Tiles Screen Captures

As promised in my last post, I've got some preliminary tiles images posted over on the Border Reivers design page. Have a gander and let me know what you think. There's still plenty of work to be done on them.

Border Reivers Tiles

I spent a good five or six hours yesterday evening on the tiles design for the limited edition of Border Reivers. It went really well, I managed to get the coastlines, roads and numbering done for the first side (I haven't started the second side yet).

I had previously done a version by hand, and I've nearly caught up with how much I had done for that version already. I've the trees, villages and waves to do and then I'm making forward progress again.

In the next couple of days I'll post some work-in-progress images of the tile design over on the Border Reivers website.

Lots of Puerto Rico

This weekend passed in a Advocaat-soaked (don't ask) blur, but we did manage to get 3 games of Puerto Rico in after various meals. The first one was with Karen, Jochen, The Wife and I (won by Karen) and then on Sunday, Rebecca, Paul, The Wife and I played another two games (one a piece to Paul and I).

All three games finished when we ran out of colonists, unlike the first time I played when Roman built all 12 of his buildings. Our scores climbed steadily through the three games as we learnt the game more thoroughly, and the final game was very close with me just scraping a win in the very last round.

The more I play it, the more I like it. It is a great game. I'm convinced that buildings are key to winning, as Paul got only 4 victory points from transporting goods to the Old World in the last game, and yet he very nearly won, despite my 18 victory points from transportation.

Oh, and as usual after every games session we finished with promises that we should make time for a game of Twiglet.

Paint Shop Pro

I've started work on a new final version of the Border Reivers tiles. I'm creating two A3 sheets which feature the design for each side of the tiles. Previously I've attempted to do this by hand and using Microsoft Publisher - neither of which were the right tool for the job. Is Paint Shop Pro the best tool for the job? Probably not, but I own it and it's the best tool I've tried so far.

Should have some more to say soon, and we've got friends coming round for tea tonight and lunch tomorrow, and hopefully there'll be games after each meal :-). I'm hoping to give Puerto Rico another outing now that I've a better idea what I'm doing.

Border Reivers

Border Reivers was my first board game, and I designed it between Christmas '01 and 2003. The game has been finished for the last two years, and I've got a prototype that I made to playtest the game with friends.

Last weekend my parents came to visit and I talked to my Dad extensively about my games design work. As a result I've decided to manufacturer a limited run of Border Reivers, while investigating getting it properly published.

So, I've started working on the final deisgn of the tiles and cards and I'm going to invest in a hefty printer for printing the tiles and cards.

I'm thinking of using Plastics for Games for the pieces (although I'd prefer nice wooden pieces like those of Carcassonne, Puerto Rico and Settlers of Catan, I can get cheap plastic pieces that fit the bill in the UK).

Interested in a copy? Then either email me at Jack@ReiverGames.co.uk or post a reply to this post.

Dollyo - Making Progress

As I mentioned in my last post Dollyo was started around two years ago, but paused for a very long time.

This time round I'm keen to take the game in a slightly different direction, by reducing the emphasis on combat and increasing the emphasis on trade and politics.

I begin my design of a new game by thinking about what elements I want in the game. To begin with I tend to include far too many elements creating a very complicated game, then slowly over time simplify out those elements that work the least well. I scribble down all my early ideas, then try to start playing the game against myself to set the mechanics up. It gives me a chance to tweak the elements of the design to improve the balance, or change the speed at which the game plays. At this point the board/tiles are scribbled on a pad of paper and I use pieces from other games to represent the game pieces & cards where I can, scribbling bits on scraps of paper where I can't.

That's as far as I got today - it'll be a good while before the game is ready to start playing with other people.

For the record the following stages my games go through are:

• Making my own cards and pieces
• Extensive playtesting with the rules regularly changing
• Playtesting with infrequent rule changes and 'beta' cards, pieces, tiles and board
• The prototype - by this stage I've made 'nice' bits, and the rules are fixed

Design

When I created this blog I promised you design as well as reviews/session notes, but I've been so busy on other projects that I've not really done any solid design for a while - I've been limited to scheming while commuting to work.

