It’s Cedric’s fault. We met in a hotel in Essen, in 2008 – two people from Portal and three people from IELLO, and discussed our publishing plans. I told them about a game I wanted to design – I told them about Stronghold. It was October 2008, the very beginning of my work on that game. I spoke about the huge numbers of troops, about hordes of skeletons and orcs storming the castle.

In the end the skeletons didn’t make it to the game, orcs did. The game was shown in Essen and I had a lot of fun with it.

I met Cedric again in October 2009. We discussed publishing plans again. I told him about a Stronghold expansion. I told him I was considering replacing the orc cubes in the Invader’s army with the undead.

”That’s it!” he exclaimed. ”The last time you spoke about Stronghold I imagined hordes of skeletons. It’s going to be great. I’d wished you had included skeletons back then!”

I came back home and started working on the expansion. I wanted to make the expansion similar to those modules for Race for the Galaxy. You buy a box with four, five sets of new rules inside, pick the ones you like and ignore the rest.

I started with making 8 new Heroes fighting in the stronghold. That was easy since Stronghold’s realm, the realm of Monastyr, is very rich. It didn’t take me long to think of distinctive features for Heroes from Kord, Gord or Doria, interesting rules would immediately come to my mind. Some two weeks later the first part of the expansion was ready for testing – a new set of game transforming Heroes.

Next in line were the Invader’s cubes. I looked at the white, green and red cubes thinking what I could do. The white ones became Phantoms, the red ones became Vampires and the green ones… The green ones were Skeletons. Rotten Skeletons, sort of, but Skeleton nevertheless. What do Phantoms do? They… fly. Bang! A rule just got created – white Invader’s cubes don’t need free spots at the walls since they don’t need ladders to fight. Vampires? They spread vampiric power and strengthen the Phantoms. Skeletons? You kill one and its bones return to the game. It’s not discarded but reused (back then I didn’t know in what way yet).

There you go, nice and easy.

I looked at all Invader’s actions very closely to check whether they fitted the undead army. Some of them were inconsistent with the plot, I mean, do Vampires use Saboteurs? Do Skeletons use Saps?

At some point I should have given up on analysing whether Skeletons make Poisons, build ladders or Trebuchets.

I didn’t. I went into it.

Does a Necromancer send his troops to build machines? No. He casts spells and uses powerful magic to summon nightmarish ballistas and catapults. He doesn’t need wood or nails, he doesn’t send ghosts to paints banners. He summons it all with his magic. Very interesting possibilities started to appear. I was entering a fascinating world of spells. There were Warhammer Battle books with Vampire armies on my table and galleries of undead artwork opened on the computer screen. Wherever I looked, there were cemeteries and skeletons.

I couldn’t stop myself, I would create, write down new ideas. The board started to fill up with cemeteries, strigas, mists, ghost illusions… The situation was getting out of hand, especially when I looked into the castle one day. How about new ways of defending against the undead? I created Priests, Exorcisms, stakes for the vampires and tower crossbows…

After a few weeks it turned out that the whole idea of modules of different new rules in this expansion might as well be scrapped. The Undead would grow and expand with every working day, slowly taking over the whole expansion. There was no more room for anything else. I would create new Invader’s actions, new actions in the Castle and slowly realize that this idea is big enough to simply dominate the expansion.

Today the testers don’t say that Undead is a good expansion. Today they say that they’re playing Stronghold 2. An entirely new game. And that it’s great. Much better than the first one.

Sometime around the end of July 2009, shortly after all bloody tests were finished, I realized that I hate Stronghold. I was fed up with it. I hated it. A few weeks later, when the production of the game started – a ride with no handlebars, I hated it even more. My heart would stop at the mere sound of the word “Stronghold”. I was fed up with phone calls from Rebel, or from the office regarding publishing. Of course back then I didn’t really know that much about hating Stronghold. Essen was the place where I finally learned what hating this game really meant.

Essen 2009 was tough. I have a gift of composing words into nice sentences and expressing emotions, but I fail to describe the horror of the last year’s fair. An unbelievable job held in the rhythm of a 15 minute game presenting monologue. The game is about a siege. One player plays a role of Defender, the other is Invader… Trzewik, this customer would like an autograph, will you sign it? Yeah, I’ll sign it, defenders know that there is no chance to save the castle…. Trzewik, this man is from a Portuguese portal, he’d like an interview. Ok, let him come back in an hour, they fight only for two reasons… They earn time for women and children to escape from castle… Trzewik, this guy asks if you have a publisher in Brazil. I don’t know, ask Rebel, I’ve no idea what they’ve signed so far. And they fight for honour, for history. They want to be remembered as brave warriors. Spartans, you know… Trzewik, the guy asks if the box contains a manual in French. No, it doesn’t, the French edition is made by IELLO, defender has altogether 30 cubes representing soldiers. Invader has 300. Question is not if he breaks into castle. Question is when… Trzewik, a guy from Phalanx Games just came in asking for some detailed rule. Trzewik, that Woman from the Czech Republic is back, what do I tell her? Have Multi explain the rules to him. And have her leave a business card, I’ll call her back later today. This is Glory board. It represents glory that players earned. It’s cool, I’m from Poland, you can explain in Polish. I can’t do it in Polish, I’ve been doing it in English for three days now. At the beginning of the game Invader has 10 glory points… Trzewik, Petr is asking if you lend them a copy for the night in the hotel. Yes, I will. After every turn of the game, he will lose one… Trzewik, Rebel say the Dutch are interested in 2000 copies, wicked! Cool, chronicle will say: 'Well, defenders fight brave’… Trzewik, do you want to swap?

We would get up at seven, eat breakfast, drive to the fair, explain Stronghold rules for 10 hours, come back for the night, hit the bed dead on our feet and repeat it the next morning. Yes, I really hated Stronghold then. There was no way in the world anyone could talk me into a game of Stronghold.

“Trzewik, you have to do an expansion, you know that, right?”, Piotr Katnik, Rebel’s boss asked me at the fair. “It’s an absolute hit of the fair, we will sell everything we brought with us. The stock we have in Poland will sell before the end of the year. People will want an expansion. You’ve made a hit, now you have to make an expansion.”

I knew that. I knew that bloody well. And I hated Stronghold even more. The thought of setting up the board and testing an expansion made me sick.

“I need a few months break, then I’ll make an expansion. I promise.” I answered.

I kept my word. I made an expansion for Stronghold. I put all my heart and talent into it. I bent over backwards to satisfy the players, to give them a new story, a new chunk of emotions and joy over the board. I’m looking at this expansion, I’m looking at the testers and I know I did a splendid job.

And now I know that before it was just teasing. Oh yes, now I do really hate Stronghold.