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.

First cards for 51st State

I have 30 cards. Each of them has a red watercolour on the top and a blue one on the bottom. Each has a name written in the middle. One is called Guardhouse, another Petrol Station, and another Bunker. I take all thirty of them and go to the board games club in Gliwice.

Asiok is the first one to arrive in the club.

“Come in, let me show you something” I say and take out the cards.

“A new prototype?” he asks

“A brand new one.” I say and give both of us five cards each. “It’s set in the Neuroshima universe, a post-war world with the mood from Mad Max. We’re the leaders of some organization with the aim of expanding our power. Every turn we scan the horizon in search for interesting locations. There are three ways of making contact with a location. You can assault it to immediately get a lot of resources or you can start collaborating and start getting a smaller amount of resources every turn. You can also incorporate it into your micro-country by building a road. In this case you use that location to its full extent. OK?”

“OK.”

Asiok looks at his five cards.

“Ignacy, these cards are blank.” He shows me his cards marked with paint with names in the middle. Like I never saw them before.

„Imagine, that there’s something there. Show me what you’ve got. There, you have a Petrol Station. If you assault it, you’ll get lots of fuel at once. Or collaborate with them and get one fuel every turn. Or build a road there and you can start selling that fuel to me.”

“OK, I’m assaulting the station and take lots of fuel.”

“And I have a Watchtower. I’m making a road connection.”

“What does a Watchtower do?” Asiok asks.

“I have no idea to be honest. Let’s say it defends you from attacks.”

“Can you attack one another?”

“For the time being you can’t. Keep playing. What’s in your hand?”

“I’m placing Barracks, it’ll give me soldiers. I’m making a road connection and it’s now part of my country.”

“OK, I’m contacting a Pub, it’ll give me one hit man every turn.”

Five minutes later we run out of cards. I’m collaborating with a Pub and a Refinery. Asiok has Barracks, has also assaulted a Petrol Station and an Arena. We have no idea what these cards do. It’s irrelevant at this stage. It’s the potential that counts.

„And?” I ask, “Can you imagine how it’s going to look in the future? Would you enjoy such game and its features?”

“If you make it well, there’ll be lots of choices. Players will have plenty of potential moves.”

“Did you have any vivid ideas? Did you feel you were assaulting and signing contracts, and that it has nice atmosphere and makes sense?”

“Yes, there’s a potential here. Bring a new version next week.”

***
I showed the game to a few other people that afternoon. I played with Sheva, Mst, Allchemik and Korzen. The latter, to my amazement, after playing a weird, made up match with me, took those 30 cards off me and played each other, also making up card’s functions as they went.

It was clear to see – 51st State had an idea. When someone asks me what this game is about, I won’t have to say: “Well, it’s a new kind of pick and delivery with a twist…” I won’t have to tell: “51st State is the four hundred and fifteenth take on territory control mechanics, where the players fight for field advantage…” I won’t be embarrassed by saying: “51st State is a game using deck building mechanics known from Dominion, but introduces a little twist…” It’s not a boring, three hundredth variation on a popular theme.

I made a game about which I can say something interesting in two sentences. 51st State is a game, where players look for locations and are able to make contact with each and every one of them in three different ways. You see an Old Radio Station and you invade it and steal their equipment, you start collaborating with them and use it in every turn or you annex it and it becomes exclusively yours, indefinitely.

Two sentences selling the mood of the game. Two sentences telling about mechanics and a multitude of choices and tactics. Two sentences showing that it’s a great piece of tangible storytelling fun.

That day I started believing in the potential of 51st State. I saw a vivid idea that works, that people played a card game where the cards had no rules on them. And yet they could imagine what was happening and enjoyed it. I enjoyed it too. It was a nice, playable idea. It was something new. Not another eurogame with cubes, not another Dominion clone. Something different. Assault a location, collaborate with it or annex it to your territory.

One card – three colourful, strong storytelling outcomes.

