitation was holding me back, so I decided to let myself include game money and VP tokens as components. This let me breakthrough to the early stages of this design, with its biggest early influences being London

, Citadels

, Saint Petersburg

and Phoenicia

. I admire those designs for how much mileage they get out of an economy based solely on money and victory points (VP). It was probably London

that had me thinking about making an economic game about city building.

In the early versions of the game, all cards provided money or VP or both to players on their own turns, and these versions of the game were pretty dull because the game wasn't interactive enough and other player's turns were just downtime. By October 2011, I had come up with the "Your Turn/Rivals Turn" mechanism, and this brought the game much closer to its final form. Now some building cards paid off when you chose to discard for income, and some paid off when other players discarded for income. This made other player's turns more exciting because you were waiting to see whether they would give you income. It also added more decision points because you wanted to force later players into situations where they had to give you income. Thematically, too, this change better represented the action of an interactive economy. Rivals Turn buildings were initially themed as the suppliers to retail businesses, so when the retailers sell, they buy from the suppliers. I don't recall whether the idea for this mechanism grew out of the thematic desire to model economics more closely, or the mechanical need to get the players interacting more.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1260367_t.jpg] I Left My Hat in San Francisco

At this point I was playtesting with Chris Ruggiero

, who later became the co-designer of [company=9656]Race to Adventure[/company]

, Evil Hat Productions

' first board game. Chris proposed making the game about rebuilding post-earthquake San Francisco, which I thought was a great idea. He had a lot of specific ideas about how to implement this theming, and I immediately brought him on board as a co-designer.

Let me say at this point that I am not a natural collaborator. All my other designs are sole authorship for a reason, and that reason is that I am a control freak. I have tried and failed to co-design with others on other occasions, and it has been mostly my fault. Collaborating with Chris worked because he is an exceptionally easy-going guy, and he was happy to let me be senior partner and have final say about everything. Generally if I am going to be involved in a design process with others, I would rather be a developer than a co-author because it is easier emotionally for me to take a backseat in that situation.

The game went through a bunch of changes that ultimately did not work out, and I don't recall which ideas were Chris' and which were mine. At one juncture in October 2011, the game had a majority control map that interacted with card placement. I believe this is when we instituted the cards having neighborhoods on them as a way to get a little more San Francisco into the game. The map went away, but the majority control neighborhoods stayed. At one stage, building cards had hit points that could get eroded, but that did not work very well either.

Then in December 2011, I think it was Chris who introduced the general idea of a newspaper-themed mechanism (which eventually became new product cards and Kaiju cards). I wanted to introduce a penalty points system, similar to poverty points in London

, and Chris had the idea that instead of scoring VP and PP (penalty points), players would collect good and bad newspaper stories about their companies. This was a big thing in early San Francisco, where corruption was rife and labor disputes were frequent, so I replaced the game money and VP with advancing tracks that eventually allowed you to collect a good headline from the San Francisco Chronicle

or a bad headline from the San Francisco Examiner

. (If you lived in the Bay Area back when newspapers were a thing, then you know why we themed them that way.) Eventually we arrived at the bad headlines destroying your building cards (by ruining the businesses) and good headlines awarding VP based on the building cards in your tableau at the end of the game. This helped with a mechanical issue that most tableau-building games have, that is, the tableau growing too large to manage.

Over the next 2 years the game got playtested and refined a lot, but with no major mechanical changes. Mercifully, my friends liked it and did not object to all the playtesting. At some point between 2012 and 2014, my longtime friend and playtester [user=jonspinner]Jon Spinner[/user] suggested that I should convert the tracks into wheel shapes, to make clearer what happened whenever a track wrapped back to the beginning. It was a great idea, one that really improved the flow of gameplay.

In this period I took the game with me anytime I might have a chance to pitch games to a publisher (which was infrequent), but it did not get any traction. In this period I worked on Zeppelin Attack!

and Don't Turn Your Back

for Evil Hat Productions, as well as doing game development for them on a cooperative game by Chris Ruggiero and Eric Lytle. It did not occur to me to pitch them this game, however, because an economic game didn't seem to fit their oeuvre.

Stop...Kaiju Time!

Meanwhile, president of Evil Hat Productions [user=evilhat]Fred Hicks[/user] had given me a quasi-commission to create a card game around a time travel/paradox theme he had in mind. I designed a game that I wasn't entirely happy with, but that did give me a chance to create some cool alternate history gags, like: "1500: Philippine Empire colonizes Spain", "1965: Malcom X survives assassination attempt, made bionic", and "1980: Jerry Falwell elected President, bans synthesizer music and coin operated video games, American Dark Ages begin". It was a majority control game about trying to take over different centuries with your version of history. It worked mechanically, but the game feel was off; too many players found the game frustrating because their actions were constantly being undone by other players.

My first game with Evil Hat, Zeppelin Attack!

, debuted at Gen Con 2014, and the English second edition of my game Romans Go Home

was being demoed by Asmodee

at the same show, so I returned to Gen Con for the first time since Cambria

and Hibernia

had debuted there in 2011. I was hobnobbing with the big-time designers at the Asmodee booth (finally got to meet Bruno Faidutti face-to-face), taking a variety of meetings with Evil Hat, and generally feeling like a real game designer again.

I demoed the time travel game for Fred Hicks, Chris Hanrahan, and Ron Donoghue, and they came to the same conclusion I had about the problematic feel of the game. I think time travel is a tough theme for a game because it presents a very narrow range of options for representing the theme mechanically. While they were there, I showed them the other prototypes in my portfolio. To my surprise, they wanted to do the San Francsico game! Fred came up with the idea of re-theming it around kaiju (Japanese giant movie monsters), and instantly both Rob and Fred started riffing ideas for re-theming the game. The bad headlines became the kaiju, which made the destruction of player tableaus make a lot more sense. The players became megacorporations, looking to profit from rebuilding the world after kaiju attacks.

Aside from that, I don't remember how much of the broad kaiju theming was spawned at that meeting and how much we did later. My meetings with EHP at conventions tend to be fast (between other meetings), chaotic (with conventioneers constantly stopping to talk to Fred), and conducted when I have had too little sleep. I do remember walking to dinner with the EHP crew afterward, with Fred occasionally turning to me to utter a kaiju roar and make a building squashing gesture; he was very enthused about the game.

The new theme was always intended to be humorous, a parody of kaiju films rather than just a homage to them. I don't think we ever explicitly discussed that; it just unfolded naturally, perhaps a holdover from the humor of the time travel prototype. It eventually became clear that Fred and I were fans of different kaiju properties. He was mostly a fan of Pacific Rim

, whereas I was mostly a fan of classic Godzilla

movies from the 1960s and '70s. This turned out to be a good mix of influences because it made the game a broad parody of the genre as a whole instead of being a tight parody of a particular series.

Once we set down to work on the re-theming, it became clear that the kaiju theme was a better fit with the game mechanisms in every way. Chris Ruggiero and I had a field day re-theming the cards, both getting to indulge our senses of humor. The neighborhoods became cities in different nations, so we needed Russian, Chinese, Japanese, American, and Australian themed gag companies. Chris created hilarious card names like "Tchaikovsky Piano Cannon Factory" and "Easily Panicked Masses Stadium". I had the idea to make all of the Australian cards acronyms, like "War Office Mobile Battle Attack Tech" (WOMBAT). EHP likes to keep the humor in their games pretty clean, so some of my gags got toned down slightly, thus "Kaijumojo Male Enhancement Cream" became "Kaijumojo Male Enhancement Pills", and "The Emperor Norton Baby Kaiju Vivisection Hospital" became a "research hospital" instead. By making the U.S. city San Francisco, we were able to keep a little connection to the original theme of the game. Believe it or not, since then I have created another prototype set in the early 1900s Bay Area that also got re-themed as something else. One day I will get to make a game about my hometown…one day…

I also added new material to the game after the introduction of the new theme in the form of the special action cards. These were created to be a KS bonus item, but also to increase player interactivity by letting them buy actions that impacted each other. I experimented with some other add-ons, like a Giant Robot, which did not work. (Giant Robots never work right.) All the add ons that did work are in the published game now. I also made changes that sped up the game so that it would run a little under an hour most of the time.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3414531_t.jpg]Fred hired Brian Patterson of d20 Monkey fame to do the art, and he really brought the humor to life. Often the sight gags were very different from what I had envisioned and much funnier. The "Banned-Die Toy Company", with its conveyer belt full of "fun hugs bear" teddy bears with razor arms sent me into hysterics when I first saw it. Sometimes he cleaned up my gags by adding a counter-intuitive sight gag, such as the "Hot Robot Maid Research Foundation" that features a very un-sexy masculine robot in a French maid costume...on fire. The art also did a great job of evoking the kaiju world in general, without mimicking anything specific. I had a little input on the art, which didn't need much because it all turned out so well. I remember for BRUCE, a card that was essentially a big public bomb shelter in Australia, the art didn't evoke Australia in any way, so I asked Brian to go back and put really big beer cans in everyone's hands. (No offense, Australians; I am sure you throw down responsibly.)

Brian works quickly, and the game and all its artwork were pretty much done by late 2015. By that time, The Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game

was also pretty far along, and EHP decided to bump that up ahead of Kaiju Incorporated

on the production schedule. EHP decided to help promote the card game by commissioning a Kaiju Incorporated RPG

. Rob Wieland created the RPG about the lives of post-kaiju attack clean-up crews, and I had very little to do with the RPG. I made up some additional background material about the world of the card game when Rob first started work, but I don't think he ended up needing to use that material very much. The RPG is entirely his work, and I think it's a cool RPG and am happy to have it out there. However, I must admit it bugs me when people assume that the RPG came first and I designed the card game around it; for once, it was the other way around.

