I bought the book the month it was released in Poland. I was in college, it was 1997 or 1998, I don’t remember exactly. Huge novel, well promoted. Since I was quite busy at the moment, I didn’t start to read it. I lent it to my fellow mate from our gaming club. He said it is an amazing novel. Other fellow mate asked me so I lent it again. And then I lent it again. And then, few months later I was the only person in our club who didn’t read the book. Me, the owner of the book.

When finally the copy of the book came back, I was busy again. I forgot about it. But then, few years later FFG published A Game of Thrones CCG. Man, I was into it. I played a lot. I even played in tournaments. I love that game. I was really into the story. And yet, I still couldn’t catch up with the novel, I knew the world only from cards and pictures. Book was on my to-read list. For years…

And then, few years later HBO made a TV series. What a hit! Everybody, literally everybody was talking about it. It was 2011. I had Pret-a-Porter and New Era and Convoy on my head. I had no single weekend that would be free. So everybody was talking about new episodes and I… and I was keeping GoT on my to-read and to-watch list. It was ridiculous. I was the guy who bought the book in 1998! I made all my friends fell in love with the story. And now everybody was talking about it and me… Still waiting. Still believing that one day I will catch up…

Yeah.

Finally I made it. I just watched two first episodes of GoT HBO season 1. I have many episodes to catch up, but at least I made first step.

And after watching these two first episodes my question is: How the hell it is possible anyone on that planet wants to play Lannisters kin (in CCG/LCG or board game). They are f… assholes. Pure evil. Snakes. I f… hate them. I would never play this faction. And I will always attack them, no matter what. You play Lannister? I attack you. From the very first turn.

Yeah, that’s me. Catching up with the story you all already know. I’ll have fun, will I?

…or why I didn’t throw out randomness from Hex and Theseus?

(this is guest post by Michal Oracz)

A warm, spring evening. You’re sitting comfily in front of the screen reading a game review. There’s a picture, a title and five blocks of text.

Scrolling…

At the end of the review there is a summary:

Rating: 8/10
Pluses:
– Beautiful graphic design
– 90 plastic figures = money well spent
– Innovative mechanics of city development
– Theme and humor
– The whole thing weighs over 5 kilos and makes a pleasurable sound when shaken = money well spent
Minuses:
– Non-standard card size
– Randomness
– No interaction
– The game is for 2 players only
– Play time: 10-15 minutes
– Player’s age: 12+
– The box is red and black

No, it’s not a summary for Her nor for Theseus, they don’t have figures, boxes are lighter and interaction level is at 200%. This is a summary of some nonexistent game taken straight from Narnia.

The question is different: when did you notice that something was wrong with this whole summary? Was it the game time or the player’s age or the red and black box? If so, not bad.

But maybe it was earlier, where randomness and lack of interaction were mentioned as minuses? Really? It’s hard to believe since we’re used to treating randomness and lack of interaction as obvious defects and evident mistakes in games.

Who didn’t hear about a „stupid, random game”?

I personally like a bit of randomness, which even may – focus here! – influence the result of the game!

Sometimes I’m asked if Hex wouldn’t be better off without the random element. If everything would be in front of the player and accessible from the very beginning, turning the game into a real contest of the minds. Similar situation takes place with Theseus. Hmmm…

It is said that Theseus is a difficult game. The rules are very simple but during the game itself you really need to flex your brain in all directions to put all that you got into a game winning, asskickin’ combo machine. Phew, tough sport. Is it good? No. In commercial sense it is absolutely a flaw. But there is something instead. Theseus is very fast, experienced players can deal with it in about 20-25 minutes. Secondly all games are unique, each time there are different combos on the board composed from different cards and in different locations of the game. Finally: Theseus includes an element of RANDOMNESS. It’s not major but it’s enough – same as in Hex, you simply don’t know what will come next to your hand, that’s it. But IT IS THERE.

Oh yes, the short play time and the random element were kept in the game as a painkiller for the general brain consuming factor of the gameplay.

I wanted to make a game that would involve a huge amount of brain work while thinking about all these combos yet it would forgive the player the mistakes he makes. So that if you lose you wouldn’t leave the table feeling your brain is somehow worse than that of your opponent’s. So that you could always cheer yourself saying: This time you had some luck, let’s see how you’ll do in the next game. Let’s play again.

As a player I hate to lose because my brain was worse than somebody else’s. There surely are people who enjoy such level of competition. But I’m not one of them.

