What's Up at SlugFest Games

Chicagoland Games Red Dragon inn Eggnog Event

SlugFest Games — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:55:34 +0000

Every year Chicagoland Games runs a very special Red Dragon Inn game, the Eggnog Event, where you partake in the beverage of your choice, or eggnog, each time your character does! Chicagoland Games has been holding this event since the release of Red Dragon Inn and we love it. To support them, SlugFest Games has offered them both of the new Red Dragon Inn Characters, Erin the Ever Changing and Pookie the Vicious, and you can get a chance to preview these characters at the event!

The Eggnog Event is held on Saturday, December 17th at 7:00PM. There is a $5 entry fee to participate, and you can find Chicagoland Games at:

5550 N. Broadway Avenue
Chicago, IL 60640
(773) 728-3656
chicagolandgames@gmail.com
http://www.chicagolandgames.com/

Check them out and have a blast!

Sam Waller, VP SlugFest Games

The New Eve

SlugFest Games — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 19:50:08 +0000

For this year’s print run of RDI1 and RDI2, we changed the wording on most of the cards. In the vast majority of cases, the reason for this was simply to make all the cards have consistent wording and to more clearly express each card’s original intended function. However, you diehard Slug Fans out there may have noticed that for the new printing of RDI2, we made functional changes to Eve. It’s true; we decided that Eve was badly underpowered and needed some tweaking.

First, the changes. For those of you who have an original printing of RDI2, feel free to hand-edit your copy of Eve!

1) “Ha! That’s just an illusion. I’m actually over here!” now reads:

So, it is now somewhat stronger, since the original version could only Ignore cards affecting your Fortitude.

2) “Look into my eyes… you are getting… drunker!”

This card now adds 2 Alcohol Content instead of 1.

3) “Woah! Careful! That’s real fire!”

Now hits for 3 instead of 2.

So, why did we make these changes? Well, there are two main reasons we decided to do this: a new RDI testing methodology, and Phrenk.

During the development of RDI3, we became huge fans of testing the character decks through one-on-one play. This has two big advantages. First, the games are fast. We Slugs can blaze through a heads-up RDI game in about 10 minutes. This means more games, which means a lower likelihood that a problem will go unnoticed. The second advantage is that two-player games nicely control for the vagaries of multiplayer political play. As much as we like the political aspect of RDI, it severely hinders the character deck testing process. Honestly, it is nearly impossible to get character balance right when trying to determine which wins and losses are due to character strength and which are due to political effects.

So, there we were doing two-player testing of the RDI3 characters, and I expressed some concerns about Phrenk’s power level. To make my case, I told SlugFest President Cliff Bohm that I thought Phrenk was basically Eve but way stronger. So we decided to play 5 or 6 games, Phrenk vs. Eve.

Eve didn’t stand a chance. Phrenk won all the games easily.

“See?” I said. ”Phrenk’s broken!”

Cliff replied that he wasn’t sure that Phrenk was the problem. So he put away Phrenk and took out Deirdre. Again, we played 5 or 6 games, this time Deirdre vs. Eve.

The match was almost as lopsided as the first match had been. Eve won exactly one game against Deirdre, and it was because Deirdre got a 9-ish-point drink that she couldn’t deal with.

At this point, we decided that yes, in fact, the problem was Eve. A few tweaks later, we now think she’s competitive with the Big Boys (and Girls).

So…give the New Eve a try and tell us what you think!

- Jeff Morrow

SlugCrew Newsletter – December 2011

SlugFest Games — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 21:25:16 +0000

SlugCrew Newsletter – December 2011

Hello SlugCrew!
As we head into the most consumer heavy time of the year we at SlugFest Games just wanted to appreciate you for your hard work over and the volunteered time you have spent with us. Thank you for running demos and events, for helping us out at conventions, and for being positive members of your gaming communities!

We would like to encourage any of you to help out your local brick and mortar stores this season by being there on game nights and helping them out by building up excitement about all the great stuff that came out this year. If you happen to demo some SlugFest stuff, let us know and fill out a battle report!