Eric Vogel

SPIEL '17 Preview: Herbalism, or Guess for Success

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/695…erbalism-or-guess-success

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3664861_t.jpg]Taiwanese publisher EmperorS4

has six games and one expansion

on its SPIEL '17 release calendar, and after the success of Hanamikoji

in 2016, which I previewed on BGG News

, I'll be looking closely at all of them. No, Hanamikoji

was not original to EmperorS4, having first been published in Japan in 2013, but when a publisher releases something you love, you pay attention to their other choices in the hope that something else measures up.

One of EmperorS4's new releases in 2017 is Herbalism

, a 3-4 player game by Eros Lin

and Liu Xiao

, and the only two things this game has in common with Hanamikoji

is the box size and the requirement that you be supremely clever with your choices, but maybe that will be enough for you.

The gameplay is set thousands of years ago in China during the birth of herb-based medicine. As an aspiring pharmacist, you have been tasked with figuring out which herbs are required to cure sick individuals in the countryside. Strangely, though, you are competing with others to determine which herbs these are, and you all want to be secretive with the herbs you hold, lest that information help someone else more than you. I'm not sure who would be so cruel as to withhold aid that could be shared with others, but without that competitive edge, you wouldn't have much of a game, so let's roll with it.

The herbs comprise a deck of fourteen cards, and at the start of each round, two cards at random will be tucked away while each player receives a hand of 3-4 cards depending on the player count. You can take notes on these cards if you want, but no player has in the two games that I've played and I don't think notes would have aided our deduction. Of course, I might just be a terrible note-taker and deduction-maker...

You want to guess the two hidden cards, and to do this, you will receive information or cards from other players, sometimes at the cost of a card of your own. Whatever these two hidden cards are, they will match one of the seven medicine cards shown below. Note that the center card represents cards that are the same color, whatever that color happens to be. (Each color has pips underneath it to remind you how many cards of each color are in the deck.)

On a turn, a player takes one of the available actions, and these actions can differ in each game or even from round to round (if you ignore the rule about keeping the same actions throughout the entire game). The rules suggest a few different combinations of actions, with the top two in the image below being recommended for your first game:

• Appealing:

Place your colored marker on one of the seven medicine cards shown above, then choose a player; this player must give you all the cards they have in hand of one of the two colors on that medicine card.

• Curing:

Place your colored marker on one of the seven medicine cards shown above to indicate which color combination you think is on the two hidden cards. Each other player in turn can pass, follow you (by placing their "follow" marker on the same card), or provide their own answer (by placing their marker on an unoccupied medicine card). Everyone who has placed their marker then looks at the hidden cards. If everyone is incorrect, they each lose 1 point, then the game continues; if someone is correct, they receive 3 points and anyone who followed them scores 1 point while all incorrect guesses are punished.

The other actions you can use, all of which involve you first placing your marker on a medicine card and choosing an opponent, are (from left to right in the bottom row):

• Inquiring:

Give the opponent a face-down card matching one of the two colors on the medicine card; they look at this card, then state how many cards they hold of the other

color on the medicine card.

• Feeding:

Give the opponent a face-down card matching one of the two colors on the medicine card; they look at this card, then give you all the cards they hold of the other

color.

• Brewing:

If possible, the opponent must give you one card of each color on the medicine card; if they have only one color, then they give you only one card.

The central medicine card that depicts all colors has special rules for each of the actions. When curing, if you choose this medicine card, then you win as long as the two hidden cards are the same color; when brewing, the opponent must give you two cards of the same color, with them choosing the color.

If a player guesses incorrectly when curing, they take no further actions in the round, but they can still be chosen as the target for other players' actions. If only one player remains in the round due to everyone else being terrible curers, then this last player must attempt a cure on their turn. Hope they were paying attention to all of the failures!

I've played Herbalism

twice on a review copy from EmperorS4, once each with three and four players, with each game lasting about five rounds. In both games, we started with appealing and curing in the first round, then something else and curing in the second round, and so on. Some of the actions are similar, but the differences do matter. With appealing in play, the cards start clumping in players' hands because someone with a blue card who's passed one more will have to pass both blue cards together; with inquiring or feeding, you can split pairs or triples to ideally divide information among your fellow players.

One thing we haven't tried yet are the prediction tokens included in Herbalism

as a variant. After taking a non-curing action, a player can claim a colored prediction token that doesn't match the color of a token they already have. For each token, if this color is among the hidden cards, the player scores 1 point, regardless of what they guessed or followed; if not, they lose 1 point for this token. This system is another way for a player to share information with their opponents while (possibly) profiting from doing so.

As you might expect, the three-player game gives you more control than the four-player game because you're more frequently deciding which action is being done (once you have multiple non-curing actions) and who the target of this action is. That said, you can certainly learn information from the actions of others, and one player in my 4p experience excelled at this; at the end of a round, he would explain how he put together info gained from three other players' actions to determine what he wanted to guess as a cure.

The thing is, however, that he would often guess when he was confident of only one of the hidden cards, with a 50% chance of the other card being correct. As with many other deduction games — such as Sherlock 13

, which I previewed

in October 2016 — the conflict between being right and being first pulls you in opposite directions. How sure do you want to be before guessing, especially since being first gets you three times as many points as being right, but only in the wake of someone else? With four players, sometimes you just want to for it since someone among the other three players will likely guess before you do. In practice, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing since many incorrect cures were proposed, but that itch to be first still remains. Thankfully you have herbs on hand to treat that itch...

Designer Diary: A Tale of Pirates, or Isn't Turn-Based Real-Time Play an Oxymoron?

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/695…es-or-isnt-turn-based-rea

by Asger Sams Granerud

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3678807_t.png]I remember exactly when the first seed of inspiration for what eventually became A Tale of Pirates

was planted. It was Easter 2012, and I had attended the Danish board and role-playing game convention Fastaval

for the first time. While sitting around relaxing, I had a chat with Martin Enghoff, a fellow game designer and participant in the convention. He brainstormed an idea he had had for using sand timers as a "cooldown" mechanism in a board game. Basically you would place your timer on your intended action, but not get to activate it until the sand had fallen. I was immediately sold on that idea!

Disclaimer: Before anyone beheads me for misusing the term "cooldown" mechanism, I'll add that I'm well aware it isn't really what is happening. It was just the initial thing that came to mind!

I love working as part of a team in games, whether fully cooperative designs or other team games. Among my favorites are Captain Sonar

, Hanabi

, Magic Maze

and Flick 'em Up!

These four examples all take different approaches to handling the dreaded "alpha player" syndrome through a combination of limiting communication, adding time pressure, or emphasizing dexterity. When done successfully, such games can lead to the elusive and patented "high five moments", moments when upon the achievement of some goal the team erupts into...wait for it...high fiving!

Celebrating achievements in groups brings the pure unadulterated joy of gaming to the forefront. I literally love it! A Tale of Pirates

is exactly such a game for me, and I hope you will find it is for you, too. I've played it hundreds of times and seen it played almost as much. When Daniel Skjold Pedersen

and I sit down and play it together on the hardest difficulty, we almost move together as one silent well-coordinated machine. A few sharp commands to coordinate the crew's actions can be heard across the deck, but aside from that there are just the waves crashing against the hull. And we still high five after beating a tense mission!

The sand timers add the time pressure that is needed to curtail the alpha players, but does so without the full-on franticness that we've seen in other time-based cooperative games — and frankly a franticness that has previously scared away many "serious" gamers. I can't tell you the number of times we've heard testers say something along these lines: "I normally dislike games with time pressure, but this..."

The 30-second wait allows just enough room to breathe, making it possible to talk and coordinate rather than just react. Moreover each scenario is (typically) divided into several chapters, which means you stop at key points throughout, again allowing you to take an even deeper breath and coordinate the next burst of actions. This is why I call it turn-based real-time gaming. It feels turn-based, and it feels real-time. Magic. Pirate magic!

But before the magic happened, hard work happened. This is without comparison the most complex design project I've been involved in. The game itself is fairly straightforward, but the ten distinct gaming experiences designed in each mission pulled out some teeth. We have worked hard to ensure that you aren't simply getting slight variations on the same theme, but actually giving varied experiences. I've been quoted as claiming that the basic scenario (#2) is something you could release as a game in its own right, but let's not stop there. Let's add that ten scenarios had to be balanced at three different difficulty levels? That each player count also poses a different balancing challenge? That testing this game became a nightmare because we wanted fresh eyes on the campaign and thus burned through testers faster than you can say "YAAAARGH!" Did I mention that all this had to be baked into an app that we didn't have access to for most of the design period? I've never had as extensive a Google docs sheet to keep track of these multiple overlapping layers, and all for the sake of what is at its core an extremely simple game. All that said, I'm super proud of what we've built and of how Cranio Creations

lifted the challenge.

The journey to get to this point took many years. It involved bursts of intense design, long period of waiting, crazy ambitions, and much more. At the top of the list it also involved Daniel and I for the first time collaborating with a third designer: Daniele Tascini

. Daniele is best known for Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar

and The Voyages of Marco Polo

, but has designed many other games. Note that those two games are very different from A Tale of Pirates

; I want to state that loud and clear before anyone buys it hoping to find a heavy Eurogame. Tzolk'in

is one of my personal favorite Eurogames, so getting the opportunity to learn how Daniele designs was a great experience!

If you want to read more about the passages we had to navigate and the rocks we hit en route, then please proceed.

