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Nigel Buckle
United Kingdom
Forest Hill
London
Now called Omega Centauri (by Spiral Galaxy Games) release date tbc
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It's been a while since I updated, and things have altered with the game following lots of playtesting.
What worked:
The game, most playtesters enjoyed it, although there were suggestions for improvement (some contradictory) ...
The timescale - it plays in around an hour, depending on the players
Balanced - no particular cards stood out as being overly strong (although a few were a bit weaker), except for the Achievements
What didn't (so much)
Some cards (in particular Advance) seemed to confuse everyone
Some achievements could generate massive scores if you got them early enough to work towards them (ok you could hope you'll pull it and work towards it regardless, but that is a very risky strategy!)
Not enough interaction
Too much interaction in a 4 player game (which is a contradiction I'll explain below)
To fiddly to setup
To vanilla - there wasn't enough difference between the nations
Too much reliance on the strategy card - the games tended to be 'tune your deck and then crank it using the strategy card to score VP', leading to reduced replayability (this also contributed to the feeling of blandness, as each nation had to do the same sort of thing).
To fiddly to play, too much maths (this related to handing out and calculating the VPs you would get everytime you played the strategy card).
Hmm, written down this all seems much more negative than I felt at the time  but of course I was working on the design and making small changes.
On the interaction issue - originally some of the Explore cards were events that penalised you for hoarding (as one successful strategy would be to collect 'stuff' for turn after turn and then do a major cash in towards the end ... boring, gamey and players didn't like it - apart from the few who enjoy that type of approach). These penalise cards were things like 'Corruption' lose half your resources ... and they worked fine in a 2 player, ok ish in a 3 player and a major source of frustration in a 4 player, as you'd spend your turn getting resources (ready for the next turn) and by the time it got round to you again it was all gone.
So interaction but the wrong sort.
I changed these to instead let players either lose some resources (or population, or cards etc) OR a played region, their choice. This worked better, but if you got a region that had a great invade bonus, you actually wanted to lose your regions so you could play them again ... which didn't really fit the theme.
So, what to do? - I have a game that works, but I'm aware there are a number of areas that aren't so great (overall players liked it, but these weak spots were mentioned ...). Some of the changes would be significant, and when you have a working engine ripping a major part out is hard.
I put the original prototype to one side (just in case I wrecked things totally with my changes!) and went back, almost to square one again.
Changes:
VPs - looking and the comments overall there was a feeling that getting VPs in the game was a problem:
1. It was a bit to mathy for some players (count points here, and here, and here, then collect them - make change, and then add them up along with the points on the cards at the end).
2. The scores were high - over 300 in one game, players didn't want to do mental arthmetic to that value.
3. The handing out/making change of VPs slowed the game down
4. The counting out of VPs at the start (VP exhaustion was a game end trigger) slowed the game
5. The game felt like it revolved around building a VP engine and then running it using the Strategy card.
So VPs had to go - or rather scoring VPs during the game had to go, instead you just score at the end.
This eliminated a lot of the weakness in one blow, but left a major hole - the Explore deck.
In the original design the explore deck was a major source of VP income, you'd explore, encounter something (Natives, etc) and score some VP if you had sufficient resources or military etc. With scoring VPs gone - what to do?
I had a major breakthrough by changing the way Explore cards are used - originally you'd reveal a card, either pay the cost and take VP then discard it or just discard it. Instead I hit on the mechanic of you use the card itself to record the VP and you either pay and take it, putting it in your history pile, or don't, in which case you put it on the bottom of your deck.
This removes the need for a discard pile and strengthens the theme of the history pile - which will be record of what you have done exploring at the end of the game.
I also removed the strategy card, as it wasn't needed any more
I made the changes and tried it, and it worked - no-one was arguing for VPs to come back
Time, Culture and Advance card
The advance card was a major problem - originally it had a Barbarian effect, pay 2 resources, pull a Barbarian card and an Empire effect, pay 1 population, pull an Empire card. But players kept getting it wrong; they'd play it as a Barbarian and get an Empire card with population, or play it as an Empire and get a Barbarian card with resources.
