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.

Browian, Grzech and I finally have the chance to meet and discuss 51st State, three weeks after they took the prototype. They live in Wroclaw, I live in Gliwice. With 200km between us the only contact comes courtesy of Skype. But thanks to Pionek, a convention for gamers, we can finally meet and play together.

“The Merchants are too powerful”, starts Browarion. “They win all the time.”

“It’s possible. You got the deck for testing, didn’t you? I never noticed it and perhaps you have found a way to win the game by using the Merchants.” We sit down and play. „Take the Merchants.” I say.

Browarion takes his Merchants. We play the three players version. The Merchants come third.

“Let’s do it again” says Browarion. Again we sit down and play. The Merchants come last. We play again. The Merchants come last for the third time in a row. I’m tempted to tease him but Grzech beats me to it.

“I told you but you wouldn’t listen. Don’t look at nations, look at players. When we played in Wroclaw you didn’t lose to the Merchants, you lost to me. I told you.”

***

The match has been on for good fifteen minutes now. Piotr has been moaning like a slaughtered calf for good fourteen minutes.

“The Merchants are too weak. They can’t do anything. The contracts are of no use to me, three spots and that’s it. This needs to be changed.”

“Stop moaning and play.”

“But they are. Can’t you see that?!”

“How many points do you have?”

“14.”

“How many do I have?”

“14.”

“So will you, please, stop moaning?”

“I’m being serious. Do you know how I struggle to get these 14 points?”

Another 10 minutes pass like the whole eternity, since Piotr manages to fill every one of them with ten minutes of moaning.

“The Merchants are weak, what a joke. I have the contracts’ spots blocked and you’re all over me.”

“Stop moaning, concentrate on the game. I’m finishing in the next turn.”

“I would finish too, but with those stupid Merchants I stand no chance. Maybe with a fourth contract spot, or a universal resource instead of the stupid fuel? This would bring some commerce mood and I would stand a chance…”

We’re done in the next ten minutes.

”How many points do you have?” I ask.

“36. And you?” he asks.

“36.” I answer.

“See? I barely managed a draw!”, he is moaning again!

“You have more cards left in hand, which means that you have won. It is tiebreaker. Merchants won.”

“Do you realize how tough that was? The Merchants are too weak, I’m telling you!”

***

After another series of tests I discard the Baby Swift from the deck. The players have too few cards in hand to afford discarding two more for a victory point. Baby Swift is an unplayable, dead card. We play without it and everything works well until the next rule change. Now the players have more cards in hand, so Baby Swift gets another chance. It comes back. We play subsequent matches and indeed, Baby Swift makes more sense now, even though it seems to be one of the weaker leaders. Players tend to put their money on Borgo or Greedy Pete, Baby Swift is usually a second or third choice. I make notes and analyse everything, constantly monitoring which cards come into play and which ones are regularly ignored during the draft. It seems to me that Baby Swift walks a thin line between being popular and being unused. It’s a little too weak to be a hit and slightly too strong to simply be discarded from the deck. It gets used sometimes.

In the meantime Michal Oracz prepares another version of the prototype for me – new graphics from the illustrators came in. We can finally play with the original Baby Swift artwork that will appear in the final game. The graphics are insane. Another wave of matches and tests commences.

Baby Swift is the most popular leader in the game now. It’s on the table every game. It’s always the players’ first choice.

I haven’t changed a single rule. I only changed the graphics.

***

Testing games is crazy fun. You get tens of contradictory conclusions and pieces of information. Every tester tries to pull in their own direction. Each one has a different view. Each one expects from the game something different. One tester plays well, another one is not that good. One tester claims that a certain faction is powerful, another finds it the weakest. Testers from Wroclaw catch me on Skype in the evenings and ask me not to listen to testers from Opole, because 51st State doesn’t need negative interaction. Opole rings me and says that the players from Wroclaw are little girls, and Neuroshima is for big boys. Wroclaw writes that Opole is biased, since they prefer war games there. And that the merchants are too weak.

Games’ reports. Results’ files. Statistics. Opinions and claims. A continuous flow of information.

I sit and filter through it. I pick recurring remarks. I check and thoroughly analyse opinions which seem to appear on a regular basis.

And everything else… into the bin.

Initially the prototype doesn’t work. It’s ugly, boring and crashes often. It takes a lot of effort to find people willing to play and test it. Friends try to avoid it, preferring other games from their collections. It starts working after a few months. It doesn’t crash. You are happy with it, after many weeks it’s finally there – your game works. You start thinking about sending the prototype to a publisher.

Stop. Before you do that, you need to answer two questions. The first one was covered previously, today the second one.

