Around the Table Winter 2020

winter 2020

Parallel Games Designer Diary for City of the Big Shoulders

Top Five 2-Player Games that you can play with your significant other

The Superstar Effect Or why games sell out

winter 2020 • AROUND THE table 1

© 2020 Renegade Game Studios.

www.renegadegames.com · Plant a stunning succulent greenhouse by designing gardens and completing projects · Compete against other horticulturists and their ambitious plans · Optimize every turn to become your community’s premier succulent gardener!

WHO HAS THE

AVAILABLE MAY 2020 MSRP $45

Ages 10+

2-4 Players

45-60 min

AROUND THE

BOARD OF DIRECTORS & STAFF PRESIDENT Stephan Brissaud IELLO USA VICE-PRESIDENT Anne-Marie De Witt FIRESIDE GAMES TREASURER Marie Poole ROLL WITH ADVANTAGE SECRETARY Jeff Tidball ATLAS GAMES & GAMEPLAYWRIGHT DISTRIBUTOR CHAIR Sito Sanchez PEACHSTATE HOBBY DISTRIBUTION RETAIL CHAIR Dawn Studebaker THE GAME ANNEX DIRECTOR-AT-LARGE Andrew Chesney CHIP THEORY GAMES DIRECTOR-AT-LARGE Alan Hochman GAMERMATS DIRECTOR-AT-LARGE Nicole Lindroos GREEN RONIN PUBLISHING DIRECTOR-AT-LARGE Jeff Pinsker AMIGO GAMES EMERITUS Will Nibeling

GAMA STAFF EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR John Stacy DEPUTY DIRECTOR Chris Materni COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER Danni Loe EDUCATION MANAGER Melissa Jacobs MEETINGS MANAGER Jim Godin EVENT COORDINATOR Paul McGraw MEMBERSHIP ADMINISTRATOR Jessica Davidson PROJECT COORDINATOR Billie MacFarlane The Game Manufacturers Association

240 N. Fifth St., Suite 340 Columbus, OH 43215 Phone: 614-255-4500 Fax: 614-255-4499 media@gama.org gama.org

A Publication by the Game Manufacturers Association

winter 2020

CONTRIBUTORS

Thank you to the following industry professionals for contributing their time and expertise to Around the Table! Please enjoy their articles throughout this second issue. If you would like to contribute to future issues of Around the Table by suggesting a topic or writing your own article, please email media@gama.org.

Egg Embry Egg Embry is a freelance RPG journalist writing for EN World, Knights of the Dinner Table, RPG News, d20 Radio, the Tessera Guild, the Open Gaming Network, the AetherCon Convention Magazine, GAMA’s Around the Table, and more. His areas of focus are RPG crowdfunding projects and RPG reviews. He also conducts interviews talking to a range of gaming professionals from freelancers to CEOs. Beyond journalism, he dabbles in freelance writing and producing gaming zines for the roleplaying zine-aissance.

Reach him at facebook.com/egg.embry.

Scott Gaeta Scott has spent most of his professional career in the entertainment industry making fun stuff based on many of the world’s largest pop culture brands. He’s still putting off getting a real job. When he’s not making, thinking, or dreaming about his next project you can find him on the trails of California getting away from it all; but still probably thinking about making more fun stuff to bring joy and entertainment into your lives.

Vaughn Reynolds Vaughn Reynolds has been a tabletop and board gamer since the early 90s. He's been a Level 2 Magic Judge, playtested and demoed for major publishers, has taught games around the world. He's helped companies raise over $743k on Kickstarter for their board game campaigns.

He runs I'm A Social Gamer (instagram.com/ vaughnreynolds) which focuses on gaming in a more open and public environments such as pubs, restaurants, and cafes. Look out for his projects Meet at the Inn and Escape Area 51, coming to a tabletop near you! He currently adventures in Vermont with his wife and two children.

Justin Spicer Justin Spicer is an instructional designer by day and a 15-year veteran of entertainment and hobby-based journalism in his free time.

When not pursuing the newest trends in learning or covering innovative publishers, designers, and musicians, Justin enjoys family activities such as gardening, making music, and visiting museums.

Nathan McNair Nathan McNair is the coowner of Pandasaurus Games. He calls Austin, Texas home. He is the proud father of 2/3rds of his dogs. His favorite game is Power Grid. Before working in the board game industry he worked in risk management on Wall Street as a VP of Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank. Find him online at twitter. com/Pandasaurusgame winter 2020 • AROUND THE table 3

NOW IN STORES! For more information, you can contact sales@luckyduckgames.com or visit our website at

WWW.LUCKYDUCKGAMES.COM

AROUND THE

A Publication by the Game Manufacturers Association Features

10 18

Adverstories GAMA Member Feature

R&R Games and Flying Leap Games

Top Five 2-Player Board Games Games you and your significant other can play together!

26

Counterfeiting is Cheating

36

Youth Gone Gaming

44 62

winter 2020

Renegade’s experience with counterfeit board games

How publishers and retailers are bringing children to board gaming

Tips and tricks to help retail stores sell games, written by the following companies

8

12

14

Van Ryder Games Modiphius Entertainment Fireside Games

16 Anvil Eight Games 20

Skybound Games

Pegasus Spiele

22

24 Bezier Games 28 Ringtail Café Productions 30 Game Rustlers

32

Big Kid Games

34 KTBG / Burnt Island Games

How RPG Publishers Show Their Support The Superstar Effect Or why games sell out

38 Bloomsbury Publishing 40 Lucky Duck Games 41

CrowD Games

46-47

Parallel Games

48 Cephalofair Games 49

Departments

3

GAMA Board and Staff

3

Contributors

6 Letter from the Executive Director 7 Letter from the President and Retail Chair 52 New Products 70 GAMA News 76 Index of Advertisers 78 New Members

IELLO USA

50 Renegade Game Studios 56

PvP Geeks

58 Indie Boards & Cards 60 GameFor

66 Koplow

68 Green Ronin Publishing

80

Magpie Games

82 Peachstate Hobby Distrubution

Around the Table © 2020 The Game Manufacturers Association Published by Fahy-Williams Publishing P.O. Box 1080, 171 Reed St. Geneva, NY 14456 P 800-344-0559 F 315-789-4263 To advertise, contact Ashley Cavanagh at 315-789-0473. winter 2020 • AROUND THE table 5

FROM THE executive director

Dear GAMA members,

W

elcome to the second edition of Around The Table, a new quarterly publication serving the hobby gaming industry.

We were very pleased by the response our inaugural issue received and are excited to bring this issue to you as well.

In the GAMA member spotlight article, we meet Frank DiLorenzo of R&R Games and Molly Zeff of Flying Leap Games who share how they got into the hobby games industry, talk about ways to introduce non-gamers to the hobby, and what advice they would give new publishers.

Additionally, Scott Gaeta with Renegade Game Studios shares some of his experience dealing with counterfeit products while Nathan McNair of Pandasaurus Games discusses the impact the Superstar Effect has on availability of certain games.

This issue also has a helpful article by Egg Embry as he interviews several RPG publishers about how they support their

brick and mortar retail partners. Justin Spicer looks at how publishers and retailers are working to bring and keep children in board gaming while Kristina and Vaughn Reynolds share their suggestions for Top 5 Two-Player Games.

Each issue we strive to curate articles that will stimulate your imagination and foster a lively exchange of ideas. If you would like information about submitting content for Around The Table, please send an email to media@gama.org.

Regards, John Stacy Executive Director Game Manufacturers Association

Fresh New Look We are excited to announce that we’ve re-branded as Delano Games and thrilled to share our new look and logo!

We offer the same exceptional service and same awesome folks to work with as you’ve come to expect. Delano Games is proud to be entering into our 4th decade of US production.

Your domestic leader in tabletop card and board manufacturing, Delano Games still offers production, rigid boxes & folding cartons, warehousing and order fulfillment, prototypes, consultation, collaboration, Kickstarter support, marketing materials, as well as other services.

is now

The change has been reflected in our web address, it has changed from delanoservice.com to delanogames.com. Reach us at info@delanogames.com or from the Contact Us tab on our website.

All inquiries sent to our old address will be redirected

www.delanogames.com • (800) 233-5266 6 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

to our new address.

FROM THE president

Dear GAMA members,

I

hope everybody had a great holiday season, both professionally and personally, is ready for a fantastic new year, and will find the content of this second issue of Around the Table interesting.

Our lobbying efforts with the Toy Association’s Federal Government Affairs and IP Committees resulted in the cancellation of the last list of tariffs with China on December 13, and a reduction of the taxes already in place. This is a relief for the entire game industry. We also participated in the drafting of the suggestions for the Stop All Nefarious Toys in America Act (SANTA act), asking online marketplaces to provide more information about their sellers.

I am delighted about the GAMA Healthcare program; we tried to think about every single situation our members are in to design the offer. Check out your options at gamemanufacturershealthcare.com.

The new GAMA.org website is up and running, and I am happy with its look and features. The GAMA staff did a fantastic job with the refreshing of our organization’s trade dress. GAMA Trade Show is also being rebranded as GAMA Expo, and the Site Selection Committee is actively working on picking the destination of the 2022 event.

Please join me in thanking Brendan Bell for his service on the Board of Directors and wish him good luck in his future endeavors.

I am looking forward to seeing you at GAMA Expo 2020. Be excellent to each other.

Stephan Brissaud President Game Manufacturers Association

FROM THE retail chair

Hello Retailers!

T

he retail world is constantly changing and evolving. While watching CNBC’s new show, “5 Day Biz Fix” with Chrissy and Erik Kopplin, I heard a quote from Chrissy that stuck with me: “You adapt or you die.” These are strong words, but something that every hobby retail store owner has to be thinking about in our ever-changing world. The game industry is changing more rapidly than it ever has in the past. So, these words cut deeper than they ever have before.

The GAMA Retail Division has been talking to members about what their biggest challenges are. We want to know if they feel it is time to change the way they do business and what that might look like. By now, you have all received at least one survey in this regard. We will be using that data to structure programming for GAMA Expo and through 2020.

Areas of impact that spawned the focus were

communication from a large number of retailers indicating that unbalanced MAPP enforcement, increasing competition from publishers focusing on selling directly to consumers with unbalanced promotions, and more have had them feeling frustrated for some time.

We also want to make sure that you are receiving the survey data as well. We hope to publish the results of the surveys along with some ideas to help retailers strengthen and grow their businesses. The GAMA Retail Division Board is looking forward to 2020 and we hope you are as well.

Dawn Studebaker Retail Chair Game Manufacturers Association

winter 2020 • AROUND THE table 7

Solo Games

Can They Work in Retail?

W

hen I designed Hostage Negotiator, I was truly of the belief that a true single player game would never sell in retail. We put the game on Kickstarter and hoped to make enough to make a few hundred copies for a handful of passionate solo gamers.

To my amazement, the game overfunded and we were able to produce a 2,000 copy print run.

Although I was skeptical, my fulfillment agent convinced me to sell the game into distribution. He said it was something different and why not see what happens? Publishing as a side hustle at the time, I thought, what do I have to lose?

Hostage Negotiator (MSRP $24.99) is a

8 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

By A.J. Porfirio, President of Van Ryder Games

1-player game that plays in about 15-20 minutes. It is very thematic and after playing the game the player feels like they just watched a Hollywood hostage film.

Some of the villains (or abductors as they are called) in the game and expansion packs are even inspired by films such as “John Q” and “The Negotiator.”

With its unique theme, easy rules, and short play time, Hostage Negotiator sold out of that initial print run within

a few months and became an evergreen.

It is still a big seller for Van Ryder Games today. Its success still amazes me. It has multiple expansion packs that let players add new content at their own pace for less than 10 bucks each (Abductor Packs #1 - #8: MSRP $8.99 each). There is also a standalone expansion with a larger box (Hostage Negotiator: Crime Wave MSRP $34.99) that holds all of the content for the game in one place!

So, can a solo game work in retail?

YES! Whether it is Hostage Negotiator, our Graphic Novel Adventures game books (10 different books! MSRP $22.99 each), or one of the many other great solo games available to you from other publishers, make sure you have some great solo games available for your customers.

The solo community is one of the most passionate communities in all of gaming.

Treat them right, and they will pay you back tenfold!

In Frontier Wars, take control of one of the four most relevant factions in World War 2 and recreate battles of the largest military clash in history. Manage your resources, make bold tactical maneuvers, and forge alliances that meet your interests.

Fight smart and stay sharp; the end of the battle can arrive at the most unexpected moment!

The game includes 100 fully detailed miniatures, 90 cards that will make each game unique, and a modular battle field for a new experience every time!

2-4 PLAYERS

30-120 MINUTES AGES

12+

Will you send out your bees to gather resources for the hive, or will you spend your precious resources to make valuable honey? Bees: The Secret Kingdom is a deceptively simple game with STUNNING artwork that takes only minutes to learn, and with both a family AND advanced mode included, its perfect for gamers of all types and ages!

2-6 players

30

minutes ages

10+

MEMBERFEATUREMEMBERFEA Member Feature

R&R Games Frank DiLorenzo

How did you get into the hobby games industry?

I’ve been designing games since I was 12, and also treasure hunts, which are a particular passion of mine. In the early Nineties, I had designed a game focusing on a treasure hunt and my friends liked it. At the time I had just sold my first business and was looking for what to do next. So I tried to get my game published by taking it to established game companies.But as an unknown designer it was tough to get it before the right people. Eventually I decided if I couldn’t get it to be published by a game company, maybe I would publish it on my own. So that’s when I decided to start a game company. It was a long and hard learning experience, but definitely a fun ride. Some of the best friends in my life I met in this industry.

How do you introduce nongamers to the hobby?

Simple, I break out a game!

Usually something fairly simple and easy to jump into playing with little explanation. Party games or card games are great for that. Then gradually offer them more choices to fit what they are interested in trying.

What advice would you give to a publisher that’s just starting?

Heh, there’s tons of info I could think of that fits this question.

Probably the most key thing is don’t expect an overnight success. It usually takes longer than you expect and serious effort. Secondly, test the heck out of your products! Get unbiased opinions from focus test groups, not just from your friends. Examine your games from every possible angle and edit the rules repeatedly. You want the end result to be as polished and flawless as possible. The time spent doing it can turn a ‘meh’ average game into one with staying power and longer lifespan. Not to mention a more fun and satisfying experience for the consumer.

10 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

What is one aspect of your business you’re proud of?

That we survived and grew from just one game to a full fledged publishing company with hundreds of titles. Back when I started, it seemed like 10 to 20 new game companies started every year. Within three years, most folded. We bucked those odds and continued to grow and expand, adding more and more games each year.

What’s your favorite game to demo to customers?

Probably Time’s Up! It’s fast and easy to explain and always brings a smile to people’s faces.

What’s the story behind your company name?

I’ve hidden a series of treasure hunts throughout many of our games and other places.

Some easy, some far more challenging. The harder it is to solve, the bigger the prize.

The biggest hunt that is still unsolved is for what does R&R actually stand for... Solve that one and there’s a substantial prize that beats out all the prizes we’ve given out for the other treasure hunts. And we’ve given out some pretty great prizes including cash and a trip to Florida. There are a lot of clues out there for it, you just have to follow the path.

How has GAMA helped grow your business?

It’s been a great way to connect with the specialty hobby and games stores market. Also excellent for staying in contact and cooperation with likeminded publishers in our industry. Early on, GAMA was really instrumental in getting us noticed as a fledgling company and helping us learn the ropes of the industry.

ATUREMEMBERFEATUREMEMB Member Feature

Flying Leap Games Molly Zeff

How did you get into the hobby games industry?

I had an unusual start: I got into the industry because I decided years ago, around my 26th birthday, that I needed to write a book or invent something to pay for business school, which I planned to attend in 3-5 years and happened to be extremely expensive. First, I started writing a book on how to fail well, and then I realized I needed to fail more before I wrote it. So that summer, I set my mind on inventing a game instead, inspired by the “Would You Rather” Book, in which you give answers to ridiculous funny questions. I thought, adults make up these questions; they’re paid to sit around and be weird all day. I could be weird all day! I decided to make a game in which you get out of ridiculous situations using funny resources. That’s how Wing It, our first game, was born. I went full-time years later, in 2017, after being laid off of a new job, and my cofounder and I are still at it inventing games!

How do you introduce nongamers to the hobby?