So I split the card - made a Barbarian advance card that worked only for Barbarians and an Empire Advance that worked only for Empire. This worked but it meant players had a dead card in their hand (Empire Advance) until they became Empire.
I had less concern about dead cards in hand once a player becomes Empire as the reorganise action is much more powerful than the Barbarian Purge.
So I needed a way to add the Empire Advance card later. Initially I just had it added when you became an empire, but players forgot to take it!
I also had the problem of nations feeling to vanilla – originally each nation had a set of time cards that gave bonuses (resources, military, vp) as you went through your deck, and then culture cards that gave VP when you went through your deck too (but they had a cost). Everyone had the same set of cards.
With the removal of VPs these needed work – so I decided to make unique Time and Culture cards for each nation, which adds in more historical flavour (now the Carthaginians can have Elephants, the Romans legions etc), and they didn’t have to be just vp cards. They could be action cards, technology cards or region cards.
Also I didn’t need to limit all the nations to having 6 time and 6 culture cards – now I could bring in a bit of historical time line, so those nations who became empires earlier in history (eg the Egyptians) could have less time cards and more culture cards than those who came later, or were perceived as more ‘barbarian’ (eg the Celts). And I could add in the Empire Advance card into the Culture cards, fixing that problem too.
It worked, but I took it one stage further and changed the Progress card to be a Barbarian progress card, and introduced an Empire Progress card to the culture cards.
This addition of 12 specific cards for each nation really made them play differently – a massive improvement to the game 
Achievements and high scores
Getting an achievement like ‘Military Power – each military is worth 5VP’ was a very swingy, pull it late in the game and it probably got you 10 points, as you had no time to build up your military. Get it early and you can build your deck around it and score 50 or more points! This felt wrong, or rather it was happening too often, and drowning out the other strategies.
So I split the achievements – and those relating to regions went into the barbarian deck and those relating to non-regions (population, resources) went in the Empire deck – meaning you’re much less likely to get them early on. Yes you can still build a huge army and hope you draw military power, but it is much more risky than having it in your hand at the start of the game!
However the scores for the game were still high – as I’d increased them on the cards to offset the removal of the strategy card for scoring in-game VPs (so for example a region was originally worth 1 vp, because it could score every time you played strategy, but an action card was worth 8 vp because you only scored it at the end of the game). I went back and cut back and removed the vp values of most of the cards, taking the scores from the 100’s to a range 40-70 or so (depending on the game).
This all seemed good – and a significant improvement over a game I liked before I started the major surgery.
But there was one comment that kept being raised – your starting hand was very significant, as you had few cards in your deck at the start of the game, your starting cards made a big difference, and sometimes you had a great hand and that would pretty much guarantee a win.
One of the playtesters suggested drafting the cards at the start – and that fixed it, and added depth to the game, now players had much more control over their starting hand, you could concentrate on actions and draft those, or regions - depending on your nation and the cards you were seeing.
Next time – adding interaction, adding more historical flavour, streamlining setup, developing the solo game.
Or look back at stage 8
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Nigel Buckle
United Kingdom
Forest Hill
London
Now called Omega Centauri (by Spiral Galaxy Games) release date tbc
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Empire Cards
Well this could be the shortest update in history ...
[drum roll]
The Empire cards are the same types as the Barbarian ones.
[/drum roll]
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.
.
.
.
[awkward, slightly annoyed silence]
[/awkward, slightly annoyed silence]
But, there are some differences - otherwise the switch from Barbarian to Empire wouldn't be very significant at all 
The mix of Action/Technology/Achievement is different (more technology for a start) and all are unique. They are generally worth more points and the actions do slightly different things to the Barbarian ones.
Also when you switch to Empire you get a different set of actions to choose from,
Opps, I need to back up - I haven't explained the actions for Barbarian yet (I'm so hopeless at this blogging thing)
Ok, in your turn you get 3 actions, playing a card is one and you can repeat that. All the others you can only do a maximum of once (it didn't used to be like that ... but testing showed it needed limiting)
* DELAY place 1 card on the top of your deck
* DRAW 1 card
* REVELRY score 2 VP
* PURGE pay 1 Resource or 1 Military then put 1 hand card into your history pile
* RECRUIT pay 1 Resource then gain 1 Military
Oh, and I haven't mentioned History either ... you have an 'out of play' pile called the History pile, stuff you put in here is out of the game until the end, at which point you add it all back in for scoring.