When your friends visit you, do they ask you if they could play your prototype? Do your mates say: “Could we play your prototype today?” If they ask for it, everything is just fine – send it to a publisher. If you have to persuade them to play it – throw it away. It’s not worth releasing.

A few weeks ago I came back from my holiday in Croatia, which I spent with friends and a big bunch of children. The friends are board games’ fans, so we had a substantial number of board games in the car boot, besides swim fins, swim trunks and goggles. The friends brought Dominion and Small World, and I brought Neuroshima Hex, Galaxy Trucker, Doom, Tichu, Havana and the 51st State prototype.

Throughout the entire trip we had one game of Small World, one of Havana, five games of Tichu and over 20 games of 51st State. I didn’t suggest playing 51st State once, I always waited for others’ suggestions. I wanted to see how quickly they would get bored with it, what its replayability was, how many games it would take for them to get fed up with it and play something else. I didn’t suggest playing it once. And the game has landed on the table over 20 times…

In the last evening of the holiday Piotr came to our room. They’d also had their stuff packed, their children in beds. And we’d had our stuff packed, our children in beds. We were to go back to Poland at 7am the next morning. 10pm, the last evening of the holiday in Croatia.

“How about a round of 51st State?”, Piotr asks.

“With pleasure” I say.

51st State is a winner and I’m feeling good about it. We already had sensational titles with us, the board game elite, from Dominion, to Small World, to Havana, to Galaxy Trucker. And yet in Croatia they have all gathered dust. The game on the table was 51st State, time and again.

My answer to the question: „When your friends visit you, do they ask you if they could play your prototype? – is “yes”. Yes, I sent Small World back on the shelf. Yes, my 51st State made Dominion stay in a suitcase all holiday. Yes, due to my card game we only played Havana once throughout the entire holiday.

Yes, 51st State is ready to be released. The prototype has been tested, pitted against the giants, which it’s trapped on a shelf. If your prototype is not up to such trial, don’t send it to a publisher. Nobody is going to release a game worse than the ones already present on the market. You have to be better. You have to lock the giants in the cupboards. You have to make the competition retire early.

Initially the prototype doesn’t work. It’s ugly, boring and crashes often. It takes a lot of effort to find people willing to play and test it. Friends try to avoid it, preferring other games from their collections. It starts working after a few months. It doesn’t crash. You are happy with it, after many weeks it’s finally there – your game works. You start thinking about sending the prototype to a publisher.

Stop. Before you do that, you need to answer a question.

Before you send a prototype to a publisher, answer the question – Is my game the best game in the world? If the answer is “No”, you can throw your prototype away. I’m being serious. If you yourself don’t consider the game to be excellent, outstanding, the best in the world, then what are you counting for? Do you think others will? You don’t love it, so what do you expect from others?

Every time I sat down to work on Stronghold, tinkering with rules, drawing boards, castles, in every moment, every afternoon, there was one thought in my mind: “Here comes Stronghold, the best board game in the world.” I would create new Invader’s actions, or design new Defender’s actions and mutter: “Agricolo, you are about to lose your crown, Stronghold is coming.” Everything I did for the game, I did believing that I was creating the best board game in the world. I would sit awake at night wheeling and dealing how to make it even better, so it could beat Puerto Rico and other top games.

I’m a realist. I know that Stronghold won’t ever reach the BGG charts’ No. 1. I knew it even when I was creating it. But being realistic has nothing to do with it. When you design a game, you clench your teeth and do everything you can to create the best game on this planet. There is no other way. Your game will revolutionise the market, it’ll get you both Spiel des Jahres and DeutscheSpielPreis together and your name will be the synonym of genious. That’s all that matters to you.

And it’s a bit like in a basketball match. When you face Chicago Bulls with Michael Jordan on the pitch, you realistically estimate they’ll win 96-72 or 101-78. But down in the changing room you believe in victory. You’ve trained to the limit, your team is tuned, your coach is good, and so you believe you can win. You have to believe you can defeat everybody. The game starts, you loos two quarters and before the half time it becomes obvious that you’ve failed. But it doesn’t matter. Training, heart on pitch, hope and strength matter.

The game came out and didn’t reach BGG’s No.1, and that was to be expected. But back then, when I was sitting over nights, creating it, preparing it for publication – I believed it was the best board game in the world. I believed that it’s excellent, that people would love it, and that it’s unlike any other released game. Original, interesting, thrilling.

If you’ve finished working on your prototype and plan sending it to a publisher without yourself being able to describe it as original, interesting, thrilling and that it’s the best game in the world and it’s going to BGG’s top 10, then you take that game and bin it.

There are thousands of average games in the world. Publishers expect the best of the best, and won’t settle for less.