While ( Blogging )

I've been thinking a lot recently about game groups, I've been involved in a few tabletop ones over the years.

Who knew that buying small pieces of plastic was so hard and so expensive?!

Outer Wilds was a game I picked up while on my paternity leave. As its core it is a game about exploration and mystery. It blew me away, the mechanics of the game, the theme, the music, the story, the visuals, basically everything completely captivated me and it is not one of my favorite games. Just the first few notes of the intro music is enough to send me reminiscing.

Its been a long while since I've played games in person with my friends, as is the case for a lot of us. With a new daughter during this whole thing I didn't really prioritize gaming, to focus instead on settling into fatherhood. Now that I'm getting used to things I've started playing boardgames remotely with my friends again.

I've finally decided on a web address, which requires some name changes. I'm also taking the opportunity to improve things and add a new section/

As many of you might have experienced, boardgame boxes tend to be much bigger then needed for their contents. This is often done to make games stand out on store shelves and to give potential buyers a sense of value for money. Alas it also means they take up more shelf space at home and are harder to bring places.

I've had an Ikea Detolf glass cabinet for a long time. It stored the many miniatures from the many games I've played. I moved house a few years ago and didn't unpack much into, I was starting to get unhappy with how little it could fit. The cabinet stands over 5 foot tall but only has 3 shelves and the base on which you can put models. That's more then 12" of height for models that rarely go over 1"!!

Hot off the back of building my first board game prototype, I had an idea for a game. While playing Carcassonne online with my friends, I wondered what it would be like to play Carcassonne in reverse. Where the tiles were already down and players were picking them up.

I've finally completed a full draft of the rules for the Rugby Card Game. There are a few gaps here and their I'm sure but its pretty much all there and playable.

In my last post, I gave a general outline of what I wanted the core loop to be. I also created a document on github to start fleshing out my rules. Since then I've added much more details to my rules, and added a lot more details to what will be the core loop of the game.

The first step is laying out the rules in a document so I can easily iterate on them. This will help me build up the picture of how it will all work. I've started that here. At time of writing its just what I think the components will be. You can read the laws of rugby to get a better idea of what I'm trying to model.

I've blogged about my idea for a Rugby boardgame before. In that post, I discuss the rules of the sport and how they could be mapped to a game. In particular the challenges with how to track 15 players on each side. I then evolved this idea further, focusing on a variant of the sport called 7s with just 7 players a side. After some more thoughts, I've started to figure out how I'd like the game to work, and I'm committing myself to building a working prototype, even if I start to feel its not right.

Where have I been?

I've started to record the boardgames I play on a page on this website (see Game Diary). The aim is to record the games I have played so that I can look back and remember the fun I have had.

Learning from others is central to creating something new. Great works are often built on the research and development of others. To that end I have purchased some game design books to help me with my own project. First up is Clockwork Game Design by Keith Burgun. Clockwork Game Design is a compact 146 page A5 book about how to design a strategy game. It tries to be generic to the medium, boardgame or computer game. Instead focusing on what should be the focus of the designer when building a strategy game.

For the Thin Men I wasn't sure about painting them the navy they are in the game as I thought it wouldn't show well or would match too close the colour of the Greys. So I started with grey for the suits. After the first one though I wasn't happy, the grey doesnt appear evil or dangerous enough. So I finished a pair so they would at least match and then moved to navy for the last 3. This looked much better to be honest and I'm quite happy with the results. I have 5 more of the same models if I want to do more Thin Men, though I might do actual Men in Black for actual 15mm gaming.

Nations is a classic worker placement/ building game. Players have a player board where they have actions they can place their workers on and resources/points are accumulated during play. Overall a good and interesting game if a bit on the long side.

I am very happy with an idea for a game about rugby, I have been thinking about it and it feels like something that should be straightforward for me to work with as a first game. I'm thinking hard about how to balance simulation vs abstraction though, I want the game to be quick and interesting but definitely keep the feel of a game of rugby. Bloodbowl is a game that feels like a very good simlulation of a sports game but it is long and complicated. Bloodbowl Team Manager is a very abstract game of managing a team, it is much simplier but still very good!