A Tale of Pirates

is a cooperative game for 2-4 players, ages 8 and up. Inside the box you will find a big 3D pirate ship, cards, and lots of counters. In addition, you get a free downloadable app, which will help you along! The game takes about 20-30 minutes per scenario, but you might not succeed at first. (If you do, consider picking a harder difficulty.) Of course we hope you want to play all ten scenarios, as the narrative, complexity, and craziness evolves at each step. The app will be available for both Android and iOS, and you can play using either a phone or a tablet.

This Is NOT a Legacy Game

Though A Tale of Pirates

evolves, it is NOT a legacy game. Changes aren't permanent, and they CAN be reset at any time. However, as the campaign progresses, you DO open envelopes with new content: upgrades, enemies, and more. Each of the ten scenarios are unique, and the app helps handle the bookkeeping, introduces events, and manages reveals as you go deeper into the story. We compare it to a classic computer game in which you can always go back and replay previous levels, but you can't jump ahead until you've finished the level currently in front of you. (Well, you can, and we can't stop you, but we do recommend you try them in order as they wasn't chosen at random.) If you get far enough, you might even encounter whatever lurks beneath!

Getting from 2012 to the Present Day

When the initial spark of an idea first happened back in 2012, a whole year passed before I even considered starting the design. Martin Enghoff, who had shared his idea, wanted to build a game for the Fastaval convention the following year. I was so fascinated by the idea that I even proposed a partnership with him to codesign the game, but he declined. As it turned out — and as it almost always turns out — the idea that Martin brought a year later was nothing like what I had in mind. I've since learned not to worry too much about parallel designs as they rarely end up being parallel at all. Slightly different takes on the same idea typically result in vastly different outcomes after the many iterations a board game goes through, at least in my experience.

The spring of 2013 was also the year that Daniel and I started designing 13 Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis

together, and since then we have never really looked back. He was thus onboard from the first prototypes and ideas.

Is It Just a Gimmick?

The pirate theme had solidified one step at a time in my mind. We already had the core mechanism chosen, which was cooperative real-time worker placement. I figured that a ship crew having to cooperate under time pressure was an ideal fit. Pirates face lots of different challenges, so we wouldn't run out of material midway in the design.

The next thing this meant was building a 3D pirate ship. At a quick glance, this could look like a gimmick, but it actually had to be done for game design purposes. The ship is in the middle of the table, but is being swung around when you turn it. The sand timers fell over on early prototypes of the game, so making holes in the deck to hold the sand timers became a practical necessity to ensure a minimum of fiddliness. This is important in any game design, but putting fiddly in the corner is a prime concern when a game is played under any type of time pressure. We want players focused on the game and its choices, not lunging after bits and having their plans thwarted by a fallen timer.

Once decided, this also allowed us to use the 3D feature for a number of other things. The mast was installed as an intuitive place to set a sail, which helps keep track of speed. Hearts were attached to the ship as hit points (or rather hull points in this game), so everyone could see at a glance how good a shape the ship was in. And, assuming you get far enough in the campaign, you might discover other features that can be added to the ship at a later point.

It has been a fantastic journey to get here, and I am proud of the final product the team has delivered. I think you guys are getting an innovative, eye-catching, and fantastic game with a bucket full of content. Of course I am also terribly biased, so for now I can only cross my fingers and hope to see you all make this a runaway hit at SPIEL '17.

Happy gaming!
Asger Granerud

P.S.: Daniel and I will demo and sign the game on both Friday and Saturday from 14:00 to 15:00 at SPIEL '17. Come see us at Hall 1: A118!

SPIEL '17 Preview: TimeBomb Evolution, or Time for a Rainbow-Colored Rematch

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/695…-evolution-or-time-rainbo

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3708213_t.png]Whenever a sequel appears for a successful game, it is almost always more complicated than the original title. Catan

, Carcassonne

, Ticket to Ride

, and Pandemic

all have many examples of this dynamic, with each sequel following an equation like "Base Game + Somethin' Somethin' = Newish Snazzier Game". This equation shouldn't be a surprise because complicated things are less likely to become runaway hits than simpler things. Movies tend to follow the same formula as a sequel is usually "Most or All of the Characters/Things You Originally Liked + Something New". It's hard to make the soup simpler when you keep adding things to the pot.

In mid-2015, I previewed

Yusuke Sato

's TimeBomb

after being introduced to the game at Tokyo Game Market in May 2015. TimeBomb

is a straightforward hidden identity game, with SWAT agents needing to find the right number of successes among each player's hidden cards so that a bomb doesn't go off, while being misdirected in their efforts by terrorists who are hiding on the SWAT team. You can start playing the game immediately and use the first couple of moves to teach others how to play. If someone goofs and sets off the bomb accidentally, say "oops", shuffle the cards, and play again.

In 2016, Sato and publisher New Board Game Party

introduced TimeBomb II

, which used a similar formula while giving players a hand of cards that they would play to locations in a quest to uncover the terrorists' three hideouts.

Now Sato and New Board Game Party have released TimeBomb Evolution

, with the game having debuted at TGM in May 2017 and now being prepared for release at SPIEL '17 in October. As before, TimeBomb Evolution

follows the formula of the original game, with SWAT members looking for 4-6 "Success" cards (with that number being based on the player count) and with terrorists hoping to survive four rounds if they don't manage to set off the bomb any earlier. In more detail, here's how the original TimeBomb

works:

To set up, you take as many "Success" cards as the number of players, the single "Boom!!" card, and as many "Safe" cards as needed for the deck to equal five times the number of players, e.g., thirty cards total with six players. Each player takes a secret role card at random, with four SWAT cards being in the mix for six players and three SWAT cards for four or five players. After looking at your role card, look at the five cards you were dealt, then shuffle them and lay them out in a line with the backs being face up. Choose a start player at random.

The start player takes the nippers and "cuts" one of the cards in front of another player. This player reveals the card, then uses the nippers to cut someone else's card. This continues until 4-6 cards have been cut, with this number equaling the number of players. You then take all of the face-down cards, shuffle them, then deal four cards to each player, with players once again looking at their cards, then shuffling them and placing them in a face-down row.

This process continues for at most four rounds. If all of the "Success" cards are revealed before the end of the fourth round, the game ends and the SWAT team wins. If this doesn't happen — or if the "Boom!!" card is revealed at any time — the game ends and the terrorists win.
TimeBomb Evolution

removes all the boring "Safe" cards that do nothing except draw out a sigh of disappointment when you reveal one of them instead of a "Success" and replaces them with six sets of colored bombs.

To set up TimeBomb Evolution

, you choose as many colored sets of cards as the number of players, shuffle them, remove a number of cards equal to the number of players from the deck (without revealing them), shuffle in 4-6 "Success" cards, then deal five cards to each player. Choose someone to start with the nippers and you're off!

The big difference compared to TimeBomb

is that the deck doesn't have a single "Boom!!" card that serves as a terrorist victory if it's revealed; instead, if four cards of the same color are revealed before all the "Success" cards, then the bomb goes off and the terrorists win. Now instead of all the tension in the game being instantiated into a single card, the tension is spread all over the place. On the first few card reveals, the color is meaningless, but once you see the second instance of a color, everyone starts paying attention and saying things at the start of the round like, "I have a 'Success', but also two red, so don't cut any of my cards!" Do they mean that, or are they lying, perhaps hiding multiple "Success" cards so that the SWAT team won't find them?

This simple change gives everyone more of a stake in the game because even having a hand of nothing but colored bombs gives you information about what others don't

have, and you can sometimes use this information to get clues as to who might not be telling the whole truth.

What's more, TimeBomb Evolution

includes variant rules that ups the challenge even further by giving special abilities to both the "Success" cards and the colored bombs. Under these rules, when you reveal a "Success", you place that card on a colored bomb that's been revealed to provide protection. That color will no longer win the terrorists the game when the fourth card is revealed. That's good for the SWAT team, right? Yes, except perhaps when a terrorist is the one who gets to place the "Success" card and they choose a color with only one card (thereby outing themselves as a bad guy) or choose a color that will perhaps lead to SWAT members revealing cards from a player who they would otherwise ignore.

The counterweight to this benefit comes from a half-dozen bomb effects. Yellow bombs, for example, can't have protection placed on them, and when a blue bomb is revealed, you must remove a "Success" that is currently providing protection, thereby possibly causing an immediate explosion. Green explodes when only three cards have been revealed (instead of four), whereas purple blows up immediately if two purple cards are revealed in a row. Red cards throw randomness onto the table because if someone reveals a red bomb, you don't get to choose whose card to cut next; instead you reveal a numbered card and circle around the table that many spaces, then cut a card in front of that player. You might want to have cut a card held by someone else, but too bad! (I've also played with this rule incorrectly, teaching that you pass the wire nippers to the player revealed at random. This is a less random way to play, I think, since the new player holding the nippers still chooses whose card to reveal, so consider it a variant of the variant.)

Pink bombs are the most dispiriting because for each pink card revealed, you can reveal one fewer card in the fourth round — assuming you make it that far. If you're SWAT, you find a few successes and think you're grooving, then you realize that you need to find two more "Success" in five picks. Whoops! You just revealed a pink, so now you have only three

more picks to find that pair of successes. Good luck.

I've played Timebomb Evolution

five or six times now on a review copy from Japon Brand, each time with five or six people. The heart of the game mimics that of the original, with some games ending in 1-2 minutes when something goes horribly wrong in the first few turns, and others coming down to the wire, but this version has your head spinning in new directions because more of what's happening each round matters to you, especially once you start using the effects of the variant. This variance is magnified by cards being removed at random at the start of the game. Do you even have three green cards in the deck any more? Do you have to worry about that color? The only way to remove the uncertainty is to see the cards in hand, thereby verifying the threat, but whether you can get anyone else to believe you is another matter.

