FlickFleet Prototype Revision

Last week I finally made some progress on Zombology crafting again after a five week hiatus that included Christmas and various work trips. My aim this quarter is to make 12 games each month and then an additional six at some point during the quarter. With three evenings left in January I'm at six for the quarter so far :-(

On a brighter note, I finally made it along to Newcastle Gamers for the first time since October. It was also my first visit with unclaimed Zombology stock, so I tweeted about bringing it and mentioned it on the Meetup page too. After a quick game of Keltis das Kartenspiel with Olly, John S and Neil, I asked around if anyone was interested and managed to drum up six people who were. We played a game, and then Trevor requested a second game. Afterwards I made my (pretty weak!) sales pitch: 'I've made these myself. I've got a quarterly mailing list if you'd like to subscribe, or you can buy a copy if you like for £10. If you don't want to do either of those that's fine.' I took four mailing list subscriptions and sold three copies! Which considering two of the six were a couple means a 60% conversion rate - I'm happy with that! Afterwards we play a couple of games of Codenames, which was great fun too - I'd only played the Pictures version before, so it was nice to see the original version. It was great to make it to Newcastle Gamers, I rarely make it because of kid-related exhaustion, visitors or visiting friends and family or work travel.

This week is going to be very busy. By Wednesday I need to do my tax return and I'm hoping to submit FlickFleet to the Cardboard Edison Award. I've never submitted a game to a competition before, so it'll be interesting to see how that goes. I've got a really good feeling about FlickFleet (the feedback has been very positive) so hopefully we'll either do well or get some good feedback from the judges. I've been working on the rulebook in preparation, so that's starting to take shape a bit more, with pictures and scenarios included now.

On the weekend my friend Paul (my FlickFleet co-designer) and his family are coming to visit, so I'm hoping to get the next version of FlickFleet prototypes made in time for that (at least his copy!). I've made some changes to the rules and some minor changes to the laser-cut pieces. I've also significantly changed the ship dashboard cards and the wooden piece requirements. I'm getting five copies made, a refresh of mine, one for Paul (hence the rush!), a couple of playtest copies and one that will either go to Cardboard Edison if we make the first cut or another playtest copy. I meant to do these ages ago, but my printer broke and then the Perspex I need for the laser-cutting was delivered to London in error, so they've had to send me another copy that will hopefully arrive today. Assuming they get here in time I'll drop them off with Dan for laser-cutting on Wednesday and then hopefully assemble the rest early next week.

The dreadnought faces off

I've still not managed to fix the printer, so I might need to go to some professionals for the prototype printing, which will probably end up being surprisingly expensive, despite the fact that I only need 12 sheets of card printed and I can provide the card.