Thanks to a snow day I'm now at home with some time to spare so here's my first thoughts on Codename: Dollyo a new game I first started about 2 years ago staight after Border Reivers, that has been paused for about 20 months :-)

Like lots of the new German boardgames available at the moment Border Reivers had a victory point mechanism (in the form of first to 40 gold wins the game), but it was possible to circumvent this mechanism by slaughtering your opponents before anyone reached the 40 gold target. In Dollyo I intend to do something similar, but with a couple of new (to me, at least) twists. The first is to limit the actions you can perform by the number of victory points you currently have. I like the idea of this, especially since it 'makes sense' in the setting of Dollyo, and I've not seen it anywhere else. The second is something that I've seen in Citadels by Bruno Faidutti (Fantasy Flight Games), the first person to reach the victory point target (in the case of Citadels the first to eight city districts) is not necessarily the winner - although you do gain an advantage.

The Beast!

We finally got a chance to get another game of Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition in this weekend, only four months after the last game. We played with Paul, who had played with us last time so we had the double advantage of all three players having played before in the not-too-distant past, and only three players - so the finally total was only 4 and a half hours. It really is a beast :-)

Here's a snapshot of the penultimate turn before I got a lamping :-) Click on it to see the full-size image.

I won the game in the end, using the 10 victory points mechanism - as always seems to be the winning strategy. Unusally, there was no combat in the game until the final round when it was already clear that I was going to win - so there was a definite 'Well we've got to have at least some fighting' feeling about it.

I also tried a different strategy this game, using the Politics strategy to ensure a plentiful supply of the rule-bending Action cards, and making the most of my race's technology special ability, by ensuring that I never chose the Technology strategy myself - allowing both the primary and secondary usages. I ended the game with 13 technologies which was nice :-)

It was also the first outing of the Distant Suns expansion pack, giving each planet a random effect such as extra trade goods, hostile locals or radiation which kills your landing party. It slowed the expansion of the player's empires down and added a new dimension to the exploration and expansion - I'll definitely play that again in the future.

As usual after Twiglet games, we said we need to play again soon, to take advantage of us all have the rules in our heads, who knows when we'll get round to it though...

Hot Carribean Action

So after a few attempts that were called off due to sickness, I finally got a chance to play Puerto Rico from Rio Grande Games yesterday.

Expectations were high as it is the most popular game on BoardGameGeek, and first impressions after a single game are that it is really good. The wife is already saying that she definitely prefers it to Citadels which is also a great game.

It uses similar mechanics to Twilight Imperium 3 and Citadels where players choose a different role each round. However, unlike citadels where only one player gets to perform the action associated with the role, and Twiglet where the actions differ depending upon whether you choose the role or someone else did, in Puerto Rico everyone gets to perform the same action (although the person who chose it gets a related bonus).

Players take it in turns to choose a role, starting with the 'Guvnor' (which rotates clockwise each turn), and they and then the other players get to perform the action for that role. Because of this, you spend very little time waiting for other players like many of the other German games.

The aim of the game is to have the most victory points at the end, and there are two ways of gaining points: by shipping goods to the Old World, and by building buildings. You also get to create plantations which provide an income of goods for trade or shipping. In the game (with the wife, Jochen, Karen and Roman), I didn't concentrate much on generating money, so I couldn't build many buildings, which bit me at the end as I came out 4th out of 5. Next time I think I'll keep that in mind and try to get more building done.

In conclusion, there are a lot of really nice mechanisms in the game, and at first blush it seemed to be very interesting and certainly replayable, and, as usual with German games, the wooden pieces are great and the printed pieces are nice enough. All in all, I'm very happy with my purchase.

One, Ah, Ah, Ah...

So, I got my first taste of the Count of Carcassonne today in a couple of games with the wife. In the first game we didn't really comprehend it, and failed to use any of the new game mechanics, in the second I forced myself to go against my instinct to use the new mechanics just to see how it worked.

The new tiles and wooden piece are just as attractive as the original pieces, and the new mechanics give you a method of treating your limited number of followers as reserves, placing them in the city of Carcassonne where you can use them to help you claim cities, farms, roads and cloisters as they are completed. You can choose which to claim as they are scored, rather then when you place the tile which reduces the speculative nature of placing followers. In addition, the fact that you can only place a follower in the city when you have given your opponent points means that you change the way you interact with the other players which also makes things more interesting.

The main downside is that it definitely increases the complexity of Carcassonne, and its fixed starting position (not one but twelve tiles!), reduces the variation between games.

I'll have to play it a bunch more times before I can firmly make a call on it, but the early impressions are it'll be nice to play once in a while, but I think I'll still prefer the basic game most of the time.

