No age limit

Last week I had the pleasure of having my parents over for the first time since I moved to Poland. During the day they went for their usual activities - visiting and enjoying life - so most of the time we spent together was in the evenings. So, what better thing to do in the evening that have a good chat over a glass of beer or water and... play a board game.

You must know my parents are not young anymore, they lived most of their lives in communism and the only games they played are chess and bridge (and one attempt at Warriors & Traders). They have no gamer friends and up to the point where I started NSKN they kept thinking that games are for kids alone.

I must admit that I was surprised and happy to hear my mom saying that she'd love to try a game, any game, maybe not to complicated. So I thought we could start with something light, just to add some spice to the conversation. We put Kingdom Builder on the table and after 10 minutes of explanations, we simply played. It took us about an hour to go though a 4-player game and I was thinking that the board games night is over. To my surprise (again) they both requested a re-match, now with full understanding of the rules. An hour later we had just finished our last match of the evening, with my mom having managed to win one game and my father coming second twice.

The next evening they wanted to try something different, maybe a bit more complicated, but still in the light game category. We went for Fresco with expansion and we had another pleasant evening. I think that the "virus" is slowly catching my parents and soon they will be interested in even more complex games.

Playing Fresco with my parents

This was just another proof that gaming has no age limit. You don't have to start in primary school and go through the usual path (Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, etc), the door is always open, even when you're already retired. I am also happy that my parents understand better and better what I do for a living. It's hard to explain that for a whole week, 12 hours a day, I've done nothing more that work around an idea for a new game mechanism and it's still not ready. But with time and more games played, I think that it will slowly start to make sense.

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NSKN @ 2 years (part 2)

I felt nostalgic today and it felt like a good time to tell the rest of the story of building NSKN. The first part ended with the 1-year anniversary of the company... well shortly after we went for the first time to the UK Games Expo, with high hopes yet knowing quite little about the event.

May 2012 - We still had only one published game, but we had ready-to-play prototypes of Exodus: Proxima Centauri and Wild Fun West and we had prepared one table for each, hoping to raise awareness and interest for our planned release in Essen or Nurnberg.

NSKN was among the very few publishers daring to show off prototypes during the expo, and while we were a bit afraid that they won't be well received, most people reacted quite well and some even wanted to pay us to make sure they'll get a copy of the final games. Pushed by people's interest, we decided to put the games on Indiegogo later in 2012, hoping to raise some money for the production and a spark the interest in Essen.

Jun 2012 - GobCon LAGNA and the first expansion. Right after the UK Games Expo, we took a trip to Italy to meet our friends from La Tana dei Goblin for the second time. We prepared for them an expansion of Warriors & Traders called Italia, with a cotton map and a more interactive game play. It was a small series of only 50 copies, but after the first week of preorders it was all sold out. Add this to the sun and wine from Italy and you have the perfect small gaming event!

Sep 2012 - We started our first two projects on Indiegogo, Wild Fun West and Exodus: Proxima Centauri. Most people thought we were crazy and we shared their opinion at first, but there was a good reason behind this decision. We knew that only one game will succeed, NSKN was too small to advertise and keep two projects alive, but with little experience in crowd-funding we did not know which of the two games had better chances. As soon as Exodus took off and reached a quarter of its goal in less than a week, we directed all our advertising efforts into supporting it. And it was worth it.

Oct 2012 -This was the craziest month in the history of NSKN. We had a place in Essen booked long time before and waiting from Exodus and Wild Fun West to arrive from China, go though customs and ship immediately to Germany for the big event. Two weeks before Spiel Essen, the ship carrying the games was delayed in Istanbul, we later found out that the games were not packed on pallets and the truck we had booked to carry the games backed out of the deal. 

I will spare you the details and get to the conclusion. The games made it on time, but just 5 days before Essen. We had to rent a van and drive all the way to Germany, with 1.5 metric tons of games and furniture for the booth. While part of the team was enjoying Essen, the rest were packing games and shipping to our Indiegogo backers.

For NSKN it was the first fair with more than one published games, so we attracted some attention, had about 30 business meeting and around 10 interviews with reviewers, so all the effort paid off in the end. Our distribution network expanded quite a lot and our games ended up in store in 31 countries.

Nov 2012 - While most publishers are late with delivering their crowd-funded games, we managed to beat the deadline. By half of November all the pledges were shipped out and about 1/3 of them had already reached their new owners. 

Every success story has its shadows. By December 2012 we started receiving complaints about the quality of the components in some of the Exodus boxes. We looked into it and asked the help of the manufacturing company to replace the defects. To this day they have refused to support us in any way. So, we sacrificed some of the game boxes and sent out replacement to every owner of a flawed games who has reached out to us. It has been a giant amount of work, but we need to make sure that everyone gets what they pay for.

Jan 2012 - We released the second expansion of Warriors & Traders, called Middle Ages, again in Italian for La Tana dei Goblin. It was our third presence in GobCon and we were already feeling like part of the community. We also showed the prototypes of Praetor and W - The Board Game and got quite a positive reaction.

