A (p)review of Burning Rome from SunTzuGames.

Way back in September 2013 I did an interview with Emil Larsen of SunTzuGames about his new game Burning Empires. Emil must have enjoyed that experience since he contacted me earlier this year about his new game: Burning Rome. Emil offered to send me a prototype copy of the game in return for a review. Well here's that review, which I'm calling a (p)review since it features prototype components and rules. If you dig the review and think this game sounds worth checking out, you can find it live on kickstarter right now.

Summary:

Burning Rome is a very quick tactical card game recreating ancient battles. Four ancient armies are featured: Rome, Carthage, Celtiberia, and Gaetuli. Each force is represented by a 54 card deck. A big part of any battle is preparation and that is represented in Burning Rome through deck construction. Before each game, players construct their own decks. Decks are built using a point system, similar to army building in many modern miniature games. Interestingly decks in Burning Rome are usually rather small, and can have as little as 8 cards.  Each deck includes one general (no more, no less), a bunch of unit cards, and optionally some tactic cards. Points not used to buy cards are split between the armies starting Army Strength (kind of like the hit points for your full army) and Command Points (what you use during play to play cards from your hand).

In order to jump right into the game, and for players not interested in the deck construction aspect, the rules also provide quite a few sample decks: one for each of the factions and a starter deck set up for Rome and Carthage.

Once players have their decks ready it's time to start the war. The battlefield is set up by placing the center line in the middle of the table. Leaving room for card play to each side of it and placing an army board for each player at each end. On this board, players mark their current Army Strength and Command Points.

Each turn players do three things, starting with the attacker (determined by random card draw at the beginning of the match):

1) Draw a card or gain 2 CP - pretty self-explanatory.

2) Play cards into the battlefield by paying the CP cost on them.

3) Attack with the units in play.

This continues until one army hits 0 Army Strength or their CP is reduced below 0 and in that case , their opponent wins.

How cards are played and where is the meat of this game. When playing a card you have to decide where to put it and you have a choice of three fronts. The right or left flank or the center of the battlefield. The first card played in a front starts a new column. New columns can't attack. You can later add more cards to an existing column and these become support cards. The most cards you can have in a column is three (with an exception made for the general card which is the only card that can be the fourth card in a column).

Every single card I've seen for this game has a special effect. Most of these happen as soon as the card is played. They let you play cards for free, gain CP, draw cards from your deck, do direct damage to your opponent and a lot more. Some cards need to be activated and can be activated once every round. Chips were included to mark this status. Other card effects happen when a card is removed from the battle, or are ongoing and happen all the time. Some of these effects are even negative. For example, when Carthage plays their famous War Elephants they have to spend an extra CP or take 3 damage.

Now here's the neat part: only the card on top actually has an effect. So if you plan things properly you can cover up those bad effects, or later in a battle move units to have effects trigger multiple times. It's setting up and manipulating these columns of troops that provides all the action in battle.

Attacking and defending has some neat rules regarding these columns as well. Every card has four stats: Attack, Skirmish, Defense and Siege. When attacking, the front card in a column adds its' attack value to the attack of the middle card in a column (if any) and then that is added to the skirmish value of the last card in a column (if any). Similarly, defense value is calculated by adding the defense of the first unit, plus the defense of the second unit, plus the siege of the last unit. Any attack left over after the defense total is subtracted represents damage to the defender's Army Strength. So, as you can tell, the order of units on the battlefield is of great importance.

One important thing to note here about attacking and defending: units are never destroyed. The cards you play on the battlefield tend to stay there for the entire battle. There are a few cards that let you move them and even fewer that will actually remove a card from the battle. There are retreat abilities on some cards that let you remove them but out of all the decks I only saw a handful of these.

What isn't evident from this summary is how quick all of this happens. A full game of Burning Rome only lasts about 15-20 minutes. We spent way more time deck building than we did playing any of our battles (which is why the rules suggest a best of 3 or best of 5 match up).

Included with the rules I was given were some interesting optional rules. One was the option to build an auxiliary deck of mercenaries where both armies have the option to draw from that deck instead of their own personal draw deck. Another was to play a large battle with two armies per side. In this case, the armies face off in sections. This is where the game hits its' maximum of four player count. There are also some historical scenarios that can be fought but I did not get a chance to try those. These scenarios include some interesting twists like units starting in the field and different victory conditions.

So what did I think?

When I first opened the package from Emil all I could think is: damn that's a lot of cards. Then I was surprised again by how few of them I was actually using in our first battle. Reading the rules I didn't realize how much of this game was about the pre-game deck construction. With 54 cards per deck and the option to combine various decks, there are a crazy number of combinations and permutations possible. This is a very good thing.

Actual battles are ridiculously quick, but somehow still manage to give you the feel of a large battle. The fact that each card represents a full unit of troops, combined with the way you play them to different areas of the battlefield, gives you a very solid mass combat feel. I found this very impressive for a short filler game. I have to admit, that some games go by so quick that I wish they were a bit longer. It sometimes feels like I haven't seen enough of my deck before the game ends. In the games we played there also seemed to be a bit of an advantage to being the attacker, though I've been assured this was mainly due to us being new to the game and not being familiar with the various cards yet.

While I haven't had the chance to try out any of the historic scenarios (my prototype copy didn't have enough cards for the battles currently listed in the rules), I love the fact that they exist. In particular, I really want to try the one battle where Carthage starts with four War Elephants on the field.