At a high level, I introduce people to the hobby simply by inventing games that are easy to learn, easy to share with non gamers in your life, and can be enjoyed by anyone.

More specifically, I’ve introduced people who aren’t “gamers” through game nights. I’ll invite tons of friends, including both gamers and folks who don’t play games often. Many of these friends have never been to a game night at a board game store, so bringing them into a home to play games is simple and accessible.

What advice would you give to a publisher that’s just starting?

First of all, go to GAMA Expo! If you want to make a game on Kickstarter and not get into retail, that’s perfectly fine - go for it! But if you want to start a publishing company, even with just one game, and you want to see your game spread, then try to get into retail. One of the MOST important first steps you can take to expand into retail is to go to GAMA Expo. More specifically,

make sure you network with consolidators and make an effort to really get to know retailers and other people in the industry by playing games together and laughing together. You’ll gain a wonderful network of friends who are so much more than simply people who might buy your products. I’ve even stayed at the homes of three retailers I met at the show!

Also, ask retailers for advice often. My retailer friends have played a huge role in the growth of our company and even in “small” factors like the reality that the back of the box should have a summary of your game. The big lesson? Get to know retailers through GAMA and in-person visits to stores, get advice, and listen to it as much as you can.

What is one aspect of your business you’re proud of?

I’m proud of the close-knit relationships I’ve built over time with retailers, many of whom have become friends and who support our company with advice, jokes, and so on. I believe building a business is ideally about so much more than buying and selling; it’s about creating a network of friends.

What’s your favorite game to demo to customers?

Wing It Beyond! because the Situations, Resources, and Surprise cards are even quirkier overall than the original Wing It. What’s the story behind your company name?

Flying Leap Games stems from the idea that risk-taking and taking a leap of faith is in our DNA! Becoming a full-time entrepreneur and investing my life savings in our company was certainly a flying leap!

How has GAMA helped grow your business?

GAMA helped our business initially grow from about 10 to nearly 60 stores in 4 weeks in 2018! The story involves a group of retailers, a bar in Reno, a block of cheese, and hours of playing and getting advice from them at GAMA Expo. Ask me for the story if you see me at the show this year! winter 2020 • AROUND THE table 11

Organizing a Narrative Tournament Where

Everyone Wins!

By Chris Birch, Publisher & CCO of Modiphius Entertainment

H

ow can you run an event that isn’t truly competitive? That doesn’t build the tension of who’s going to claim the top prize? I’m sure you all have your tried and tested tournament games that are guaranteed to put bums on seats but as we’re seeing there’s a new wave of games that aren’t just you vs me, they’re about telling stories together. Whether that’s a co-op board game, miniatures

game or card game it’s a big audience that the classic tournament games just aren’t reaching because they’re so laser focused on competitive gameplay.

Tournament games appeal to a certain type of player, whether a friendly event or hardcore competitive show with hard fought over prizes with various forms of versus battles to whittle the entrants down to one or more winners.

12 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

Tournament Events are also usually designed to encourage purchases within the community in preparation or even on the day.

What if there’s a whole other audience yearning for a reason to drop in to your store and get involved in an exciting story, have those ‘wow!’ moments without the competition, and spend some money? Events are a reason for players to show off their collection, a reason to get those minis glued together and even painted.

They’re a reason for serious players to invest in multiple armies (or card decks) to give them different competitive edges in miniatures games, or customised decks for card games.

There’s been plenty of tournaments that have awards for the best painted army, best scenery, most helpful players and so on but is it possible get similar results from a co-op or narrative based event? You might want to check my article on narrative in gaming in the last issue, but I really believe story based events could bring in a whole new audience for you.

For example why not plan a co-op gaming day where you display some of

the hottest co-op titles, from card games to board games and miniatures? Give a different audience a reason to come along. Make sure you’ve got a member of staff or some volunteers who know some or all of those titles on offer to help customers decide, and of course a chance to play one or more if you have demo copies.

Narrative miniatures events can reward completion of the missions, a deadline for completing the scenario, achieving objectives that were not crucial to victory, keeping certain characters or units alive, discovering hidden plots and so on. Leagues could be run with teams who have the most victory points based on achievements going through to the final table, or simply let everyone take part. Wouldn’t it be great to be previewing the first part of a new narrative product that you happen to be launching in store that day?

Fallout: Wasteland Warfare’s Organised Play packs have achievement driven gaming objectives for narrative play, with the new Raider set launching this month with hot pink Raider Luck dice. As we roll out the new Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms miniatures game in late March, which also features solo/ co-op and versus gameplay we’re also planning non-competitive story-driven organised play sets with achievement driven gaming objectives, linked team campaigns, and participation prizes for all attendees.

This isn’t an A-Z of how to run narrative events, it’s something we’re committed to developing, and with your help and feedback, refining into another major event stream to support this new area of our great hobby. I hope this inspires you to look beyond the competitive tournament to see the potential for expanding your events.

How to Demo

By Justin De Witt, Chief Creative Officer of Fireside Games

S

tringamajig is a party game that mixes the creativity of a drawing game with the hilarity of charades and draws a crowd every time it hits a table.

To make sure it’s also a success in your store:

Set the Stage

Lay out a demo copy of the game. Leave a few cards face up so customers can see the word lists. Make a fun shape out of the string. (Try making a shape that’s on one of the faceup cards.)

Make the Pitch. Tell interested customers: “Stringamajig is a party game that’s part drawing game, part charades.

You’ll get 60 seconds to use a loop of string to draw a shape, move it around, and interact with it to try and get the other players to guess your word. You’re trying to get them to guess as many words as you can in that 60 seconds.”

Play the Game

Choose a word. Draw a card and keep it hidden. Explain to customers that you will choose your word by looking at the back of the card that’s now on the top of the deck.

The numbers shown on THAT card are the words you can choose from on YOUR card.

Showing the backs of a few other cards will demonstrate the different possible choices.

Draw a word. Tell customers that after they choose their word, they will be drawing it with the string and the other players will be trying to guess that word.

14 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

They’ll have 60 seconds to get the other players to guess as many drawings as possible.

Emphasize that a lot of the fun of the game comes in interacting with the string.

Encourage them to act out the use of the object they are drawing. For example, if they draw a guitar, they can strum it. If they draw an octopus, they can move the tentacles. If they draw a helicopter, they can show the rotors spinning. The game really shines here, so the sillier or more creative, the better.

Two key rules are that they can’t make any sounds and at least part of the string must be touching the table. The other players call out their ideas and when a player guesses the word correctly, they get the card.

The current player draws a new card, moving on to their next drawing.

Let customers know there are 3 types of Challenge Words in the game that are harder to draw, but worth 2 points.

1. 2-Player: Make your drawing in the air with another player.

2. Don’t Look: Draw with your eyes closed.

3. Forbidden Word: The wrong guess costs you a card.

Score. Each word guessed correctly is 1 point to the drawer and 1 to the guesser.

Challenge words are 2 points for the drawer, 1 for the guesser, and 1 to the player who helped with a 2-player word.

A full game ends after everyone has had 2 turns as the drawer (1 turn in a 7+ player game). The player with the most points wins.

Attention! Front Line

NO KOMRADES!

By Brian Niro, Director of Anvil Eight Games

F

ront Line No Komrades is a delightfully cut-throat variant on the casual party and group game genres.

In FLNK, players assume the role of Komrades – hapless conscripts who have been forcefully marched off to the front by their merciless Kommissar. Each round, any one of a deep assortment of misfortunes from the Incoming! Deck is launched at the Komrades. Your conscript’s job is to stay in the game by avoiding damage and by making sure your “Komrades” get the worst of it.

With friends like these, who needs Komrades?

Oh!?!

Front Line No Komrades is a line movement, card action, and player elimination party game with cascading damage that prevents any one player from resting too long.

FLNK is a party game that can be played and enjoyed by children, teens, and adults alike. We found that it was often the case that party games were restricted to one age group, and that didn’t seem like the best option to us! So we have designed FLNK to be both approachable and endearing.

At the end of the day, Front Line No Komrades is tailored for anyone looking for a light game that doesn’t inundate players with volumes of rules and false complexity. There is depth to the strategy of FLNK, but that depth can be very quickly explored and easily navigated.

Did you say “group therapy session”?

Players should expect some light-hearted fun with their family and friends! We recommend approaching the game in a friendly-aggressive manner for the most laidback, disruptive, and joyous play style. Think of it as a group therapy session. Friendly 16 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

grudges will be created and others resolved while your poor Komrades endure their tribulations on the tabletop.

Because the typical game of FLNK will take between 15 to 40 minutes, depending on the number of Komrades and the player familiarity with the rules and game contents, players are able to play several games in very little time at all.

Wait… There’s more?

But of course!

Oxna Bears All is a brilliant expansion for the hit card game Front Line No Komrades. Oxna continues the fast-paced card game of survival, but offers new expansive play possibilities, including several fun new Komrades and quirky new equipment.

Most importantly, Oxna Bears All offers new ways to play the basic game – with unique missions for your rag-tag group of conscripts as well exceptionally compelling options for cooperative play and linked campaigns. The expansion includes Scenario cards, dangerous new Incoming! Cards, new Characters, Equipment, Maneuvers, and Events.

And more???

Jawohl!

Kameradenschweine is another mesmerizing new expansion for the hit card game Front Line No Komrades.

Kameradenschweine has been a labor of love from creator Will Conway and award-winning artist Kwanchai Moriya, who has created an entirely new cast of conscripts and Kommandant for the No Komrades core game. The expansion includes new Scenario cards, thematic new Incoming! Cards, a whole new cast of Characters, Maneuvers, Events, and Equipment (requires Front Line No Komrades to play).

2 layer

P

d r a Bo S E GAM Games You and Your Significant Other Can Play Together!

by Kristina and Vaughn Reynolds of I’m A Social Gamer

A

s single gamers, we have a lot more leeway with what kind of games we can sit down and play, mostly due to time availability.

But as the years go on and we take on more responsibilities, our gaming time has a tendency to diminish. If you’re lucky enough to cross paths with someone you want to spend a lot of time with and they also play games... it’s truly a blessing. The time you can carve away might not be as long as before but it is, at least to us, far more fulfilling than gaming on my own.

We have decided to put our favorite 2 player game lists together primarily based on what we can actually get to the table. Our collection is well over 200 games, but certain ones keep getting back to the table over others. And rather than listing the player count, playtime, and all the general info on these games, we 18 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

are going to give our thoughts on why we love these games!

Kristina’s Top 5:

1. Duelosaur Island is a fun, relatively quick 2-player game that is as light or as deep as you want to make it. It’s possible to let the flashy ’80s vibes, fun dice rolls, and dinosaurs overtake your senses, but beyond the fun theme, there is a fair amount of strategy behind which resources and cards to select!

2. I really love 7 Wonders Duel.

It's a very smart, light to medium, highly strategic game. It plays out in three ages and the cards you select in the first and second ages have benefits in the third. It’s fun to explore the different roads to victory, including a “take that” element that you mustn’t ignore or you'll be overcome by oncoming forces!

but without any ‘take-that’ elements between players. It's a crunchy game that requires you to think and plan very carefully. When you don’t, you feel the pain very directly when that perfect card and ability combo comes up and you have nowhere to put it in your town. I highly recommend this to couples who want a game that doesn’t involve them beating each other up at all.

3. Near and Far is like Dungeons & Dragons Lite, it’s great. We went through the whole campaign sitting next to each other, adventuring, building camps and gathering resources. Highly immersive and just so much fun!

4. Wingspan is one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing. Every detail in this game is attended to: the neat and tidy play of the game itself, the graceful illustrations of the birds, the fun factoids at the bottom of the cards! I would play this game every day if I could, it’s that lovely!

5. Clank! is a game that scratches many an itch, it’s a deckbuilder, it has a huge game board to explore, there’s a press your luck element to it, there are lots of things going on and they all work together to create a fun game (unless you can’t escape in time!).

Vaughn’s Top 5:

1. Star Realms is my most-played 2-player game by a long shot, with over 2k games played on the app and physical version. However, both players will have to be okay with the take-that style of play. My advice: never take it personally. It’s a tight competitive game and is gloriously balanced, extremely well-designed, and has great art!

2. I was lucky enough to pick up a prototype of Fantastic Factories from the folks at Tantrum House at Origins Game Fair 2018. Little did I know it would be such a hit and after over 20 plays it’s edging into being in my all-time Top 10 games. The use of the dice as resource generation along with the cards for the tableau-building works seamlessly together.

3. 51st State and Imperial Settlers are on opposite sides of the same coin. They have all the same core mechanics, but some differences in theme make owning both worthwhile. 51st State scratches our post-apocalyptic itch, while Imperial Settlers scratches our 4x/ historical itch. Both are great resource management games with a lot of variety to keep it fresh.

4. Welcome To... is an extremely smart ‘town building’ game where players are building simultaneously,

5. I had heard all the hype about Wingspan, but wasn’t introduced to it until a friend brought it over for us to play. Their copy is decked out with custom-woven nests, unique bird meeples for each player color, and it DEFINITELY hooked us. We got a copy for ourselves and, even though it's “just” the base game, it’s still quite gorgeous. Having 170 unique bird cards in the game makes sure that every single game feels fresh and new without the gameplay changing drastically.

We hope to have introduced you to some games you can get to the table with your friends or significant other!

And we’ love to hear your favorites as well. Just stop on by facebook.com/ groups/imasocialgamer/ and let us know!

Welcome to

Sorcerer City!

By Derek Funkhouser, Game Development Manager of Skybound

C

ity building is a tough job. You plan the perfect layout.

You agonize over the details, and things never quite go exactly as planned. Do you wish you had the chance to start over? Tear everything down and start fresh?

Every year, Sorcerer City is built and rebuilt in magical new ways, with city blocks moving and rotating in crazy directions.

You and your fellow players are rival wizard architects in charge of building your city district over five years, expanding and rebuilding to gain the most Money, Influence, Raw Magic, and Prestige. Unfortunately, Sorcerer City has a bit of a monster problem, so you must work hard to mitigate the effects of marauding creatures that attack your district.

20 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

Building your city each year may sound simple, but did we mention the timer each player must overcome? Players have just two minutes in which they construct their city districts.

They will face agonizing layout decisions, and creatures that will attempt to ruin their best-laid plans.

After players have finished, they’ll take a step back and admire their work. The Wizard who earned the most influence will receive a special reward. But before this winner is determined each Wizard will have a chance to convert their raw magic into a different resource, possibly stealing the lead from one of their competitors!

After the yearly rewards, each player will have the opportunity to add new tiles from the market into their city tile deck. In Sorcerer City, players are managing their city districts through a new combination of tile laying and deckbuilding; talk about a magical combination! Before the year ends, all Wizards are awarded prestige they’ve collected during the round. Prestige is vital and determines who will become the next Head Wizard!

After each round, all players will gain monster tiles. Each monster has an ability that will wreak havoc upon your city, and only a cunning Wizard can overcome its power and soften the destruction to their city.

Thankfully, as a magician, each player can tear down and reconstruct their city each year. Perhaps they’ve added a magical rainbow tile that exists as all colors, or they’ve purchased a powerful scoring that will help them win the yearly rewards.

One thing is for certain, the future is bright for Sorcerer City, and a fresh start each year will allow them to arrange their city districts in the best possible patterns to ensure their success!

Like all Druid City Games, the experience of Sorcerer City is not only unique, but also highly dynamic. The variety of tiles means that players will never experience the same game twice, and the variance in deckbuilding allows players the freedom to create a city of their choosing.

You can find Sorcerer City in your local gaming store now!

1-6 players Ages 14+ 45-60 minutes

A board game that combines tile-laying, deck-building, a casual timed element, and a lot of strategic planning!

www.skybound.com/tabletop

Available now!

www.druidcitygames.com

OFF TO

New Adventures!

A storytelling game of a special kind: The designers report about the development of Adventure Island

By Nadine Wohlfart, PR & Content Marketing for Pegasus Spiele

O

h, it could have been so great! A long and comfortable journey on a luxurious ship.

But now the players are sitting on the dusty ground of a desert island. What happened? On their way to India their ship got hit by a storm and sank. With their last bit of strength and a huge amount of luck, they made it to the banks of this island. After recovering both from the exhausting efforts and the shock of suffering shipwreck, they soon have to face the dangers of this inhospitable place. They have no idea which dangers await them on the island and hunger and thirst are growing fast. Therefore, there is no other way to survive than to explore Adventure Island and find a way home.

