Great Night

I've decided to reduce the frequency of my blogging in an attempt to boost the quality - i.e. only post when I've something to say. Hopefully, it'll make the blog a bit more interesting...

Last night I got some good news, a sale that I had previously counted, but hadn't turned into anything was confirmed - I was beginning to lose some confidence, as sales had slowed too. But, I chased them up, and they confirmed the sale - woohoo! I've also received another real gamer sale this week - things are looking up.

We also had some friends round, and while the ladies entertained themselves, Rich and I played games. First up was a game of Border Reivers, and to avoid damaging the copies I had ready to go, we played with the old prototype:

It was fun breaking out this old version, and I still love the FIMO pieces I made to represent mountain ranges, towers and castles:

The game was a real nail-biter, Rich got to the mine first and made use of the monetary advantage to get a lot of armies. Outnumbered on cash and armies I had to make a few desperate attacks, which after some disasterous failures finally paid off. I managed to win the mine back eventually, and wiped Rich out at the same time as getting the requisite gold. It was a really enjoyable game because of the back-and-forth nature and the pressure I felt under. Good stuff.

Afterwards I offered Rich a few options and he chose my Jorvik prototype (the latest one). We ended up playing four games, I won the first, then we drew the second, I won the third and then Rich won the final game. Rich seemed to enjoy it, and was keen to play more. During the games our scores steadily increased, until the last game when we both suffered at the hands of the events. It felt good though, we both had a strategy, I won the majority of the games which implies a level of strategy, rather than just blind luck, and I found a flaw in the rules, which needed to be address halfway through the last game. I still think Jorvik needs something else, but I felt it went fairly well. One of the things I'm aiming for with Jorvik is a Lost Cities-like experience. Fast games, that are really good fun and pull you in for more. The first time I played Lost Cities, I got utterly creamed but really wanted to play again. When I introduced it to Roman we played five games back-to-back. After each game of Jorvik last night I offered Rich the chance to play something different, and each time he chose another game of Jorvik - I must be doing something right.