Even better, the games play out differently depending on what happens when. In one game, we revealed a couple of blue cards in the first five moves, which was bad since two more blue cards would lose the game for the good guys, yet we also were thrilled that those blue cards didn't cost us any protection since we hadn't yet discovered any "Success" cards. Wait, why were we happy about not finding success? Ah, never mind — take joy where you can find it!

P.S.: Immediately after I finished writing this preview, I checked Twitter and happened across this announcement of a new version of the original Time Bomb

from Arclight Games. The bright rainbow colors are everywhere!

Designer Diary: Peak Oil, or From Published Game to Prototype PnP

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/695…r-published-game-prototyp

by Heiko Günther Heiko

: To call this a diary is funny at best. Sounds like we meticulously took notes and photographs something like years ago because, yes, we knew, deep in our hearts, and as a fact cold and shiny as brand new rubber boots made from the finest crude oils, that one day, not too far away, we would want to publish said meticulous notes.

Well, we didn't, so this is more of a "Designer's retroactively puzzled-together story of how we prefer to remember the way we ended up with this game in our hands". It's maybe a bit more interesting, and, at the very least, casts a better light on our abilities as game designers. It is also very sketchy and ignores a large portion of what actually happened. But hey, water down the river et al.

Tobias

: Unlike Heiko, I have perfect photographic memory, so I can recall every tiny detail about the whole process. It's like I'm a machine. A sentient robot. A neural net processor, a learning computer.

Okay, that may be a bit exaggerated. Possibly even a lot exaggerated. Or, actually, totally made up. The development of this game has been going on, intermittently, for years, after all.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1289390_t.jpg] (image by mazout)ÖL FÜR UNS ALLE

Roughly 2005 I was sharing a flat with Tobias, and also our weekly games' night, an unhealthy obsession with nuclear tanks, and a high-sugar diet — the perfect breeding ground for stupid game ideas. If you ever played bicycle-racing board games and gave all bikes large nitro tanks, flak guns, and flamethrowers, you probably know what I am talking about.

At least with myself I also shared my personal obsession with hunting "valuable things" at flea markets, especially obscure board games rising from the ashes of time. So I proposed to the assembled games' night folks to play this probably amazing game I just bought last Saturday. It had tankers and oil and drilling and pegs you put in holes and stuff.

A guy on the cover, with a BP logo crudely photoshopped (probably still in a real photo shop at that time) on his safety helmet lent further credibility to this Ravensburger title.

This obsession with getting obscure games from flea markets has, in my opinion, met with somewhat mixed success. At first glance, this game looked like an incredibly retro and incredibly clumsy piece of marketing. The second and third glance did little to change that impression.

The "clumsy marketing" aside, we immediately liked the theme. One or two years before, the media had been full of images from the recent large oil spill on the coast of France and Spain. Obviously, this had to be a game about sinister large oil companies exploiting the environment, all for the greater good of making profit and helping the world economy grow. You probably would backroom deal with other players, try to forge tanker papers, sink enemies' tankers, and earn a shitload of money. Presumably, Ellis or Ennis would have written the script, and you could play as any James Bond villain you liked.

It should, perhaps, be pointed out that what Heiko describes are things we absolutely love in games. I mean, who doesn't want to be a Bond villain? Who doesn't want to poison vast stretches of pristine nature just to make a quick buck? It's probably a basic human need, I guess.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1661228_t.jpg] (image by moonblogger)

We opened the box and played it.

While some of our hopes were indeed, and surprisingly, and probably unintentionally, correct, most were not. You could move funky tanker miniatures with holes that held oil pegs around the board, and load off oil at refinery centers. Drilling was somewhat fun; at the fate of a die roll you moved pegs on a drill board deeper and deeper into the unyielding soil, sometimes to strike a rich vein, sometimes to no avail.

Another peg board was reserved for more cool bookkeeping stuff, and there was money and named oil fields from real life and shipping contracts and the North Sea and, to be true, a roll-and-move game at the core that happened on a track suspiciously similar to Monopoly

. Well, it goes around a board, a rectangular board, and there is a Start spot where you collect income.

The whole thing lacked some proper sort of ending condition, and after a few hours we decided that we had reached it all the same. We multiplied our red plastic chips with moneys and some other things happened and one of us had won. But still, cool tankers.

The biggest problem was that everything was terribly nice. There were no morally questionable things to do, no trade wars, and precious few ways to screw another player. The company you played was totally law-abiding, responsible, and honest — which is a bit much to swallow in a game about Big Oil. Anyway, this was a huge pity because many ideas in the game were pretty nifty.

A nondescript amount of time passed.

We decided that the tanker miniatures were just too cool, and we needed to use them in a new version of this game, a proper version, with slush funds, weapon trading, black markets, oil spills, nuclear tanks, nepotistic regimes, general mayhem, and a real end. Over a few different versions, sometimes with a year or so in between revisiting the game, sometimes only days, we kept adding things we liked at the time and removing ones that didn't work.

Regulars of our games' night started to fear "the oil game", and we had to come up with all sorts of annoying ploys to make them play it. Sorry, guys, but if you are reading this, that cousin of mine neither suffers from a highly contagious blood disease nor licked all of my other games.

Over time, this game has probably used most mechanisms a game can use at one time or another. We had, at various points, roll-and-move, fixed move, everything controlled by dice, diceless, what have you — except a hex grid, which somehow never made it in. Weird.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3208736_t.jpg] (Version 1 board)BLUT FÜR ÖL

The playtest for our great new game, lovingly dubbed "Blut für Öl", was still a mess, but it was ours, and one we liked better.

Allowing each action to be taken in a more effective version, called "dirty", which also brought the potential of causing a PR disaster, made you feel like the bad overlords of oil dealing you were supposed to be. The roll-and-move track on the other hand decidedly did not. We kicked that out for the next one.

The roll-and-move track also cluttered the board and was just ugly.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3209280_t.jpg] (Version 2 board and cards)ÖL FÜR BLUT

The drilling had been abridged to a simple die roll, and there were several spots you could "control". To trade weapons, you needed to control cards (corresponding to spots) with at least one left (origin country) and one right (key market) half of an AK-47. I can't really be bothered to search for the rules on old hard drives, and, in fact, am highly surprised I even found these images. To be honest, I have no idea what the turn structure was in this version.

What I do remember is that you had secret accounts for especially dirty deals. They did not hold any money or anything, but if you were required to pay money from such fund, you just flipped one of your "secret account" cards on its used side. Control over certain regions (South America, I guess) gave you access to more secret funds, and some money laundering action allowed you to flip them back to their active side. Hm. Tobias, remember anything more?

The game was pretty complicated at this point, if I remember correctly. You could do a lot of things, but pretty few of them were simple, or even — gasp — automatically successful. I think it would have been very difficult to get into the game unless you had been evolving it for months.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3209303_t.jpg] (Version 5 board with some cards)

V3 and V4 are lost in the haze that is the past. By the time of Version 5, the shipping routes had been opened to allow for less linear movement and for jockeying for good tanker positions at the refinery centers. If your tanker suffered a disaster, the place it happened was of great importance for the amount of money it cost you to get a hold on the ensuing PR disaster. A disaster around Europe or North America was quite the costly indulgence, whereas sinking your tanker around Africa or in the open Atlantic didn't really concern anyone.

Drilling had been further abstracted into cards, and tankers had a "cool down" phase at the refineries, where you could not retrieve your tanker until all spots had been filled.

Oh, right, to make more profit, you wanted to first destabilize regions, then take control of them. Stabilizing an opponent's region at the wrong moment could really mess with plans. Mercenaries were a central part of every thriving oil empire. Also, building pipelines for the greater good (and a lot of money).

There's still information overload in this version. Even with Heiko's love for clean design and minimalism, there's loads of different symbols and references and little fiddly stuff. The pipelines are a good example; you had to construct the things piece by piece, and the earlier versions were so difficult to complete that the whole pipeline thing was pretty much useless.

Ah, also, there was, I think, a really nice area-system that allowed your general influence in a larger area to filter down into a specific control over one region in that area. I have to admit I introduced it somewhat secretly, bypassing Tobias, and he never liked it. In retrospect, I totally agree, but can also relate to past Heiko being incredibly annoyed at the blasé reaction of his to my great innovation. Also, they look good. Sucker.

/cough/ Yes, well, it was a really nice system. It just sucked. Seriously, I'm pretty certain that a lot of the sub-games from those early versions could be developed into full games on their own, actually. The area control part was something like that: an interesting new game, but too unwieldy to bolt onto this one.

Even so, I still think we should have put a hex grid on the ocean, and added Attack, Defense and Move stats to the tankers.

Somewhere during these versions, we also read up on oil: where it is, who uses it, and how much it costs, along with which routes it is usually shipped upon and what the dangers are. Why are oil corporations so evil? How does the pricing in refineries actually work? Is oil from the North Sea or Canada an important factor, globally, and which refinery centers are actually important, nowadays? How does all of this relate to nuclear tanks? Is "Peak Oil" actually "a thing"? That kind of boring stuff.

It's incredible how Wikipedia has changed the way we access information. Why, when I was younger…!

