Game Nite magazine issue # 3

Game Nite

Issue # 3

the magazine of tabletop gaming

ee r F

lay d P e! n a sid n int Pr me I Ga

GAME REVIEWS REINER KNIZIA INTERVIEW PT. 2

“THE KOBOLD GUIDE TO

BOARD GAME DESIGN”

PETER ADKISON WOTC AND GEN CON

BROM

AND MORE!

IN THIS ISSUE: REVIEWS

INTERVIEWS 18

Peter Adkison

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Reiner Knizia Brom

Scrabble Meets Dominion.

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For The Crown

BOOK REVIEW

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TRENCH

42

Firefly

50

Cutthroat Caverns

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Rise of the Zombies

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Shadow Throne

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Baseball Highlights 2045

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Samurai Sword

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Paperback

Baseball Themed Deckbuilder

Samurai Deduction.

Chess Meets Dominion.

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A beautiful Abstract game.

Wizards of the Coast/GenCon.

Pt. 2 of the interview.

Artist.

The Kobold Guide To Board Game Design Game design essays.

MINIATURES

TV based board game.

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Sculpting 101 A series on sculpting.

CONTRIBUTORS

Backstabbing fun.

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Real time Co-op.

Game Nite Contributors

PRINT AND PLAY 64

Control the Throne.

Shadow Throne Nothing Sacred Games PnP.

NEXT ISSUE

HISTORY 04

Boardgame History

Part II Ancient Greece.

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Issue #4 Preview Preliminary cover to issue #4.

FROM THE GAMING TABLE

Game Nite ISSUE # 3

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e have some great games featured in this issue!

It was impossible to choose just one game to give the Editors’ Choice award to... so we wound up giving it to three!

John Anthony Gulla continues his excellent series “The History of Tabletop Games”. This issue he looks at the games of ancient Greece.

Bill Braun contributes a fine review of Firefly. The game is based on the fan favorite TV series. If you are a fan of the show, you will want to read Bill’s review!

I’d like to thank Dr. Reiner Knizia, Peter Adkison, and Brom for taking the time from their busy schedules to share their thoughts with our readers.

We are grateful to Teale Fristoe for providing our readers with a Print and Play version of Shadow Throne. Even though it doesn’t feature the final artwork, I think that you will find it enjoyable. It continues to still hit our table on game night.

If you are a writer, photographer, etc. and feel you have something unique to contribute to the magazine, feel free to contact me to discuss it. We’d love to have you on board!

Serge Pierro

Cover Photograph by Serge Pierro.

TRENCH ©Wise Games

Editor in Chief/Publisher: Serge Pierro Editor: Eric Devlin Contributing Writers: Dan Fokine Bill Braun John Andrews Alex Harkey Matt Pavlovich John Anthony Gulla Photographers: Serge Pierro Bill Braun Follow us on Facebook:

Editor in Chief

editor@gamenitemagazine.com

www.facebook.com/GameNiteMagazine Visit us at:

www.gamenitemagazine.com Follow us on Twitter:

@GameNiteMag Issue #3

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History

The History of Tabletop Games

Perhaps the most well-known (and arguably most important) development in tabletop gaming attributed to this period is the invention and use of dice in games.

The first proto-dice on record (to borrow the Greek prefix), were called Astragaloi (plural) by the Ancient Greeks, and were used first to play a dexterity game that we know most commonly today as Jacks— yes, the game of Jacks is that old! These Astragals were roughly cuboid in shape (i.e. an uneven rectangular prism) oving forward a few thousand years in time and most commonly made from the knucklebones and several hundred miles to the north, our of animals (often sheep), though some later examples journey continues toward the next major stop of Astragals exist that were made of brass as well as in board gaming history, Ancient Greece. In Western stone (but amusingly still carved to mimic the shape Astragals were considered a Civilization, Ancient Greece is oft remembered as the of the knucklebone). foundation of Democracy, Drama, Philosophy, and is children’s game in Ancient Greece and was alluded to even more well-known for its Mythology and Theology. in this manner many times by Greek writers and poets, Not least of all, of course, Ancient Greece is recognized including Homer, throughout the era. as the birthplace of the Olympic Games and the While the usage of Astragals and their physical competitive spirit often associated with them. What is not as often recognized, however, is that this rich properties are certain, there is much dispute amongst and remarkable culture also heavily engaged in (and historical sources as to who really invented and first perhaps refined) the older Egyptian and Middle-Eastern used these primitive dice for games, with some Ancient traditions of tabletop gaming, too. Regrettably, while Greek accounts claiming their origin as decidedly Greek we have much in the way of their marble sculpture and others citing foreign nations as having been the first and decorative pottery to examine in the present day, to develop them. Herodotus, perhaps the most wellthe Ancient Greeks did not engage in near as much recognized Greek historian, claimed that Astragals were preservation as the Egyptians did with their board first conceived in Lydia (aka Maeonia in antiquity), a games, nor did they manufacture them out of enduring western region of present day Turkey. Contrastingly, materials (for the most part). As such, most specimens Plato later makes the claim that they were invented in remain lost to time and are only known through indirect Egypt. Evidence to support both of these claims has sources and references from the period. It is with this been found in Egypt and Lydia (Turkey), though less thought in mind that we begin the hunt for more is known for certain of these finds. Nevertheless, the information and detail as to what we do know about proud Greek culture seems to have broadly believed and Greeks and games, why games were important to them, accepted that the renowned Greek inventor, Palamedes, and the most exciting and/or interesting examples of was the originator of dice, having come up with the idea popular games of the time, which they doubtless played sometime during the time of the Trojan war (c. 1188). amidst the countless Grecian columns and between The Palamedes story was widely referenced by many Greeks, and most famously recounted by the playwright historic battles.

Sophocles (which is preserved in a surviving fragment from one of his plays).

By John Anthony Gulla

Part II - Ancient Greece c.1100-300 B.C.

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photo: Jakob Bådagård - Creative Commons

Indeed, there is other existing evidence that the Greeks eventually used Astragals as proper dice, adding a number to each face as a randomization method, while affirming the Palamedes story at the same time. In one of the most iconic images of all in ancient board games, the famous Exekias Amphora shows Achilles and Ajax playing a game between them using a raised, flat surface and (presumably) dice in front of the city of Troy as a pastime. It may not be apparent to most that dice are involved in this Greek vase art at first, but further inspection reveals that the figures, while staring down at the playing surface, have written Greek words coming out of their mouths that seem to indicate the result of a die roll immediately after it had been cast. Ajax (the figure on the right) says, “Tria,” meaning “three,” floating just outside of his mouth, while Achilles shouts, “Tessara,” (“four”) depicted in the same fashion. Even more compellingly, these two die results (i.e. Tria and Tessara) are consistent with archeological findings of later astragals and how their sides were numbered. Unlike

our cubical modern dice, Astragals that functioned in this way only had four sides (since two sides of the object were too thin and small to land face up). Yet like our contemporary cube dice, it has been noted that all sides of the four-sided Astragals added up to seven on opposite faces. As such, the four sides of the Astragals were labeled, 1, 3, 4, and 6, giving more credence to the Exekias Amphora’s depiction and result for the game between Ajax and Achilles. Of course, and as always it seems, Achilles is the winner. Interestingly, six-sided dice would come to be used by the Greeks, presumably sometime later, and are mentioned in various Ancient Greek writings as well. Unlike Astragals though, these cube-shaped dice, called Kuboi, were more negatively portrayed and more often associated with gambling and fate than with tabletop games.

One game mentioned by Ancient sources (though with not much detail) was played on a series of five parallel lines and five pieces per side, giving rise to the name Continued on next page>

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History (Cont.) modern scholar’s would coin simply as Pente Grammai.

Not much is known about Pente Grammai, except that it was a two-player affair and that the goal was to have your five pieces all moved to the center line, called the “sacred line.” It is also known that a die of some kind was involved in determining movement. Still, there seems to be some strategy involved, since it also seems to have been fairly well known that moving a piece which had already been placed upon the sacred line was generally considered a bad idea strategically, or only done as a last ditch effort, giving rise to a common turn of phrase at the time used for other purposes, “moving from the sacred line.” Some scholars believe that Pente Grammai may have even included a “King” or special piece for each side, though this idea is still heavily disputed and difficult to discern given the lack of physical evidence.

Still such a concept would have been novel for its time, and would also have created an interesting and distinctly opposed philosophical viewpoint to the Greek idea of democracy and equality in governance.

Petteia was a two-player game played on a square grid, with many pieces in two main colors, one set belonging to each of the players. The object of the game was to “enclose” a piece of the opposing color by placing your pieces on either side of it, thereby capturing it, as in our modern day Chess or Checkers. While many variations exist as to how large or small the grid was, as well as the amount of pieces each side began with, it is generally accepted that the initial set up was for both sides to have begun lined up nearest to their side of the board (again, similar to Checkers and Chess), and advance towards the opponent from there. Over time, players would capture one another’s pieces and/or prevent them from making a legal move. Once one player captured or barred all the opposing player’s pieces, he or she won the game. Similar to the Exekias Amphora, there are many pieces of Greek art on pottery showing Ajax and Achilles playing what appears to be a form of Petteia, leaving us to wonder if there once existed a famous story on the subject that has since been lost to us, or if the most popular game of that time was being transplanted Pente Grammai wasn’t the only form of intellectual on to their own mythology. Regardless, it is safe to amusement going for the Ancient Greeks, though, and say via the many references to Petteia over hundreds of likely not the most popular either. Perhaps even more years, that the game was popular and well-known in its important than the inclusion of Astragals and/or Kuboi time—plausibly with more cultural importance than in this era was the emergence of a game known best as any other tabletop game of the era.

Petteia (also referred to as Pessoi, and/or Poleis over the centuries). Petteia was often mentioned and depicted With so much of the direct historical record for as being played by adult males, and marked a large leap Ancient Greek tabletop games missing or incomplete, in providing a platform for long-term strategy within it is tougher to say as much about how the actual games tabletop games. For perhaps the first time in Western and their mechanisms reflected Greek society with any Civilization, there was decidedly less luck and more certainty in the same way that some of the Ancient skill involved in a board game. This was also reflected Egyptian games did. What we do know, however, is in how the game was viewed culturally. Many of the that games were still quite prevalent in Greek society, historical and ancient references to it (and to those who and often cited and shown as being important symbols played it) are marked with allusions as to how a good or experiences for their people and their past.

Petteia player must be clever, and how the game teaches one good strategy in real-life battles.

I hope you’ll join me next issue for Part III of the series, where we will hop across the Ionian Sea together and As luck would have it ( and unlike Pente Grammai), find out how the Romans built upon the pre-existing we are privy to the main idea behind Petteia and some Egyptian and Greek ideas, and delve deeper into what of the major rules, thanks in part to the writings of the games they played say about who they were as a the Ancient Greek author Pollux. Pollux tells us that people.

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Miniatures

Interview

Sculpting 101 A sculpting tutorial series - from start to finish.

By Dan Fokine

M

y freelance sculpting for the tabletop wargaming industry has revealed certain truths and techniques that I will share with you in this article and those that follow. I hope that they can help you appreciate the craft of miniature sculpting, even if you are someone who just uses them. I will provide some basic insight into the techniques that make sculpting possible, for those of you who are interested in picking up the trade, and provide tips to those who are already engaged in sculpting for pleasure and profit. I took up sculpting as a freelance artist essentially because I always loved miniature soldiers, especially the 25 mm ones, and felt compelled to leave some pewter relics behind me when i’m gone.

So, lets start from the beginning. Or more like, when I get a new commission.

I have worked for Hyacinth Games. Their Miniature game/RPG “Wreck-Age” is a post-collapse collaborative skirmish tabletop war game. Pretty interesting stuff, and since they were a new company promoting a new game, I was lucky to get in on the ground floor when they were first establishing a ‘look’. The ‘look’ or style is typically determined by whoever they hire first as their sculptor and/or the major Concept artist, In this case, I was neither.

The “look” can either haunt a company or define/

distinguish it for the life of the game and company itself.

Since I came along first sculpting a few of the pack animals that accompany some of the factions, I was fairly free of the restraints of perfect mimicry. As I did a few more sculpts I was able to hone my style to fit closer to that of artist Sylvain Quirion (http://sylvain.quirion.pagespersoorange.fr/english/frame.htm). Gamers and game makers are typically very adamant, that you as sculptor tailor your style to fit another sculptor’s style, which is pretty much the most difficult and trying thing you can do as a artist, and its what defines you as a commercial artist and not a highfaluting ‘artiste’. That being said, its nice that Anton (Anton Zaleski, designer/owner of Hyacinth Games http:// wreck-age.net) sent me a few of their sculpts to base my Continued on next page>

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Miniatures Interview (Cont.)

work on. This is something you should always ask for, as looking at a miniature on a computer screen next to a human’s thumbnail is a pointless endeavor.

