Pretentious Board Games

Robin and Lyle form the guild played Automatown with me last night. We used the new goal cards that I just made. Here is how I modified the game: I removed all points from automa, and gave them up to 3 symbols - bullets, hands, and top hats. they can be tapped either for their ability, or to generate a symbol, but you have to place a worker on them to generate a symbol. This automa generates either a hand or a tophat: As an action you can place as many workers as you want on an equal number of automa, and then spend the generated symbols to complete a goal. Goals have from 1 to 4 symbols, and are just worth points. (considering adding abilities to some goals). This goal requires two bullets and a hand. Here is a copy of the notes I made during the game, and a brain dump of thoughts afterward. Most of the notes are comments from the other designers, so they don't necessarily match my thoughts: Recycling station: change to generic level 2 cube symbol. (this would be sim...

SaltCon was super fun. I played a bunch of games that were new to me, bought a bunch of games, and also pitched the Citadel of Madness to a publisher with moderate success. My favorite game from the convention was Santorini. Alison's was Clank!. We had played neither before. As a result of this, I have a good idea for a birthday present for Alison. When I pitched Citadel of Madness, Ryan liked the game, and said that he wants to see how it will develop, and would consider publishing it if I were to clean it up and change the score cards. I am happy with that. His ideas were quite fun, and I am going to try them out soon. I don't get to go to the next BGDG because I have a dentist appointment planned then, however hopefully by the one that is two after that I will be ready to go with my changes. I have been drawing more icons, but haven't been able to work on my games very much - it has been pretty busy. That being said, I do have plans to do that soon - once I get the...

I have been working on The Citadel of Madness a lot recently. I have applied most of the changes that came from the last guild playtest, and they are working well. I also had a really helpful guy on the internet offer to create artwork for the game. The results speak for themselves: I have been making good strides toward getting the game completed. Even though it is not yet all the way there, it is moving along fairly quickly, and it is making strides toward becoming a easier to understand experience for those involved. I am preparing to submit it to Red Raven games. I think that Ryan could help to make it a better game than it would otherwise be. Perhaps he would even provide some final artwork for it. I have also been working on Micronesia. The game is undergoing major revisions. I will probably hold off on anything big until after SaltCon, but the game is definitely scheduled for some more surgery before I am through with this round of editing. The SaltCon math t...

This last weekend was SaltCon. It was pretty great. I got 11 new games, played about that many games which I hadn't played before, and met a lot of great people. Thursday I presented The Age of Vikings to the judges for the Ion Award. It didn't go very well, so I wasn't surprised when (on Saturday) it was announced that I didn't win. I went into the finalist judging with presentiments, because Dan announced that the highest scoring game scored an average of an 8, and that matched my highest score (which means that my average was lower than that). I had also talked to another of the finalists, and he said that he had gotten calls from two of the judges asking for more info about his game. Fortunately I held back on submitting Terran League of Defense Robots this year. I have made so many good changes to it since I submitted all of my games that I know that it will have a much better chance next year. I got to play the game that won the Ion Award this year - Paloo...

Much of my time recently has been spent gearing up for SaltCon. If you don't have tickets yet buy some now, it starts on Thursday! We played a game of The Perfect Moment, and also Avalon at work on Friday. Avalon is a fun lying game. I like it much better than the other lying games that they all love, because you can actually deduce things. I was the Assassin once, and we totally aced the entire game, and then I guessed Merlin as well (though we won the game). On the second game, we won as the good without them guessing Merlin, and then on the third game the good guys won hard core until the Merlin guess, which made the bad guys win. So, I won two out of three games. On Friday night we had a local game group get together, and we played The Perfect Moment as well as Age of Vikings. I practiced teaching it in preparation for my presentation on Thursday. We figured out some parts of the presentation that need more work, and my wife engineered a killer game engine that blew the com...

I brought The Perfect Moment  to the last BGDG meeting. It was at Demolition Games  for the first time. The venue is nicer than the last place that we met at. We had 11 people, and only one person brought a game (which only supported two players). I presented  The Perfect Moment , which received good feedback. We decided to change the Ring card to allow players to trade cards. I also showed off my new artwork for the first time. They liked the new look better than my original look. I have gotten the laser cutter working really well. It cut out all of the cards for  The Perfect Moment . I should probably have it cut out tiles for Terran League of Defense Robots , but I have not spent the time to do that yet. I have, however, been preparing to present The Age of Vikings at SaltCon . The Age of Vikings was declared a finalist in the Ion Awards this year. That has been where a lot of my time has gone, but I have also been fine tuning my laser cutter, and cutting ou...