The amount of variety you get with four different full decks for four different armies means that the number of different battles you could play is nearly endless. It also means that deck construction has a ton of options. Just browsing through the cards I was coming up with cool and interesting combos I'd like to try out in a future game. This also leads to one potential issue with the game. There are a lot of cards to learn. Each army plays differently and learning each army takes time. This gives a tactical learning curve and something that makes it hard for a new player to compete with someone who has played multiple times before.

Final thoughts: 

I'm glad Emil sent me a copy of Burning Rome to check out. It's a cool game. It's also a lot of game in a small package. I can't think of another game that I can play in 20 minutes that gives me a taste of big box games like Command & Colors Ancients (my personal favourite Rome Vs. Carthage wargame). It has a lot of depth and tactics for a filler game and anyone who enjoys the lonely fun of deck construction will find something to love here.

If Burning Rome sounds like something you would enjoy, check out the kickstarter, which is live right now.

Will Reign: The Card Game reign supreme on Kickstarter?

UPDATE: Reign is back. After the first kickstarter failed Garage Games is back for another try. You can check out reign on kickstarter here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/garagegamesau/reign-diplomacy-deception-domination?token=c08554af

I'm back with another Kickstarter (p)review. 

This time I'm looking at Reign: The Card Game from Garage Games Australia. I meant to get this up just before their Kickstarter launched but I forgot about the whole Australia thing and time zones. Due to this the kickstarter is live right now and you can head over there and check it out if you like.

Reign is a diplomatic card game for 3-7 players in which you are a lord in a fantasy realm trying to prove your legitimacy for the Onyx crown. The interesting bit is that there is no way you can get there on your own and you will have to use diplomacy to get other players to back your play for Regent each round. As throwing support behind the winning Regent gets you legitimacy points as well there are interesting decisions to be made on which claimant you want to back or if you want to try for the crown yourself.

The copy of Reign I had the pleasure of checking out was a prototype copy of the game. Images in this review reflect that and may not match what the final production copy looks like. That said, the prototype copy I received looks like a completed game and a good looking one.

Another Kickstarter (p)reivew - Sultan's Library

It's time for another Kickstarter (p)review. This time I spent some time with a prototype copy of Sultan's Library from Photon Games. Sultan's Library is a "take that" card game that has players competing to impress the Sultan by filling his library with rare books. 

The kickstarter launched today and is doing well so far. 

I've broken Sultan's Library out at a few of my home game nights as well as bringing it out to a variety of Windsor Gaming Resource events. 

The game seems to go over very well with players who enjoy the "take that" or "gotcha" genre. Games like Munchkin, Red Dragon Inn and Lunch Money.

Note: the prototype I received was a very early print and play prototype and I'm assured that the final components and art will look much better than what I had to play with. Due to this I used mainly images from Photon Games' website and their kickstarter for this (p)review.

Builders of Blankenburg the best (p)review I've played yet

I fairly recently signed up for an account over at Meeple Mechanic. Peter Schultz of Cobblestone Games was one of the first to contact me through the site. He was looking for someone to preview their new game Builders of Blankenburg. The game is currently on kickstarter and already half funded.

Builders of Blankenburg is a bidding and building game for 2-5 players. Players are bidding and trading resources in order to convert plans in their hand to buildings on the table. What you build is very important as citizens who move into Blankenburg have definite preferences for which buildings they want to stay in and they will reward the owners of those buildings with much needed income. 

I've got to say right off the bat Builders of Blankenburg is, by far, the best (p)review game I've played. These kickstarter preview games are often a mixed bag and sometimes feel like they could use a few more months (or years) of work. Not so with this game. The gameplay is very solid and it does something interesting and new. 

Note: this (p)review is based on an early prototype of Builders of Blankenburg. The physical components you see here do  not represent the final production versions. Very few of the cards have actual art on them and I know for a fact that the board background art is changing. In addition the resource cubes and beads may not represent what will be in the final product.

I don't think I'm going to be able to resist Resistor_

If you are anything like me you are pretty sick of kickstarter and most things that go along with it. Kickstarter has gotten to be huge over the last few years and it seems like there are more disappointments than triumphs through it.

I get approached by people doing kickstarters regularly and over time I've chosen to be a lot more discerning on what I choose to review, promote and/or put my name on. I will admit that most pitches I get from kickstarter projects I politely turn down.

When I was contacted by Cardboard Fortress Games about their new game Resistor_, I almost did just that: turned them down. But, reading the pitch that Nicole Kline sent me, had me curious about the game. Her pitch talked about a fast paced two player game that relied on hidden information and tactical decision making that simulated hacking computers. 

The whole double sided card deal and only seeing your side of those cards sounded neat, so I dug deeper. Nicole provided a link to their Kickstarter Preview page and the more I read and watched, the cooler the game sounded. So I agreed to check it out. 

After playing a few games with my wife and other local gamers, I think Cardboard Fortress may have gotten me to back another Kickstarter when this one launches. It's a really cool game.

Update: The kickstarter is live now!

Oddball Aeronauts 2 give away. Create a custom Captain!

Back on November 4th I announced that Oddball Aeronauts 2 was about to launch on kickstarter. Well, now it's live! Even cooler than this though is that maverick:muse has agreed to work with The Windsor Gaming Resource again to offer a really cool give away. A give away that's even better than the one we hosted last time.

For those who don't know or remember Oddball Aeronauts, it's a two player card game that doesn't require a surface to play on. That's right: no table needed. Oddball Aeronauts 2 adds new factions to the game and also adds multi-player rules.

