Archive for Interviews
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W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
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Russian publisher Zvezda popped Samurai Battles onto the public radar in early 2012 with little fanfare, despite it including the next iteration of Richard Borg's "Commands & Colors" series. (Negative fanfare actually, as the Zvezda rep at New York Toy Fair in February 2012 asked me not to write about the game, even though some information was already publicly available.) In any case, since gamers want to know more about how Samurai Battles came about and what they might find in the box, I asked Richard whether he could talk about his involvement in the game's creation. I've edited his response and present it for your critical review below:
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I have always thought the historical Samurai period was interesting, and I had even collected a bunch of miniature figures, thinking one day I would perhaps have the time and opportunity to do a game on Samurai warriors.
At New York Toy Fair in February 2011, I had stopped by the Alliance Game Distributors booth to talk with Michael Webb about games, and he asked whether I had seen the new Zvezda World War II Barbarossa 1941 game by Konstantin Krivenko. I had not seen the game, but I did know of Zvezda and had a number of packs of their very fine plastic 1/72-scale Samurai miniatures. Mike introduced me to Konstantin, who was at the Alliance booth, showcasing his WWII game. We talked awhile about games in general and I was very honored to hear he knew of some of my game designs. He gave me the Zvezda catalog and he asked whether I would like a copy of the WWII game. Sure!
Returning home, I took a serious look at the catalog and it all came together! Zvezda was planning to release an entire new line of Samurai figures, and the company had just come out with a board game, and I always wanted to do a game about the historical Samurai period, and the game could have miniatures, very cool miniatures. It seemed like a perfect fit...
I contacted Mike at Alliance, who gave me Konstantin's (Zvezda) contact information and after a few emails, we were well on our way. Konstantin had already been thinking about doing another "Art of Tactic" Samurai game, and when I suggested doing a "Commands & Colors" Samurai game using the new Zvezda Samurai figures, it seemed logical that his Art of Tactic rules and my Commands & Colors rules could, in fact, become one game project.
The end result is Samurai Battles, which will have two sets of rules: Samurai Battles - Art of Tactic rules by Konstantin Krivenko and Samurai Battles - Commands & Colors rules by Richard Borg. Both rule sets utilize the same battlefield map game board, a set of terrain tiles and the Samurai miniature figures, but each rule set also features a number of additional game components unique to it. The rules for Samurai Battles - Commands & Colors are 110% "Commands & Colors" gaming with a deck of Command cards, Dragon cards, special Samurai battle dice, and a set of Honor and Fortune tokens.
Overall, players are in for a real treat as the new Zvezda Samurai Battles game, with two sets of rules in one game box, is sure to provide players with an entertaining, unique and challenging gaming experience.
Richard Borg
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Piotr Silka
Poland
Warszawa
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Piotr Siłka: First, please introduce yourself: what you do for life, and how your adventure with board games started?
Konstantinos Kokkinis: My name is Konstantinos Kokkinis. I am a 3D designer/animator. I also own a hotel on a Greek island. I started getting more into board games around 12 years ago, and I have been playing as much as I can ever since.
PS: Drum Roll is your first game that was released, but is this also your first prototype that you made together or alone?
KK: Yes. This is also my first prototype. Hopefully more will come in the future.
PS: What was the inspiration – I mean primarily theme but also mechanisms – for Drum Roll?
KK: Back in 2009 I was seriously considering designing my first game. The circus theme always excited me and I saw that even though it is a nice theme, there was a big gap in the board game market with few circus-themed games. This was ideal since I wanted to make something fresh.
The opportunity came when BGG's Greek Guild community announced its "2011 board game design competition". I invited my good friend Dimitris Drakopoulos to join me in participating in the contest and gave him a rough description of Drum Roll's theme. He was also excited and together we started working on Drum Roll.
We needed a mechanism to represent the evolution of an artist's performance. This determined right away that our resources in this game could not be wood and stone and bricks as the concept was not to build a circus but to manage it and make it evolve. This is why we adopted Rehearsals, Costumes, Promotion, Supplies and Equipment as our game's resources since those where the tools that would make an artist's performer improve. In the end, the game was ready for the competition and we managed to win the first place in both jury's and public's awards.
The designers of Drum Roll – Mr. Kokkinis and Mr. Drakopoulos – at Spiel 2011 (Image: Babis Tsimoris)
PS: When did you start to work on Drum Roll? What was the hardest thing during design work?
KK: The design of Drum Roll's mechanisms started in September 2010. Development was smooth and we didn't encounter any major issues at the time. Our biggest problem was when we started working on publishing the game. The initial version had lots of English text in it. We wanted to publish the game in most major languages, but the cost was too high to produce individual versions. This brings us to the hardest thing during design, which was converting the game to be language independent. Rules needed to be changed, balancing needed to be redone, more illustrations and symbols needed to be done, etc.
PS: I have to admit that I love the artwork in this game. How did you find Antonis Papantoniou? Is this the his first realization of this kind?
KK: I have known Antonis since my college days and he was actually my illustration teacher by that time. We remained friends. A few years back he was the my best man at my wedding. Antonis has worked in many fields of digital illustration, but Drum Roll was the first board game he has illustrated.
Draft of the cover
PS: Why did you decide to publish the game by yourself? Is it hard to find a publisher? Did you want to challenge yourself. (Maybe you thought about company a lot earlier and the game was only a good occasion to start a business?)
KK: Publishing always excited me and having full control over your project is something that everyone likes. I really believe in Drum Roll's potential, so I decided to invest in it and undertake the risks and benefits of self-publishing. There is much interest from larger publishers for a reprint of Drum Roll after Spiel 2011 as we have published only 2,000 copies for now.
We already have other projects coming up and of course if their cost goes above our production budget, we will present them to larger publishers from the start.
PS: Do you have favorite games from Polish authors, or maybe something that's made a good impression on you in recent years?
KK: Poland is a country that got a lot of publicity during the past few years. From board games to miniatures and wargaming products, there is much artistic talent which I really admire. During Spiel 2010 I had the opportunity to acquire a copy of Magnum Sal signed by the designers, Marcin Krupiński & Filip Miłuński. I believe Dimitris bought all games that were introduced by Polish designers in 2010.
Eclipse designer Touko Tahkokallio looks pained (Image: Antti Koskinen)
(The next two questions were asked prior to the opening of Spiel 2011, with follow-up questions after the show closed.)
PS: How are the preorders going, along with the organization of the worldwide shipping?
KK: Preordering is going really great. We are very happy with the warm welcome the game has received from hundreds of people who have truly honored us by supporting the game before it has even been released.
PS: What are your expectations of the coming fair in Essen?
KK: Dimitris will arrive on Friday at Spiel 2011 and along with some friends offering help, we will be able to run our booth. I am very excited and anxious at the same time since this is my first time as an exhibitor. I am pretty sure it will be a great experience, and I hope many people will want to play the game.
PS: What are your impressions of the show and the game's reception after Spiel? Where your expectations met – or perhaps even exceeded?
KK: We are very satisfied with how well Drum Roll did at Spiel 2011. The game sold really well, and we received a lot of buzz. Almost all people who played the game seemed to enjoy it and that was reflected in the percentage of people buying the game after playing it.
We are already looking towards Spiel 2012 where we hope we can do even better after learning so much from this year's experience.
PS: How will Drum Roll be distributed in the future?
KK: We had many proposals for distribution and publication. We are currently in communication with a large publisher who has shown interest in taking over English and French versions of the game. Since our first print run is almost gone, we are scheduling a larger print run soon.
PS: Thank you very much, and good luck at Spiel 2012!
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Piotr Silka
Poland
Warszawa
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Piotr Siłka: Thanks to the user records on BGG, I see that you have quite a large collection of games. When did you become interested in modern games? Do you play a lot? And, be honest, how many of these games have you not yet played?
Matthias Cramer: I started in the early 1990s, mostly with old Avalon Hill games. Later there came El Grande and the Euro Games, so there was plenty to be played. I had one or two gaming groups through all of the years, but right now, I am spending much more time with playtesting than with gaming myself. So I think that I've played most of my games, but there are still some sealed ones on my shelf.
PS: Which games have made a big impression on you lately? And now that you are designing games, do you still have time for playing the new ones?
