Pretentious Board Games

Dave got me some new artwork for Dancing Robots. I have updated all of the previously generated cards with the new artwork. The only part that has yet to be drawn is the spring (which is still sporting my trendy artwork). Here is a gallery of the current look of the cards. With the new artwork I am more excited about working on dancing robots some more (I have been much more excited about Creative Accounting recently, but that hasn't prevented me from working on Dancing Robots and Collusion as well) Tonight I put together a simple example of a visual way of displaying the amount of space a card provides or takes up. Here are some of the example cards I made: The cards that provide space have the space that they provide graphically represented on the right side of the card. The cards that use up space have the amount of space that they use up graphically represented on the left side of the card. You stack the cards up until the dark brown bar is as tall as the ligh...

I am getting ready for SaltCon's Prototype alley , but can't figure out which game I should bring. Which one would you be most likely to want to play (given brief descriptions and rules): Dancing Robots : A game where you draft part and dance cards to build the ultimate dancing robot. You need to balance concerns to build a good robot that can dance a lot of moves. Finally, you must defeat all the competition in a judged dance off. 2-4 players, 20-40 minutes Collusion : A game where you buy and sell goods in an attempt to make more money than others through price fixing and undercutting. Alliances can be formed but no agreement is binding. 2-8 players, 10-40 minutes Creative Accounting : A team game where you are either a bean counter who tries to cook the books to give your company an unfair business advantage or a whistleblower who is trying to catch companies cooking the books. It is sort of Werewolf like, but there is no player elimination. 3-12 players, 10-30 minut...

I finished my first read through of all of the rules. I have not yet read all of them enough to feel comfortable playing them all. (Also, I was unable to find the rulebooks for a lot of them online.) The Following seemed to be impossible to find the rules for: Misty Ruins Other World Stadium Stella Nova: Journey of the Magi Superpowers The Demise of Dr. Frankenstein UFO Hunter Where Chickens Dare! Here are my thoughts on the others: Paradise Fallen: Seemed to be fairly simple to understand. More examples of cards would be nice. The game felt fairly simple, but it seemed like play might uncover some hidden complexity Rialto: A fun sounding game. I will probably play this one time or more at the con. SlapShot: it is a hockey game. There seems to be some randomness to it, but also the possibility of winning through strategy. It is possible that I found some old rules for this because it seemed very old. Space Sheep: a simple game that could be fun based on...

Over the past few days we have been playing some more "creative accounting". I still haven't gotten in a three player game, but we have played a fair amount of two and four to six player games. It seems like the cut off for two companies might want to be at six players. That decision hasn't been made yet for sure, but it seems like a good place. With two players it is mostly a game about second guessing your opponent, and it ends up playing similar to paper scissor rock (sigh). Cook the books > play it safe > audit. With four players the game is pretty hard for the auditor. It is possible that I should make the scoring different (something like the more book cookers that are caught on an audit the more points the auditor gains). If I do that then perhaps the book cooking should be scored the same. (The game would have a whole new scoring system, but the remainder of the game would stay the same) I entered SaltCon's Prototype alley. I am still trying ...

Friday we played three games of Collusion at work (the dream game). Large changes were made to the rules. As always the newest rules can be found  here . The big changes that were made cause the game to be much simpler. They include: Removing money from the game entirely. (now you just get bonus goods for selling above the average and lose goods for selling below the average). Obsolescence/Spoilage is now a rule in the game. Players lose 50% of unsold goods to give a penalty for selling too high. Increased demand: Each turn one more demand card is drawn than was drawn the previous turn. With these changes the game is faster and simpler. I will continue to play it and post how it changes. On Friday night we were invited over to a game night. We played one game of Moar Moai and a few games of Love Letter. They seemed to enjoy both of them. I think I will end up buying Love Letter. Also, a lot of people have been playing Dancing Robots and writing up reviews for me recentl...

We have had some sick girls over the last little bit, so I have not gotten into much gaming recently (That is besides the regular Resistance games at lunch, and the periodic games of the game that I dreamed up). Recent playtesting has made some changes to the game. I am not really happy right now about the pacing of the game. It takes too long to play, but I am not sure what to do to make it faster. Perhaps I will make the profit margins larger. Also, I think that the name of the game will be something like 'Collusion', or 'Price-Fixing' Right now the rules are as follows: Each player has a color. Your Goods tokens are tokens of your color. Each player starts with 4 Goods tokens. The game alternates between selling and buying phases. If any player ever has 30 money they win the game. During a selling phase: n d4 are rolled, where n is the number of players. The sum of the roll is m , or the demand. This will be used to calculate how many goods will be pur...