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I tinkered on some Viking Age raid Scenarios.

Painting/building some models for Photos/Bat Reps/Playtesting.

Worked on a new army list for Heirs to Empire, the Mauryan Empire.

Really, it is more of a 'What If" since we know very little about the potential conflict between Seleucus and Chandragupta around the Indus River valley before the Battle of Ipsus.

It is unclear if the two even had an actual battle, before Seleucus mended fences, made some marriage alliances, gave up some barely governable land, and headed West.

Still, it was a fun research project.

I've spent the last couple of weeks pondering my most finished game, and have decided to rip it apart and jam it back together in a different way. I worked, but was a bit too clunky and slow for my liking. there was little feeling of progress and it tended to be that when a player got the upper hand, they kept it.

I've a new plan, with a smoother system, which I'm going o be putting together this week, and hopefully playtesting this weekend. with a bit of luck.

Take an axe to your babies!

Good luck Some Bloke, this can be the hardest step.

Finally put Zero Dark: Operation Nemesis to bed. Turning to developing the work on Horizon Wars: Infinite Dark, which is a space combat game. But I also have a bunch of other stuff to work on for Zero Dark, including Antediluvium (a cyberpunk prequel to the main game) and Millennium, a grimdark sequel. I also need to work out some tricky mechanical questions in Hero Dark, which is a completely different setting and adaptation of the rules - a standalone game, rather than a supplement.

Also now planning a Zero Dark set of miniatures which I hope will be the start of a themed range of generic, hard sci-fi types. We'll be running a Kickstarter early next year. I've done most of the concept art and my sculptor is making good headway on the digital sculpts. I've found a local 3d printer who can do the work, have resin and metal printing operations read to go, and have the capital allocated. Just got to talk to a fulfilment service to make sure everything flows like silk.
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Impressive work all around Precinct!

I put up Only The Strong Survive on my Wargame Vault page as a Pay What You Want. It is completely playable and fun, but I don't see myself developing it any further than it is.

https://www.wargamevault.com/browse.php?keywords=blood+and+spectacles&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=

I think I will be turning my attention to other projects now.

I pitched a few games for publication today. Hope it works out.

I also started working a bit on a silly, dexterity game for paper warships. Like Green Army Men or High Noon, except with ships you draw.

As part of a recent 2 day Game Jam on One Page Rules, I have been working on 'We're not meant to be here', a game were a small group find themselves in enemy territory, it is dark and they haven't been spotted, perfect time for an ambush.

Play tested the first version, absolute disaster. So back to the drawing board. made some large changes to the game, so thought I'd video my first test of the new version.




Plan was to have the following:

A game were you start off with full synergy, which over the course of the game gets lessened
Quick game play.
Plenty of options.
Small footprint.
Nothing too heavy, nothing too light.
Model agnostic.
Solo option.

I had a stab at the One Page Rules game jam, but after a really successful Friday night where I hashed out the first full draft of the rules, my weekend got super busy due to me rushing my weekly commitments and having to go back and do them again (looking at you, lockdown church service video editing...). As such, I ended up not being able to submit my ruleset.

The theme was a kind of 'team-based' FPS vibe, but on the wargames table. I initially stole the playing system of the card game "Sh*thead" (otherwise known as 'Palace' or Parlour Games') to create my synergy; different wildcards have different effects and can combine to create combos. After cannibalising the bits I needed from the traditional card game, I added an extra level of synergy with 15 miniature profiles, which can work in conjunction with one another. In addition to a respawn mechanic and multiple victory conditions (to be chosen at the beginning of each game), in theory it should be a fast paced, brutal 2 player skirmish wargame, where the 'race against the clock' clock is actually the running down of the card deck as you activate miniatures.

Damn, I had forgotten about the game jam. I might give myself the challenge of completing it in 24hrs anyway, just for the fun. It's got to be worth having a go at these things to open new ideas.

I made a basis for a game last night which I think has merit as a nice simple card/board game. Mechanics are simple and mathematically sound (a big thing for me, I hate designing things based solely on whether they "feel" right. it has to feel right too, but if it's mathematically fair/even/random then it's a much stronger starting point!). Next up is for me to do some artwork, for a total of 8 different cards, one board and some information/mission cards (which aren't going to have art so much as just a nice design). I'd also like to playtest it with more people, but that's going to have to wait until after lockdown :(

So many great projects going from others!!!

I am taking a break from my latest board game design to recreate one of my favorite childhood games: Dogfight!