MC: With around 1,000 new games each year, I have no chance to play them all, so I pick a few that look interesting and I try to pick the ones that promise to have some new mechanisms or the ones that are really telling a story.
PS: How did you start designing games, and how do you manage this with your job as an IT project manager? Most of all, what does your wife say about this when instead of spending time with her, you play with cards, chips, and meeples...
MC: The secret is to have a good life-work balance. I work to live and do not live to work, so there is a place for other passions like making games or going diving. My wife also likes board games and she joins most of the gaming events anywhere, so she knows the guy in her living room quite well ;-)
PS: Okay, on the subject of your first game Glen More, which was welcomed by players in Poland, you mentioned that the circular layout and the tiles were in place from the beginning. I understand that you then started to look for a theme which would be right for tiles? What main changes occurred during the development phase? Is this one of your first designs and how much time did it take you to get from idea to a design ready to be presented to alea?
MC: Glen More had a very short development process as the path was quite clear from the beginning. I tried to maximize the effect of the circular layout and movement mechanism. Everything had to be built around the dilemma of "Which tile should I take?" I started with many resources and a lot of rivers and streets. All of this was reduced at a middle stage, because less is more. It also became clear quickly that the tiles should have large differences in their power. Therefore, I created the special places like Loch Ness and the Castles. After nearly a year, I presented the game to Stefan Brück from alea and he liked it from the beginning.
PS: Your next game, Mieses Karma, was based on a book. How many mechanisms did you try to get to the right one?
MC: Developing a game based on a book takes a special approach because you have to follow the book. For Mieses Karma it was clear that the players "travel" through different animal incarnations, and I wanted to have a kind of life line as a representation of life itself, so I played around with a bunch of mechanisms and went for an easy and interactive one in the end.
PS: Lancaster hasn't been on the market long, but it's already been nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres – congratulations by the way – and has been highly praised. I've only read the rules so far, but I liked very much the twist with worker placement which seems a little bit like a auction. How did you came with this idea?
You mentioned also that inspiration came from The Republic of Rome, and I understand that it applies to the voting procedure. But from where came the idea of laws and different conditions to get victory points?
MC: In the first version of Lancaster, players were setting their knights from the victory point track into the different counties. To make it short: It didn't work at all, so I went for something else.
To be honest, I don't remember at which stage the bidding came into the game. (It was quite early.) Maybe I didn't recognize it. The knights and the counties were there from the beginning; even the distribution of the knights – 4-3-2-2-1-1-1 – never changed through all of the years. In the beginning, there was a big tournament at the end of each round during which players fought each other. This mechanism disappeared and was replaced by the conflicts in France.
The laws are also an old mechanism because I wanted to have a game in which laws can change rules. These rule-changing laws didn't make it to the basic version, but you'll see some of them appear in the New Laws expansion.
PS: Your most recent game, which will be on display at Spiel 2011, is called Helvetia. Beyond a few sentences about the theme and one picture – I see that there are three ways of using a meeple? Am i correct? – there is no more information. Can you describe the game mechanisms and the ideas of which you are most proud? Was the game thematically inspired, or did the mechanisms arise first?
MC: The meeples just show heads and shoulders, but there are women and men. They have three positions: as a baby (lying on the side), awake (standing) and sleeping (lying). There are 16 resources in the games, but no counters or cubes to represent them, so you have to use directly what you produce – there is no storage at all.
The basic idea is that you have to produce so many different things that you have no chance to do it all on your own, so you marry, say, your neighbor's butcher in order to get some nice steaks out of your cow. He will be quite happy about this marriage as he can then get children to work in his butchery. It's a strategy game, but most family game players have a lot of fun with all of these marriages.
PS: Can you tell a little bit about the games you are designing now?
MC: I do not talk much about ongoing projects. In my ongoing games, I am caring more and more for a density of the game and its suspense arc – and I believe that storytelling will become much more important for me in the future.
PS: Do you want game designing to be your full-time job, or would you rather keep the situation like it is now?
MC: Never ever :-) Making games is one of my hobbies and I don't want to have a feeling of work when designing new games. I am testing a lot with friends and with people who I like. That is leisure time for me and them, and it should stay that way.
PS: Thank you very much.
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Editor's note: This interview originally appeared in Polish on GamesFanatic.pl.
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Andrea Ligabue
Italy
Modena
Italy
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Some days ago, I was lucky enough to be contacted by "Cielo d'Oro", an Italian design group, asking me to playtest the new game they are going to propose to publishers at Spiel 2011. I was so impressed by this new game that I asked whether they had already designed something and discovered that they are the design team behind Aquileia, the winner of the 2010 Premio Archimede, that being Italy's greatest award for unpublished games and new designers. Here's the summary of that game from the Studiogiochi website:
Quote: If you think that modern life is complicated, try to find your way between the market, the arena, the stadium, the theatre and the forum of ancient Aquileia.
I was also surprised to find almost nothing about this game online – despite it being a Spiel 2011 release from Zoch Verlag – so I decided to send a few questions to Cielo d'Oro's Giorgio Villa and write this preview. Let's start with a slightly longer summary of game play and the game's setting:
Quote: Each player, representing a wealthy Aquileian patrician, owns a certain number of henchmen (pawns) whom he uses for the main activities: playing, gaining culture, trading, and building. Each activity can bring expenses, earnings and sometimes victory points. The game lasts six rounds, and the player with the most victory points wins.
Aquileia, the second most important city of the Roman Empire, had been originally founded as an outpost against the Barbarian invaders. From its military origin comes the peculiar quadrilateral structure divided by the main streets.
Later, the city developed to become an important political and cultural center and a prosperous trading city, especially for precious goods, thanks to its convenient and efficient river port. Important monuments such as the Gladiator Arena, the horse-racing Stadium, and the famous theater were built, as well as craftsmen's workshops and patrician villas, which completed the architectural network of the city.
Andrea Ligabue: Aquileia, your first design, was the winner of the last edition of Premio Archimede. Can you tell us the story of Aquileia?
Giorgio Villa: Aquileia is not our first design. We have been inventing games since ten years ago, and sometimes we had already come close to publication. We had visited the Nürnberg fair and the Essen fair a few times, bringing our ideas, learning from our contacts with the publishers (we got to know most of them) and playing the most acclaimed games.
We had already participated twice in the Premio Archimede, always qualifying as finalist. In 2008 we got tenth place with Expo; in 2006 we got fourth and 14th with Tiago and Calderone.
Other games were tested and unfortunately not accepted by the biggest German publishers.
Aquileia is somehow the "summa" of all our experiences. The setting was chosen after a visit to the archeological site of Aquileia, that inspired the creative minds in our group.
Aquileia prototype
Liga: "Cielo d'Oro" is a collective name. Who are the designers behind this name?
Giorgio: We are all friends since fifty years ago when we were classmates in the elementary school of our town, Saronno.
• Pier Volonté: the promoter and designer. He is the "Yin". He has the idea.
• Giorgio Villa: the public relations man. He has the words.
• Chicco & Gigi Tramezzani: "the sponsors". Providing commitment and support, but no cash!
• Stefano Fontana: the artist and designer. He is the "Yang". He gives a shape to "the idea".
• Mario Biscella: the old, wise guy. He cools down the "Yin" and the "Yang".
• Ercole Telazzi: the workshop apprentice.
• Renato Borgatti: the professional tester
The story begins ten years ago with a little child who did not sleep and her dad (Pier) who designed his first game to keep her awake. The experiment worked, so Pier created another game and then another, and another, and another! He needed some friends to test his creations and there we were.
The story continues with hundreds of nights spent playing and arguing (as only friends can afford to do) and with the shared commitment of publishing games, sooner or later!
By the way: "Cielo d'Oro" was the name of a weird stage character played by Pier thirty years ago. What does it mean? Who knows? The crazy comedy was entirely written, produced, acted and directed by all of us – but that is another story.
Liga: Can you tell something about the game? Is it a gamer's game or a family game?
Giorgio: It's a gamers game, but in our opinion it's also a game that can be easily enjoyed by "non-gamers". There is a lot of interaction, fun and strategy at the same time.
We think that one of the main features of this game is that it's made of many games in the same game. The "strategic" gamer can build his strategy balancing his strength and his participation in the different areas of the game, while the "amateur" player can enjoy the fun of the competition. The presence of dice in certain areas allows the non-gamers to compete with the most "professional" players with a chance to win.