In Adventure Island, players have to work together to get through the biggest adventure of their life: to survive on a desert island after being stranded there.

For this purpose, they have to master five adventures. At the beginning basic needs like shelter, fire and food are in the foreground. But it soon becomes clear that the island isn´t as deserted as presumed and finding new friends who will help the players to survive becomes important. Meanwhile players get to know the island better and better with its inhabitants, mysterious strangers and secrets. And finally, there can be only one goal – leaving the island and returning home, right?

22 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

The two designers of Adventure Island, Michael Palm and Lukas Zach, summarize the game principle in their designers´ diary: “In Adventure Island, two to five players take on the roles of castaways and try to survive on an island full of secrets, supernatural mysteries, and terrible dangers by relying on good teamwork and collective decision making.” In addition, they report about the development process and how they came up with the idea of designing a narrative game with a series of game sessions, each of which strongly influences the course of things. The foundation stone of this idea certainly is their passion

for roleplaying and the wish to make this experience available for a broader audience. Therefore, the rules had to be easy enough for finding an immediate way into the game.

Although Palm and Zach report that the first test sessions were a complete success, there were also problems to overcome. Amid the developing process a new trend on the game market came up: narrative games. Nevertheless, along with the Pegasus Spiele editorial staff they decided to take the time to put as much fine-tuning into the game as they had originally planned. One essential feature was changed during the development, however: Originally the game had been planned as one long chapter with different endings. After test sessions have revealed that players were satisfied with finding only one ending instead of playing the same story again to experience every ending, the game was structured into episodes with their own goals. Therefore, players can now decide for themselves if they rather want to venture into the next episode or if they want to replay the last one to discover more secrets and to improve their preparation for the things to come.

In the end, Adventure Island is a cooperative and narrative adventure game that is played episodically and that is set apart from the trend of one-shot storytelling games.

TM

As Weavers of Fate you can pause time and jump to specific moments in a deceased person’s life to undo their tragic death!

Contact us to place an order:

sales@pegasus-web.com

Designing

by Ted Alspach, game designer

W

ithin a few weeks of Silver’s initial design, I knew this wouldn’t be a one-off card game. However, it took several months to refine the concept of the initial game and its follow-up games, and to come up with a way to tie all of them together.

At its core, Silver is a fairly simple game. Each player starts with five facedown cards in their “village,” of which they get to view two. The goal is to have the lowest sum by the end of the round (the numbers on the cards represent werewolves... you don’t want a lot of those hanging out). Players can trade their highvalue cards for lower values from the deck or discard pile, and even exchange pairs, three of a kind, etc. for a single card to reduce the number of cards.

The game gets interesting, and fairly addictive, when you give every card a special power, allowing you to do things like view facedown cards, exchange cards with opponents, and other abilities that help you to reduce your sum. If you dare to “call for a vote” during a round and end up with the lowest sum of anyone playing,

24 AROUND THE table • fall 2019

as a Series of Games you receive zero points and get to use the special silver token on the next round, which gives you another powerful ability.

The first game in the line, Silver, contains introductory cards that let players focus on learning their cards and their opponent’s cards, as well as some basic additional capabilities. The second game, Silver Bullet, ups the ante by including additional interactive cards, allowing you to do more with your opponents and to develop card combos.

The third game, Silver Coin, coming this spring, introduces new abilities for flipping and turning cards, and has more exciting combo possibilities to discover and use. The fourth game, due in summer 2020, adds a layer of strategy, with defensive options and new planning capabilities. The fifth Silver game arrives in the fall, and has ways to leverage your opponent’s capabilities. Each game has a unique silver token in it, and even more Silver games are due in 2021!

To make the games work well together, individual numbers tend to be similar from game to game. For

instance, the 11 and 12 cards in all games allow you to directly interact with your opponent’s cards, while the 7s always provide a method for you to learn about your own hidden cards. Once you have more than one Silver game, you can swap numbers from different games to create a set of cards that works perfectly for your game group. In addition to making each game feel different, because the swapped numbers are similar in some ways, players can quickly grasp the changes brought on by the new cards. The learning curve for the initial Silver game is pretty shallow, but each successive Silver game is easier to learn, even though each game includes fourteen new, unique abilities.

As a designer, working on the Silver series of games has been incredibly rewarding; each game has its own personality, and some card abilities do things you wouldn’t expect in such a “simple” card game. But they all fit together really well. For players, the toughest part of Silver will be “which cards should we play with?” because you can’t go wrong with any combination of Silver cards!

beziergames.com

Counterfeiting is CHEATING Renegade’s experience with counterfeit board games

By Scott Gaeta, President & Publisher, Renegade Game Studios

F

ake copies of popular consumer goods have been a problem for decades. It seems if something is popular enough there are people who will counterfeit those items and try to pass them off as 26 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

the real thing. Handbags, trading cards, perfume, toys, watches, jackets, shoes, shirts, and many more items have been counterfeited over the years. I had dealt with these issues before when making collectible card games and the sports

card industry was plagued by it for years.

Upper Deck came to be largely because they had a solution to counterfeit sports cards back in the late ’80s.

Sometimes consumers of these items know they are buying fakes and don’t even

mind. They rationalize it by saying they can’t afford a real one or they are saving money this way. Others never know they’ve been taken. Often paying top dollar for something and getting a fake.

With the recent rise in boxed game sales this has become a huge problem in our industry. Most games are made from simple materials such as paper, cardstock, and wood. Plastics are tougher and more expensive to knock-off but if the demand is high enough it’s not out of the question.

Last year we had one of our games counterfeited and being sold online.

The first indicator was the price was ridiculously low. When we looked at the seller it was a 3rd party with no history. A brand-new account. We first discovered this on Amazon. We ordered copies to inspect.

At first glance the copies were pretty decent but once you looked closely you see glaring differences in quality and production. We immediately contacted Amazon and they shut the seller down.

Then the seller popped back up under another account. We shut that one down too. And the game of whack-a-mole was on. Our strategy here was to be so diligent in policing this and shutting them down quickly that we wouldn’t be worth it. We shut down a few more and this went on for a couple of months.

We also put out messaging to the gaming community that news was circulating to of this bargain price that these were not real copies of the game.

The old adage that if something is too good to be true, it probably is, was certainly relevant here.

In working with Amazon, they made us aware of a new program they were testing and invited us to participate. The program is called Transparency. The way it works is that we print unique codes on our games. These codes are issued by Amazon in advance and tied to a specific game. Every copy of the game has a unique code. Any game without a code will never make it to a customer through their platform. Customers can scan codes to verify the product is authentic no matter where it is purchased from.

So far, we have rolled out this program on many of our games and it has worked very well. Other platforms can still be a challenge but when you cut off the world’s largest online retailer from the options these counterfeiters can use, it makes our games a much less attractive target. Any platform that allows third party sellers has potential for abuse. We’ve even heard of counterfeiters reaching out to individual brick and mortar stores trying to sell them fake games. I don’t think this is very widespread in North America or Europe but in other parts of the world many products are sold openly on the streets and in stores.

Another factor that has made these counterfeits viable is the agreements between global postal systems. The short explanation is that underdeveloped countries were not up charged by

wealthier countries to move mail that originates overseas to their final domestic destination. A counterfeit seller in China can advertise their fake on eBay and get away with only charging a few dollars (or free shipping) for a package that weighs less than 4.4 pounds all the way to New Jersey. In turn shipping the same item back to China would cost $25 - $100 depending on the service you choose. The original intent of this program was for mail to move easily and freely around the world. For lesser developed nations to be able to communicate and not be locked out because of their lower economies and personal incomes. But with the rise of e-commerce and online selling platforms it has become a pipeline for fake goods.

Luckily this program is going away and its demise should help curb the flow of fake goods being shipped directly from the source to consumers.

The other part of counterfeit prevention and policing is our customers.

Our original problem was verified quickly by our customers. We were able to gather information from those that unknowingly purchased fake copies. For that we are thankful that they came forward and helped in our investigation to identify the source.

My advice to publishers would be to look into programs like Transparency and Brand Registry on both Amazon and eBay. Your intellectual property and trademarks can only be protected by you or your agents. As gamers, it’s on us to do our due diligence and report these fakes when we suspect them.

Counterfeiters are cheats and gamers hate cheats.

Additional Reading

theatlantic.com/technology/ archive/2018/10/trump-changes-terminaldues-and-epacket-rates/573337/ brandservices.amazon.com/transparency govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG114hhrg95389/html/CHRG-114hhrg 95389.htm winter 2020 • AROUND THE table 27

How to Play

By Sal Hernandez, Art Director, Ringtail Cafe Productions

C

ryptid Codex is a quick-paced, easy to learn card game for two to six players. Players take the roles of cryptid hunters trying to prove the existence of cryptids. To do so, they’ll have to use the evidence and tools at their disposal to outwit their fellow players and capture monsters. Cryptid Codex is published by Ringtail Cafe Productions.

How To Play Cryptid Codex

Gameplay is simple and fairly intuitive.

The game comes with two decks: a Monster Deck and a Capture Deck. To start the game, both decks are shuffled and the players are dealt five cards each from the

Capture Deck as their starting hand.

The two decks are then placed on the table, face down. Then the top monster from the Monster Deck is drawn and played face-up on the table.

Players take turns, drawing a card from the Capture Deck and playing a Capture Card from their hand onto the monster.

The monster has a Capture Total on the card and the value of the cards played onto the monster by the players is tallied as they’re played. The total value of the Capture Cards adds up until someone plays a card that meets or exceeds the monster’s Capture Total. That person captures the monster and adds it to their own pile. A new monster is drawn from the Monster Deck and play continues.

The mechanic is simple but Capture Cards and Monster Cards have effects on them which lead to more complexity.

Monsters may be immune to certain types

of cards or have other abilities. Capture Cards let players mess with each other or strategically add to the point totals.

While playing, players may capture well-known cryptids like Bigfoot as well as more obscure creatures. There are also Hoax Monsters in the deck who don’t count toward victory.

The game ends when one of the players reaches three captured monsters.

Gameplay generally takes between 15 and 30 minutes, the time can be adjusted by changing the number of monsters needed to win.

Visuals

The artwork for Cryptid Codex is bright and colorful, with a playful, comic book inspired look. The card text has a humorous tongue-in-cheek tone. Each card is unique, with no duplicates and there are several recurring characters that imply a bigger universe to the cards.

The Monster and Capture Cards have nods to actual cryptozoology as well as referencing portrayals of cryptozoology and the paranormal seen in pop culture. The entire game is a loving parody of the genre.

Want to prove the existence of Bigfoot by using a Cheesegrater of Destiny, or go toe to toe with aliens armed only with your massive twitter following? You can! In this game, anything is possible!

Conclusion

Cryptid Codex is a quick, casual game.

It may not be ideal for someone who prefers longer or more complex fare but is great for family game nights, for gamers who want to play with non-gamer friends, or for fans of the weird world of cryptozoology.

28 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

Build Your Community with Game Rustlers

By Mac Senour, Game Rustlers Evangelist

E

very store has regulars. Those fine folks you can count on day in and day out to show up with gaming on their mind. But every store wants to expand that base. Show me a store with 12 regulars, and I’ll show you a store that wants 20 regulars. Further, I’ll show you a store that wants to expand beyond their current space to accommodate those new people.

That’s a day and night difference.

But how do we do that?

And as the store, you have a new member of your community… that’s how it grows from 12 to 20 and beyond.

Customers can add games when they’re short a player or two, and you as the store owner can manage the space, giving them permission based on space available. If all the tables are booked at their preferred time, so you can suggest a new time right in Game Rustlers.

You can link games in a series (like RPG campaigns), single games, or game demos.

You can even link to games with paid tickets. Game Rustlers is a portal to your online shop.

Use Game Rustlers to build your community through notifications for a game, a group, or game type. For example, you can send an email to all customers who love fantasy games.

We do it by ensuring that the customers will have a seat at the table. Ever try to get a friend to come along to an event, that you may or may not actually be able to attend? Impossible. What if you could tell that friend, you made reservations, and you BOTH have a seat?

Now with Game Rustlers, you can make reservations for you and up to 4 friends.

Reserve a seat at the hottest game of the season, and KNOW you’re going to play.

What a fun night!

Gaming with friends!

Game Rustlers adds games to your existing Google Calendar on your site, where customers can make reservations from from that page, even if they don’t have an account with us.

Is a player running late? No problem, send them a reminder text message through Game Rustlers that their game is starting soon. You, as the game organizer, can set this up as an automatic reminder or as a one time message to a single player.

Game Rustlers has the tools to build your customer base through building community. Sign up for the 3 month free trial!

30 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

Booth Booth 436 436 for for the the GAMA GAMA trade trade show show

A A board board game game reservation reservation service service for for all all your your special special events, events, tournaments tournaments and and weekly weekly game game calendars. calendars.

We’ll #savemeaseat We’ll Save Save A A Seat Seat For For you you #savemeaseat

Gamerustlers.com

BE THE HERO. SAVE THE REALM.

A

shadow rises over ancient Japan. Each night, storied terrors emerge from a dark gate to ravage the countryside. As all hope seems lost, a group of heroes stand together to fight back the Oni and their endless hordes.

Onimaru (Japanese for “demon circle”) is a fully cooperative game where you and your allies take up arms to defend a village against otherworldly invaders. You will win the game if you are able to destroy the three villainous Oni. However, if you fail to do so within the predetermined number of days (rounds), the Gate will remain open forever, and all of Japan will succumb to the shadow!

Each round begins with a preparation phase, where new enemies will appear from the Gate, and the Heroes may develop their skills. After that, each player will roll a set of dice and work together as a team to decide how to allocate, reroll, and sequence those dice. These dice can be used to attack your enemies directly, or combined in specific sets to execute powerful techniques. Finally, the Oni will roll its own dice to damage the Heroes, summon forth new Hordelings, and command those Hordelings in play to attack their targets.

Out of the box, you can choose to play the Heroes as recommended...or, through the use of GameTrayz technology, you can customize and store your own unique Heroes! Each Hero can be built with any 2 of the 16 included Techniques (and their accompanying cards), any 3 of the included 24 Skills, and any one of the 8 included Talents. Out of the box, over 1.9 million different combinations are possible!

32 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

The enemies also feature similar modularity. In each game, you will choose one of the three Oni to face of each Circle (difficulty tier). Each Oni is not only its own board, but also adds its own unique Attack cards and Hordeling cards to their respective deck.

When an Oni is defeated, those Attack and Hordeling cards remain in those decks, as it passes its abilities and dark allies along to empower the next Oni!

Onimaru will be available through Japanime Games and their distribution partners this Fall!

Unique Underground Adventures

By Sean Jacquemain, Marketing Manager, Burnt Island Games

F

or generations your kin have been banished from the sacred mountain that they called home. In a brutal war, the Gnomes were able to drive the rightful Troll owners from the underground world they had carved out for themselves and since then, your people have been scrounging for survival off the land. It was tough, but they were resilient. They kept one eye on the future and one eye on the mountain waiting for the chance to one day return. That day has come. A rumble shook the earth, and with a resounding crash, the mountain collapsed taking its own revenge on the invading forces. Now the mountain calls to you and your fellow Trolls. It’s time to return and restore it to its former glory. It’s finally time to go home.

In the Hall of the Mountain King (HotMK) is the second published game by Burnt Island Games, following a successful Kickstarter of Endeavor: Age of Sail in 2018.

HotMK was over 900% funded and the retail version will be coming to local gaming stores in February 2020.

In the game, you take on the role of Trolls trying to rebuild your ancestral mountain home. Each turn you either spend resources to build tunnels or hire new Trolls 34 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

to join your ‘Troolsmoot’.

One of the keystones of a Burnt Island Game is their unique approach to story and mechanics. HotMK, designed by Jay Cormier and Graeme Jahns, immediately caught the attention of owners Helaina and Josh Cappel. The game presents dual puzzles for players to figure out, each one a fresh take on a Euro-style game.

At its heart, HotMK is a resource management and area control game, however it approaches both aspects in very interesting ways.

The main board represents the mountain itself. Every player has their own entry point where they build their network of tunnels out from. The deeper your Trolls dig into the heart of the mountain, the more prestigious the layers you uncover. Through your tunnelling efforts, you may uncover resources, workshops, and even statues of ancient Troll leader from the past. The tunnels are represented by polyminos of various sizes and shapes. At the beginning of the game, the mountain seems like it will be big enough for everyone to expand their networks, but very quickly it becomes a race to control territory and block the competition.