Back to the Empire Actions:
Revelry is gone (no more VP collecting), replaced with Gather (gets 2 resources)
Purge is gone - now you can organise a hand or discard card into history (for free!)
Recruit is gone - now your population is split into Military and Civilians, and you can only Hire civilians (for a cost of 2 resources).
And delay is gone - not replaced with anything ... Empires are just harder to manage 
Next time more detail on the Explore deck ... stage 9
long delay, and things have changed, next time is now major changes, stage 9 - rework part 1
Or look back at stage 7
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Nigel Buckle
United Kingdom
Forest Hill
London
Now called Omega Centauri (by Spiral Galaxy Games) release date tbc
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Barbarian Cards
There are 3 types of Barbarian cards:
Action cards - which work in the same way as the basic action cards, you play them doing something and then discard them.
Some are similar to the basic actions (but improved) some are a bit different, all are worth VP at the end of the game.
Technology cards - these are different, they are played (deployed) out and remain in play, as played some give a bonus, but all alter the game in some way. All are worth VP at the end of the game.
For example Religion allows the owning player to draw 6 cards at the end of the turn rather than 5, very powerful.
Advantage of technology cards are they are played out of your deck, so thinning your deck, and everyone can see all the great inventions you've made.
Oh, and because they are worth VP you also score them multiple times, like regions (every time you play the strategy card).
Achievement cards - these are like achievement cards in Omega Centauri, they score you VP at the end of the game, but the quantity depends on what you've collected/done during the game. Some for getting particular regions, some for gaining cards, some for resources etc.
The players all start with 2 (random) barbarian cards. Then the remainder (or some, if playing with less than 4) are placed as the Barbarian deck for use during the game. Running out of Barbarian cards is one of the end game triggers.
One concern is making the non-technology cards attractive enough to want to take, as it looks like technology cards are just better. Something for me to work at
A discussion about the Empire cards ... stage 8
Or look back at Stage 6
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Nigel Buckle
United Kingdom
Forest Hill
London
Now called Omega Centauri (by Spiral Galaxy Games) release date tbc
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To make up for the delay in posting, this is the 2nd one in a week
Here are the 8 basic action cards that each player gets at the start of the game. I tried using 4 with more options on each - that was too much text, I tried with more cards, including duplicates, and that wasn't great either ...
Your starting deck is bigger than these 8 though. During setup 4 regions cards and 2 barbarian cards are dealt to each player - then either they are added to the deck,or (once you're familar with the game) these 6 cards are drafted between the players, to reduce 'luck of the draw' at the start.
One region (assuming you have any, but that could only happen in a draft, and if you deliberately ignored all of them) can be placed in play immediately as your starting region - everything else goes in your deck.
This starting region has to be paid for (called the 'invade' cost - so each player starts with 3 resources and 2 military units), some regions give you bonuses including cards - if the starting region gives you a card then this is shuffled into the deck at the start too.
Back to the actions
#1 STRATEGY
Play: Score VP
Empire Play : Adjust Population (move military to/from Civilian, any quantity)
This is the card to generate in game VP, but will you waste a valuable action always playing it? The more VP generating cards you have in play (regions, technology and culture) the more it provides you. The secondary effect only applies to Empires, but it is useful to build up your military as that is a problem for Empires
#2 SCOUTING
Gain 1 Population then draw and resolve cards from the Explore deck until you decide to stop or you draw a region card.
You can put a region card in your discard pile by paying the explore costs.
Most of the explore cards are hazards you have to overcome - either spending resources, population or cards - but you get VP if you do (and get to draw another card). If you decide to stop you get nothing further.
#3 EXPLORE
Gain 1 Resource then draw and resolve cards from the Explore deck until you decide to stop or you draw a region card.
You can put a region card in your discard pile by paying the explore costs.
Sister card to #2 - and you can play them just to get the resource or population (which for a barbarian is always military).