Since those first sculpts, I’ve gotten to know Anton well, and have sculpted several of their

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more periphery characters and ‘vehicles’. Now they are looking for more sculpts to round out their less central mini-less factions. I chose between several factions, and I opted for the one most akin to my ‘style’, in particular to their clothing and character.

I decided on ”The Church of Fun”, a cult of neohedonist narcotic sponges, who see surviving till

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tomorrow as unlikely as society ever getting its act back together again. Thanks to mind altering drugs, and promises of escape from post-collapse seasonal depression, the cult recruits members, but it’s also not adverse to the busting of skulls either, and some of the cult are specifically weened on the “moloko” of ultra violence.

I get the concept art and I’m told that they will need five figures to compose a ‘boxed set’ to be casted and marketed in the next year or sooner. Since I’m only capable of keeping track of about three minis at a clip, I choose the three from the concept art that look the best to me, keeping in mind that I’ll have two more after that, and I shouldn’t pick my three favorite, but leave a favorite behind to motivate me, and keep me engaged. Since this is not a full time job, I do need to be sculpting things I find interesting, or it wouldn’t really be worth the $4.00 an hour I make on average per mini. Sometimes the miniature’s pose itself has to be different than the concept art, but in this case, artist, Konstantinos Skenterides (http://kingkostasart.blogspot.com), has done some very good and workable posses for the cult.

I choose three that I like and begin to do the most important thing I can do before starting - I stare. Staring at a drawing is important, you notice the things you’re trained to notice first. Body parts, weapons, proportions, and faces, then as you continue to stare, you notice more details. “That thing on that guys back...what is that and hows it attached to him?” and “Is that guy wearing haram pants?”. You ‘build’ the mini in your mind first, and it’s only through patience and contemplation that all the little nooks and crannies, inconsistencies, and quirks become apparent. The problem with sculpting something in real three dimensional life

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is that nothing can be blurred, concealed, suggested, or representational, it has to be actually there, and on top of that, it has to be suitable for the casting process of the miniatures.

Over the next two articles, I’ll show how the sculpting goes from starting off the endoskeleton armature, up until completion and purchased by the good folks at Wreck age.

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Game Review Baseball Highlights 2045

By Serge Pierro

Baseball Deck Builder!

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ith Board Games seemingly becoming the new national pastime, it only stands to reason that there would be a deck building game based on baseball. “Baseball Highlights 2045” takes the deck building mechanic and the game of baseball and combines them into something special.

“Baseball Highlights 2045” is a new deck building game by famed designer Mike Fitzgerald. In the future baseball has been reduced to six innings and cyborgs and robots are now a common sight amongst the players. Although humans (Naturals) are still around, it is the explosive offense provided by the the robots and cyborgs which have propelled baseball back to its place as our National Pastime.

The game comes in a large box with an excellent Franz Vohwinkel (see last issue’s interview) painting on the front.

Inside you are greeted with high quality components that are held in place by a plastic insert, with plenty of room for expansions and multiple sets of cards if desired. The oversized rulebook is informative and even has lists of abilities that are available in expansion sets. Four very sturdy double sided player boards are present that serve as a “top” for the closed box and have both right handed and left handed sides printed for players natural hand strength.

As far as the cards go, there are four starter decks and one 60 card deck of Free Agents which contains cards that can be bought between games. A large bag of pawns are included for the base runners, as well as various tokens for keeping score of runs and games won, as well as four player aid placards.

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Although the game play is simple, there is a lot of interesting strategy for both the game and the postgame Free Agent buys. Each player starts with a 15 card starter deck. The choices include New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston, and each deck is composed of both rookies and veterans.

Players deal themselves six cards and the game

begins. The first player plays a card and “threatens” an offensive play. The second player then has a chance to play a card in response. The upper part of the card may have a defensive ability to deal with the “threat”, if not the “threat” goes off and player one’s play resolves. The bottom of player two’s card may also have an offensive “threat”, which then player one has a chance to play a

card and respond to it. Play goes back and forth for the six cards until there is a winner. If at the end of six cards there is no winner, then the game goes into extra innings with the players drawing 3 cards and playing until there is a winner. At the end of the game, each player adds up the “money” that they have from the cards played and the player with the lowest amount has Continued on next page>

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Game Review (Cont.) the first opportunity to buy from the Free Agent pool.

After players purchase from the Free Agent pool, they place the purchased card(s) on the top of their deck and set aside the same amount of cards from their previously played cards to the Minor Leagues. This is similar to the “Trash” mechanic in other Deck Building games.

Players will always have 15 cards in their deck, however after each game their decks get stronger cards added to them by purchasing Free Agents and sending weaker players to the Minor Leagues.

This game is brilliant! With only six cards, the game captures the thrill and excitement of an actual baseball game without any of the tedious foul balls and other distractions. When played and tested, baseball fans and non-sport fans completely enjoyed the experience. It is great to see the Deck Building mechanic starting to be used in a more interesting way than the “solitaire” style of play of Dominion and other clones. For those of you who have no interest in Baseball, you can think of this as a deckbuilder with a unique scoring mechanic. The game holds its own as a modern board game and as a baseball game. Baseball fans will be thrilled with the ability to play an entire game in such a short amount of time, and yet still be able to talk about the heroics that were contained within. “Remember the time when I had the bases loaded and you were able to flip over a card to cancel all hits”, highlights indeed!

Although this review is for the “base” game, if you are thinking of adding this to your collection, don’t bother with the “base” game and go right for the “deluxe” edition that comes with all of the expansions. You won’t regret it as you are definitely going to want to own all of the expansions! Each expansion has a particular theme.

The Coach expansion is the most interesting in terms of what it brings to the game play. They are essentially pre-game cards that have effects that can be used once per game and then are discarded. Coaches are discarded at the end of each game, regardless of whether or not if they were used.

Here is an example of one of the 15 Coach cards: ‘ “Triple Play” This is an Immediate Action taken before you play a card. Remove up to 3 base runners from your opponent’s stadium mat. Even fast base runners can be removed. Remove this Coach from the game after using this action.’

The other expansions are cards that are added to the free agent deck. These include additional Naturals, Robots, and Cyborgs. Each of these expansions include ten new players and some new abilities to the game.

Another expansion that gets shuffled into the Free Agent deck is the 15 card expansion “Rally Cap”.

This adds players whose new abilities are triggered depending on whether you are ahead or behind in the game. Example: “Closer” cancels all hits when you are winning and “Hold” cancels all hits when you are behind.

As someone who spent a part of their youth playing stat simulation baseball games (Sherco and Strat-omatic) and keeping extensive stats for entire seasons of the players and teams, I love the fact that there is a solitaire variant. It is a tough variant in which you play against a randomly drawn 15 card team from the Free Agent deck. It is also easy to see where players will want to form leagues and progress through an entire “season” and have playoffs and a World Series.

All in all, this is a brilliant game by Mike Fitzgerald, and special kudos goes out to Eagle Games for “taking a chance” on a baseball themed game. I would highly recommend it to baseball fans and anyone interested in a fun and fast paced game!

Designer: Mike Fitzgerald Publisher: Eagle Games Number of players: 1-4 Mechanic: Deck Builder Ages: 10+

Highly Recommended www.eaglegames.net

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Game Review Samurai Sword

By Serge Pierro

Bang! meets Samurai

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hen it comes to game themes, I have a weakness for anything involving Samurais. So it should come as no surprise that I would be interested in DV Viochi’s “Samurai Sword” which is based on their “Bang Game System”. Does it live up to the honorable standards of the Samurai? Let’s find out…

“Samurai Sword” comes with 110 cards, 30 Honor token, 36 Resilience tokens, and two rulebooks (one English and one Italian). All of the components are of good quality and the included plastic bag allows the storage of tokens to be conveniently stored in the recess of the plastic box insert. The cards themselves are written in both Italian and English.

Like it’s older sibling “Bang!”, players secretly take on various roles and during the course of the game try to figure out “who is who”. At the start of the game the Shogun is the only player who reveals their role card, all of the other players keep their roles secret. Since the winning score is based on “teams”, it is important to try and figure out everyone’s role as quickly as possible to avoid inflicting damage and stealing honor from potential teammates. The distribution of the roles depends on the number of players, but essentially you have the Shogun and Samurai(s) on one team, the ninjas working together, and the lone Ronin who is playing to win by himself. It should be noted that it is important to quickly figure out who has the Ronin card/role, because in 6-7 player games, he scores 3x his honor points at the end of the game and can easily win the game if he isn’t reined in quickly.

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At the start of the game each player is dealt a Character card in addition to the “secret role”. These Character cards grant each player a special ability that they will have available throughout the game. They also list the amount of “Resilience” that the player receives for using

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that Character. There are a 12 different Character cards, thus adding a great deal of replay value to the game, as only 7 are used in a game with the maximum amount of players. Each player starts with 4 Honor tokens, except for the Shogun who starts with 5.

At the heart of the Bang Game System is that weapon cards have a Difficulty (range) printed on them and where players sit have an actual impact on game play. If you have a “Bokken” card, the Difficulty is 1, meaning you have a “range” of 1, so only the player on your immediate left or right may be targeted. However, Continued on next page>

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Game Review (Cont.) a card such as “Naginata” has a Difficulty of four, allowing you to reach someone sitting further away from you. Since there are cards that increase a player’s Difficulty, there are times when the apparent sitting arrangement of players can be misleading, as a player with two “Armors” in front of them now has their Difficulty increased by two (one for each piece of Armor), thus making it much harder to target them.

Which also helps to explain why the range of some weapons, such as “Daikyu”, have a Difficulty of 5. If the player is successful in their attack, they deal the amount of damage as indicated.

In addition to the weapon cards, there are also Property cards which stay in play after being played.

Some of the useful effects that these cards have include the ability to play an additional attack per turn, deal +1 damage per attack and as previously mentioned, +1 Difficulty. In addition to the Property cards there are Action cards whose effects go off immediately and are then discarded. There are a wide range of effects provided by these cards, including “Geisha” which removes a Property card from play, “Breathing” which fully restores your Resilience points, the ever important “Parry” to stop attacks, as well as several other interesting effects.

During the course of the game players will take damage and thus have their Resilience reduced. When a player’s Resilience is zero, they lose one honor to the player who inflicted the “final blow”. When any player has lost all of their Honor tokens the game ends. Players will then reveal their Role cards and the scores of each team is then calculated by adding up their total Honor, applying any modifiers (as explained on the Summary card) and the team with the most points wins.

“During the course of the game it is important to make sure that no one has too many Honor points… just in case they turn out to be the Ronin.”

Although I am not a huge fan of deduction games, I did find this one to be both interesting and a lot of fun to play. At the end of the game there was a lot of laughter, as players finally found out what roles each player had, and many times they had guessed wrong or were at least partially wrong. During the course of the game it is important to make sure that no one has too many Honor points… just in case they turn out to be the Ronin. We found that the game truly excelled with the maximum level of players. This allowed for the Difficulty/range to be more meaningful and the deduction mechanic to be utilized to its fullest. If you like Coup or The Resistance, you will love this game, as it is actually much more dynamic/tactical than those games, and yet still maintains the enjoyable deduction aspects of them. I can see this hitting the table often!

Designer: Emiliano Sciarra Publisher: dV Giochi Number of players: 3-7 Mechanic: Deduction/Combat Ages: 8+

Recommended www.dvgiochi.com

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Interview

Peter Adkison

Wizards of the Coast & GenCon

“Peter Adkison was the founder/CEO of Wizards of the Coast and is currently the owner of GenCon.”

By Eric Devlin

Did you grow up in a home where game playing was encouraged?

Thankfully, yes! Some of my earliest memories were playing games like Rook, Life, Checkers, and Chinese Checkers. When I was in 4th grade some older kids introduced my dad and I to Risk, which were my gateway drug to more complex games. One Christmas---around 1970 I suppose--my grandmother took me to a toy store that carried Avalon Hill games. I picked out three games based on the artwork and grandma bought me all three. One of those was Gettysburg. From then on I was hooked. By the time I was 15 my dad and I had probably a hundred SPI or Avalon Hill board wargames. And then I discovered D&D!

Your father, Gary Adkison, is a gaming enthusiast and long time player of Magic: the Gathering. At one time he was Wizards of the Coast’s North West Regional Representative for Organized Play. Did he influence your passion for games?

Peter Adkison CEO/Publisher Magic the Gathering Pokemon

Dungeons and Dragons Bella Sara GenCon https://www.facebook.com/peter.adkison

Absolutely.

My childhood games were with the whole family, but once we discovered Risk, and then board wargames, dad and I left the rest

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behind. Looking back I can see how my father tried to balance his love of wargames with being a preacher, and then a chaplain in the army. Part of this balance was an early decision to not get into miniatures wargaming or board wargames where one counter represented a “person” instead of a “unit.” So I would say my father heavily influenced what games I played--and didn’t play! Around age 15 my father was sent to Korea and I stayed stateside with my mother. For the next couple decades I rare saw him and for a while felt guilty playing D&D as it clearly violated the parental restriction.