To acquire the various resources in the games, each player hires workers to their own personal Trollsmoot. You can hire new Trolls from the horde to join your Moot. As you hire new Trolls, you place them above two on a lower level forming a pyramid-like

structure. Once a new Troll is added to your Trollsmoot, a cascade of resources occurs.

The new Troll receives the resources depicted on its card, and each Troll descending out beneath it also receives the resources on their card. However, as resources come, they are stored on the Trolls themselves. If you haven’t spent them by the time a cascade happens, you don’t receive that particular resource, making for a less than optimal hiring. It becomes an interesting timing puzzle, to decide when to hire a new Troll and when to spend your resources to clear space off the Trolls you already have.

Trollsmoots also work as a timer for the game. When a second player has capped their Moot, game end is triggered and everyone has two more turns to complete whatever projects they’ve been working on.

HotMK is one of those games where the rules are quite simple, but the decisions you have to make along the way can be excruciating. Finding the right time to make a bold expansion of your tunnel network, or to hire a Troll that gives you a resource you desperately need can lead your Troll clan to glory or disaster.

Burnt Island Games is quickly building a reputation as a publisher that takes risks to bring players something they’ve never seen before. HotMK is a perfect example of a game that approaches traditional mechanics in a whole new way. You can look for it in retail in February 2020.

KIDSTABLEBG.COM • CASUAL GAMES FOR SERIOUS GAMERS

AVAILABLE AT RETAIL NOW! BURNTISLANDGAMES.COM • STRATEGY TITLES LIKE NOTHING ELSE ON YOUR SHELF

h t u o Y Gone

By Justin Spicer

Gaming

How Publishers and Retailers are Bringing (and Keeping) Children to Board Gaming

D

espite its explosion in the last decade, as well as its entrance into the pop culture zeitgeist, board gaming is still searching for wholesale solutions to attract young gamers into the fold. While some publishers have ratcheted up the toy factor by leveraging vibrant design, exquisite miniatures, and innovative packaging, there’s still a group of gamers that may find itself largely ignored.

Even as the hobby and its surrounding industry has exponentially expanded, there is still a need to appeal to the youngest of gamers. For decades, publishers and retailers have coveted youth gamers to keep the hobby relevant, up to date, and dynamic.

Some have even dedicated themselves to catering to this specific niche.

However, times are changing. The toy factor of new games is largely aimed at seasoned gamers and collectors.

There is still a need to appeal to children to keep the hobby exciting and relevant for decades to come.

Thankfully, a host of publishers and retailers understand the benefits of 36 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

community building and being integral to a child’s development beyond a mere form of escapism.

One such publisher is Kids Table Board Gaming. Founded by industry veterans Josh and Helaina Cappel, their goal to attract children to gaming was by also making games that appeal to the adults in their lives. “From the beginning we’ve believed that we wanted to fill a space that no one else was filling,” explains Helaina. “So, we knew that the games not only needed to have aspects of them that were challenging enough for adults and simple enough for kids, but also had to look the part.”

Josh expounds further. “Nothing can be too gritty or mature, and likewise nothing can be too childish or silly. It’s a hard balance to strike...but generally we’ve kept the equilibrium we’re aiming for.” The results have yielded success for the publisher by combining Euro gaming ideas into child-friendly themes and gameplay.

The games fit the company’s motto of “Making casual games for serious gamers and serious games for casual

gamers.”

Family gaming stalwart HABA has also found new means to appeal to young gamers. It begins with the company’s tried-and-true yellow box games. “HABA is first and foremost a children’s toy company. If our products don’t appeal to younger kids, we’re not doing our jobs right!” exclaims Tiffany Caires, Games Manager for HABA USA. This ethos fuels everything HABA does. “The design process starts with the idea for something unique or interesting with the game components.”

Yet, HABA has evolved this philosophy with the emergence of its Game Night Approved line. “We still focus

on making engaging themes and components, but add more strategic play to those games, to give families more mentally-challenging play,” begins Tiffany. “All of our Game Night Approved games start with a simple idea that’s easy to learn, but the more you get into the game the more you realize there’s a layer of strategy you can engage with to best your opponents.”

It’s not just publishers who are reaching out to engage and excite children through unique and innovative gameplay that grows along with them.

Kathleen Donahue, proprietor of the popular Washington, D.C. store Labyrinth Games & Puzzles, has found success in keeping children’s interest by being active participants in the community. “We co-host events with local schools, local business development organizations (at the farmers’ market, play in public events, and city festivals), public libraries, colleges and universities, and more,” explains Donahue. Labyrinth also has taken their community-

building to the next level. “We run an afterschool game club program at twelve local schools, which has a weekly attendance of over 500 children aged 3-11.”

Labyrinth Games also invites children into the store for various events. Donahue describes some of their initiatives: “We run a monthly game class for beginning gamers called First Moves (3-5-year olds) as well as regular Pokémon card game classes, Magic the Gathering card game classes, and a monthly Kids’ Night Out Board Game Club.”

Cat and Mouse Games co-owner Linda Schmidt echoes these community-building experiences. “We host events especially for kids and their families, such as a weekly Pokémon League for kids, and a monthly Family Game Night. We also participate in a lot of family-friendly community events, and host events for schools and youth groups like the Girl Scouts.”

Interactivity with the local community is not just crucial for local board gaming stores, it’s central to publishers such

as IELLO. “We receive a lot of game prototypes. In order to screen them, we work with teachers who make time for game testing in the classroom weekly,” states IELLO representative Emma Recher. “Every Wednesday, we go to local elementary schools with at least five prototypes and play with children of all ages.”

IELLO has also mirrored the ideas of HABA via its new children’s gaming arm: LOKI. LOKI was created to “complement the IELLO catalog by offering games for younger players.

We want to offer a great range of experiences to kids, with smart mechanics, immersive visuals and quality material,” affirms Recher.

No matter how it is carried out, being integral in the lives of children as they grow up leaves a lasting impression that is hard for them to shake as young adults, and eventually as parents and members of many communities. Everyone seems to adhere to the same sentiment of togetherness.

“We’re happy to be part of something that brings people – and especially families – together,” laments Helaina Cappel. “Designing/publishing games has certainly brought our family together.” Husband Josh piggybacks of this sentiment: “I think the hobby attracts a good proportion of smart, creative, thoughtful adults. And those types of adults introduce their smart, creative, thoughtful kids to it. It perpetuates itself because board gaming is something you share with people in order to enjoy it.”

winter 2020 • AROUND THE table 37

Undaunted

North Africa

It’s the summer of 1940 and the North African Campaign has begun.

T

he Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), a reconnaissance and covert operations unit of the British Army, has just been formed, tasked with penetrating enemy lines to provide intel and stage raids. Lead these brave soldiers in a series of daring missions, or command the Royal Italian Army’s formidable forces to stamp out these incursions once and for all. Take charge amidst the chaos of desert warfare, outmanoeuvre the opposition across open sands and rocky terrain, and remain undaunted.

In Undaunted: North Africa you are in command of either a group of desert warfare specialists or a unit of the conventional Italian army. Across a series of missions, you must strive to claim, hold, or destroy key objectives. Each scenario has a different landscape of tiles, which you will have to master in order to gain advantageous positions and achieve your objectives. You will be playing cards from your personal deck to control your men, but as injuries mount you will have to bolster your deck with new cards to reinvigorate your tiring soldiers.

38 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

This game uses the popular Undaunted system, expanding upon the gameplay in many new and exciting ways.

Scale: in North Africa, each combat counter represents a single soldier, rather than a unit of soldiers. The game uses this zoomed-in sense of scale to reflect the unique attributes of each individual in the game.

Casualties: in North Africa, if a combat counter is removed from the board, all the corresponding combat cards are removed from the game. Combat counters that leave the board cannot spawn again, as they could in Normandy.

This means that combat is even more tense, exciting, and deadly than before.

Vehicles: North Africa introduces vehicles to the Undaunted system. Now your soldiers can operate tanks and jeeps to help them achieve their objectives. And the Italians even have access to reconnaissance aircraft.

Asymmetry: in most missions in North Africa, the objectives and unit composition of the LRDG and the Italian forces are far more asymmetrical than in Normandy. And since each counter now represents an individual rather than a unit, the game has new added asymmetry in each individual character in the game.

AVAILABLE THIS FEBRUARY FROM OSPREY GAMES

letTERPrEsS A CLEVER GAME OF WORDS

In this clever card game, compete with your rival wordsmiths to craft the most impressive words and win first pick of letters to add to your collection. Choose wisely, for you will find any you leave in the words of your opponents, and the player who uses their stored letters to greatest effect will spell victory.

Playable by up to six players, with solitaire rules pitting you against the industrious rotary printer, Letterpress offersa an enticing challenge for gamers and word-lovers alike.

Players: 1-6 Playing Time: 20 minutes Ages: 14+ Contents: 110 cards Price: U.S.$21.00 • ISBN: 978-1-4728-4110-0

Ospreypublishing.com

How to Demo

Wonderful WORLD

It’s a

By Anthony Boyd, Director of Sales and Marketing, Lucky Duck Games

I

t’s a Wonderful World is an exciting, accessible, and beautiful card drafting game that hits a home run for fans of games such as 7 Wonders and Century: Spice Road. Available in the U.S. from Lucky Duck Games, It’s a Wonderful World is proving to be a hit. We’d like to discuss how to present and demo It’s a Wonderful World in order to help you more effectively sell the title to your customers.

Before demoing this title in your store, please take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the rulebook, as this brief article doesn’t allow us enough time to cover the game rules indepth, though they are simple and fast to learn.

Set up the game board, then place the resource

cubes and Development Card deck in their appropriate places.

Give each player demoing the game an Empire Card, noting that for the demo, we will be using side A. Each Empire Card is unique on side A, so take the opportunity to explain to each player how their Empire generates resources and scores victory points.

Now, the rest of the demo comes down to simply playing a couple of rounds of the game! Deal seven Development Cards to each player, then begin a seven-card draft to the left for round one. Be sure to cover construction cost, victory points, card types, and recycling bonuses for Development Cards. After your draft, move on to the Planning and Production phases of the game.

For the Planning Phase, discuss once again the anatomy of the Development Cards. Show the players how planning ahead and constructing cards in a specific order can allow for greater rewards during the Production Phase.

Moving right along to the final phase of a round, the Construction Phase, enjoy watching each player collect resources and assign them to Development Cards to achieve their goals. One more round of all three phases, and your demo is complete.

The high accessibility of the title lets you demo the game for a round or two without cutting out any elements of gameplay.

Play through two rounds with your customers, and you should have a nice demo done in a short amount of time!

With easy and fast to learn rules, gorgeous artwork, a fun theme, and sleek table presence, It’s a Wonderful World is a delight to both play and sell.

A few simple pages for all you need to know.

40 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

Octahedrons

ON THE ROLL

By Maxim Istomin, CEO, CrowD Games, USA Office

L

et’s talk about dice. Dice are cool. They look like candies, very pleasant to touch and make this great clanking sound when rolled. Dice exist in almost all countries and cultures. We are quite used to a standard RPG dice set, you know, the little tube with D4 through D20.

But did you know that there are many more shapes of dice? For example, there are 13 Archimedean solids. The problem with them is that their faces are not identical (some square, some triangle, some hex) so the chance of rolling a particular number varies. This is why no one makes or uses them. But we decided to change that because we think those shapes are very beautiful.

We decided to use cuboctahedron (composed of 8 triangles and 6 squares) and truncated octahedron (composed of 8 hexes and 6 squares) in two of our games: Ganesha and Winter Queen. In those games, dice are not rolled (there are

no numbers or symbols on them). They represent precious stones or icicles – which is kind of what they look like.

It proved to be a rather difficult task to make these octahedrons – we have spent almost 5 months on finding the right manufacturer and working with engineers on the right look and feel of those shapes. We hope that you will check out our games and like the result. Who are “we”?

CrowD Games, publisher of Ganesha and Winter Queen, is an unusual company. It was founded in Russia in 2015.

Since then CrowD Games has published the Russian-language versions of more than 120 popular board games (such as Scythe, Root, Tainted Grail, and many others).

So in 2020, we are coming to the United States with our own games: Ganesha, Winter Queen, Deep State, Windmill, and Enigma. This year, look for our stand at Origins, GenCon, and Essen Spiel in Germany.

Email: contact@crowdgames.us winter 2020 • AROUND THE table 41

Winter Queen 2–4

8+

20–30 min

Audience range: family abstract game MSRP: $40 Editions: English, Russian Components

Game board, 45 Enchanted Crystals, Cloth bag, 4 Crystal Holders, 20 Spell Books tiles, 8 Queen’s Domain tiles, 36 Victory Points tokens, 1 Winter Queen token, 4 Player aids, Rulebook.

Description

Game features

In one faraway land, there is always winter. Once a year Winter Queen announces a special competition for her court sorcerers. Using enchanted crystals they create magical ornaments and the Queen pays for them with golden coins. The one to collect the to bemost coins till the end of the competition is to be come the next Queen’s advisor.

Winter Queen is an abstract family game. You will take on the roles of Winter Queen’s sorcerers, creating magical ornaments out of enchanted crystals. Each turn you either place a new crystal onto the board or use already placed crystals to score victory points depending on the spell books you and your opponents have. Here are some key features of the game: • Easy to learn and to teach.

• Suits family audience, but can also be played as a geek-filler.

• Quite competitive game.

• High replayability with lots of strategical combinations.

• Beautiful art and unique components.

Look for us at: GAMA — stand 637 Origins — TBD GenCon — TBD Essen Spiel — TBD

Ganesha 2–4

8+

20–40 min

Audience range: family abstract game MSRP: $40 Editions: English, Russian Components

3 double-sided Mandalas for different number of play-ers, scoring track, 4 individual Destiny Tiles, 1 Ganesha’s Altar, 60 precious stones markers, drawstring bag for the precious stones, first player token, 8 Spice tokens, 4 wooden pieces.

Description

Features

Once upon a time you were travelling in India and decided to visit the temple of Ganesha — god of wisdom and prosperity. In the middle of the hall decorated with flowers stood an altar with different gems: rubies, emeralds, diamonds and many others.

An acolyte of Ganesha, dressed in bright clothes approached you and explained, that this was an ancient game. If you would like to participate, you and other contestants would have to decorate a magical mandala with precious stones. Whoever did the best job, would attain special favor from Ganesha himself.

Ganesha is a fast abstract game for a broad family audience.

• Easy to learn but difficult to master.

• Each turn you chose whether to place cubes on the mandala to score points or to save them in order to score even more points in the future.

• Beautiful and unique components: cube octahedrons, wooden pieces.

• Double-sided e-sided mandalas for 2, 3, and 4 players add variety to gameplay and change strategy.

crowd.games crowdgames.us www.crowdgames.us contact@crowdgames.us

HOW

R

PG publishers participate in a variety of programs to support brick and mortar game retailers. In this article, several publishers highlight the promotions they’ve embraced to promote their games through their partners in retail.

What marketing programs does your company participate in?

Publishers Show Their Support

By Egg Embry, Freelance RPG Journalist

Sara Erickson, Director of Marketing and Sales, Renegade Game Studios Renegade Game Studios actively participates in a number of programs that support friendly local game stores.

Looking into 2020, we’re excited to be an active part of the following wonderful programs: · Free RPG Day: Free content for select roleplaying games to participating stores · Board Game Expo: A celebration of tabletop games in friendly local game stores · Bits & Mortar: PDFs of our games that can be shared with gamers who purchase the physical copies of our RPGs at their local store · Pop Up Gen Con: The big convention experience in friendly local game stores nationwide Michael O'Brien, Vice President, Chaosium Inc. Chaosium is part of the Bits & Mortar initiative and sees that as an important support for brick and mortar sellers of our product.

We took part in Free RPG Day for 2016, 2017, and 2018, but didn't participate this year [2019] as, instead, we did our own #weareallus commemoration of our founder, Greg Stafford, releasing free PDFs of our core lines on the first anniversary of his passing.

Tomas Härenstam, Director and Game Designer, Free League Publishing We’re in Bits & Mortar.