Adding the element of randomness to my games is not a result of tests, nor demand of the players, nor even a fashion. It’s the effect of the player I am, of what I enjoy in board games and of what I don’t enjoy, of what annoys me and of what I miss. Many players love to engage in heavy games with no randomness at all, logical and ruthless. I unfortunately don’t, I’m a different type of a player. I wrote earlier that I try to be honest and polish the gameplay while feeling it 100%, so I design games as if they were for myself. It’s the easiest way for me to evaluate the fun that comes from the gameplay. I’m not starting to design a complicated eurogame only because they are appreciated and a popular genre. I won’t make a game for kids only because it’s a huge and great target and a lot of players want to play with their little ones. I prefer to be honest as a designer and work only on what I know and what I feel. I like games with a well-placed and well-choses element of randomness, that’s why randomness will be present in my games.

Randomness, while anticipating the occurrence of new tiles or cards in the game, be it ours or the opponent’s, is also connected with a special type of emotion, totally different than the ones that we feel while anticipating opponent’s move. We know what may come to the opponent and what may come to us. But we don’t know when. We prepare a certain situation on the board, calculating in our heads the chances for drawing and playing more or less fortunate elements of the game in the upcoming turns. We create a flexible machine to overpower our opponent, we update it as the elements appear and we modify our plans. Sometimes we pray for a Bomb or a Sniper; sometimes we pray so that our opponent wouldn’t get a fast unit or a net-fighter or Move. We pray for him not to place the Duplicate or Safeguard. We beg our luck for the opponent not to draw Battle this turn! Not now! He got it… damn… Hurray, it’s a Bomb! I did it! A shooter, yay! I’ll close the combo! Phew, that was close, just one Push and I’m saved.

For the whole gameplay the player digests wishes and prayers in his mind, he keeps his fingers crossed and holds his breath. There is another game taking place in his mind, next to the board. Satisfaction and frustration occur, one after the other, anger and happiness. The gameplay is short and intense, the tactic is short-distanced so these emotions are also very temporal, the anger is very short and disappointment after a lost battle can be easily wiped with a rematch.

All this without feeling that your brain is somehow inferior because there always is light in the dark tunnel, a simple fact at our hand: “if I had the proper token back then everything would have been different. You were lucky!”. So what if luck or bad luck are just a minor element of the whole gameplay? What is important is the fact that we can always blame our defeat on fate.

Of course I don’t like „stupid, random games”. But I also don’t like ruthless, logical monster without the faintest trace of randomness in it. A minor and well placed element of fate is like a well-chosen spice. The game just tastes better.

(this is guest post by Michal Oracz)

The Neuroshima Hex factions are asymmetrical. They vary in terms of: mobility and attack strength, initiative, toughness, potential for clearing enemy units from the board, ability to control the board, ability to get out of trouble, possible combos or with the abilities allowing to blackmail the enemy and force him to declare Battle when the board is full and when it’s beneficial to us.

They also vary when it comes to how easy they are to learn and play, using their maximum potential. At the beginning some of them seem to be too easy, others too hard. They become equal only in the hands of experienced players.

When we sum up the statistics of both the experienced and the beginning players we will discover something not surprising at all: an army easier to master is the one that has more wins in this statistic. The problem vanishes in the long-term summaries of games because players are beginners for a lot shorter than they are veterans.

Borgo definitely bears the palm when it comes to terrifying players.

„I’m surprised Borgo’s balance wasn’t corrected in 3.0. Everybody knows Borgo is too strong and it’s a mistake of the Hex’s designers”.

I guarantee that never, in any upcoming edition will we change even a single tile in Borgo’s army. This faction is just the way it should be, it’s not even slightly too strong. It’s not too weak either – such voices can also be occasionally heard from players who have uncovered all of Borgo’s weaknesses and they feel overconfident.

What’s crucial in grasping both weak and strong sides of Borgo was included in the game manual:

Borgo is incredibly fast and can clear the whole board. It can cause a lot of wounds to enemy’s Headquarters when it gets close enough.

Meanwhile it is very weak at breaking through the protective wall around the Headquarters and the most effective attacks (Net-Fighter) are carried out by units that are rather defenseless, that need additional protection.

That’s exactly it.

This is where the truth about Borgo and its Achilles’s heel is. However, knowing this secret won’t change Borgo into a set of thirty-five useless pieces of cardboard. It’s still a fully functional, strong army.

So what should Borgo’s opponent know to feel he steps into the ring as an equal?

Let’s put things in order.