Fortunately, all’s well that ends well, for after my dad and I started seeing each other more in the mid-90’s I got him into D&D!

You were either the founder or headed up Wizards of the Coast, Hidden City Games, Gencon LLC and Hostile Work Environment. To what do you attribute your dedication to entrepreneurship?

I hate other people telling me what to do. Seriously, my main motivation was to be in business for myself and be in charge of my own work life. Of course that’s naïve. As soon as you take on investors you’re back to working for someone. But it’s a bit different reporting to a board of directors.

At least that was my motivation in the beginning. There was also a strong desire to create, to build. I never did it to make money, except that I did want to make enough money to take care of my extended family should they need it. I’ve always thought of business as a game, the laws and ethics of business as the rules to the game, and the payouts to shareholders as a measurement of how well your game strategy is working.

months, in the wake of the Magic bubble burst around the Fallen Empires expansion at the end of 1994. I think it was that moment that defined what kind of company we were capable of not just in good times but in crisis.

My biggest regret is that I didn’t do as good a job as I would have liked in managing relationships with my early business partners, especially the original Magic: The Gathering artists.

Do you believe that its possible today for someone to create What prompted the interest in purchasing TSR by WotC? a company that would impact the hobby game industry the What went into making that final decision to move ahead way that Wizards of the Coast did? with the purchase?

Absolutely. It’s not only possible, but likely. Business is cyclical. IBM was eclipsed by Microsoft, which is now losing its dominance to companies like Google and Facebook.

If you had to narrow it down, what do you believe was WotC’s greatest success under your tenure and what is your greatest regret?

Clearly, WotC’s greatest success was finding Richard Garfield and publishing his game, Magic: The Gathering. The success of Magic gave us the funds to buy TSR (Dungeons & Dragons and Gen Con) and the reputation to create a phenomenal partnership with Pokémon. And the combination of Magic, Dungeons & Dragons, and Pokémon is what inspired Hasbro to court us for the big payday.

I think the more interesting question (because it’s far more debatable) is, “What was WotC’s second greatest success under your tenure?” I think it was the repositioning of Magic: The Gathering from a collectible who’s value was driven by speculation in the market to that of an intellectual sport through the creation of an organize play program with player rankings, world championships, big money pro tour events, grand prix events, sanctioned tournaments, and so on. We put this entire program together and rolled it out in about 3

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We were accumulating a lot of cash due to the success of Magic and were under shareholder pressure to either issue dividends or invest the cash intelligently. The board was perhaps split on the topic but I heavily preferred to invest---meaning, acquire another successful game company. We looked closely at Games Workshop, but I felt the cultures were too incompatible to merge the operations. When the TSR opportunity came up, however, I was very excited about the chance to return to my love of roleplaying.

While my personal love of Dungeons & Dragons was sufficient for me, the business case was that buying D&D brought Wizards of the Coast from being a company reliant on a single brand (Magic) to owning two of the top three games in tabletop games. Two years later our strategy was validated when the then-CEO of Hasbro confided that he would not have been interested in acquiring WotC if it was “just the Magic company.”

What prompted WotC to obtain the rights to Pokemon? Did you have any idea of how large that juggernaut would become?

We were in the fortunate position of seeing the early success of Pokémon in Japan because we were doing a great business selling Magic: The Gathering there. We had no idea of course that it would be so huge outside Continued on next page>

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Interview (Cont.) of Japan, but it was the first trading card game that passed up Magic in any meaningful market so we really wanted to hedge our bets just in case. When Nintendo informed us that they would have the TV series in the states and would back it up with a $40 million marketing campaign, we were all in.

Was selling WotC to Hasbro a difficult decision? What are your thoughts on that sale now that it’s 16 years in the past?

It wasn’t difficult for me! And my board was generally enthusiastic as well. We generated a ton of wealth for shareholders who got on the ride as early as 1990, so it was the right time for an ownership makeover.

When you are looking at games strictly from the perspective of a player, is there anything in particular that draws you in? What types of games do you prefer to play with friends?

Richard Garfield once told me that a great game has the right balance of skill and luck. If it’s too weighted toward skill, then the best player wins too often, which isn’t fun for others. If it’s too weighted toward luck, then players won’t feel well-rewarded for playing skillfully. I think that’s a pretty good starting point for what I look for from a board or card game.

I think it was a great deal for everyone concerned. The shareholders got a great payout, and Hasbro got a great company that was built to last.

For me personally, I was ready for a change. I ran WotC long enough to prove to myself that I could grow with the job and effectively manage a large organization. But my heart wasn’t really in staying indefinitely. Launching 3rd Edition D&D was my last, grand project at WotC and I was happy to leave on a high note.

Three years later you purchased Gen Con from Hasbro.

What unique challenges did that present for you and your staff?

The biggest challenge was moving Gen Con from Milwaukee to Indianapolis. As a startup, effectively, we had to build a registration system and put together a team. Fortunately, the team part was relatively straightforward in that as part of the acquisition of Gen Con the team came with it. The bigger challenge was enticing the collective gaming community (both gamers and publishers) to move with us to a new venue.

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But my first love is roleplaying games. And with roleplaying I’m drawn toward gritty, dramatic play styles with elegant mechanics that reward players for embracing their faults.

Your experience as a business owner in the hobby-game industry is both deep and wide. Do you have any advice for someone that would like to start a game company?

Sure. Go to the GAMA Trade Show. During the day, sit in on every panel and demo every new game (so you see how it’s done). At night, hang out in the bar and make friends with people in the industry (in other

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words, schmooze). Tell everyone your plans and invite D&D, board games went through a slow but steady them to poke holes in them. And then listen to what surge, and Magic started growing again. This created a they say. And at the same time, don’t listen. solid foundation for our industry, something we never really had in the prior century.

That’s the trick---knowing when to listen and when not to listen.

Okay, now the exciting part. Geekiness became mainstream. With celebrities like Vin Diesel, Stephen What are your thoughts on how crowd funding has Colbert, and Wil Wheaton “coming out” as gamers and shows like Big Bang Theory shooting to the top of the impacted game production and sales? charts, tabletop gaming has really taken off. Settlers It’s absolutely fabulous. It’s not a panacea, of course. of Catan is almost a household name now, and in Something I’ve said many times is “Raising money is Indianapolis if there’s a Colts game the same weekend never easy.” Crowdfunding is not an exception to this. as Gen Con it’s not the gamers who feel out of place downtown!

To do it successfully one needs to study how it’s done.

But it’s awesome that there’s now another route to funding new games.

What are you currently excited about in the world of gaming?

That’s a long way of saying that what I find exciting about the world of gaming is that there is broad market acceptance and validation of our interest. As someone who grew up in an era where geeks and nerds were both derogatory terms, this has special meaning for me.

How can Game Nite readers stay up to date with what

For about the last 15 years the small press “indie” RPG scene has been fascinating to watch. I love these games. you’re working on?

But to me what’s most exciting about the world of tabletop games is that a few years ago it really started to fire on all cylinders. In the 80’s and 90’s the segment was incredibly volatile, with radical ups and downs based on the success of new releases. D&D was the first “big hit”, then roleplaying games glutted and things looked grim until Magic came out. But then there was a major crash after other companies jumped on the trading game bandwagon but most couldn’t make it work. Then there was the d20 spike and dive.

Subscribe to my Facebook page.

Mainly what I’m up to these days is the beginnings of a filmmaking career. I’m creating a fantasy web series called Chaldea. The pilot, Chaldea: War Room, will screen at Historicon and premiere at Gen Con this summer and will be available on the upcoming website this August, 2015.

Cheers, and thank you for your interest in my adventures!

Then sometime around 2005-2010 the market reached Peter D. Adkison some sort of maturity, with all the segments doing well. Miniatures wasn’t just about Games Workshop anymore, Pathfinder made roleplaying not just about

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Game Review

Paperback

By Serge Pierro

Dominion meets Scrabble!

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aperback is a game that should have a wide appeal, as it takes popular word games, like Scrabble, and combines them with the deck building mechanic. It’s an intriguing concept, but does it actually work? Let’s take a look at the game and find out.

The first thing that you notice about Paperback is the nicely designed box. There are images associated with the game on each end of the box, while the top of the box is made to look like the spines of books on a shelf. The box top does not go all the way down to the bottom of the box, which can be a bit confusing the first time you put the cover on and it doesn’t close all the way.

Upon opening the box you find a section for cards, a package of wooden cubes, and an instruction book inserted along the side of the box, which is held in place by two pieces of foam. The foam is used to take up the space that isn’t used by the cards and keeps them from moving about. One of the nice features is that there are dividers included that separate the cards by their cost and type - a very nice and helpful addition, which makes setup much easier and organizes everything when you put the game away.

The cards are broken down by their type and cost. The letter cards range from vowels that cost 2 cents up to the “bigger” letters that can cost 8-10 cents. Many of these cards have a special ability or have two letters on them. There are also the “Fame” cards that are the main means of scoring in the game. These are illustrated as “pulp novels” and add a nice “retro” feel to the game and design.

Artist Ryan Goldsberry’s art is one of the many highlights of this game. There are also several types of special cards that come with the game. So let’s take a look at how it plays.

There is a diagram in the manual that shows how to set up the game. Essentially you will go from left to right with piles of cards sorted by their cost, lowest to highest. Other than the two cent vowel cards, each stack has one card placed below it so that a player has a choice of two cards to choose from when they are deciding on

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what card to buy at the price indicated by the pile. The Common Card stack is placed on the left. (see below) Each player starts with an identical “starting deck” that includes the letters: T,R,S,L, and N, along with five wildcards (which feature the mascot of the game: Paige Turner). The players will shuffle their decks and draw the top five cards. This will be their hand for this turn.

They then try to make a word with the letters

and wildcards. There is also a special pile of cards that are called the “common cards� and all of the players are allowed to use the letter on top for inclusion in their word, they don’t actually take the card in their hand, they just say that they are using it. Once the word is formed, the player adds up the amount of money that letters generate and then they may purchase either one card or several, depending on how much money the word generated, and they choose letters from the piles of letters laid out on the table. Then the player takes the newly purchased cards

and the cards they used this turn and place them in their discard pile. They then draw five new cards for their next turn. When the draw pile runs out, you shuffle the discards into a new draw deck and repeat. When you cash in larger/ more valuable words, you may purchase the Fame cards.

These range in cost from 5 cents up to 17 cents and range in Fame points from 4 points to 15 points. The game ends when two of the piles of Fame cards are depleted or when all of the Common Cards are gone. The player with the most Fame points wins.

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Game Review (Cont.)

There are several interesting abilities and types of cards available in the game. Perhaps the most important is the Common Card pile. These cards are used throughout the game to help players form words, however, they also present other important additions to the game play. For example they can be obtained by a player by matching the requirement on the bottom “card” of the stack. The first requirement is that the first player to form a seven letter word gets to add the current card on the stack to their hand. Then the next vowel is revealed and players have the opportunity to use this in the same way as the previous card, but this time it will take an eight letter word to add the card to their hand. The Common Card stack has slots for 7-10 letter words and uses a random draw of A, E, I, and O. Each of the Common Cards are worth 5 Fame points at the end of the game. If a ten letter word is formed, the last vowel is taken and the game ends.

Some cards have abilities printed on them. Some examples include: “If you use all your cards, +2 cents”, “If this is the last letter, +1 card next hand”, and “+2 cents per wild in word”. Besides adding to the replay value of the game, these abilities make the game strategically interesting, as you have to decide on letters for their usage in words or take a letter for its ability.

There are several abilities that combo well and it makes each game a fascinating playing experience.

If the aforementioned was all that there was for the game, I would still rate it as Highly Recommended.

However, designer Tim Fowers didn’t stop there, he includes several expansions and alternate rules for an even more dynamic gaming experience.

Expansions: There is a two card expansion for the Common Card stack. These cards make the game harder by limiting access to vowels and making it tougher to make larger words, yet present interesting effects. The first “Dyslexic” allows you to reverse a two-letter card to gain +1 cent. Example: ER now becomes RE. The other is “Spacebar” where you can make two words instead of one and receive +1 cent.

The five card Power expansion gives each player a special power to be used during the game. Example: “Stuck Key” Once per turn, if word has 3 or more wilds, +1 cent”.

There is a six card “Theme” expansion which allows a player to take the relevant five point Fame card when they match a word on the list. Example: On the Pirate Theme card there is a list of words, including “Captain”. If you make the word Captain you may take the card and score its points at the end of the game.