Feb 2012 - We had another premiere, we had a booth in the Nurnberg Toy Fair, a quite expensive and exclusive trade fair where the big names in the industry show they latest inventions. It was out first corporate event and even though we were a bit lost in the beginning, we managed to get the most of the fair, establishing a few long term partnerships and selling out whatever was left of our stock of Exodus: Proxima Centauri.

Mar 2012 - We took out all the upcoming games and went on a play-testing spree, trying to see which of the four games (W, Praetor, Perfect Storm and Evolution) will take priority for the rest of the year. Praetor and W were the two games that stood out and made it past the finish line and even though we don't have clear deadlines yet, we are trying to make them available as soon as possible.

In 2013 we did not have a formal celebration of two year of NSKN, but we plan to do that in Essen. Being still quite an international team, we don't have that many chances to be all together in the same place, but there's always one big event that gathers all of us and that is obviously Spiel Essen.

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NSKN @ 2 years

A bit more than two years ago I was registering the name NSKN Legendary Games, embarking, together with some of my friends, on an unexpected and amazing journey. I had big plans and little knowledge, but it seemed that designing and publishing board games is the right thing to do. Two years later I can confirm that I made the right decision and, even if this proves to be a much tougher journey that I could have ever expected, it is worth every moment.

Anniversaries are not only moments of joy and celebration, but also good opportunities to remember, because "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (G. Santayana).

But the history of NSKN did not start only 2 years ago. It goes back another year or so into the past, when the idea of making board games sparked in my head.  That is the true beginning...

Jun 2010 - Warriors & Traders prototype, second version. Looking back at this it feels like ancient history, like it happened 500 years ago. Looking at the prototypes we are making today, it feels childish, but deep inside I know that had it not been for this one game, NSKN would not be what it is today.

It took another 14 versions if I remember correctly and one year of play-testing before Warriors & Traders was ready for printing, but hard work and good friends to exploit were the key to making it happen (there are so many people that I want to thank for their help and for believing in this project, but that is beyond the purpose of this post).

Apr 2011 - The last play-test of Warriors & Traders. Soon after we established NSKN, while our graphic designers were doing their magic, preparing the final version, ready to print.

The summer of 2011 was one full of planning and hoping, we were about to go to our first Spiel Essen, we had no idea how the distribution was working and until the very last moment we were afraid that the games might be late (it had happened to the biggest names in the industry) and we will simply be eight people in an empty booth showing people a big... smile.

Oct 2011 - Spiel Essen - In the end, everything was fine, NSKN came to Essen with Warriors & Traders, a game well received by both the public and the distribution companies.

Spiel '11 was an event I will never forget. I still get goosebumps when I go think about the amount of people we talked to, that we ran out of games several time and we had to drive back and forth from Germany to Belgium to bring more. It was indeed a magical time, one to remember every time something went so wrong that I wanted to quit and never look back.

By the end of 2011 we had already sold a significant quantity of Warriors & Traders, covering most of Europe and North America and reaching game stores as far as Thailand and Japan. What we were still missing was the direct connection with the gamin community, but we were about to take care of that aspect too.

While still busy and focused on selling Warriors & Traders, I was secretly working on another big game, Exodus: Proxima Centauri, though back then it carried a completely different name.

Jan 2012 - GobCon - This was our first contact with gamers in a local convention and it was a blast and not only because it was in Italy - the country of amazing food and wine - but because of the people I met and the friends I've made. This was also the starting point of the first expansion in the history of NSKN, Warriors & Traders: Italia, developed especially for the organizers of GobCon.

Feb 2012 - The prototype of Exodus: Proxima Centauri was ready. I had worked on it for half a year, I had learned physics and read books in the process, but all my effort was rewarded with good feedback after the first session.

And how many designers out there can honestly say that for their first test of a sci-fi game they had good feedback from an all-girl team? :)

Apr 2012 - NSKN was celebrating 1 year. We had cake, and Champagne, we recalled the good moments of the year that had passed and we made plans for the future.

By then, Exodus: Proxima Centauri and Wild Fun West were both tested, working quite well and it was just a matter of time and fixing the details before NSKN was ready to publish two new games.

And that is the first part of our little saga... The second part is coming soon.

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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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Kickstarter and the future of board games

If you are a frequent user of BoardGameGeek you might have noticed that the majority of the adds there direct you to Kickstarter or other crowd-funded projects and most of them are board games.

A year and a half ago, most Kickstarter projects were coming from start-up publishing houses from the US and only a special few were able to raise more than 20-30 kUSD. Also, there were no more than 2-3 relevant active board game project at a time. Today, the big picture looks totally different. There are at least 20 project currently running on the crowd-funding platforms with real chances to succeed and become board games and the amount they raised is increasing day by day. Just at a fist glance I discovered a project that has already raised 325 kUSD and it still has 40 days to run. Furthermore, even Kickstarter is expanding and is now allowing UK residents to start projects.

Retailers used to be happy to carry in their store board games previously funded on Kickstarter, most likely because they were benefiting from the free advertising campaign. A game that has gathered one thousand backers is likely know by several other thousands who are not early adopters and they want to see the real board and to check the quality for themselves. But that was a while ago already and the attitude is slowly shifting. Now, brick and mortar store owners are asking "are there any gamers left who don't already own that game?" and they think twice before ordering even one case of a successfully crowd-funded game. There's a very interesting article I've read on this matter here.