I rush into the house, toss my briefcase in the corner and run to my desk to get some sheets of paper. “Daddy, daddy!” Lena’s voice comes from the kitchen. The daughter pat pats through the hallway and grabs hold of my leg. “Merry, take her!” I shout in the kitchen’s direction and pass the kid to the mother. “How about a good afternoon?!” I hear. „I’m not here.” I answer and rush into the kids’ room. „Nina, give me the paint set, quick!” I utter and run into the bathroom to get some water. „Daddy, daddy!” comes from the kitchen. „I’m not here!” I shout back. I pick up the paints, sheets of paper, a brush, water and get to the table. “Ignac!” Merry gets angry and now I’m going to get it. “I’m not here, don’t talk to me.” I answer risking my life and start to cover the paper with paint. Have you seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Then you know what’s going on. A nutter covering sheets of paper with drawings. Merry with the kid on her arms stands behind ready to hit me. “Give me three minutes and I’ll say good afternoon. Now I’m not here, please.” I say through my teeth and keep painting in blue, red and grey. One, two, three sheets of paper. They all fill up with notes, drawings, and arrows. “I live with a lunatic.” Merry recaps and goes back to the kitchen. The daughter cries daddy is back, she wants to daddy. Nina brings more sheets of paper. It takes me three minutes to fill up six of them. I spilled everything I had in my head, everything I came up with during a half an hour drive. I didn’t waste a single idea. I managed to note down everything. Phew. I get up relieved. „Daring, I’m back! How’s your day?” I shout in the kitchen’s direction. The daughter runs to me with a squeal. There are six sheets of paper dirty with paint lying on the table. It’s the groundwork for 51st State, a card game that is going to debut in Essen this year…

***

I  sprained my ankle and had to go to the changing room in the middle of the match. It hurts like hell. It’s way past eleven in the night. I hope I won’t finish my evening at emergency. I drink water and patiently wait for the game to finish. My mind goes to Basilica, a game which I’ve recently been testing and helping improve. A solution comes to my head after a short while, one which I’ve been trying to find for days to no avail. I sit in the changing room, it’s almost half past eleven in the night and suddenly all the pieces start falling into place. I have nothing to write it with, I can’t make notes, darn it. I pick up my mobile and write a text message to Merry. “A choice of 3 helpers, a brigadier for two peasants…”. A few minutes pass. An answer comes: „What?!” I might have woken her up. „Write it down on a piece of paper on my desk, please.” A few moments of silence and another text message arrives. “I live with a lunatic.” I don’t deny it. The three helpers patent works and is going to be implemented in the final version of the game. And as far as I know Basilica will be appearing in Essen this year.

Fortunately, the ankle wasn’t that bad either. No going to emergency…

***

Sunday afternoon – a curse for many men, who have to sit through a boring dinner at their in-laws. I have armed myself with All Flesh Must Be Eaten, a roleplaying game devoted entirely to zombies. I read subsequent chapters, I look at the drawings, and the afternoon lazily drags on. Eventually I pick up a notebook and a fountain pen and start to scribble. No big deal. Zombies walking alongside railway tracks, people at some barricades. I write down fine rules, like a zombie moves one field back when hit; zombies in single file don’t step back, or different shots inflict different wounds… The afternoon drags on. I have five pages filled with rules and ideas for cards. A few days later I bring a prototype to work. A few months later the game is released in Poland under the title “Zombies”. It becomes very popular, gets four additional prints, a release in Germany and a sequel – Zombies2. Lazy afternoons can sometimes surprise…

***

I have an incredible job. I make games for the living. I buy shoes for my kids and realize that I have the money, because people buy games that I’ve made. I pay my telephone bill and realize that I have the money, because someone likes my ideas and has purchased Zombies or Stronghold. I have a pork chop with chips for dinner and I can afford it, because I made Witchcraft. I support my family thanks to ideas that come to my head. In the strangest places and times.

I am a lunatic. A bloody happy one.