Also included is a four card “Award set” which endgame conditions printed on them. One is dealt at the start of the game and the player that meets condition stated on the card at the end of the game claim the card which is worth five Fame points.

has out the can

And last but not least, there is an Attack letter set which provides additional letters to the stacks, but each of the effects attacks another player. Example: “-1 Card next hand”, “Cannot use two-letter cards”, and more. Each one is meant to slow down your opponent and make their turns harder. These are not for every type of player, but can make for an interesting and competitive game if you are interested in going down that path.

There are several optional rules presented as well as an excellent co-op or solitaire version of the game.

This is an incredible game and when you factor in all of the expansions and optional rules, it is just staggering how much game play is included. This game will have a strong appeal for fans of Scrabble, and yet the letters having abilities on them change how you approach the game. Players actually “do something” with the cards they draw, instead of just buying victory points. If you like word games, this is a no-brainer. If you like deck building games and have a decent vocabulary, then this is also a game you should pick up. Of course if you are a tournament level Scrabble player and serious board/card gamer then this game is a must!

Designer: Tim Fowers Number of players: 2-5 Mechanic: Deck Builder Ages: 10+

Highly Recommended www.paperbackgame.com

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Game Review

For the Crown

By Serge Pierro

Dominion meets Chess!

O

ne of the interesting things about deck builders these days is that designers are starting to explore new and interesting ways in which to use the mechanic. With “For the Crown” (Second Edition) from Victory Point Games, we see the melding of the deck builder with the venerable classic, chess. This is certainly an ambitious and intriguing concept, but does it actually work?

As stated in the rule book, designer Jeremy Lennert was inspired to take Dominion and merge it with chess and “For the Crown” is the result. It should be noted that although there are clearly elements of chess within the design, there are also other pieces that have movements that are not chess-like, somewhat akin to those of the game, The Duke.

The game comes with an array of laser cut sheets waiting to be punched out. A handy tissue is enclosed to wipe off the ash from the laser cutting process on the edges of the pieces. The game actually includes two boards, one is a foldable “heavy stock” paper board and the other is a much thicker lasercut chipboard game board that comes in three sections which are assembled with jigsaw puzzle-like appendages. Either board it viable for the game, but the heavier one stays in place better, due to the weight of the material used. Also included are 150 cards.

To start the game, players will set up the game as follows. Each player will be given 6 Peon and 4 Guard cards for their starting deck. Players will then put the following stacks of cards on the side: Champion, Clergy, Tower and Consort. These are the standard cards that are used in every game. In addition to these cards, players will randomly choose 10 additional stacks of cards to use during the course of the game. As a nice touch, the designer lists 10 cards that he recommends that players start with their first time playing in order to become familiar with the game, and not become overwhelmed with the more powerful pieces until they grasp how the game works.

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We found the recommendations to be well suited for our inaugural game and then went for random stacks in the following games. Although it takes a little longer to set up the game, I would suggest that you take the associated tiles and place them next to their relevant card stack so that when you are playing the game you don’t have to sort through pieces to try and find the piece that you are looking for. Each

player will choose a color and place their King onto the designated square on the first rank. Since the pieces are double sided, be sure that when you place one of your pieces on the board, that it is flipped to the correct color. At times players seemed to be so caught up with the game play, that they forgot to flip their piece to the correct color and they needed to be reminded.

A players turn is broken into four phases, which are conveniently printed on the board as a reminder.

The first phase is the Order Phase. In this phase players may issue one of the following Orders: March, which means they may move a piece that is already on the board into an empty space on the board. Attack, they Continued on next page>

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Game Review (Cont.) may move capture an enemy piece. Deploy, place a unit from your Barracks into your first rank (or second rank if they are a Foot class unit) and Card, play a card with an Order effect on it and resolve it.

attack by “trashing” them once the Queen was on the board.

A Consort/Queen and two Tower/Rooks were a formidable force and if the opponent didn’t have some of the same the game would be quickly over.

The second phase is the Action Phase. You may play one card with an Action effect and resolve it. If you have a card that gives an additional action(s) these are also resolved.

Since the game ends when your opponent has no Sovereign units left on the board, it is an interesting strategy to obtain more Sovereign units, if they are available. Unlike Chess, you can actually have multiple Kings (Sovereign units). This can make for some very interesting scenarios. If your King or Sovereign unit is under heavy attack on one side of the board, you can Deploy an additional one on the other side of the board, thus negating the potential loss of the besieged unit and buying you more time to bring in reinforcements.

The third phase is the Buy Phase. You play all of your cards with Treasure effects and take the total amount of Gold and purchase one card from the 14 stacks that were set aside at the start of the game.

The fourth phase is the Housekeeping Phase, where you discard all the cards that you drew at the beginning of the turn and may have acquired during the turn and draw five new cards.

One of the most important elements of the game is that you may use a special type of Action called a Training Action during the Action Phase. This is the “bridge” between the deckbuilding engine and the play on the board. Instead of taking an action stated on the bottom of the card, a player may use the Training Action listed at the top of the card to “trash” the card (remove it permanently out of the game) and take the corresponding unit tile and place it on your “Barracks” section of the board. From here units may be Deployed as an Order on a later turn. At times it is a tough decision as to whether or not to “trash” a card for a unit or keep the card in the deck for its effect. This is especially tough during the earlier stages of the game when the card might generate Gold to buy better cards.

It is important to keep in mind that the game is won or lost on the battlefield and this is one of the more interesting aspects of the game. When do you decide to switch gears and go from building your deck to playing the board? We found that there was a need to keep a close eye on what your opponent was acquiring and bringing into play. If a player buys a Queen then you have to focus your efforts on also getting a Queen or there’s a good chance you will lose quickly.

Seeing as the board is more open than Chess, having a Queen is a great advantage, but the defender has a couple of turns to try and bring their own Queen into play as a lone Queen will not be able to capture an opponents King or Soverign unit on their own. I did find that buying Towers for 3 Gold not only led to acquiring a Queen quickly, but also aided in the

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Although the game comes with a fine assortment of cards and units, there are actually other expansions available that bring more interesting effects and units to the game.

Perhaps in the future we will have the opportunity to play them and let you know how they work. But just by reading their descriptions, they appear to make this an even more interesting game.

Chess players who have an interest in modern boardgames will love this game. The deckbuilding recruit method is brilliant and the tactical forays with the non-chess pieces can be dizzying at times, but always interesting, thus giving all players an opportunity to win as your standard tournament Chess player will not have an overwhelming advantage when there a several pieces on the board that they are unfamiliar with. Yes, they will be able to bring the combinational and positional skills to the table, but the use of non-chess units will often catch them by surprise as they exclaim “I didn’t know it could do that!”. Overall this is an excellent game and one that should be given a try by both chess players and non-chess players.

Designer: Jeremy Lennert Publisher: Victory Point Games Number of players: 2 Mechanic: Deck Builder, Chess Variant Ages: 13+

Highly Recommended

www.victorypointgames.com

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Book Review

The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design

By Serge Pierro

A collection of essays on Board Game Design

W

hile there are several books on the market on game design, unfortunately the majority of them are slanted towards or devoted to computer game design. The Kobold Guide to Game Design takes a different approach by concentrating on board and card game design. When you are done reading this book you will find yourself repeating the quote by Bruno Faidutti on the front cover: “I wish I had a book like this twenty years ago”.

Game Designer Mike Selinker has put together a fascinating collection of essays by industry insiders.

Each essayist was chosen for their area of expertise and their ability to present the information in a concise and informative way. The book is broken down into four separate sections: Conceptualizing, Design, Development, and Presentation. It also features a Next up is Richard Garfield who discusses the need Foreword and Afterword by Selinker. to play games for both research and fun and how they influence/inspire your design process. Jeff Tidball contributes a piece on relating a game to a three act play.

Conceptualizing Matt Forbeck writes about “Metaphor vs. Mechanics”.

This chapter starts off with an interesting essay by James Seliker himself finishes the section with an excellent Ernest, (see interview in Issue #2) “The Game Is Not the piece on “Whose Game Is It Anyway” where he gives Rules” which is the perfect way to start the book. This various perspectives on Designer, Developer, Publisher is the first of three contributions by Ernest, and one can’t etc. contributions to the game. help but notice that he brings a lot to the discussion.

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Design Andrew Looney’s “How I Design a Game” leads off the Design section of the book and shows the progression that he uses to make his games. Along the way he dispenses a lot of practical information on various topics. And while there are some other interesting offerings throughout this section, Selinker himself contributes an excellent chapter “The Most Beautiful Game Mechanics”. Here he looks at mechanics such as “tapping” ala Magic the Gathering, Battletech’s “heat”, and Dominions “reshuffling”, as well as some others.

All of the examples are innovative in their concept and causes one to stop and try and think of their own unique approach to a mechanic. James Ernest adds the thought provoking “Strategy is Luck”, where he states that until an optimum strategy is discerned, players can only use an “educated guess” at what the right play is, thus in the overall scheme of things the decision will be either lucky (correct strategy) or unlucky (wrong strategy). A short but interesting essay!

Howell’s “Stealing the Fun” looks at six guidelines for in game situations that designers/developers should avoid (Kingmaker, Player Elimination, etc.). All six are “solid” guidelines that should be seriously looked at.

Once again, Mike Selinker provides an excellent essay, this time on “Writing Precise Rules”. This is something that every Game Designer should read. He annotates some examples from the rules of several well known games and provides great insight into their flaws.

Presentation

Steve Jackson (see interview in Issue #1) leads of the Presentation section of the book with “Amazing Errors in Prototyping”. In his usual humorous approach he gives several real life examples of prototypes that he received from designers and then talks about what they clearly did wrong and what they should have done instead. Excellent information for young aspiring designers. Richard C. Levy’s “Life’s a Pitch: How to License Your Game”) provides an introduction to Development the process of reaching out towards the mass market.

Michelle Nephew’s “Getting Your Game Published” The Development section kicks off with Dale Yu’s takes you from the proposal to the final printing of the inside look at the development of “Dominion”. Game game. There is a ton of useful information contained development is often overlooked in the game making in this essay! process, as the designer gets their name on the box and the company’s name and logo is present, yet “hidden” This is probably the best book currently on the market away is the name of the developer. Yu does a nice job for the aspiring board and card game designer. Although of showing what the developer brings to the game it doesn’t delve into the exact process of designing games, publishing process, using the game “Dominion” as it presents a great deal of information that is necessary an example. A fascinating read for those interested for designers to consider when working their idea from in development as well as fans of “Dominion”. Paul a concept to a final product. The range of material is Peterson contributes a piece on “The Trick Task of great and has a lot to offer designers of all levels. The Unbalancing Collectible Card Games”, which takes writing is both engaging and entertaining and is clearly a look at Magic the Gathering and the development worth taking the time to read a second time, and at a process of how to decide which cards to release. Dave 138 pages it is easy to do so. Highly Recommended!

Author: Mike Selinker Publisher: Open Design

Highly Recommended Issue #3

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Interview

Reiner Knizia Legendary Game Designer

much they can sell... of course I don’t want a publisher who doesn’t want to sell (laughter). I am very happy to work with new publishers and smaller publishers. It’s really about getting a good game out and having them

By Serge Pierro do their work competently. I don’t want to go through it and show them all the stuff that’s wrong, they can’t write the rules, they can’t get the colors right, and so on. There is a very vast range of different publishers from excellent, that they write the rules and they are just Dr. Reiner Knizia needs no introduction. He has designed perfect, to somebody who writes the rules and you say over 500 published games, including “Lord of the Rings” “What have you done?” I can’t even recognize my own and “Pickomino”, both of which have each sold over one game. (laughter) million copies. He has been inducted into the Origins Gaming Hall of Fame and has long been considered the Then Karen (Karen Easteal, Mr. Knizia’s personal assistant) will probably shout and say, “If they never world’s top game designer. answer our emails, that’s not good either.” There needs to be a certain level of correspondence. I have also learned that, yes, we have our standards, and yes, we would like What kind of qualities do you look for in a publisher? people to react and be organized, and I think that we are very organized and very reactive, but, I’ve also learned There’s a big answer to be given here. Firstly, yes, I that we cannot force our way of “that’s the system, that’s am more well known and that means that makes some the way the publisher has to be organized”, we cannot things easier because the doors are open, but I still have force it there. There’s a willingness to accept that other to put something through the door and that means that people to run their business in a different way, but there you have to have good product. There’s no way around is also a certain red line where you say “some principles that. That’s still the challenge, particularly if you’ve need to be there” and that is about the quality of the done a number of games and then you want something work and some kind of a partnership where you can that is even better than all of the games you have done communicate. before.

(Part Two)

Your classic “Lord of the Rings” is still one of the best co-

But, the quality of the publisher, I think is a very op games available... important topic. I am not so much driven by a need to earn much money, it’s a love for the games and I want Thank you. to work with publishers who do a competent job in bringing these games to reality and is something that will bring lots of enjoyment to the people, and not lots ... and with the popularity of co-op games at the moment, of question marks about the rules and lots of annoyance have you given any thoughts of producing another co-op about any wrong components. That’s what I don’t want. game for the hobby market?