#4 CONQUER
Barbarian play: Either invade a region card from your hand for free or pay 2 resources to invade a region card from the discard pile
This card is useless for Empire players - and is the main way you want to play regions as a Barbarian, otherwise you can just invade them from your hand, but you have to then pay (could be resources, cards or population, or a combination).
#5 TAXATION
Play: gain resources from regions (and 1 resource from each civilian as an Empire) then pay 1 resource per Military (or remove the military)
This is the main way to generate resources - but as a barbarian you either need a small army or rich regions. Empires can just use Civilians for tax.
#6 POPULATION GROWTH
Play: Add 1 population
Barbarian Play: May add up to 1 military per region (costs 2 resources each)
Empire Play: May add up to 1 Civilian per region (costs 3 resources each)
The main way of increasing your population. Barbarians only have military (so military = population) for Barbarians. Empire have Civilians and Military (so military + civilians are both population).
#7 ADVANCE
Play: Pay 2 resources (Barbarian) or 1 Population (Empire) to look at the top 2 cards (Barbarian deck for Barbarian, Empire deck for Empire), put one in your discard pile and the other back on top of the deck (Barbarian or Empire)
This is the main way of getting more cards into your deck
#8 PROGRESSION
Empire Play: Pay costs (resources/population/cards) to Advance your culture as far as you like.
Barbarian Play: Pay 4 resources to make a TIME advance (shuffle discards into your deck as well)
This is the card to accelerate you through your time cards (as a Barbarian) at the cost of resources, or through your Culture cards as an Empire.
Culture cards are a bit like regions - you play them out of your hand and then they are worth VPs when you play STRATEGY
A discussion about the Barbarian cards ... stage 7
Or look back at Stage 5
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Nigel Buckle
United Kingdom
Forest Hill
London
Now called Omega Centauri (by Spiral Galaxy Games) release date tbc
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Barbarian to Empire
It's been a while (struggling to find the time to blog), and the game is taking shape, but I'll continue with the format I've used so far.
I really want the 'you are a Barbarian' to feel different from 'you are an Empire', so what I've done is put 'time' cards in front of the player as a seperate deck when you are a barbarian. Everytime you go through your deck you add a time card to your deck (they sit in front of you face up so you know what the next card is).
I started off with everyone having the same set of (6) cards - and that worked, but now I've changed things and there are races in the game, and each race gets a unique set of cards to give the historical flavour of that empire.
Once you're through your time cards you become an Empire - some actions change and instead of time cards you get culture cards. These are all the same for each player (how many you get depends on how many are playing) - and they're a bit like region cards, once they are in your deck you can play them out for an action and then they are worth VP when you play a scoring card.
How do you get culture cards - well like time cards you can take one when you go through your deck, however it isn't automatic - there is a cost to take the card (and it gets more expensive for the more valuable cards).
Back to the full set of basic actions (as I've not detailed them as yet) ... Stage 6
Or look back at Stage 4
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Nigel Buckle
United Kingdom
Forest Hill
London
Now called Omega Centauri (by Spiral Galaxy Games) release date tbc
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Currency and how the 'building' bit of the game works.
At this stage I'm still throwing around ideas and I don't have a fully working model, but I'm not too concerned that's how my designs evolve, I have some ideas, add some more and more and more, then try to make something structured out of it. Then distill things down cutting things out until the cut makes things worse.
So 'currency' - by this I mean how you 'buy' cards to add to your deck, although I'm also thinking about other currency in the game too.
I've decided I want a fairly easy setup/tear down - so having a set of cards you randomise each game from a large pool is not what I want. Rather I'd want all the cards to be used with 4 players, and remove some (at random) for less players. Also as each player has their own deck I don't want to make cards cost discarding cards to play either, as tracking that is going to be difficult with 4 players (of course its much better if all players play by the rules and don't need to be reminded, but there's no point in designing a game with mechanics that easily allow someone to 'cheat').
