2019 gaming year in review

Why do I even have this blog?  Is a blog still a blog even when you only write one entry per year and no one reads it?  What is the sound of one hand clapping?

Fuck it, let's introspect about games.  There's value in it, I assure you.  And by you, I mean me.

Design & Publication

There were some big ups and downs this year.  I continue to feel that board game design, development, and publishing are incredibly punishing processes - especially for freelance designers like myself.  It is difficult, at times, not to feel exploited.  And yet there is much to be thankful for.  This year saw the eventual appearance of Maniacal - in the flesh, so to speak.  Delivered several months late to KS backers, and still suffering some problems with distribution.  But there was (is) great joy in seeing that final product - that game you've poured your brain into for so many months - finally manifest in one's immediate reality.  To hold it in your hands and examine the box, as if you've never seen it before.  To read the instruction manual for the 1000th time, but also as if you've never read it before.  To punch the tokens and set up the board as if you've never played before.  

I'm thoroughly pleased with how Maniacal ended up, let me be clear on that.  The final product is gorgeous and it's beyond what I originally imagined it could be.  So Kudos to EGG, and Kudos to me.  But it's also true that the development and production of Maniacal were beset with inefficiencies and delays and poor decisions that were utterly unnecessary.  Changes in company leadership and in lead developers that impacted the momentum and, in many ways, final quality of the game.  Events beyond my control, even though I often raged against them explicitly.  This part of game design is NOT FUN.  I hope that other designers don't experience it, but I suspect many do.  I feel like designers, and in particular, freelancers need a BILL OF RIGHTS that discusses fair contracts, appropriate royalties, ownership rights and all that jazz, bu also goes beyond into basic issues of respect and communication.  Something that helps move consumer and designer to at least an equal level with publisher, if not above. 

It remains to be seen how well Maniacal will sell.  There has been very little publicity and advertisement.  Hardly any buzz whatsoever.  My game competes with 1000's of others churned out by an industry that is more concerned with taking advantage of a consumer boom than worrying about any particular title in their catalog.  Put out as many games as possible, hope one of them gets hot, becomes an evergreen.  Those that don't are abandoned, eventually placed on deep discount, quickly forgotten.  My cynicism today apparently knows no bounds.

My proudest accomplishment design-wise this year was successfully transforming an Aztec-apocalypse themed game that's been in my prototype pile for a while into a much better Doomsday-cult themed game.  It blossomed into a strong design early in 2019, so much so that I felt confident showing it to potential publishers at Origins.  Grey Fox Games expressed interested, took my prototype, and a couple weeks later I'd signed a contract with them.  I've continued to tweak the game in the ensuing months - working on expanding the player count to 1-6 primarily, and adding a few new cults to the game - but no formal development on this game will occur until later this year.  

To be frank, I'm not optimistic that switching publishers will necessarily lead to a more satisfying development and publication experience.   I don't think my problems with this industry lie with specific companies, in other words.  They are more systemic.  But I could be wrong.  Stay tuned here (and elsewhere) for more news on this game as it gets closer to publication.  In some ways it's my strongest design.  And yet again, it's very different from my previous games.  As such, it may be unsatisfying to those who wish I was just working on another area control game.  I think part of what's been going on with me design-wise these past couple years is that I'm trying out different types of games, playing with lots of different mechanics, fiddling with contrasting game philosophies (e.g., direct confrontation vs. little player interaction).  Seeing what fits me.  Seeing what I'm good at.  To be clear, I'm still learning.  I'm getting better but also more jaded and more and more influenced by other popular games in the market.

It's getting harder and harder to feel like your design is truly innovative.  It's getting harder to understand what players want in a game - intricate plastic components, three dimensions, electronics, app-integration, hordes of MINIS, 100+ scenarios, solitaire variants, etc., etc.  My ideas often get quickly swallowed up in thoughts of inferiority and confusion.  I still think about games in terms of cards and counters and dice.  I may be outdated.

Board Games I Played & Loved

In contrast to my design frustrations, I can say that 2019 was an excellent year for playing games with my friends.  I have a great game group - 4 of us - who get together around once/week for 3-4 hours.  We played a lot this year.  A lot of it was fantastic.  A lot of these were new games.  So maybe the industry is fine?  Things look different from the hobbyist's perspective.

I also joined a boardgame podcast this year, hosted by the illustrious critic Tom Chick.  As a long time fan of Tom, this was a periodically exhilarating experience.  Tom, Mike, and I put out an episode every 2 weeks for the entirety of the year, and I mostly didn't run out of things to say.  I don't like how my laughter sounds on tape, and I come off as pretentious at times.  But I enjoyed the pressure of coming up with something interesting to say about one game every other week.  I hope we continue it. 

Gaming highlights?  Well, certainly Twilight Imperium 4 has to be at the top of the list. What a game.  We played 3x in 2019 - the first a learning game in all honesty, but all intensely competitive and dramatic.  People shouldn't shy away from TI4 because they're worried about game length or rules complexity.  It is long, it does have a lot of rules - but once you get into it, it's probably the most immersive strategy game I've ever played.  It keeps you up at night thinking about your next turn.  It gives you stomach aches worrying what stupid Action cards your opponents might have.  And the tension ramps up.  The narrative arc of a game is fascinating.  I'm proud to say I won each game we played, and so I should likely never play TI4 again.

Nemesis is also great.  A truly cinematic experience that captures what many of us love about Alien, the movie.  I love how it can be very cooperative or intensely confrontational.  The secret objectives are incorporated very well.  It can also run long, but it's well worth it and the flow of each turn is actually quite simple and smooth.

I played a number of low/mid weight games that I quite liked this year:  Victorian Masterminds, Crusaders, Ethnos, Wasteland Express, Clank.  I would play all of these again in an instant.  I also count myself a fan of Tapestry, even though I understand the haters.  I maybe love KeyForge even though I hardly ever play it.  

When it came to solitaire play, I got into Unicornus Knights for a time - and I'm looking forward to playing it again.  It's wacky and cool.  The expansion for Paper Tales made it an excellent little solo drafting game that I'm sure I'll pull out regularly.  But other than those, it was a somewhat dissatisfying year for solo play.  I maybe shouldn't have sold my copy of 7th Continent to my brother.  But I needed the cash...

My top 10 has changed a little, at least according to my BGG ranking:

TI4, Concordia, and Clockwork Wars are new additions.  The Clockwork Wars ranking might not even be a lie.  We played it a couple times this year and it was a blast. 

But above all this, I'm just thankful that I have three good friends that I get to see (at least) once a week, drink good beer with, bullshit, and play against.  I couldn't have asked for a better crew.  We play a lot of different stuff, we know how to learn new rules quickly, we know how to be competitive without being assholes, and no one ever leaves the table upset.  We create a "magic circle" weekly, and stepping inside of it allows me to temporarily forget much of the chaos and tragedy in the world.