Actually one of the nicest sides of the game is that you have the chance to win until the end; you are never cut out of the competition to win.
Liga: Which games have inspired you in the design of Aquileia?
Giorgio: As we said before, Aquileia is somehow the "summa" of all our experiences. There are ideas inspired from many games, and it would be hard to name any of them. In the end, we prefer to think that this game is an original, very original compilation of the best ideas and mechanisms in the game market.
Liga: Is there something special in Aquileia that you want to tell us about?
Giorgio: I think that what makes Aquileia special is already written in the above paragraph. While being an outsider in the game market, we honestly think we have created a very playable and amusing game which hopefully will open more doors for us in the game inventor environment!
Game board
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Marc André's Bonbons will debut at Spiel 2011 from Swiss publisher GameWorks SàRL and I thought I'd find out more about both the game and this first-time designer. (Many thanks to GameWorks' Sébastien Pauchon for translating my questions into French, then translating Marc's answers into English.)
To give some context for the interview, however, let's first describe the game:
Quote: Bonbons is a memory game with a little twist. Eight types of candies, each in four colors, are hidden in the central 6x6 field, along with four special tiles: three money tiles and one empty package. All tiles in the center of the table are square.
Each player receives four round tiles at random from a set of 32 that match the candy and color options on the square tiles. On your turn, you turn over one of your round tiles and a square tile. If they match in both candy and color, both tiles stay face up and you take another turn; if not, you turn both tiles face down again.
The little twist is that on your turn you can rob candies from your opponents. If you turn over a square tile along with a matching round tile in an opponent's possession, you get to keep that face-up round tile and give the opponent one of your face-down round tiles in exchange. Sweet!
In addition, if you reveal the empty package, leave that tile face up and add another round tile to the ones you already have; now you must reveal five tiles instead of four. If you turn over a money tile at the start of your turn, then turn over the other two money tiles, you remove them from play and place them on one of your round tiles, which now counts as being face-up.
The first player to turn all of his round tiles face up wins.
The candies in question
Daniel Jensen: First off, thanks for taking the time to do this interview. Can you tell me a little about yourself?
Marc André: I learned to play Chess when I was 4 and played competitively for eleven years, starting when I was 7. I like all types of games with a preference for smart and short games, streamlined of useless complexity.
DJ: How did you end up becoming a game designer?
MA: As with many others, I started by tweaking rules of existing games. Discovering a new game always puts me in a creative frenzy and pushes me to develop my own concepts.
DJ: To follow up, do you view yourself as a "game designer" or as someone who has designed a game?
MA: Many end up having only one game published. In my opinion, only those with several games on the market can consider themselves as real designers. Anyone might have one original game idea at some point in his or her life. The difficulty is achieving this repeatedly.
DJ: How would you describe the perfect game?
MA: That would be a game liked by everybody without the slightest complaint – but I don't think such a game exists.
DJ: How do you approach designing a game?
MA: When working on a game, I impose on myself a strict canvas, as if it were a contract game, e.g., a family game with only text-free cards or tiles. I designed several games within that canvas, among which what was to become Bonbons.
A game in progress
DJ: Is Bonbons the first game that you've designed, or only your first published game?
MA: It's my first published game. I'm taking part in the 30th designers' contest of the CNJ (Centre National du Jeu - National Game Center in Paris - the former Boulogne Billancourt contest). I sent four games in, one of which was the Bonbons prototype that I had to withdraw once GameWorks announced its intention to publish the game. But one of my other games is currently in the final round. I have designed other games since, and I still have many rough ideas to be polished for 2012.
DJ: How did Bonbons end up being published by GameWorks?
MA: I made contact and sent them the rules with pictures of a game in progress. Sébastien Pauchon later confessed that he was actually turning my proposition down with something like, "Sorry, we're not interested" when he suddenly thought "Why not a memory, after all?" He finally wrote me back after having made a prototype and tested it satisfactorily. I don't know how a publisher's brain works, but I think I've been very lucky on that one.
DJ: What is the most important thing you learned during this design that you will take with you going forward as a game designer?
MA: I learned to be patient, but I think you learn more from your failures than from your successes.
DJ: Thanks much for taking the time to answer my questions. Good luck on all your future endeavors!
MA: Thank you very much. I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the GameWorks team for turning Bonbons into such an elegant and refined game.
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So that concludes my first ever interview. If you like it or hate it, please send me feedback or post a comment below.
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Andrea Ligabue
Italy
Modena
Italy
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I was curious to learn more about Upon a Salty Ocean – being released by Italian publisher Giochix.it at Spiel 2011 – because I know the designer, Marco Pranzo.
At the first PLAY: The Games Festival in Modena, Italy in 2010, he won a contest by designing a special game with Moonghs, the characters from Martin Wallace's Moongha Inavders that are also the mascots of PLAY. The game was simple as it was constrained by the promo cards available at the event, but Marco's skills were already evident. So I did the reasonable thing and asked him for more details.
Marco sent me images of the early stages of the game board and they show the evolution of the game up to when Giochix.it started work on it.
Liga: Please, Marco, tell us how you got the idea for this game and what is new in it?
Marco Pranzo: I got the idea for this game reading the book Fish on Friday by Brian Fagan. In the book the author explains the importance of fish and salt in the history of Europe. Due to religious norms there were several days in the year when it was forbidden to eat meat. Therefore there was a demand for fish and the main way to store it for long periods of time was to have it salted. At the time ships left the harbors loaded with salt in order to be able to process fish directly on board.
Prototype game boards, versions 1 and 2
What I found interesting is that incidentally the high demand of fish pushed for an improvement of naval technology and the development of new ships such as caravels and carracks, and in the end this made possible the discoveries of the Americas by Columbus and the Great Banks of Newfoundland by Cabot.
The game is a classical German-style resource management game with a tight integration between mechanisms and theme. Actions require money and the cost is incremental because it grows every time that action is performed.
Prototype game board, version 6
Liga: Can you explain in more detail how the game works?
MP: The players are rich merchants in Rouen. At the time Rouen was the main French harbor, and one of the main activities was to fish in the ocean. The players have to accumulate money as after the fifth turn, the King of France, Francis I, arrives in the city and the richest merchant will be declared the winner.
However, the coins are also used to take actions, so the players have to find a trade-off between accumulating money and spending money for doing actions. There are four types of actions:
1. Navigation: A player can either move ships from Rouen to the sea and fish for cod or herring, or move a ship back to Rouen.
2. Harbor: A player can either build a ship or load them with salt.
3. Market: A player can either sell their fish and salt to the market, or to buy them from the market and store them for later.
4. City: A player can either build a building in the city – with buildings providing bonuses, special abilities and additional points at the end of the game – or build a salt mine.
The cost of the actions increases each time during a round that any player uses that type of action. What's more, the price of the goods is influenced by other market actions and by events. Hence it is important to sell at the right moment.
Liga: It looks a gamer's game – is it?
MP: Upon a Salty Ocean is mainly a game for gamers, but it is not too complex.
Nearly final game board
For more details, read the longer game description on the game's BGG page or download the rules, which are available in various languages on the Giochix.it website.
Wed Oct 12, 2011 10:00 pm
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Don't argue, just play!
Poland
Raszyn / Warsaw
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(Editor's note: Witold Janik is a spokesperson of sorts for Gry Leonardo, the publisher of the 2011 release Mare Balticum, so he had good access to designer Filip Miłuński and artist Piotr Słaby to get background on the game and its unique look. The interviews were conducted in June 2011. —WEM)
Witold Janik: It's well known that most of the titles by Friedemann Friese start with the letter "F". Your next production, which will soon be published by Leonardo Games, is called Mare Balticum. This is the third of your five games which starts with the letter "M"! Coincidence?
Filip Miłuński: Coincidence. However, like Friedemann, I also have a designer's quirk – all of my games need to have player pieces in purple because I play purple.
WJ: Did you study Latin? You know why I ask: Mare Balticum is also your second title after Magnum Sal (created with Marcin Krupiński) in that language. What is the reaction among players to this kind of "language gimmick"? Have you heard any opinions from outside Poland?