In summary, the new mechanics noticably change the play of Carcassonne, it becomes a totally different game, and while this will increase the longevity of the game it definitely makes it more complicated. Carcassonne has always seemed a game you won't bore of, it plays quickly (30-45mins), it's very simple and yet there is a great depth of strategy involved and you usually feel that games are won or lost by your moves rather than your luck. Is the Count worth it? Well it only cost £3, so probably yes, but it doesn't significantly improve the game - just changes it.

New Look, New Games

What do you think? The wife has gone to town on the design and boy does it look gorgeous :-)

In other news, I bought Puerto Rico from Rio Grande Games, and the Count expansion for Carcassonne today, hopefully I'll get a chance to play them tomorrow when we go round to friends for dinner - look out for some feedback soon.

In yet more news, I've spent a little time working on Codename: Dollyo again, so I will try to post about some design in the next couple of days.

Carcassonne extensions: first impressions

Hello. Mal here. Jack’s been kind enough to invite me to join the gaming party.

So, without further ado, and for a change, it’s Carcassonne. Specifically, the Carcassonne extension packs, The Count of Carcassonne and The King And Scout. I bought both of these packs yesterday and they seem to be of wildly different complexities. I’ve yet to play with them, but here are my first impressions from a skim through the rules.

The Count of Carcassonne

Muckle rock hard to understand! You get an extra 12 tiles to start the game, placed in a pre-ordained arrangement. These tiles form a large city, the city having 4 quarters (districts rather than literal quarters). The Count, a purplish meeple reminiscent of the "One! ah ah ah, Two! ah ah ah", Sesame Street character, is placed in one of these quarters and... oh, I don’t know... he, like, controls either cloisters or roads or farms or whatever.

I’ve probably got it completely wrong already, but suffice it to say your meeples can be placed in the city along with the Count and the position of said purple fella affects the scoring of the various ’trades’. As I said, it’s not a simple thing. Once I’ve had a game or three, I’ll write it up properly, but for now, I think I’m gonna ease myself in with...

The King and Scout

Or, more accurately, The King. This extension pack is actually 2 separate extensions: one for the original Carcassonne; and one for the Hunters & Gatherers edition. Given that neither Jack nor I have the latter, it’s the King part I’m interested in. To say that this extension is simple would be an understatement. All it boils down to is a few new tiles (just 5 of them!) and a couple more scoring mechanisms. These new scoring mechanisms are simply Longest Road and Largest City bonuses. In other words, the person with the longest completed road at the end of the game gets one extra point for every completed road in the game, regardless of who ’owned’ it. Same thing for the largest city. Whether I needed to buy the extension pack to get these variations in the game is a matter I’ll be chatting to my wallet about.

As I say, I’ll write up a proper review of these two once I’ve had a shot with them. Hopefully then I’ll actually be able to explain the Count, ah ah ah!

Buntu Circus!

Jochen came round this afternoon for a few games and we ended up playing 'The Buntu Circus' by The Buntu Circus Ltd. a great game I got about 6 or 7 years ago, and haven't played for ages. The game is interesting, and very different from anything else I've got, it certainly provides a mental challenge and is a nice balance of skill and luck.

After that we played four games of Carcassonne - it's great!

More Carcassonne

Got a few more games of Carcassonne in last night before Mal left, and I finally won one. The key to Carcassonne is definitely the farmers, you need to pick the area you farm though, in one game, Mal and I both ended up with four farmers on a single field - which severely limits the number of men you have available for other point-winning schemes.

I'm thinking of buying a new game soon, not sure what though. I'll probably go for a 'Spiele Des Jahres' winner as I've come up trumps with them in the past. Anyone got any suggestions?

I'm hoping to get another game of Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition in soon, it's a fantastic game, the downside is that it takes a whole day to play, and because it's so complex, and we play so infrequently, you spend most of the day trying to remember the rules :-(

Introduction

This new blog serves a dual purpose, allowing me to post about progress with the board games I'm inventing, and to allow my friends and I to review and recommend board games they've played.

Off the bat, I played several games of Carcassonne from Hans Im Gluck games last night with The Wife and Mal, and then just Mal. I lost them all, but I'm still loving Carcassonne - it is a truly excellent game that doesn't pale with lots of play.

Carcassonne was a winner of the prestigous 'Spiele Des Jahres' German board game award, and I'm finding that to be a reliable indicator of a game's quality.