Video Games I Played & Loved

Not much, and I ain't lyin'.  This is largely due to the fact that I transitioned to an Apple computer at home, which has limited the games I can play.  I also don't have as much time to play as I once did.  And my motivation is lower.  I'm not as excited by video games anymore, and I'll often choose to watch a good film vs. spend 2-3 hours playing a strategy game or RPG.

Having said all that, there have been a couple stand-outs.  Slay the Spire is a darn good time.  I'm not sure it deserves all the attention it receives, but it's clean and precisely balanced and fairly impressive on several levels.  I got into Dungeons 3 for a while, reliving my old Dungeon Keeper obsession.  It didn't quite capture the same magic, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed taking my creatures aboveground to slaughter righteous heroes.  My biggest surprise of the year was definitely Battle Chasers: NightWar, which is a hella dumb name and yes, it's a JRPG (I guess?) but I loved every minute of it and it was just the right length.  Probably the closest I came to a 10/10 experience this year.  

Ape Out was OK, and at least pretty amusing and hip.  Cultist Simulator was flat-out disappointing and frustrating.  Nowhere Prophet was good but not great.  And I still keep coming back to Northgard even though the AI continues to hammer me.  It's a great example of a video game that feels like a board game but does things that a board game could never do.

Conclusions

It's all good, don't worry about me.  First world problems, I don't practice my gratitude enough, I know I waste too much emotional energy on anxiety and pessimism.  I've got a lot more gaming in me.  A lot more to create, a lot more to play.  Thank goodness for games.  When I die, I want to be surrounded by cardboard and dice and lots of beautiful, colorful boxes shining at me, tempting me with the stories they contain.  Bury me with them, let me take them into the afterlife.  It will be glorious.

2018 gaming year in review

2018 was a challenging year for many reasons, personal and professional.  Nothing particularly traumatic or heart-breaking... just challenging. Kids, research, teaching, our government, the inexplicable inefficiency and incompetency of other human beings.  But let's ignore all that and focus on games!

By far the biggest and most important gaming news for me this year was the development and successful Kickstarter funding of my second boardgame design, Maniacal (previously, Infamous).

The development and publication of Maniacal has been a rollercoaster ride with far too much unnecessary stress.  I've worked with five (!) different "lead developers" since EGG signed it in 2016, and each time a new person took over the project, there was a loss of time, a large burden placed upon me, and substantial stress.  This is a game that could easily have been ready for Kickstarter in late 2017, but instead we launched in August 2018.  I wish that we could have done more promotion & playtesting at various conventions leading up to the Kickstarter.  I wish that we had had a consistent art director and graphic designer on task from day one.  And I wish that far more advertising and promotional work had been completed before we launched.

But on the plus side, I'm thrilled that EGG was willing and able to hire the amazing Rob Guillory to do all (!) the artwork for the game.  I love how the graphic design ultimately came together.  And I think we ended up shoving an extraordinary amount of good content into the game, even though I had to leave a bunch of cool ideas by the wayside (for now, at least).  And finally, I'm of course thankful that we actually funded the project successfully.

On that note, the Kickstarter itself was a bit of a letdown.  We never quite generated the enthusiasm and momentum that we had hoped for.  I had honestly imagined that we would hit $50K easily and had the potential to reach $75K if enough people heard about the project.  I believe we were adequately prepped for the KS itself (rules 100%, stretch-goals all planned, art and graphic design around 90% complete) with the exception of lining up enough previews/reviews.  But there's a lot of competition nowadays, and it's hard to stand out in a crowded market.  Maniacal is, at its core, a card-driven game without a lot of component flair.  I'm not a well known designer, by any stretch of the imagination.  So perhaps this was a project that consumers wanted to "wait & see."  Fair enough.  I hope that when it's released, we garner some good reviews and convince people to try it out.

The stress and inefficiency of Maniacal's development has had a couple unfortunate consequences for me, personally.  I had to put a lot more of my time and energy into prepping Infamous/Maniacal than I had originally hoped, in large part because of the inconsistent leadership from EGG.  This ended up stealing away time that I wanted to put into some other designs that I currently have at the prototype phase. I was hoping to show one or two of these at Origins this year, but they weren't even close to being ready.  The second consequence is that I'm feeling more cynical and less motivated about boardgame design and publication now.  There are too many games coming out, publishers are exploiting designers too much, games aren't going through enough development, consumers aren't spending enough time with games before judging them, and I personally have not found the process efficient or satisfying.  I hope that my attitude changes once Maniacal is finally in print.

With regards to personal gaming, this was a great year.  My gaming group is a solid core of four wonderful friends, and we were able to get together once or twice a month - sometimes more.  We shared a ton of laughs and together came to appreciate our "collective" tastes in gaming.  Generally speaking, when we play together we prefer combative strategy games, especially area control games.  Blood Rage is our favorite game to play, and we probably got it to the table 10+ times this year.  It's good every time. We also played a fair bit of Rising Sun, with which I have some problems.  I find it overly long, tiring, and lacking in finesse.

We played Scythe 2x this year, and while I love aspects of the design, overall I found it to be a frustratingly constraining experience.  I tried to get the group hooked on Civilization: a New Dawn, but only two of us liked it and one actively hated it so now it laments on my for-trade shelf.  We had a fairly thrilling session of Black Orchestra, but it never hit the table again.  I was happy to play Concordia at least twice this year, as it's probably my favorite Euro and I've played it enough now to actually play well.  I re-discovered the joy of the "command and colors" system through Battlelore, Second Edition which I think is a thoroughly fun game.  I don't play 2-player very often nowadays, but I really hope to get this one to the table more in 2019.

For solitaire play, I played a hefty amount of the LOTR LCG, which I'll always keep in my collection.  Also, Nemo's War, the new Fallout boardgame, some Mage Knight, and Dungeon Alliance (which I eventually traded away).  Surprisingly, I barely touched Spirit Island at all, even though I absolutely adore the design and it happily squats in my Top 10.

Excitingly, Inara (my older daughter, now 7.5) started to get more into boardgames this year.  Together with my wife, Aili, we played a decent amount of King of Tokyo and Kingdomino.  We even futzed around with Castle Ravenloft a bit, and next year she'll definitely be ready for the full ruleset.

I didn't play much "new" stuff this year.  I have a copy of Dice Throne: Season 2 sitting on my desk which I want to play, as well as Martin Wallace's Wildlands.  Overall, I was more conservative with my purchases, in part because Eric (a member of my gaming group) has been buying more and growing his collection.  On Kickstarter, I supported only Tang Garden and The Ancient World (2nd edition).

Digital gaming definitely toned down this year, continuing a consistent 5-year trend. Nowadays, I eschew complex RPGs, massive open-world games, and multiplayer FPS's (which I used to adore) for more bite-sized strategic experiences.  I thoroughly enjoyed completing Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, which is a fantastic real-time, squad-based stealth game.  I also loved Northgard, a cool hybrid of civilization-building, RTS, and colony survival.  Offworld Trading Company, Into the Breach, Tesla vs. Lovecraft, and Darkest Dungeon also got significant play-time.