FM: I did study Latin, but I don't remember too much. The reason you use Latin for a game title is simple, and it has been used by many publishers for a long time. A Latin title is international. When you publish a language-independent game with instructions in several languages, then a title in Polish or even English is pointless. In such a situation, you choose an abstract title which sounds good in every language because it has no meaning (Dobble, Qwirkle), or geographical names which sound the same in almost every language (Puerto Rico, Salamanca), or Latin (Carolus Magnus, Mare Nostrum, Alea Iacta Est). There are many such board games. As for player reactions, I've not heard any negative opinions; at the same time, no one is especially enchanted by it. I think that the title is really a low priority for the player.
WJ: Okay, let's get to the game itself. Where did you get the idea for a game of fishing in the Baltic Sea? Do you fish? Do you spend your vacations sailing? Are you an amber collector?
FM: I fish, but more and more rarely recently as board games, badminton and bicycling have pushed fishing to the back burner. I also used to sail. The idea came from amber. I wanted to make a game about this Baltic treasure. The first concept was a more complex economic game about the whole amber trade route. However, it evolved into a family game about fishing.
Everything in the box - and the box, too!
WJ: How was it working with the game's illustrator, Piotr Słaby? Who thought up the idea of modeling clay?
FM: I have to say in all honesty that working with Piotr is a true pleasure. He's a very creative illustrator, and at the same time he's very communicative and listens to the feedback of the game designer and the publisher. Modeling clay was his own idea, and he actually had to convince us at first, which is hard to believe now, seeing those great final graphics! He did a fantastic job. This is truly something new in the boardgame world. I believe that Piotr has started a whole trend of modeling clay like when Michael Menzel started the trend of pastel art with lots of details on the Pillars of the Earth board.
WJ: What was your reaction? Were you afraid of this "revolutionary" - as some have called it - proposal? Did you have some other vision of your own, or as a game designer do you feel that's not your area of expertise?
FM: At first I thought, "Wow, that's really weird." But I then came to the conclusion that this could be a great selling point to distinguish this game from a sea of other titles. Some people will love it, some will hate it, but no one will be indifferent to this art style. When I saw the first trial graphics, I was quite confident that people would like it. It's obviously not my area of expertise, but I always try to have some influence on the game's appearance and I collaborate on it with the publisher and illustrator.
WJ: Aside from the amazing graphics and light theme, what else do you think will attract potential gamers to Mare Balticum?
FM: The idea of Mare Balticum was to be a very simple family game, which would be fun even for six-year-olds, so from the very beginning, I tried to avoid unnecessary rules complications. The rules are very simple and can be explained in five minutes, and a whole game takes only a half hour, even with five players.
At the same time, my own gamer spirit and the valuable testers of the "Monsoon Group" inevitably made Mare Balticum work well not only as a family game, but also as a filler for experienced players. In the game we have two simple optional rules that enrich the game with more interaction and more diverse strategies. In fact, any group that knows even a few modern games should start playing immediately with the optional rules. The basic version is definitely meant to be played with kids.
Ultimately the players themselves will decide what the strengths of the game are. The testers and I value the smooth and intuitive game play which is congruent with the theme. We have fleets of boats with a certain cargo capacity, several types of fish, and various ports with varying demands for fish. The player has many choices, but they are rather straightforward, so the game does not have downtime.
The game board and the clay model pictured on that board
WJ: Your board games seem to be gaining more and more fans, both in Poland and abroad. What are your future plans? Are there still many prototypes waiting for publication?
FM: I always try to keep developing new titles. Right now, two of my games are already at the initial stage of preparation for publication. Both should be released in the first half of 2012. I'm also working on some other new projects, but at this point I can't say anything concrete about them. I'll just say that I was thinking about players who mainly play two-player games, and also that I am trying my hand at new types of games: an abstract strategy game, and a design with a more American than European approach.
WJ: Are you going to Spiel 2011 to promote your latest game?
FM: I plan to. You will find me at booth 4-120 with Mare Balticum and Magnum Sal.
WJ: A final question: Can you assure our readers that no fish were harmed during the testing of this game?
FM: We consumed a sea of coffee and other drinks during testing, but no fish were harmed at all. Designer's word of honor!
WJ: Thank you very much for the interview. I wish you more successful projects!
FM: Thank you!
•••
Witold Janik: How would you finish the sentence: "Every day Piotr Słaby..."
Piotr Słaby: Thinks up new ideas to keep out of debt. Meanwhile, he tries hard to work doing what he likes and not what he must.
So now I am working with graphic design, even though my university diploma says I am an architect. A large part of my work is making graphics for board games, but perhaps mostly I design logos, posters, leaflets, websites, etc. Because I've always loved to invent and design, I not only illustrate but also try to create games. Besides that I have many other activities, from stupid stuff like playing on the computer to doing quite creative things - but I will not elaborate on that.
An close-up look of the detail on the game board
WJ: Now you've had the opportunity to create a three-dimensional model of the Baltic Sea region. Was this your first work using this technique? Do you have a favorite creative technique, or are you still exploring?
PS: For the purposes of a board game, it was the first time. Earlier I made two posters for which I created three-dimensional paper models: The first was for the Festival of Board Games in Brzeg and the second was for another big board game event; unfortunately it has not been published yet. I think it was very well done, so eventually I should show it somewhere myself.
Of course like all of us, I played with modeling clay in the first years of primary school. Then, if I needed to model something in high school or college, I used clay. I also had a period of gluing together models, painting miniatures, and making landscapes for battle games. That gave me a bit of experience, which was useful while doing the graphics for Mare Balticum. Besides that, thanks to my high school I have professional jeweler training; for five years, I got used to dealing with small delicate objects and learned how to form them, although I must say that modeling clay is a nicer material.
I don't have a favorite technique. I have some tried and true motifs, which I use in various projects, but I'm not attached to them. Sometimes I prefer to do something new. My tastes and ideas change too quickly to lock myself into one style.
Another perspective of the game board model
PS: No, I'm not especially into stop-motion animated films, although I've always enjoyed them. I really respect the work of animators because if my work with a single static model took so long, I can only imagine what they go through to make thousands of frames.
For a long time I've wanted to create graphics by hand – and at first I wasn't thinking specifically of board games – using what was at hand instead of limiting myself to Photoshop. Computer graphics are overused lately. Because of the simplicity of the software and the wide availability of the Internet, a lot of people are using computer graphics. Even employment agencies offer computer graphics courses for the unemployed.
It is difficult to stand out in such a flood of works – which are sometimes better, sometimes worse, but typically derivative – and to create something different from the rest. So in a bit of contrariness, I decided to play with cutting, pasting and gluing, techniques that seemed to die out with the spread of computers. Fortunately, there is a retro trend lately. Handicrafts are being revived in a surprising way, so some of us feel like spending a few weeks kneading and modeling clay.
WJ: You are self-critical and very demanding of yourself. Using a computer greatly simplifies the process of illustration as you can make any number of changes. How was it in the case of this technique?
PS: Ninety percent of the work was creating the models for the board, player mats, cards and box cover; the rest was computer work. I hardly made any changes to the clay models themselves, except for changes in post production, so to speak.
In Mare Balticum some necessary elements were not done by hand. I was also lucky because I got clients who trusted me and did not request a lot of changes; they didn't change my concept and were open to suggestions. Based on a quick test model, which was not even that great, they decided to do Mare Balticum in clay, which was very encouraging for me. The graphics that have been presented so far were well received on BoardGameGeek and elsewhere, so the gamble paid off, and I hope it will help sales. And help me get my next contract.
I would like to do more game projects in the future with clay or other handcraft techniques. The potential is great, especially with games for kids, but not only for those. A well-done eye-catching board and box cover is a big part of success, especially when the competition is huge. I am sure that Mare Balticum will not disappear in Essen among thousands of other titles.
WJ: This is not the first game you've illustrated. You're working with Phalanx Games Poland, for example, developing prototypes of Teutons and Carolus. Does your familiarity with different games help you in
your work?
PS: Yes, my first professional game art contract was with Los Diablos Polacos, and after that came another one. Perhaps soon wargamers will enjoy their wargames with my art - I have my fingers crossed!
