Unpub at Origins

Put a hammock in the van and save on housing
costs!

I've been developing a game for a little over a year with a friend of mine called Bellum, you can check it out here if you'd like www.bellumgame.com. In developing a game its nice to get feedback and go to designer events. Last year we started going to Designer Nights at the Rook in Cincinnati. Then we started hitting local conventions like CincyCon, DayCon, AcadaCon, CinCity Con and an UnPub Mini Event at the Rook. We had our successes and some conventions were busier than others but the feedback has been immensely helpful. Last weekend I drove out to Origins to do some late stage play testing at the Unpub Network hall, again great feedback and good exposure. While I was there I got to check out some games in varying stages of completion and I'd like to go over them here.

Gods Of Tyn Harra 

From Ogre foot games designed by Mike Hopper 

Fireball is what took me down

From the site description: "This is a game of skill designed to take luck out of the equation by drafting your entire 25 card deck then placing your Vorpal Shard in the place that will benefit you the most.. Each player begins with the same base amount of Mystic Shards to cast spells each turn. The only advantage you have is your skill in drafting, casting and using your abilities.

There are 3 types of cards you’ll use to defeat your opponents, Creatures, Relics and Spells.

When you cast your angel, demon, dragon or wizard you must choose between the defense zone or the attack zone. You can move them later if you need more defense or attackers to finish off someone.

When your creatures die, collect Soul Shards and use them to acquire more powerful spells!

The best part, in a 3 or 4 player game, is you’re defending yourself against the player on the right while attacking the player on the left. This makes the strategy change throughout the game as you react to the other players. In a 4-player game, you cannot attack the player directly across from you or to the right; you may only attack the player to your left."

I really enjoyed this one. I got to play it with Mike and two other guys who seemed to have a hand in a lot of its play testing. It was extremely intuitive, so much in fact that I had to get bumped out of the game because I was wrecking everyone. This didn't feel like a classic kingmaker scenario more the opposite, if I wasn't contended with I was going to win, with me out of the game the other three had a fair fight amongst themselves. Thats an interesting piece of this game, since you are attacking the player to your left and defending the player to your right, you want the player across the table (in a four player game) to fair well but not too well because he will eventually be attacking you. If you threaten the player to your left too much he will spend his actions defending against you which will in turn leave the person they are attacking to not feel the heat as much per say. Another great aspect is at the beginning of the game you are drafting among a pool of cards then during the game you are buying other cards from a central location, those are purchased primarily with the souls of your lost creatures. Add in asymmetrical player tableaus with additional customization by placing a 'vorpal shard' to denote which additional ability you want creates a lot of variation of game play. I believe he is running a Kickstarter in July of this year and I recommend checking it out.

Stellar Leap by Weird Giraffe Games 

The gentleman in the white shirt trounced us.
#AllTimeHighScore

Oh man, I played Stellar Leap twice. I really enjoyed this 4X game in a small package or as I may have joked, "A 4x that fits in your JNCO's pocket." This runs like what you would expect from a 4X but plays a bit faster, about an hour (maybe I just play a lot of heavy ones.) At the start of the game players are placing their starting planet to the same galaxy represented by placing the planet card in a row. There are 6 columns to the rows and they represent values 1-6, this is what is used to gather resources off a 2d6 roll counting each die individually and the difference. A roll of 5 and 1 would produce resources for all inhabited planets in columns 5, 1, and 4. However there is more to those dice because at the beginning of the game the players have a random global dice manipulation and a player specific one. This allows players to have more agency in what the 2d6 roll produces. The game has multiple ways to score points from completing missions, exploration, attacking, population growth and a secret player objective where a lot of points are earned. My favorite part of this game is the end condition, everytime a certain condition is met like completing a galaxy the player who took the action draws a card from the event deck and resolves the event. After a preset number of events have resolved the game finishes the turn, points are tallied and a champion is determined. I really enjoy games where you have a hidden number of VPs and can speed the end of the game to wreck other peoples plans, the balance there is obviously you aren't taking the most optimal actions. I don't think thats a popular or well used mechanic. Its one of favorite strategies of expediting the games end, it doesn't always pan out but you got to keep people on their feet. Really looking forward to this release because its a 4x I am pretty confidant I can get people to play with me.

Flummox by John Moller

flum·mox

ˈfləməks/

verb

informal

1. perplex (someone) greatly; bewilder.

This 2-5 player trick taking/hand management is deceivingly complex which is true to its name. In this surprisingly deep game you are moving the Flummox, a token represented by a large meeple in our game, around the board to collect the variable victory point card. You draw your hand and lay it out on the table in any order, the first player places the Flummox anywhere on the table and takes 2 actions, the first will affect the table by either drawing, stealing or trashing two cards. The second action is to expend a card on your side to move it a number of spaces and a direction both represented on the card expended. The player who has the flummox land on their side draws a card from the victory card deck. The game has a predesigned length determined by the number of players which is also the victory point deck, this deck has victory point cards valued in the positives or negatives. So when its showing a negative value you don't want it on your side. This is definitely a game I'd pull out for more casual players and I would not be surprised if when published more hits big box retailers. 

Mayan Conquest by Andrew Duryea 

Card artwork/Business card artwork

I sat down to play this game and looking at the table set up could honestly not see a game initially. It was just a whole bunch of wonderfully illustrated cards with zero words and a single d6. Skeptically I listened to the overview and it quickly became clear there was almost a completely hashed out game before me. The mechanics are pretty straight forward, at the beginning of your turn you flip the event deck to see what conditions your turn takes place under, then you roll a die which determines what type of dude (card representing a Mayan) you receive. You then have one additional action to take of three: trade your dudes for another dude, attack an opponent or build. Buildings are the win condition and require you to trade your dudes in to acquire them. I say almost fully fleshed out because the action deck wasn't finalized which was no biggie. Also there was some discussion about adding some game effects to the cards, which I either recommended or seconded, Andrew if you read this leave them as just art. The additional rules can fit on a player card, it's great as is and how many games are there of cards with no values besides the Art? Probably a few but I like yours just the way it was anyway. 

All in all, I had a great time at origins and really enjoyed the Unpub Networks room. If you haven't checked it out before I recommend it, look em up on social networking stuff, hit there local events and if you don't have one maybe even make your own! Hopefully I can make posts more often than annually in the future.