It is Thursday, July 29, 2015. Late evening, the four of us are sitting in a hotel room at the Hilton in Indianapolis. It’s me, Multi, Chevee, and Jeff. A few hours ago, the first day of Gen Con ended. We are here with the release of the game Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot. The game has been well-received. From the first pallet containing 240 units, we have only a few boxes left.

„Should we announce it as sold out?” I ask.

Everyone at the convention has seen how boxes have been disappearing from the stack of games throughout the day, and by the end of the day, only a few units remained. I could post a short tweet that Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot sold out on the first day of Gen Con. We have a success story, distributor interest in the title, fans upset that they missed out on a hot game, and the press and media will pick up on it. We will be featured in every Gen Con report as one of the games that generated enormous interest. Of course, we will be bored to death at our booth for the next three days, but we will return to the company victorious. The news will spread throughout the industry that Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot was one of those titles worth paying attention to.

What is the difference between a designer and a developer? It’s roughly like the difference between a father and a grandfather. Like the difference between a mother and a grandmother. The mother gets up at 2 am to feed the baby, while the grandmother sees the baby on Sunday after dinner, chats with them, says sweet nothings, proud of her grandchild, as if it couldn’t get any better! The father rocks the baby in his arms for two hours because the baby has colic and is screaming so loudly that he can be heard throughout the neighborhood. The grandfather, on the other hand, comes around during the holidays, tells a nice story, gives a gift, offers some advice, and then goes back home. He went through all of that, now let the young parents struggle, he’s too old for that.

Testing Thorgal gives me wild joy. I come, play, give my opinion here and there, ask for something to be changed or added, and then I go back to my duties. Let the young parents…

I’m playing a game called Nevsky with my buddy from the USA over WhatsApp. He makes a move while sitting in Charlotte, North Carolina, records a video message, and sends it to me via WhatsApp. I update the board here, make a move, record a video message and send it to him. He updates the board there… It’s not the fastest way to play, a game takes us about two months on average, but that’s not what I’m talking about today. Today I’m talking about rolling dice. And about how players are crazy.

Last week during the game, there was a battle under the city of Koporye (photo above shows the castle!). My troops approached the castle and encountered a unit of Rus, who occupied the fortress. An exciting moment. Tokens of our troops land on a special battle board, charges start, dice rolling, fingers crossing, all that jazz—the salt of war games.

I downloaded the BG Stats app in February 2018. Since then, I have recorded 1178 sessions in 475 different board games. I played five or more times in only 53 of those 475 board games. What’s more, I played 258 games only once and never got back to them. I learned the rules, prepared the game, and then one session and never again. That’s a scary statistic.

Merry and I got a board game accessory for Christmas this year. We chose 10 titles that we love, games that bring us a lot of fun, games that, damn it!, deserve much more time on our table. Sorry, new releases, this year, get in line to be played…

So there was this one guy in the wargaming group who wrote a post that he’d already played Nevsky three times, and each play was boring, tedious, and he really didn’t like this game. Nevsky is one of my favorite board wargames, so I just smiled and repeated to myself: “De gustibus non est disputandum. To each their own. There’s beauty in variety.” I was surprised that this guy actually spent three sessions, each four hours long, on a game he didn’t even like. On the other hand, Nevsky isn’t the cheapest, so he probably wanted to be absolutely sure it wasn’t for him. I respect that.

But not even a month later, that same gamer, in the same group, was roasting the game called Almoravid. For all of you who don’t know what Almoravid is, I will explain—it’s Nevsky, but in Spain. The same genre, the same series, just a few changes in the rules. That’s when I started to wonder.