How to chose your holiday destination

Long time no hear! After two years of working like crazy I felt that the line has been crossed. The winter in Poland was absolutely out of the ordinary this year. The first three months were OK. Winter, you know, cold, snowy, rainy and so freakishly dark outside most of the day. Anyway, this would be still acceptable if only after all this winter sadness ... less winter came. However mother nature had a different plan and it brought us more winter sadness! It was the end of March when the temperature dropped to -10°C with heavy snowfall and wind outside our windows, letting us know that winter was not going to leave us neither easily nor soon. And you could feel that your heaters are on the limit! They may be able to get you to April... but then what? 

I have to be honest with you, I am completely weather dependent. When it's sunny outside, birds are singing and there is a rainbow on the sky - oh yeah! I feel the power! (and yes, I do sing "I got the power!", when I wake up with this picture outside of my window).

So I went to discover the sunny side of the earth, with the sneaky thought in my head: "When I come back it should get better in here. Maybe", and here comes the bold thought, "there will be Spring already in Poland."

(Just as a spoiler I will tell you now that when I landed back in Poland I sang "I got the power" again.) 

However, choosing holidays destinations was not easy. The winter was long, so you can imagine that I've played quite many board games and you know how they work - they move one's imagination! 


?? Should I go to Mexico and see Chichen Itza, Palenque, Uxmal, Tikal, Yaxchilan, as while playing Tzolkin I hanged on all those new places to discover?  This game, Tzolkin, put so much curiosity in my head! 

?? Maybe some place with nice beaches, white sand and palm trees? - Thank you Merchants & Marauders! Thank you Hawaii!

?? Or, or... I know ... something more exotic! Like in Ming Dynasty... Asia?? Asia!!

?? For adventure in dungeons with torches and magical blue potion in one pocket and a silver dagger in another I was not ready yet! Who knows, maybe in the summer... Winter and dungeons sounded too extreme in my head. Thou Descent: Journeys in the Dark filled the gap perfectly!

?? For Cosmic Encounter and Race for the Galaxy I was totally not prepared. What do I know about cosmos? What if Exodus will come and hey! what will you actually do if you discover a new form of life? Space definitely seemed too much to handle.

So Asia it was, without my gaming preferences I needed sun and I needed it immediately. Long story short - the trip was wonderful. It was long enough to detached from all the responsibilities, clear my mind and see things from a new perspective. I am now loaded with new ideas, my mind is nearly exploding! This year will bring a Perfect Storm and Praetor and W: The Board Game at least. We're planning to fit in all this also re-dressing of Exodus: Proxima Centauri this year. So, as I said, long story short - let me get back to work... I wanted to share with you that there are wonderful board games coming up this year from NSKN. And yes, I am genuinely smiling while writing this... ha! Wait till you play them!

Now, all our thoughts are focused on the preparation for the UK Games Expo 2013 on the 24th - 26th of May in Birmingham. We are printing, cutting and gluing prototypes so you can enjoy playing freshly made prototypes with Andrei and I there. Many more thing are going on at the same time.. World is never asleep and especially board gamers! So I hope to see you there!

As a conclusion of my adventure I want to share with you this picture. Some of you maybe have seen it already, as I shared it a few seconds after taking it ;-). However it is so mind blowing... imagine seeing this in reality!

Enjoy! And let your mind wonder!

Captured while wondering on the streets of Yogyakarta

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BoardGames Night Out

Thursday evening in Belgium, after a surprisingly sunny day I met Agnieszka and Andrei and went to the Board Games Shop in Leuven. The place is pretty close to the city center, and the guys there are very friendly and enthusiast about what they do. Of course, how can you not be enthusiast about having a job in a place full of great games? Great games indeed, they had Warriors&Traders both on the shelf and in the demo's room.

We arrived there at around 8 and almost all the tables were full of people playing different games. We were warmly welcomed and invited in the demo's room where we picked our game: Mage Knight.

We heard so many good things about this game that our choice came natural. The game looks marvelous, the already painted miniatures and the map are all pretty amazing. As a design short-coming, I would say that the game is dedicated for people with  excellent vision.

Andrei struggling with the rules :)

The four awesome heroes

We didn't manage to finish our play before the closing hour of the shop, but the two hours spent with the game and the rules convinced us that is a game we want in our collection. Unfortunately, they didn't have it on stock yesterday, so we had to pick something else as our weekly treat. Agnieszka was so excited about this purchase that I cannot wait to play it tonight.

Buying decision "Show me the Dwarfs and I will buy it"

The BOX!

We’ve jumped in our old red automobile and rushed with 20 miles per hour speed to the closest village. It was a sunny morning but then, as always in Belgium (always for the past year), the rain has come and the small wheels of the red old cranky automobile started to make slow slippery movements in the mud. We knew we got stuck. Did I say we were in the wildest mountains and the forest around was even wilder now when the rain got heavier? And did I say that this wilder and wilder with every minute forest and mountains were famous for their hungry bears and poisons snakes? Yes, and we were lost, stuck and …

Good that this is not a real story. Some times I’ve noticed, it’s easier to tell the story straight from your imagination than to actually be honest and write about the truth. I will try really hard this time to tell the truth and nothing but the truth.

