New News No. 7

Thanks for signing up to get some New News from End Game Games. You can get your news in 2 varieties, short and sweet or long and sweeter. I’ve taken the liberty of signing you up for the short and sweet version, which will just be important announcements. The long and sweeter newsletter is a business casual update of what’s been happening with the development and release of games from End Game Games plus the occasional thing that I’m doing as a games designer person and any other cool tabletop stuff that’s happening in my general area, that is, Brisbane or even more generally Australian. Just for this first email, I’ve included the longer version below. If you like what you read, just just update your subscriptions preferences and you’ll get the long one from now on. If you do nothing, you’ll just get the super important stuff. Let the newsletter begin!

Also, if you are Brisbane-based and looking for some tabletop action this weekend, perhaps involving a wintery apocalypse, come on down to The Vault Launch party. I'll be demoing games all day (unless it seems like I can take a little break to play some X-Wing Minis).

PAX

It was fantastic to meet so many gamers and roll so many dice over the long weekend of PAX. We lost track of the number of times we played Ragnarol but hundreds upon hundreds of Vikings died imaginary deaths throughout the weekend. Thanks everyone for playing and signing up to this newsletter to keep informed about the future of Ragnarol. You can find some specific Ragnarol news below and some pictures of the event on the End Game Games Facebook page. If you’ve got any pictures yourself, perhaps taken with more stable hands than mine, please share them around.

Ragnarol: The Long Summer

Ragnarol stood up to a full 3 days of demos and though it did bend, it did not break. I’ll be working on some balancing issues over the next couple of weeks, in order to get the heroes performing equally well and making sure that a glory victory is possible but pretty dangerous. This will be a long summer of development for Ragnarol but we should have a finished game in just a few months! Those of you at PAX saw a combination of actual art and pictures of people dressed up as Vikings from the internet, if you weren’t at PAX, check out the Ragnarol page on endgamegames.com or our Boardgamegeek page to see where we’re headed with the art (and let us know what you think!).

Next, I’ll be sending out playtest packets (hopefully before the end of the month) to interested raiding parties (of which I've got more than a few). If you’d like to add yourself to the list, just reply to this email. In the meantime, I've got still got some dice stickering to do.

Hedron: Clarifications

It was great to get Hedron back on the table after a few weeks off while I went into turbo development for Ragnarol. I’ve started to have a few rules queries float back to me, and have started to put together a FAQ. If you do have a question, it’s probably frequently asked so please don't hesitate to ask it of me, so it can also be frequently answered. Also, if you’re ever in the middle of a game and can’t decide how something works, don’t let yourself get bogged down, just pick an interpretation of the rules and roll with it. If your group has multiple interpretations, roll your flux dice and let the player with highest flux result pick the interpretation. 

During the weekend, I also got to introduce the game to a great deal of players face-to-face. I was really happy to be see that moment where it suddenly clicked and players grasped the chain concept and move from confusion to mastery. I also got to experience some problematic interpretations of the Ram card, and after reading the card with fresh eyes, I believe the problem’s in my wording, not in player’s interpretation. The exact wording has been something that I was tinkering with to try and get just right and was briefing new players during balance testing. It was definitely a 1st time designer mistake not to put the final wording in front of a completely new player and watch the inevitable mistake happen. I’ve added an errata to the FAQ, but if you prefer your own interpretation, just roll with it. It will make the Ram card more powerful, and the game more dangerous. I will be making some changes to the Print and Play files and sending them out to backers to reflect the revision as soon as possible.

After getting a question about one of the maps for Hedron, I've also taken the time to put together a little campaign guide to better brief the players on what they could expect from each map and to give them a recommended path of progression through the maps. As well as some additional tips for designing your own battle galaxies.