Blog Archives
Monday Brews – 6-30-14
Another week gone by. And another summer weekend in the rear view mirror. And another tornado warning where I live. What a summer this shall be!
It’s Monday, so let’s take a look at the Boards & Barley that I enjoyed this past week.
The Barley:
BARLEY SPOTLIGHT: Lake Louie Mosquito Beach
This is a beautifully tasteful beer and perfect for warm summer evening enjoyment. Lake Louie, a local brewer, makes some excellent brews. This particular beer, a “California Common,” is Lake Louie’s first lager beer. It weighs in at 5.8% abv and possesses 30 IBUs. And it is really tasty!
- Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy
- Leinenkugel’s Honey Weiss
- Smith & Forge Hard Cider
What brews have you been enjoying?
The Boards:
BOARDS SPOTLIGHT: Brooklyn Bridge
I made a change to the brickyards based on a suggestion for a local world-class game developer and it took the game from “This is a game” to “This is special!”
It worked really well, increased player interaction dramatically, added a slightly more cut-throat nature, and most importantly made it more fun and enjoyable. I can’t wait to get it to the table again and keep working on it!
The only other game I played last week was Mutiny, which I should be able to write about in the near future. I’ll keep you posted on that.
What board games have you been enjoying?
Design: The Grand Illusion
Ladies and Gentlemen, I welcome you to the big show. Tonight I will be performing a series of illusions of the highest grandeur. You’ll see things that no human has ever seen before. And then you won’t see them! Tonight it’s all about the magic. For my first trick I’ll need a volunteer…
I came up with a new game design theme a few weeks ago and it’s still rattling around in my brain. So I figure I should try to turn it into a real game design. For some reason I’ve decided to do all the design publicly on this blog. I think this will be a fun way to show people what is all involved with the game design process and I’m also looking for involvement from all of you!
So these design articles, starting today and continuing on Thursdays, are meant to be an open source forum of sorts where I welcome your comments, ideas, suggestions, etc.
Game Theme
I love the look and feel of vintage magician posters from that era.
I love the movie The Prestige. It’s a fascinating movie about competing illusionists in the early 1900s. If you’ve never seen it, I highly recommend it. For me magic has always been an intriguing thing. Last year I had the chance to visit the Harry Houdini museum in Appleton, Wisconsin. It was neat to learn about his story and more about the era as well. It seems like an interesting time to have lived.
So I want to make a game about competing illusionists from that time. Therefore The Grand Illusion is all about magicians and their competition to earn the best reputation.
You are a street magician in the early 1900s beginning your career. You’ve got a few tricks up your sleeve that no one else has mastered. It’s time to build a reputation and become a household name in the field of magicians.
You start small doing a few tricks for small crowds on the street. Do them well and your skills will increase, as will your reputation. When you’ve got enough of a following then it’s time to take your show to a real stage. But beware, the crowd will always be expecting bigger and better!
If you can find a way to continually master new tricks and perform them flawlessly, then you may end up as the greatest magician of all time!
Basic Concepts and Components
My original thoughts for the gameplay involve card drafting and set collection. The concept is that you have to collect sets of cards that allow you to perform certain tricks. The bigger the set, the more likely you are to perform the trick flawlessly.
But there’s a catch. You know the old “Ball and Cup” trick? The idea of the trick is that there will be a ball under one of three cups. Then the magician will move them around and try to get you to lose track of which cup the ball is under. I want to utilize this as a mechanic in the game. If players each contribute a card to a common hand these would represent the cups. Then if there were a special card added to that hand it would represent the cup with the ball. Then players would blindly draft and whomever pulled the cup-ball card would get to perform the best trick. That’s my basic original concept for one of the mechanics in the game.
What I want players to feel throughout the game is a sense of accomplishment while teetering on a sharp edge. Players should attempt tricks and illusions throughout the game but always with some risk of failing and letting down the fans.
Each set of cards used for performing tricks will have several different symbols on them. These symbols represent different illusionary skills such as sleight of hand. When you complete a trick you can increase your skills in any or all of those categories. One emphasis for that decision making process would be that each player has a Grand Illusion that they are working toward completing.
The Grand Illusion
Like a private scoring condition, the Grand Illusion card that each player holds is a trick that could provide a huge boost near the end of the game. It is a trick that can only be attempted once, so players will want to make sure they have a skill set that will help them perform the trick with high success.
The idea is that as players become better magicians and build an audience and a reputation they realize that they have to keep increasing the awesomeness of their tricks or else the audience might go to another magician. So by performing their Grand Illusion it could put them at the top.
What’s Next?
So that’s the current state of the design. It is just a bunch of basic concepts. But that’s where you all come in. What would you like to see in a game about Victorian era magicians? What mechanics, themes, components would you like to see?
Let’s design this together. Please comment on this article or reply on Twitter. I’m looking forward to designing this publicly with all of you. Thanks for reading!
Monday Brews – 6-23-14
I’m Back! My paternity leave is over, my baby is a month old, and I am ready to jump back into game designing, blogging, and brewing.
