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Saturday, March 28, 2020
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AZ Game Fair 2019
Last weekend I attended AZ Game Fair 2019 in Mesa. It's just up the road from Tucson, and as a "special guest" I get a free badge, so it's usually a very inexpensive weekend of gaming. However, this year my wife and baby came with, which meant a full price hotel room for 2 nights, so it wasn't so cheap after all.
I did not arrive at the convention until 10pm on Friday, so I might as well have just come up Saturday morning and saved the cost of the room that first night... oh well.
Saturday and Sunday, however, I did manage to spend a lot of time at the convention, and actually play some games for once!
Old Favorites
Puerto RicoAfter hopping into a game or two of The Resistance with Sean Ramirez of The Dukes Of Dice podcast, I taught his friends Puerto Rico, which sat at the top of the "best games" list for a decade (and with good reason). Sean and I had played before, so of course it boiled down to a contest between him and me. I haven't played that game in years, but it's definitely one of my favorites, and I pulled out the victory.
Game Design Panel
After that, I was on a game design panel with another local designer, David Short, as well as Canadian special guest Daryl Andrews, and the guest of honor from Italy, Vital Lacerda. The panel was called The Secret Lives of Board Game Designers, but had no real direction or moderator, so I tried to sort of direct traffic. We mostly took questions from the audience.
Railroad Tycoon
After the panel, my friend Hoss was running a game of Railways of the World (FKA Railroad Tycoon). There were only 3 of us, Hoss, myself, and a new player Hoss had just taught how to play. We used a map of Great Britain, which I'd not seen before. I kinda liked the map. It was a tight game, and in the last round I had to go to the bathroom, so I made my last 3 plays out of turn (they didn't affect anybody else anyway) and ran off. When I got back, they'd just finished counting points, and Hoss had won by 1 point! I don't know if I trust him though, the first thing he said that game was that I should be banker because he was bad at counting, and the first thing he did in the game was grab $10k bills in lieu of $1k bills... :)
New Hotness
Underwater CitiesIn addition to those old favorites, I got a chance to try a few of the new, hot games. Saturday night Hoss and I sat down to figure out Underwater Cities. The rulebook took about 45 mins to learn from, mostly because they repeated the "play a card and place a worker, and if your card color matches, you get the bonus" text at least 4 times.
I was enjoying Underwater Cities while we played, but thinking about it afterwards, I am not sure I'd want to play it more than maybe twice. The "play a card and place a worker, and if your card color matches, you get the bonus" thing is cute. I did feel like I never really wanted to play an off-colored card, even though I had something in play that gave me a consolation prize when I did that (though I probably should have done it once or twice).
We had to stop 1 turn before the end because they closed up, so I don't actually know how my strategy turned out, but I got a pretty good feel for it. I saw maybe 2 real paths I'd want to try (the one I did, and 1 other). I'm sure there's more, but it wasn't obvious what else you could really do.
The collect-cards-in-play part was a lot like Terraforming Mars, and I definitely liked this A LOT more than I like Terraforming Mars.
Wingspan
Wingspan was solid. I enjoyed most of it. Probably the only thing that I thought was weird was the random-and-variable resource pool. You need resources (in 5 types) to pay for playing bird cards, and there's an action where you take some resources (you can upgrade that so you take multiples, 1 at a time). The resource pool is 5 dice, rolled into a supply. When you take a resource, you remove the die from the supply, reducing what's available. Caveat, if all remaining dice in the supply match (there's only 1 resource option available to you), then you may choose to re-roll all of the dice, resetting the whole pool to 5 random things before taking one.
I could see wanting a random resource pool, and I could see wanting a competitive resource pool (like dice drafting), but I'm not sure the way they're combined here is the best way to do the job.
One of the types of reasons I don't like it is because there are a bunch of card effects that are like "take a [specific resource] from the supply, if it's there" - which is therefore super variable, based not just on what's rolled, but also based on how many dice happen to remain in the supply. Worse, there's a card type that says "when [X happens and succeeds], take a die from the supply," where the likelihood of X happening depends on what opponents do (which is fine), but the likelihood of X succeeding increases as the number of dice remaining decreases... so while it looks like this card gives you flexibility when it hits (you choose a die rather than get a specific resource), in reality, this card is not likely to hit at all, and if it does, you probably get some random resource, not a real choice. I could argue that's just a lame card effect, but I think it's a symptom of a lame resource system.