Of course it helps to know games. Thanks to that I have some idea of what a functional game is, although the game designers usually already have an idea of the board layout. I can give clients concrete examples of solutions by naming specific games, or advise against something that didn't work in other games. I will probably face a true challenge when I get a job to do graphics for someone who has no clue about board games.
Knowledge of games is also useful when creating the rulebook, where I happen to catch errors in the text.
WJ: What is your favorite genre or title...?
PS: I like wargames; my favorites are Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage and Combat Commander. When it comes to Euros, I mainly like negotiation, cooperative and deduction games, where half the game play is not on the board but in talking among the players, e.g., Mall of Horror. I also like brainburners like Steam and Age of Steam, which I think are the best of this type. I like Dixit, which works well for small parties. I like interaction. I don't like when someone cheats or stops in the middle of the game when he knows he has no chance.
WJ: We had the "Polish Film School" and the "Polish School of Posters" which were famous all over the world. Observing how Polish illustrators are breaking into "the West" with more and more success each year, do you think it will soon be possible to talk about the "Polish School of Game Illustrators"?
PS: In contrast to the jaded west, Poles are hardworking, ambitious, and still cheap to hire, but the same is true for people living in developing countries, so I do not think that Poles are exceptional in this way. There are more and more talented graphic designers and illustrators from Brazil, Russia and other countries. Poles are only one group among many. I also suppose talking about a "national school" is a little outdated in an era when you can create a project for someone in Singapore who doesn't really care whether you are from Poland, Austria or Australia.
WJ: Thanks a lot for your time!
PS: Thank you, too.
Toot! Toot!
-
W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
-
As noted in this July 2011 news item, Cambridge Games Factory has sent a cease-and-desist to French publisher IELLO over that publisher's impending release of Carl Chudyk's Uchronia, which CGF's Ed Carter claims IELLO is promoting "as a 'definitive' version of Glory To Rome with only a few 'technical' changes."
With that context in mind, I thought I'd reprint my Boardgame News column from January 23, 2007 to provide more history on CGF. —WEM
Time to look into the heart and soul of another independent publisher, and the willing victim this time is Ed Carter, the man behind Cambridge Games Factory, which released its first four titles – Glory to Rome, Ice Pirates of Harbour Grace, Splat!, and Sneeze – in October 2005.
BGN: How did Cambridge Games Factory come into existence?
Ed Carter: Cambridge Games Factory began in late 2004 as a conversation at the MIT Strategic Games Society. I'd been turning up regularly for a few months and had been very impressed by half a dozen of Carl Chudyk's designs; most were large, expensive-to-produce board games but a couple were much simpler family games which I knew he could print for a few thousand dollars. I didn't have any interest in getting back into games publishing myself – the main thing I'd learnt in two years trying to market Kersplatt! (a previous version of Splat!) was that there's precious little money in it – but I was interested in helping out, so I started asking a few questions to see where he was planning to go with the prototypes he'd been creating.
It turned out Carl had spent the previous four years working as a messenger in Boston while he perfected over 20 game designs, but he really wasn't sure what his next step would be to try to get any of them printed. I offered some suggestions, but as you know it's a tough industry to break into – maybe too tough, I started to think. Here's a guy with a dozen really strong games and no idea who to call to even have them looked at. I'm a business-guy and this was starting to smell like a business opportunity. I still wasn't hooked, but I was starting to get interested...
The game that launched the company was Organic Soup – another of Carl's great but simple family card games. What I loved about the game (apart from how good it is) is that it's also a serious organic chemistry lesson, which means it can sell in a lot of places where more traditional games are not going to get shelf space. As it turned out, Glory To Rome swept it and several other games out of our first release, but we're currently playtesting Organic Soup for our latest set of games.
BGN: What's your role at CGF, and how is Carl involved in the company?
EC: When we started, publishing games was all Carl thought he'd ever want to do. The plan we came up with was for this to be a real job for Carl and a hobby for me; we'd call it a partnership and split the profits 50/50. During our development cycle, our team picked up a third member (Erek Slater) who was a huge help through the game development cycle, and he would have been running the sales and marketing side of the business if he hadn't moved to Chicago two weeks before we published.
Carl tells a story of how he lost his job after he and Erek played Glory To Rome until 10:00 AM with someone who followed them home from a playtest session. He doesn't always mention that he quickly got a much better job and shortly after that a new girlfriend so that just as we were getting to market he found he wasn't quite so sure about spending the rest of his life making no money as a games publisher after all. At the same time, I wasn't too keen on spending a lot more time than I'd originally expected building 50% of a publishing business for a partner who wasn't putting in the kind of effort I was expecting.
It took some working out, but I'm now running Cambridge Games Factory as a sole proprietor, with Carl acting as an independent designer – we put together a document called "Ed and Carl's Particularly Cool Shared Asset Management Agreement" for the games we designed together.
BGN: What's your gaming background?
EC: I've always loved board games and I grew up role-playing – first D&D and then every system I could find while I was at University. I've never quite got into massive wargames (they look like too much work), but I'll play pretty much anything else. I'm a sucker for a good theme – if I'm playing a pirate game, I want to be able to think like one and devise effective strategies accordingly. When I design, I usually start from a theme or a story and work backwards to an interesting mechanism. These days I'm doing much more game development than working on my own designs, so I'm working the process the other way round – for example, when Fox first showed me Between The Lines, the game was called "Merchant Mayhem" without any specific period or context. We brainstormed a variety of potential settings (e.g. Camel Traders in the Sahara, Modern Day Gang Leaders, Renaissance Italy) before settling on World War I profiteers as the right fit for the high risk, high reward game she'd designed.
BGN: What's the deal with Kersplatt!, your first design credit?
EC: If you self-publish one game with black and white cards and square corners with a rulebook that is virtually incomprehensible and then spend two years trying to market it without actually having the first idea what marketing is, let alone how to do it, you will probably not succeed, even if you get a couple of good reviews.
BGN: Well, given that experience why create your own game company?
EC: Err...it seemed like a good idea at the time.
I've always wanted to start my own business, but now I know how to build one. I also know that unless you're coming in with a résumé like Gail DeGuilio (formerly with Wizards of the Coast, now with SimplyFun) this probably isn't the best industry to pick. That said, I'd always wanted to have another go at game publishing and so I'm very glad Carl gave me the excuse to get back involved.
BGN: What do you hope to achieve with CGF?
EC: Profitability. When I joined Staples in 1994, I imagined it would be a temporary job to tide me over while I worked out what I needed to do next to get my games business up and running. Twelve years later I'm still with Staples (although now as an independent contractor) and I've built four businesses for them in three different countries with combined sales of over $100 million. What I haven't done (yet) is built a profitable business on my own without the deep-pocket backing of a corporate parent.
Once we've done that, it gives us a launch point for several longer term plans, both within and outside of the games industry, but right now we need to show that the car has an engine before talking too much about the places we'd like to go in it.
BGN: What makes a game a CGF game?
EC: It's probably easier to describe what makes someone an ideal CGF games designer. I'd expect a new designer to have at least 3 or 4 (and probably 10+) really solid game prototypes made up and playtested, with several more in various stages of development. They'll have played a large variety of games and have well thought through ideas about what they do and don't like about games they've played.
From there we look for games which are non-collectible and can be produced without electronic or custom molded components and have a good match across theme, complexity and target audience. We put a lot of emphasis on "theme integration" – for example, we reworked the entire Glory To Rome role structure to get Patron onto the most expensive material to match the Roman social structure – and we use a fairly limited set of components to both keep costs down and create a consistent look and feel across our range of games.
Then I try to work out how to add poker chips...
BGN: What audience are you trying to reach?
EC: People who love to play games. In the ten years between closing down Blaze of Glory (my first games company) and opening up Cambridge Games Factory there were some long periods when I didn't play a single game – not because I didn't want to, but because I didn't know where to find other people to play with. For three years I was living in Central Square, Cambridge (a mile from MIT) with no idea that there was a games club meeting there – now I drive almost an hour to get to it. Sites like BoardGameGeek and Boardgame News are doing a superb job of connecting the active gaming community together which has made a big difference to the number of people playing games, but when I introduce myself as a games publisher I'm far more likely to hear "I loved playing games when I was a kid" than "I play games all the time".