With all that research, we definitely wanted to avoid being preachy. This was a game first, after all. Still, we were (and are) impressed by games which are fun, mechanically, and also give you something to think about. We both like Soft Landing

by BTRC, for instance. I think the final version of Peak Oil

works very well this way. There's a solid game, with meaningful decisions and interaction — and it's also a commentary about how some things might possibly be not ideal in the real world without being in-your-face about it. I guess you can approach the game on either level. I like that.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3209773_t.jpg] (Version 6 board with some cards)

By Version 6, oil spills in most regions of the oceans didn't concern the public any more, and the refinery centers had lost their initial price granularity. Each had only a high and low price left, and changing it was not a function of ebbing and swelling oil streams any more, but solely controlled by the evil players.

This version introduced the current way of accumulating victory points in a crude and early stage. Playing the game involved moving around heaps of poker chip money, which you could use to buy into future techs. The little chart in the lower left corner could be influenced to manipulate your and your opponents' final scores. If you invested in, say, the tech on the right of a given row, you wanted the public to like it better than the one on the left of the same row.

Version 6 also had the first implementation of the worker majority action system. The control concept had degenerated into "controlling pirates", which was not really a bad thing.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3209774_t.jpg] (Version 7 board with some cards)

Not a lot changed for Version 7, with the notable exception being that the value grid for the techs evolved into a value wheel. The position of a single pawn on it at game end gave bonus points to that tech as well as the neighboring ones, although fewer. Prices at refinery centers again had a "degrading" function to them, and could only artificially be increased through the interference of companies.

Finally, we let go of the cool tankers, and all of a sudden, things worked really well. Instead of managing your ships and moving them around the board each turn, something you'd constantly forget, you just acquired shipping contracts, and each of these was good for one shipment. Also, major saving on the components.

It's really ironic. The tankers were one of the things we liked best initially, but removing them was a definite improvement. In the same way, most of the concepts or mechanisms which were crucial in the beginning got pruned along the way. And this made things better! I find it striking how much the final version differs from the early drafts.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3210512_t.jpg] (Version 8 board with some cards)
PEAK OIL PNP

This is pretty close to what we uploaded to BGG and "sold" to 2Tomatoes

at SPIEL '15, the notable exception being that this version still used money, alongside oil, as a second resource and allow you to increase only the value of your own techs, not those of other players.

Generally, an unholy amount of playtesting with very diverse crowds happened to this game in its various incarnations, and the most valuable thing we learned from it, I guess, is not to do what playtesters want you to. Listen closely to what they say, try to locate what makes them say it, see if that source may be fixed, and work on that, but completely ignore any direct advice on how to make your game better.

Oh, another thing might be that if you have an idea you think is the funky shit, build it into the game and see what happens. And keep your playtesters bribed well. Beer and crunchy salty things work well. Visit different groups. Don't be shy as most gamers are delighted to play an unpublished prototype. Be nice.

Ain't that the truth. I vividly remember one evening when we got detailed feedback, looked at each other, and thought, "Let's just not do all that." Understanding the reason for feedback is much more useful than simply implementing every bit of advice you get — just like in real life, I guess.

The second lesson I learned is that sometimes you need to trash parts of your design. Don't be afraid to let go of things. Also, find your inner center. And consider Phlebas. Someone has to.

This pretty much concludes this "diary". Thanks for reading. To find out what happened after we found a publisher, check this development blog: Peak Oil - From PnP to Published Game Thread

. (Short summary: Amazement at somebody wanting to publish this, lots of talking, lots of great development by incredibly skilled game designers, new art style, graphic design, Kickstarter, production. No nuclear tanks.) Should you be interested in meeting us for a round or two on the published copies, we will be at SPIEL this year, at the 2Tomatoes booth (7:K120).

New Game Round-up: Devil Pig Readies Heroes of Black Reach, Renegade Revisits the North Sea, and Eurydice Explores Zombology

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/695…readies-heroes-black-reac

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3771284_t.png]• In May 2017, I posted

brief news of a deal between Devil Pig Games

and Games Workshop

to release a game line in the Warhammer 40,000

universe that makes use of DPG's "Heroes System" from Heroes of Normandie

.

The base game in that line is Warhammer 40,000: Heroes of Black Reach

, a two-player game that pits Ultramarines against Orks that includes an eight-scenario campaign and hundreds of bits and retails for $75. As with Heroes of Normandie

, multiple supplements will be available, including Orks Reinforcement

and Ultramarines Reinforcement

(with these two items each having a four-scenario campaign and more units), Ork Freebooterz

and Ultramarines Vanguard Veteran Squad

(with these being additional bits available solely via the DPG webstore), and the Drop Zone Demo Kit

, with this being a smaller standalone two-player game with a single scenario for $25 that can serve as an introduction to the entire line, while also being compatible with it. Chaos and Eldar armies are in the queue

for release in 2019.

IELLO

will distribute the Heroes of Black Reach

line in the U.S., and the game is part of its "Elite Release" program in which certain brick-and-mortar retailers will be able to sell these titles starting March 15, 2018, whereas other B&M stores will get the games for a May 10 release and online retailers can start selling the game on May 24. Apparently we need many more fields in which to list release dates on a game because things are getting complicated.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3771543_t.jpg]

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3771544_t.jpg]• Renegade Game Studios

seems to announce a new game at least once a week, and the latest addition to its release calendar is a pair of titles due out Q4 2017 that were previously funded on Kickstarter: Hall of Heroes

and Fields of Fame

, two expansions for Shem Phillips

' Raiders of the North Sea

— and the Renegade version of that game is due to hit the U.S. market on October 11, 2017.

• In addition to these expansions to the North Sea

line, Renegade has announced a Q2 2018 release date for The Tea Dragon Society Card Game

, a design by Steve Ellis

and Tyler Tinsley

that is based on The Tea Dragon Society

graphic novel by Katie O'Neill. No details about the game have been revealed beyond its impending existence.

• Designer James Ernest

took the basics of a game created by author Pat Rothfuss for the novel "The Wise Man's Fear" and turned it into the actual game Tak

. He's now doing something similar for a fantasy novel in the works by Sonia Lyris. Here's an overview of Rochi

from Ernest:

Rochi is a gambling game for 2-8 players, played with a Tarot-style deck with six suits of different sizes. It's a new deck design for us, and it's a whole new way to think about how gambling games should work. There is no betting, very little bluffing, and six different pots!

Along with Rochi, we have developed a couple more games in the same family: another card game called Roche, and a dice game called Rugen. These are both standard self-working casino games.
Rochi

will be published by King of the Castle Games

in 2018, but if you're interested in checking out the game now, you can download the rules and materials

from Ernest's Cheapass Games website.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3634668_t.png]• Designer Jackson Pope

used to self-publish games (and publish designs from others) under the Reiver Games

brand, but he stopped around 2010. (He's detailed what went wrong

on his "Creation and Play" blog.)

The itch to design games didn't go away, though, so in 2015 he returned to the method of how he launched his first game, Border Reivers

, and decided to sell a handmade limited edition of Zombology

, a semi-cooperative game in which 3-8 "scientists" attempt to cure a zombie plague using "unlikely cures such as homeopathy, healing crystals and a vegan diet". He's now established a new company — Eurydice Games

— under which to release the game, and he's making two hundred more handmade copies of Zombology

to sell through his website

. So retro!

Designer Diary: Liberatores, or The True Nature of Games with a Traitor

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/691…s-or-true-nature-games-tr

by Yan Yegorov

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3747786_t.jpg]Hello, I'm Yan Yegorov

, and here are my designer notes on the board game Liberatores: The Conspiracy to Liberate Rome

.

During the past few years, I've designed several games. They are based mostly on psychology of some sort. I have a psychology degree and am a big fan of psychological games. I like games with traitors, negotiation, diplomacy, bluffing, and so forth, and I've already published a game based on the "Prisoner's Dilemma" — Swords and Bagpipes

— and one heavily based on negotiation: Gentlemen's Deal

.

Theory of Traitors

In 2016 I was up to new challenges. Onу day, my friend Nick and I were discussing the theoretical basis of games with a traitor. My main issue was that the strategy of these games is in a way pretty straightforward. If somebody does something a bit irrational, he is the traitor, right? Nobody in his clear mind will do bad things for his team, so how can the traitor ever harm his team without exposing himself?

Most board games solve this puzzle by making some of the information hidden. You can do sneaky stuff when nobody's watching in Battlestar Galactica

, The Resistance

, and many other games. You will always have some kind of hidden information whether it is secret moves or just a closed hand.

I found this approach a little bit cheap. I like classical traitor games a lot, but it is not an interesting solution to the problem. It is totally playable, but I wanted something else. Hidden information makes the game more of a puzzle in which you can combine all the evidence together to track down the bad guys. I wanted to provide players with a situation in which a traitor can act naturally and everything will be okay. The other approach has already been used in many games, so there's no need to make a new one like that.

My friend and I came to the conclusion that it would be very interesting to make players with good roles act irrational — but how can I do so?

The Solution

I immediately chose a Roman Empire theme, with the players being conspirators who are going to kill Julius Caesar. The theme was chosen mostly because of the design convenience. Conspiracies often have a lot of hidden goals, betrayal, and twists, so it's easy to speculate about what's going on.

My first attempt was to make the roles unclear. I made a game in which you had some kind of "Traitor Rating" cards, so you didn't really know if you were a traitor or not. More specifically, you were dealt several cards and the person with the highest traitor rating became the traitor. You know whether you have a high rating or not, but you can't be sure that you are the traitor.

What did it gave us? Nothing. That was a really bad idea because in effect you're randomly thrown to one or the other side at the end of the game. It was a major upset when you were trying to play as a traitor, but then you lose because you've picked the wrong side.