Essentially I’m looking for a publisher where the LOVE for the game is in the foreground and not so much how

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I know not everyone likes to hear it, but I’m not so Continued on next page>

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Interview (Cont.) much at the moment working in the hobby games.

Every now and then there will be a hobby game there, but I feel that I reach many more people by doing games which are not as complex as the hobby game market sometimes demands. Yes, I like to play the hobby games and of course I like to design them, but one has to understand that the reason behind it is that it is harder to place these games on the market because there are fewer publishers there who really do it. If I look at the global market and publish these games, and there is a very big competition these days and there are a lot of people who just do it for fun and sit there not minding spending a year on these more complex games, and then you sometimes face situations that these are smaller publishers who want to then go on Kickstarter.

something of a smaller game with only one page of rules, but it has a depth to it and it has a kick in there where you can actually get deeper into it and have enjoyment for twenty minute or half an hour. It’s a different type of game, but it is not a primitive game.

When you did the current release “Age of War”, how did thtat come about from “Risk Express”? Were you apprached to do a re-theme, or was is something else?

I have a close relationship to Fantasy Flight. So every now and then we would sit together and we would discuss the possibilities and certain projects and sometimes I have an opportunity or I do a project and see “Oh, that is something that could be very good” so I “so to speak” just approach Chris Peterson and say “There’s an opportunity, have a look at it, if that is good for you or not”. In this case it was actually the other way around, Chris’s team came to me and said “This is a good game, we are convinced of it, we have a good license to combine it with. I think it actually started with them saying “this is a good game and we want to republish the game” and now how can we find the best way to transport it. This is a different game where I hope that it can reach a lot of people. Because it is a good thematic positioning and it is not a two hour game but you can play it on a very simple level, so that families can play it, but as gamers you can get closer into it, and certainly get a gamers enjoyment out of this, even though it is a small game. It is precisely this type of very nice game which has a broad audience, but also has a very wide span of people who can play it.

Kickstarter is a problem in my eyes for the game design, because what is sold is nice promises and nice components, but once the funding has happened there is relatively little motivation to really make a good game design for a good game and I think this disappoints a lot of people who participate in these Kickstarter projects and essentially dampens the expectation for the good games there. You get into an environment where you make compromises, where you say “I’ve got a game that went to two or three publishers and they didn’t want it, because they have their own view of what they want to take, so the market is narrower and takes much more time to develop them, it’s harder to adapt them if the publisher wants some changes, and in the end you get a smaller edition out and you reach very few people, unless of course you are lucky and make a “Euphrates and Tigris or Ra”, but it is not so easy to do these, so if you think it is a good game there’s a lot of comparison out there and you don’t see the wood from the trees in What can you tell us about the “Brains: Japanese Garden”.

Apparetnly this is nto a game, but a collection of 50 logic these gamer’s games.

puzzles.

I could see how it would be more rewarding to reach a large group o people who enjoy your games than a smaller I have done a number of puzzles recently, because they fascinate me. I try to do that within relatively simple market such as the hobby games.

means. That means that I’m not such a fan of where you have a 100,000 different combinations and you need Well, what I still expect from my games is that even if to try them through and then you are lucky. Of course it is not a “gamer’s game”, that the gamer’s can still play deduction is a very important aspect of a puzzle game, it and enjoy it. It’s not a two hour game where I really and so what I decided was I wanted to create something have to go into it and read twenty pages of rules, it is with very few pieces, if I remember correctly this has only 7 different pieces. They are square pieces which Continued on following page>

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Interview (Cont.) you need to arrange. Sometimes the gardens only go three or four different places, so you arrange it and what you do is make very nice Japanese Gardens. They have some restrictions, because you see where the entrance passes and sometimes you know that this one needs to lead to the lake, or this one needs to go there, so you know the paths that need to pass by the lake and the lake is on one tile as well. So you are constructing the garden so that the boundary conditions, if I talk within “mathematical speak”, the conditions that I have given you at the border, at the fence of the garden that they all match. So if you have a gate, you need to have a path in there, and the path says that you need to go there, you go there, if the path says it is very long, then you need to have a very long path, and if the path says it leads from there, then the path needs to lead from there. If you satisfy all of the boundary conditions then you have a solution. We actually have a software program which has checked so that there is only one unique solution.

For each piece there is one unique solution. The puzzles were essentially done manually because that is where you see if they are interesting to do. It is created from seven pieces with paths and things on them.

It says that there will be 50 puzzles. Will the rulebook have “scenarios” that you have to attempt?

Essentially the puzzle shows you a garden, but only shows you only the outlines, then you see that it needs four tiles, so you need to choose the right four tiles out of the seven and arrange them the right way so that the paths and everything happens exactly as described. But clearly if I have a boundary condition that says this leads along the lake, then clearly I need to take the lake tile, so I get some hints, and then there is a very long one, so I might have to have a long bendy thing in there, so I have to decide on which one to take and where to place them as I work my way through it. It starts very simple with very small gardens and the maximum size garden is six, so we leave one out. You wouldn’t believe that it is hard! Just putting six tiles out of seven down and arranging them in the right way.

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This sounds interesting and presents yet another aspce of your personality and design skills as an artist. Hopefully we will see this available in the U.S.A. Pegasus has the worldwide rights, I’ve seen the French edition and I think I have seen the English rules, but I don’t know who is the distributor in the US, but I think that it should be available.

As the “World’s Greatest Game Designer”, what kind of advice could you give to aspiring game designers?

This is almost not answerable, because it depends on which area you look at. If you look at “how do I get published”, my advice is very clearly, what I luckily did myself, go to the small publishers. With a small publisher you will find that you have access. But if you go to a big publisher, you have to go through agents and you can’t even talk directly with them, and you don’t learn anything from them. But if you go to the small publishers you get a much more direct feedback from the decision makers. You learn a lot when you get rejected and you will get rejected a lot, even I get rejected a lot, this is common in this business. But you get the feedback right and you learn much faster what you need to do to increase your probability of not getting rejected. Once you have found a small publisher who does want one of your games, then you also know that they cannot afford to have a flop, because the finances are not so that they cannot make twenty five games and then five of them that are dead and it doesn’t work with small publishers like this. Therefore you know that they will put their heart into it and you will learn from a publishing point of view of what they do and I think that the more you understand about the whole industry, the easier it will be for you to get the games so that they are easier to produce. The whole side of getting published is of course extremely important. You need a lot of patience, but I think for me, that is clearly the right way to build your relationships with the small publishers.

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I think there are two things: Don’t be afraid that people will steal your idea, usually they don’t. Don’t go out to become rich, usually you don’t, at least when you start.

Get experience. Get published. Get some references.

And then take it from there, step by step.

One last question: Since you design games all day, do you ever sit down and just play a game for fun, and if so what do you like to play for personal enjoyment?

We play everyday. In three hours the next playtest group comes in, it’s the Wednesday playtest group and the games are already lined up that I want to test today.

It goes back to what I said before, you cannot calculate the fun in the game, you cannot by experience say that this one will work, you have to test it. Playtesting is the heart of game design and so we play everyday. This is also, so to speak, the critical aspect of what you are asking, because I think that in the meantime a lot of people know about my “sixty drawers” which have my game designs that are on the go at the moment in there, of course these are the “monkeys that want to be fed” (laughter) Whenever there is time or opportunity, I am so curious about “what does this change”, so that I always want to play the things, and usually people are also saying “well let’s see how that works” and I play with many different groups and they are interested in what is there. So it is not so often that I play other games apart from when my playtesters who are good friends and they are very valuable assets, if you want to it in this neutral version, they give me extremely rich input into the playtesting and the creativity in the games and so their heart is in these games as well as my heart and my name stands on it and they sometimes bring a game and say “You must see this” “You must play this” and it comes on the table and we play it. Actually last year we put in more of an effort with looking at Deck Building games. I want to do something new there and so we played a few of these.

of games that I like to play and I like to try and play for five minutes, ten minutes, and then a half an hour is gone (laughter), as it happens to all of us. You see, the frustrating thing sometimes is, you know that I also design apps for the games that you find on the markets. When I design them, I want to make them very addictive and have a very high replay value, and building a lot of temptations and achievements, and I have these designs and I have these little paper things and it works very well, but I don’t have the application.

It’s not like all the other users who see something in the AppStore and download it. I have a brilliant game there and I can’t play it. Now I have to look for a publisher and it takes a year until I can play it. And sometimes this is hard, because you know from a paper form that it plays very well and then you can’t. Even with playtesters it doesn’t work because it is a different joy and we usually don’t do PC prototypes, and if we do it’s not the fun and the touch screen and so on. With this respect, sometimes I want to play a bit more of these games that have finished development and try and get my new high score! (laughter) First of all you need to go out in the world and find a publisher for it. So I’m always on the lookout for iPhone, by what I mean by iPhone, is mobile publishing, including Android. As well as bring these little games to the world, where I think we have a great opportunity, because there are more than one billion smartphone owners in the world, all of them have games in their pocket. I mean this world is enormous. But this world demands completely different games. There is big, big, big competition even more than anything else, because “I want it now, I want it for free” and it needs to be fun. Then there are 500,000 apps or whatever in the game stores, and how do you find them, how do you find mine. So it is even more extreme than the games industry where you have three hundred, five hundred, a thousand new editions and you need to stand out from that crowd, which is hard enough than stand out from fifty thousand or five hundred thousand.

Essentially if you ask me what I am playing, then it is Thank you Dr. Knizia, for taking the time to share like all the players who have a tablet or a smart phone your thoughts with our readers! in their pocket. I have a number of nice applications http://reinerknizia.de/

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Game Review

TRENCH

By Serge Pierro

A Deep & Beautiful Abstract Game

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ven with all of the attention that board games are receiving these days, there are still games that seem to “fly under the radar”. The Portuguese game TRENCH seems to be one of those games. Let’s take a look at why TRENCH might be one of the best kept secrets in board games today, despite its beautiful aesthetics and strategically deep game play.

Designer Rui Alipio Monteiro used World War I as his inspiration for the theme of the game. While a somewhat unusual choice for an abstract game, it is easy to see the related concepts when they are pointed out, as to how the theme is integrated within the design, in particular the “camouflage” of some of the pieces and the mechanics involved with the centerpiece of the design, the trench.

One can’t help but notice the clean and gorgeous design of the game. From the board and pieces, to the box and accessories, there is an overall design scheme that just states elegance. The overall package is a beautiful presentation.

Upon opening the box, you are greeted with a large 14” x 14” plastic board which is set up as a diamond, and not a square, as in chess.

The board is divided in half with both black and white diamonds and the trench line that runs through the middle. The underside of the board has some struts that offer support so the board doesn’t flex - yet another thoughtful design element. A black and white multi-language instruction book is also included that covers all of the relevant information on the game. A classy addition are the cloth bags that the pieces come in. Each bag is color co-ordinated with the associated pieces, as well as having a drawstring to keep them from opening within the box.

While the board is attractive, the pieces are what standout from an artistic design standpoint. Each piece is made from laminated pieces of plastic, with the base being made out of a softer plastic that has a more rubber-like feel to it so that the pieces don’t needlessly slide about on the board. They have a feel similar to a lightly weighted chess set. On the bottom of each piece is an engraved diagram

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of how the pieces move. This is yet another example of the amount of love that was put into this game. However, I am not a fan of this system. I would have preferred to have had player aids for each player so that the player could look at them and know how the pieces move until they memorize the different movements. Besides eliminating

the cumbersome notion of having to lift the pieces to see what they do, it would also speed the learning process by having the relevant information present on the playing aids, making it easier to study. We found that the lifting of the pieces was “clunky” and interrupted the thoughts of the players unnecessarily. As a sidenote, this issue will be addressed in the “budget” production of the game which will instead have the player aids instead of the engraved

bottoms, as well as being molded in a single color material.

The distance that the pieces can move is brilliantly designated by the “height” of the piece. The Soldier has only one level, so he moves one. The General is five levels high, so he moves five - very elegant. However, there is a slight problem with how the pieces are built. The bottom layer is the opposite color of the rest of the piece and a quick Continued on next page>

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Game Review (Cont.) glance at the board will make it hard to know how many spaces a piece can move due to the illusion of the piece being one level less due to the off color base. While the camouflage of the units is considered part of the game design, here it is just a distraction from the strategic element of the game and has proved to be more than once a hindrance, rather than an asset. The bottom of the piece should have been made the same color to avoid confusion. And while I understand the camouflage/ confusion of the battlefield theme, I thought it took away a little something. But, as mentioned above, the budget line will be molded as one color, thus avoiding this situation.

readily available for players who want to take their game to the next level of serious study. We found that trying to analyze opening moves was both fascinating and revealing in terms of the depth of the game, and would love to see what others had to say. However, without a standardized system, there are no means of communication amongst the player community and thus no forwarding the game to a more serious level of analysis. TRENCH appears to be a strong enough game to warrant further exploration and hopefully it will receive that treatment. It is probably only a matter of time before annotated games start to appear, as more players have the opportunity to play the game.

