The beginning (part 1)

The idea of Warriors & Traders came to me in February 2010. 

Being in a group of board games enthusiasts, we were playing almost anything we could get our hands on. One day, during a game of Risk, the dice were not on my side and I started complaining heavily, so a good friend said the magic words "If you don't like this one, why don't you make your own board game?!".

Those words stayed in my head for a long time, until it finally came to me, why don't I start designing my own game? I had already though about this, but the idea seemed overwhelming. I needed something different from everything we had played until then.

By April 2011, the answer was clear, I needed to make a board game that is interesting, fun to play and  involving no luck! Having this settled, I chose the environment, the Dark Ages of Europe, and I started working on the mechanics.

Warriors & Traders - version 0.1

The first version of Warriors & Traders looked nothing like it does today, but it kept the paradigms of game design that can be found in the commercial version: military strategy, economic development and social interaction through trading. And let's not forget about balance and no luck.

There was a map, there were armies, many, many types of armies -, there were development cards and a very basic set of rules, on a small piece of paper.

During the first month of testing, the versions were changing from one day to the next and testing involved only another person, who I have to thank for the patience and diligence. The main issues were having a coherent set of rules and ... making it playable.

For the next two months of testing, the time between two consecutive versions increased from a few days to a few weeks, but still I was already at version 0.11 when I decided that it was the high-time for larger scale testing.

The first to see the game were the very people that are now involved in NSKN and made this project possible.

Stay tuned for the rest of the story...