Boardgames are made of two main things, mechanics and theme. Theme is often what attracts people, mechanics often what keeps people. When thinking of ideas I find mechanics more interesting but theme feels more real.

I had heard about this game from a few of my friends, but its description didn’t really sound appealing to me. I couldn’t quite hear the game, and I’m not generally a huge fan of cooperative games. Then I watched Shut Up and Sit Down’s review of it, where they said it was one of the best couples game they had played. This piqued my interest! Finding good couples games can be hard as often you both don’t like the same type of games.

I'm very partial to wargames, I started my gaming career like many others with Warhammer. I have tired of the most popular wargames though because they all seem to require constant keeping up, with new rules and miniatures etc. I understand this is a commercial necessity and that some like the changes to keep things fresh but personally after a decade of playing Warhammer and Warmachine I tired of it.

In the spirit of my previous post this is the first in what will be a series of posts about boardgames ideas that I have. Hopefully they will be useful to others and more hopefully I'll use them to actually try and create one of the ideas!

I started reading Jeff Atwood's blog Coding Horror when I was in college. It's very good, I learnt a great deal from it. It is unfortunate that it is no longer regularly updated. One of his thoughts that really stuck with me is his view on ideas vs executions.

With the Skyranger ready to paint, I had to decide how I wanted to paint it! My preferred aesthetic, as with the Thin Men, is something simple with solid blocks of colours.

With the mock complete, now it's time to put the real thing together. I sprayed the sprue black so that when the parts were all put together the insides would be black already. I built the basic frame of the plane. The main sides are curved when attached to the top part so I had to cello tape them together to allow it to keep its shape while working on it. I separated and shaped the helicopter rear propellers to slot just behind the wings. There was just enough room for the pieces to fit, though it cut very close on one side of the propeller so it seems I got lucky!

In xcom your troops are delivered to each mission by a Skyranger. It is a sort of futuristic Osprey. Naturally I need something similar for my troops! For me though it would need to be bigger, in the game it only carries 6 soldiers, where I would like to carry closer to 12-16.

In my last post about my xcom plan I showed my alien Greys, which at the time were a work in progress. I recently finished painting them, so here is a post about it.

My friend brought Last Will to our last gaming night, eager to give it a shot and with a pitch like this who could resist! "Your distant childless uncle has died; in his will he explains that he did not live his life to the full. It's a great regret of his which he wants to make sure his heir does not repeat. He has given each of you a small part of his fortune, whoever lives life to the fullest with it, will receive the rest!"

So I have an idea, but the challenge is putting it all together given some self imposed constraints. The main hope is to be able to use my existing 20mm miniatures and my buildings so what I get has to fit with that. Unfortunately these requirements did not make that easy...

I played Tiny Epic Kingdoms a lot at Gaelcon and enjoyed it so I went looking for a copy. I found TEG which had slightly better reviews on boardgamegeek and has a theme I prefer (Space!). It was very well priced at around 20 euro.

When it comes to websites I prefer something clean and basic. I'm sure there are themes for Wordpress or blogger that fit this but I have a slight unexplained aversion to them for a personal site. I've used blogger for small project blogs no problem, but there is something I can't place why I don't want it for a personnel blog.

This is actually my third attempt to start a blog. My first idea, years ago, was one dedicated to boardgame design call 'The Boardgame Cabinet'. I had a great idea for a web design based on that premise, and played around with some obscure blogging software and hosting services to run it. Alas my web design skills were not up to the challenge and the project died on the literal drawing board. (I still have my notes for planned posts so it might revive in some form). Strike one.

I never played the original x-com but as soon as played the remake xcom I fell in love with it. It has the perfect combination of smooth game play, easy to use UI and perfectly executed B movie aesthetics that I love.