But other than that, I thought the game was fun, and solid.
Just One
Not as hyped as the previous two games I mentioned, Just One is a hot new cooperative party game where the goal is to get one of your teammates to guess a word by giving 1-word clues. The catch is that after each player writes down their 1-word clue (but before the guesser sees then), any matching clues cancel out. So it's scary to use the obvious clues, because if someone else does that, you don't get them, but then everybody avoids the obvious clues, and you still don't use them!
It's a fun party game, would play again, even at 2 in the morning :)
My Own Games and Prototypes
Crusaders: Thy Will Be DoneCrusaders came out just a few months ago, and so far it seems to be very well received. The production is very nice, and several people approached me at the convention to tell me how much they were enjoying the game play!
One guy who had backed the Deluxified version of the game was trying to read the rules while his friends played another game, so I offered to teach. In the end it was just 2 of them (the other 2 kept playing that other game), so I sat in and made it a 3 player game.
It's been a while since I've played Crusaders, but I still liked it a lot!
Crusaders: Divine Influence
I had made an expansion to Crusaders about a year ago, and I had thought it was probably done. I sent it to Utah with Michael in October so the TMG team could play it, and I just got it back about a week ago.
Ben and his daughter were looking to play one of my prototypes, and so as the last game of the convention, I taught them Divine Influence. Emma had not played Crusaders before, but she picked the game up just fine, even with the extra expansion rules. It went well, though I think the free movement from the Influence action is too fiddly, hard to visualize, easy to forget, and usually unnecessary. I should either cut it, or make it simpler -- maybe something like "you may freely move between adjacent hexes with your influence marker on them" (a dynamic known as "railroading" in some games). Maybe better would be to simply cut it, and save having to make components for influence.
David's doggo card game
Late Saturday night I played one of David's quick card game prototypes. It's intended to be a sort of follow up to AEG's Cat Lady. Indeed, much of it was super similar to Cat Lady (collecting similar types of sets from a 3x3 grid), however this game was a step up in complexity, as you could buy upgrades to the patterns of cards you're allowed to pick up.
I gave him some feedback, hopefully it was helpful. Mostly it was "once a player replenishes the board, their turn should be over," which I think he agreed with in the end. The rest was about a special card called "fetch," which did something thematic that David liked, but I thought should probably instead just be "get a card from the discard pile," which also seemed thematic to me. The way David wanted to do it, in my mind, subverted the main mechanism in the game, which is something I don't like doing. The recent game Noria does that, and I wish it didn't.
Ep 28: Grimdunk Is Live!
Ep 28: Grimdunk is live!
We talk with Mike Hobbs about Warhammer 40,000 and his new fantasy wargame project.
https://soundcloud.com/user-989538417/episode-28-grimdunk
Join the conversation at https://theveteranwargamer.blogspot.com, email theveteranwargamer@gmail.com, Twitter @veteranwargamer
Follow Mike on Twitter @wargamer_mike or his blog http://mikehobbs.co.uk/
Other companies we mentioned:
McVitie's Dark Chocolate Digestives http://www.mcvities.co.uk/products/chocolate-digestives
McVitie's Chocolate Hobnobs http://www.mcvities.co.uk/products/hobnobs
Sachertorte https://www.sacher.com/en/original-sacher-cake/
Previous Episode with Mike https://soundcloud.com/user-989538417/episode-15-in-my-day
Oldhammer https://soundcloud.com/user-989538417/episode-3-everything-oldhammer-is-new-again
Oldhammer II https://soundcloud.com/user-989538417/episode-22-give-me-lead-til-im-dead
Meeples and Minatures with Jon Tuffley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH4MJlW8vHk
Music courtesy bensound.com. Recorded with zencastr.com. Edited with Audacity. Make your town beautiful; get a haircut.
ALIEN ODYSSEY
by Austin Brewer
Argonaut Software, a studio best known for its development of Star Fox and the Super Nintendo's Super FX chip, also developed the obscure DOS action-adventure known as Alien Odyssey in 1995. With a far more powerful system at their disposal, how does this innovative team fare on home computers?
Read more »
Monday, March 23, 2020
Veins Of The Heartland
What's going on everyone!?
Today for the #2019gameaday challenge dear ol' dad and I played a game of Ticket to Ride on our tablets.
