My gaming group had the opportunity to play Lords of Waterdeep a couple of times this week. Despite the D&D theme, this is surprisingly a Euro-style worker placement game. Players score points by completing quests within the city of Waterdeep. Quests are completed by recruiting the necessary adventurers (clerics, fighters, rogues, and wizards) indicated on quest cards. Recruiting of the adventurers happens at the various locations on the board where players place their ‘agent’ meeples. There is a wide variety of buildings that can be purchased by placing an agent at the Builder’s Hall. Generally, only one new building per turn will be added to the city, with some exception. These buildings provide new action spaces for players to use when placing their agents. The player who purchased the building will derive a benefit when other players use the action space. At the start of the game each player will receive a Lord card, which indicates how the player can score bonus (hidden) points for completing specific types of quests. There also a Lord card that offers bonus points for each building owned by the player, making the landlord strategy a viable strategic choice. In fact, in our first game, this was the wining strategy. The game also includes a mechanic called Intrigue cards. These are action cards that can be played by placing an agent in the Waterdeep Harbor location. The Intrigue cards are always beneficial to the player who plays them, and most have a secondary effect that
51 hours to go!
Big thanks to all of my backers. 51 hours left and we are way above the initial $7,500 goal. The 12K and 20K stretch goals were easily beat! Here’s a peek at the designs for the the life\health chip. Backers will have the choice to pick one or both designs as part of their chip set.
The cost of ceramic chips
Having spent a month or so fielding questions from backers and potential backers, I now realize that I should have done a better job explaining the costs around creating a set of poker chips. A number of folks looked at the price of the sets and exclaimed, “Wow, those are some expensive chips!” The first things to discuss is that there are a variety of different types of chips on the market. The cost of a set of chips is mostly dependent on what type of material the chips are made from. The folks over at pokerchiplounge.com put together a nice summary page that compares the various types of chips including advantages and disadvantages. One big question that a bunch of folks have asked after looking at the GameChips Kickstarter Project is how does the pricing compare to other custom ceramic chips on the market. Here is a quick example of the cost of creating your own custom set versus the ones on Kickstarter. Let’s use the 300 chip set as an example: Here’s the rates used by brpropoker.com which are fairly typical from quality custom chip providers. Using these rates, your cost to manufacturer the chips is $246. You will also need to provide your artwork to the manufacturer. Unless you are a graphic artist, you will need to hire a graphic designer. The cost to hire a designer would likely be between $100-$300 as a guideline. For the purposes of this example, $150 for a simple design. So
Sneak peek at the 20K
Here’s a quick look at the ‘death & damage’ side of the latest chip for the Kickstarter project. Here’s the link to the update. These chips will be used as health and damage tokens in games.
Kickstarter: a blessing or a curse?
Full disclosure: I’m currently running a Kickstarter campaign to create a board game related accessory (hopefully that’s not news). Almost every blog and podcast now features a discussion about Kickstarter and its potential impact on the board gaming hobby. Why should this blog be different? Here are a few of the themes that almost always surface: 1. The quality of the games that will be created by first-time creators will lower quality compared to those from established publishers. 2. Eventually, the creditability of of Kickstarter-funded game development will be harmed by a project that either fails to deliver what was described, or delivers nothing at all. 3. The Kickstarter ‘craze’ will begin to wane as a result of the above two themes. So, are these 3 theories accurate? In 5 years, what impact will Kickstarter have had on the hobby? No one knows the real answer, but here is my opinion. I’ve been in the board gaming hobby for at least 10 years, and in that time, the number of games being brought to market each year continues to rise. This growth trend was in motion before the Kickstarter mania. Now with Kickstarter, even more games are created and marketed each year. Another equally gamer-friendly trend is the rise of IOS gaming, which logically should have taken market share away from the board gaming hobby as consumers could simply pay the small fee for the IOS version and not need to invest in the physical copy of the game.
Dominion Strategy Guide – Now Available
We’ve just posted a great new strategy guide for Dominion. This guide covers all of the core strategies and helps players avoid common mistakes. Enjoy.
Dragon Rampage: Review
Dragon Rampage is the latest offering from Richard Launius, designer of several popular theme-oozing games, including Arkham Horror and Defenders of the Realm. In this dice-based dungeon romp, the players are members of a party of adventurers traveling through a dragon’s lair. Along the way they are pilfering gold, stealing treasure and attacking the dragon — all through rolling a set of custom dice and assigning the results to various actions. But moving through the dungeon comes with its dangers; the dragon attacks every round, and whoever has earned the dragon’s ire that round is in danger of taking damage. The game ends after several rounds when one of three endgame conditions are met — either the players defeat the dragon, one of the players manages to flee the dungeon, or one of the heroes is killed. At that point scores are tallied and the winner is determined. And based on which condition triggers the endgame, the scoring system changes. If the game ends with a player fleeing the dungeon, players are rewarded for being closest to the exit. But if the game ends by slaying the dragon, players are penalized for trying to escape — after all, those closest to the dragon when it dies deserve the glory. Theme-wise, Dragon Rampage is a winner. There are six different characters, and each has its own deck of hero cards which suit a particular play style and set of goals. There are plenty of interesting artifacts which provide helpful and sometimes
Settlers of Catan: Strategy Guide now available
GameKnight is pleased to announce that a Settlers of Catan strategy guide is now available. Additional resources and great information about Settlers is available in the The Settlers of Catan Center. This is also available as a .pdf version if you want to print it out and keep it with your game.