Speaking of Events…
One of our California Slug Crew, Cedric Chin, has been tearing it up in the Silicon Valley recently. He has been hosting demos and participating in events for us and other publishers throughout November and going on into December. Just last week he ran demos of High Noon Saloon, Red Dragon Inn, and Kung Fu Fighting at Hacker Dojo‘s Black Friday Board Game Day. This weekend he will be at the Bay Area Games Day in Los Altos running Arkham Horror in the morning, and then some more HNS and RDI. To top it off he also participates in board game events by the Geek Club Meetup Group, in Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and Santa Clara.. Long story short, Cedric has been a Machine, and it’s been awesome playing alongside him when we at SFG West have been able to catch up with his break-neck pace.

The Blog and HNS Errata
If you haven’t had a chance yet, do check out our Blog at http://slugfestgames.wordpress.com/. Our Rules Guru Jeff Morrow has been putting together some rather stellar posts about how why we put in the effort we do in designing the rules for our games. You can also hear ruminations about what our 2012 and 2013 releases will be looking like. You may recognize a certain fluffy little psychopath.

More importantly, though, we have posted a minor errata for High Noon Saloon. The nuts and bolts of the clarification are bellow, but you can find out more about why we made the change on the Blog.

The first sentence of James Masterson’s special ability says this:

Whenever you put a Gun in your Fist or Holster, it becomes fully loaded (do not draw a Load Card).

It should read as follows:

Whenever you equip a Gun to your Fist or Holster, it becomes fully loaded (do not draw a Load Card).

In Conclusion
We at SlugFest Games hope you all have a great Holiday Season with friends and family. For those of you who are on the road, out to sea, or in the air in the upcoming weeks, we wish you safe travels. If you can spare the time, swing by and help out your brick and mortar. And last but not least, Happy Gaming!

Sincerely,

Sam Waller
Vice President, Game Design, Web
waller.samuel@gmail.com

Dave Kalis
SlugCrew Chief
dkalis@gmail.com

Joe Blomquist
Retail Liaison
fleckthebard@gmail.com

Jeff Morrow
Game Design
jmorrow@alum.mit.edu

Cliff Bohm
President, Art Direction, Game Design
cliff.bohm@gmail.com

Interesting Interactions from GenCon

SlugFest Games — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 19:14:45 +0000

We love Gen Con. We sell a lot of games, meet a lot of people, and generally have fun playing games (our own and others)! Of course, a whole bunch of people played a whole bunch of Red Dragon Inn this summer at Gen Con, including at our (in)famous RDI Doppelganger Tournament. Two rules situations came up which were very interesting, so I thought I should share them here.

In both cases, complex situations ended up having “by the book” answers based on the newly revised rulebook and reminder text on the cards. As the main guy who wrote the revised rulebook, I was quite proud of this fact. (By the way, if you haven’t downloaded a copy of the revised rules, please do so!)

SCENARIO #1

In a four-player game, Gerki has 7 Gold and Serena has 3 Gold. Serena plays a damage card on Gerki that will knock him out when it resolves. In response, Gerki plays “Well…I don’t see your name on it” and “Oh, this gold piece? Um… I found it… under your chair…” to steal 2 Gold from Serena. After those resolve, but still in response to Serena’s original damage card, Deirdre plays “Tip the Wench” targeting Serena to make her lose her last Gold.

What happens?

Back in the RDI stone age, situations like this had to be decided by house rules and general consensus. And maybe some arguing. Bleah.

Now, we have an answer under “Losing the Game” on page 2 of the new rules. There are two important bits:

1) “If you run out of Gold or pass out, you don’t lose immediately. First, finish resolving any cards that have been played but have not yet resolved.”

2) “It is possible for multiple players to lose at the same time. If this happens, first determine which players are passing out. Each of those players divides their Gold among the remaining players as described above. After this, if any players have no Gold, they lose the game as well.”

So, the first thing we do in this case is to fully resolve all card effects (rule 1 above). This means that after Serena runs out of Gold, we finish resolving Serena’s damage card, which knocks Gerki out. We then check to see if any players are losing. There are two players losing simultaneously, so we follow rule 2 above. First Gerki, who now has 9 Gold, passes out. 5 of his Gold pieces go to the Inn, the other 4 are divided among the three remaining players. Each remaining player (including Serena) will get 1 Gold. Now that Serena has at least 1 Gold she is no longer losing and gets to stay in the game!