Luckily for dad, I played an honest game and didn't cut him off on a route or two of his that he got on me which ended up winning him the game!
All in all, it was a great time and I can't wait to play again.
As always, thank you for reading and don't forget to stop and smell the meeples! :)
-Tim
Friday, March 20, 2020
What Daphne Saw, Short Film, Review And Interview.
What Daphne Saw is a poignant look at the criminal justice system. The is a well stated and slightly unnerving view of what has been spoken about in recent events in a way that, so many times, science fiction can only present.
Well done.
What Daphne Saw was screened at the 2019 FilmQuest film festival (website). It was nominated for Best Sci-Fi Short.
Synopsis
In the future, capital punishment has been abolished. Violent criminals are reprogrammed into unquestioning servants, their free will and ability to speak taken away. A young woman endures her punishment of silent servitude in a seemingly normal man's home, where she discovers dark secrets.
Tagline
Set in a dystopian future where criminals are reprogrammed to be voiceless, unquestioning servants to the wealthy, What Daphne Saw sheds light on the silencing of victims and asks the question, what does justice really mean?
Lizz Marshall directed What Daphne Saw and also shared some thoughts about her movie, inspirations, future and likes.
What was the inspiration for What Daphne Saw?
The concept for What Daphne Saw came from a few different things. It started with a feeling of voiclessness and powerlessness I saw in the character of Daphne in Greek mythology; there is a story where the God Apollo tries to rape a woman on Earth (Daphne) and when she begs the Gods for help, they turn her into a tree, so she is silenced for speaking out and forced to forever internalize her pain. I connected with Daphne in that story and wanted to explore that dynamic and those particular feelings. I had also done a short documentary my freshman year of college about recidivism, so my views on the justice system organically bled into the story.
What project(s) do you have coming up you're excited about?
As far as upcoming projects go: I will be working with anti-human trafficking non-profit organization NotInOurCity, who served as executive producers on What Daphne Saw, to create a genre-based VR short film that educates on human trafficking in a way that is engaging and narrative driven. They are currently raising funds for the project!
What was your early inspiration for pursuing a career in film?
Like many sci-fi filmmakers, Star Wars. I remember watching the original trilogy as a kid and feeling like it was just totally magical. It was really cool to be immersed in a different world and I really wanted to do that—build other worlds.
What would be your dream project?
I am hoping that this isn't the end for Daphne. I have a feature length version of What Daphne Saw that I am shopping around at the moment. I really want to direct the feature film for What Daphne Saw and share more of her world and complexities that there isn't enough time for in a short. There's also a project that's much more of a stretch that I'm hoping will one day see the light of day—it's a horror-comedy musical that's pretty out there. Totally in the opposite direction of What Daphne Saw tonally and a very different side of me as a writer. Those are my goals for the future right now!
What are some of your favorite pastimes when not working on a movie?
I also write music! I have made two music videos for songs called Parasiteand Lifeline I have co-written with Alex Winkler, who is the composer for What Daphne Saw. We actually co-wrote the song in the credits for the film—I wrote the lyrics and sang and Alex wrote the music. It was originally a song that we did loosely based on a video game called Life is Strange, and then made a music video for, but the emotional core of it really fit with the ending of What Daphne Saw so we decided to use it. I'm hoping we'll be able to release an EP at some point.
What is one of your favorite movies and why?
Empire Strikes Back! It's one of the few movies I can watch over and over and not get tired of.
You can follow the movie on
Twitter and Instagram @whatdaphnesaw
Find out more about What Daphne Saw on IMDb (link).
I'm working at keeping my material free of subscription charges by supplementing costs by being an Amazon Associate and having advertising appear. I earn a fee when people make purchases of qualified products from Amazon when they enter the site from a link on Guild Master Gaming and when people click on an ad. If you do either, thank you.
If you have a comment, suggestion, or critique please leave a comment here or send an email to guildmastergaming@gmail.com.
I have articles being published by others and you can find most of them on Guild Master Gaming on Facebookand Twitter(@GuildMstrGmng).
Thursday, March 19, 2020
UCLan Games Student Enters Rookies Competition 2019
Peter Dimitrov has entered two 3D environments into the @TheRookiesCO competition. One depicts feudal Japan, the other one is a cyberpunk theme. Check out the work and give it a high five!
We are also proud to announce that Peter has had his 3D environment work included in Epic Games Unreal Engine Student Showcase Reel 2019! Congratulations Peter.
