Blog Archives
Combat Results Postcard
Battle Card is as apt as descriptions get. Designed by David Thompson and Nils Johansson, this is the fourth project in the Postmark Games lineup. Like its earlier peers — Voyages, Aquamarine, and Waypoints — this is a print-and-play title that can be produced with functionally zero budget. Unlike those projects, however, Battle Card is billed as a wargame on a single postcard-sized sheet.
That’s true enough. With a few dice and a smidgen of experience to help interpret the rules, Battle Card covers six engagements from the Second World War. And their format is indeed very small, highlighting some real resourcefulness on their designers’ part in compressing battles and even campaigns into ten-minute experiences.
But unlike those other titles, Battle Card is a mixed bag. I’ll give an example.
Touch Grass (Metaphorical)
Voyages, the first of Matthew Dunstan and Rory Muldoon’s single-sheet print-and-play roll-and-write games, used three dice. Aquamarine used two. Waypoints continues the trend by using a single die.
That’s cool in its own right. But that isn’t what makes Waypoints special. What makes Waypoints special is the way it handles the movements generated by its rolls. Where those other titles — and let’s face it, most board games — featured straight movements, point to point, A to B, nearly every move in Waypoints is the sort of move you might actually make while traversing an open space.
Here, I’ll show you.
Dive Tables
Here’s something you probably didn’t know about old Dan Thurot: I’m a scuba diver rated for search and recovery. There aren’t many of us here in the desert, which is probably why I receive unexpected calls to dredge the ponds of local golf courses whenever there’s a Silver Alert. Thus far, I have declined these requests. Those waters are, like, four feet deep. That’s a job for snorklers. Or a tall guy with hip waders.
Instead, I mostly use this as qualification to comment on scuba stuff. That cave rescue in Thailand? Legitimate. The roll-and-write shenanigans of Aquamarine? Um. Okay, look, Aquamarine isn’t the most robust scuba simulation. But as another print-and-play title from Postmark Games, it’s a worthy followup to Voyages.
High O’er the Billows We Are Wafted Along
Let it not be said that I don’t take requests. A number of readers have pointed out that it’s been a long time since I’ve covered any print-and-play games. Too true. But there’s a reason for that. Voyages, the six-map design by Rory Muldoon and Matthew Dunstan and the launchpad title from Postmark Games, is both an illustration of my reticence and a roundhouse kick to that same reticence’s noggin.
Bowie Back to Bowie
My brain associates Dan Bullock with new-wave wargames like No Motherland Without, 1979: Revolution in Iran, and (hopefully published one day) Blood & Treasure. I’ve been consistently impressed with his ability to tackle tough topics, imbuing them with uncommon humanity while delivering a few well-deserved body blows to those who put politics and profit over personhood.
Or at least that was true until recently. From now on, I think I’ll forever associate Bullock with Bowie. Namely, the card game Bullock has designed about the life and existential crises of David Bowie in the 1970s. For reasons that will soon make themselves clear, Bowie is not an “official” title. Independent designer Dan Bullock has not somehow acquired the star’s life rights. Rather, it’s a print-and-play design, free to anybody with a printer and some scissors.
But here’s the thing: the unofficial nature of Bowie is precisely what makes it a treasure.
Going to Bed Angry
I occasionally think back on the mudslide of advice I received when Somerset and I got married. There was so much, and we were so inexperienced, that at the time it was impossible to sort into good or bad. Hindsight helps. Some of it has proved apt (“Keep making the choice to love each other”). Other tidbits were stale even at the time (“Always listen to your wife, but as the man of the house you’re the tiebreaker”). And then there were the lines that sounded good until we realized they were soul-crushing (“Never go to bed angry”).
Xoe Allred’s Persuasion is about a brand of holy matrimony not all that far off from the partnership Summer and I entered into — young, rapid, religious, and oh so very Victorian. But where other recent games about the courtship rituals of yestercentury have been drier than hardtack, Allred’s take is viciously seductive. Not because it’s particularly spicy. Oh no. Because it’s so toxic it could break a Geiger counter.
All Is Bomb Is Bomb
Here’s a scenario for you. The Princess slumbers in her bed. Soon she will awake. What will she want for breakfast? Since she’s a bit of a, well, princess, she will neither wait to be served nor accept anything other than what her rumbly tummy desires most. You summon the breakfast prophets to foretell the proper meal. Except they’ve gone missing. A dozen other matters also consume your attention.
Also, everything is a bomb.
COIN Dice
Some experiences are hard to imagine as microgames. The COIN Series, for instance. The most recent volume, Pendragon, can run for up to five hours, and that’s provided everybody understands the rules. Distilling the essence of something so dense into nine cards and a few dice has all the madness of compressing an entire brewery into a single squirt of breath spray.
Yet that’s precisely what Laurie Phillips did for his entry into the 2018 9-Card Nanogame Print and Play Design Contest. And all because of a killer history pun.
Life on the Green, Green Seas
The joy of playing independent games is that you never know what you’ll find. Maybe it will be a stinker, as was Charles Ward’s last effort, Blood & Fortune. Then again, maybe it will be his current experiment, Haze Islands. Hopefully the latter, because Haze Islands is rad.
Mr. Cabbagehead’s Pleasant Garden
I know a thing or two about pesky neighbors. So when Mr. Cabbagehead goes on holiday and Horace Savoy-Brassica from down the lane swipes an armful of prize-winning radishes right out of his garden, I can empathize. In fact, I empathize so fully that I may have even uttered some of the same phrases that saw use in my house when my neighbor petitioned to have speed bumps installed on our street. Phrases that include such words as “tarnation” and “sasquatch.” Apologies for the foul language.
SPACE-BIFF! 