Panayiotis Lines, Marketing Executive, Modiphius Entertainment Modiphius Entertainment supports Free

44 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

RPG publishers discuss how they elevate their brick and mortar retail partners.

RPG Day having released scenarios for our Conan Adventures 2d20 RPG as well as a Bundle of Holding which ran in partnership with Vision Rescue, a charity that supports the needs of street children in India.

Does your company support organized play in partnership with retailers?

SE: We support friendly local game stores’ organized play events with flexible organized play kits that include promos and marketing materials for our most popular games including Clank! A Deck-Building Adventure, Arboretum, and more! These organized play packs are structured to give local stores the flexibility to shape their events and cater specifically to their customers.

MOB: The Cult of Chaos is our official gamemaster program for running demonstration games in stores and at events and conventions.

We are currently running a free organised play campaign for Call of Cthulhu. It's called Flotsam and Jetsam and is designed to be run in game stores to help spread the game to new players.

TM: We do, yes, from time to time, offering promotional copies of games.

PL: Modiphius Entertainment has an organised play scheme for our Fallout Wasteland Warfare miniatures which we run with our teams of ‘Vault Dwellers’ who run games and demos in their local area of

Fallout. We run this in conjunction with retailers and offer prize support.

In what other ways do you partner with retailers?

SE: We proudly offer Early Release kits for our hottest new games. Kits include promo items for the games and marketing materials for the stores. Kits and games are shipped to participating stores two weeks prior to the full release for the game. We also offer retailer-specific Level Up Loot Boxes, which are boxes full of exciting promos for our games. Retailers can use these promo boxes to support instore promotions and events.

In Q1 of 2020, we are excited to offer retailers a special Early Release Display box that includes our most popular smallbox games alongside new small box games 1-2 months before they’d be available anywhere else. The box is designed to increase impulse purchases at the till.

upcoming releases and more. We also now have retailer pledges on most of our Kickstarters, giving retailers a chance to be part of the crowdfunding and making sure they get the games early with low prices.

PL: We offer promotional kits, OP kits for Fallout Wasteland Warfare, which contain prizes and competition scenarios for the game in order to support retailers in running organised play. We also run competitions encouraging players of our RPGs as well as our wargames to run games in their local stores. The players can win product and the local store can win direct to retail vouchers.

I want to thank Sara, Michael, Tomas, and Panny for answering my questions, the event organizers and program administrators that promote tabletop gaming, and every game store I’ve had the pleasure of shopping in.

MOB: We have sell sheets available for all our new releases. They help retailers when interested customers need more details on a Chaosium product.

On our social media, we frequently share sightings of Chaosium products seen on store shelves around the world using the hashtag #seeninthewild. Pics are submitted to us by Chaosium fans, and we always link to the stores shown. This has proven to be a very popular hashtag.

TM: We are actively working on improving our outreach to retailers right now. We have started a monthly retailer newsletter with information about winter 2020 • AROUND THE table 45

Remembering Who We Are.

By Raymond Chandler III, President of Parallel Games, Inc. Designer of City of the Big Shoulders

T

he truth is humans have controlled, for quite a while now, the ability to travel through time. We do this through the creative expression of our experiences, thoughts, feelings, desires, biases and judgments and place them all – neatly bundled – in a volume of text.

Nearly 2,500 years ago, Herodotus of Halicarnassus traveled throughout the ancient world, and asked people to tell him their stories. He captured them in a book

simply titled “The Histories,” which has survived to this day.

What was life like for a Greek historian 2,500 years ago? What experiences did he have to influence his worldview? And how did that worldview filter, obscure, and inspire history through the lens of his writing?

One of Herodotus’ principal inspirations for “The Histories” was to understand and document the differences between Greeks and non-Greeks, and what lead to the conflicts between them. He was born into a “triple-point” of regional conflict. Halicarnassus was a Dorian Greek settlement that existed under Persian rule, at a time when the Dorians were in conflict with the Athenians. Yet, when Herodotus began his journey into Egypt he did so with the Athenians. Why? You have to wonder. What did the Athenians have that the Dorians and the Persians didn’t?

We are all linked by history. Everything that happens has a cause and an effect and those effects ripple across time. They reach out their hands and touch us.

They inspire us. They teach us. They tell us stories.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Peloponnesian War of Herodotus’ time. How the Greeks – in this small area of the world – saw their differences to be so vast, and their similarities so few. I think about politics today and I think about how history threatens to repeat itself if the right stories are not retold time and time again. After all, if the false dichotomies of ideological City of the Big Shoulders was released in 2019 along with its first expansion, Burden of Destiny.

46 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

The game’s money features some of Chicago’s most inspirational, ground-breaking, and tenacious residents. fervor have the power to divide us, certainly our history has the power to bind us together.

I am often asked what inspired me to make City of the Big Shoulders. I started designing the game in 2016 as a reaction to the divided political climate infecting American politics. I saw a kind of ugliness that, until that point I was completely blind to. I was afraid (and still am) for our country. It is that fear, and that sense of hopelessness that drove me to retreat, and then to create.

Carl Sandburg’s poem – upon which the game is based – spoke to me because in my mind it exemplifies the American ideal. Rising from the ashes of the great Chicago fire, a city of golden opportunity emerged. Sandburg paints a picture of an imperfect city. One with crime, and hunger, and poverty but also with hope, industry and wealth. A tall, bold, slugger set vivid against the little soft cities.

His poem romanticized the power, perseverance, and grit of the city’s spirit. He praises the value of the hard work and effort of the American worker; many of them immigrants. Under the dust, smoke all over their mouths, laughing with white teeth. He tells us that the soul of the city doesn’t come from the rich, it comes from its people. The pulse of the people laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of youth.

What I tried my best to do, was to capture that spirit and bottle it in a way that you could feel and experience. I want you to see what I see. I want you to remember who we are. It is time to build a longer table.

“When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along.”

- Carl Sandburg

City of the Big Shoulders is a heavy, economic, worker-placement, and resource management game with a unique 18xx-style stock market set in turn of the 20thcentury Chicago. It plays 2-4 players in 2.5 hours. It is currently rated 8.2/10 on BoardGameGeek.com. It has won The Cardboard Republic’s “Seal of the Republic,” and Bower’s Game Corner “Bower’s Best” awards. It was recently inducted into Heavy Cardboard’s top 50 games of all time.

A second printing will be available in 2020.

Build and grow your empire with Elgin or one of nine other prominent companies..

winter 2020 • AROUND THE table 47

By Isaac Childres, President & Owner of Cephalofair Games

T

he sequel to the smash hit Gloomhaven is finally on the horizon, and Cephalofair Games would love to include you in making sure it gets into the hands of everyone who has come to know and love the base game. The expected release is Q1 2021, but we will be launching a Kickstarter March 24 of this year to officially kick things off.

We know “Kickstarter” can sometimes raise eyebrows in the world retail, but we look forward to doing what we can to make this project attractive and friendly to retailers, offering bulk order discounts competitive with distribution pricing, making sure you’ll get your orders through us before normal distribution, and having other incentives as well.

So what does Frosthaven bring to the table? This is an entirely new campaign in the Gloomhaven world, set in the northern reaches of the continent where 16 new mercenaries will not only have to battle hordes of new enemies, but also the harsh elements.

The core combat gameplay that everyone loves has remained largely unchanged. We’ve just added so much more variability and interesting twists on the formula with new classes that play completely differently, plus there are around 100 new scenarios with much more varied goals and objectives.

Additionally, we’ve added a lot more for players to do outside of combat. Frosthaven is a small, halfdestroyed outpost when the players find it, and they must help build it up, gathering resources in combat and then deciding where to allocate those resources in town, creating their own unique city on a map with stickers. Each building they create will offer new ways to spend resources and enhance their characters, including a workshop where 48 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

is Coming! powerful items can be crafted from these resources, an alchemist where potions are brewed from combining herbs, and a garrison where the defense of the city can be increased to ward off invaders.

And there are many invaders to deal with. Frosthaven introduces three new playable races: the yeti-like Algox, autonomous machines, and the Lurkers, a race of giant psychic crabs. Each of these races starts off as a threat, however, and much of the campaign is spent placating or destroying them. There are also seasonal events, where players start off in the relatively pleasant summer, but when winter comes, attacks become much stronger and more frequent.

I could go on and on about all the ways we’ve improved the core game to offer players the same

The Bannerspear.

1 of 6 new playable classes.

overall experience as in Gloomhaven, but just better. The improved tile art, the higher quality miniatures, more engaging scenarios and puzzles, a new looting system, more balanced abilities - the list is extensive.

We hope that you will consider joining us on Kickstarter March 24th, or at the very least look forward to stocking the game next year. Either way, we’d love it if you would visit cephalofair.com/retailers to sign up for our exclusive retailer mailing list for updates on all upcoming FROSTHAVEN updates promotions, and events!

New threats linger amongst the frozen tundra.

Prepared by Emma Recher, translated to English by John Stephens, Retail Liaison for IELLO USA

D

ear students, It is time to learn more about your magic. It is time to discover this Dark Matter and tame it. Will you dare to reopen The Big Book of Madness and learn to master The Vth Element?

The Vth Element, designed by Maxime Rambourg and published by IELLO, is scheduled for release in North America on Feb. 13th, 2020. Here is everything you need to know about this new game...

This first expansion, why?

Surfing on Madness didn’t seem enough, we wanted to add another dimension, a fifth element, the Dark Matter, including Dark Curses, the Dark Book and Dark Monsters. To further spice up the game, we introduced our inner phobias…

The goal remains the same: you must close the book before succumbing to madness, but now you will have to be able to handle the New Dark Matter and Phobias.

The Dark Matter and Phobias are different modules that can be played together or separately in order to make the game easier or not! The base game still applies, Phobia cards are Madness cards with a permanent constraint, they are considered Madness cards in every aspect and may be cured with 2 Element cards.

Players’ Delight

Maxime Rambourg states that he never expected the recognition that The Big Book of Madness received, and he didn’t hear about his game being on the Kennerspiel Des Jahres Recommendations until the congratulatory messages began to arrive. “I was so happy,” he says.

“After being told ‘not interested’ so many times it was exciting to see this reaction. The

The Big Book of Madness Expansion:

game is great fun, especially for a first game. (Editor’s Note: The Big Book of Madness was not the first game Rambourg had published, but he does say it is the first game he had ever imagined and designed.)

“Having your first game recognized by the critics and fans is cool, and it gives you a little confidence.”

Envisioning an Expansion

“I have a special vision for expansions,” Rambourg begins, talking about the upcoming The Vth Element.

“I don’t like expansions that just add hardware and don’t change the game at all. Here, I tried to give the game a new angle, to share a new vision for the game.

I like to destabilize players a little, so for this expansion I added a fifth element. The original game is very much based on the behavior of the four elements, so adding a fifth element, which works in a totally different way, changes the very rhythm of the game.”

The fifth element, in some ways, works like the others in that it is used to defeat monsters. The element also has an impact on a new spellbook, gathering spells that can only be acquired with Dark Matter.

“Overall,” Rambourg explained, “it adds a lot of strategy to the game.”

A New Gaming Experience

The new Big Book of Magic Expansion offers a new book of spells, new monsters, new wizards, as well as new mechanics for the game. Most magicians are either unaware or deny that Dark Matter is

both terrifying and devastating. Yet, you’ll have to master it to activate the incredible spells hidden in the Black Book in order to defeat those black monsters and annihilate new black curses. Fortunately for you, there are new magicians who understand Dark Matter better, and stand ready to help.

Phobias, which are new mechanics, behave in some ways like Madnesses, but particularly powerful Madnesses that can rapidly result in your downfall. These Phobias are harder to cure, and can have profound effects on your support cards.

Featuring 13 new Grimoire Cards, four new Magicians, and two crafty new mechanics, The Vth Element ramps up the intensity of the game while maintaining the fluidity and balance of the original. The new expansion makes the game more aggressive than ever, and forces you to cooperate ever more effectively if you want to close this terrifying new Grimoire!

Who’s Maxime Rambourg?

“I am a French designer living in Nancy (Eastern France), where I cofounded the nonprofit board game café “La Feinte de l’Ours” which literally translates as “The Bear’s Trick.” I am amazingly lucky to work in a boardgame café, and I have a lot of willing playtesters at hand. Showing my prototypes to our regular customers already felt slightly uncomfortable to me, so submitting them to a publisher seemed quite impossible.

My first 3 games have been released by local publisher IELLO, Le Truc le + (2014 - a party game published only in French so far), The Big Book of Madness (2015) and Arena: For the Gods! (2017).” winter 2020 • AROUND THE table 49

Gamers Become Horticulturalists in

By J. Alex Kevern, Designer of Succulent

Y

our succulent garden is thriving!

Through thoughtful selection, delicate pruning, and tireless care, you’ve earned a reputation as a master horticulturist. In Succulent, you compete against your peers for lucrative and prestigious projects that will cement your position as the community’s premier succulent gardener.

Who has the greenest thumb?

Succulent is a tile placement and resource management game for 2-4 players where players place flower bed tiles in the central garden to collect succulent cuttings. Place cleverly, because when others place near your beds you will earn droplets that will help you grow your own succulents in your personal garden. To win the game, you’ll use your cuttings and droplets to complete garden projects which gain you immediate benefits and earn you points in various ways. With 36 project cards in the game each with unique scoring conditions, you will find yourself exploring strategies and combinations game after game.

Resource Gathering through Tile Placement Succulent is centered

50 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

around placing flower bed tiles in the central garden to gain succulent cuttings, beautifying the board as you go.

This garden will start as a small, humble plot, and as new tiles get revealed, will grow into an abundant succulent garden full of flowers and greenery throughout the game. When you place a flower bed on the board one of your flower pieces will mark that it’s yours – and when anyone places adjacent to your flower, you’ll gain a water droplet that can be used in your personal greenhouse to generate additional cuttings. This meaningful player interaction will shape your decision making and give you the power to generate satisfying combos with a clever tile placement.

Growing Your Personal Succulent Garden

As a master horticulturist you will be able to grow succulents from your own personal garden and use them to complete projects. When you gain droplets by others placing near you, you’ll assign them to one of the five succulent types in your

greenhouse, each requiring 2 to 4 droplets to use (each greenhouse is unique). You can clear these droplets from your board to fulfill a cutting requirement of the project card you’re completing, giving you an opportunity to plan strategically and complete projects in creative ways.

As the game progresses, you will also have an opportunity to earn valuable permanent droplets that don’t have to be cleared when you use them. Clever use of your gardener meeple to claim project cards and gain more plot tiles will earn you these permanent droplets. When you – or an opponent! – completes a project card with your gardener on it, you gain a large droplet. Fill all of a succulent’s droplet spaces with permanent droplets, and that becomes a “wild” resource you can use at any time!

A Beautiful and Engaging Gaming Experience Succulent comes together as a delightful and satisfying experience which is easy to grasp and offers a compelling amount of strategy and addictive gameplay. It blends fresh takes of familiar mechanisms with beautiful art and meaningful player interaction to offer something to please gamers of many types. Look for it on shelves this Spring!

Prime X4

Gaming Box • Stores 240 sleeved cards • Removable partitions make room for oversized cards or toploaders

• Great for Transformers TCG, Magic the Gathering, Pokémon, KeyForge, and more

www.bcwsupplies.com

The race is on to cross a river crowded with crazy objects and enter the temple on the other side first! Flip tiles to find matching flotsam and form pathways across the water. Kokonana is a memory game where having the best memory isn’t always the key to victory! kidstablebg.com

Gamers of all types will love Bees: The Secret Kingdom, the newest title from Van Ryder Games and Awaken Realms Lite. In this highly accessible card game with beautiful artwork, players will collect pollen in order to harvest the most honey. For 2-6 players ages 6 and up vanrydergames.com salesteam@vanrydergames.com

Pit yourself against other players in an exciting race to 7 points in Crossed Words, the newest party game from Indie Boards & Cards. In a series of rounds, players will hurry to place their own dry-erase discs to create unique answers to earn points and claim victory!

Indieboardsandcards.com

Le Boomb! Steve Jackson Games has brought back this quick little classic, with updates to add more fun.