With time, the concept evolved into the following idea: the traitor inside the game with a traitor. One of the good guys becomes the "Competitor"; he wants to be the new Emperor, so he wants to kill Caesar, just as the other players, but he also wants to accomplish his personal goal.

With this concept, the game went crazy! People within the group started fighting each other. You can't trust anyone, so you have to beat the Competitor by yourself. Everybody starts to make selfish moves, so you can't tell who is who. The goal of actually killing Caesar becomes secondary because now the conspirators have an enemy within — and it's not just a regular traitor, who basically plays for the game. One of your teammates is out there to double-cross you.

"Has he done it because he is a traitor? Or is he a good guy who's making an action against the Competitor once in awhile? Or he is just stupid and doesn't see the better option? Or what if he is right?" — you ask yourself these questions all the time, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3747859_t.png] The Gameplay

The basics of the game are pretty simple. You have Caesar and "Liberatores" (the conspiracy group), and both sides will gain power points during play. If at the end of the game the Liberatores have more power points than Caesar, they kill Caesar.

• One of the players wants to save Caesar. He is Caesar's Agent.

• Two or three players want to kill Caesar. They are Republicans.

• One player wants to kill Caesar, but also wants to get more personal power than any of the Republicans. He is the Competitor.

Players also get their personal power points from time to time. You will mostly need these power points to fight the Competitor, but you can also transfer them to Liberatores (or Caesar).

The players have a "market" of citizens that they can lure to their side, and they take citizens from the market turn by turn. A player can spend money to buy the citizen for themselves to get a special ability, or they can spend money to send the citizen to Liberatores, so they gain power points, or they can send the citizen to Caesar, so that he gains power points; this helps Caesar, but the player gets to activate most of the citizen's cool abilities and this is the most common way to earn money. Thus, players give Caesar power to get money, then use this money to overthrow Caesar and prepare themselves for future turns.

There are tons of designer decisions to make the system work, but that is the main idea.

After some testing, I figured out the core gameplay and have been only tweaking the balance ever since. Why is it fun? Most other games in this genre disguise the traitor through a lack of information, but Liberatores

goes another way. The game puts you in the opposite situation. You don't know who is who because you have been flooded with information, and any given move may simultaneously pursue many things.

For example, you've bought an ability for yourself. That can mean that you just wanted that ability, or that you wanted to take this powerful card away from the market, so that it won't go to Caesar, or that you want to prevent another player from sending it to Liberatores. And what will you do with new ability? Oh, you can do a lot of things with your brand new card, and most of them can bring down players in many different ways.

So you have all the information in the world, and you want your guesses and clues to sum up to a solid hypothesis, but you have only a limited number of turns that is barely enough to solve the puzzle, so you will often have to jump to a conclusion just to have enough time to take action.

And it's not like you are given a bunch of irrelevant information; there are just too many possibilities. I think that it plays very nicely. Usually in such games, you barely have enough information to suspect at least somebody. In Liberatores

you are struggling to find a player to trust.

Publishing

Liberatores

happens to be a game with a high learning curve, though the rules are pretty simple. There is a lot to explore in this game, so I needed dedicated boardgamers to publish it. We don't have very hardcore publishers in Russia, but I found wonderful guys during SPIEL '16: Moaideas Game Design

.

It was an exciting adventure for me. I met a lot of foreign people, showed them my projects, didn't know what to expect. Soon after SPIEL, Moaideas picked my game. They just wrote something like: "We like the game, let's publish it?" It was very sudden. "Maybe they really liked the concept", I thought. They've made some changes and, looking at these changes, I understand those guys totally dig the game. They have this deep understanding of the game process any designer is looking for in a publisher.

I know that Liberatores

is not a gateway casual board game, but I hope it becomes something remarkable for experienced gamers. My story pretty much ends here, so I think that now David Liu

should catch up with the narrative and give the Moaideas perspective on the project:

A Word from Moaideas

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3747843_t.png]Hi, fellow gamers! David here, speaking as producer for Moaideas Game Design.

Yan pitched some of his games to us at SPIEL '16, and I was immediately intrigued by the description of Liberatores

. We didn't have time to play a full game, so I asked for the PnP files to test it after the show. I printed out the prototype soon after getting back to Taiwan, and we quickly discovered the most unique and fascinating part of the game: All players are forced to perform actions that will help the opposing team, yet at the same time, you have to let your teammates believe you are working on their side.

During development of the game, me and Afong (our main developer) focused on adjusting the effects of citizen cards. We wanted to enhance the core concept of the game by increasing the interactions between players. We culled card effects that were seldom used and added more cards that require players to make a decision about who you want to interact with. If a card was usable only by one side, then it was changed so that all three roles can find a way to use it.

Now there are tons of opportunities for you to come up with legitimate reasons to persuade someone to hire different citizens for the mutual benefit of all, while actually just advancing your own agenda. Our playtest groups never failed to amaze us with new ways to use different citizens, as well as new excuses to justify their actions.

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3747847_t.png]The more interaction between players, the more you need to be sure you are working with people on your team, or the results may be devastating… However, in this game, there is no way to prove your identity to others. Thus, an interesting dilemma is created; most of the time you can't be completely sure of another player's identity, but with only seven rounds in this game, you don't have the luxury of testing everyone's reactions until you are certain. This is a social deduction game, but it is definitely not a light party game.

For the cover graphics, considering the history and theme of the game, we decided the main topic is a power struggle. A troubled Caesar is sitting alone on a throne, and five senators (the players) are scheming behind his back with malicious intentions. There are no "good guys" in this game as you are trying to get rid of Caesar through assassination, so we hope this gets the message across.

Although Caesar seems pretty vulnerable on the cover, he is not entirely hopeless. A well-played Agent that sows distrust among the others may stop the rebellion before it is formed. Thus, I think "suspicion" is the defining word of this game since players are always suspicious of everyone else, but if Republicans don't work together, then it is very difficult to win.

Finally, thanks again to Yan for submitting his game to us last year, and together I believe we have refined it into an even better game. This is a fresh take on the social deduction genre, and we think the heavier elements of game are something that is rarely seen. Hope you will enjoy the frustration as much as we do.

SPIEL '17 Preview: Cosmogenesis, or Building Blocks for a New, Better Solar System

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/696…esis-or-building-blocks-n

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3575260_t.jpg]Are you ready to create a solar system? A solar system that includes the board game Cosmogenesis

from Yves Tourigny

and Ludonova

, a game in which you create a solar system?

While I wish this level of meta was included in the game, perhaps with a tiny image of Cosmogenesis

being visible on an asteroid, I'll have to wait until an expansion for it to exist. For now, we have only a well-crafted game about crafting solar systems, a game that had others saying, "I thought this was Exoplanets

at first glance" and "How does this compare to Planetarium

?" Apparently you can depict cosmic dust coalescing into bodies in only so many ways.

In Cosmogenesis

, you are the star — literally. You represent the sun in the system-to-be, and you're going to accumulate bodies orbiting around you, deciding to place a gas giant here, add some moons there, and direct a comet into a terrestrial body to form an atmosphere somewhere within your finite habitable zone. You're not the only star on this cosmic broadway, however, so you'll need to take turns drafting what you want and hope those other suns don't eclipse your choices.

In more detail, you start with a board bearing a few orbital rings and 1-4 asteroids depending on where you start in the turn order. At the start of each of the six rounds, you set up the central board with a number of objectives, asteroids, terrestrial objects, gas giants, and "exotic objects" based on the number of players in four regions of the board, then players take turns choosing objects. Once you've chosen something from a region, you're done with the region for that round. What you do with the object depends on what it is:

• Gas giants occupy the closest empty orbital ring to become a planet. Gas giants have no other reason for existence than to be a planet. That's all they live for. It's a simple life, but one for which they're well-suited.

• Terrestrial bodies, which come in four sizes, can be placed as planets (in the closest empty orbital ring), or as moons for existing planets (assuming the moon-to-be is smaller), or as something to be smashed into an existing terrestrial moon or planet in order to increase the size of the smashee. Why would you do this? Because only terrestrial bodies of size 3 or 4 can have an atmosphere, and you'll likely want to create a few of these in order for life to develop beyond the bacterial stage. There's also the issue of...

• Planetary objectives give you goals in life. Nana Nebula always said it was good to have goals, so you'll acquire four such goals over the course of the game. Once you meet the minimum conditions on a planetary objective, you can spend an additional action to celebrate this stage of existence, revealing the objective and obtaining both immediate rewards and points to be tallied at game's end.

• Stellar objectives differ from planetary objectives in that they're always visible and you score points for them at game's end depending on how well you meet the depicted condition, whether it's asteroids as moons, or gas giants with rings, or planets of the largest size, or moons of size 2, or fifteen other things. What's more, if you outshine each other star in this category, then you receive additional points.

• Comets can collide with gas giants to give them rings (which can be good for both types of objectives) or collide with large terrestrial bodies to create an atmosphere.

• Asteroids can be captured as moons of size 1 or collided with existing terrestrial bodies to increase their size or collided with a terrestrial body to place bacteria on it or combined with each other to create a comet or exchanged for more orbital rings should you desire a big family or placed in the asteroid belt for use later. For hunks of featureless rock, they're quite versatile.

• Exotic objects offer a wide range of benefits depending on what's depicted on them, from asteroids to comets to additional actions to the ability to move intelligent life from one world to another. These objects are all double-sided, so the particular bonuses will determined at random wen you lay out the tiles to be drafted at the start of the round.

Each time you draft an object, you do something with that object, then you can choose to use one or more exotic objects that you possess in addition to taking an optional additional action, whether revealing a planetary objective or using an asteroid or comet that you acquired on an earlier turn.