I realized that I haven't posted in a while. I didn't win the Ion Award (again). The winner of the Strategy category was "the Scarlet Pimpernel", which was a really good game, so I understand why it won the competition. I had a lot of fun at the convention, so it was not all a loss. I even got a publisher looking at one of my games. I have recently started working on a new game - it is a complete remake of one of my old games based on feedback that I got from one of the other finalists in the competition (one that also didn't win). I have also played a few games of Shadows over Camelot (the card game) at work over lunch. It was pretty fun, though we have yet to be able to win. We have been playing a lot of Secret Hitler (Which I still can't really like, but have to play because it is well liked by the other people).  Finally, I have been designing replacement tokens for the Dominion Adventures cardboard tokens that were really low quality. Perhaps I ...

Over the last weekend we went to SaltCon. I didn't win the Ion Award (my two finalist games were moderately well received, so perhaps next year I will do better and win). One thing that I learned was that there are actually publishers that want finished art (which is one thing that I have never spent the time to do since I am not really an artist). On Friday we had a Sandy board game designers meetup. We played Moar Moai and Above and Below. Ryan has cleaned up the visual aspects of the game quite a bit (it looks pretty beautiful right now). He also changed it so that there were more buildings that could be bought (which was one of our complaints about the game before). It is good that he is so responsive. There were still a few little things that we wanted changed (one symbol was confusing, one card had things in reverse order, and the new versions of the adventure cards have not been printed up yet), but all in all it is looking like the game is coming together quite nicely...

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 ...

This week I have been submitting games to be judged for the Ion Awards. I am going to submit four games probably. I am also thinking about reviving Polynesia and making a new game out of it. We played some Moar Moai as part of finalizing the rules, and we had a fun time. Perhaps I will play more at work. It is a pretty good game. We also just bought Space Cadets Dice Duel. I played it at saltcon last year, and our was pretty fun. Hopefully Alison likes it as well.

I am back from Salt Con. Here are the highlights: I played a bunch of games which I had never played before. Here are my thoughts on them: Machi Koro: This game was very similar to Settlers of Catan. It was slightly better that the aforementioned game (which I don't like very much), but not entirely horrible. There was a better ability to control your own destiny Council of Verona : This game was excellent. I had read the rules before the con, and decided to play the game at the con to see how much I liked it. After having played it I bought it (those who know me know that I am not really that likely to buy things right off the bat (so that is a large endorsement for me)). I would definitely recommend it to anyone that liked Love Letter, Avalon, or Coup. Get Bit: It was pretty fun. I would try it again. Walk the Plank : This game was very fun. I would definitely play it again. It has the ability to be moderately strategic, but you have to plan your moves in advance, and yo...

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...

I have begun to read all of the rule books for the "Play to Win" games for SaltCon. I am not yet though all of them, but I figure that writing down my current thoughts might prove useful to myself in the future (and perhaps interesting to others right now.) I have not played all these games. My reviews are based on the rule book alone. I decided to read the rule books in an alphabetical order. Here are my thoughts: Argosy: I didn't get through the rule book during my first attempt. It seems very cluttered. I intend to go back and read it again later. Baldrick's Tomb: Seemed pretty straightforward. Not really my style of game, but fairly well explained. Belfort: After having read the rule book I want to play the game. I will definitely look to play this one at Salt Con. Bellwether: Another rulebook that was very cluttered. I didn't make it through this one on the first try either. Coconuts: looks fun, but dexterity games are not my style usually. Council o...

For all of you board gamers in Utah: if you are not yet planning on going to SaltCon, I would encourage you to go. It is going to be really cool. I just went to a training for being a game librarian, and they're going to have all sorts of games that anyone can check out  to play at the con. There will be a play to win section where you can play and be entered to win a copy of the game that you played. Lots of publishers will be there as well, and they will also do the Ion award judging there. You should go. In other news I printed up a new copy of creative accounting. This new copy of creative accounting has pictures and colors and the accountants are now called Bean Counters and the Auditors are now, Whistle blowers. I hope that these changes will allow it to be slightly less confusing. Perhaps this will be the game that I will present at the prototype alley at salt con.