So where does this leave me? I've decided to go with no direct costs for any cards at all - and instead use the cards themselves to get more cards into your deck. I've already settled on an 'explore' deck, so now I have the action cards, technology cards and achievement (scoring) cards in another deck. But as I want to have a Barbarian phase and an Empire Phase I've split them into 2 types "Barbarian" and "Empire", so there are 3 common draw decks and then each player has their own deck to which these common cards are added as the game goes on.
So how do you get explore cards - well mostly you won't. The explore deck I want to represent you scouting/exploring finding stuff and hopefully land to add to your empire. So it will have events/obstacles for you to overcome and then area cards that you can add to your deck. Once you draw an area card there will be an invade cost to then put it into play (now part of your kingdom/Empire) and a bonus for doing it.
So to draw these explore cards there needs to be a basic action card in everyone's starting deck called Explore. Play it to flip cards from the Explore deck until you either find an area or reach an obstacle you can't (or won't) overcome.
What about the Barbarian and Empire cards - again another basic action card (called Advance) will add a card from one of these to your deck (if you are a Barbarian then it's a Barbarian card, if you are an Empire then it's an Empire card).
So now I have 2 basic cards, but that hardly makes a viable deck. I've decided I don't want multiple cards of each type, rather have a variety of options for the players each turn (you'll play some cards and then discard the rest, refreshing your hand each turn).
These cards (and associated actions) represent the direction you as the leader are taking for your people this turn (so Explore means the Kingdom is putting effort and resources into exploring new areas rather than doing something else).
Should these cards just be played and do the action or does there need to be a 'cost'? From a theme point of view I want your kingdom/empire to have a population and a standing army, so that needs representing and also how 'rich' you are in either gold or raw materials etc. And rather than just have these as stuff to collect actually have them used in the play of cards.
So for example to 'invade' an area you'll need to commit (and spend) some military - representing men killed and also a garrison to keep control, protect the area etc. But different areas will have different invade requirements.
Rather than have multiple resources (such as I used in Omega Centauri) I'm just going to have generic 'resources' which will represent gold, grain, cloth etc.
I'm also going to have basic actions that don't require cards - so if you have a hand of chaff (or rather nothing that is situationally useful now) you don't just do nothing, ditch your hand and draw and hope the next one is better. Instead there will be a set of actions that are generally useful most of the time - but if you have a suitable card then it's likely playing the card will be better.
Next on the list is how to move from a Barbarian to an Empire - is it an action card with a high cost you have to save up for? Or just based on turns, or a progress mechanic like in Civilization where you advance each turn if you've met the requirements.
More on that next time ... Stage 5
Or look back at Stage 3
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Nigel Buckle
United Kingdom
Forest Hill
London
Now called Omega Centauri (by Spiral Galaxy Games) release date tbc
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Card Types.
Given the theme and the mechanic of deck building - two types were definitely going in, actions and technology.
But before I got to that point I thought about who the players were representing in the game. I think that is important. when I play a game I like to have a feel for what role I'm taking in the game, and then hopefully if the mechanics fit the theme I can then get into it.
In this game the players are the ruling family for each Barbarian tribe/kingdom and then the Empire. So the actions you take in a turn are the focus of your 'empire', are you researching or gathering resouces etc - as the leader you set the priorities. I've used this concept in Omega Centauri too for the focus cards.
Back to the cards
- actions, these are cards in your deck that you see again and again, play them to do something. Some actions will be different as an Empire than as a Barbarian. I want the players to feel they are in a different stage when they reach Empire, without having to replace most of the cards with a new set, so the cards will have somethings that only apply to Barbarian, some only apply to Empire and some to both.
- technology, these you play out to have an on-going game effect. This helps streamline the deck and makes it much easier to build combinations of effects rather than expect 2-3 cards to be in hand at the same time
I also included a 3rd type achievements, similar to 'achievements' in Omega Centauri, where you score end game VP for doing particular things or collecting particular things.
Then there are the Region cards which represent the various areas players can explore and invade.
There is also another type, Explore cards - these never go in a player's deck, instead most of the region cards get shuffle up with these to form an explore deck, and when you 'explore' you reveal cards from here, and if you overcome them you reveal another until you can't get past a card or you find a region (in which case you add it to your deck). This gives an explore/push your luck mechanic that works fine in a card game and means I don't need to introduce a non-card mechanic for this element.
