Martin Wallace, the board game designer, returned for his annual post-Essenspiel trip to the UK. He came complete with a box of games he's just published or is working on. He stopped by for a couple of nights so we got in a game in Shedquarters and played a number of his games too. And discussed a new project he is thinking of, which is to produce a Wars of the Roses board game that has a different approach to the standard move armies around a map type of thing.
He also got to hear me give one of my battlefield society talks to a local history group. Lucky fellow, isn't he?
We started out with a game of "To Ur is Human", which is now 5 years old. I want to revisit the publication as it was my first, and I was still very much learning the ropes at the time I did it. The book is in black & white instead of colour, and the figures were looking a bit ropey (how fitting) at the time. They've since been given a face lift, so it might be time to showcase them once more.
His skirmishers edged their way through the groves of trees.
He then charged one of his battle cart units into my heavy foot, with little regard for his personal safety, but he got away with it.
In fact he shattered my front line unit, and caused a massed panic. The Fear Test was not my friend, in this instance, although his victory came at the cost of severe damage to the battle cart unit. He probably got the better of that trade.
I countered with my battle carts and made good inroads, but not as spectacularly. In fact what I succeeded in doing was sticking my carts into a pocket from which there was little or no escape. My army fell apart, so I had performed my role as a good host by giving my visitor a friendly victory to make him feel welcome.
I then went and gave my talk in a nicely restored Victorian Congregational Chapel in Newport Pagnell. This is before the start. It was virtually full for the talk. Honest.
Next day we played a boardgame or two, including the really enjoyable "Steam Power", which is being funded through Game Found (the pledge is still open as of now).
I'm not much of a one for railway build 'em type games, as there's usually too much in the way of economics, but I really liked this one. It was neat and quick to play with no record keeping and nice looking bits and pieces.
I didn't take any pictures of the game, so this is one from the internet. The board is printed on a silky cloth, which means you can get more than one board into the box without increasing the weight or taking up too much space. Feels really nice too. We played twice, on two different mats. I lost the first game easily, but sneaked a win in the second.
Next big thing Martin is going to launch is his take on the Fighting Fantasy books of blessed memory.
We played a prototype a few years ago, so this time round I just got to admire the artwork. There's going to be a big launch at UKGE next year, with Ian Livingstone signing boxes. The initial launch will have five adventures in the box for c£30, which isn't bad. £6 for an evening's entertainment for four of you. Mrs T and I have been playing legacy/story type games on a monthly basis with some friends for the last couple of years. We've finished all the Harry Potter "Hogwarts Battle" games, plus the two expansions, in order, and also "Clank! Legacy". We're now playing Kosmos' "Adventures of Robin Hood". We have another 6 adventures in that to go, so we'll be ready for something new by June next year, and this will fit the bill.
His newest game which is under heavy development is "Casus Belli", which is a Sci-Fi 4X game ("Explore, expand, exploit, exterminate" apparently).
Back in the day Thom Wham produced a fantasy game called "Kings & Things", which was billed as the fantasy game with everything in it. This is not at all like that as a game, but it does seem to have everything from every sci-fi TV/film series you can think of, without breaching copyright. It is a Space Opera game without a doubt.
I think it would be fair to say it is EPIC. I played an alliance of planets, committed to mutual support and growth through treaties/alliances. Martin played a more aggressive space faring empire, intent on conquest and glory. Fighting isn't inevitable, although Martin played a strategy intended to trigger war towards the game end. I did okay, but there's a lot to get your teeth into, with numerous paths to victory and defeat. I had failed to identify key resource requirements at the start of the game, and got behind on building tech, and also didn't place as many colonies as I should have done, focussing on signing treaties with minor civilizations. As long as we weren't fighting I was doing okay, and made up a lot of ground, but I was then behind on ship building. When the final confrontation came Martin blew up my key planet in the middle of the board with a planet smashing piece of tech. I had a few shots at blowing it up before it struck, but completely failed to hit it (or indeed anything at all) with my mega sophisticated stealth and everything battle fleet, designed with the aid of ancient alien technology.
This is a heavy and deep game, which will find a committed gamer fanbase. Probably a bit too clever for me in that it will repay repeated playings as you learn how to make it all work, and I probably don't have that amount of spare time to really learn it, nor a committed group prepared to invest a lot of time in mastering it.
We played some other games, not designed by Martin, and I discovered that he can't get his head round roll and write games.
I've found a weak spot.
It is probably just as well for the world of games that the games designers aren't always - or even usually - the best practitioners of the games they design. It is at least as well for the world that they design good games. I do like the look of that rail-building game (Germany, by the look?).
ReplyDeleteJust a question: what is a 'roll and write' game?
Cheers,
Ion
Martin's good as most of his games, but sometimes I'm gooder (grin). The basic game comes with two maps, north America and northern Europe. I think if the pledges are high enough there may be a third, which is West Country England. The deluxe version comes with 6 maps, and there's an expansion where you lay the tracks as a model railway avoiding the cats in the house.
Delete"Roll and write" means you roll dice and then write something down based on what you roll. Something like Wolfgang Warsch's "That's Pretty Clever" and its follow ups, and "Rolled West".