I hope you had a great year gaming too.  While we can sometimes feel guilty about spending time and money on something so "luxurious" and decadent as gaming, remember that play is - and always has been - a critical mediator of cognitive development and an essential component of the human experience.  And playing with others is one of the great joys in life.  Excelsior!

Infamous update: less than a month to go

The Infamous Kickstarter is scheduled (currently) for August 10th, so that means I have less than a month before life gets insanely stressful.  As if it wasn't stressful already...

The big project for me since Origins has been working with our exceptional graphic designer, Kody Chamberlain, on the Infamous rulebook.  Rulebooks are always a bear, and this one is no exception.  I do wish I had the graphic design skills (like Vital Lacerda, or Ryan Laukat) to do the rulebook myself.  Then I wouldn't have to worry about minimizing the number of revision requests I make, and I could obsess over small details and changes on a never-ending basis.  Actually, that sounds terrible, so maybe this is all for the best.

All will be revealed...

Otherwise, I've asked Kody to make a few minor adjustments to the components, per some feedback I received at Origins.  And while EGG and I have a fairly good idea of what the Kickstarter for Infamous is going to look like, there are a number of details to still work out:

• Kickstarter video needs to be recorded
• Kickstarter page graphics needs to be designed (wish I could do this myself)
• Specific order in which we reveal stretch-goals needs to be determined
• Promotional work

It's that last bullet-point - "promotional work" - that really sticks in my craw.  Some companies (and designers) are better at this than others.  It seems so hard to stick out in a crowd of so many games, to generate enthusiasm for yet another Kickstarter, to reach potential backers & buyers who just don't know you exist.  Over the years, I'd read so much on this topic:  from Jamey Stegmaier's amazing blog series on Kickstarters, to dozens of post-mortems.  I do wish that EGG did more than they do now; they are not the most nimble or creative company when it comes to promotion.  Having said that, they have a solid presence and reputation in the industry, they reach international customers better than many companies, and they do have a very solid "following" of customers who often support EGG games.

I did recently post a nice summary of Infamous on BoardGameGeek, and you can read it here if you want:

What is Infamous?  Let me tell you!

Origins 2018 recap

That's me next to Dr. Hominoid, just this past weekend at Origins 2018 in Columbus, OH.  Origins is the one big game con that I try to go to every year.  In part because my brother lives in Ohio, so it's an opportunity for us to get together for 4 days, hang out, and play a lot of games.

This year Origins was special because I was able to show off a brand spanking new prototype of Infamous.  Eagle-Gryphon had to cancel a lot of their events at the con because they just didn't have enough volunteers/Wing People to help out.  But they didn't cancel Infamous, and we ran 4 demo sessions per day for pretty much the entire show.  I personally demo-ed or explained Infamous to over 50 people, and by the time the show was over, I was feeling simultaneously exhausted and exhilarated.

The public response to Infamous was universally positive.  Now, a big part of this is self-selection bias, since the people who came over to try it were probably most likely to enjoy it.  And there's a bit of cognitive dissonance working there too, since they did just spend 2 hours learning and playing a game.  BUT I observed a lot of smiling and laughing, and many people told me after playing how much they enjoyed the game and couldn't wait to buy a copy for their game group or family.  I choose to take them on their word.

Teaching people the game took right around 15 minutes.  Playing a complete 4-player game took another 90 minutes, on average.  We also ran at least one 3-player game and one 5-player game.  There were no particular rules that seemed to trip people up, although it's important to emphasize the timing of Scheme cards.  This doesn't really surprise me, because it's not a particularly complicated game and there isn't too much rules overhead.  I would periodically remind people to check and see if any of their rooms provided helpful benefits during contract resolution - and to hire Mercenaries if they were thin on henchmen.

[CLICK TO EMBIGGEN]

What did people enjoy the most?  Probably the theme, the flavor, the humor, and the smooth mechanics.  As I hoped, players immediately grokked and enjoyed the idea of building a base that attracts specific types of henchmen. I think people really enjoyed debating whether to send their lackey out on contracts to gain the free re-roll.  And people loved grabbing fistfuls of custom dice to roll.  This is not a brain-burner of a game, but there are fun decisions to make all the time and the game is regularly rewarding you with amusing text and great art.  I was particularly thrilled to see some father-daughter pairs play the game and really enjoy it, as I hope to play Infamous one day with my own two daughters (currently 7 and 1 years old).  Thanks to everyone who played, just in case you're reading this.

The state of the game is fantastic.  We just have to make a few finishing touches to the graphic design and hammer out a professional rulebook.  EGG is currently sending out protos to previewers/reviewers, so that we'll have some solid video coverage in time for the campaign.  We have our campaign and stretch-goal plan worked out.  At this point, I'd say with 100% confidence that we'll be ready to launch in early August.

Thanks, Origins!  See you next year.

Infamous: status update

Perhaps not surprisingly, Infamous is absorbing an enormous amount of cognitive and emotional energy right now.  The rules are set, the components are set, and we have a solid plan for the next couple months.  The final stages of graphic design came together very nicely, and I'm desperate to show people how everything turned out.  Here's what the final gameboard will look like (or pretty close to it):



Given the many staff changes that have happened at EGG this past year, I ended up being de facto art director for Infamous, and working directly with both Rob on the final set of illustrations and Kody Chamberlain, our freelance graphic designer.  There are pros and cons to being this closely associated with the artwork of your own game.  On the one hand, I can in some ways ensure that the art and design-work mesh with my original artistic "vision"; on the other hand, I'd prefer to have a bit more distance from this process.

Having said that, I really enjoy working with artists, and both Rob and Kody have given us some amazing work.  I hope that the art and LOOK of Infamous will be a big draw.  After all, looks sell on Kickstarter (maybe even more than gameplay!), so I think it obviously benefits us to have such exceptional, unique artwork in the game which we can splash through the KS campaign.

Our final push to get all components print-ready by mid-May means that we should have new prototypes ready to show off and demo at Origins this month.  Should being the operative word here.  I will definitely be there, as I go to Origins every year with my brother and my friend, Flip.  This year will be special, as I'll get to demo Infamous at the EGG booth at least once or twice every day while I'm there.  I just hope all the pieces come in on time, including the custom dice.

The next big project for Kody and I is to generate the rulebook.  I have high hopes for how good it's going to look, and how well it will exude the theme of the game.  But rulebooks are always a bear, and I regularly wake up in the middle of the night thinking of small edits and revisions I should be making.  For the Clockwork Wars rulebook, I got to work with my close friend (and pro graphic designer) Benj.  Because we were close, I was able to request several revisions and work with Benj until the rulebook felt just right.  In the end, I think that rulebook came out great.  With Kody, there won't be as many opportunities for big revisions (unless we're willing to pay), so I have to be careful from the beginning.