SCENARIO #2

One of our most popular Gen Con events is our RDI Doppelganger Tournament. This format can take up to 36 players, and it always draws a crowd! In the first round, each player plays at a table of 2-4 players who all play the same character and fight it out with their “Doppelgangers”. Once we determine the “real” Gerki, Fiona, Serena, etc, the winning players move on to the second round; two randomly-assigned six-player games. The top two in each game advance to the four-player final table to crown an overall winner.

In this year’s Doppelganger tournament, Wizgille was playing a two-player game against….Wizgille. So, we’ll call them Wizgille A and Wizgille B. It is A’s turn, and she plays “Gambling? I’m in!” as her Action for the turn. B plays “I raise!” A plays “These? No, these aren’t my Omni-sight Goggles” to cheat. In response, B plays “I didn’t activate my temporal dilation field. It’s just deja vu.”

Now, I should pause here in the scenario to describe that card to you the people who haven’t played RDI3 yet. Wizgille’s Temporal Dilation card is pretty cool. It allows Wizgille to Negate nearly any card in the game, BUT the person who played that card may then play another card of the same type.

But there’s a catch! Like so many of Wizgille’s cards, it is a Device Card. This means that when Wizgille plays it, she must flip over the top card of her Gear Deck, which could make the card completely fail, or could make it completely ridiculously awesome. Or it could do something really weird…

So, back to our scenario!

A: “Gambling I’m in!”
B: “I Raise!”
A: Cheat
B: Temporal Dilation Field

B flipped over a Gear Card and got “Wow! That actually did what I expected it to,” so there were no extra effects. Here’s where it gets interesting. In response, A plays a Temporal Dilation Field of her own and for her Gear Card, she gets “Uh oh! I’d better fix that right now.”

Crazy, huh? In this case, though, that last bit of reminder text on the card tells you everything you need to know. A’s Temporal dilation doesn’t take effect, but that doesn’t matter. A’s turn ends immediately. All unresolved cards are discarded and the Gold in the pot goes to the Inn. It is then B’s turn.

Now, here’s an interesting alternate scenario. What if B’s Temporal dilation had been the one to hit “Uh oh! I’d better fix that right now” instead? That scenario looks like this:

A: Gambling
B: Raise
A: Cheat
B: Temporal Dilation Field, revealing “better fix right now”

Assuming that B doesn’t Negate her own Temporal dilation (with, for example, “I don’t think so!”), it resolves. It does NOT Negate A’s Cheating card, and B cannot play any more cards. The reminder text tells us that B may not participate in Gambling anymore. Therefore, since A is the only player left in the Round of Gambling, A wins the 4 Gold in the pot, then continues with her turn.

Thanks for reading! If you have any interesting rules scenarios or questions of your own, please send them to us! We hope to use some of the more interesting and illustrative situations here on this blog to help people understand the RDI rules better.

Until next time, SlugFest Rules!

- Jeff Morrow

Black Friday Gaming Update!

SlugFest Games — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 03:31:37 +0000

Hello everyone!

SlugFest Games will be at Hacker Dojo tomorrow, November 24th for their Black Friday Board Games Day. Come check out and playtest our 2012 games:

Erin the Ever Changing – An elven druid joins the Red Dragon Inn party, switching between her Bear, Raven, and Tree Wildshapes to avoid drinks, snatch up gold, and dish out punishment.
Pooky the Vicious – Zot’s trans-dimensional Familiar Pooky joins the party with his own deck, and is ready to bite back against anyone (or everyone!) who decides to pick on his cute and fluffy white self.
Magician’s Club – The carnival’s manager is giving the boot to one of you Magicians, and you’ll have to impress the audience or sabotage your opposition to win the crowd to keep your job in this fast and furious card game.

Hope to see you guys there!

- Sam Waller, VP SlugFest Games

Bay Area Gaming and Magician’s Club

SlugFest Games — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:31:01 +0000

Hey everyone!

Playtesting on Magician’s Club, Erin the Ever-changing, and Pooky the Vicious has been going very well. If you happen to be in the area, I will be at the Bay Area Peninsula Addicts Monthly Game Day this Saturday, November 29th. I’ll have our new and old products for playtesting, and will be up for playing other folk’s games too! Come check me and our resident Slug Crew Cedric out at:

Sequoia Church
233 Topaz Road
Redwood City, CA 94062-2817

Happy Gaming!
- Sam Waller, VP SlugFest Games

Questions about Quickdraw

SlugFest Games — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 21:21:44 +0000

I just answered some great questions about High Noon Saloon’s Quickdraw mechanics at Board Game Geek. Go take a look here!