Not only that but Peter is also our winner of the LancsArtFestival 2019 Degree Show Award for Games Design!
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Not only that but Peter is also our winner of the LancsArtFestival 2019 Degree Show Award for Games Design!
Monday, March 16, 2020
Now Hiring: Community Manager And Event Coordinator
We are now looking for a "Community Manager and Event Coordinator" for our company. This will be a very broad role and we are looking for someone who is very driven and creative. The tasks will range from the simple, such as:
- Managing our social media accounts and platform-specific communication channels (such as Steam communities and PS4 Game hub).
- Answering various emails.
- Coordinating and booking special internal and external events.
- Planning and coordinating PR for a new game release.
- Making plans for improving our social media and implementing these.
- Overseeing a revamp of all our webpages (company and game-specific).
- Becoming the company's catalyst for generating interesting posts and events on all of our public channels.
The basic requirements are as follows:
- It's crucial that you are a person who is highly able to work on your own initiative. No one will be laying out an exact schedule of things that you must do - you will need to drive your own workload. You will also need to be a creative member of the team, bringing a lot of your own ideas and suggestions to the table and then going on to implement them when possible.
- You must live in Sweden or be prepared to move here. Note that any employment starts with a six month trial period, and there is no need to move until that is over.
- You must have excellent writing skills in English.
- You need good knowledge of how social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, works.
- You should have a burning interest in video games and an understanding of the market.
In order to apply, start by doing the following assignments:
- Imagine that SOMA is about to be released. Write a short (at most 150 words) and playful cover letter that will be sent out with all of the review copies of the game.
- We really need to become much more frequent in our social media usage and communicate what we do as a company and what we are like as individuals. In 200 words or less, explain how you would try to go about increasing the number of interesting posts on our social media channels.
- An angry user has written an email complaining that our games have all become worse since Penumbra, as they no longer have proper puzzles and gameplay. Write a response.
- Being proactive and self-starting is crucial for this position. Therefore, write your own question similar to the ones above and answer it.
Privacy Policy
By sending us your application, you give us permission to store your personal information and attachments.
We store all applications in a secure system. The applications are stored for two years, after which they are deleted. If you want your your information removed earlier, please contact us through our Contact form. Read more in our Privacy Policy.
Sunday, March 15, 2020
WW1 Naval Campaign - Heligoland Bight
Well it's time for our second Battle Report from our ongoing WW1 Naval Campaign, check out the latest copy of T'Yarkshire Ferret Newspaper above with all the gossip and tittle tattle around the goings on off the table.
If you missed game one, the link is below -
https://yarkshiregamer.blogspot.com/2019/04/ww1-naval-campaign-war-is-declared.html
As with the first report, the AAR below is how our game developed, the scenarios in the Campaign have a number of tactical events along the way meaning that games can be radically different depending on how those tactical events play out or how the game has been affected by previous Political events.
Game 2 - Heligoland Bight
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| 3rd British Destroyer Flottila |
The British planned to push their own light force inside the German patrol line and bring them to Battle.
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| German Destroyers quickly under heavy fire |
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| HMS Royalist |
06.23 German 3rd Scouting Group consisting of the Light Cruisers Frauenlob, Stettin and Dresden, appear, 7500 yards South of the Southern most ship, sailing North West.
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| German 3rd Scouting Group |
Frauenlob scores a direct hit on the Bridge of HMS Royalist but fails to do any damage, the same turn Stettin lands a shell on the Bridge of the Destroyer HMS Contest but again the British escape with no major damage, the tide of the game could have definitely changed at that point.
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| 1st Half Flottila (German) |
So it was a relief when at 06.37 the 1st British Destroyer Flottila led by the Scout Cruiser HMS Active (with Destroyers Attack, Acheron, Hydra, Badger, Ariel and the Yarkshires very own Ferret) arrived 7500 yards to the east of HMS Landrail.
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| 1st British Destroyer Flottila |
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| HMS Lydiard in trouble |
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| Bags of action |
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| British 1st Light Cruiser Sqn |
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| The end of HMS Landrail |
More German Light Cruisers started to arrive but these were some distance away from the action.
The British finally got some decent hits on two German Torpedo Boats who had got themselves a bit isolated. A rudder hit and a couple of fires made things a bit more interesting for V2 and V4.