BGN: Glory to Rome is CGF's deepest game, yet the artwork bears a cartoony look similar to other CGF games aimed at much younger audiences. Why take this approach with a game meant for a different audience?
EC: As Harry Potter approaches his final desperate conflict with You-Know-Who, there's one last spell he's weaving on future generations; today's kids grew up with him, so they took it in their stride that each book was more grown up than the last, but the full series starts out with a fun story about a magic school which is very accessible to an eight-year-old and ends up in a gritty magical thriller laced with some pretty hard core necromancy – talk about an incentive to improve your reading age!
We're aiming to create a range of games that does something similar, leading players from UNO and Sorry through progressively more involved games until one day they wake up and find they're playing games like Puerto Rico and Power Grid. I guess I don't really think of the Glory To Rome audience as different from our other games but more like the same audience, a year or so later. Consistent look and feel is key to making the progression work – tuning the artwork to established gamers would be like building a railway from Chicago to Boston and then putting the station in New York.
While I'm committed to the colors and the style, I do recognize there are improvements we can make; the Noble Jack actually gets hate-mail, so I've let him know we're not going to be renewing his contract for the next edition. I'm very open to swapping images on individual cards if I get specific feedback on them.
Incidentally, since I'm hoping to avoid making graphic design a permanent career change we're on the lookout for an entry-level graphic designer. We're still very much in start-up mode so they'd find themselves doing a lot of other stuff, too (playtesting games, attending conventions & store demos, etc.), so I'm really looking for a committed gamer (hence mentioning it here).
BGN: You have released numerous editions of CGF games with minor changes to the rulebooks, packaging, and game play. Do you worry about creating confusion in the audience about which game is which?
EC: Yes, sorry about that.
BGN: Why make so many changes anyway?
EC: We learned a lot from these first editions, mostly the hard way. When it became clear how badly we'd underestimated the time we'd need to fine tune and test the rulebooks we seriously considered putting Glory To Rome on hold for six months while we got the other games ready for market; in hindsight we really should have done so in order to avoid all the changes we've ended up making since then.
Beyond that, there were also some one-time format and packaging changes to incorporate feedback we've been getting as we've started to get wider distribution; we're getting great feedback on our latest formats, so I don't see any major changes there going forwards.
BGN: Is any game ever finished, or are changes always possible?
EC: We're not going to release another game which has not got through blind-testing with flying colors, but it's amazing what you find out when you put a game onto the market. Perhaps with time enough and money you could work through all of them, but for a company our size publishing several games a year, there will always be minor niggles that get through. It can be especially tough to spot the issues that only really come up when someone is trying to learn and teach the game from the rules since you simply don't see them in regular playtesting.
Our business model assumes two editions: an initial one on a short print run to test the market followed by a more serious print run once the game has shown it has sales potential. The aim is to use that second print run to fix any issues that got through into the first release (think Puerto Rico's University) before the game gets into wide distribution.
BGN: What advice can you offer aspiring self-publishers and independent publishers?
EC: Think very hard about why you want to do this.
If you're trying to make money, you'd probably get a better return buying lottery tickets. If it's because you love your game, think very, very hard about how much you're going to enjoy it once you've played it several hundred times. After a year of playing Kersplatt! non-stop I hated the game and hadn't come close to making my money back, even though I'd sold several hundred copies (convention fees, petrol, hotels – it all adds up). If it's because you want to get a game in print and you have no idea how to do it, shoot me an e-mail and we'll take a look at it.
Don't assume you'll see your initial investment back; I'm happy when my sales cover the cost of getting to a convention. As a hobby, game publishing is not quite as expensive as scuba-diving, but it's close.
Do, do, do blind-test. If your game fails its blind-test, fix the issues and then blind-test some more. You really don't want your reviewers to be the fix-it people who discover that you forgot to mention leaving a 1⁄4" gap between bay cards in your pirate game (sorry Matthew) or that "may execute immediately" is basically incomprehensible (sorry Tom).
BGN: What mistakes have you avoided, and what mistakes have you made that they should avoid?
EC: We didn't really avoid many mistakes; most of them we took head on. I can think of two big ones that we did avoid though: firstly, we didn't invest thousands of dollars in marketing (going to Essen, etc.) before the games were ready for prime time; secondly, we didn't not learn from our mistakes.
On mistakes we made that you should avoid, I think you'll find plenty in the previous sections – did I mention that you should blind-test?
BGN: What changes would you make if you were launching the company now instead of several years ago?
EC: This is not really a fair question. Knowing what I know today, there are lots of things I'd do differently, but the main thing I've been doing over the past couple of years is learning the industry, so if I were launching the company now I wouldn't have that knowledge.
The second time that I really, really kicked myself (after the blind-testing) was when I discovered Aldo Ghiozzi at Impressions Advertising. For a start-up publisher his service is superb – worldwide hobby distribution for an 18% cut – and if I'd known about him as we were starting up I'd have signed up in a shot, but by the time I found his website we were down to 250 copies of Glory To Rome and so the conversation broke down at "So we'd start off by taking 400 copies of each game".
BGN: Why did you sponsor a prototype contest at Unity Games XI [a day-long open game event in the Boston area]? What were your goals for the competition?
EC: Prototype contests have always been in the plan as a way to find new designers, but they got pulled way forward when Dave Bernazzani put out an "anyone got any ideas for an event" e-mail a few weeks before UG-XI. With typical foresight and planning, I'd volunteered CGF to run the event and got halfway through planning it before checking my calendar and realizing that I was going to be in the UK for my father's retirement party. Fortunately Anne and Eric from the MIT crowd pulled together and signed up to run the competition without me; a little weird, but we got some great experience out of it, Best of all, it did exactly what we were hoping – found us an excellent game from a brand new designer: Huang Di by Bryan Johnson.
BGN: What information can you share about CGF's upcoming releases?
EC: I'm sure there's a really good reason why I'm supposed to be secretive about our upcoming releases, but I haven't worked it out yet, so here's the scoop:
Our next set of releases is going to be a mix of first and second edition games. I'm working on final artwork now – we'll be playtesting all of them at the Unity Games convention in Framingham (outside Boston) on January 27, 2007, then getting them into blind testing straight afterwards.
Because we share print costs across games, everything prints at once so we won't have final release dates for a few more weeks but we're getting very close.
The new games are:
• Huang Di, by Bryan Johnson
You have been chosen by the Emperor (Shi Huangdi) to help construct one of the greatest man-made structures in the world: The Great Wall of China. Your goal is to become the most distinguished master builder in China with the help of your taskmaster, workers and Shi Huangdi himself! Each player uses an identical deck of eight cards in which to plot their actions such as purchasing workers, building, collecting money from the treasury, etc. In addition to scoring points for having built the majority of blocks on each level of the wall, players can also boost their income by completing favors for the Emperor.
• Between The Lines, by Fox
The Great War is underway and Europe is being torn apart. Will the Lusitania sail or sink and catapult America into the war? Will Churchill's ill-fated adventure finally capture Gallipoli, or result in ignominious retreat from the Dardanelles? The money is in the details. You are a war-profiteer buying and selling in an attempt to turn a quick pound or two against a backdrop of rapidly changing events – don't get caught selling Arms when the Armistice is signed!
• Organic Soup, by Carl Chudyk
Atoms build molecules. Molecules react to create bigger molecules. Beware of entropy – it may create reactions you weren't expecting. Find the right recipe and the right fiendish reaction and you could create one of the building blocks of life – and win! Organic Chemistry, the card game!
[Note from present me: Not to bag on Ed, but the "really good reason" some publishers shy away from touting future releases is that those games never come into existence (Between the Lines & Huang Di, which also didn't appear from JKLM Games) or appear from another publisher (Organic Soup). I know, I know – events happen, plans change, and you do the best you can... —WEM]
The second editions are:
• Glory to Rome, by Carl Chudyk – Mostly card balancing, with a few minor changes to game mechanisms.
• Ice Pirates of Harbour Grace, by Carl Chudyk – Slightly simplified to get it more squarely into the family game space (much closer to Carl's original version).
• Splat!, by Ed Carter – Massively simplified to get it back into the family game space (much closer to Kerpslatt!).
We'll be offering a "new cards for old" trade deal for both Glory To Rome and Splat! for a couple of months following the actual release date; only a few cards are changing in Ice Pirates, so we'll offer those as a free upgrade to existing owners for the same period.