Next Stage 4 - currency and how 'deck building' actually works
Or look back at Stage 2
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Nigel Buckle
United Kingdom
Forest Hill
London
Now called Omega Centauri (by Spiral Galaxy Games) release date tbc
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So I decided to ditch the theme of Sci-Fi 4x and the link with Omega Centauri.
Next thing was to pick a new theme - as I start with the theme when designing games, mostly, in this case I want to use a deckbuilding mechanic so I'm really starting with a mechanic, but I haven't got a working abstract game I'm trying to paste a theme onto. Rather I general mechanic with no detail at all at this stage.
Rather than use my existing deck building prototype which I've been dusting off and putting back on the shelf repeatedly I decided to start again (although I'm sure some elements will creep in).
So a blank slate again - just 'deckbuilding'. Pretty quickly I settled on Civilization/Ancient Empires as a theme (as I like that), it also fits the idea of a 4x game quite well.
Next stage was throwing ideas into a melting pot to see what I should or shouldn't include. Fairly quickly I hit on the idea of having 2 parts to the game - some deckbuilding games you repeat the same process from start to finish, hopefully improving your deck as you go. I wanted an early, mid and late game feel, with the last turns being more significant but not taking much longer than the first turns.
I decided players start as a Barbarian and as the game progress turn into an Empire - and then make the actions and focus of the players change between the two, Barbarians being more concerned with taking areas, collecting plunder etc and the Empires with gaining technology and culture etc (no insult intended for any barbarian cultures, this is just a sterotypical ancient barbarian - ancient empire game). Main point is the game feels different as you move into the second phase - not just doing more actions or collecting more VP but have the actions change, and have the game allow the change to occur at different times for different players.
Second decision was to fix this as a 1-4 player game. Mostly for my convenience, I rarely have 5 players to do early testing and having a game work with 1 means I can inflict most of the prelimary stuff on me without trying to play 2 hands at once etc. It also helps keep the playtime down as I don't intend this to be a simultaneous play game, each player will have their own deck they are building.
Of course I might do a 180 on this later and decide it would be better as a 'save the empire from the barbarians' or 'who should lead us to becoming an empire' type co-op deck building game sharing a common deck but certainly at this stage I'm not going down that road. But I've tried deckbuilding before and not been happy with the result, so I'm keeping an open mind.
Stage 3 will be the card types and how deck building will work
Or look back at Stage 1
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Nigel Buckle
United Kingdom
Forest Hill
London
Now called Omega Centauri (by Spiral Galaxy Games) release date tbc
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As I've mentioned before I'm working on a deck-building game.
I've got an earlier design - started working on it the day after I played Dominion and decided it wasn't for me but I loved the idea of building a deck/modifying your actions as you go.
Omega Centauri has this a little bit already - technology alters/improves your basic actions, so Hyperdrive lets you move your ships further if you move and PSI labs let you steal an opposing fleet when you research etc, but the main mechanic of chosing 3 actions from 5 isn't changed.
So I went back to my original design and mashed it into Ascendancy - in effect replacing the focus card mechanic with a 'build your deck of focus cards' mechanic.
It worked - after some alteration, and I could see potential - different races could have a different deck ... but there was serious problem, play time.
When I designed Ascendancy I wanted a 4X game playable in under 2 hours - this new game was taking much longer than that. This was a major flaw, my feeling was why play this when Ascendancy is quicker? Does the extra deckbuilding element justify the time it was taken.
Short answer was no, so what to do? Give up on the deck-building aspect completely (it's sort of failed twice now) or rethink the way it had been dropped into Ascendancy?
I took the latter, and decided to repeat what I did with Ascendancy, namely looking at the elements and identifying the ones that took time, and seeing if they could be cut/modified/abstracted to speed the game up.
First things I looked at where the Empire growing and combat - with the extra element of deck building you didn't need those slowing the game down, but without combat how do you control sectors and 'explore', and without the Empire also developing either it is too hard at the start of the game or becomes a push over as the player empires gain combat technology and more fleets.
