’Mariusz sent us new artwork. Look at 'Mr. President’ card. It is awesome.’ , said Michał and showed me the artwork.

'You must be kidding’, I said.

'What?’, asked Michał. 'What’s wrong with this ilustration?’

The artwork was really nice. Smiled showman was pointing at us.

'Mr. President is a men who rebuilds the city. He is a tought guy. Not showman’

'What?!’

'Look at the card. He gives on free rebuild action and he gives you Victory Points anytime you do rebuild action again. He believes he is a new president of US. It is clear. Obvious. He is tought guy with mission.’, I explained.

'Do you, really, believe that anyone find it obvious?’ asked Michał.

Michał might be right. I may be the only one men on this planet who sees theme and story in 51st State. I am the guy who knows exactly why Excavator gives you – while Invaded – two bricks, and why Bulldozer ignores type of the card when you make rebuild action.

So here I am. I tell you about story in 51. I hope you will have more fun with the game when you will understand what is happening on your table.

Card icons
Every card in 51st State represents location that you can find in neighborhood. What you have in your hand, this few cards, represents locations that you’ve heard that are around your home. That is why the draft phase is called Lookout phase – when you take cards, you are looking for interesting places near your Base. When you have cards in your hand, it means, that you know about these locations and that you can try to make a contact with them.

That is why when you put Pub into play, you may – during every turn – take new cards. You have Pub, Pub is a place where people share information. You listen to stories from wanderers and you know what is interesting behind horizon.

If you have Noticeboard, you take more cards during draft – you have access to information. When you Invade it, which means burn and destroy, you take all announcements that were there and that’s it. You take 3 cards – that is all knowledge you get by reading these announcements.

If you put Tavern into a game, you will be able to sell information. That’s how it works – discard a card from hand (which means you share some information about interesting Location) and gain Victory Point.

What does Baby Swift? She discards cards, which means she sells information… I will not describe it in more details. You get the picture, do you?

Victory points
Victory Points represent power. Victory Points show how our faction is perceived by others. If you have Wreck of tank it makes impression, isn’t it? Size does matter. That is why you get 1 Victory Point when you have Tank. Everybody in neighborhood knows that you are the one with Tank at your doorstep. You do more, you put Wreck of plane next to Tanks and you will rock. You will be famous. You will get many VP.

What about Museum? You Invade it you get 1 VP – everybody’s heard that you was the guy who destroyed this big, famous building. And you get 1 card. Why? There were some old maps and you know something interesting now…

Guns
Arena gives you possibilites to attack other places. You have Arena, so you have thugs who can invade. That is why Arena produces Guns. Guns trader makes you famous in the area. You are they guy from whom everybody can buy a gun. That makes you rich. Powerfull. That gives you VP. Well, when you will build Gun shop, it will be something!

I really do like Kelly’s Pawn Shop. Kelly is a big fish, as you can see when you look at the card. If you have interesting Spoil, and you not use it, but you go to Kelly and give it to him – you will gain lots of VP. Everybody will notice that you are Kelly’s good buddy. You make business with big fish. You got 2 VP. Your power grows.

Other
In Old depot you will find lots of iron. With Radiostation you may contact other locations and sign deals. At School you will find free workers, in Old factory you have space to hide good stuff… I believe that 51st State has interesting rules but I also do believe that there is a great story behind cards. When I play 51st State I always imagine my faction growing stronger and stronger with new buildings, deals, and spoils…

Post Scriptum
About these Bricks in Excavator… You sent your thugs to bring you stuff. You say: 'Overe there, two miles from here, there is Excavator. Do your job!’

Few hours later they are back. They are happy as a hell.

'Boss, you will be proud of us. We hunted it down. You won’t believe! It had a locker in front, and lots of stuff there. We have it!’

And then they give you two backbacks full of bricks. Stuff, they found when destroying Excavator…

I spent some 35 minutes at Bazik’s house, we were in a hurry – Merry, me and Folko. We managed to have some tea and play two short, very quick games. That visit has cost me 10 Euro, because Merry absolutely fell in love with the first of the two games. So it resulted in an order and a money transfer.

I spent 90 minutes in total at a two-day convention in Belk. You could say that I just dropped by, said hello to friends, had some tea and went back home. Costs? 40 Zloty for petrol and as much again for “To Court the King”. To be honest I didn’t even play it. I just came in, saw the cards, listened to how it’s played and went home. Then I switched on my PC, fired up the browser and ordered the game from Rebel.

Seriously, one is scared to go out, to meet with friends. Wherever I go, costs follow. One visit and the shopping list gets longer, a game catches my eye and the wallet goes like crazy.

Anyway, what can I say, I’m not innocent myself. I take a heavy toll too, you could say. You go and visit me, or invite me to your place and you can be sure it’ll cost you dearly.

I came back from Warsaw yesterday, one evening at friends’, and those friends are now 10 Euro down. They rather liked Adel Verpflichtet, which I brought with me to show them. One meeting with Folk at “Pionek” where I demonstrated Verflixxt to him and his wallet suffers. I invited Bogas and the visit has cost him a bit, you know – petrol, delicious cake, and a decision to buy Mall of Horror…

Unfortunately it’s like good games screamed to us: „You have to have me, you have to have me!” And with friends it’s like they never put some unplayable Pinocchio on the table, oh no! You’re barely past the doorstep, barely manage to agree to a cup of tea, when you hear they had recently bought a fantastic game which you have to see and play. And so the best game from their collection lands on the table, the pearl they want to show off, the wonder making you think on your way home: “Great, awesome, I have to have it.”

I’m looking at my shelf and see these titles – Dungeon Twister? Bazik’s fault. The Pillars of the Earth? Pancho’s doing. Heckmeck? Revenge for Adel Verpflichtet. Yes, it’s the friends from Warsaw…

How are you supposed to socialize? How to meet gamers? How to visit friends? Seriously, it’s a scare. With terrifying consequences…

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.