Otherwise, I'm having lots of tough conversations with EGG folks about whether we want to push forward with an Infamous expansion right away, what the content of that expansion should be, and how much it will cost.  From my end, I have a decent amount of expansion material that I think is ready to go; but I understand that investing in an expansion before you even have a sense of how many basegame copies you're going to sell is kind of crazy.  And yet - a lot of KS's have expansions built into the campaign, and it's a nice way to give backers access to additional content if they want it.

I don't know if I've written about this before on my blog, but I often have conversations with my wife about this:  game design and publication is equal parts exultation and stress.  There are many times when I truly don't think it's worth the hassle.  So many (unpaid) hours brainstorming ideas, writing copious notes, trashing those ideas because they're derivative, meticulously crafting prototypes, organizing playtest sessions, selling to potential publishers, showing off your work to strangers, reading about game design, feeling like you spend way too much time thinking about game design.  And then you sign a contract!  And it's amazing!  And then there's a HUGE wait, and after that wait passes, there's an insane truckload of new stressors ready to wreck your sleep schedule.  And for what?  A board game?  A vacuous cultural product that will eventually sink into the trash-heap of humanity's decadence?  One game, amidst the multitudes published every year (over 3000 by some counts)?

The joy comes when you see your game in "the wild" and watch strangers play it and enjoy themselves.  And that joy doesn't really fade.  If your boardgame is good, people can continue to discover it and play years after it is released.  So there's pride and satisfaction and some sense of giving back to this hobby that's given you so much joy, but it really is tempered by this nagging feeling that the cost is just too damn high.

Supervillain #5: Gorgonex

And last, but certainly not least, is the petrifying Gorgonex:  a beast out of legend, a horrific hybrid of a minotaur and gorgon.

Gorgonex has made his lair beneath the ruins of the Athenian Acropolis. Contracts in Europe and Africa are within close reach.

Thematically, my goal was to include one supervillain that tied into ancient mythology. In part, because comics have always tapped mythological traditions for amazing story-lines (see Wonder Woman for a good example of this). Also because, in some general sense, comic books are a form of modern myth. Part of what draws us, and our children, generation after generation to comics is because they present archetypal stories of good vs. evil, of human frailty and strength.  

My original conception of Gorgonex was more medusa than minotaur, because mechanically I wanted a villain whose strength was an enhanced ability to attract henchmen but whose weakness was a penchant for overly extreme punishment. When Rob heard the general idea, he pitched a minotaur-medusa hybrid and we all loved it.

Gogonex's strength is "Intimidation," which grants you 1 free attraction point at the start of the Henchmen Phase. The timing of this is optimal; at this point, everyone has played their rooms for the round and made their "bids" for various henchmen types. You can then use this 1 extra attraction point to give yourself that final push you need to score a key henchmen.

His weakness is "Pitiless Contempt." Mechanically, this ability went through numerous versions before I hit on this one. Your henchmen can never heal (Gorgonex doesn't care about their pain!), so Injury tokens are permanent. Furthermore, if a henchman ever gains a 2nd Injury token, they are immediately Captured. This weakness becomes a real nuisance once you realize there are Scheme cards out there that let your opponents directly injure your henchmen. So if you play Gorgonex, you've got to continually push for lots of henchmen and treat them like expendable commodities. After all, you cannot make an omelet without breaking some eggs, eh?

Supervillain #4: Empress Ishii

Empress Ishii is, in many ways, an example of the classic "criminal overlord" trope. She'd fit right in in a James Bond flick. Indeed, the inspiration for placing her secret base location inside of Mount Fuji came straight from You Only Live Twice, which influenced me quite a bit as a child (as did most James Bond movies).

So I apologize if any of this sounds just too derivative; I've tried to be playful with many standard comic book tropes in Infamous.  Think of these supervillains as archetypes; representations of our collective unconscious, brought to life by Rob Guillory's expert pen.

Empress Ishii doesn't want to freeze the world or watch it burn or eradicate humanity. She just wants to make lots and lots of money. Oh, and be really really powerful. Simple. To that end, she and her side-kick, Ninja Girl, train an army of geisha-assassins within the bowels of Mount Fuji, using them to expand her vast criminal network across the globe.

Ishii's unique strength is, in fact, "Criminal Network."  She can automatically trade time for money (e.g., spend 1 week to gain $200,000), which can be incredibly useful if your contracts aren't paying out as much cash as you'd like.

Her unique weakness is "Perfectionism."  Attempting hard contracts costs an additional week of time, while legendary contracts cost +2 weeks.  Ishii does not tolerate failure and likes to plan out every variable before hatching a new scheme. As such, when you play Empress Ishii with all the fixins', you'll need to be heavily conscious of time as a resource to manage carefully.

Rob's original pitch for Ishii was "Akira-like Neo-Tokyo Yakuza Queenpin" and the first sketch was pretty amazing. I somewhat regret us moving away from that original idea. But we decided we wanted Ishii to be a bit more "empress-like" - more formal and intimidating and traditional?  All I know is I wouldn't want to get on her bad side. That smile is vicious.

Supervillain #3: Pachacuti Jr.

Ever wanted to be a reincarnated Incan god-emperor?

Pachacuti Jr.'s has founded his base at Machu Picchu, rebuilding the ancient Incan citadel into a modern-day supervillain fortress.  His closest continent locations are South and North America.  Thematically, I envision Pachacuti as insanely powerful but somewhat naive and comically dim-witted.  He garners his mystical power from the sun (and human sacrifice, of course), and his schemes consistently revolve around how to harness the sun's energy more effectively.  His lackey, Priestess Quilla, is more of a co-conspirator and administrative assistant than "lackey."  Truth be told, if it wasn't for her sagacity and organizational skills, Pachacuti would have destroyed himself and the entire planet in his last plot to shift Earth's orbit (directly into the sun).

Pachacuti Jr.'s strength is "Solar Power":  after revealing a contract, you can exhaust Pachacuti to lower the target value of that contract by 1 (making it easier).  Or you can exhaust both Pachacuti and Priestess Quilla to lower the target by 3!  This is an incredibly powerful ability that will greatly reduce your likelihood of failing contracts - especially Easy and Hard ones.

Pachacuti Jr.'s weakness is "Heretical Dogma":  every time you succeed at a contract, you lose 2 attraction points.  Basically, Pachacuti becomes more insufferable and demanding with each success he has, making him a less attractive supervillain to work for. Strategically, it means that you might want to think twice about simply trying to complete as many contracts as possible; focusing on fewer, but higher difficulty contracts is likely a better option.  As is looking for other ways to earn Infamy (via Room card effects and Scheme cards, for example).

When Rob first showed me his sketch for this piece, I went gaga.  It just wasn't what I was expecting and surpassed anything my imagination could have come up with.  Another example of how Rob just sees the world differently from the rest of us mortals - and thank goodness!

Supervillain #2: Dr. Hominoid

Let's meet the great doctor...