With only two components, this fun, fast-playing, and super portable little gem is just what you need to brighten up your game nights! It’s pocket sized, a great impulse buy, and comes in four different colors! sjgames.com/dice/leboomb

Skytear is a card-driven miniatures game, inspired by MOBA video games like League of Legends. Draft your team of heroes from up to 24 champions, then use their unique skills and ultimate abilities to lead your minions to the enemy Nexus. When it falls, victory will be yours. playskytear.com sales@pvpgeeks.com 52 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

The highly anticipated Metal Coin Upgrade set is coming from Cephalofair Games.

Compatible with all titles in the Gloomhaven Universe (including Founders, Forgotten Circles, and the upcoming Jaws of the Lion), this premium 60 COIN SET will be sought by more than just your party’s Scoundrel. Loot while available!

MSRP: $24.99 cephalofair.com

It’s a Wonderful World is a card drafting and engine building game for 1 to 5 players. Plan your expansion and develop your empire to rebuild the world into a utopian paradise. For more information visit luckyduckgames.com or contact sales@luckyduckgames.com.

Cooperate with your friends to help all the kids boarding the wonderful merry-go-round of Monsieur Carrousel! Place them into the carousel according to the color of your die, and let them enjoy a spin. Will all the children have the chance to go for a spin before it starts to rain? Enjoy this cooperative memory game that contains a real wooden carousel. For ages 4+ with 3 levels of difficulty. MSRP $ 34.99 iellousa.com/collections/loki info@iellogames.com

Compete with your rival wordsmiths to craft the most impressive words and win first pick of letters to add to your collection. Choose wisely, for the player who uses their stored letters to greatest effect will spell victory. Letterpress is sure to appeal to gamers and wordlovers alike. ospreypublishing. com/letterpress

winter 2020 • AROUND THE table 53

Flex your creative muscle with Stringamajig, a new party game from Fireside Games for 4 to 10 players.

Drawing meets charades with a string in this hilariously inventive game that rewards players who get as many ideas across as possible in 60 seconds. sales@firesidgames.com firesidegames.com/ games/

In Tricky Druids, the players try to brew potions.

But before they use the ingredients they have collected, they have to offer them to another player as a present. Will the other player accept or will they give the ingredients back? Hopefully the active player has a use for them, if that happens! pegasusshop.de/en Facebook@pegasusspieleglobal

Spy, swap, and peek to find CABO the Unicorn in this fun, addictive, and simple card game. The player with the lowest total wins! This Deluxe Edition features amazing artwork, two decks with unique cardbacks, a full color, oversized scorepad, and a high quality two-piece box. beziergames.com

Abzu’s Bounty is the first campaign for The Expanse Roleplaying Game. It covers time after the events of the first novel, Leviathan’s Wake, and follows a crew around the system to recover valuable protomolecule. Keep your eyes open for plenty of other supplements for The Expanse RPG in 2020. greenronin.com

Countdown d10 dice from Koplow Games are available in five colors: Blue (#19604), Red (#19584), Emerald (#19582), Smoke (#19585), and Pearl (#19583). They measure 7/8-inch.

Contact your local distributor or Koplow Games: 1-800-899-0711, koplowgames.com

54 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

Wizard Kittens is a semi-cooperative set collection card game. Play as kittens who have accidentally released a few curses from the library’s restricted section. The library is supposed to be a place of quiet and contemplation, with no noise, no playing, no yarn – and DEFINITELY no magic! Now you and your friends must defeat the curses fast before you’re caught by the librarian, Professor Whispurr! info@magpiegames.com magpiegames.com

Kameradenschweine is a glorious new expansion for the hit card game Front Line - No Komrades. Kameradenschweine has been a labor of love from creator Will Conway and award-winning artist Kwanchai Moriya. They have created an entirely new Kommandant and cast of hapless Conscripts for your No Komrades misadventures.

Contact: brian@anvil-eight.com anvil-eight.com

The Prime X4 Gaming Box is perfect for Transformers TCG, Magic the Gathering, Pokémon, KeyForge, and more! The box stores 240 sleeved cards, and with its removable partitions, it accommodates oversized cards and toploaders.

It features a removable dice tray and secure locking lid that is perfect for on-the-go gaming. bcwsupplies.com

Introducing Dragon’s Breath: The Hatching, a stand-alone expansion to our 2018 Kinderspiel Winner Dragon’s Breath.

In The Hatching, players take turns playing as either the Dragon Mom carefully melting the ice around the nest and egg, or as dragon children working to collect the fallen gems to complete amulets. The game can be played on its own, with Dragon’s Breath to allow for 5 players, or combined with Dragon’s Breath for a new ruleset. habausa.com info@habausa.com winter 2020 • AROUND THE table 55

The Tabletop

Left: Skytear Starter Box; Below: Akimo with his Ultimate Power Card

MOBA

By Giacomo Neri, PvP Geeks Director

S

kytear is a card-driven miniatures game inspired by MOBAs, a genre of video games played by over 100 million players each month.

Draft your team from a pool of 24 heroes, with new ones added each quarter. Then, use your champions’ unique skills and ultimate abilities to lead your minions so they can tear down the enemy Nexus. When it falls, victory will be yours.

Skytear is more than a brawl; the winning conditions are never the same match-to-match. Stay flexible and expect a range of playstyles.

There’s no need for dice. Instead, Skytear uses Power Cards: special moves that heroes can take at any time. This

makes for exciting matches that players described as being “like Magic, but with heroes on a map.”

Building decks is half the fun of Skytear, with a deck building system that allows you to further personalize each hero and is fully integrated into the initial drafting phase. Equip heroes with cards that amplify their strengths, or surprise your opponents with unexpected tools.

Unlike existing tabletop games inspired by MOBAs, we designed Skytear with organized play in mind, particularly through these key features: • Pre-assembled miniatures • 45 minute playtime • 2 minute set-up time • Small table footprint of 28”x28” • A new expansion every quarter

But most importantly, we’re striving to give hobby retailers the best support to grow a community around Skytear.

PvP Geeks Support to Hobby Retailers

Tournaments kits are more than just the usual promo cards: they include exclusive miniatures and components to upgrade some of the game’s default pieces.

Each participant always bring home a prize made of plastic, no matter their placement. This is an

important point to us, because we want to create a space that’s welcoming and friendly to both casual and competitive players (and we embraced this principle also in the overall game design).

We built a deck-builder app that allows us to regularly “nerf ” and “buff ” heroes to ensure that the meta stays fresh and diverse.

The tournament organizer app allows you to collect registrations with pre-validated decks, form pairings, and submit results that will inform the global ranking ladder.

The rankings will power a world championship with regionals in North America, Europe, and Australia, leading toward a world final this December.

Finally, the store locator and the ambassadors program allow us to grow local communities and reward retailers that are willing to invest in us.

If you Google Skytear you’ll find our Kickstarter from May 2019 that was fulfilled in January 2019. We won’t run another. As crazy as it sounds, we used Kickstarter to start a project, and now we want to thrive together with hobby retailers.

We are aware that stocking a new miniatures line is not a choice made lightly, but take advantage of the GAMA Expo show special and you’ll be surprised to see how many MOBA players are already customers of yours — and how excited they’ll be to get their hands on Skytear.

Astryda with the Bewitch Power Card 56 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

EVERGREENS

and New Releases

By Kira Peavley, Indie Boards & Cards

I

ndie Boards & Cards has two new games this year that will be perfect for your family or large game group.

Our newest release The Sherlock Files, is a unique take on narrative, cluedriven games using the Q System. In The Sherlock Files, players take on the roles of detectives trying to solve a mystery.

The case begins with limited information and a deck of clues that help flesh out the story. These items may include photographs, newspaper clippings, or statements from witnesses or people involved in the case. Players take turns playing cards from their hand if they believe the information presented on the card is relevant to the case, or discard it face down if they think it is irrelevant.

Once the team has cycled through each card, the game is scored based on being able to solve the mystery correctly and how many unnecessary cards were played instead of discarded. The game comes with three different scenarios at varying difficulties to test your skills!

Finger Guns at High Noon is a fast-paced finger drawing, good time!

58 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

Negotiate with other players to persuade which actions they might take, convince them to join you to posse, then count down and grab that sheriff ’s badge! Hand gestures show each action that gets resolved in the order of the player card that indicates your life.

Posse up with majority and have players lose life, dynamite your foes to the left and right of you, or lasso an ally that can help you throughout the game. The last player standing is the winner, even if they might be a ghost!

Indie Boards & Cards also has a wide range of gift-friendly games such as The Resistance, Avalon, and Coup. All are fun, family friendly games that can be played at large gatherings or family get-togethers.

These have been quality, replayable, evergreen titles for years and they do not show any sign of slowing down! The price point makes great gifts for casual and hobby gamers alike. Each of these three titles has massive replayability, which means it is great to bring to the table

and find that hidden traitor in your family while the turkey cooks!

In case your cooking goes terribly wrong, you can stock up on copies of Flash Point: Fire Rescue, which is a favorite of cooperative hobby gamers everywhere. If all else fails, Kodama: The Tree Spirits may calm everyone down and encourage them to seek refuge camping so you do not have to deal with those cranky relatives!

Finally, if you want to find out more about Indie Boards & Cards upcoming games, announcements, and policies, we have set up a retailer Facebook group that you can join and is available now.

Just search for Indie Boards and Cards Retailer Group and you will be welcomed by our favorite retailer liaison, Dawn Studebaker, and several members of the Indie Boards & Cards staff will be there to help as well!

GameFor co-designers (left to right) Jason Stephenson, Adam Loper, and Matt Ridley

The Social Platform for Connecting Tabletop Stores and Publishers with their Customers

By Adam Loper, Marketing Director, GameFor

D

o you run gaming events at your store? Do you find posting those events on mainstream social media is not reaching the number of gamers you thought? Game stores are finding it more difficult to reach out to local gamers through companies like Facebook without having to pay constant fees to “boost” their posts - to reach the gamers that drive their sales. That’s one of the reasons that GameFor was created.

The GameFor platform is designed to connect tabletop gamers. It helps motivated gamers find gaming events in their area - conventions, club events, and the events you post for your store - easily and quickly. It also allows you to look through the ‘Looking For Players” section in your local area, and see what kinds of games your local players are searching to play.

It’s also a great resource to help gamers find your store - the Store Finder database in GameFor has listings for over 6,700 tabletop gaming stores worldwide, so a quick check on the platform can 60 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

show users the closest stores if they’re new to the area or traveling.

“We believe strongly in game stores,” says Adam Loper, GameFor co-designer.

“As tabletop gamers ourselves, we understand the benefit that game stores bring to gamers with events, community, and knowledge - and we want to make it easier for game stores to communicate with their community.”

GameFor is free - available on Android, iOS, and on the web at www. iamgamefor.com. If you’re interested in getting more gamers into your store and posting your events into the Gaming Events calendar, your store can get verified for free - just click on the “Store Owners” link at the bottom of the page. GameFor offers many free features to stores: a calendar widget to put on your website or link to on social media, a scrolling calendar page that you can display on a screen in your store, and much more.

GameFor is created by Milk Can Dev & Design Studio, a small firm that builds mobile apps and web

projects for many types of industries, from manufacturers to health care to e-commerce and more - but they’re also tabletop gamers. “We knew the tabletop gaming industry needed this,” says Matt Ridley, GameFor co-designer and Milk Can Principal Developer, “because we were looking for something like it ourselves. When we couldn’t find anything, we knew we had the resources and the expertise to create it.”

Milk Can has been doing more work within the gaming industry, as well.

“Milk Can has helped us design and develop so many exciting new features on our Custom Tray Creator website,” says Jama Filip, owner of Battle Foam.

“Their complete rebuild has made it so much easier for customers to use when designing foam trays. It is also much more user friendly for Battle Foam staff to manage the backend.”

To find out more about GameFor, go to www.iamgamefor.com and to talk to Milk Can about websites, mobile apps and more - go to www.milkcan.io.

R T A S R E P T SU C E EFF THE

Or WHY games sell out.

By Nathan McNair, owner, Pandasaurus Games

T

he Cabbage Patch Effect So, there is a long-standing “common knowledge” theory that companies like to intentionally constrain supply in order to create a false sense of demand in the market, thereby making a thing really hard to get, and that scarcity making people want the thing that they can’t have even if it’s not a thing that they would have otherwise wanted. This all operates under a blanket term called Artificial Scarcity.

This has absolutely happened in collectible markets. Sports cards, magic cards, beanie babies…any consumer products whose value is derived from the collecting or speculation in the secondary market prices. Rares have to be… well, rare. I was an avid collector of basketball cards as a kid, and I loved grabbing my Beckett and valuing my cards. If the rare cards had been more abundant and you could easily get them from a blind pack then there would be little point in collecting them, as you could cheaply and easily get whatever collectibles you wanted.

Oddly enough, the most famous examples of artificial scarcity (Cabbage 62 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

Patch Kids, Tickle Me Elmo, Furby, Ocarina of Time, Popeyes chicken sandwiches) were likely not actually artificially scarce. They were unexpected hits. Or at least, bigger hits than expected that wound up out-stripping the producer’s capacity to make them.

The initial short-fall of supply for most of these products is just a matter of guessing wrong about how badly people would want the item. And after that, they just couldn’t catch up to the demand. At least not for months after Christmas.

Cabbage Patch Kids were all completely unique dolls. No two were ever going to be the same again (I see you KeyForge) and that caused massive issues at Coleco trying to keep up with the production demand of creating millions of completely unique dolls for Christmas.

And they just couldn’t. This led to angry parents fighting each other in malls, and mass chaos.

The vast majority of things that are supply-constrained are not artificially constrained. They were actually constrained in the supply chain (i.e. how fast they could be produced in quantity to meet demand).

The board game industry is not supply constrained. At least not the hobby board game market. If our company wanted 100,000 units of a game, I could likely have them produced in 3 or 4 months, and 100,000 units is a massive success in the hobby game space. There is, of course, some upward theoretical limit of board game production capacity and at certain times of the year we definitely come close to hitting it, but in reality, the board game industry does not have a production capacity issue.

So, if that’s the case, why is it that board games sell out all the time?

The Superstar Effect

The superstar effect isn’t a new idea. continued on page 64

AVAILABLE Q2 2020

GET THE EXPANSION!

AVAILABLE Q2 2020

$59.99 AWG DTE09SP

$27.99 AWG DTE09SPX1

continued from page 62

The basic theory is this: If something is perceived to be of a higher quality it will get a disproportionate number of dollars.

I’ll put this into some board game terms. Let’s say that Root is 10% better than some similar game that came out in the same year. We’ll call the other game Little Root. He has the heart of a champion, he’s just not as good as Root.

In this theory we’ll assume Little Root is mechanically, artistically, thematically, and cost-wise similar, but a little worse than Root.

Logically speaking, Little Root is 10% worse, so you would expect sales to be about 10% worse if demand were linear.

And in a world in which consumer information was low, you would expect Little Root to do pretty well. After all, a game that is 10% worse than Root is still a good game. Why wouldn’t it do well?

The problem for Little Root is, Root exists. Reddit exists, BGG exists, Facebook groups exist. And consumers talk. They talk about how good Root is. They talk about how Root is better than Little Root.

They may even say things like “Little Root is actually pretty good, but it’s not as good as Root.” Consensus starts to form around how good Root is. People are playing Root. So then other people want to see why everyone is making cute woodland creatures war with one another so they buy Root.

Little Root is not going to sell 10% worse than Root. It’s going to sell a lot

Now, of course, there are other hits out there besides Root in the board game world. But they tend to fill a different niche, either mechanically, in game weight, or thematically. So, Scythe and Dinosaur Island and Wingspan and Spirit Island can all coexist with one another.

Santorini, Azul, Sagrada and Machi Koro can all sell well. They all scratch a different itch from one another and will find an audience.

When you ask someone which is the better game: Root or Azul, the answers will probably be more along the lines of, “Uh, those are super different, that’s a weird question, they are both good.” But if you asked the differences between Azul and a hundred other gateway level games from 2018…well, you may find Azul coming out on top.

The hits are HITS. The non-hits are...well, going to do poorly.

worse. Sherwin Rosen’s formula for the Superstar Effect is complicated, but the net result is this: Root is going to get almost all of the sales. Little Root is probably not going to fare well.

It’s simple. If there is a limited amount of money to go around for consumers and Root is better...why buy Little Root at all? Just buy Root.

90% as good as Root!

And it’s not as though Little Root was aware that Root was coming out. If so, Little Root's publishers would have done something different. Now for the second twist: Root didn’t know it was the Superstar either.