It's a really unique and cool rock, paper, scissors based game with quite a bit added to make it more strategic and interesting. My favourite part though is the artwork and theme of the game. I guess anthropomorphic steampunk does it for me :) To learn more about the game, check out the (p)review that was posted back on January 22nd.

What you can win:

Last time we gave away the chance to design the Bounty Hunter card. This time we are going a step farther and letting the winner name a ship and design their own captain. The winner will also get a copy of all core 26 cards. Here's the details from +Nigel Pyne:

The winner picks the faction of their choice - Pirates, Pendragon, Mechinauts or Free Kingdoms. They then pick a name for their airship and will then receive all core 26 faction cards for their choice with their chosen ship name on the back of every one. Plus, they get to work with Lloyd to design a character that will then appear on a Mercenary Captain Card of their very own - their unique Captain that they also name and they can use that Mercenary Captain in place of a regular Captain in any faction deck. Or they can have their custom Captain unique to a faction - their choice.

How cool is that? 

Oddball Aeronauts 2 launches on Kickstarter tomorrow!

You remember Oddball Aeronauts don't you? The really cool game from +maverick:muse where you don't need a table top play on.

I wrote up a (p)review of the original game back in January and then hosted a give away during their very successful kickstarter in February.

The kickstarter was a great success and +Nigel Pyne and his team even delivered the game on time! 

Remember now? Good! 

A follow up to the original game is about to launch on Kickstarter tomorrow.

Edit: The kickstarter is live now!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lloydashpyne/oddball-aeronauts-2-double-the-trouble

Apocalypse: Galactic Arena (p)review - on Kickstarter right now!

Apocalypse: Galactic Arena is a 2-6 player battle game by Storyception Games that is currently on Kickstarter.

I was contacted by one of the designers, Christos Chrysou, and provided a prototype copy of the game to (p)review and as of writing this there are 13 days left in that kickstarter.

The game has already funded so it will be be made. Right now they are working towards some great looking stretch goals like a bigger board and new heroes. 

I've played the game a handful of times. Trying it with both one character each side and with teams of three facing off against each other and I feel pretty confident in recommending it. The buy in price for a full copy of the game is only $47 and that includes worldwide shipping.

A look at Damage Report, a refreshingly different co-op disaster aversion game

A while back I was approached by Alex Barbieri of Break From Reality Games about reviewing his new game: Damage Report. 

Damage Report was funded through Kickstarter where it made $48,642 of it's initial $10,000 goal. Quite the success. As part of that success a huge number of cool game upgrades were added to the final product.

Alex sent me a pre-production copy of the game and I've managed to get it to the table with a few different groups of local gamers. We've now tried out a few of the different missions and I feel confident in my ability to accurately review the game.

The main thing we have all found is that this game is very different from other games like it. While you can't help but compare Damage Report to games like Space Alert and Space Cadets, it has a very different feel, though it has a similar theme. While it's a co-op game where you are trying to stop your ship from being destroyed, the unique timing system really changes both the pace and the feel of the game.

Flick Wars: a strategic dexterity game ending soon on Kickstarter.

Flick Wars is a really cool new dexterity game by Andrew Tullsen of Print & Play Productions that's running on Kickstarter right now. There are only three days left and you should go back it. Seriously this game is good and fills a niche and you should back it, I will tell you why in a bit. I'll make it easy for you, here's a link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/printplaygames/flick-wars-tabletop-dexterity-combat-game-with-3d/

Okay, now that you've backed it let me tell you why I think that was a good decision. I was given a prototype copy of the game and have been playing it at a variety of local events. It's been a hit at pretty much every session. Even my wife who hates dexterity games and won't even touch games like PitchCar rather enjoyed it. Note that the copy I have is a prototype and all comments are based on the version I received.

Oddball Aerounauts Giveaway

It lives! The Kickstarter for Oddball Aeronauts: Pirates vs the Pendragon is live. 

I was lucky enough to get to try out a preview demo copy of this rather brilliant game over the holidays. Besides really sweet looking artwork this game has a pretty cool twist: it's a card game you don't need a surface to play on. You play the game 'in hand' never needing to put a card down anywhere.

Check out the full review I posted back on January 22nd to see how maverick:muse managed to pull this off.

Even cooler, when I made the deal to get to try out the game I also talked Nigel Pyne, the game's designer,  into letting me host a giveaway right here on the Windsor Gaming Resource Blog. This is our first official giveaway and it's something I'm really excited about. Be sure to spread the word to your fellow gamers.

What you can win:

Dueling in the clouds is dangerous work. Besides having to worry about what your opponent is doing you also have to worry about potentially game changing events. Like a giant sky Kraken attack or a minefield. One of the events that will be included in the kickstarted version of the game is the "Bounty Hunter".

You can help design the Bounty Hunter. The winner of this giveaway will work with Lloyd Ash Pyne, the game's artist, to develop the card art, choose a name for the character that will appear on the card, receive the original artwork and be credited in the rule book as a co-designer of that card.

How cool is that?

Check this out: a card game you don't need a table to play on. Oddball Aeronauts (Prototype) Review

I was contacted by maverick:muse back near the end of 2013 and asked if I wanted to check out a new game they were working on. This new game was a two player card game that simulated a fantasy airship battle. The most unique part about the game was that it was played "in hand". This meant that it didn't need a surface to play on. That game is Oddball Aeronauts.