In all this dancing around Kickstarter and the attitude of store owners towards it, there are two more important actors, or maybe even three - the gamers, the publishers and the distributors. 

Judging by the increasing amount of projects and the success rate, I believe that gamers learned to trust crowd-funding and that an immense majority are satisfied with what they're getting in the end. And in the whole gaming community there no voice more important that the one of the gamers, the final consumers who end up approving or rejecting any new project. 

As a gamer, I am using Kickstarter or Indiegogo to get more and more games (5 projects backed in the last 2 months) because I know I have a very good chance to get good games with a discounted price before anyone else. What more can I ask?

As a publisher, NSKN has already used Indiegogo with some degree of success and we're planning to do that again soon. We are adapting our business strategy to what is happening in today's world. It would be foolish t ignore this trend and only the really big players have the luxury of working the old fashioned way knowing that the community will embrace their game anyway.

I would say that overall, the whole industry is growing thanks to Kickstarter and the other platforms alike and as long as the end users - the gamers - are satisfied this method of publishing will keep increasing in popularity. There's also the risk of abuse, but that has been there all the time. In any functional community there are those 'special' few who don't play by the rules, but break and abuse them and the crowd-funding world cannot be any different. But as along as they will remain special cases and not become a significant percentage (and so far I do not personally know of any successful board game project which did not deliver), the trend will be the same and the board gaming community will increase in size and more and more awesome games will reach the market.

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More about NSKN Legendary Games on the website | Facebook | Twitter | BGG |  ScoopIT Magazine | Blog

Warriors & Traders can also be found on its own website | Facebook |  BGG
Exodus: Proxima Centauri: website | BGG
Wild Fun West: website | BGG

Follow us on Twitter: Agni, Alexandra, Andrei and Vlad 

The challenges of a start-up (1)

NSKN is a publisher of board games and, therefore, a company. We started more than 1 year ago and from time to time we are trying to draw the line and see exactly where we stand. Now is not one of those moments, it's just the beginning of a new week, with new thoughts, most of them of how crazy life is when you are self employed. So, this post is less about board games and more about what are the challenges of starting up a company and bringing it to either success or bankruptcy.

Well, the path to bankruptcy is quite simple, paved with poor management decisions, bad cash flow management, lack of people skills, not knowing how to sell. And you don't even need all these ingredients, usually one or two of them are enough to take you down that road.

The way to success is far more complicated. Not making any bad decisions does not necessarily mean you made good decisions. Not making mistakes is not the same with doing the right thing. One year of hard, successful work can be cancelled in a split second by a really bad decision.

I guess that the major challenge for any start-up company is to survive past its first year and a half, maybe two years, when the money and the reputation have piled up high enough to counterbalance one major poor decision. The initial plan, no matter how good, will have to be adapted to the changes of the market, to the new technologies and the ever changing demands of the customers.

Moving from general and abstract thoughts to practical challenges, in my opinion the biggest "hill to climb" is cash-flow management. Those who were involved in managing a business know that the government is very willing to take and not so happy to give back (e.g. VAT return, income tax), so the lack of knowledge of the (ever-changing) laws combined to high receivable may lead to a short in the cash-flow which may lead to... I don't really want to say the word, but you know what I mean.


The second big challenge is to stay up to date with the customers. The life cycle of a product (in the case of NSKN this is Warriors & Traders) is different for similar (not identical) products. How long a board game lasts on the market depends on many factors. I can count the notoriety of the publisher, the overall quality of the game-play, the investments in marketing to keep the interest alive and these are just the most important criteria. Of course, having good cash-flow may help deal with the marketing part, but for the first two aspects (notoriety and quality) there is not much a publisher can do after releasing a game. The same principle also apply outside the board games world.


I will talk about challenges number three, four and five in my next post. Stay tuned!

Happy Easter!

To all of you who are celebrating Easter today, a good thought from

the NSKN Legendary Games Team.

Happy Easter!

Essen - what an experience!

It's hard to find my words after what happened in Essen. 

We're newcomers to the world of board games publishers and the attention we got was overwhelming... in a good way! 

So I will start by thanking all those who came by, asked questions, played, bought one copy, brought some friends or gave us vote on BGG. Thanks to all of you, we made the most out of this event and now we're ready to get the games to all of those who did not get a chance to come by and visit us.

We were planning to have 2, maximum 3 gaming sessions per day and yet, even on Sunday, we managed 5 and still had to refuse a lot of people who wanted to play Warriors & Traders with us. We promise that next year we'll come with a bigger stand and more play-tables for gaming enthusiasts. 

We ended up the fair with no games in our stand and this another reason to be proud and thankful to all of the people who saw the potential of Warriors & Traders and gave or will give it a try.

There are so many things that happened that I wish there were an infinite amount of time and space on the blog to talk about all of them. I'll just say that now we're doing our best to get the game anywhere where there are board game fans so more people will play and enjoy!

Once again, thank you all...