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| German Ships taking proper damage at last |
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| HMS Royalist is now alight |
The British Light Cruisers were now starting go get the range of the Germans who had been keeping their distance. Information concerning a possible smoke plume seen to the south was despatched to the British player who sent HMS Gloucester to investigate.
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| V2 sinks |
And that was the game over the British player realised that his nearest support, a Sqn of aging Armoured Cruisers were no match for the likes of Moltke and withdrew. The Germans who had already started to pull back couldn't take advantage of the potential help from the Battlecruiser Sqn as they were too far away from the British to keep them engaged.
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| HMS Royalist is saved. |
A further German Destroyer V4 sank due to flooding on its way back to port meaning that the losses in the game were even, 2 Destroyers a piece.
Which just leaves me time to show off my new cool dice shaker !
A evenly matched game which ended in a cautious stand off. There are so many variations in the Campaign book that this could have gone a number of ways, even splitting into two seperate battles. In my first grumble about the book, the instructions for this scenario are dreadfully confusing but I managed to get there after reading it hundreds of times.
There will be a short break in the Campaign whilst I catch up on some painting, I didn't notice initially, but Scenario 3 contains some older vessels I don't own. Who needs an excuse to buy more ! I got the missing ships from Tumbling Dice so look out for a review / comparison post on them soon.
Thursday, March 5, 2020
Nepenthes, Short Film, Review And Interview
The doubly deceptive title, Nepenthes, gives this short film a stronger impact of what so many go through in their troubling life of finding something they can be a part of. A tale of wanting something to ease the pain of loneliness versus being trapped.
This Canadian horror film plays on what we do because of love and loneliness.
Synopsis: Max is desperate to make a meaningful connection, but when she decides to meet an online dating match at home she gets herself into a painfully sticky situation.
Ariel Hansen wrote and directed Nepenthes. She was willing to share what inspired her to make this movie and to be a film maker. She was also kind enough to share some thoughts about what she like to be doing when not writing a script or looking through a camera.
What was the inspiration for Nepenthes?
When writing this film, I was inspired by the world of online dating and how horrifically wrong it can go. Originally, I wanted to make a ghost story, but then I remembered an old creepypasta I'd read that inspired me to make the monstrous circumstances a little... different.
What project(s) do you have coming up you're excited about?
I just wrapped shooting my next short film called Clout. It centres around a social media influencer and her fall from internet grace with a healthy dose of body horror and a pinch of sci-fi.
What was your early inspiration for pursuing a career in film?
I actually don't remember a time in my life where I didn't want to pursue a career in film, ever since I was a little kid I've been obsessed with being a part of the film and tv world, initially aiming for acting since it was the part of the industry I could see the most of. Maybe I was inspired by the sheer volume of movies and tv shows I ended up watching as an only child.
What would be your dream project?
Well I would definitely love to direct for Blumhouse someday, but there is one project that I have an idea for a film that I would love to make. The only problem is it would have to be either a sequel or remake to Cujo because it too is about a rabid dog trapping people in a car, just under very different circumstances. Aside from that I want to journey into the occult and folk horror in the future.
What are some of your favorite pastimes when not working on a movie?
I absolutely love gardening, especially growing fruits and vegetables. This year I even tried pickling some of my vegetables and I must say that they turned out quite delicious. When my hands aren't in the dirt I also enjoy sewing and curling up on the couch with a good comic book, my cat and a pot of tea.
What is one of your favorite movies and why?
I'm a big fan of John Carpenter's The Thing. It's one of the first real horror films I remember watching on TV as a kid to really creep me out, especially with the amazing practical FX. It was also the film I saw with my partner on our first date at the local independent theatre so it now holds a very special place in my heart.
You can watch the trailer for Nemethis on You Tube (link).
You can also find out more about Nepentheson
IMDb (link)
Facebook (link)
Twitter (link)
Instagram (link)
I'm working at keeping my material free of subscription charges by supplementing costs by being an Amazon Associate and having advertising appear. I earn a fee when people make purchases of qualified products from Amazon when they enter the site from a link on Guild Master Gaming and when people click on an ad. If you do either, thank you.
If you have a comment, suggestion, or critique please leave a comment here or send an email to guildmastergaming@gmail.com.
I have articles being published by others and you can find most of them on Guild Master Gaming on Facebookand Twitter(@GuildMstrGmng).
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