Leder Games has talented people top to bottom, and Root is a fantastic

64 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

Wait, I thought this was about, “Why are games sold out all the time?”

I’m getting there, I swear. The reason games are sold out all the time is because of the Superstar Effect. Not every game can be a hit. For every Root there are probably a hundred or more Little Roots that don’t sell very well.

And here is the big twist: Before the consumers vote with their dollars, it is very hard to tell the difference between Root and Little Root. It’s not like Little Root is bad, it’s a really good game. It’s

game…but Root could have been Little Someothergame. I think most talented publishers and designers are setting out to make the best game they can. But there is always the chance that another game will be better, or be perceived as better.

Publishers, no matter how hard we try and no matter what we put into a game, do not decide who the Superstars are. Consumers do. It can be a combination of gameplay, art, price, and right-place-at-the-right-time. It could be a perfectly timed review.

Good publishers tend to have more than one hit title, so there are some things that we can do (release fewer games, be choosier about games released, put them through longer development cycles, spend more on art and components, etc.) to try and give our games a chance at becoming a Superstar… but we don’t actually get to decide what is or is not a Superstar.

This means we have to be cautious.

If I am Root, printing 10,000 copies is probably safe. Really, printing 100,000 copies is probably safe. But if I am Little Root, printing 10,000 copies is bad. Like, my company could be out of business bad.

But if Little Root doesn’t know he’s not Root, and Root doesn’t know he’s not Little Someothergame, then what does a publisher do?

It leaves us in a pickle without a really good way out. The reality is for the vast majority of games, no one knows how big of a hit it’s going to be until the game has come out and consumers have played it. Given that I don’t want to go out of business, it also means that we are basically going to have to print most titles as though they are Little Root.

We also don’t actually know how many people want the game. Just because we sell out of 5,000 copies doesn’t mean we should go print 100,000. Demand for the game may be for 6,000 copies. Or 10,000. Or maybe over the next year, that demand will grow as more people play it.

Basically, everyone is cautious. And if everyone is cautious, it means hit games will be hard to get ahold of for the first 6-9 months of release.

Layered Dice L

ayered dice and collectible dice are not a new phenomena, but they are a new venture and adventure – at Koplow Games.

The standard set of layered dice will be packaged as usual in tubes, boxes and with headers in order to meet our customers’ varied preferences.

The production of the 55mm layered countdown D20 has been a new experience. It is taking us down an untraveled road.

The process of testing colors, and the time needed for pouring, setting and finishing production, made what we thought would be a large production run of molded rainbow dice into a short production run of hand-poured molded dice that became a gamer and dice collector’s limited edition.

We are excited to see where this direction will lead.

66 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

Enemies & Allies

By Will Sobel, Director of Sales, Marketing, and Licensing, Green Ronin Publishing

M

odern AGE is a roleplaying game that uses the timetested AGE System (first seen in Dragon Age), which is a rule set that uses 3d6 to resolve tests and leans into narrative action using the Stunt System.

If players roll doubles they gather a number of Stunt points that can be spent to do heroic and cinematic things that give combat extra spice. Each iteration of the AGE System has a unique flair that gives the game its own unique flavor, and Modern AGE is no different. Modern AGE is classless, but character creation presents dozens of different options that allow players to customize their characters in powerful ways.

Demoing roleplaying games is difficult – it can be a big ask for some players. However, we’ve made demoing Modern AGE (and the setting supplement Threefold) as easy as it can

68 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

be. On our website you can find two different Quickstart PDFs for free. The two Quickstarts are a little different, but both run on the Modern AGE engine and give players and Game Masters a comprehensive outline of what the system and can do and what a game should look like. These Quickstarts include pre-made characters, a quick rundown of the rules, and a short adventure that will guide both players and Game Masters through some practical uses of the system.

These are the same adventures that we use to run new and interested players through our games at conventions, and are designed by the games developer to be a perfect introduction. To get the ball rolling and find interested parties, we’ve seen success with asking members of ongoing RPG groups or posting specific times and dates to social media or other

event-planning platforms. Be prepared with a print out of the PDF so that each player can have a pre-made character sheet, and supply enough d6s for the players and Game Master to use or share.

It’s better if some of the dice vary in size or color, since the Stunt System needs for some of the dice to be different as they’re rolled. Other than that, the only thing you’ll need to get a demo off the ground are pencils.

If demos go well, be sure to reach out to us about our Pre-Order Plus retailer program. This program assists our fans by getting both the print book from you, their favorite retailer, and also getting a copy of the PDF from our website for a discount. Retailers who want to participate will receive codes to hand out to their customers for that discount which helps drive sales through you – our brick and mortar partners.

AMP UP YOUR

CAMPAIGN!

Enemies & Allies A SOURCEBOOK FOR MODERN AGE

Enemies & Allies is a book of foes, allies, and weird entities for Modern AGE. Containing a selection of friends and foes from fantasy, horror, science fiction, crime drama, and technothriller genres, Enemies & Allies guarantees you’ll never be caught without a villain or useful Non-Player Character.

Designed for all Modern AGE games and compatible with Threefold, Enemies & Allies requires the Modern AGE Basic Rulebook.

Threefold A CAMPAIGN SETTING FOR MODERN AGE

The flagship setting for Modern AGE, Threefold introduces a Metacosm of infinite planes. Threefold supports virtually any genre or character concept.

New talents,specializations, psychic powers, mystic arcana, occult rituals, and rules for cybernetic augmentation provide additional options for any Modern AGE character.

Threefold requires the Modern AGE Basic Rulebook.

BUY ENEMIES & ALLIES AND THREEFOLD TODAY! www.modernagerpg.com

news

2019 In Review

GAMA

This year we took several large steps towards our mission of “promoting members' common interest to increase the adoption of and engagement with hobby games through the fostering of networking, the sharing of best practices and innovations, and the pooling of resources toward common goals.”

Some of the steps were visible, such as: • Launching a new online educational portal to offer webinars and other educational programming outside of GAMA Expo and Origins Trade Day • The establishment of the quarterly Around the Table magazine • Increased advocacy and partnerships to fight against higher tariffs on the importation of hobby games from China • Coordinating the ESSENtial Retailer Summit in Europe • An upgraded presence on social media and communication efforts with GAMA members and Origins attendees • A recently unveiled website and member portal • A renewed focus on the Origins Awards (see pg. 75) • The GRD’s Winter Wishlist buying guide for Retailers • Increased volunteer opportunities for members with the Education Advisory Committee, the Market Expansion Committee and the GAMA Expo Site Selection Committee

Other steps were not so visible but equally important to move our association forward, including: • The on-boarding of five new staff members to increase our professionalism and support for our members • Upgrades to our technology infrastructure with a new association management database • Improved event and volunteer management software for Origins • The time and energy spent by the Board of Directors on creating our Strategic Initiatives to outline where we are heading as an association • The months we have spent exploring how to deal with the need for affordable health care for our industry (see page 72).

None of this would have been possible without the support and hard work of the GAMA staff who strive every day to provide value for our members. It has been an honor to work with each one of you.

New Look to GAMA New Logo Revealed As you may have noticed, GAMA also has a new logo.

We thought it was time to update the original GAMA logo in coordination with all of the technological upgrades we are implementing to improve the membership experience. Communicating member Matt Paquette Co. has created a set of modern logos that fully represent our pillars of education, networking, and advocacy

70 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

SJG5933B

ice, d e e r g, th a b e with c i l l d a s e s Includ ee journal ble art! r ra and th ook’s ado C Katie

Kitten d6 Dice Set includes 12 dice

dice.sjgames.com

Someon e else, perhaps a cat, may kn ock the m off the t able an d steal th em!

SJG5933

e k a t e c u i o d y t in r en p h w w l pa fu e d r n a a c y t t Be i k e t u c e s the t x e n . r . u . o y n to sio s e s g n i m a g

GAMA

news

Healthcare Coverage Options GAMA has partnered with MJM Global Brokerage to enable us to offer the benefit of access to improved healthcare coverage options for our members and families through a GAMA sponsored Private Health Exchange, GameManufacturersHealthCare.com.

Through the exchange you’ll enjoy savings on healthcare coverage, and will receive a number of options, such as: • A reduction in healthcare costs • Better and more appropriate healthcare options and lower out-of-pocket expenses • Simplification of the process of enrolling in healthcare for American members • Clarity regarding the true cost of healthcare • The best choices available in the marketplace, with flexible benefits and wellness solutions GameManufacturersHealthCare.com uses the collective purchasing power of the GAMA membership to reduce healthcare premiums, while maintaining flexibility in plan design and provider. This benefit enables members to take control of their true healthcare costs.

As a special benefit GAMA has negotiated, at no additional costs for members enrolling in this program, a suite of non-insurance benefits including: •

Health Advocacy - access to a Registered Nurse, or a person experienced in benefits and administrative issues, who can help you navigate the healthcare system. Industry experts can also review, explain and resolve insurance claims and billing issues.

• Medical Bill Saver - Anytime a member or employee has a medical bill over $400 not covered by insurance, a skilled negotiation team will work with all providers to get a discount. Successful negotiations can save hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of dollars.

• Telemedicine – Work with U.S. board-certified doctors to offer a diagnosis, treatment options and prescription, if medically necessary. By using this benefit instead of going to an urgent care clinic or ER, members cut unnecessary out-of-pocket costs and time wasted in crowded waiting rooms.

• Confidential Employee Counseling - A highly trained team of Licensed Professional Counselors and Work/Life Specialists offer confidential 24/7, short-term assistance and resource support for a full range of personal, family and work/life problems.

GAMA members can shop online for your preferred deductible, provider network, effective date, and receive immediate price savings when compared to the current Affordable Care Act plans. If state laws allow, and if you qualify, Level-Funded plans are available that can refund up to 50% of unused premium dollars.

MJM Global, a proud member of the Independent Insurance Agents of America (IIAA) and the National Association of Professional Insurance Agents (PIA), serves the needs of more than 3000 businesses, professionals and households throughout the United States and abroad.

View the on-demand webinar explaining the enrollment portal and benefits of the private health exchange, available here: http://bit.ly/ GAMAHealth 72 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

GAMA

news

The New Membership Portal

Since the summer, the GAMA staff has been hard at work preparing a new membership portal and website to better serve our members. This new site has been up and running since December and features a wide variety of benefits and features. Log in today to explore everything the site has to offer!

Resources

Now you can view the complete list of membership benefits in one place. We offer a wide variety of business services to members, including group healthcare coverage, shipping discounts, and more.

There is also an archive of on-demand webinars and instructions for giving seminars in the education portion of the website.

Events

Get a feel for the busiest months of the year with the industry calendar, which keeps track of hobby game conventions, distributor open houses, and official GAMA functions. Learn more about the events GAMA hosts throughout the year, such as GAMA Expo, Trade Day at Origins Game Fair, and the ESSENtial Retailer Summit.

Association News

Stay up to date on all the association activities, programs, and announcements by subscribing to email alerts and participating in forums on the website. Get news fast via social media and regular newsletters.

Coupled with all of these technological changes, we also incorporated a new logo for the association. Communicating member Matt Paquette Co. has created a set of logos that fully represent our pillars of education, networking, and advocacy.

Collect Jewels, Stack Unicorns & Clouds in the

cloud stacking cooperative game!

Enjoy any one of our three Unicorn Glitterluck games!

HABA USA · info@HABAusa.com · www.HABAusa.com · 800-468-6837 US_Edplay_11_19HE0364.indd 1

winter 2020 • AROUND THE table 29.11.19 14:3773

GAMA

news

First-Hand Advice for GAMA Expo

GAMA Expo is just one month away (we’ll see you in Reno from March 9 to 12!), we wanted to ask our members to share some valuable tips and tricks to getting the most out of the show.

Read along to these pieces of first-hand advice from members experienced with GAMA Expo, or watch a webinar on the same topic here: http://bit.ly/ExpoAdvice Talk to everybody. Engage in conversation - David Finn, Giga-Bites Cafe Take this as an opportunity to meet people and network. Make sure to sit down with different people at lunch every day and say hi and talk about how things are different and the same at each of your stores\companies. - Andrew Zorowitz, Foam Brain GAmes

Create a follow-up list of action items, as you go, for when you get home. - Scott Gaeta, Renegade Game Studios

Try to identify 3-4 objectives for your trip. By having objectives you can sort through the various presentations and make a game plan for your time. - Rhonda Becker, The Gamers Den If you are a retailer, meet with EVERY distributor. If you are a publisher, likewise, make a point to introduce yourself to every distributor. If you are a designer, introduce yourself and give very publisher sell sheets. - Mike Paschal, Peachstate Hobby Distribution

Go to every evening event. Learning games for free at the game nights before they come out WITH either creators of the games or just people who are passionate about them is so powerful. Disney Court, Game Haven

When someone gives you a card, write down on the back what you talked about. Because when you leave, you’re going to have roughly 100 business cards from various people, and you’re absolutely not going to remember who said what. - Dan Hoffman, Canton Games

Listen to what others have to say, and NEVER be afraid of asking a question, no matter how basic or dumb you might think it is. EVERYONE was a newbie at some point, and there’s nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed about not knowing. Erik Bigglstone, Games of Berkeley

Keep notes in Google Docs. Last year I shared the link with staff so they could follow along in real time with the big publisher presentations. - Kyle Fehr, The Game Hub

Pack so you have lots of room for a lot of samples to take home (if you are flying). - Bryan Winter, I’m Board

GAMA European Representative To expand our outreach and service for our European members, GAMA is excited to announce that we have engaged Liesbeth Bos to be our onsite representative in Europe. She will open our first office outside of the United States and work with local members to provide a point of contact for GAMA, coordinate European focused programs and educational opportunities as well as explore additional ways to provide value for the European Hobby Games market.

Liesbeth asked to share the following message with our members: “I live, with my two kids, near Maastricht in the most beautiful part of the Netherlands.

After studying industrial design at the Design Academy in Eindhoven and the University of Wisconsin I became a toy designer.

74 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

For fun I had invented a game with my dad which got published.

But the first “real” boardgame I invented years later: “Capt’n Clever.”

It was published immediately. And from that moment on the focus shifted from designing toys to designing games. The world of games is just too much fun!

A few years ago, I decided to move my focus again. As I wanted to stay in the boardgame industry I started a venture in which I want to provide services for publishers. I localize games worldwide, edit rules, do PR, etc.

And now GAMA. I am excited to set up a European office for our members over here.

I look forward to start and meet you all.”

news

Power Retail Awards

GAMA

GAMA and the Retail Division take great pride in honoring the best in retail innovation and creativity with the Power Retail Awards. Each year, these awards recognize the most innovative retailers in a variety of categories.

Winners will be announced during the GRD Reception on Monday, March 9 from 6 to 8:30pm. Each winner will receive a $500 credit memo from one GAMA Distributor member, be photographed during the awards ceremony, and receive official recognition in the online GAMA database and the Spring issue of Around the Table.

CATEGORY OVERVIEW Outstanding Store | The crowning achievement of specialty games retailing. This is your chance to tell us about how you bring together all aspects of a successful hobby game retail business model. What makes your store stand out from others, locally and in the industry? Where do you think you’ve been an innovator? How does your shop showcase the best the hobby game industry has to offer in every aspect of your daily routine?

Outstanding Marketing | You have a great looking store, but what are you doing to get customers in the door? Break down your marketing plan and show how you’ve developed your web presence, advertising, promotions, sponsorship, media awareness, community outreach and support. We want to hear about the best the most innovative aspects of your business communication and message-building to your current and potential customers.

Outstanding Organized Play | How do you turn play into revenue that keeps coming back? Lay out why you feel your Organized Play program has been a success and some of the things you do that help keep it that way. Pictures and video of events will help get across the nature of your space and how you use it, and solid numbers (attendance, sales, etc.) will help back them up.

Outstanding Store Design | This is your chance to show off why customers say “Wow!” when they walk in the door. From your exterior signage to displays to fixtures to graphic design and layout; what about your store stands out? What do you do to give your store a unique look while informing your customers? Take pictures, shoot video, and discuss your design philosophy.

Nominate a store at this link: http://bit.ly/GAMAPRA

Origins Awards Submissions Increase

The Academy has received 300 submissions for the 2019-2020 Awards cycle, up from 81 submissions in 20182019 for a 370% increase. Most categories experienced a doubling of submissions, with some even quadrupling (specifically board and role-playing games).