Happy Gaming!
- Sam Waller, VP SlugFest Games

Minor Errata for High Noon Saloon!

SlugFest Games — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:00:22 +0000

Hi there, internet readers! We’re super excited about the release of our latest game High Noon Saloon. Unfortunately, one small oversight made it into the final version of the game.

The first sentence of James Masterson’s special ability says this:

Whenever you put a Gun in your Fist or Holster, it becomes fully loaded (do not draw a Load Card).

It should read as follows:

Whenever you equip a Gun to your Fist or Holster, it becomes fully loaded (do not draw a Load Card).

That one-word difference is important! The key part to remember is that a Gun only becomes fully loaded when you equip it–in other words, only when you play it to your player mat from your hand.

So, the auto-load ability does not fire when you move a Gun from your Fist to your Holster or vice versa. In addition, the ability does not fire when you receive a Gun from a teammate via the card Chuck It!

Hopefully this clears things up. Sorry for the confusion. We hope you all enjoy High Noon Saloon as much as we do!

- Jeff Morrow

Playtesting at Black Diamond Games

SlugFest Games — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 17:31:53 +0000

On Monday November 7th Cliff Bohm (SFG), Sam Waller (SFG), and Aldo Ghiozzi (Impressions) sat down at Black Diamond Games in Concord, CA for a few rounds of playtesting.

This last weekend has been very productive for SlugFest Games and the titles we are hoping to have out for 2012 and 2013. Here’s a quick run-down of what we worked on (All subject to change!):

“Magician’s Club” – A set management game where you play positive and negative cards infront of yourself and other players to try and gain the most audience members. Each round the best show takes a portion of the audience, but throughout the game the other players are stealing, trading, and conniving to drag the best show down so they can get ahead. We are hoping to have this as a 2012 release.
“Arena” – A rough and dirty gladiatorial combat game where you make attacks to try and damage and push your opponent into deadly obstacles. Built on our classic KFF fighting engine, it promises massive damage and quick turn arounds. We are looking at a 2013 release for this one.
RDI: Erin the Ever Changing – Our new druid character who shifts between elven, raven, bear, and tree forms while she weathers the chaos of the party at the Red Dragon Inn. See her in 2012.
RDI: Pooky – You may remember the extra-dimensional “bunny” familiar of Zot the Wizard from Red Dragon Inn? Well the viciously cute and fluffy monster decided to stick around after Zot headed in for the night, and is ready and willing to show off just how sharp those fangs are. Get eaten by him in 2012.

Every couple of weeks Cliff and I sit down with some some folks to stress test our games and see what is working, and more importantly what is fun. We feel pretty awesome about how “Magician’s Club” has been going and we hope you will be just as excited about it as we are!

- Sam Waller, VP SlugFest Games

Welcome to RulesFest!

SlugFest Games — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:59:34 +0000

Hi, everyone! My name is Jeff Morrow. I’m a game designer for SlugFest Games and an unabashed rules geek. With assistance from fellow designer Sam Waller, I’ll be writing occasional blog posts here about the rules to various SlugFest Games and answering rules-related questions from you guys.

We have several goals with this blog:

We want to make sure that as many people as possible are playing our games correctly. Some of our games (Red Dragon Inn in particular) are rather complex and are getting more complex all the time. We’d like to see people having fun playing our games and not arguing about how things should work or falling into rules holes all willy-nilly.
We want to give you all a glimpse into the game design process. Frankly, the world needs more really good games. If this blog inspires someone out there to design the next great Euro-style board game or a super-fun beer-and-pretzels card game, then awesome.
We hope to gather feedback from you guys about our rules systems and ways we can make them better, either in current games or in future ones.

So, if you have any rules questions you’d like answered, please let us know. Similarly, if you have rules topics (general or specific to SlugFest) that you’d like to see us discuss here, please tell us! You can leave comments here, email us at SlugFestGames@gmail.com, or post in our forums at http://slugfestgames.com/forums/.

Until next time: SlugFest Rules!Jeff Morrow, De Facto Rules Manager