I found a website dedicated to the game and able to order all parts, but I am resin printing my own planes and such - I will be ordering an original board, but designed a new board that I can print to give my boys a set of the complete game, too.

Nice work to those who submitted something to the Jam!

I put together a new list for Heirs of Empire for the Mauryan Empire.

https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2020/11/heirs-of-empire-mauryan-empire-army-list.html

I have been pondering the merits and issues with my basic card game's theme. The premise was that you worked in a lab, and the lab rats had escaped, and you needed to put them back in their cages. I have since been battling with the simple fact that this is not an appealing theme, and that whilst the game worked quite well, I don't think people would want to play a game about experimenting with lab rats.

So, bizarrely, I have decided to change it up and have the plot revolve around social experiments on people instead. For some reason, this works way better - I can indulge my dark sense of humour without feeling like a bad person - doing bad things to lab rats is horrible, doing bad things to people is funny - so can expand my game a bit more without feeling like I'm stepping on dodgy ground. In my original concept, the experiments are all very benign - is this trait hereditary, can smart rats invent the wheel - and now, with people as the subject, I can add more twisted ideas.

It's a little dark, but I plan to raise it up with silly art styles and lots of humour.

I could see this working as a comedy twist on the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Meanwhile, my laptop has died, leaving me twiddling my thumbs (i.e. painting minis like a maniac and finally tidying and sorting my office) while I wait for the parts I need to fix it (can't afford to replace, as all my current capital is dedicated towards a Kickstarter project I have planned for next year).

That sucks. I hope all Game Design and business documents were backed up somewhere safe!

After playtesting V4 of Castles in the Sky (after killing off some babies) I realized I need to completely re-write the scenarios for the game.

They all kind of suck and do not make much sense! Woops!

Right now I'm developing my V2 of my game but also ingesting my time into 'lore' of historical events as my game is based on Alt. WWI-sort of. Made a thread on Dakka under a different account years ago but the idea has always been with me, and I'm still going at it. I just need to read into more history for consistencies sake (we all know one or two folk who would nitpick if it weren't).

Alternatively, I'm also working on tweaking the 40k 5th ed. ruleset up the way I always wanted to see it

My laptop has resurrected!

My files weren't at risk, because the failed part was the charging cable. Unfortunately, I could only order it from China and it took weeeeeks to get here. But it's arrived and I'm back at work!

So, to celebrate, this week I finished the very first, basic draft of the core rules for Infinite Dark, the space combat game built on the Horizon Wars mechanics and set in the same universe (although still a generic space game).

I'll be sharing these with my patrons later today, and moving on to flesh out the solo and campaign rules for the game over the next few weeks.

Looking forward to taking at least a week off over Christmas to just roll dice and have fun with my family.

Hmmm, Patreon. What a brilliant idea! I will have to look into that!


I spent some time creating paper templates for playtesting my Fury of the Northman game.

Patreon has been great for me. I don't make much from it, but it gives me a ready source of enthusiastic supporters who are paying for the privilege of early access and who are therefore well motivated to tell me if they think it's BS.

I've figured out my core dice system, and through working on that, I've been able to streamline my turn structure and activation system around it, to figure out how morale works for my game, figure out how Magic works for my game...

I've been doing the initial draft of rules writing. Like, actual rules writing. Most of the last 15 years have been note-style writing, conceptual ideas, summarized processes, disorganized stream-of-consciousness brain storming, etc. Now I'm actually translating all of that to "proper" rules that can be read, interpreted (or misinterpreted, hopefully not though ), and played with.

This isn't necessarily my first go at it, mind you. I've done various iterations of rules writing over that time period, but never anything quite this concerted or necessarily this well developed. Even still, when I'm done with this draft it will be a far far cry from being "finished".

I am teaching myself how to use OpenOffice. I've learned how to implement a basic table of contents, chapters, subchapters, and page formatting.

I've started writing 'rule examples' for the system, and am going to attempt to create a few testgame samples soon.

I posted up an alternate army list for Men of Bronze using the Etruscans on my blog.

https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2021/01/men-of-bronze-etruscans.html

Learning Table of Contents, and organizing concepts at a 'high-level', while filling their entries out in a way that will make sense.This is a matter of slowly filling things out.

I haven't done much game design work lately, mostly because I've been testing out my new 3d printer. Which, if I am honest, is at least related to my eventual business plan, so it's not like I did nothing for my tiny LLC.

Sent a final draft to Osprey to Osprey for their review for Castles in the Sky.

I poked around on doing some research for various Historical rulesets.