First of all Borgo’s Headquarter will most likely be placed at the middle of the board, which will give Borgo the six terrifying, hasted fields around it. This is when the knowledge of the less obvious Hex tactics comes in handy. See the tokens have more uses than just attacking or building combos, they can also be used to block certain crucial fields on the board. Should we flood these six fields with our own units we would rob Borgo of its haste.

Secondly if we cover all three fields in front of our own Headquarters, hidden in a corner of the board, and will NEVER trigger Battle in this game, Borgo probably won’t be able to get past to our HQ and won’t inflict any wounds. When Borgo activates Battle, it will at most remove some of the units defending our HQ, of course we will replace them just after this Battle in our own turn with new ones. Borgo’s only chance for scoring a hit on our covered HQ is a situation when a faster Borgo’s unit kills one of our defenders and in the next initiative turn Borgo’s Assassin shoots through the newly made gap. However Assassin’s initiative is 3 so the unit that takes down the cover must have an initiative of 4 or more and the shooter must be perfectly placed. Oh, and of course the shooter will only score a single wound on our HQ.

Nonetheless Borgo’s shooters, there are only two of them, are our number one target on the black list of Borgo’s units for elimination.

A Grenade can also make a hole in our wall, there is very little we can do against the instant tokens.

It’s time for a little digression concerning the Battles. It pays to remember that playing Hex often reminds a contest of nerves – it’s a game of forcing your opponent to invoke Battle. When the board is full the one who invokes the Battle pays a dire price: it’s always opponents turn afterwards and it is the opponent who gets to be the first to fill all the best strategic fields on the game board (for example resupply the defensive wall around the HQ or set up an effective attack). The one who possesses the potential assets to win this contest of nerves will often force his opponent to declare Battle and therefore gain the initiative. Such assets can be: a Bomb, a Sniper, a Grenade, a Net-Fighter, a Blocker, a Scout, a unit with armor, Movement or Push waiting in hand, all this depends on the situation on the board that led to an impasse.

Usually one of the players has the advantage – has more points or at least will have more points after resolving the Battle. You can be sure that this player won’t rush to declare Battle. The rule is simple. If both players will delay in this situation, the one with the advantage will simply win when one of the players will run out of tokens to use. So in most cases the situation looks like this: when the board if filled and only one empty field remains, the player who has the advantage won’t declare Battle and will only discard tokens in order to quicken the end of the game, meanwhile the player with a disadvantage delays with declaring Battle waiting for the token that will be a game changer for the upcoming Battle (like the earlier mentioned Sniper or Bomb). The winning player delays and risks; the losing player counts for a miracle and fearfully counts the time remaining until the end of the game.

Playing against Borgo, should you have at least a few points of advantage, cover your HQ and never declare Battle.

Third, thanks to its speed Borgo can, with time, take control over the board – meaning, after each Battle more of his units stay on board. We must remember about it. If there only is a chance to strike the unprotected back of the units controlling the board (such as the hasted Mutant or Claws) you have to go for it. Same goes to the possibility of a blow for a blow exchange if we have tough units at hand, so they will take out Borgo’s units even if they have lower initiative during the Battle.

Should you have at least a few points of advantage and your HQ covered, Borgo’s control over the game board is no biggie. You just have to last until the end of the game, just like a soccer team carefully defending a not-impressive but sufficient 1:0 score.

Oh and please remember that nothing clears the board like Moloch’s Bomb dropped on Borgo’s HQ.

Fourth thing, the Net-Fighter. It’s Borgo’s most dangerous unit – we can never make this fatal mistake and simply assume that the opponent won’t draw him next turn. Protecting our HQ, we can never allow ourselves to be so careless and leave an empty field near our HQ without even few quick-shooting unit’s targeting it from the neighboring fields. Placing our tokens we must assume that Borgo’s Net-Fighter will be set up there, paralyzing our HQ and dealing three wounds every Battle and possibly until the end of the game.

Summing up: don’t fall for the Net-Fighter trick, cover the hasted fields, gain few points of advantage, cover your HQ, never declare Battle, eliminate Borgo’s shooters. These are just the basics because the tactical and even strategic secrets of Hex are numerous.

Simple? Not at all. Borgo is a hard opponent even if we know its weak sides. It’s hard as any army in the hands of an experienced player.

However it’s high time to grow out of the fear of the blue color.