I checked out some of the links Nigel Pyne, the game's designer, provided and I was blown away. First by the artwork and then by the way he made the whole surface-less thing work. I really liked the look of Oddball Aeronauts and jumped at this chance to check it out before the kickstarter goes live in February. My prototype copy showed up a couple weeks ago.

Since getting the prototype I played a few games with my wife. I also brought it out to one of the Windsor Gaming Resource events and showed the game off to a few people. I figured I've given the game enough of a shot now to write up a formal review:

Oddball Aeronauts Overview

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The prototype box I received is a bit thicker than an old Magic the Gathering starter set. Inside were a couple pages of instructions and 54 cards. The cards are split into two 24 card decks and there are 6 additional encounter cards. I will admit the instructions were currently a bit rough. I communicated my questions and concerns to Nigel and he assures me that they will be fixed in the final version of the game. You can check them out yourself here: Oddball Aeronauts Beta Rules V2D

The back of the cards showing the two factions airships

The theme of the game is an aerial airship duel between two factions: Pirates and Pendragons. These factions and characters come from something maverick:muse is calling the Oddball Realms. The art for this realm has a steampunk anthropomophic slightly anime look to it that I really dig.

To start the game each player chooses one of the factions. Each faction has it's own 24 card deck. To that deck each player adds three encounter cards that are randomly selected. You then hand your deck to your opponent who shuffles it and then hands it back to you face down. When both players are ready you flip your decks and begin.

Holding your deck of cards eliminates the need for a table

All of the stats for the for the cards are located on the left hand side with the artwork taking up more than half of the card on the right. There's a reason for this. They way you play is that you slide the cards out to the left so that you see three cards at a time (as shown there on the left). I thought this was particularly well done and is one of the main ways that the game eliminates the need for a surface.

Each card has three statistics on it. Each statistic has two numbers: a rank shown as a number and a bonus shown as a number with a plus. In addition every card ha a special ability which is located below the stats. Only the special ability of the top card is used each turn. The skills going in order from top to bottom are: Sails, Guns and Boarding. There is an exception to this: events. Event cards do not have skill numbers.

Example of an event: here the Pirates would recover 1 card

Once both players have their top three cards showing, both players check for an event. If both players have an event they are both discarded. If only one player does then the event happens. Events generally have players comparing one of their respective skills on the top crew card shown. Some events check for the lowest skill others look for the highest. Once the event is resolved it is discarded.

The way you discard cards in Oddball Aeronauts is the other way that this game keeps the cards in your hand instead of on the table. When you have to discard something you just flip the card over and put it at the back of your deck. Sometimes you will be told to recover a card, when that happens you look through your deck and find the first card that is face down and flip it face up. I thought this was also brilliant. The game ends when one player's entire deck has been discarded aka flipped over and in that case the other player wins.

Now that there's no events in either players hand we can get to the meat of the game. The active player is going to look at his top three cards and pick one of the three skills to attack with. The opposing player then chooses which skill they want to defend with. Now here's where it gets interesting: both players then decide how many cards they want to use for support. Player simultaneously hold up either one, two or three fingers (We found using a rock paper scissors like pumping motion and counting "one" "two" "three" and revealing worked well) to indicate how many cards they will use. 

Here comes the math bit: now each player adds the skill on their top card to the bonus of any other cards they decided to use. Note this can be one, both or none of their support cards. The player with the highest total wins the round.

Example Pendragon cards

Both players now have to discard the cards they used. Then, based on what skill was used by the winner, players recover or discard cards. If Sails were chosen the winner gets to recover two cards. If Guns were chosen the looser must discard two more cards. If Boarding were used, the winner gets to recover a card and the looser must discard a card. This resolution system adds a nice level of strategy to the game and gives a valid reason to not always just go with your highest combo. 

Sounds simple enough right? Well there's just a bit more to it. Remember I mentioned those special abilities on the cards? These mess with the basic system and modify games in a variety of ways. Most of the special abilities give you a bonus based on what skill your opponent chooses. Stuff like "you get +2 guns if your opponent chooses Sails or Boarding" (note it's not that verbose, it's all done with symbols on the cards.

Other special abilities will let you recover cards or they can modify the next round in some way. These next round modifications are handled in a very interesting way. Any modification for the next round is added to the top right of the back of the card. When you discard the card you leave it sticking up just a bit to remind you of this rule in play next round. Something I've never seen before in a game and it works really well. 

So that's basically it. The winner of the round becomes the active player for next round and you rinse and repeat until one players deck has been completely discarded. All this without a single card having to touch a table.

Final Thoughts:

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Okay I will admit I was a skeptic when I first read about this whole "card game that doesn't need a surface" thing. I just couldn't imagine how it would work. How do you 'play your cards'? How do you discard your cards? Heck, what do you do with your deck after you shuffle it? Now I know, and I really dig it. Oddball Aeronauts managed to pull off the game you play 'in hand' brilliantly. 

Example Pirate cards

This means that my wife and I can play it anywhere. The last time I actually played a game was standing in front of the cash at Hugin & Munin, showing the store owner how to play as I played against one of the other patrons. Next time my wife and I head out to our favourite coffee shop I'll have her toss the deck in her purse. 