From the beginning, the consistent favorite among Infamous playtesters has been Dr. Hominoid.  And why not?!  The trope of genius-gorilla-scientist has long been fun for comic book fans (e.g., Gorilla Grodd, Monsieur Mallah), and I admit to a certain predilection for hyper-intelligent non-human primates.

Dr. Hominoid resides on the island of Madagascar, and as such, the closest continent locations to his secret base are Africa and Australia.  Thematically, he's a militant environmentalist who believes that eradicating Homo sapiens is the best way to save the planet.  His lackey is the lovable Mr. Jones, a quick-witted but lazy research assistant who'd rather be playing video games than conquering the world.

Dr. Hominoid's strength is "Evil Genius," which gives him two benefits.  First, he starts the game with an extra Scheme card.  Second, every time he visits The Underground special location, he can draw 2 Scheme cards (instead of 1).  Scheme cards are very helpful in Infamous.  Each one comes with two possible benefits:  a) you can play the card for its "help you" effect, which gives you a benefit or bonus at some point during your turn, or b) you can play a Scheme for its "hurt them" effect, which negatively impacts other players (basically, a "take that" card).  If you enjoy scheming and possibly messing around with your opponents, then Dr. Hominoid is for you.

Dr. Hominoid's weakness is "Incompetent Assistant" - which, you may guess, has to do with the capricious Mr. Jones.  When weaknesses are in effect, you must use the "incompetent" version of the Mr. Jones lackey card, which significantly reduces his value when assigned to contracts.  Most likely, you'll be keeping Mr. Jones around in your base, where you can keep an eye on him...

And what can I say about Rob's art that doesn't speak for itself?  I love his tie, and the pens in his pocket.  He's also clearly good at multi-tasking.

Supervillain #1: The Arctic Queen

We're probably a little over a month away from the launch of the Infamous Kickstarter.  I also have a bit more time in my schedule to write/blog about Infamous, since the academic year is closing and I'll be submitting grades this week.  Of course, summer research begins at the end of the month, but I'm going to ignore that for now...

Let's start meeting the central characters of Infamous:  the Supervillains!  Each player will choose one of five different supervillains to play.  The supervillains are differentiated by their flavor and artwork, their secret base location, their Strength, and their Weakness.

The Arctic Queen was one of the first supervillains I came up with, and my daughter Inara helped me flesh out the idea.  The Arctic Queen's secret base location is in Glacier Bay, Alaska - which means that contracts in North America and Asia are closest.

Thematically, she's got the whole sorceress-who-wants-to-freeze-the-planet thing going on.  Inspired by The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, as well as the The Snow Queen (Danish folklore).  She's introspective and isolationist.  Rob's artwork is just brilliant, I think; he's made the Arctic Queen sensuous and otherwordly and intimidating, all at once.

The Arctic Queen's lackeys (to be shown at a later date) are supernaturally intelligent, sibling saber-tooth tigers:  Sabra & Sable.  If you choose to play with the Arctic Queen's strength ("Exceptional Smilodons") Sabra and Sable become more powerful than any other lackey in the game.  The Arctic Queen's weakness is "Suspicion & Discord," which punishes you if your contract teams are composed of different henchmen types. 

Who's the Queen best suited for?  Your daughter, of course!  Or anyone who's jonesing for some serious climate change.

Humor in Infamous

Humor in board games is a tricky business. First, the experience of humor is a highly subjective one; more so, I think, than preference for particular board games. As such, some people might find the humor within a game to be a real boon to the experience, while others might find it to be a complete turn-off. Designers walk a delicate rope when they decide to inject humor into a design. I look at something like Galaxy Trucker (and its subtly clever & humorous rulebook) as an example of successful use of humor in a board game.  I see the recent KS campaign of HATE as a poor use of dark humor that is potentially turning away potential backers.

Perhaps most importantly, the theme and mechanics have to match the level and type of humor involved. A heavy, thinky Euro is probably not going to be a great place to inject slapstick humor (but it might very well be an appropriate venue for a more subtle, "sophisticated" humor?). Similarly, a casual family game that presents itself too seriously - imagine a grimdark adventure game for kids! - is a poor fit.

When it came to Infamous, I tried to let the humor come naturally. After I made a critical decision (between v1 and v2) to enhance the narrative element of the game, writing became a more central design component. There was going to be a LOT of flavor text in this game, and the purpose of it was to bring the characters to life and give the players a sense of living inside of a comic book. Each henchman and villain needed a description, so that it was easier for the players to develop feelings of attachment for their team. And perhaps most importantly, the contracts needed significant flavor text for Success and Fail states so that your actions in the game contributed to an overall narrative. Consider how important the flavor text is in games like Eldritch Horror. If you just conduct the skill rolls without immersing yourself in the story of what's happening, you miss out on so much of what the game is offering.

So the question became:  would the contracts be humorous, or would they take themselves fairly seriously?  My natural inclination led me towards humorous. These were supervillains, after all - and they were engaging in periodically horrific acts within the game (kidnapping, domestic terrorism, subjugation of the entire planet, etc.). If these acts were taken too seriously, the game could fall flat or potentially be offensive. I ended up leaning more towards Despicable Me vs. Dark Knight.

Instead, contracts provided an opportunity for these villains and henchmen to fail spectacularly - in often hilarious ways. This had the added benefit of taking the edge off of contract failure. You almost want to see what happens if you fail a contract; the story is amusing, and the effects are often persistent (e.g., Injuries, Powers).  Now you have a story to remember about that time your henchman was bit by genetically-modified sewer rats, or overdosed on super-fertility hormones.

With the decision to embrace humor in the game, the presentation had to follow appropriately. The theme matched, the relatively light mechanics matched, and now the art needed to match. This is probably the biggest reason why I really wanted to get Rob Guillory on board to do the art for Infamous. His artistic style is very dark-humor; stylized and clever and immediately funny.

Infamous is a game centered around the central tenant of FUN. The mechanics provide lots of opportunities to make fun, small decisions that influence the game-state and your likelihood of victory. The story that you and your opponents will create together is all about fun. Perhaps you'll laugh out loud, chuckle softly, or just groan at some of the humor in the game. Regardless, it's there to remind you - to remind all of us! - that games are meant to be fun, and sometimes nothing is more satisfying than sitting around the table with a group of friends sharing a laugh.

2-player Infamous? Enter the D.O.P.E. squad!

Infamous has several interlocking mechanics, but perhaps the most central is the opening draft for Secret Base Room cards.  At the start of each round, players draft up to 3 new rooms to build into their base.  These rooms are central to your strategy.  Each one will provide a certain number of "attraction points" for different henchmen types (Beasts, Criminals, Scientists, and Mystics), and many rooms also possess unique activated abilities.

Drafting is a great mechanic for so many reasons.  I love how it speeds up play through simultaneous activity.  Every player is reviewing and choosing at the same time - not sitting around and watching someone else deliberate.  I also love how the cards you're choosing from are in your hand, and thus, easily readable.  Games which force players to choose from a communal line-up of cards lead to frustrating usability issues; for example, players not being able to read small card text from across the table.  Finally, drafting is a form of light player interaction.  The decisions you make influence the ones subsequent players can make.