The defining element of the game is the trench. This is the line that runs across the middle of the board and serves to represent the trench warfare that was used in World War I. It has both offensive and defensive properties. A piece that enters the trench may not be attacked by an opponent’s piece that is in the opponent’s territory. In order to attack the entrenched piece, the opponent has to cross over into enemy territory and attack the piece from behind. This proved to be a fascinating aspect of the game, as there were multiple maneuvers taking place on trying to vie for position in order to eradicate the entrenched unit. As far as the offensive bonus goes, the entrenched unit may leave the trench and move as many spaces as they are able, capturing all the pieces in its path. This was a powerful move that often times proved to be more of a threat than a reality, as players would start to evacuate the area to minimize the damage. A General or Colonel out of the trench is an impressive offensive weapon in the hands of a tactician. The one downside of being entrenched is that you are unable to move along the trench‌ unless the piece is either a Colonel or General, further adding to their explosive power out of the trench.

Every game of TRENCH that I played was both interesting and deep. Everyone who saw the game immediately became interested in learning how to play, and those who did were impressed by the gameplay. There is a lot to like about this game and the more you play it, the more it reveals its strategic depth. There are many interesting strategies that would engage lovers of games like chess. I would enjoy seeing this available as an online game so that I can expand my pool of potential opponents.

Inside the rule book is a diagram showing the coordinates of the board. This is essential for a notation system to take TRENCH to the next level. Games such as Chess, Go, Shogi, etc. are able to be studied on a serious level with the use of a standardized notation system for analysis and annotations. While the game does have the aforementioned coordinates available, there does not seem to be any game collections or analysis

Trench is a game that seems to be on the edge of exploding into a standard game. With 5,000 Facebook page likes and a growing legion of fans, you have to wonder why no publisher has picked this up for major distribution.

American publishers take note, this is a game that you should be taking a serious look at. TRENCH is an excellent game that could be grouped with the likes of Chess and Go. As someone who plays in both Chess and Go tournaments, I can easily see this game as being at that level of competition and depth. If you like strategic abstract games, then purchasing TRENCH is an easy decision to make. With the right exposure this game can potentially become a classic!

Designer: Rui Alipio Monteiro Publisher: Wise Games Number of players: 2 Mechanic: Abstract Ages: 10+

Highly Recommended www.wisegames.net

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Game Review

Firefly

By Bill Braun

“Find a Crew - Find a Job Keep Flying”

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he catch phrase that was at the start of every episode of Joss Whedon’s short-lived television series is also the basis for Gale Force Nine’s board game, designed by Sean Sweigart and Aaron Dill. Firefly The Game is at its heart, a pick-up-and-delivery game for one to four players with a race to be the first to complete a set of randomly chosen objectives. Pick your ship, pick your Captain, and begin exploring the outer reaches of space while avoiding legal confrontations with the Alliance or becoming the next meal for a ship full of Reavers – cannibals of the outer rim.

Gameplay: There’s no two ways about it, the footprint of Firefly The Game is intimidating – the board is huge, there are multiple decks of cards, and an abundance of tokens – but the actual gameplay and mechanics are rather simple. On their turn, each player will have the opportunity to choose two of four possible actions: Fly, Buy, Deal, or Work.

Probably the most basic of the four available actions, Fly is also the most unique. Unlike many other games that rely on roll-and-move mechanics, Firefly The Game incorporates the use of navigation cards for your ship to travel from one end of the ‘verse to the other. After initiating a full burn (spending a fuel token), players will draw a Nav card for each adjacent sector of space they fly into. The bulk of the game board is divided into blue sectors controlled by the Alliance – the authority of the Firefly universe – while the outer edges consist of yellow sectors that the Reavers call home. The tension lies in never knowing what Nav card will be revealed: empty

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space, a run-in with the Alliance, or a close encounter with the Reaver threat.

Encountering specific planets is where the remaining available actions come into play. Whether flying to Persephone to Buy additional crew and load up on supplies, landing on Athens to make a Deal with Patience,

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or transporting a hull full of contraband to Work that job for the nefarious Niska, Firefly The Game focuses heavily on time and resource management. Hull space is limited, and each ship can only carry a handful of crew members, so ensuring that you’ve planned your jobs to be completed in the quickest, most efficient way, will speed you along that path to victory.

Although Firefly The Game may sound like your basic pick-up-and-delivery game, it provides an experience that is deeper and more strategic than first impressions provide. Completing jobs and getting paid will get you one step closer to winning the game, but forgetting to pay your crew, harboring fugitives when faced with Continued on next page>

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Game Review (Cont.) an untimely encounter with the Alliance, or simply running out of fuel can all lead to disaster and result in a huge set back to the progress of your game plan. It’s also worth noting that each job is distinct from one another, and identifying those that are legal, illegal, moral, and immoral is imperative to preventing your crew from becoming disgruntled and jumping ship at the next available planet. A happy crew makes for a successful crew.

However, lady luck may not always be on your side when needed the most, and Firefly The Game adds just the right amount of luck into the equation.

Incorporating skill tests – fight, tech, and negotiation – players will roll a single six-sided dice to overcome a variety of challenges and obstacles throughout the game. Failing a fight test might result in the loss of a valuable crewmember. Unsuccessfully talking your way past the Alliance could end with the seizing of your contraband and a warrant being issued. It’s happened to me on more than one occasion and can quickly change the game from a solid win to requiring a new strategy and playing catch up. Thankfully, proper planning eases the notion that Firefly The Game boils down to a simple dice roll.

Photo: Bill Braun

that fans of the television series are more likely to fall in love with it than those that are not. The game art is represented by images taken directly from the show, and practically every card adds an appropriate quote from the character displayed. Gale Force Nine has become known for producing games based exclusively on television IPs – Firefly, Spartacus, Homeland, Sons of Anarchy – and it’s clear that the designers are devout fans of the source material. Having played other, non-Gale Force Nine, By providing opportunities to mitigate these skill tests, board games based on existing franchises, Firefly The players that ensure that their crew is well balanced and Game continues to be a frontrunner with its ability to carrying a good variety of supplies will increase their fully immerse the player into the fiction of the Firefly chances for success. Each negotiate, fight, and tech skill universe. that a crewmember or piece of equipment includes can be added to these individual skill tests. Suddenly, As was previously mentioned, playing Firefly The completing a skill test of eight or nine with a six-sided Game requires a larger-than-average size gaming table – dice is less daunting of a task. Additionally, every six a small card table will simply not suffice. It’s possible that rolled results in an exploding dice – giving that player the size of the board could have been reduced to better the opportunity to roll again and continue adding to accommodate for a smaller playing area. However, I get the final result. That’s not to say that even the most the impression that the designers may have intentionally accomplished and well prepared of Firefly Captains created a larger board to better represent the vastness aren’t prone to experience some bad luck from time to of space. Regardless, the graphic design of the board is time. When it does, it changes the course of the game. nicely detailed and visually appealing.

Theme and Components: I would be remiss if I didn’t provide a few comments on the theme of Firefly The Game. There’s no question

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The inclusion of paper money for use as currency was a pleasant surprise when first opening the box. So many other games have completely abandoned paper money, only to be replaced with cardboard coins. The

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miniatures provided to represent the four Firefly class ships, the Reaver cutter, and Alliance cruiser are well designed, durable, and fit snuggly onto their bases. The varying colors help to better identify which ship belongs to each player and matches each of the four player boards respectively.

Although setting aside several hours to complete Firefly The Game is required, it never gets boring or drags on.

The mechanics are well thought out, the rules are easy to understand and digest, and the theme is incredibly strong. As a dedicated fan of the series, I’ve enjoyed it immensely and use it as therapy to help ease the pain in knowing that a once great show was cut short far too soon. Since first released in 2013, Firefly The Game has benefited from a variety of expansions that provide for

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a fifth player, additional crew, gear, and contact cards, as well as the Blue Sun large box expansion that adds an entire side board with new planets to explore, new jobs to be completed, and an even greater Reaver threat. If you haven’t already, it’s a great time to “misbehave” and give Firefly The Game a try.

Designers: Sean Sweigart & Aaron Dill Publisher: Gale Force Nine Number of players: 1-4 Mechanic: Pick-up and Deliver Ages: 13+

Recommended www.fireflythegame.com

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Game Review Cutthroat Caverns

By Serge Pierro

Backstabbing Adventure

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mirk and Dagger are known for their line of games that feature betrayal and backstabbing and “Cutthroat Caverns” should be considered their flagship game. In this fun, RPG styled card game, players will attempt to defeat the Encounters they face while at the same time trying to be the one who finishes them off, as only the person dealing the final blow will win the Prestige Points. As it says on the box: “Without teamwork… you’ll never survive.” “Without betrayal… you’ll never win.”

The game comes with a very sturdy board for tracking the Creature’s life totals and the number of encounters, and glass tokens to mark these numbers as well as the life totals of the characters used in the game. The rules for the game are for the 2.0 version and clearly layout how to play the game. As a bonus, the back page lists all of the artists who’s work appears in the game, as well as a short bio on each which also includes a way to contact them, a very nice touch! It’s nice to see some love given to the artists of a game, hopefully more publishers will consider doing this. Six Character cards are included, but sadly they have no abilities and we all felt that this did a disservice to the game, although apparently there is an expansion that introduces characters with special abilities and nuances. Still, this was everyones main disappointment with the game as, aside from the artwork, it didn’t matter who you chose as your Character. Also included are the 26 oversized Encounter cards that are the main source of conflict within the game. The variety of artists/artwork on the cards further enhanced

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the diversity of the Encounter pool. Various tokens and Prestige markers are also included. There are also 94 action cards, as well as 6 Initiative cards. These are all stored in a molded plastic tray insert.

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To start the game, each player chooses a character and then the Action, Encounter and Initiative cards are all separately shuffled. The Initiative cards are dealt out face down and game play will revolve around the numerical order of the cards and not the players seating position.

The deck ranges from 1-6 and is adjusted accordingly to the number of players in the game. Players are dealt 7 Action cards, which is also their maximum hand size, unless modified by an effect. Nine Encounter cards are dealt face down on the table. These will be the Encounters Continued on next page>

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Game Review (Cont.) that your party will face during the game, the extra cards are put back in the box. The top Encounter is revealed and its stats are marked accordingly on the Tracking board. Play then proceeds in initiative order. The unique aspect of this game is that you are trying to be the person delivering the final blow to finish the encounter, as only that person receives the Prestige Points for doing so, and all the other party members receive nothing. So while it seems “logical” to go all out to defeat the encounter, in doing so you are actually helping your opponents get closer to delivering the final blow. However, if you “slow play” your attacks, the Encounter will still live and continue to deal damage to you and your party. You have to walk a fine line between trying to defeat the Encounter and also preventing your companions/ opponents from being in the position to deliver the final blow. When all the Encounters have been defeated, the player who is still alive and has the most Prestige Points is the winner.

This is a fun game to play with your friends, as there is much sighing and laughing throughout the game as people keep backstabbing each other in order to try and gain the Prestige Points. The most impressive aspect of the game are the excellent Encounters.

While there are many interesting creatures in the deck, it is the non-creature cards that are what makes this game really stand out from other dungeontype encounters. One of my favorites was “Riddle Room”; you take all the players hands and shuffle them together and place them on top of the draw deck. You then deal them out in a 5x5 grid. The encounter then becomes a “memory game” where you have to match the cards ala “Concentration”. If you don’t get a match, you take 5 points of damage.

If you do get a match you escape and take no damage,

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while the other players still have to deal with it. After three rounds the encounter ends and any player who still hasn’t found a match takes 10 points of damage.

Although this is a clever card, another of its uses is to make sure players don’t start hoarding good cards, and it also makes for a nice break from a steady flow of creatures. We also felt that the Encounters that generated token creatures were interesting. All in all, the Encounters were both very creative and entertaining and were clearly the highlight of the game.

There are several expansions available, though we haven’t had the opportunity to test any of them yet.

I can’t help but feel that these will elevate the game to another level, as this is already a fun game and the additional elements added by the expansions appear to kick that up a notch. From what I understand, there are now 105 Encounters when you factor in all of the expansions. That’s a tremendous amount of game play and replay value considering that you use only 9 of them per game. This is the perfect game for those looking for an “RPG-style” card game with a copious amount of backstabbing.

Designer: Curt Covert Publisher: Smirk and Dagger Number of players: 3-6 Mechanic: Hand Management Ages: 14+

Recommended www.smirkanddagger.com

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Interview

Brom Artist

Gerald Brom is a gothic fantasy artist whose work has appeared in numerous games and on many book covers.

By Eric Devlin

Did you have any influences as a child that spurred your interest in art?