Not only is the game uber portable and playable almost anywhere, more importantly it's actually fun. Sure it's not the most strategic game I own and sure it's not the most engaging two player experience I've had, but it's a solid little game. It very strongly reminds me of the old Citadel Combat Cards from Games Workshop but it takes the basic mechanic (I pick a stat, you pick a stat, whoever is higher wins) and improves on it quite a bit. There are some real tactical choices to be made here. Using more cards to win the round means you are eating through your deck quicker. The different attack types mean that you may not always want to go with your highest skills. There are even ways to combo your special abilities if you can manage your attacks properly (If I use one card now and my opponent is using boarding that will mean that my third card will be on top, which means...).

Overall I really dig this and I want to thank Nigel and maverick:muse for giving me a chance to check this out. The kickstarter isn't launching until February but when it does I recommend anyone who's looking for a fun two player game that can be played anywhere to back this one.

A Bonus for Windsor Gaming Resource Readers

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As noted above the Kickstarter for Oddball Aeronauts goes live next month in February. Watch this blog when it does because I've made a deal with Nigel that I think is rather cool. We will be hosting a give away here with a pretty unique prize:

One of the 'Event' cards will be 'Bounty Hunter'. We're proposing that the winner designs the character for this card. They would work with Lloyd to develop the card art, choose a name for the character that will appear on the card, would receive the original artwork and be credited in the rulebook as co-designer of that card.

In addition, once the game is in production we will be getting a couple copies to give away at WGR events as well as hosting another give away here on the blog.

Update: The contest is live:

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http://w-g-r.blogspot.ca/2014/02/oddball-aerounauts-giveaway.html

An interview with Emil Larsen, the man behind Burning Suns

This weekend I got the chance to do an email interview with +Emil Larsen of Sun Tzu Games about Burning Suns, a tactical sci-fi board game currently up on Kickstarter.

Diceships!

Burning Suns caught my eye for a few reasons. For one I really dig 4x Sci-Fi board games. Stuff like Twilight Imperium and Eclipse. I was addicted to Masters of Orion back in the day and it's great to see that board gaming has finally really started to capture that feel. Burning Suns looks to do some new things in the genre. There's currently over 700 possible factions in the game (possibly more to come with stretch goals), that totally blows away any other game I know. There's also some really cool looking miniatures that integrate dice into their design. Emil calls them Diceships. There's also a neat alignment system worked into the game.

Personally I found this rather long but detailed review by Undead Viking to really showcase what makes this game stand out:

Anyroad, enough of other people talking about Burning Suns, lets here it from the man himself:

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Moe: First off, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity. I remember when Burning Suns was on Kickstarter the first time around and I fully remember being firmly on the fence about backing it. What I don't remember though is why exactly I decided against backing at that time. Obviously I wasn't the only one since you ended up doing a do over, which this time around has already hit your funding goal. Congratulation on that achievement.

Emil: "Thanks a lot Moe, and thanks for taking your time to interview me - I really appreciate that :)"

M: So my first question is: what's different this time around? What did you do wrong the first time, what wasn't right and what did you do to fix it this time around?

E: "It's an interesting point you raise, because I believe I did a lot of smaller errors that together made the campaign fall short of it's funding the first time around.  

To make it easy for your readers to go through, I'll just point out the things that might have kept you from pledging on my first campaign.

• Include the rules of the game (in a nice layout).
• Use pictures/illustrations of the available pledges.
• Include shipping in the pledge and streamline the amount of available pledges.
• Do an engaging trailer (that makes people want to read a bit more of your page).
• Don't put all your cool USPs (unique selling points) like minis into stretch goals, you need some initial pull on the campaign.
• Make sure to build a "substantial" fanbase before going live.
• Use your Kickstarter preview option as a correction and optimization tool, not a cheap last minute marketing tool. 

Yea, it's been great and we hit the goal quite fast - Which is definitely a testimony to me learning from my mistakes ;) Plus people have been very supportive and helpful all the way!"

M: I personally thought your three tiered stretch goal system is brilliant. Rewards based not only on how much money the project has raised but also the amount of social media attention it has generated and the actual number of backers. I love the fact that even someone contributing $1 is helping to unlock new things for the game and make it better for everyone. This question was also asked by one of my google plus followers: so how well is this new style stretch goal system working for you?

E: "It's working VERY well, so well I'm positive a lot of new project creators will be using the same formula.  

Burning Suns is much more established on both Facebook and BoardGameGeek after this Kickstarter, mostly due to my very loyal and helpful backers who really wanted to help. And I gave them some tools to make that help visible.

I used the amount of backers as a promo goal, since the amount of backers would determine how important my "Print'n'play" options would become. These were combined with my stretch goals that made it financial possible to upgrade many of the components in the game.

One thing I made sure was that to calculate that these goal wouldn't overlap, but instead come up as a kind of stair, since that makes a world of difference always being able to spot the next goal ahead."

M: One of my Google Plus friends +Eric Franklin was a bit worried about this stretch goal system. He asked the following:

"My only concern is that all three categories of stretch increase the cost of production and two of them add minimal money to the project. The "Viral" goals, for example, add zero money to the project but have the potential to significantly increase its cost to produce (art isn't cheap)."

Would you care to address that Emil?

E: "[He's] right, at a glance it may look like that.  

But I'm making sure that my artwork isn't "just" used for a single purpose. It can both be used on components and as high resolution wallpapers etc. So when I'm structuring the different artwork, I'm always making sure we start out with something big and have the opportunity to use it several places.