•••
Upon first hearing a description of Glory to Rome, many gamers will remark on the game's similarity to San Juan – but that comment won't come as a surprise to designer Carl Chudyk, who intended Glory to Rome to play like a more complex version of Puerto Rico's little brother.
That intention was fully realized because the game's complexity starts on the first page of the rulebook and will likely continue far into your first game. The main source of the complexity? Order cards, which are used (1) as building materials, (2) as a building foundation, (3) as a role, (4) as a client, (5) as victory points, and (6) as special rule-breaking possibilities once the building it represents has been completed. Order cards come in six colors – laborers/rubble/yellow, craftsmen/wood/blue, legionary/brick/red, architects/concrete/gray, patrons/marble/purple, and merchants/stone/blue – with each color also representing a role and a material. The game also includes 30 site cards; each building foundation must be placed on a site to begin building, and when the last site is claimed, the game ends. (The game also ends if the deck is exhausted.)
Game play is played in turns, San Juan-style, but the roles that the active player (called the Leader) can choose are determined by the cards in his hand. Either the Leader will think (drawing one or more cards) or he will choose a card in his hand and play it onto his camp, declaring the role for that turn. If the Leader plays a card, each player in turn can either think (i.e., draw card(s)) or follow; to follow, the player must play a similarly colored card onto his camp, play a Jack (which serves as any role), or have a patron of the appropriate color. (More on patrons later.)
Once everyone has decided to think or follow, the Leader takes the action associated with that Order card. In addition, for each patron he has of the same type, he can take the action again. The other players do likewise in clockwise order, then the Order cards played that turn are discarded into the pool in the center of the table. (The pool starts with randomly drawn cards equal to the number of players.) The possible roles on a turn are:
• Thinker: The Leader either draws cards up to his maximum hand size or draws one card (if he is at or over his maximum hand size) or draws a Jack (which are never placed in the pool); no one else does anything.
• Patron: Each player with a patron role can choose a card in the pool and place it under the left-hand side of his camp; this card is now a client of the player, and whenever a player chooses this role in the future, this client will perform the role for the player, whether he thinks or not.
• Laborer: The Laborer role lets you take a card from the pool and place it in your stockpile as building material.
• Legionary: Like the Laborer, the Legionary gets you building material, but you must first reveal the desired material in your hand. Don't have it? Then you can't claim it. In addition to nabbing material from the pool, the Legionary demands one material from the left- and right-hand neighbors.
• Craftsman: The craftsman lets you start a new building or add materials to one under construction. Added materials move from your hand into the building.
• Architect: Like a craftsman, except the building material moves from your stockpile into a building.
• Merchant: Sell one building material on the black market by placing it in your vault; at the end of the game you'll receive VPs for cards in your vault.
The number of clients and cards in the vault is limited to two at the start of the game, but as you finish buildings, you'll score VPs (1-3 per building) and the size of your client pool and vault rise by an equivalent number. Each card in the vault scores 1-3 VPs, which is much more efficient than buildings, but without the buildings you're stuck with a vault limit of two, so a mix of the two is essential.
As I mentioned, each Order card can serve as a building foundation (thanks to the craftsman and architect), and each building has its own special ability. (Multiple copies of each building are in the game, but you can build each building only once.) The building abilities on their own can be powerful – each of your clients is a craftsman in addition to its regular role, for example, or you may use any material in blue buildings – but if you find the right combinations, the game can quickly turn in your favor. Ed has pointed out the lethal combination of the Palace and Circus Maximus, for instance (Palace: May play multiple cards of the same type for additional roles including Jacks (wild); Circus Maximus: May play any card as Jack (wild) during your turn as leader), but your opponents will see you working towards those buildings and will likely be able to limit the flow of the appropriate materials to your stockpile, hampering your development.
As you might have gathered from the description, Glory to Rome is an intense game of hand management. You often need to think three turns ahead, trying to figure out which role you should play to put certain cards in the pool so that you can claim them as materials or clients later. To work towards a particular building, you might need to empty your hand in order to restock with the roles you really need – but that will make more cards accessible for opponents.
I've played only three times so far – once each with two, three and four players – and find the game has worked well at all levels. Certain buildings seem overpowering at first glance, but with experience I imagine you'll be able to anticipate more plays from opponents and have more control over the flow of the game.
The second edition of the game is supposed to have cleaned up versions of a few cards, and the camp – which doubles as a player reference for all of the roles – has been nicely enlarged and redesigned to shorten the learning curve on those first games. The cards are now rounded as well, which makes them easier to handle.
The only drawback that's glaringly evident is the look of the game. Glory to Rome is a deep strategy game which will start your eyebrows twisting feverishly as you try to figure out how to make the cards do the tricks you want – but the game looks amateurish with crude cartoons and clipart images. A player in my game group has been quite taken with the game, but he actually felt the need to write a complaint letter about the art. Ed explained above that he wants to maintain a uniform look to CFG titles, but if any game needs the Mike Doyle do-over, it's this one. (The artwork for the second edition was still being worked on when I played it, but I don't expect to see any radical changes when the game appears in print.)
Despite the graphic awfulness, I highly recommend having someone else teach you how to play. Let them struggle through the learning process, then step in and start learning. Play the first few rounds with the cards face-up, if need be, to understand what's possible on each turn and how the flow of the game changes as everyone thinks or follows. Three games in, I feel like I'm starting to get a handle on what to do, and I'm looking forward to more plays to see what else is possible, a clear sign of a very good game.
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Andrea Ligabue
Italy
Modena
Italy
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After the debut of Munera: Familia Gladiatoria in 2010, I was interested in seeing more from new Italian publisher Albe Pavo. Admittedly Munera is not really a top class game, but it was a good first release – and the attention that Albe Pavo devoted to the illustrations in and graphic design of that game, as well as historical details used, kept my interest alive.
In case you feel the same (or are discovering Albe Pavo for the first time), here is an overview of the publisher's next release, Sake & Samurai, scheduled for Q3 2011, starting with an interview of designer Matteo Santus.
Liga: After the gladiators of Munera, now you have samurai; it seems you are fascinated by warriors and history, doesn't it?
Matteo Santus: Yes, we love both warriors and history – and of course we also love sake! In fact, we are working on a number of projects, and many of them are about neither history nor warriors, but in this case, we follow the same background path as Munera: Swords of the past!
Liga: At first glance, the game appears somewhat light, but by going through the rules and playing the game, you discover something deep and strategic. Who is the target of this release?
MS: We designed the game with the purpose of creating a sort of party game, something fast and fun to play, but with the strategic depth necessary to give it longevity and real fun.
I think that many people would like it. People who love to play easy games with friends will find in it a fun way to pass an evening (by playing multiple matches), but in addition people looking for strategic choices and competition will find it interesting because Sake & Samurai is not just a party game!
(Liga must have a different definition of "light" than I do. —WEM)
Liga: Most card games usually suffer from too much randomness. Do you think you have eliminated this problem in this game?
MS: In Sake & Samurai every card can be played in at least two different ways: to take actions or to use its text. And you have many choices to do: different actions, different cards. The randomness of card games is moderated by the number of choices you can do. Draw a card with useless text? Take an action, as they're always useful! For as long as we playtested the game, we never received comments like "I was unlucky with my hand" because you can use everything in different ways! Of course you might not find a specific card you want, but that's the game! Can't find a naginata? Use a katana! Both can kill! :-)
Liga: Munera was released less than one year ago and now you are ready with a new release. How long did it take to design and playtest Sake & Samurai?
MS: We always have multiple games under development and the playtesting phase can be vary from little more than a year to more than three years. I must admit that Sake & Samurai came very fast to a stable level and it took a little more than a year to develop it, playtesting intensely. We work every day on our products because we want to be sure that they are ready when published!
Liga: Is there something you want to share with us about this game before it hits the market?
MS: In Sake & Samurai we designed a very fun way to have dead samurai keep playing and doing so in a totally different way! Sake & Samurai is about drunken samurai killing each other, but we didn't want to have a samurai killed too soon, with his player then having nothing to do but wait. So we designed the Ghosts of Enma, the God of Death, who are thirsty for sake from the living world! In my opinion, that's a really fun way to play Sake & Samurai because the Ghosts play in a totally different way. (During the game, for example, they use the back of cards because they are dead and see things from the other side!) I want people to know that while Sake & Samurai is a game about cruel dueling in which samurai die easily, no player is eliminated from the game!