As usual since today is Monday I recap the Boards & Barley I’ve enjoyed. But it has been a long time since I posted so I have an extensive list today. We’d better get started… (So many beers means I won’t be linking them all. If one sounds interesting, just do a search for it.)
The Barley:
Oh Baby!
I can’t pick a Barley Spotlight beer since there were so many good ones. Here’s what I’ve enjoyed over the past few weeks:
- Bell’s Oberon
- La Trappe Quadrupel
- Anchor Old Foghorn Barleywine
- Leinenkugel’s Lemon Berry Shandy
- Capital Amber
- Grand Teton Sweet Grass American Pale Ale
- Vintage Sasparilla Killa
- Capital Supper Club
- Delirium Tremens Tripel
- Konig Pilsner
- Solemn Oath Snaggletooth Bandana American IPA
- Leinenkugel’s Honey Weiss
- Tyranena Down & Dirty Chocolate Oatmeal Stout
- Capital Lake House
- 4 Brothers Prodigal Son
- Labatt Blue
- Southern Tier Creme Brulee
- Breckenridge Nitro Vanilla Porter
- Kostriker Schwarzbier
Wow… what a list. Probably could have done without the Labatt Blue, but otherwise it’s been an enjoyable few weeks on the Barley front!
The Boards:
No Boards Spotlight here either. We’ll be back on track next week with the spotlight items.
- Qwirkle
- VivaJava Dice x3
- Le Havre: The Inland Port
- Nauticus
- Feudality
- King of Tokyo
- Mutiny
That’s not as many games as I thought. Maybe I forgot some. I guess I was pretty busy painting the baby’s room, hanging curtains, putting mulch around our house, playing with the two older kids, watching the World Cup (Pretty good timing for my paternity leave!), and sleeping. But it’s good to be back!
Designer’s Corner:
It’s time to make a strong push to get Brooklyn Bridge ready to demo for people at GenCon. I’ve got just under two months to refine the game to a point where it is fully enjoyable without any gaping holes. There’s aren’t really any gaping holes right now. It’s just not fully enjoyable. But I have a few tweaks that I want to test this week that my Level 1 friends have said sound like good changes.
Also, I have a new game design idea that I really like. The theme is totally fun and interesting to me. I’ll give you more information on Thursday when I plan to share the concept with the world. The cool thing is that I will be doing all the design publicly on this blog. Each Thursday for the next few weeks I’ll be posting design articles about the game and I’ll be wanting your feedback for it. We can all design it together in a sort of crowd-sourced design thingy. That should be pretty awesome.
So progress is being made on Brooklyn Bridge. I’m going to tweak a few things with Quantum Orcas and make it more flavorful, which hopefully will increase replayability. And it should be a fun 7 weeks leading up to Gen Con! Will I see you there???
Monday Brews 5-19-14
After a week off from my Monday Brews articles last week I’ve wrangled up a long beer list. It was aided by the fact that my city was having a Craft Beer Week. And it was also aided by two playtests of Brooklyn Bridge. So I’ve got a nice long beer list for you this week.
I also brewed another beer. I’ll be writing about that later this week unless my new baby pops out of my wife’s belly. It is a wheat beer that I’m calling “You’ve Been Wheated.”
So let’s jump right in and start with the barley…
The Barley:
Best word to describe it: Yum!
BARLEY SPOTLIGHT: Tyranena Doubly Down and Even Dirtier Barrel Aged Chocolate Vanilla Double Stout
I enjoyed this most amazing beer with possibly the longest beer name ever during a Madison Craft Beer Week event. It was on tap and it was amazing. It was very rich with a beautiful flavor and a solidity to it that made it feel as though you just ate a full meal. I will definitely drink this again. Also, it’s baby brother, “Down & Dirty,” is also very good and more accessible.
- Sprecher Special Amber
- Boddingtons
- NEW! New Belgium Snapshot – I liked it at first but then it seemed to have a characteristic closer to a Sour beer. I’ll try it again.
- Young’s Double Chocolate Stout
- Lucette Hips Don’t Lie
- NEW! New Glarus Spiced Ale – Not as spicy as I was expecting, which was pleasant.
- NEW! Boulder Shake Chocolate Porter – Warm this one up a little and you’ve got yourself a full-on dessert!
- NEW! Potosi Steamboat Shandy – This was a very enjoyable shandy.
- NEW! Blakkr Imperial Black Ale – This brew is actually a partnership between three breweries. (Three Floyds, Surly, Real Ale). I didn’t particularly enjoy this brew.
- New Belgium Trippel
- Hofbrau Original
- Bridgeport Kingpin
- NEW! Green Flash Double Stout Black Ale – This was an excellent, deep, dark double stout.
The Boards:
How good of a Euro could this be? They don’t really look that bored.
BOARDS SPOTLIGHT: Aquadukt
This isn’t a new game, but it was new to me. And I loved the simplicity of it! The options you can choose on your turn are simple (build houses OR build a well OR build canals). But with those three simple choices comes a game with surprising depth. Which house tiles do you build – 1s, 2s, 3s, or 4s? When/Where should you build a well? How/Where should you build canals. This is a euro and it doesn’t try to hide it. The board is basically a big grid sectioned into 20 areas. I love games that use simple mechanics but yet have deep and interesting decisions!