After each player has chosen four objects, you return unselected celestial objects to the drafting bag, remove unchosen objectives from the game, advance life one step up the evolutionary ladder (from bacteria to jellyfish to fish to lizards to intelligent life, which may or may not coincide with human beings), then prepare for the next round. After six rounds, you advance once more on the evolutionary wheel, then tally your points on ye olde scorepad, which is as much of a pain as it always is, especially since you need to compute three stellar objectives per player, possibly with bonus points for each. Thankfully we have already reached the evolutionary stage of having an opposable thumb, which allows us to note such things instead of having to remember all of them.

Gameplay in Cosmogenesis

— which I've played twice on a review copy from Ludonova, once with three players and once with four — is simple, while the game choices are not, mostly due to you needing to time everything in just the right way so that the bodies mesh in the most effective way possible. You might need a second moon of size 2 in order to finish a planetary objective, but only size 1 objects are available, so you could draft one, then ram an asteroid into it, then on your next turn play the objective, which gives you another asteroid and a bonus comet, so maybe you want to draft a gas giant first so that you can use that comet on something, etc.

The game lasts only 24 turns in packages of six rounds, yet with a possible additional action on each turn, not to mention the exotic objects, your choices explode and expand, leaving you unsure of what's best when. On top of this, you have the standard worries of any drafting game, with you wanting A, B and C, but able to take only two of the three and possibly not even that if someone else takes an object first.

The rules are messier and less straightforward than they could have been because they focus on setting over systems. The rules have sections on coalescence for planet creation and on the capturing of moons, for example, instead of something more flowcharty to mirror what's described above. When playing the game, you'll think, "I took a terrestrial body, so tell me what I can do with it." Or "I took a comet; now what are my choices?"

You want the rules to show the paths on which you can travel, not include a section on colliding that features subsections explaining what happens depending on what is being collided into what. Start with the objects, the things that will be handled during play, and tell us what to do with them. Such an approach would also make it easier to reference rules questions during play. Want to double-check something about asteroids? Turn to the "asteroid" section and you'll find everything there.

Along similar lines, the player aids are either too large and unwieldy or too small and of less aid than one might wish. The rulebook contains image charts that show what happens when a terrestrial body collides with something or when an asteroid collides with something, but the player aid detailing your actions is merely a text list that sort of jogs your mind as to what you can do, but not enough to understand how things actually work.

Aside from these quibbles, the gameplay in Cosmogenesis

provides just the challenge that a young naked star needs — to surround yourself with those who will never leave you and who will satisfy whatever oddball demands you might find yourself grappling with.

Crowdfunding Round-up: The 7th Sunset Panic Over Evil Potato Trench

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/696…nset-panic-over-evil-pota

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2648303_t.jpg]• Hard to believe that only five months have passed since Gloomhaven

raised nearly $4 million on Kickstarter, but here we are in October 2017 with another giant, heavily immersive adventure game piling up the bucks, this being The 7th Continent

from Ludovic Roudy, Bruno Sautter, and French publisher Serious Poulp

. As was the case with Gloomhaven

, Serious Poulp is funding a new edition of The 7th Continent

for all those who missed the game in the first place. In addition, the publisher is marketing an expansion — What Goes Up, Must Come Down

— that adds another 250 cards to this weighty game. If nothing else, a quest for this game will help you explore your wallet... ( KS link

)

• In the category of games bearing famous IPs, we have Resident Evil 2: The Board Game

from UK-based Steamforged Games Ltd.

, which last hit Kickstarter in mid-2016 to fund its take on Dark Souls

. I guess Steamforged has its niche carved out. Any bets on what they'll adapt next? ( KS link

)

• Also lodged in that category is T2029: The Official Terminator 2 Board Game

from Ian O'Toole

and Australian publisher Rule & Make

. As you might expect, players all take part in the Resistance against Skynet in the year 2029 while also needing to protect John Connor in 1995.

( KS link

) We recorded an overview at Gen Con 50 should you care to learn more:

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3750065_t.png]• Okay, that's three intense co-ops from non-U.S. publishers, so let's zag in the other direction for Sunset Over Water

from Eduardo Baraf, Steve Finn, Keith Matejka, and Pencil First Games

. Players in this game trek through the wilderness, create landscape paintings, then attempt to sell them. No one fires guns or falls off a cliff and needs a broken leg bound. I'm not sure how such games still exist, but here we are. ( KS link

)

• You might experience a similarly calm sensation in Spy Club

from Randy Hoyt and Jason D. Kingsley, which is being co-published by frequent partners Foxtrot Games

and Renegade Game Studios

. In this cooperative game, you channel Encyclopedia Brown and Harriet the Spy to solve mysteries in your neighborhood, whether as one-off cases or as a sequence of cases that fit together in a larger story. From the BGG description: "Throughout the campaign, you'll unlock new modules with additional rules and story elements. With 40+ new modules and 150+ cards in the campaign deck, you can reset everything and play multiple campaigns — with a different story and gameplay experience emerging each time." ( KS link

)

• Deduction is also at the heart of Stephen Godot's Human Punishment: Social Deduction 2.0

from his own Godot Games

, with each of the 4-16 players being either human, machine, or outlaw and wanting to hunt down everyone else on the other teams. The graphics seem like a modern take on the neon-heavy look of Blade Runner

. ( KS link

)

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3690024_t.jpg]• Japanese creators can now use Kickstarter as well, and I think the first such project from Japan is for Yota Suzuki's Space Editor

from TACTICAL GAMES

. The game takes you back to the dawn of time, then challenges you to create the universe (no small feat!) by taking control of one of the five elements and ensuring that element remains dominant when you and the other gods decide to knock off for the day and call it done. ( KS link

)

• Potato Pirates

is the latest take on a game that will teach kids how to code, with this design coming from Singapore-based technology company Codomo. More generally, this seems like a "take that" style of game that allows for loops and conditional elements to do more and take advantage of opponents in particular circumstances. ( KS link

)

• Nothing Now Games

is back on Kickstarter for a second go at Panic!

, a bidding and bluffing system from James Ernest

in which players are commodity brokers who must escape a market crash before everyone else in order to stay on top of the financial pack. As seems to be common for an Ernest design, his game system has been used to create three different designs in one box: a bidding game, a drafting game, and a trick-taking game. ( KS link

)

• Another game getting a relaunch is ELO Darkness

from Tommaso Mondadori, Alberto Parisi, and Reggie Games

, with this being a two-player customizable MOBA-inspired card game that can also accommodate four players in teams of two. ( KS link

)

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3733753_t.jpg]• Marshall Britt and Andrew Toth's Re-Chord

from Yanaguana Games

places you in a guitar battle that has you trying to complete secret chords to score points while also placing the guitar picks of your hidden color in the best scoring positions. ( KS link

)

• After releasing multiple versions of its Evolution

board game, North Star Games

is now bringing the design to PC, Mac, and mobile devices. ( KS link

)

• Whoa, here's a blast from the past. Outer Limit Games

is funding a new version of Rui Alípio Monteiro's Trench

, an abstract strategy game for two players inspired by trench warfare tactics from World War I. ( KS link

)

I interviewed Wise Games, the original publisher of Trench

, at the 2013 Spielwarenmesse trade show in Nürnberg, Germany, the first time I had attended that event. It's nice to be able to re-use videos for an explanation of something coming back to market. (P.S.: I still own that shirt.)

Editor's note: Please don't post links to other Kickstarter projects in the comments section. Write to me via the email address in the header, and I'll consider them for inclusion in a future crowdfunding round-up. Thanks! —WEM

Designer Diary: Dragon Castle, or How to Do Proper Justice to Your Mechanisms

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/695…tle-or-how-do-proper-just

by Lorenzo Silva

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3683059_t.png]Here in the western part of the world, the game called "Mahjong" we're mostly familiar with is the solitaire variant. This label is since it doesn't have anything to do with the real traditional Chinese game by the same name, a set-collection game of skill, strategy and calculations, with a bit of chance involved, for four players. The only thing they have in common is the tiles used for the game.

With that said, the tile-collection mechanism of "solitaire mahjong" has been popular for decades, especially in video game form, and it is quite good on its own merits. There is something fundamentally satisfying in searching for a couple of matching tiles to remove and slowly demolishing a huge structure of tiles! You can even start with the tiles laid down in many different shapes to greatly alter the feeling of each game. There must be a reason these video games have been so popular ever since their invention, after all!

This is how the story of Dragon Castle

started. During an IDEAG

event — IDEAG being a series of Italian events where game designers show their prototypes to players and publishers — Luca Ricci

approached me with the idea of making a board game based on "mahjong" (meaning the solitaire). I found the idea very appealing for all the reasons stated above and more, so after a couple of email exchanges we started to work separately on our ideas (me in Milan at the Horrible Games

headquarters, Luca in Rome), comparing our prototypes every couple of weeks to decide where to bring the development next.

The core of the project has always been to use that tile-collection mechanism. Traditional mahjong tiles are divided into "simples" (numeric tiles going from 1 to 9), "honors" (dragons and winds), and "bonus tiles" (seasons and flowers).

One of the earliest decisions we made was to turn the "simples" into factions ("farmers" for the "bamboos", "merchants" for the "circles" that I've always seen as coins, and "soldiers" for the "characters"). The soldiers, in particular, would have to be swords in increasing numbers, like the other suits, instead of the Chinese characters. This apparently insignificant change would give us two advantages: We could start creating a setting for our (otherwise very abstract) game, and it would also make the tiles easier to distinguish for western eyes without losing that "mahjong" feeling.