Furthermore - I don't really believe in "free", people should get something for their effort, so giving them cool stuff like artwork for spreading the word, is a worthy expense on my project - and viral always add value :)"

M: 700 empires! Sorry over 700. That seems insane. I thought Cosmic Encounters was the Space game with the most factions but you have them beat by a mile. Obviously this number comes from the very unique three part player board. Where each player gets a race, an ideology and a structure, I've got two questions in regards to this: first off how the heck did you get up to over 700 and second, how is it that you can keep that many variables balanced?

E: "Haha, yea - in that regard I got most space games in existence heavily outnumbered ;) 

The concept of the 3 part empire building provides a strong multiplication factor, and since you can find a lot of factors on each component (ideology, race and structure) that can be tweaked, it means that I'll be able to keep designing new stuff for quite a while. 

It all started out with 6 x 6 x 6 different components in the first game, and for this campaign I added 1 extra of each, since then the backers have unlocked 2 more, getting us to 9 x 9 x 9 different empires (729).

There are several answers to [keeping things balanced]. You can find some of my pointers on this topic in one of my updates (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/suntzugames/burning-suns/posts/598623) related to a talk Richard Garfield held in Copenhagen a few weeks ago.  

Another thing is how my campaign and final development phase have been structured. Together with my backers I'm going to arrange a lot of beta test activities on the game (hopefully with over 400-500 gamers), tournaments and more. Things to really polish the game before launch. I'm really using the "crowd" in crowdfunding, unlike make Kickstarter campaigns, which is more or less pre-order pages."

M: You seem to be very dedicated to making your fans and backers a part of the game. Having their impact help shape the game and it's world. You not only stress this in your video and backer levels but also in your updates. I've seen very few designers willing to let their backers vote on which artwork to use for example. Can you talk more about this, what your plans are and why you think it's so integral to the project that your fans are involved?

E: "I think it's pivotal to the concept of a crowdfunding project, that you're looking for more than just funding. Otherwise you could argue that a business angel is just as good. But with the backers of my Kickstarter project, it allows me to gain access to a lot of great minds and thoughts about the project, the stories, the mechanics - practically everything.

It's of course important that you state the general directions and that you remain true towards your concept and ideas. But tweaking it to the appeal of your backers, and polishing based on their feedback is immensely important if you want your product to be more than just a flash in a pan. And that is exactly my goal with Burning Suns, I want it to last."

M: I'm a big fan of organized play programs, especially ones that reward the organizers and participants. I'm often running release events and demos at the FLGS and it's always cool to have something to show for it. Things like laser cut tokens, special dice and oversized cards seem popular this year. I see you are really hoping to have public play support for Burning Suns. What type of program do you imagine there being for Burning Suns?

E: "That's a tough question. As of now the sky is the limit. 

I'm still just dipping my toes when it comes to organized play and programs. Hopefully a lot of backers will come up with good ideas. I've also had a lot of great suggestions from backers, and a handful have already announced that they would love to promote the game and do some presentations here and there. 

I think it's important that the community develop this part, and make demands based on those needs. I shouldn't go and dictate what people should do, just like I'm not going to dictate any tournaments. I want my game to be tournament friendly and balanced, but it's the community who will ultimately make the demand. 

Hopefully it'll be high in many regards :)"

M: You seem very interested in publishing not just a game, but a world, a fiction for Burning Suns. Between the newly launched burning-wiki http://www.suntzugames.com/burning-wiki.html and things like writing contests on Board Game Geek, almost every backer update gives us another peek into the Burning Suns world. A few questions on this. What came first, the world or the game? Just exactly how big are your plans for this world, do you expect it to spill out past the board game into other games or possibly novels? As most people know I'm not just a big boardgame fan but also a huge pen and paper RPG fan and when I see someone creating a world like this I can't help but ask: will there be an RPG in this setting sometime in the future?

E: "You're not the first to ask - so as I said, maybe the demand will rise to a level were it can/must be developed. 

The game came first, and slowly developed into something almost too big to comprehend in one game. In that regard I've also been contacted about plans to maybe share the IP with other designers/creators. 

I would love the universe to expand further - which is also why I did the writer's contest on BGG and why there's going to be a couple of short-stories taking place in the Burning Suns universe. 

The idea is that the Burning Suns game will create the pillars for other great articles to stand on, inspired and developed by backers around the world :)"

M: My last question: one of the things I saw on your project page that made me cringe was this: "Money Back Guarantee" You are willing to pay people back if they don't like it and will ship the game back. Isn't this highly risky?

E: "I've been inspired by Jamey Stegmaier who has been a great support during the project, and I thought that it was a good idea to put a Money Back Guarantee like he did, simply because it's an offer I believe they are entitled too. Furthermore, I believe very strongly in my game being of great value in game play AND in components. I would be surprised if people really would want to send the game back when you take into consideration of what they are getting for their money."

M: That's all I wanted to ask, do you have anything you want to add?

E: "We're entering the last phase of our Kickstarter campaign (http://kck.st/1d2sRN6) - and there's still some cool stretch goals that I know we would all love to reach, getting more minis to the table! So when you read this - be sure to go and help us out with a pledge, and become part of the final development of Burning Suns :)"

M: Well Emil, thank you very much for your time and the opportunity for my readers and I to learn more about Burning Suns. I'm really looking forward to seeing the game and bringing it out to a Windsor Gaming Resource event and giving it a shot.

E: "Thank you so much for having me in this interview Moe, I really appreciate that! And I'm looking forward to sharing Burning Suns with you and all our backers, it's going to be awesome! :)"

---

So there you have it. It sounds pretty sweet to me. Sound good to you? Well go back it right now! The kickstarter ends on October 5th!

