It was a blink. In one moment I got my new game ready. It just came to my mind and was brilliant. I was so excited. Players are shepherds and have to have the biggest flocks of sheep. Different tiles have sheep with different colors, some tiles have wolves who eat sheep. Your aim is to gather group of 4 sheep in one color. Simple, easy, great.

No orcs. No mutants and tanks.
No „Trzewiczek style”.
Spiel des Jahres jury, I am coming!

I took brushes, I took paints and started to make a prototype. I have huge range of Citadel paints, very expensive, but very good. I wanted my prototype to look great. I used Citadels. I painted 32 tiles with green paint (sweet meadows!). I drew 158 little sheep and then I painted all of them (yellow, white, blue, red). It was great, I was imagining myself coming to the office, showing the prototype to the guys and telling them that I’ve just designed a great game! It took me whole night. Nearly 5 hours of painting little sheep.

The most beautiful prototype I have ever seen.

It was very late in the night, but I was so proud of myself. It had to be a hit! I was excited. I didn’t go to sleep. I took a box of chocolate, I painted it grey, and then I drew a meadow and some sheep on the front cover. It was awesome. Spiel des Jahres jury, I am coming!

Finally I went to sleep.

I woke up the next day. I was so proud. I ate breakfast and sat at the table to play my game. The first test. I was very excited. First time in my designer life I was about to play a test game on such a beautiful prototype. So I played.

Well, not exactly. I didn’t play because it didn’t work. It didn’t work at all! I was sitting at the table and couldn’t believe that I spend whole night painting sheep without first checking if the rules make any sens.

That’s how I didn’t win Spiel des Jahres this year. And my today’s advice for you is – first test, then paint, my friends. First test, then paint…

The first time I came across this term was in 2007 during my interview with Bruno Faidutti for Polish magazine “Swiat gier planszowych” (World of board games). I asked him how many games he had in his collection. „More than five thousand, hard to say. I cannibalize many games.”

„What?” – I asked, clearly not understanding what he meant. My conversational Polishenglish combined with his Frenchenglish … I think you can sympathize.

„I cannibalize. I take components from other games and use them in my own prototypes. Thus, a lot of my game boxes are incomplete and will never be playable again.”

„Oh.” I said. That was something absolutely new for me. And it was two years after my conversation with Bruno, when – during my works on Stronghold – I finally fully understood what he meant.

***

I have used wood from two Mykerinos boxes, two Glik boxes and one box of Elasund for my Stronghold prototype. I’ve added a cartload of Lego bricks as walls, pots, cannons, hooks… The castle looked like a vast construction site. For a moment it even seemed possible that five incomplete game sets and a pile of my son’s bricks was enough for me to work. Unfortunately… During the final stage of my work on the game I had to send the prototype to testers, and had I not discovered a store with wooden beads I would have been in serious trouble and Ystari company would have been over the moon with twenty more Mykerinos boxes sold.

While working on Prêt-a-Porter I’ve cannibalized copies of Arkham Horror. This game has wonderful cash tokens. I’ve borrowed one of the copies from the club in Gliwice, the other one was lend to me by Tycjan from Opole. I have tarnished the sanctity during my works on Stronghold: Undead – I’ve used chess pawns for priests. I have also made use of green cubes from Space Alert. They have worked so well that eventually we contacted our friends from the CGE and with their help the final version of Undead is equipped with the same tape of cubes as in Space Alert, however they are blood-red colored…

My 51st State was created using wood pieces from Light Speed, and Light Speed was created on the basis of Ikea glass markers. I designed Witchcraft with the usage of damage indicators from the first edition of Neuroshima Hex, and Machina (Machine)… To be honest, I’ve created Machina from scratch, all by myself. It was my first game. I didn’t know then that one should steal the components, and not cut them out with scissors from cardboard…

***

I write about all this all as now working on my Robinson game I’ve cannibalized without even noticing my favorite CGE game – wonderful and crazy Galaxy Trucker. And now, not only I cannot fly into space and experience great adventures there – I also had to splash some paint on my brave Czech astronauts for the sake of Robinson. In my prototype I needed meeples in four different colors, so I had to paint the astronauts. Their resemblance to Neil A. Armstrong is lost.

Galaxy Trucker is one of my son’s favorite games. And what will I tell him now? How can I admit what I have done? Even if I finish my work on Robinson pretty soon, even if none of the astronauts is lost during the tests and they all eventually return to Galaxy Trucker’s box, space trips will never be the same again. Robinson has left a considerable mark on them …

Essen fair has ended, stress level has fallen- finally a moment to catch a breath. I can play in the newest releases, see what the other authors have prepared, take a gulp of new ideas. I’ll note the interesting solutions that may be inspiring and I’ll allow my mind to be stirred by others. Sometimes – quite unexpectedly – something completely new is born from all this commotion.

Finally, after several plays, the commotion came. Oh yes. And as a result, within two weeks after Essen the brand new prototype has landed on the table. We play. Turns come and go. Step by step Merry is gaining the upper hand and finally I can see nothing’s going to change that in the following two moves before the end of the game. I was beaten. The prototype seems to be cool, yet the cards have little to do with balance.

I draw my last card. It’s named Commandos, yet there is no text nor symbols with rules on it, only the title and cool graphics. I didn’t have a slightest idea for the mechanics, only a cool title, so I just tossed this card into the deck. Very clever. „Trzewiczek style” they call it – the story always comes first, then you’ll have time to worry, dude, about the rules.

And so I draw this stupid Commandos and with a poker face I put it in New York saying „Commandos. I won.”

Merry’s eyes widen.

If I had to buy her some contact lenses just in that moment, they would have to be the bottom of a jar size.

„What?” she asks almost completely speechless.

I lost miserably. The only thing left for me was to tease her a little bit. „Well, I pulled Commandos. Didn’t I tell you that when Outpost draws that card, it wins? And so I won.”

Merry didn’t believe in what she’s just heard. „There is no such card.”

I keep my face straight. „There is. As you can clearly see here. Commandos wins the game.”

„Ignacy, there is no such card!” Merry furiously rushes to the other side of the table, grabs the Commandos and throws it away. The card lands besides the window. „Ignacy, there is no such card.”
All I could do is bursts out laughing.

Two days later, the Commandos has its abilities described. Maybe it does not win the game, but… but still gets to be my favorite card in the whole deck.