From here came the idea of the "crumbling castle", that is, a place that people (i.e., the tiles/factions) are abandoning in search of a new home — a premise that has remained in the game ever since. The early prototype of the game, though, was very different from what you see today. You had a more structured player board divided into different areas: the city, the fields, the barracks, and so on. Depending on the kind of tile you collected, and the area of your realm you placed them in, you could trigger different instant effects or work towards different end-game scoring criteria (waging war against your neighbors, removing farmer tiles to harvest, etc.). We wanted the special tiles to have thematic effects, too, but none of the ideas we tested was really convincing.

This was a phase when the development of the game proceeded slowly. It took me a bit of time to realize why, but the reason none of the iterations of the game using this system really convinced me was that we were building a quite structured and complicated Eurogame that was based on a simple and instantly recognizable mechanism with a distinct family appeal. We did want strategy in the game, but this was not the way to go.

This realization finally became crystal clear to me one day when I casually showed the game to my mother. She instantly said, "Oooh, mahjong", and for once she was really interested to know more about a game (even though she's not really a gamer at all) — yet I knew she would never, ever want to play a game like that. That's when it hit me that a core mechanism with such a broad appeal had to be used in a more accessible game because otherwise it would feel like a waste (to me, at least). Both Luca and I were struggling to find the right direction, and with many other projects on our hands, the game was slowly falling behind in our respective development schedules, but I always kept it alive in a part of my brain.

The project finally found new life when Hjalmar Hach

joined the Horrible Games team. I showed him the latest prototype, and I explained the general direction I wanted the project to go, that is, a more accessible, puzzle-like game that would better fit with the core mechanism and its history. I was hoping that a pair of fresh eyes would see something new, something that me and Luca, with all our development history and layers of old ideas and game versions, found difficult to see. And luckily, that was the case! After a few hectic brainstorming sessions, we basically made a whole new game based on spatial objective cards that players needed to complete by building certain patterns with tiles of certain colors (a bit like Ticket to Ride

). This is when the game really started to take off.

We quickly went through many revisions. The game became more and more accessible, and we started to finally really enjoy playing it. We had no more areas on the player boards — just a single area where you could place your tiles, score the objectives, then place more tiles on top of them to score more objectives. It now felt like you were building your own little castle. Players would compete both for the tiles they needed to take from the central castle (now finally called the "Dragon Castle") and the available objective cards. It had strategy, and it still was a very abstract game, but the improved accessibility made it way more enjoyable.

It sounds like the pieces of the puzzle were finally falling into the right places, right? We thought the same...yet many parts of the game were still not convincing. The card system felt overcomplicated, for example, and the level of pattern recognition capabilities required to effectively play the game was still higher than what I would have liked. When you completed an objective card, you were forced to turn some of the tiles face down to avoid snowballing, but this mechanism was very prone to analysis paralysis. (If I complete this objective, this tile turns face down and I can't complete this objective anymore, but if I complete this one first instead... You get the idea.) There were many other small details and nuances in the system that were needed to fix some of the problems we had, and they all contributed to make the game more complicated than it needed to be.

We couldn't decide whether we were in a situation where a few tweaks here and there would do, or whether we still needed major changes. Many of our playtesters liked this version of the game, despite its problems, but we ultimately felt that we needed to be bold. The game needed to go through another major metamorphosis. Striving to finally achieve that ultimate level of accessibility for which I was the main advocate, we got rid of the objective cards altogether. You would simply score points when creating sets of tiles of the same color. We made a first playtest with a very basic version of what would become the game as it is now (with no special powers and no special objectives), and something clicked. This was the way to go.

The game didn't really work, and it was a bit shallow compared to the previous version, but it finally felt right. We spent a few weeks working on this version of the game, making slow but steady progress. We re-introduced cards in the form of the Dragon cards, which are common "building" objectives for the end of the game that are much broader in scope than the old ones, yet much simpler to understand, and the Spirit cards (common special powers to break the rules and trigger combos). These cards kept the essence of what was good in the old versions of the game and integrated it into this new form, while also offering a great deal of variability and replayability to the game, with that variability being supplemented further by the many different castle layouts in the final rulebook (and the fact that you can also create your own layouts). A major improvement came with the addition of another key component: the Shrines.

Without the objective cards to constrain and guide your building possibilities, players were feeling a lack of long-term purpose in their decisions. When we added Shrines, which increase your score but also prevent you from building anything else on top of them — basically locking one of the spaces on your board forever — we made the puzzle aspect of the game as interesting as it was with the previous version, while keeping the game simple enough that you could understand what it was all about in five minutes and you could play it with your friends (gamers or not), partner, parents, children, dogs, cats — finally, a game for everyone.

The game took its last step towards the published form when we made one final addition: a dynamic scoring for the sets of tiles. In Dragon Castle

, you gain more points if you complete larger sets, but the score increase is not 100% linear. This creates a tension between riskier strategies (trying to go for larger sets for lots of points, but at the risk of other players counter-drafting the tiles you need), and quality strategies (completing many smaller sets that give you fewer points, but allow you to build a higher castle more quickly and build a lot of Shrines, especially on the upper levels of your castle where they are the most valuable). You can also mix and match these two extreme opposites, of course, and you also need to make sure you have enough Shrines to put the strategy you choose to complete fruition!

I'm very happy with how the final game turned out, and I'm sure the same can be said for my partners in crime: Hjalmar Hach and Luca Ricci. If you'll be in Essen for the SPIEL fair, we hope you'll pay us a visit in Hall 3, booth Q106! Dragon Castle

will be there waiting for you!

Happy gaming!
Lorenzo Silva

SPIEL '17 Preview: Sakura Hunt, or Between Our Two Lives There Is Also the Life of the Cherry Blossom

Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/697…unt-or-between-our-two-li

by W. Eric Martin

[Blockierte Grafik: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3631552_t.jpg]I've traveled to Japan a few times to cover Tokyo Game Market, but I've yet to see the annual cherry blossoms since they typically bloom in early April in Tokyo and I show up in May. (I also missed out on the tulip fields in full bloom when my wife and I lived in the Netherlands, visiting the field only after they'd all been cut down, leaving us to ogle at vast fields of cut stems.)

Sakura Hunt

from Yu Maruno

and JUGAME STUDIO

showcases these cherry blossoms in all their glory and gives folks like me the chance to enjoy them from afar, as well as the chance to miss seeing them once again. Now you can be disappointed all the time instead of only once a year!

In game terms, you're trying to collect sets of three cards, either in numerical sequence or bearing the same number. At the end of the game, you then arrange these cards in a panorama from low to high, scoring points if you have five or more cards in a row while also scoring bonus points for having three cards of the same number or three sake jokers. (Jokers can extend a panorama, allowing you to consider 1-2-3-4-J-6-7-8 as being connected, but you treat this as only a seven-card panorama since you were blitzed on sake on day 5 and don't remember it that well.)

How do you acquire these gorgeous cards? From four hanami rows that are created over the course of the game. The rules explain that "hanami" is "a Japanese custom to enjoy and appreciate the blossoming of sakura", so you and your follow players seed these rows with cards, which you then claim on a later turn.

In more detail, you start with six cards in hand and on a turn you can:

• Place a card in your hand into a hanami row, then draw a new card, or

• Swap a card in your hand with a card already in a hanami row, or

• Pick up one card from a hanami row, then combine it with two cards from your hand to create a set, then draw a new card.

You score points for this last action, with the most points coming when four cards are in the row. Yes, you are trying to time the viewing of sakura to just the right moment to see them at their most beautiful. When you score, your hand size is reduced by one, making it a bit tougher to create sets in future turns. What's more, once you visit a hanami row and score from it, you can't score from it again. You must travel the country and score once from each of the four rows.

Once you've scored four times, you take only the first action for the rest of the game, thereby pushing it toward a conclusion because the game ends once all players have scored four times or all hanami rows hold six cards.

While beautiful in design, Sakura Hunt

doesn't quite work as I think the designer intended, something I've experienced multiple times over five playings (4x 3p & 1x 2p) on a review copy from Japon Brand, which will sell the game at SPIEL '17. The problem comes from the swapping action because if players are paying attention, they don't want to create a row with four cards since doing so gives an opponent the chance to maximize their score (after which the row will have only three cards, thereby requiring another discard before you'll want to score there). Thus, someone with, say, an 8 and 9 in hand will swap one of these cards for a 10 in a row that has three cards, then on their next turn they'll swap this 10 for the card they laid down on the previous turn. At some point someone will break the cycle, either laying down a fourth card or settling for only two points, but this spinning of the wheels is frustrating.

In some games, sure, you want to take a sideways step to see what other players are doing and be able to respond to their actions, but if everyone is shuffling sideways over multiple turns, then the game itself ceases to advance, at which point it begins to die. (Games are like sharks in this regard — well, like sharks that are obligate ram ventilators

anyway.)

The rules contain a variant in which when you swap cards, you must place the newly received card on the table. This card is still part of your hand, but you can use it solely for creating a set, not for further swaps and not for placing in a row. This small change greatly affects how the game plays out because the laying out of a card commits you to playing it in the future, giving others the chance to scoop cards you might want and thereby offsetting the benefit that comes from swapping, namely setting up a row with a card that you want to score with in the future.

This variant complicates the table as you'll now have cards in hand, cards on the table that are to be considered in your hand, and cards in played sets, but I can't imagine playing without it as otherwise you'd just be swapping cards turn after turn until the heat death of the universe, which means you'd never see the sakura in real life.