An honest look at Gunship: First Strike

Gunship: First Strike was originally a suscessful Kickstarter that finished early in 2012, absolutely destroying it's goal. I remember at the time being tempted to back it as I really dig games where you customize your own ships. I didn't do it though. So how did I get a kickstarter copy of this? The BoardGameGeek marketplace. Someone had an auction and I got this for a very low price. When the game showed up it ended up it was never even opened. I have to assume the original backer read the rules and found it wasn't for them. I can see why this could be possible as this game isn't for everyone.

The core game is about two space fleets facing off against each other. Each fleet has a capital ship (the carrier), four squads of fighters and one gunship. The goal is to destroy the opponents capital ship. Now the kickstarter added to this, now the game has four different fleets, well four identical fleets in different colours and includes rules for playing 3 or 4 players. What's annoying though is that the game box and insert is still designed for two players. That doesn't really impact gameplay though. I personally have only played two player.

Everything that came with the kickstarter

You start Gunship: First Strike by customizing your gunship. There are four cannon spots on your ship board and for each you pick between ion or regular cannons. On the wings you can also mount a cannon of your choice or you can forgo the guns and put on bombs for hitting the enemies capital ship. You then decide on three areas to reinforce with armour. All of this is done using the flimsiest cards I've ever held. Seriously these cards are thin! Each player has a board for their ship (these are mounted due to a stretch goal hit during the kickstarter) and they place cards either on or next to the board. The art on the board is the same digital 3d art you see on the game box and for some reason the card art doesn't actually overlay the board art.

Each round you roll initiative (on a D8) and then the capital ships fire their turbolasers (they aren't called that but we are Star Wars fans so fell into that habit of calling them that). This causes 0-2 damage to the other ship (you flip a card from the damage deck and check for a symbol in the top corner, most cards do 1 hit, a few do 0 and even less do 2). Each capital ship has shields and hull, the shields are represented by squares on the carrier board and the hull is represented by a D12 that starts on the 12 spot. As you take hits you move the D12 down through the boxes and when they hit the last spot you start counting down on the die.

This carrier firing mechanic mechanic is neat in two ways. For one it gives a nice background feel of the cap ships firing big guns at each other while the smaller ships dart around and dogfight. Two: it puts a timer on the game, pretty much every round both ships are going to take a hit and eventually, even if you do nothing else with your other ships, one side will win.

Next the player who won initiative draws cards and activates their fighter squadron. If a fighter squad is alone with a gunship it can strafe it potentially doing significant damage. It can't do this if there are enemy fighters there, in that case a dogfight starts and fighters fight fighters. While enemy fighters are tied up with yours your gunship is free to move around unharnessed. There's some interesting strategies here with what exactly you use your fighters for. Fighters do damage by rolling dice based on how many ships are left in the squadron. These dire are the nicest component of Gunship. They are custom colour D6s that actually look great. In the case of fighter attacks you are trying to roll fighter symbols that are on 2 of 6 sides.

Fighters and gunships in the neutral zone between carriers

After the fighters go, the active player then gets a Gunship turn. They get three actions. These can be: move, fire guns at the enemy gunship, fire guns on enemy fighters, dock with your carrier ship or try for a bombing run on the enemy carrier.

For shooting at gunships or fighters you have to play a card that matches the weapon being used. A "hit" card when firing a cannon, an "ionization" card when firing an ion gun, a torpedo when doing a bombing run etc. The opponent then gets to play evade cards if they have them. The unique D6 are used when firing at fighters (you want a fighter symbol and roll one die per Hit card) or at long range (you want a target reticle and roll one die per hit card) otherwise the right card with the right gun means an auto hit. You can play one card per action per gun you have on a ship. So if you have three cannons and three hit cards in your hand you can play all of them with one action.

Damage is one of the cooler parts of Gunship. Each gunship has 3 shields, those go first. Then you start taking hits to specific parts of your ship. A D8 is rolled to determine where, and that's where you place the hit or ion card that was played by the attacking character. Get a second hit in a location and the location becomes heavily damaged and the hit card is flipped over (the back sides show two hits). Damaged locations can't be used and have a variety of effects (damaged shield generators = no repairing shields, damaged engines = less movement etc). Ion is a little more interesting as it just disables the spot temporarily and then at the end of your turn you roll a D8 and the ion moves to another area of your ship. If Ion ever gets to your power generator your gunship is crippled for one turn.

Bombing runs are the only way to damage your enemies carrier directly. The cap ship first it's defense turrets with the defending player rolling four of those unique D6. They are looking for orange hits, 2 sides of the dice have one hit and one has two, so it's possible for an incoming ship to take 8 hits before it drops it's bombs or torpedoes. If the attaching ship survives this the player can drop their bombs or play torpedo cards. Bombs may or may not hit depending on dice rolls, torps always hit. Get the enemy cap ship to 0 hull and you win.

Shot of a two player game, mid way through

At the end of your turn you can play repair cards to do in flight repairs to your gunship, get shields back or removing ionization. Heavily repaired areas require you to dock with your carrier to repair. Docking takes an action and then on the next turn, your three gunship actions a turn become repair actions. Most repairs take one action but heavily damaged areas take two. Slagged areas can never be repaired.

That ends one players turn and now the player who lost initiative draws cards, does the fighter, gunship and repair phases. Initiative is re-rolled and you rinse repeat until only one capital ship is standing.