However,  early on in playtesting, it became clear that drafting for room cards - and the subsequent attraction of henchmen to your base - didn't quite work with 2 players.  There wasn't enough interaction during the draft itself, and there was too little competition for the available henchmen.  Players could easily accrue a large retinue of henchmen each round and fulfill a bevy of contracts without feeling substantial pressure.

As such, I started to develop a dummy player (or automata) for 2-player games who could spice things up a bit.  Rather than make the dummy another, potentially faceless, supervillain, I thought it might be interesting to thematically dress up the dummy as a squad of superheroes.  These heroes interfere with the players by stealing away (arresting) henchmen during the Henchmen Phase, and patrolling the world during the Contract Phase.  

Perhaps most importantly, the automata rules were simple to instantiate and involved only a single deck of Hero cards.  As such, 2-player Infamous is:  1) only slightly different from the regular 3-5 player game, and 2) thematically fun - as you find yourself getting easily annoyed by the D.O.P.E. squad.

This post also gives me the chance to show off another piece of Rob's fantastic artwork, and also the superlative graphic design work by Kody Chamberlain.  This one piece of art (for the heroes) took some time, as I wanted to work through a set of specific characters with Rob:  one "defender" for each continent.  We wanted the cultural ties to be somewhat obvious without being offensive.  Personally, my favorite is Baby Penguin - defender of Antarctica!

While the D.O.P.E. squad is limited to the role of automata in Infamous for now, I have big plans for a future expansion which makes their presence much more... intrusive.

Infamous: the artist & cover illustration

The past two months have witnessed a furious pace of development on Infamous.  My publisher, Eagle-Gryphon Games (EGG), is ready to start revealing some of the artwork that's been created for the project, and so I figured I would make that the theme of this post.

I'm thrilled to announce that our artist for the entire project has been Rob Guillory, the Eisner-award wining comic book artist, primarily known for his work on Chew. I was introduced to Rob's art many years ago, when one of my research students was reading an issue of Chew in the lab.  This particular student and I shared a passion for comics and were often exchanging recommendations for series and graphic novels we thought the other might appreciate.  Chew sounded totally crazy and looked amazing.  Rob's art is unique - comedic and dark, detailed yet often absurdist.  Here's an example of what I mean:

Chew cover

In late July of this year, I started working with Charlie Bink who was assigned to be lead developer and art director on Infamous. Let me say right off that bat that Charlie has been amazing to work with. A true professional and always on top of his game. Charlie asked me for a list of potential artists that I could see doing the 100+ potential illustrations for Infamous. At this point, our goal was to hire one artist to do it all - but realistically, we didn't actually think that would be possible with the time schedule we had in mind (January/February KS launch).

I gave Charlie my dream-list. At the very top was Rob Guillory. For some reason, I just thought his style and humor would be a perfect match for Infamous. I wanted the art to clearly reflect the comic book vibe of the game, the dark (semi-mature) humor, the bizarre cast of characters. As luck would have it, when Charlie contacted Rob, he had the time and interest in the project. He agreed it sounded like a great match for his talent. Needless to say, I was flabbergasted.

Rob's done every single piece of art for the game, which has included:

• 1 Box Cover (see below)
• 5 Supervillains
• 36 Henchmen
• 5 Lackeys
• 8 Mercencaries
• 10 Powers
• 75 Secret Base Rooms (!)
• and 1 Hero Squad

Infamous front box cover illustration

What a great piece! The cover features one of our five Supervillains, Dr. Hominoid, surrounded by shadowy henchmen within the central control room of his secret base. A holographic globe floats between his hands. In the various computer monitors around the room, we're actually previewing some of the additional art within the game. I love the image and really think it expresses what Infamous is all about:  taking pleasure in being bad.

I can't wait to reveal more of Rob's fantastic work over the coming weeks and months. I'll be doing some here, some on BGG - and EGG will showing off pieces on Twitter and other social media sites.

Contracts at their Core

Another long hiatus from the blog! The past year has been a relatively slow one for game design and development. Infamous has sat in EGG's development queue for a while, but everything is picking up very quickly right now. As such, I though it might be a good time to start posting design entries again.

I think Infamous has some really fantastic design elements - in particular, how the base building directly feeds into henchman recruitment. It's thematic, intuitive, and strategic. Putting together a team of henchman and sending them out on a contract half-way around the world is evocative and satisfying.  I also really like how straightforward and tense contract resolution is - although it's possible some players won't like the centrality of dice-rolling within the design.

[WARNING:  CRAPPY PROTOTYPE COMPONENTS SHOWN]

Contract Resolution

Let's take this contract as an example: Take Revenge Upon Your Nemesis.  This is a "Hard" difficulty contract, which requires a team size of 2 henchmen. You'll need to roll 5 successes to succeed. If your henchmen possess Brawn as a trait, you'll be more likely to succeed (that's what the flexing muscle icon means).  That's because each of your henchmen contributes a certain number of custom dice, based on what traits they possess.  A henchmen with 3 Brawn will contribute 3 Brawn dice.  A henchmen with 4 Stealth will contribute 4 Stealth dice, and so on.  The dice types differ in some ways; for example, Magic dice provide more extreme outcomes (spectacular power!  spectacular failure!), while Stealth dice are relatively consistent.

Furthermore, if you're rolling Brawn dice and the Brawn symbol comes up (1/6 chance), that will be worth 2 successes on a contract like the one shown. In contrast, Stealth, Intellect, and Magic icons will be worthless for this particular contract.

So there's some strategy is enhancing your odds here. And this leads to juicy choices when determining the composition of your team. For example, one of your team members could be: 1)  a Scientist with 5 Intellect - but no Brawn, 2) a Beast with 3 Brawn, 3) your Lackey, who has 1 Brawn but also lets you re-roll all your dice once. Who will you choose?

Then, gather up all your dice, roll 'em, and count your successes.  Wait!  Did you activate your Ectoplasmic Nexus with your Supervillain back at base?  If so, you can add another die of any type to your roll (add a Brawn die!).  Wait!  Did you bring your Lackey?  You get a free re-roll.  Wait!  Do you have a Scheme card in your back pocket (not literally) that gives you another re-roll?  There are so many ways to mitigate luck in this game, which I think is always important in dice-driven systems.

Greater games than mine have been based on repeated "skill checks." Arkham Horror/Eldritch Horror come to mind immediately, but the list goes on and on. Shoot, we might-as-well put D&D on that list. My concern isn't necessarily the role that luck is playing here - although that's part of it - but rather if rolling dice will feel enough like sending your team on a dangerous mission. It's an issue of abstraction.