PS. In one of the upcoming episodes I’ll look into a similar case concerning Theseus, to be more precise concerning the Fire, a terrifying card of the Marines faction. Similarly, with pleasure, I’ll tell you more about other terrifying tiles from Hex, for example about the Outpost’s Mobile Armor or the Moloch’s Bomb – and about other strong and weak sides that you’ll be better of knowing about 😉

PPS. Thanks for all the propositions for the name of the Theseus’ robot faction! For now we are calling it Bots, it worth to say that during the polishing phase the army broke into two completely different factions: the first being the cunning and greedy A.I., which does whatever it wants to the Station, second being the heavy, armored, crushing machines that will roll over anybody like a tank. Both factions are being developed simultaneously (for now) but soon one of them will send the other to the waiting room, we will see which one it will be 😉

This is guest post by Michał Oracz

Some of you have signed copy of one of my games. In most cases it means that you have cow inside your box. I know. It may be not exactly what you expected when you approached me to sign your copy of Stronghold, Robinson or other title.

Time to explain. Time to answer a question: 'What the hell is wrong with Ignacy.’

*

It was a damn boring lecture. Seriously. I was really scared. There was a real thread of death in the room. It was possible some students may actually get killed by lecturer. Cause of death? Boredom.

I was scribbling in my notebook and at some point I drew a cow. I added balloon with funny comment about this lecture and passed it to the student sitting next to me. He smiled and passed it to the next guy. He smiled and passed… You know how it works. We all were in school right?

Since then every time we were stuck at boring lecture, I was passing funny drawings with cows. People had fun.

I was a resistance hero. I saved them from death. I saved them from boredom.

*

At this point I was publishing RPG magazine called Star Pirate. I draw few cow’s drawing and showed in the office. Cows were talking about playing RPG and it was quite funny. Feedback was very positive. So I kept drawing them. After few months cows were a must in each issue. RPG players really liked them. And then madness began…

We announced that we are going to publish Polish edition of Cheapass Games Falling. Our fans asked: 'What if Polish edition of the game had cows instead of businessman…’

So I was forced to send to Cheapass Games an email that said something like: 'We do respect your IP and your ideas and we do really like the idea of businessman falling from skyscraper but you know, here in Poland… Could we re-theme the game and make cows falling in our edition? Would it be an issue for you?’

Luckily James Ernest has sense of humor. He agreed. So that is how Polish Falling looked like:

And if you think this is peak of this madness, you are wrong. Oh, yeah…

*

At this time, year 2006, when Internet was young and was full of new possibilities, we were trying different ways to stay in touch with our fans. One of them was chat. We run chat rooms for our fans twice a month. We were talking about our plans, we were gossiping about our work and we were running auctions. We have loyalty program in Poland, you can earn points called GAMBLE for supporting us and then you can spend them on different products.

At one of this auctions I said: 'I’ll draw a cow for you. Price: 5 gamble’

And auction began.

Few second later I was rubbing my eyes with wonder. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. People went crazy. I don’t remember how much the winner paid but it was something like 500 gambli (for 50 you could have brand new book for Neuroshima RPG with our signatures). It was madness.

I felt terrible. I meant it as a joke, but people treated it very seriously and one of them was happy to pay all his loyalty points he had to have my cow.

So I sat on my ass and I draw a comic book. Winner of the auction didn’t receive a drawing of a cow. He received 6 pages long comic written and drawn by me.

You can see it here

I hope he was happy.

Never again I offered drawing of my cow for money or points or whatever. I felt really bad that I made him pay for cow.

*

Since then I draw cows as a signature. And I do try to make every signature unique. Every time I draw a cow, this cow says something. Each time it is something different, and each time I do my best it is more or less funny. Of course it is not possible to draw super funny drawings every time, but I do my best. I do my best that each of you have unique cow with unique dialog.

If we have a geek list here with photos of those cows, I do believe that about 80% of signatures we gather would be unique. Every time you approach me at convention and ask for a signature, I do my best to draw you a cow that is unique, drawn especially for you. I hope you like them.

*

And time for post scriptum. In 2012 I was in Modena. I met there super cool guys. One of them is Toy from Ludus Iovis Diei gaming club. He was helping me at convention, was king of guide in Modena. He saw me drawing cows for 2 days long and at the end, on Sunday when I was getting to leave, he asked me to sign his copy of one of my games.

He was hoping to have a cow.

He didn’t know, I can also draw a pig.

You should see his face when he looked at the box when I passed it to him…

*

Post scriptum II. In 2013 I was back in Modena. I met Toy again. And again he was my guide and supported me for 2 days long. He is super cool guy and he has a great sense of humor.

At some point I was signing a box for Italian geek. I draw a cow. Geek was in shock. Toy saw that. And spotted a good opportunity. He approaches us, pulled box I signed in 2012 and said to Italian geek: 'At least he didn’t draw you a pig…’