Was there something or someone that triggered a change in how you approached art from something that you enjoyed to something that you had a true passion for?

I spent the first three years of my life in Japan and blame a barrage of androgynous super heroes, transforming robots and giant monsters for getting things started. My older brother collected horror magazines and novels by such authors as J. R. R. Tolkian, M. Moorcock, E. R. Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard. Seeing those early Frazetta covers on Burroughs and Howard set my path.

I was born with the passion. It is all I ever truly wanted to do. The difficulty came in finding a path to make a living with that passion.

Did you find that the art that you were producing as a child was similar in theme to what you produced a decade or so later as a professional? Were you drawing/painting heroes and monsters when other children were doodling images of their pets and sports figures?

I was drawing and writing the exact same material then as I am today, making little evil books in my room. Only then I used crayons, notebook paper and staplers instead of oil paints and the computer.

Brom Artist Dark Sun Dark Age The Child Thief

War of the Spider Queen www.bromart.com

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Fans that are familiar with your fantasy oeuvre may be surprised to hear that you did work as a commercial illustrator for companies such as Coca-Cola and IBM. How does your approach differ when working on art for a megalithic company such as Coca-Cola to when you are producing something for a game company? Are there inherent advantages to both?

The defining factor with any job and any client is how much personal freedom I have to express my own ideas, or my interpretation of their ideas.

Unfortunately, typically, the more they pay you the less freedom you have.

If you were imagining the perfect client, what traits would they possess? As an artist, what do you like to see in someone who is commissioning your work?

Again, it comes back to how much freedom they give me to do my thing. The exception to that is collaborative projects, such as movies and video games, where I am contributing to the overall project instead of an individual interpretation. Which, when you are working with a good team, is equally rewarding.

Is there an equivalent to writers block for artists? Do you ever stare at a blank canvas and have no idea where to start?

I’ve suffered burn out a few times, the result of doing to many repetitive projects in a row, but fortunately seem to have a bottomless imagination.

When you are working on a project such as the Dark Sun campaign or War of the Spider Queen, when you are asked to set the visual tone for project, do you find that challenge exciting? Is it more stressful than other commissions?

I find it incredibly liberating and exciting. Dark Sun was amazing, the writers would feed me their concepts and ideas then set me free to invent. We all fed off each other’s creations

Continued on next page>

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Interview (Cont.)

What piece of yours receives the most comments and praise from fans? Is there a piece that you are particularly fond of that you would like to see get more recognition?

It sometimes seems as though the general public has no idea how artwork is produced. What is the one thing that you wished more people knew about the process?

The paintings I do for my own novels are dearest to my heart.

It’s exciting in the beginning, fun at the end, but the middle is long and tedious.

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What is your favorite medium to work in?

I paint traditionally, preferring oil on board. I occasionally use Photoshop to tweak colors and such, once the painting is finished.

You’ve written four novels, the first two of which are labeled as ‘An illustrated novel by Brom’. Are the most recent two (The Child Thief and Krampus the Yule Lord) also illustrated?

They contain several dozen illustrations, but are prose novels, both close to 300 pages.

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Interview (Cont.)

Do you find writing to be a more satisfying creative outlet than illustration?

They work together for me, one inspiring the other. I discover ideas in each that influence the other.

At times it is almost like two separate people working on one project. The illustrator in me will often surprise the writer in me and vice versa, coming up with ideas in the process that the other half did not.

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Where can people purchase your novels?

contact me through my website.

Details and links can be found at www.bromart. com

How can Game Nite readers stay up to date on your work?

Do you accept private commissions from fans?

I do. If anyone would like more info they can

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You can find me on FB and Twitter, both links on my website.

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Game Review

Rise of the Zombies!

By Serge Pierro

A Real-time Co-op

W

ith the success of The Walking Dead comic book and TV series, the zombie genre has become a popular theme. However, with the market flooded with these titles, each game needs something unique in order to stand out. With “Rise of the Zombies�, Dan Verssen Games (see Issue# 2 for our interview with Dan) has designed a co-op game with the novelty of including an electronic timer so that the game can be played in real time.

The game includes 168 cards, various tokens, 8 plastic stands, dice and the aforementioned timer. The rulebook even includes a sample game and Survivors bios to add a bit of backstory to the game.

Play begins by separating the three shuffled decks into their respective piles: Action, Survivor and Zombie.

Players choose the Survivor they would like to use. Have each player take the corresponding Survivor token and insert it into the plastic stand. Place all of the Survivors onto the Safe House card (the starting card). Take the Helicopter card and place it approximately 7 cards lengths away. During the course of the game players will be moving to 6 locations between the Safe House and the Helicopter. The winning condition of the game is to survive and reach the Helicopter card and take off.

Since the included timer may not be stopped for any reason, it would be wise to have all of the players up to speed on the rules of the game. The game length is determined by both the number of players and the level of difficulty. When everyone is ready, start the timer and begin the game.

The amount of cards that each player receives is determined by the number of players. A Group token

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contains the relevant information for hand size and health.

Each players hand size is tied to their health. If they take any wounds, their hand size decreases accordingly. Healing effects restore both health and hand size.

The first thing players will do on their turn is to discard all non-essential cards and then redraw up to their maximum hand size. This is an important phase, as it is quite possible to be stuck with a bad hand of cards. Not surprisingly, the groups odds for success increase as they are able to get good cards in hand. Since this is a real time co-op game, the discard/draw, playing actions and attacking are done simultaneously.

One of the first choices the group has to make is whether or not to play a new location and move to it. Only one Location card may be player per turn. One strategy could be stay at the Safe House and kill any zombies that appear so that you can gain Experience in order to buy items.

However, keep in mind that the clock is ticking, so you might not want to spend too much time dallying. The Survivor who plays the Location card gets to move for free to that Location. Cards are then drawn from the Zombie deck for the Zombie Infestation. The number of Zombies put into play is determined by the Location and any modifiers, as explained in the manual. Zombies with the Fast attribute immediately attack the Survivor at the Location. Then other members of the group may discard a card with the Follow symbol on it and move into the new Location.

Players will then attempt to eradicate the current group of Zombies. Each Survivor gets 1 free attack on their turn. To play additional attacks, players can discard a card that has the Attack symbol on it for an additional attack. Players can discard as many cards with an Attack symbol as they wish. The combat system is simple, you roll a die and use the results printed on the card. When all of the players have

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passed on Attacks or Actions, the Zombies get their phase of the turn.

The Zombie phase is split into three phases.

During the first phase, all of the Zombies move one card closer to the nearest Survivor.

The second phase is the attack phase. Each Zombie gets one attack against a Survivor at the current Location.

When the Zombies are done attacking, there is the Zombie Spawn phase in which a Zombie is drawn from the deck and placed one location behind the rearmost Survivor.

This is certainly an exciting game as your adrenaline flows freely as you try to beat the clock against a horde of Zombies. Although I’m not really a fan of the genre, it was enjoyaable and the theme fit well as a co-op game. Although I understand the concept behind the artwork, I was not a fan. The inclusion of the digital timer was an excellent idea as it made for a more life-like experience and I’m sure my interest in the game would have been a lot less if we were able to take our time and plan things out better. The frantic game play influenced by the timer was exhilarating and was a very different feeling than the standard “sit down and play”. If you are a fan of the Zombie genre, then you might want to give this one a chance, as it delivers an absorbing experience.

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Designer: Dan Verssen Publisher: Dan Verssen Games Number of players: 1-8 Mechanic: Co-op Ages: 12+

Recommended www.dvg.com

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Game Review Shadow Throne

By Serge Pierro

Who Controls the Shadow Throne?

F

or gamers who like to have a backstory to accentuate the game play, Shadow Throne includes a compelling backdrop for the game by shedding light on the three factions involved in trying to control things behind the scenes in setting up the Shadow Throne. The players will use the factions to vie for control of the throne, while being crafty about who they are actually supporting.

The game comes with a glossy, four color rulebook, a cardboard scoring track, several sheets of tokens to be punched out, and a deck of 54 cards. The rulebook is excellent, as it describes all of the basic functions within the game while also providing a bit of backstory for each of the factions and their special ability and rulings for individual cards. This proved to be quite useful when there was a question asked during the game, as we never had to go online to search an FAQ for the answers.

The deck of 54 cards is broken down into the three factions, each of which have 18 cards each. These are shuffled together and each player is dealt six cards. Since this is a card drafting/ hand management game, each player will choose one card and then pass the rest to their neighbor. Play continues until all six cards have been drafted. Play then moves on to the Conflict phase in which players will play face down a card from their hand, and then all players will reveal their chosen cards simultaneously. This is the first of four “waves� that will make up this round of play. After the cards are revealed, the players will either collect the amount of gold printed on the card or pay the printed amount. Then the special abilities are resolved. The game uses an ascending scale in which the effects resolve, starting with level one, then level two and

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finally level three. This is a clean and simple system that takes care of any timing issues and helps the game flow smoothly.

The abilities are both interesting and strong.

The Church converts characters of other factions to the Church. A conversion token is placed on the characters and now they add

their stats to the Church and not their former faction.

This proved to be a factor in many games as the Church was able to influence several victories with this effect.

The Empire’s ability is to Kill. When this occurs, a skull token is placed on the affected card and that card doesn’t add their power to its faction. However, a dead character does contribute half of its influence, rounded down, should they be part of the winning faction that

round. The Rebels have the Embolden ability which grants +1 power to other Rebels. The Rebel and Church abilities seemed to have more of an effect on the game than the Kill ability of the Empire, which didn’t seem to trigger as often.

After the above steps have been completed, the Power Track is adjusted by moving each Faction’s Power Continued on next page>

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Game Review (Cont.) token on the board by the amount of Power that each Faction generated during this wave. Players can then plan what to play on the next “wave” by looking at the Power Track and seeing how they want to influence the factions. Players will then repeat this procedure for the following three waves. At the end of the fourth wave, the players who played any cards that backed the faction who had the most points receive the appropriate amount of influence as stated on the card(s) they played, while the cards that were not amongst the winning faction receive no influence. However, there are card effects that trigger when a faction does not win a round, thus adding an additional layer of strategy to the game, as you might want a certain faction to lose that round to gain the benefits from their cards. Players then choose one of their remaining cards to hold onto for the next round, discarding any remaining cards and shuffling the deck anew and then another round of drafting commences. Play continues until a player hits 15 or more influence at the end of a round. The player who has the most influence at the end of that round is the winner.

There is a lot more than meets the eye when playing this game. Even with only three factions involved, there is a great deal of strategy involved. You have to be crafty in how you play your cards as you don’t want the other players to realize who you want to win, so playing your cards in a certain order is desirable. If you have a hand that you consider to be weak, then you have the opportunity to play cards that will benefit you when the chosen faction(s) loses.

Of course when you are drafting you will be seeing the cards as they go by and you have to expect that someone is going to take a strong card that you may pass on for that turn and it might be used against you on a later turn. This makes for an interesting draft as you might have to take cards that you might not play, just to make sure that they aren’t played against

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you for the strategy you are pursuing. We found that both the drafts and the waves produced numerous opportunities to make interesting decisions and watch how they played out. There is a surprising amount of replay value to the game, due to the fact that each draft will be different and thus all of the waves will be played differently, so even with only three factions each game proved to be unique enough that we were interested enough to have it keep hitting the table.

“There is a surprising amount of replay value to the game, due to the fact that each draft will be different and thus all of the waves will be played differently...”

This month we are happy to feature “Shadow Throne” as our Print and Play game. Although the Print and Play doesn’t feature the final artwork, you will no doubt get a feel for how interesting this game is. Give it a try… I think that you and your gaming group will enjoy it!

Designer: Teale Fristoe Publisher: Nothing Sacred Games Number of players: 3-5 Mechanic: Card Drafting, Hand Management Ages: 14+

Recommended

www.shadowthronegame.com

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Contributors Serge Pierro

Serge

has playtested numerous games for several companies, including Wizards of the Coast and AEG. He has also written for Duelist, Inquest and Gamer print magazines. His award winning photography has appeared in both newspapers and magazines. He has self published a game, and has several other designs scheduled for a 2015 release.

Eric Devlin

Eric has been the North East Regional Representative for Wizards of the Coast, the brand manager of Legends of the Five Rings, as well as working with Sabretooth and Third World Games. He has an extensive background in playtesting for top companies. He has also written for Games Quarterly, Duelist, Inquest and others.

Dan Fokine Dan has sculpted miniatures for “Wreck Age”, published by

Hyacinth Games, as well as miniatures for the “Brushfire” and “Endless” product lines, published by “On The Lamb” games.

John Anthony Gulla John graduated with an M.A. in Humanities, wherein he focused his study on games, the history of gaming, and game design as it relates to the Humanities. He is an avid board gamer and game collector, with over 200 games in his current collection. You can reach him on BGG.com under the username JohnAG68

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Bill Braun Bill has been a contributing writer for PSNation and High-

Def Digest, an Editor and Publisher Relations Director for 30PlusGamer, and the co-creator and podcast host of A Band of Gamers.

