I love good commercials. I hate stupid commercials and I love good ones. There is no middle ground.

Here is one that I love. Please, watch it before we move on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiQVkoDlBbQ

Yesterday is gone. Today is up for grabs.
Do something and be remembered. No one owns today. Take it.

***

Let’s move back 6 years. It’s 2009. I am anonymous guy from Poland. No one ever heard about me. No one can even pronounce my name. I have game about siege. I have to do the impossible and create buzz and interest about it. I have to work as hard as possible, I have to use all my talent, skills and passion to win your hearts and convince you to try the game.

So I wrote epic – 12 posts long – series of articles about designing Stronghold. Published by BoardgamesNews.com it was something that no one saw in the industry before. I put whole heart into it. 12 weeks of tale about creating biggest game of my life.

It worked. I got gamers attention. I went to Essen, I sold every single copy of the game, I signed contract for US edition.

I did it. I had biggest success of my career.

***

Today I am no longer anonymous guy from Poland. Today there are people who know how to pronounce my name. Today I don’t look for contract for US market, Portal Games publishes games directly in US.

Looks like everything changed. I will just announce [thing=176606]Rattle, Battle[/thing] and I am done, huh?

Nope. Not at all.

I’ll work as hard as possible. I’ll use all my talent, skills and passion to win your hearts and convince you to try my game.

Because yesterday is gone. Because today is up for grabs. Because no one owns today.

Like every year I will have to take it.

@trzewik Why Can't We Eat Friends, the next expansion for Imperial Settlers, which introduces the Zombie faction! Am I right?

— Attorney At Slaw! (@AgentKuo) April 29, 2015

@maydaygames Hands down Robinson Crusoe – Me, alone against the island… then me, dead on the island. At least no one will know my shame…

— NVS Gameplays (@NVSGameplays) April 24, 2015

@maydaygames @trzewik My fav is Legacy: The Testament of Duke de Crecy! I love marrying off my daughters to fat, unattractive, foreign men.

— Todd Kauk (@ToddKauk) April 26, 2015

https://twitter.com/che2487/status/592539774205841408

Okay, fine. FINE. I’m getting Neuroshima Hex. I feel like it’s in every other tweet I read, even though it was released like 8 years ago.

— CARDBOARD! (@CardboardCast) April 26, 2015

What you see above is a tweet from Rich Sommer who finally decided to give Neuroshima Hex a try. Rich doesn’t know what will happen next but I do. I am publisher of the game. I know all those cases. I know them very well. Rich is doomed.

Rich will fall in love with Neuroshima Hex because this game is freaking good. Since its release in Poland in 2007 it is bestseller, we sell more than 2000 copies here in Poland each year, we present it on conventions every damn weekend and we know what we have here – we have here one of the best tactical board games on the planet. Yes, I said it.

Rich will then learn about expansions. He will discover that here in Poland we released 11 additional armies and because the English rights for the game are back at Portal Games, we just released first new army in English. It is called Uranopolis and it has a cool girl on the cover. Rich will probably give it a try, it’s only 12 bucks, right?

Rich will love how Uranopolis changed the game and how it increased replaybility of the base game. I don’t know if he is a patient person, but I could see him ordering from Poland just few additional armies that were released only in Polish language so far, but man, the game is language independent anyway, right? These other armies look so cool…

I don’t know if the next guest at Cardboard! is Mel Gibson or Tom Hardy, but I know that it will be an awesome opportunity to close the circle and make Mad Max play Neuroshima Hex. That’s how it all began many years ago…

Me and Stephan Buonocore record Board games Insider on Sundays. Except these Sundays when we can’t record because we are at convention. Which means most Sundays. In these cases we have to improvise.

Last Sunday I was in Modana at Play Festival and recording of episode #4 was impossible. We set recording for Monday. Our episodes are released on Tuesdays, so I belived we will be ok. We record on Monday evening, I edit it on Monday night and on Tuesday it is aired.

Timing was important, because on Wednesday I had to go to Germany, to meet my friends from Pegasus Spiele.

Monday, 6PM my time. Everything is set and we start recording. After 11 minutes something happens…

Ignacy, where are you?

After 11 minutes of recording I lost Internet connection in my home. My provider has some problems and suddenly I am offline. No way we can continue. I send message to Stephan that I am very sorry and we decide we will try tomorrow evening, at 8PM.

Wednesday, 8AM my time. Provider fixes problems and I have Internet.

Wednesday, 6PM my time. I loose it again. In two hours I should record and I am offline again. I am really angry. And I am not going to give up. „Nothing gonna stop us!” I say and I drive 20 km to my office.

Wednesday, 8PM my time I am at Portal Games offices and I am ready to record this damn episode.

We record. We have it ready. Stephan says he will send me his audio file. I will edit it early in the morning and then I go to Germany as planned.

Wednesday, 7:20AM my time, Merry wakes me and tells me that we have Internet back and I can do podcast. I get up, I check email, I click link to Stephan’s file to download it and I go to bathroom.

When I am back, I can’t believe what I see. Transfer speed 1,6 kb/s Estimated time to download the file: 9 hours.

You must be f… kidding me.

My suitcases to Germany are packed, Merry is prepared to start our trip anytime. But well, nothing gonna stop us, right? I take pendrive, I copy my file of audio and I say: „We go to Portal office. I will download Stephan file there, I’ll edit podcast and then we go to Germany.”

Merry is not happy. We go.

You remember when I told you that my office is 20 km from my home? It wasn’t a case on this particular Wednesday. Exactly today they began road works on a path between my home and Portal office. Believe it or not. I need to take detour. We need 40 minutes to get to the office, that is 20 minutes more than usual. But #NothingGonnaStopUs

I turn on my office computer, I download file from Stephan. It goes fast. Good. I will edit his file with mine. I put pendrive with my audio file.

Computer doesn’t see this pendrive. I can’t copy my file, because this damn laptop is not reading this damn pendrive…

I am gonna explode in 3, 2, 1…

I made it. 4th episode of Board games Insider is online. It was ridicolous serie of events. It looks like made up story, but it is 100% real story of 3 days of unlucky events. It really happened.

Give it a try. I hope you’ll enjoy it. I work really hard to give it to you!

Link to Board games Insider.