For example, I imagine a (different) game in which you take your team, plop them onto a separate board that represents the specific location they're infiltrating, and you now take tactical control of a squad of villains. Movement, weapons, line-of-sight, rolling dice to hack electronic locks, stun guns, skill checks of different varieties, you name it. That's going to feel like going on a mission - but in Infamous, that would 1) turn the game into a tactical minis game, which is definitely not what I want it to be, and 2) make the game last 10x as long. One advantage of abstracting down the team's efforts to a dice-roll is that it makes the game move quickly and smoothly - especially since the other players are waiting while you resolve your contract.

Contract Difficulty

Right now, I think contracts are a bit too easy and I've got some additional tweaking to do. In my last solo (4-supervillain) runthrough, I probably achieved success on 90% of my contracts. That's too high. If players consistently succeed, the tension of the dice-rolls later in the game will dissolve. But maybe I'm achieving a high success rate because I'm good at the game and know how/when to press my luck. After all, if you play Infamous well, you know how to 1) recruit the right henchmen for the job, 2) build the right rooms to support your team, and 3) spend your resources (time, money, henchmen) wisely to achieve maximum value each round. 

The other factor playing a role here is the Supervillain strength/weakness. I've built in a specific strength and weakness for each Supervillain. For example, Dr. Hominoid gets to draw 2 Scheme cards instead of just 1 when he visits the Underground. These Scheme cards basically let you mess with other players more.

You can play Infamous where 1) everyone is playing vanilla supervillains and you ignore their strengths/weaknesses, 2) everyone is using their supervillain strengths (easier game), 3) everyone is using their weakneeses (hard more), or 4) everyone is using both. You can even mix and match, allowing you to handicap some players.

The vast majority of playtesting has been with people using strengths but not weaknesses. As such, my statistics are primarily based on easy mode. So perhaps a 90% success rate isn't surprising, or bad. But this is something I need to think about and play around with a lot more.

At a more fundamental, philosophy-of-fun level, I wonder if there's an optimal success rate that appeals to people. Games where you fail over half of your skill checks, I think, are considered tough and possibly frustrating. I'm thinking 66% success is possibly the right target. Just gut instinct. If you go on 5-6 contracts per game and fail 2 of them on average, that feels about right. And that's assuming "average" play - not blind idiocy (which should lead to a nearly 0% success rate), or high-level play (which should increase your rate substantially).

Lots to think about.

Infamous: a new game design

After a fairly long hiatus from this design blog, I'm happy to announce that I've signed a contract with Eagle Gryphon Games (EGG) to publish my second board game design.  As such, I'm going to start posting on here more regularly, to talk through some of the design choices and roadblocks I encounter through this next year's development process.  But let's start this off right!  Let me give you a quick summary.

Infamous (working title) is a strategy board game for 2-5 players that plays in around 2 hours.  It's a medium-light design - perhaps a "3" or a "4" on a 1-10 scale - and while it sports some sleek, Eurogame mechanics, I'd say it falls firmly and confidently within the Ameritrash family.

In Infamous, you take on the role of a comic-book supervillain.  You goals are to build a secret base, recruit henchmen, and then use those henchmen to complete nefarious contracts around the world. Successfully doing so will earn you money and infamy points.  The player with the most infamy at the end of three turns wins the game.

Current prototype

There are four phases in each turn.

Base Building Phase

Prototype only (art stolen from internet)

The base building phase is primarily composed of a draft.  Each player is dealt 4 Secret Base Room cards.  They secretly decide to either build or sell one card.  The players reveal their decisions simultaneously, pass their remaining cards clockwise, and repeat two more times.  Thus, it is possible to add 3 new rooms to your base during each Base Building Phase.  These rooms are important for two reasons.  First, each room gives you "attraction points" for various types of henchmen.  For example, if you build a Money Laundering Facility, you will immediately earn 6 Criminal attraction points.  Criminals will now want to come live in your base!  You can also build rooms to attract Beasts, Scientists, and Mystics.  The second reason why rooms are important is that many of them have special powers that can be activated during the Contract Phase.  These powers might spell the difference between a successful mission and a failed one.


Henchmen Phase

Sample Henchmen card (prototype)

During the Henchmen Phase, each player will (hopefully) recruit henchmen to their side, depending upon how attractive their base is. Beasts, Criminals, Scientists, and Mystics will be drawn to the player who scores highest in attraction for that henchmen type. There are some additional subtleties to this, but the feel of it is that the Henchmen Phase flows directly out of the Base Building Phase and just takes a couple minutes to resolve. You'll immediately get feedback on whether your base is successfully competing with everyone else's for the henchmen's attention. The more henchmen you recruit, the better. Having a diverse crew will give you a lot more flexibility during the Contract Phase.


Contract Phase

This is the meat of the game. There's a big map of the world in front of you. Six (or seven, depending on player count) continent locations, each with a different Contract card. These contracts represent missions to which you can assign your henchmen. During this phase, players will take turns choosing contracts, forming teams of henchmen, and then rolling dice to see whether they succeed or fail. If you succeed, you'll earn cash and infamy. If you fail, your henchmen might get injured or captured. Then again, sometimes your henchmen will fail but end up receiving a cool, new Superpower (e.g., caught in a radioactive explosion)! In future entries, I'll spell out more of the rules for the Contract Phase. There's some fun strategy on display here, in addition to fistfuls of custom dice.

World Map board (prototype)

Sample Contract card (prototype)

Clean-Up Phase

It's not very exciting, but it's necessary.  You've got to pay your henchmen (including your Lackey), refresh any of them that are exhausted, and re-seed the world map with contracts.  Quick and easy. After three turns, the game ends!


The Story So Far

I've been working on Infamous for the past 6 months or so.  I would say it was around early December (2015) when I hit on a set of ideas that would eventually evolve into this game. My initial point of inspiration was actually from the mechanics end of things. For a while now, I've been pondering how I could adapt the "attract a hero" mechanic featured in the small card game, Boss Monster, into a bigger game. And make it a bit more interesting, to be honest, by having the people attracted be positive (members of your team, not enemies) and persistent. In some weird unconscious back-alley, this idea got mashed with the 2004 PC game, Evil Genius. I've always liked "dungeon"-building sims (Dungeon Keeper, etc.), and once I hit upon the idea of using room cards to attract different types of henchmen, the rest of the game started to fall into place. The hardest part was the Contract Phase - but I'll save that story for another post.

I got a solid ruleset and prototype in place around March or so. Initial playtesting was extremely positive. Kept working on it and polishing the proto until I felt it was ready to show to a couple publishers. I wanted it to be ready before Origins, since I thought that would be my best opportunity to pitch it to a number of different companies. But I first sent an email to Eagle (who published my last design, Clockwork Wars), and they asked me to send a copy of the prototype to the Gathering of Friends. They checked it out there, loved it right away, and offered me a contract. I happily accepted, and we'll be starting development within the next couple months. I expect a long road ahead, but after having gone through years and years of waiting and development work for Clockwork Wars, I have a much better understanding of the process this time around. I'm looking forward to the work and have really high hopes for this game.

