Pretentious Board Games

I came home and found that my copy of Harbour arrived. It is a fun worker placement tableau building game by Tasty Minstrel Games. I backed it as a Kickstarter project (I also playtested it, so I knew that I would like it already), and it finally arrived. I sleeved the cards and plan on playing it tomorrow. After that I got an email telling me that I was announced as an ION Award finalist today :). I submitted 5 games to be judged and two of them were chosen as finalists: Hungry Oni, and Moar Moai. I sort of expected Moar Moai to do well. It is a simple game that has a lot of strategy, but Hungry Oni was a bit of a surprise. It is really minimalist (I built it as a microgame, to see if I could), so it is not really that big a game. Either way I am really excited to go to SaltCon and see what happens. Weather or not I win I will still feel like a winner, since I already have a publisher looking at two of my games, and that was really my main reason for submitting anything to ...

I have been playing some more games of Witch Hunt recently. I have changed the rules to be a bit more simple and to not require as many components. It seems like the entire game for 3 to 7 players could fit into a 54 card box. This is sort of exciting since if the game were under $10 then it would be really cheap for the amount of enjoyment that you could get out of it (and it feels like $10 is a reasonable price point for a 54 card game.) I have also been working on the artwork for the game. I totally contacted Kit Cox and got his permission to use his artwork for the cards (just for prototype purposes, not for actual production of the game), so now I am in a position to send out some play testing decks and see if I can get some reviews that will help to clean the game up. I think that his artwork fits the theme of the game really well, and doesn't detract from what the cards do be being too bad (like any artwork that I would create if I were to do it myself.) Here is the ne...

I have started on some artwork for witch hunt . It still is not complete by any means, but it is closer to what I want than the white paper with black writing that I used to have. The cards were designed by me, and the art was drawn by Kit Cox. I found it on the Discworld Wiki . I am currently tracking down Kit and asking him permission to use it, but I have not succeeded so far in contacting him. (He is no longer active on the wiki, and the last time he posted there was 6 years ago). I think that I have found him on Facebook, but it remains to be seen weather it really is him or not. I am trying to come up with ways to speed up the game, and I think that lowering the number of testimony cards will do that. Perhaps that will be enough, but perhaps I will have to do more. I am being quoted on another Kickstarter campaign (this time by tasty minstrel games, so a bigger campaign than last time). I have not gotten as many games of Harbour in as I would have liked recently. Wit...

We have been playing more games of Harbour recently. I have been trying to get people to play it every day at lunch. One time they all revolted and asked to play Witch Hunt instead. This is funny because I was actively campaigning for Harbour, but they wanted to play my game instead. I cannot say that I am sad that that happened (having my game more popular than a game that a publisher is about to publish is a good step). After playing more games (of Harbour) I am still not sure what the optimal strategy is. I was able to pull off some large point margin games by picking up only large buildings, but I have not won every game. I just got a bunch of kickstarter updates (templar intrigue, burgoo, coin age, robots on the line) recently. I look forward to getting all of the games that I supported last year. Hopefully they all come in before the end of this year. I have been too busy with other things to make much progress in any of my games recently, although I have been getting a gr...

After a few more days of playing, I have more thoughts about Harbour For one thing I have played my first four player game. Four player games: Playing with four players makes the game a little more difficult to plan for, but not that much. The pacing of the game is slightly slower in a 4 player game, but still not boring. Sadly enough you cannot fully plan for your turn during other player's turns since their turns have a high chance of changing your plans. Some cards (tax office, and abbey) seem to have different power levels based on the number of players. The weakest point for the tax office card is at 3 players (where you get only two goods, but get to pick neither of them) The abbey card seems to be best in a 2 player game. As I haven't played a statistically significant number of games I am in no position of authority to make the above statement, but that is the way that it feels to me. Market Alteration: If you use an action to change the market it is less ...

I received a playtesters copy of Harbour on Friday night. My wife and I already had a date planned, but I was able to convince her to try it out after we were done having sushi. Components: The rule book was not entirely complete, but was pretty good (I will sum up our questions later in the post). Some of the components did not look exactly as they did in the rule book (an accompanying letter explained most of the discrepancies, but the Market Board was set up slightly different than the rule book indicated that it would be). Alison wants it noted that she found the rule-book by itself to be confusing. It explains everything on the cards, but because of the lack of context it is a bit overwhelming. We did not actually realize that we each started with a symbol (a coin for me and a top hat for Alison) until after the first game was over. Andrea's favorite card was the Ranch I expect the rulebook the be cleaned up a lot before the final release of the game (Eminent Doma...