Sorry for the delay, blame the raccoon who gave me a hefty debt to repay.

Anyway, when we last left off, we had decided on a board layout. Now we need to figure out how that board works.

If we are to take any inspiration from Mayfair Game’s initial design, it’s that the game is a sort of “Suped-up Catan”. In fact, in the Prototype the “Terrain Hexes” are simply Catan tiles with colored paper pasted over them. It would then follow that those colors, Red, Green, Yellow, Blue, and rarely Black are different types of tiles, like how in Catan there are different types which yield different resources. In fact, we already know what these resources are, as there are small piles of “Resource Gems” in each of the four main colors. Unlike Catan, we don’t have numbers to determine which resources are gathered, so we can create a more 4X-like framework for that.

But before we do that, what exactly goes on the tiles? We can’t make a comprehensive list yet, but we can create some general types so we have a framework for making new things that go on the tiles. To use a programming metaphor, we need to decide the Classes before we make the Objects. Off the top of my head, I think Minis, Buildings, and Resources are the three types we will need.

Minis can be subdivided into the Player Minis, the Armies, the Soldiers of Fortune, and the Creatures of Legend. The Player Minis are the “main character” for each player, they have the powers of the character and such. The armies, as outlined in the rulebook, are given variably depending on the Player Mini chosen. They can be deployed on the board at specific starting locations, and move slower then the Player Mini. Armies, however, can also trigger certain conditions, such as passing the Front of Tragarum, or entering / moving up the Sub-boards. The armies will be displayed by nondescript minis which have a army value printed on them, almost always 5 or 10. Each mini is worth that many “armies”. Next we have the soldiers of fortune, minis with their own stats and powers, which can be bought by the players. Lastly, the Creatures of Legend are monsters which have specific conditions for showing up. They are either coerced by a Player into fighting on their side or they are controlled by The Ledgerman (examples include the Dragon and the Lava Worm). If we are to take the Published versions color schemes and attach them to these types; the Armies are silver, the Player Minis and Soldiers of Fortune are bronze, and the Creatures of Legend are gold.

Buildings probably can’t be subdivided, so lets just look over what buildings we have seen so far. In audio, we know there is a Citadel and a Belltower, the latter of which can be placed inside another player’s Citadel. So the hexes aren’t owned by any one player, or the Belltower is unique. Not sure which we should choose yet. In the screenshots, we saw many strange structures, like the castle and tower minis in the Prototype, or the Globe, keys, and large clear gems in the Published version. And that’s it. Unfortunately for us, this means we’ll have to make quite a few more. It’s also very plausible that the large clear gems are the Belltowers, giving us an even smaller pool of “canon” buildings.

Resources we can dive deeper into, since they are expressly tied to the board. There are four colors, and they appear in both versions. We also know that the blue gems are explicitly called “resource gems”, while the others are not. These resource gems when placed on a tile are called a “Prosperity tile”, which is probably a sort of bank that keeps a player’s resources on the board. In fact, the players don’t really have anything in front of them at all. I would like to change this and give the players a player sheet, but perhaps everything on the player sheet is also visible on the board? Like how their abilities are determined by their armies on the sub-board, and their wealth is determined by their prosperity tiles. There are also large versions of these resource gems, which I think would be better served as more types of buildings, so we’ll ignore them for now. So the “resource gems” are the small gems, but do the colors matter? This is CONES OF DUNSHIRE, of course they matter! All four colors are “resource gems”, and each are scavenged from a hex or extracted by a building, but some purchases require specific colors of gem. And with specific colors come specific names! The blue gems can be “diamonds”, but the others we should branch out. Green gems will be called “Dragon scales”, yellow gems “Antiprisms”, and red gems “Geodes”. Each resource gem can be received by the same color hex, except the black Doom Point hexes, which when scavenged any type of gem can be chosen by the player, but no buildings may be placed on them.

Moving away from the board uses, we also have to wonder about the naming conventions of the board. Each of the colored tiles has multiple names to it, but does that affect anything in game?

Take a moment and ask yourself this question. Should the arbitrary name of a tile, which otherwise looks exactly the same, change how the game is played?

A) Yes

B) No

If you answered “Yes”, you have figured out how horrible this game is going to be! We’ll create a sheet, called the “Terrain Modifiers Table”, which explains how each of the different hexes change the game. It will probably be subtle things, like “you can’t build buildings on Doom Points”, or “Only one mini can be in the Devil’s lair at one time”.

But what are these names? Lets compile a list of all the ones in the images and audio to create an extensive list (which we will probably add to later):

Blue: Whirlpool, Ocean Hex

Red: Lava Lands, Volcano, Foot Hills, Devil’s Lair

Yellow: Desert, Hot Sands

Green: Moors, Bog, Fen Land, Swamp, Barrow

That’s going to be it for this time. We got a lot of work done yet I still feel like we haven’t made much progress into the rules. So in the next post lets go into intense detail on one mechanic, to the point where we won’t have to touch it again until a final look through the rules to make sure nothing is contradictory. What mechanic will that be? At time of writing I’m not sure yet, but click here to find out.