Needless to say, I really love this game. It is so fun, and surprising, and constantly throws small but interesting decisions at you. The narrative you and your opponents create will set you laughing. The tone is playful, but the gameplay is consistently tense and engaging. In very broad terms, imagine a mash-up between:  Boss Monster, Among the Stars, & Eldritch Horror. It's a very different design from Clockwork Wars, but I think that's a good thing! I think it will appeal to many types of gamers, especially those who like (slightly heavier) beer & pretzels-type experiences, an emphasis on theme and narrative, and the conceit of playing a villain.

Origins Game Fair, 2015: Part 2

This is part 2 of my Origins 2015 retrospective. You can read part 1 here. This part will summarize my experiences demoing Clockwork Wars for Eagle-Gryphon at the con.

I demoed Clockwork Wars 2-6 times per day from Wednesday through Sunday, for a total of around 16 complete games. We had two demo copies available and (barely) enough space to have two 4-player games running concurrently. I tried to vary the maps and Discovery cards throughout the con - partially for playtesting, partially just to keep myself entertained.

The general pattern was like this: some people had previously signed up to play CW, and some people dropped by with generic tokens to see if there were any spots available. I think we were able to accommodate most people who wanted to play. I had players choose their race, and then started in on 1) general intro to the game (genre, weight, playtime, theme), 2) how to win, and 3) specific rules. In total, this probably took around 20 minutes (30 if people asked lots of questions). Rick had encouraged me to get my training spiel to 10 minutes or less, but I just don't think that's possible. Demo sessions were scheduled to last 2 hours and most people were able to finish their games in that time period (so, 20 min of rules, 100 min of play).

My approach to teaching was to orient them to their player aid (which turned out absolutely fantastic, design-wise), and then use that to march them through a single turn. What aspects of the game seemed to trip people up? First, understanding that you don't really move your troops around in CW. Once you deploy units to a territory, they usually stay there. Second, how combat is resolved. Specifically, reinforcement orders, battle resolution, and turn order. Understanding this system usually required experiencing a few battles in-game.

One nice thing about teaching games at cons is that pretty much everyone you run into has played a lot of board games, so they're 1) prepared to sit patiently and learn rules, and 2) capable of grokking systems quickly because of their prior gaming experience. I was often stunned at how quickly certain players figured out the game and started playing strategically. This wasn't everyone: most people played sub-optimally and were simply exploring the game systems without worrying to much about winning. But I remember a few people who honed in on certain strategies, formulated plans, and carried them out successfully. That was gratifying to see.

One individual, in particular, who I remember from one of my earliest sessions figured out the power of Espionage very quickly. He pursued a heavy court-espionage strategy, supported by conservative (but efficient) map expansion. This allowed him to stay under his opponents' radar for a large majority of the game, and he walked away with a solid win. Impressive. That group of four, by the way, was a wonderful group of people. They were super-friendly and asked me lots of questions about the design and development process during the game. They also really enjoyed the game and brought back several of their friends throughout the con to try out Clockwork Wars. It was nice for me to have such a positive demo experience like that early on.

What did I learn about balance, rules, and potential future errata? Well, I continue to be confident that nothing is broken in Clockwork Wars. There are no infinite loops, and I doubt there are any super-dominant strategies. However, given all the unique cards and effects in the game, it's not surprising that a few tricky cases come up periodically.

For example, a couple people asked whether the Operative could use her assassinate ability against a enemy soldier that was paired with an Engineer (the answer is no, the soldier needs to be alone). Also, after the Operative assassinates during her reinforcement stage, it often surprised people that if the targeted opponent came later in turn order, he could reinforce that battle to take out the Operative. Fortunately, this is a confusion that came up during playtesting and so the rulebook does explicitly cover this scenario.

The Spymaster action, Counter-Intel, is the one rule that is not well-explained in the manual. As I mentioned in a previous post, this is 100% my fault and I wish I could change the wording now to prevent the inevitable confusions that will arise.

With regards to the races, the easiest race to play does appear to be the Mongrels. Their Unique Unit, the Hunter, is powerful and relatively easy to understand. The Troglodytes are also easy to grasp, and people intuitively understand the idea of a combat-weak, research-focused unit. It was interesting to see how people dealt with the Purebreeds' Operative. Some people refused to deploy her at all, fearing her loss early in the game. Some, realizing she would be safe in the Court, simply deployed her there and never moved her. Very few used her like I do: aggressively, periodically placing her into perilous situations.

The Rhinochs, somewhat surprisingly, were the race that people most struggled to understand. The idea that the Crashers can only be deployed into enemy-controlled territory was often missed or misunderstood. If I wasn't paying attention, I'd often see a Crasher simply sitting on the map, defending someone's city (which is not possible - the Crasher acts as a kamikaze unit). I don't think the Rhinochs are underpowered, but after this Origins experience, I suspect that people will find it hardest to understand how best to use these units - and at what point in the game.

I am relieved to say that my previous worry that Espionage cards may be overpowered does not seem to be true. Indeed, players consistently were thrilled with the potent impact of these cards. A single card can significantly alter a turn, but just one card won't win you the game. I saw Poisoned Waters and Insurrection used to great effect. Treason might be under-powered compared to the rest of the deck, but I need to wait and see what player feedback is.

In terms of the Generals, people were drawn towards the Steamtank. The idea of a mobile uber-unit was appealing. The Steamtank is difficult to use effectively, but a couple people figured out that using Gambit can get it to your front lines quickly, and that's a necessity if you've waited until the middle or late-game to research it.  The least used General, I think, was the Guardian - which is perhaps not surprising, since he's defensive and not particularly sexy.

Many, many discoveries were used, and from my perspective, nothing seemed under or over-powered (except possibly Infallibility, a late age Religion discovery). I saw one player use Alchemy and Martyrdom to crank out VP's and win the game. I saw Cataclysm researched, placed on the map, and then used by different players as ownership switched hands over several turns. Generally speaking, people didn't save IP well (to purchase discoveries as soon as they became available), since they were often tempted by what they could afford at the moment. If there's one Discovery that dominated a game, it was probably Colossus. This card lets you destroy Early Age discoveries in play for their points, and the player who researched it got 11 VP's from this effect.

Component wise, I have no complaints. The tiles turned out great, and no one had issues reading the ID tags. The cards are beautiful and textured, and the player aids fantastic. The wooden pieces sit on the map well, but the battlefield is nicely spiced up by the presence of some plastic minis (UU's and Generals). Certainly, if I was buying this game, I'd make sure to spend a little more on getting the plastic UU's - they are so much cooler than the wooden pieces we included by default. The plastic insert that Rick designed is awesome. It is designed to hold all basegame and expansion components securely in one box. This is not an insert that people will be tossing.

Overall, I really thought this was an enormously successful convention for me and Clockwork Wars. The vast majority of the groups that I taught the game to thoroughly enjoyed it, and several went on to pre-order the game after their experience. The game plays well, it plays fast, and it challenges and delights. I'm certainly very proud of how it all came together. Now, I just have to wait a couple more weeks before KS copies ship and the game starts popping up in stores.