Now for some details about how to play. Note that I have played an early prototype version of the game, with almost final rules but with provisional materials.
Players are thirsty and fierce samurai ready to make all efforts to drink the last glass of sake. To win the game, you must be alive at the end and have drunken more sake than any other player.
Each player starts with a small board, a samurai card, and a katana card. Each samurai has different skills and life points. Each turn you play up to two cards, use your followers, draw two cards, and decide the weapon you'll have in hand during other players' turns.
There is no game board, but the players are separated from one another by "step counters". At the beginning of the game you are three steps away from the samurai on your left and on your right; during the game you can move left or right, switching the side of the step counter. It's a brillant way of maintaining the relative positions of samurai without using a real board.
During your turn you can move, attack or drink, or you can use the special text on a card to play followers, weapons, objcets or events. The game features simple rules and a lot of options.
Drinking sake (which you need to do to win the game) requires you to place a sake counter on one of your played cards (weapons, samurai, objects), which means you then lose the special effect of this card – a smart way to simulate the effects of alcohol. When the last drop of sake has vanished from the masu, players start the final round.
During the game samurai (and followers) fight each other and often die. Killed samurai become Ghosts of Enma and can work together to kill the other players in order to win the game together. In the end, the winner could be a single living samurai or all of the dead ones.
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W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
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(In light of yesterday's news item about Peter Olotka's attempt to organize a community-designed expansion for Cosmic Encounter, I thought I'd reprint a Boardgame News column from September 18, 2007, which ran shortly after Fantasy Flight Games licensed the game and two others from Eon.
I've edited the formatting, but kept all other details – including previously announced release dates – intact. If anyone wonders why a publisher would shy away from announcing release dates, here's yet another example why.)
Fantasy Flight's announcement of new editions of Cosmic Encounter (due out in Summer 2008), "Dune" (Winter 2008), and Borderlands (Summer 2009) made many people very happy, while simultaneously enraging others. To find out more about what gamers can expect to see next year, I turned to Peter Olotka, co-designer of all three games and founder of Future Pastimes, LLC, which runs Cosmic Encounter Online.
Asked about previous editions, Olotka says, "Avalon Hill never got its act together as far as we could see." Even though the Eon crew – the folks who created Cosmic Encounter – offered advice to the AH development team, the Hasbro edition of CE was released with a relatively small number of alien powers, planetary systems incompatible with previous editions, and an upper limit of four players. "We begged them not to do it that way, and there was very little acceptance of the Hasbro design in the Cosmic community."
While twenty aliens were too few for modern buyers of Cosmic Encounter, that's more than three times the number originally in the game. "We thought this game up in 1972 here on Cape Cod, and it predates Dungeons & Dragons, predates Magic: The Gathering, predates all of these things that have exception-based rules," says Olotka. "When we did the design, we had no clue of its expandability for a long time. For years it had six aliens and that was hard enough and interesting enough for us because of the variability attached to it. We didn't realize that it was so unlimited." (That early version, by the way, was also limited to four players.)
Olotka has different expectations for what's possible with Fantasy Flight. "We have a company who we can really work with, one that understands the genre and how to make good product," he says. "Cosmic Encounter has an audience of both hardcore and casual gamers, and we want to be able to reach them all. While at most conventions, it's 99% men, when we had tournaments running, 50% of the players would be women."
Besides, says Olotka, "none of us who were the original designers played those hardcore games".
As for what the new FFG version will include, Olotka says that gamers themselves will have a say in the contents. "We're tapping into players and fans for their suggestions, which I think is very appropriate. There are a bunch of aliens online that we want to release for the first time in the board game."
Admittedly some aliens work only in the online game, such as the Brat, which can skip the game into the next game state and skip over opportunities to form alliances or use alien powers, and the Dork, which floats across a player's computer screen obscuring parts of the interface. Says Olotka, "Perhaps someone can wave his hands in front of an opponent's face..."
What he really hopes to see, though, are alien powers that create some kind of synergy between play online and in the board game. "We're excited to cross-promote the board game with Cosmic Online, so what if buying the board game gave you some kind of advantage online?" he asks. "There are a ton of advantages in both media: With the boardgame you have the social experience; online, you don't have to count everything and you can just play the game for the purity of it."
Online play is also a good argument prevention measure: "I personally know there are no conflicts between the aliens," says Olotka, but most players – okay, everyone not named Bill Eberle and Jack Kittredge – lack his level of knowledge and experience. CE Online will also experiment with a partners version in the next league, and Olotka expects to add Team Cosmic to the board game as well.
Olotka encourages CE fans to visit the Cosmic Encounter Online forum, specifically the thread labeled "Fantasy Flight Cosmic Board Game Wish List" and post your suggestions. Kevin Wilson from FFG visits the site, so your ideas could play a role in the appearance of the final product.
FFG's ability to release editions of the game in multiple languages around the world through its publishing partners is a nice bonus from Olotka's point of view as it might prevent unauthorized knockoffs, the existence of which he discovered after talking with CE Online players located in Brazil. "I traded a Hasbro game for a Brazilian Cosmic Encounter that I never knew existed," he says.
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While new versions of Cosmic Encounter and Borderlands were greeted with almost universal excitement, the decision to use the "Wheels within Wheels" game system of Eon's Dune in a new game set in the Twilight Imperium universe was met with an equal mixture of excitement and outrage. As of mid-September 2007, a petition asking Brian Herbert to license Dune to FFG had gathered more than 3,300 online signatures.
"I don't disagree with what [these petitioners] are saying," says Olotka, but he doesn't expect it to have any effect either. "I know of two or three other companies that tried to get the license. You can't dig out that license. It's like talking to mud. It's not there."
As for the hubbub over the nigh blasphemous notion of stripping the Duniverse from the Dune game, Olotka doesn't understand the fuss – but that might be because the game system wasn't designed for Dune in the first place.
"We wanted to do a Dune game and it turned out that Avalon Hill already had the rights, so I called Jack Dodd or whoever it was, and they said they had someone," says Olotka. "That was that."
Time passed, and Avalon Hill came back to Eon because it didn't like the game created by the other designer. "So the deal was that we would design the game, and if you didn't like it, fine, but we're doing it our way," says Olotka. "We had a game created earlier called Tribute and that's where we designed the Wheel system, so we lugged that out and retrofitted it to the Dune characters."
Tribute was set in Rome, and the wheels in that earlier game had Roman numerals. "We had a king among a million other characters, and whoever played the king had to wear a crown," says Olotka. "So we took the whole thing and added ancillary stuff, plugging in leaders. We stole heavily from Cosmic Encounter when we designed Dune; the idea of having these well-defined and different powers, we applied it to Darkover, to Dune, and to Cosmic Encounter."
So the greatest meshing of theme and mechanisms in game design history is, in fact, just another example of a thematic paste job – albeit one with glue so strong that no one previously suspected as much.
"We would love to see the existing game reissued, but after years of trying, it's just not going to happen, so you take another track," says Olotka – and if anyone has the right to say that a Twilight Imperium reinterpretation of Dune is a good idea, it's one of the game's co-designers.
"Dune is one of my favorite games that we've designed," says Olotka. "We used our gaming system that we had developed independently for this Tribute game, added some stuff from Cosmic, and used the Dune setting to place it in. It has all of these nuances, and to transplant the game play into another world is a very interesting idea. It shouldn't be disallowed. We're the guys who did stuff that was different. We did Quirks and Cosmic Encounter and Borderlands and Dune and Runes and Darkover, and each of those games didn't have a copy then and doesn't have a copy now. They exist in their own definition."
Olotka also takes credit for one aspect of Dune game history that doesn't please fans. "When the movie was coming out, we convinced Avalon Hill to reissue Dune with a new box cover that had someone who looked like Sting on the cover, along with two expansion sets. After the movie came out – which was the biggest bomb ever – Dune just stopped selling. It just stopped. That was it, end of story."
In any case, Olotka is excited to see these games in print once again, and if all goes well, he says, "maybe we'll get into a couple of other old games as well..."
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