We are working on completing the jury scoring guidelines and will have them sent to the Jury by the first week of December for initial review. The Jury will have until Jan. 10 to submit additional products, with a deadline of

Feb. 3 to complete all scoring.

The final list of nominees will be announced at GAMA Expo 2020 on Thursday, March 12 during the Origins Awards Showcase. After the show, voting will be opened to all GAMA members to determine Game of the Year from among the final nominees.

The nominees and ultimate winners will be celebrated at the 2020 Origins Awards on Saturday, June 20 at Origins Game Fair.

winter 2020 • AROUND THE table 75

INDEX OF advertisers Company............................................................................................... website

adverstory page......... ad page

Anvil Eight Games................................................................. anvil-eight.com....................................... 16........................17 Arcane Wonders............................................................ arcanewonders.com...................................................................63 BCW Supplies.......................................................................bcwsupplies.com...................................................................51 Best Coast Pairings...................................................bestcoastpairings.com...................................................................72 Bezier Games.......................................................................beziergames.com....................................... 24........................25 Big Kid Games..............................................................playbigkidgames.com....................................... 32........................33 Bloomsbury Publishing........................................... ospreypublishing.com....................................... 38........................39 Cephalofair Games............................................................... cephalofair.com....................................... 48.......... Half Wrap CrowD Games.......................................................................... crowdgames.us....................................... 41.................. 42-43 Delano Game Manufacturing.......................................delanogames.com..................................................................... 6 Easy Roller Dice Company............................................ easyrollerdice.com...................................................................65 Fireside Games................................................................. firesidegames.com....................................... 14........................15 Game Rustlers.................................................................... gamerustlers.com....................................... 30........................31 GameFor.................................................................................iamgamefor.com....................................... 60........................61 Green Ronin Publishing......................................................greenronin.com....................................... 68........................69 HABA USA..................................................................................... habausa.com...................................................................73 IELLO USA.......................................................................................iellousa.com....................................... 49....................... C4 Indie Boards & Cards.........................................indieboardsandcards.com....................................... 58........................59 Koplow................................................................................ koplowgames.com....................................... 66........................67 KTBG/Burnt Island Games.................................................kidstablebg.com....................................... 34........................35 Lucky Duck Games..................................................... luckyduckgames.com....................................... 40.......................... 4 Magpie Games..................................................................magpiegames.com....................................... 80........................81 Modiphius Entertainment.................................................. modiphius.com....................................... 12........................13 Parallel Games Inc................................................ parallelboardgames.com................................. 46-47....................... C1 Peachstate Hobby Distribution........................................ phdgames.com....................................... 82....................... C3 Pegasus Spiele....................................................................pegasus-web.com....................................... 22........................23 PvP Geeks................................................................................ playskytear.com....................................... 56........................57 Renegade Game Studios............................................renegadegames.com....................................... 50....................... C2 Ringtail CafĂŠ Productions..................................................ringtailcafe.com....................................... 28........................29 Skybound...................................................................................skybound.com....................................... 20........................21 Southern Hobby Supply..............................................southernhobby.com...................................................................78 Steve Jackson Games...............................................................sjgames.com...................................................................71 Van Ryder Games...........................................................vanrydergames.com......................................... 8.......................... 9

To advertise, contact Ashley Cavanagh at 315-789-0473 76 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

Issue 2nd Quarter 3rd Quarter 4th Quarter

Deadline March 27 June 26 September 25

Mailing Date May 8 August 7 November 6

GAMA

news

Allen Panakal named Origins Artist Guest of Honor For his impressive artistic skill and continued support of the show, Chicago-based digital artist Allen Panakal has been named the Artist Guest of Honor at Origins Game Fair 2020.

“Hey! I’m Allen Panakal. I’m a Chicago-based Artist, working as a web and graphic designer for more than 10 years. I’ve been illustrating for the last three years. My goal is to create new work that inspires.”

The Idea for the Ancient Ones: “Mythology has always been a huge part of my life. I spent my formative years poring over books about various myths.

When the idea for the Ancient Ones first entered my mind, I took that as a sign that the universe was pointing me in a particular direction. I’ve been writing and working on concept art for this project since 2009.”

Allen will have a booth in the Art Expo at the show and will illustrate the cover of the event site book, in addition to having his artwork featured on a show-exclusive tshirt.

To discover more of his work, find his portfolio here: http://allenpanakal.com/

Above: Keybinder; Right: Tree of Ardalore

winter 2020 • AROUND THE table 77

NEW

members

Publisher / Manufacturer 25th Century Games 1425 Van Epps Ave SE, Atlanta, GA, 30316 United States (404) 822-0326 chad@25thcenturygames.com 25thcentury.games Amusing Designs LLC 10995 Long Lake Drive, Sparta, MI, 49345 United States (616) 450-2995 heather@amusingdesigns.com amusingdesigns.com B&B Games Studio 6380 S Valley View Blvd, Suite 244, Las Vegas, NV, US, 89118 United States (702) 914-2488 billy@bnbbizcorp.com bnbbizcorp.com

Carolina Game Tables 508 4th Ave NE, Conover, NC, 28613 United States (828) 409-0959 jodi@carolinagametables.com carolinagametables.com Dolphin Hat Games 108 N Main St. STE B, Englewood, OH, 45322 United States (937) 776-0272 dave@dolphinhat.com dolphinhat.com Free League Publishing Fria Ligan AB, Hornsgatan 114, Stockholm, Stockholm, SE, 11726 Sweden 46766265030 info@frialigan.se https://frialigan.se/en/startpage/

Gemhammer and Sons Gaming 61 Water Street, Woburn, MA, 01801 United States (781) 866-1430 scribe@gemhammer.com gemhammer.com Grand Gamers Guild 5355 Northland DR NE STE C #226, Grand Rapids, MI, 49525 United States (616) 916-1179 grandgamersguild@gmail.com grandgamersguild.com Gray Matters Games 432 Stagecoach Run, Glen Ellyn, IL, 60137 United States (517) 974-5256 info@graymattersgames.com graymattersgames.com Hit Point Press 1175 Brookfield Rd East, Ottawa, ON, K1V0C3 Canada (613) 297-7203 ricardo@hitpointpress.com hitpointpress.com Hush Hush Projects 16 Gulph Mill Road, Somers Point, NJ, 08244 United States (609) 204-3485 rich.gain@hushhushprojects.com fogoflove.com Little Genie Productions 1514 NW 46th St., Seattle, WA, 98107 United States (206) 706-1935 x1 tiffany@littlegenieproductions.com littlegenieproductions.com Modiphius Entertainment Ltd 2nd Floor, 39 Harwood Road, London, JS, SW64QP Great Britain +44 207 736 7020 chris@modiphius.com modiphius.com

78 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

Restoration Games, LLC 12717 W Sunrise BLVD, #244, Plantation, FL, 33323 United States (954) 937-1970 justin@restorationgames.com restorationgames.com Rock Manor Games 2324 W 18th St, Wilmington, DE, 19806 United States (302) 379-9906 mike@rockmanorgames.com https://rockmanorgames.com Roxley 477 78th Ave NE, Alberta, AB, T2K 5A1 Canada (587) 889-4861 info@roxley.com roxley.com Swordfish Islands LLC 4502 Longvale Dr, San Antonio, TX, 78217 United States (512) 568-6584 swordfishislands@gmail.com swordfishislands.com Tuesday Knight Games 17717 Preston Road 301, Dallas, TN, 75252 United States (469) 22-3184 contact@tuesdayknightgames.com tuesdayknightgames.com Ultimate Custom Coins 1519 S Jenifer Ave, Glendora, CA, 91740 United States (888) 489-0998 ultimatecustomcoins@gmail.com ultimatecustomcoins.com

GAMA

news

Jeff Pinsker Joins the GAMA Board During the latest GAMA Board meeting on Tuesday, January 21, Jeff Pinsker of Amigo Games was selected to fill the vacancy the previous Director-At-Large, Brendan Bell, left with his resignation in December.

Jeff Pinsker has founded and sold three companies in businesses ranging from practical jokes to children’s TV and publishing to toys and games.

Accomplishments include: • • • • •

Inventing products that have sold 41+ million units at retail Establishing an international distribution network spanning 104 countries Starting a division that converted legacy game IP into mobile apps Running a company with the #1 rated show on The Disney Channel Pinsker is CEO of Amigo Games, the US subsidiary of one of Germany’s top game companies. Previous positions include top management roles at: Cardinal/Spin Master, Pressman Toy, Scholastic’s Klutz division, and University Games.

Board service includes: Literacy Coalition of Central Texas, American Specialty Toy Retailing Association (ASTRA), Project Genius, Mashup Foods, Cooloo, Trophy Skin, DASH Robotics, National Education Week, Stanford’s Entrepreneurs Group, and the Tech Museum’s Tech Challenge. Pinsker has written 13 children’s books, holds a master’s and two bachelor’s degrees from Stanford University, and is the proud father of two grown children and a 15-year-old stepson.

We look forward to continuing to serve our members with Jeff on the board!

Tickets to Origins Game Fair for GAMA Members We will be offering special programming for GAMA Members at Origins Game Fair 2020. As part of this, we are happy to offer up to 2 complimentary badges to active GAMA members.

Complete the form on this page by May 13 to request your badges: https://www.originsgamefair.com/gama-member Trade Day will again be held on Wednesday, June 17 and will have a full schedule of educational programming. As part of our efforts to support continued education for our members, we are expanding the programming to include seminars for retailers in addition to publishers, distributors, and designers. Once finalized, we’ll share the full schedule at the link above.

If you are unable to attend Origins yourself, you are also able to use your two complimentary badges as a way to engage with your customers. We’ve heard of stores giving away badges to their customers through raffles, social media contests, or even loyalty rewards!

winter 2020 • AROUND THE table 79

Wizard Kittens

By Sarah “Sam” Saltiel Director of Marketing and Sales, Magpie Games

W

izard Kittens is the purrfect game to enchant players of all ages, with quick, easy-to-learn gameplay and cards featuring adorable and fantastical artwork. You play as mischievous kittens who accidentally released the contents of a book of curses while frolicking through the library’s restricted section. You and your fluffy friends must collect the escaped curses and restore order before the librarian, Professor Whispurr, catches you!

Wizard Kittens is a semicooperative set collection card game.

The kitties have to work together to defeat six curses throughout the course of the game. Each of the curses requires a different combination of ritual components to be defeated and each awards a varying number of points to the player that defeats it.

On your turn, you draw a card from the deck, cast a spell, and try to collect the ritual components to defeat the curses. Performing the best spells gets you points, but be careful! If Professor Whispurr arrives before all the curses are defeated, any kitten with 10 or more points gets thrown in detention. After that, the Cleanest Paws Clause applies and whoever has the fewest ritual components left in front of them avoids detention and wins the game! If all 80 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

the curses are defeated before the Professor Whispurr card is drawn, the kitty with the most points wins.

Wizard Kittens takes between 15-30 minutes and works with 2-4 players, age 7+, perfect for entertaining little ones on the go.

To ensure that one box contains hours of fun, Wizard Kittens has variable levels of play. The basic level is perfect for teaching younger players or players that are new to card games. If you want to master a different level, all you have to do is flip your adorable play mat over and go from basic play to advanced. To change things up even more, you can add in the Chaos Cat card, which brings new rules to the game during gameplay, throwing in surprises that will keep kids and adults coming back for more!

Wizard Kittens comes from Magpie Games, a Golden Geek nominated, Indiecade award winning company founded in 2011. Wizard Kittens was successfully Kickstarted in March of 2019, raising over 30x its initial goal. The box includes 4 kitten play mats, 48 ritual component cards, 12 extra credit cards to give kittens a secret way to play and score points, 12 quirky and absolutely charming curses, and much more. Wizard Kittens will brighten up your shelves and tables with mesmerizing artwork and magical kittens nearly seem to come to life!

Organized PLAY

from the Outside In

by Roderick Edwards, Director of Organized Play, Peachstate Hobby Distribution

O

ver the years, in my role as Peachstate Hobby Distribution’s Director of Organized Play, I have witnessed enormous success from brickand-mortar stores that have championed organized play in their community.

While many hobby retailers fully embrace organized play (OP) in their buildings, there are a multitude of activities and events in their neighborhoods that can be utilized to help shape and grow the gaming culture of their business. Through this type of outreach, stores can utilize organized play to build their community from the outside in by bringing games to the people.

With that in mind, here are few suggestions to consider when organizing play in your local community.

Schools

Nearby middle schools and high schools often have extracurricular and after-school programs centered around tabletop gaming. Communicating with the school administration about your desire to interact with these students and possibly host specific events is an opportunity to promote your store and engage with students and staff. For instance, if they have a roleplaying group, then offer to run a series of short gaming sessions to introduce different RPGs and play styles. If they have a trading-card game group, offer a course that walks them through the basics of game play, drafting, and deck building.

82 AROUND THE table • winter 2020

Scouts

Local Conventions

A few years back, Scouts BSA (formally Boy Scouts of America) introduced a Game Design Merit Badge that requires Scouts to play several different types of games and learn gamedesign terminology. Reaching out to local Scout troops (there may be more than one in your area) to offer your assistance in teaching the course gives you a chance to promote your business while giving back to the community. In addition, part of the course requires them to playtest a game of their own design and get feedback.

Hosting this portion in your stores makes the connection complete and builds goodwill with your customers.

Smaller shows can be a great place to promote your store and event schedule.

If you have a large collection of game demos, consider hosting a game library.

Some convention promoters may offer the space to you for free when you agree to provide this service. If you have a more limited collection, focus on games that fit the convention’s theme and run them in the con’s gaming area. Either way, be sure to schedule these events and have them listed, but be flexible if your tables are not filling up. Finally, consider hosting “Learn to Play” session for TCGs, RPGS, and some of your most popular board games. This may help to reduce the anxiety that some newer players may feel about playing games in public with strangers.

Regardless of how you conduct your OP outreach, I highly recommend giving participants a valuable takeaway, such as a discount coupon, or a voucher for a free gift. Either of these will hopefully inspire them to visit your store. When they do come in, remember that you are their ambassador. Take the time to show them around. Discuss your in-store events and invite them to return. By stretching your organized-play program beyond the boundaries of your walls, you will improve your skills, expand your reach in the community, and promote the activities that make your store a neighborhood entertainment destination.

Outdoor Events

Tabletop gaming outdoors may seem like an odd choice at first, but at many outdoor events, attendees are in a low-pressure environment and are more likely to be receptive to new ideas.

Renaissance fairs are the perfect occasion for hosting fantasy RPG scenarios. One retailer who I spoke with, hosts one-hour slots complete with a themed tent and laminated character sheets, so that the games can withstand the great outdoors.

Another option to consider is hosting events at local fairs or farmers markets with oversized versions of games. Some publishers are willing to loan them to retailers for events. These large games are a great way to introduce and connect your store to the community.

PHDGAMES.COM

PHD Celebrates 15 Years Now with over 15 years of experience, PHD has become a leader in U.S. game and hobby distribution and we want to extend a heartfelt thank you to all the publishers and stores that made it possible. PHD will continue to provide a full line of TCGs, Miniatures, Board Games, Card Games, Sports Cards, and RPGs, as well as Comic, Gaming, and Hobby Supplies.

With experienced staff and personalized organized-play support, we willl do what it takes to help you grow your business.

THE PULSE OF THE GAME INDUSTRY FOR 15 YEARS

1.877.743.4263 info@phdgames.com

COMING TO LEARN MORE ON

page 48.

MARCH 24

A new adventure unfolds.

FROSTHAVEN is coming

March 24th, 2020!

A new party of mercenaries must gather at the end of their rope to help bring back a frozen land from the edge of destruction in this exciting new campaign from the designer and publisher of GLOOMHAVEN. Learn more on page

Subscribe: cephalofair.com/retailers

48.

Quicker setup, fewer components, and a smaller box New stand-alone campaign Featuring 25 scenarios and built-in tutorials

New map and location stickers 16 monster types 7 new standard monsters and 3 new bosses

4 new playable classes Compatible with GLOOMHAVEN and FROSTHAVEN Jaws of the Lion Retail Q3 2020 | SKU CPH0501

Upgrade your adventure.

A premium set of metal coins compatible with all titles set in the Gloomhaven universe.

AVAILABLE SPRING 2020

Product Details Page 53.

Metal Coin Upgrade SKU CPH0401