Linked to this was the map building, moving on a map, generating resources from the map, placing discovery chits on the map ... again all taking time.
So instead I removed the map! Going back to Dominion, it has 'land' represented by VP cards you buy and then clog up your deck. I part like that idea, but wanted a way to limit it a bit, and to bring in exploring rather than 'purchasing'.
I put the sectors onto cards, and gave each an "explore" cost in fleets - removing the vs empire combat - now you pay in fleets to 'buy' the card. Once in your deck it is worth VPs but also you can invade it, for a futher fleet cost which then lets you play it in front of you (like a world in Race for the Galaxy) still worth VP at the end but now you can do stuff with it (like build shipyards, collect resources)
This worked - but I wanted different values of sectors to explore, so they had differing costs. Testing showed the order became crucial, you needed to draw sectors you had sufficient fleets to explore, and that was down to the luck of the shuffle, not good. Throneworld handles this by having different strengths (and values) for the worlds but marking them as inner/outer etc so the early areas players take are weak (and low value), later stronger and more valuable. With a deck I can do the same, I split the sectors into different types and shuffled each type and build a stacked deck, with the strongest at the bottom working up, so as the game progressed the players start to get through the outer sectors and into the valuable core ones.
However a couple of my long suffering testers asked "why Omega Centauri (again ...)" and that got me thinking. There were lots of elements I'd included to give a feel of the board game ... and they were slowing the game down and making it more rule heavy. Did I need these? Was the gaming experience worth the effort?
I realised that my idea to have a deckbuilding game based on Omega Centauri wasn't really working. So I sat down and thought about a retheme (but keeping the central idea of an 'empire building' type game) ...
More to be revealed in step 2.
Wed Sep 14, 2011 10:25 am
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Nigel Buckle
United Kingdom
Forest Hill
London
Now called Omega Centauri (by Spiral Galaxy Games) release date tbc
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* (Alien) Ascendancy
Originally JKLM agreed to publish Ascendancy in 2006, and opened pre-orders in Feb 2008, but it never actually got published. JKLM liquidated in Feb 2010, and finally I got the rights back in September 2010.
Now Spiral Galaxy Games have taken on the game but it needs a new name and the final decision over the name isn't mine to make.
I've made some changes to the game compared with what JKLM were intending to publish (most of these are reversing some of the changes JKLM made, such as limiting races to 4, some are alterations I've wanted to make but didn't suggest it for fear of delaying the game further!). I posted some of them (although they've been altered a bit after testing)
I've pulled these all together, done some more playtesting and submitted everything to the publisher.
* Invader Sector 831
A 'filler' level sci-fi themed multiplayer game, where each player takes a succession of races (each with a unique technology) and invades a sector of space.
Submitted to several publishers - no interest  now considering reworking this to (re)use my old Ascendancy prototype ... so there is a variable map and better back-story for the races.
* Ascendancy Express
A rework of Omega Centauri using dice drafting rather than focus cards/actions as the central mechanic. Shorter, faster and more tactical. It needs rulebook rewrite then it could go out to blind playtest, but I'm not saying much more as I don't want to distract from Ascendancy.
* Deck building game
Dusted off an earlier design and done some work to retheme it and try to use part of my Ascendancy prototype (so it's almost Ascendancy the deck building game) where the central mechanic of pick 3 from 5 focus cards is changed to a deck, and as the game progresses you modify it, needs work as currently takes much much too long (around twice as long as Ascendancy ...)
I'm writing a blog about this games development if anyone is interested ...
* Drafting game
Undergone several reworks including retheming - initally I designed this game after playing Fairy Tale and wanting more 'game' along with the draft mechanic.
Several publishers have looked at the various versions, no interest and now probably eclipsed by 7 Wonders. Well on the back burner now.
* Dungeon Crawl
I loved the concept of Dungeon Lords but it wasn't the game I was looking for. I want to play a game where I build a bunch of heroes and raid an opponents dungeon, while building my own and fighting off my opponents.
Still kicking ideas around, stitching the 2 parts is problematic - nothing firm enough for a playtest
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Now called Omega Centauri (by Spiral Galaxy Games) release date tbc