John Andrews John “jaQ” Andrews is a Marketing & Technology Specialist at

Zco Corporation. When not getting trounced at board games, he rants about science fiction, technology, culture, and music at www. jaqandrews.com.

Alex Harkey Alex is an accountant by day, an MBA candidate by night

and a game design enthusiast on the weekends. He enjoys aiding local game designers with their latest projects. Alex writes for the blog Games Precipice at www.gamesprecipice.

Matt Pavlovich

Matt has a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and works in an ana-

lytical chemistry lab by day but analyzes game design by night. He is particularly interested in exploring novel mechanics in strategy game and roleplaying game design. Matt writes for the blog Games Precipice at www.gamesprecipice.

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SHADOW THRONE

This is a print and play prototype of Shadow Throne.

The final version will look MUCH better :)

3 - 5 players. 30 - 45 minutes. Ages 13+.

Background

The Aclysmian empire is crumbling. King Kyros Bentheion clings to power by any means necessary. Queen Eleftheria, abandoning her husband, leads a rebellion of disgruntled peasants and soldiers to overthrow him. Princess Beatus, always devout, has disavowed both of her parents to join the church, whose self righteous leader seeks use her to rule the kingdom himself.

You and the other players, members of a secret society, hold sway over Aclysmia, but your job is not to set it right. You just want to be on the winning side when the fighting ends. By carefully weaving Machiavellian alliances and influencing the outcome of crucial battles, you’ll accrue influence for when the war finally resolves. In the end, the king, the queen, or the princess may wear the crown, but you will rule from the shadow throne.

Components

Game Overview

54 Character cards (18 for each of 3 factions) 1 Power Track 28 gold tokens (20 ‘1’s and 8 5 ‘5’s) 30 influence tokens (20 ‘1’s and 10 5 ‘5’s) 12 +1 Power tokens 10 Death tokens 7 Conversion tokens 3 Faction tokens +1

Feedback

Thank you for taking the time to check out Shadow Throne! We’d love to hear what you think! If you have suggestions, questions, comments, complaints, or really anything to say, please reach out!

You and the other players influence characters belonging to different factions, determining the outcomes of battles until the war is over. After the war, whoever has the most influence wins.

The game takes place over the course of several battles.

Each battle starts with an intrigue phase, where players gain control of different characters. The battle is then fought over the course of four waves. In each wave, players add characters to the battle. Finally, in the conflict phase, players associated with the faction that wins the battle gain influence points.

Once a player collects 15 or more influence, the game ends. This usually takes three to five battles.

Game Setup

Email: teale@nothingsacredgames.com Shadow Throne is coming to Kickstarter in June 2014!

If you enjoy the game, please share it with your friends and keep in touch!

Twitter: @nothingsacredg Facebook: facebook.com/ShadowThroneGame Sign up to keep up with Shadow Throne news at shadowthronegame.com

Credits

1. Give each player 3 gold.

2. Shuffle the Character cards into a deck. Cards from all three factions go into one deck.

3. Place the Power Track near the Character card deck.

Put the Faction tokens on the “0” on the Power Track and the other tokens nearby, within easy reach of all players.

Nothing Sacred Games

Game Design - Teale Fristoe Story and Theme - Benjamin Huffman Art - Jesse Parrotti

Copyright 2014 Nothing Sacred Games. nothingsacredgames.com

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Steps of a Round Each round of Shadow Throne represents a battle. Before a battle is fought, players make alliances with characters in the Intrigue Phase. Players then determine which characters fight in the Wave Phase. Finally, the battle resolves and the winners take rewards in the Conflict Phase.

Intrigue Phase In the Intrigue Phase, players gain control over characters from the different factions by forming alliances with them. Or blackmailing them. Or kidnapping them. Or whatever. Follow these steps in order: 1. Reset the Power Track. Put all three Faction tokens on “0” on the Power Track.

2. Shuffle the Character deck.

3. Deal pools. Deal each player a pool of 6 cards face down.

4. Draft from pool. Each player looks at her pool, chooses one card from it to add to her hand, and passes the remaining cards to her left neighbor.

5. Continue drafting. Repeat step 4 until all pools are gone.

Wave Phase In the Wave Phase, players decide which characters fight in the battle. Folow these steps in order: Each Wave Phase has four waves. For each wave: 1. Choose characters. Each player chooses a character card from her hand and puts it face down in front of her. All players do this simultaneously.

4. Resolve special rules. Activate all special rules for characters in this wave.

- Special rules activate in ascending order. All ities trigger, then all 2 , then all 3 .

1

abil-

- Place characters in later waves to the right of characters in earlier waves.

- Same numbered abilities occur simultaneously. For example: all 2 abilities happen at the same time.

2. Reveal characters. All players reveal their chosen character cards simultaneously.

- See the Faction Details section (page 5) for details on how specific abilities work.

3. Collect or pay gold. Each player either collects gold if her chosen card has an income (it has a ) or pays gold if her chosen card has a cost (its has a ).

5. Update Power Track. For each faction, total the power from all characters in the battle of that faction and put the faction’s token on that number on the Power Track. Note: Dead characters don’t contribute power.

- See boxes below for special rules about paying gold.

Follow steps 1 – 5 above 4 times, once for each wave.

Hush money: Players don’t want to be closely associated with any one faction. After the first wave, if a player plays a character of the faction she played in the immediately previous wave, it costs 1 more gold.

For example: Upset Peasant usually costs 0 gold, but it costs 1 gold if you played a rebel character in the previous wave.

- When your character is killed or converted (see the Faction Details section), you do not have to pay any hush money in the following wave.

For example: Thief usually provides 2 gold, but if you played a rebel character in the previous wave, collect only 1 gold. Do not pay 1 gold, then collect 2.

- Hush money is not cumulative. If you play three rebel characters in a row, the third costs 1 extra gold, not 2.

If a player cannot afford her chosen card’s gold cost (or it is illegal to play for some other reason), she reveals it, turns it face down, and collects 1 gold. The character is not considered part of the battle. The player doesn’t have to pay hush money in the next wave.

Note: This is not a choice. If you can afford your chosen character, you must pay for and play it; if you can’t afford the character, you collect 1 gold and turn it face down.

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power

faction

name

rank

gold cost ( ) or income ( ) loss gold (if any) special rules (if any)

Character Cards

Name. The character’s name.

Faction. The character’s faction. This is also indicated by card color.

The factions are the Empire, the Rebels, and the Church.

Rank. Some special rules reference character rank. Additionally, rank can indicate how to use a character.

Commoners grant gold. They’re the backbone of your economy.

Elites are powerful and often determine the outcome of a battle.

Nobles cost a lot of gold, but offer a lot of influence.

Power. The character contributes this much power for its faction.

The faction with the most power wins the battle.

Influence. The number of influence points the character grants if its faction wins a battle.

Cost or income. You must pay this much gold to play the character if it has a cost ( ) or you collect this much gold when you play the character if it has an income ( ).

Consolation gold. Collect this much gold if the character’s faction loses the battle. Not all characters grant consolation gold.

Special rules. Character abilities occur after paying for your character.

Conflict Phase

In the Conflict Phase, the outcome of the battle is determined and the victors gain spoils. Follow these steps: 5. End the game? If at least one player has 15 or more 1. Total power. For each faction, total the power influence points, the game ends! Hop down to the from all characters from all waves. Remember: Dead “Winning the Game” section below. characters don’t contribute power.

6. Keep one card for the next battle. Each player 2. Determine the winning faction. The faction with keeps one card she did not play from her hand for the the highest total power wins the battle!

- If there is a tie, all factions with the highest power next battle and discards the rest.

- The saved card starts the player’s hand in the next are considered winners.

Intrigue Phase. Do not draft saved cards.

3. Collect influence. Each player collects influence - After the first battle, players will save 1 card from points for the characters she played of the winning the last battle and draft 6 more, so will have 7 cards in faction. hand at the beginning of the Wave Phase.

4. Collect consolation gold. Each player collects 7. Form deck. Discarded cards and cards played in the consolation gold for the characters she played of battle are shuffled back into the deck. It’s time to fight factions that did not win. another battle!

For example: If a player played an Upset Peasant during the battle, but the rebel faction did not win, that player collects 3 gold.

Ending the Game

The game ends in the Conflict Phase when at least one player has 15 or more

Winning the Game

When the game ends, whoever has the most

influence points.

influence points wins!

In the case of a tie, whoever has the most gold amongst those with the most

influence points wins!

If there is still a tie, the kingdom is in ruins and no one wins.

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Faction Details Each faction has characters with unique special rules.

Empire

Rebels

The Bentheions have long ruled the lands of Aclysmia, ever working to expand its borders and solidify their claim to power. Now, with the royal family and kingdom divided, King Kyros Bentheion turns the might of the empire upon those who would usurp him.

Special Abilities Killing. Many characters in the empire faction can kill members of other factions.

- When a character is killed, put a

token on it.

- A dead character doesn’t contribute faction.

power to its

- If a character is killed before its ability would trigger, its ability does not trigger.

For example: If a 2 ability kills a character, then that character’s 3 ability doesn’t trigger.

For example: If a 2 ability kills a character, then that character’s 2 ability does trigger.

- A dead character only grants half its points, rounded down.

- A dead character grants normal.

influence

consolation gold as

- When your character dies, you do not have to pay hush money in the following wave (See Wave Phase step 3).

King Kyros. King Kyros lets you play an extra pire card.

em-

- Collect its income or pay its cost as normal.

- Do not have to pay hush money for the extra card.

- If you cannot afford the extra card’s cost, do not collect 1 gold. It is not in the battle as normal.

- The extra card is considered part of the same wave as King Kyros. Abilities that occurred before King Kyros’ ability do not affect the extra card. However, abilties that occur at the same time as King Kyro’s ability do affect the extra card.

- The extra card’s ability will trigger, even if it is a or 2 ability.

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The many conquered peoples of Aclysmia have waged a sputtering and ineffective rebellion for years. Now that the beautiful and shrewd Queen Eleftheria Bentheion has betrayed her husband and the empire by joining their cause, they might actually stand a chance.

Without the empire’s access to resources and training, the rebels rely on support from one another and the Queen herself to turn the tide of the conflict.

Special Abilities Embolden. Many characters in the rebel faction grant extra power to other rebel forces.

- Place a

+1

token on a character for each +1 it receives.

Scout. A Scout gives +1 to each other in its wave.

rebel character

Bold Bannerman. The Bold Bannerman grants +1 to each rebel character in the wave after he is played.

- If Bold Bannerman is played on the fourth wave, his ability does nothing.

Queen Eleftheria. Queen Eleftheria gives +1 to each rebel commoner in her wave and all preceding waves.

- Queen Eleftheria does not embolden characters played in subsequent waves.

Tenacious Veteran. If Tenacious Veteran’s ability triggers and the rebel faction loses the battle, do not shuffle him back into the deck. Leave him out for the next battle as if you played him in a wave before any others.

- Remove any next battle.

+1

or other tokens from him before the

- He does not stay in the battle if he is

killed.

- If the rebel faction loses a second battle, shuffle Tenacious Veteran back into the deck.

Informer. The Informer prevents characters from other factions in the same wave from using their 2 and 3 abilities. Treat those characters as having no abilities.

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Church As the royal marriage dissolved and the people of Aclysmia were drawn into a conflict between husband and wife, King and Queen, the church officially denounced them both. Church leaders, calling the royal couple corrupt and forsaken, now claim that Princess Beatus Bentheion is the only true and just ruler of the kingdom.

Special Abilities Conversion. Many characters in the church faction convert characters from other factions to their side.

- When a character is converted, put a conversion token on that character. The character is now part of the church faction and is no longer a member of its original faction.

-

Dead characters cannot be converted.

- A converted character contributes its power to the faction it is converted to, not to its original faction.

- A converted character grants influence points if the faction it converted to wins the battle and grants consolation gold if the faction it converted to loses the battle.

- When your character is converted, you do not have to pay hush money in the following wave (See Wave Phase step 3).

Princess Beatus. Princess Beatus converts commoners and grants them +1 .

- Princess Beatus does not grant +1 to commoners who were already part of the church faction.

- If a commoner is converted to the church faction by another source at the same time Princess Beatus converts it, it still gets +1 .

Martyr. If the Martyr dies, he grants special ence points.

influ-

- The Martyr still grants special influence points even if he dies in a wave after he is played.

- If the Martyr dying brings a player to 15 or more influence points, the game doesn’t end until the Conflict Phase as normal.

Miracle Worker. The Miracle Worker gets extra power if the player who played her has 0 or 1 gold after paying her cost .

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SHADOW THRONE Power Track

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3

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6

7

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12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

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