Added to all this are a small amount of modifier cards. Ones that cause critical hits, let you choose the target location on the enemy gunship, slag a target area so it can't be repaired and more.

Along with the core game the kickstarter version of the game I received also has a bunch of expansion modules. I've got optional ship upgrades and crew. When using these you draw six cards of each type and pick three to use. The upgrades really help you to personalize your ship and even have some improvements for the carrier. The crew give you once a game abilities that let you break the rules in some way. I've also got asteroid decks and the Gunship Mark II. I've yet to try either of these to really comment on them.

Gunship: First Strike is a fun game. Every round I've played of it has been much closer than you would expect. The last one being a nail biter right until the final round. I dig the ability to customize the gunship and even cooler is having to dock with your carrier mid game for repair and re-equipping. This ads a neat push your luck aspect to the game. I reminds me of car racing, do you pit now or try to go one more lap? The problem with the core game though is that there just aren't enough customization options. You are only really picking between two weapons six times, and then getting the option of swapping two of those for bombs. Picking three spots for armour isn't really all that interesting either as almost everyone is going to put them in similar spots (the torpedo launcher is needed to damage the enemy carrier and who wouldn't protect their shield generator)? Now I will admit this is improved with the upgrade cards from the expansion, but it's still not as much customization as I would like.

Trying to show the thinness of the cards and
warping that has already occurred.

My biggest beef with this game though are the components. As noted above the cards in this game are thin. Really thin. These cards represent everything from the damage deck, your ship upgrades and the ships out in space. Your gunship and the fighter fleet are also represented by these thin cards. Now the kickstarter version came with some cardboard tokens made to replace these. They are cool but aren't that functional. I like the fact that the card gunship can be flipped to show that a ship is in the hanger on the carrier, the cardboard one doesn't have this (instead the other side is used if the ship ends up ionized). There are cardboard fighters too but they are grouped oddly and you have to move four of them all to the same spot each turn, it's just easier to move the card. These upgrades are nice looking but just not all that functional. 

Added to thin thin cards are the thin ship boards for the Gunship Mk II. You can tell this was the initial plan with all of the ship boards but there was a kickstarter stretch goal to make them mounted boards. Seems that didn't extend to the Mk II. The boards for the two Mk II ships aren't any thicker than the cards. I can't see them living up to play very well, especially at public play events that I like to bring my games to. Lastly, the box insert is the worst. There's no way of fitting everything in there, not even close. There don't even seem to be enough spots to fit everything from the core game.

To me Gunship: First Strike fells exactly like that, a first strike. A first attempt at a game. There's some really cool stuff here but then there's some really annoying stuff as well. It feels like a great first step to something better. It's fun enough but just not quite great. I have a feeling if there's ever a V2.0 it will be a much more impressive and better game. As it stands now this one could be worth picking up, if you dig the theme and if the game play above sounds cool to you, but I will admit I'm glad I got this off the bgg marketplace pretty cheap and didn't back the kickstarter.

What is Torn Armor and why am I excited about it? Includes rules sneak peak

Torn Armor is a new board game in the works from the Torn World team. It is the first game that will be released set in The Torn World, a world that started off as a Dungeons and Dragons home game campaign setting. Torn Armor is going to be a miniature skirmish boardgame and everything I've seen about the game looks awesome.

Torn Armor is currently up on Kickstarter and is looking for you, the gaming community, to make this game a reality. Only a couple days in so far and they have already reached $9k. That's still a long way to go to their target of $50k. If you think this game and it's setting looks awesome, I encourage you to back the project. The team have some truly awesome stretch goals in mind and I would love to see them not only hit their funding but provide everyone with the coolest game possible.

You can back the game here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1471855235/torn-armor

Torn Armor is coming from a solid group of gaming industry professionals. Alyssa Faden is the woman behind Torn Armor. I first heard of her due to her fantastic, breathtaking, hand drawn RPG maps. She's also done work for Paizo, Silver Griffon and most recently Gygax Magazine. Jack Cull her partner, is responsible for most of the crunch behind the game. Ross Isaacs who has done work for WotC, White Wolf, Chaosium and more, is the lead editor. jim pinto who doesn't like his name capitalized, is in charge of graphics. Credit for the amazing art you can see on this page goes to Jeff Laubenstein and Eric Lofgren. Jason Wiebe is responsible for the fantastic miniatures based on that art. Gwen Perkins writer of the Artifacts of Empires series and other books, gets the fine job of editing. Lastly Matthew Meagley is on board to balance the various mechanics and work on probabilities. I'm also a small part of the Torn Armor team, having been asked by them to help spread the word and get people as hyped about this game as I am.

Below I've got some pictures and links to things that sold me on Torn Armor. A mix of concept drawings, 3D renders of the models and even a gameplay video that makes Torn look like a quick to set up, easy to learn game with a solid level of depth.

Here's some of the great concept art for the Maychian Faction - one of the two included in the core game :

These are from the other faction included in the game, the Greco-Roman inspired Sisk:

Some of these guys are just huge. Here's a great size comparison of the various models:

You can learn more about the actual gameplay of Torn Armor in this video:

Still not sold on Torn Armor? Well maybe this will push you over the edge. Alyssa Faden, the amazing woman behind The Torn World, has been awesome enough to send me a copy of the first draft of the rules for Torn Armor. These are only an initial draft and lack any art and gameplay shots but will give you a chance to read over the rules and see if this is a game for you.

You can check out the draft of the rules here: http://tornworld.com/assets/tornrules.pdf