So… it was like this.

In the morning, the weather was really great. It was almost sunny and you could even see a little bit of the blue sky!! “What a day!” I said to myself. But after we've jumped to our not-so-old and not-so-new black automobile it really started to rain. We rushed to L., a town which is real and where our friend who we’ve never met face-to-face lives. Did I say why we were rushing to the mysterious L. town? Oooh, I see - I did not. Let me explain to you what was the reason to rush through the rain on the great highways of Belgium! We went to see the BOX, but not any box; this was an actual handmade wooden and beautifully self-designed BOX. One day after buying a wild Warriors & Traders game box, our friend Tassos got so angry with the magically flying components of the game that he decided to do something. He did not want to lose any of the Barbarian units, Army units or - God forbid! - Princesses! He is a wise man, he is an engineer and he has an artistic soul, so he sat down and thought for a few days. And then he made the BOX.

And here is the BOX, handmade, wooden, with burnt out names and logo of Warriors & Traders

Ok, I do not know how he actually got the idea and if what I wrote is in any way related to the truth – but I like this story, so just follow my words for few more sentences and then enjoy the pictures.

Just keep reading… good! : )

We met Tassos in L. and then he showed us the BOX. I’ve seen the pictures a few days back, but it was something totally different to see the real thing. It was just an amazing piece of work. Tassos even took the time to get Warriors & Traders logo printed on the top of the wooden box. He made it himself! And as I was looking at the handmade beauty, I’ve noticed that it can rotate, so the players can get all the resources and other tokens much easier and that all the compartments are the perfect size for every single token in Warriors & Traders. And I could not believe that we’ve found him so easily. It is a big day, a great day and the day to remember and cherish when things are going bad, as we have just meet a soul mate. Whatever was the reason for Tassos to do the BOX, for me it meant - here he seats, a Facebook friend, mailing friend, a Twitter friend – a FRIEND who understands our craziness and passion.

Thank you Tassos – you made our day. And the BOX – it’s just precious!

And thank you all for getting through!

Essen Day 2: It's Alive!

Hi everybody!

The second day of Spiel'11 is over. It was a busy day. A lot of people from all over the world came to our stand. We managed to hold 3 demo games and for tomorrow we alreday planned 2 more.

So far, we are getting a lot of attention and positive feedback and it feels great. So thanks everybody who supported the development of this game during the last 1.5 years. We appreciate it. Also thanks everybody who is showing an interest during this days. We also appreciate it and you are always welcome at our stand in Spiel'11. Special thanks to those who are buying our games - hope you have a great time playing and be sure to let us know what you think!

Lots of things happened today:

• we got in the Boardgamegeek GeekBuzz - it's a top of new games at Spiel'11. We are curently ranked #7 in the medium traffic category and for some time during the day we were ranked #1 overall. For tomorrow, we hope to get into the high traffic, so keep our fingers crossed.
• we got a short review on facebook, by brettspiele-report
• we have the first tweets about W&T
• during the demo games, I saw a strategy that we never thought about during development (and it was effective). I am happy for this, because one of our goals as developers was to create not a game that is played in a predefined way but rather one that is rich and consistent enough that players are allowed creativity in using the rules

A small change in the blog today - I posted most of the pictures on facebook and will only link them here: day 2 pictures. One reason: it is faster to upload on facebook. Second reason: I am experimenting with different ways to provide updates in order to find the most convenient one for the people receiving the information. Feedback is always appreciated.

Finally, just one picture from the demo games today:

Cheers!

Essen Day 1

The stand is prepared. The games are ordered neatly in their boxes on our shelves. We are ready ...

... set ...

9:45 - a large crowd is waiting outside the gate to the exhibition centre. 10:00 - the gates open and the Spiel '11 begins

we even got a demo game going in our booth ..

an last but not least, we sold some games

that's it for today.


Cheers!

Essen: Day -1 The City We Built

Hi all,

Last time I left to go working for our concept for the Inventor's Booth in Essen. We did just that and now we have a game prototype that we shall call for now "The City We Built". It's a city building, bidding, cardgame for 3 to 10 players and we are quite proud of it.

Tonight we finished doing the mechanichs and it was time to print and cut the cards:

... then we procedded to add color graphics:

here's a close-up of the "Saloon":

With the deck ready, we went to Sorin's place to get the electrical screwdriver. Once there, we naturally played a test game. For bidding, we used Twix candies:

One specific bidding round started small...

... and then got bigger ...

.... and even bigger ...

... in the end Sorin almost won the game but we left because it was getting late.

Tomorrow morning (which is actually soon) we leave for Essen where we will prepare our exhibition stand.

Cheers!

First War

Well, Hi!

Three weekends ago, as the games were finally getting to our warehouses, I was planning to quickly have the first playing session and post some pictures to show you how a table with W&T on it looks like.

Then I got a bit lazy and prefered to play some more instead of actually posting about playing - that is until now. Here's how it looks like - a picture from my fifth playing session with the boxed version of the game:

here's a detail with a section of the map:

and here's how the full layout of the game looks like:

Click on the photos for larger versions.

Cheers,