- Targi – such a fun 2 player game!
- Quantum Orcas – Ran another successful playtest. Still not sure what I want to do with this game.
- Love Letter
- Unpublished Prototype – oh man… this one is SOOO good!
- Qwirkle
- Brooklyn Bridge – more below.
Designer’s Corner:
The progress currently being made on Brooklyn Bridge is making me feel much better about the game. While there are interesting mechanics that people seem to enjoy it has been all the other stuff in the game that has been needing the work.
The most major change is that money is no longer a part of the game. (Side note: I may bring money back with money being the points in the game. Currently the points are set up such that they could be equivalent to $$.) Previously players could earn money without having to build the bridge. That meant that early in the game they would focus on money to buy abilities. With the change the only way to buy abilities is with points and the only way to get points is to actually build the bridge… imagine that!
I am extremely happy with how the latest playtest went. The first half of the game worked really well, consisted of interesting decisions, and players overall seemed to be having fun. A big thing that was an improvement was the new player mats. These allowed me to get rid of the 30 red, 30 yellow, 30 brown, and 30 silver cubes that represent the bricks and mortar. Now players have one cube of each color and they move it along on their player mat.
It wasn’t all good though. The second half of the game imploded. It was as if the game ran into a brick wall (no pun intended). The upside is that I have implemented a few changes which should circumvent that issue. I can’t wait to get it to the table again. This is probably the first time with Brooklyn Bridge where I really feel like there is “publishing potential.”
There you go… the late, great version of two weeks of Boards & Barley. What Boards & Barley have you been enjoying???
Building Buildings – A Review of The Builders
A bored European on the cover?? I’m In!
My level one friend Jeremy went to Essen last year and hoped to pick this game up but unfortunately it wasn’t available. So I picked it up a few weeks ago. Packed in a nice little tin is a really enjoyable game. I’ve played two times, which is enough for me to review it.
Let me remind you that I review games after 1 or 2 plays because if it stinks after 1 or 2 plays then I’m not likely to play it again. So games usually have to make a pretty good impression early on for me to desire more plays.
So today I present my opinions on The Builders!
In The Builders players are racing to 17 points. Points are earned by completing buildings or tools, each of which can be worth points. Players will utilize their workers by sending them to work at their buildings that are under construction. Once the resource requirements for a building are met with workers or tools then the building is completed. The player will earn coins instantly and points which are counted at the end of the game.
The Builders set up for three players. Image via BGG user Spielemitkinder
At the start of the game each player will begin with an Apprentice card as their lone worker. Five buildings and five workers will be placed on the table. Each player will also begin with 10 coins.
On your turn you can do three total actions, choosing from the following:
- START CONSTRUCTION: Take one of the five available building cards
- RECRUIT A WORKER: Take one of the five available worker cards
- SEND A WORKER TO WORK: Place one of your workers next to one of your unfinished buildings
- TAKE COINS: Take coins
Those are the four actions you can choose on your turn. You could do the same action all three times if you so desired. There are a few rules with how choosing the same action works, but I won’t get into that here.
Basically you go around and around until someone gets to 17 points. Then you finish the round and score it. Pretty simple… but is it any good?
Here’s What I Like:
ARTWORK: Amazing! The artwork for the buildings in this game is so vibrant and colorful that they really pop on the cards. If I were an artist I would want to make things look like the buildings in this game.
EASE OF GAMEPLAY: Since players only have three actions per turn, and since there are only four options from which to choose, this makes for pretty simple gameplay that is easy to understand. It’s also very easy to teach this game, which allows me to play with non-gamers or baby gamers.
Here’s What I Dislike:
ACTION CLARITY: What I’m referring to is when you choose the same action several times. For instance, when you place two workers on the same building in the same turn there is a compounding of actions and money that isn’t completely clear in the rulebook.
Designer Perspective – What Would I Change?
This is an all around solid design. That makes it tough for me to think of something I would change. One thing I would change is to add female workers to the workers deck. There’s no reason they all have to be male. Perhaps the biggest thing I would change would be to add bonus points for building similar types of buildings. So players could purposefully try to build a church and a cloister and earn bonus points. Those types of combos could be very interesting, especially if similar types of buildings required different resources.
Beer Pairing
This is a simple, light game with nice deep decisions. So it calls for a similar beer. One that comes to mind would be the La Trappe Tripel. Most tripels seem to have two taste components. When you first take a sip you get an excellent character of quality beer. Then after you swallow you typically experience floral overtones. That’s similar to The Builders in that The game is so simple and exhibits an “excellent character.” Then once you’ve played it you can see some awesome depth, similar to the floral overtones.
Overall Rating:
I really enjoy The Builders. It is fun, quick, and yet has compelling and interesting decisions throughout the game. It is a test of optimization, to be fair. But I ignore math when playing games and focus on fun instead. And this game is a lot of fun. I’m rating it 8 out of 10 according to the BoardGameGeek.com rating scale.
Very good game. I like to play it. Probably I’ll suggest it and will never turn down a game.
Boards and Barley 