Category: Behind the Scenes

Cover Your Kingdom: Adapting a Well-Loved Game for a New Market

Posted on Brandon Rollins2 CommentsPosted in Behind the Scenes

Many long-time readers of this blog know that I like to talk about long-term strategy. In fact, I’ve even said: “don’t build a board game, build a business.” You’re probably focused on making it – and you should be! But what happens when you do “make it” and it’s time for your next move? For that situation, Cover Your Kingdom is an excellent case study.

It is also currently on Kickstarter! Check it out and see what you think!

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Allow me to introduce you to Jeff Beck of Grandpa Beck’s Games. You might know their company through Cover Your Assets, their breakout game. They captured lightning in a bottle, marrying modern board game aesthetics with a larger market. It’s a big seller. An intimidatingly big seller, basically never dropping out of Amazon’s top 20 card games.

How on this sweet earth do you follow that? To answer that, I’ll turn it over to Jeff…

Who is Jeff Beck?

I’m Jeff Beck. I am the developer of The Bears and The Bees and Cover Your Kingdom, published by Grandpa Beck’s games. Tauni and Brent (aka Grandpa) Beck – my parents – founded the company about a decade ago. They were looking for extra income to help their five kids through college. They thought creating and selling games would be a simple and easy way to make a little extra cash.

Long story short – it wasn’t. To give a full account of the setbacks, failures, and challenges they encountered and overcame in the early years of the business would require a whole series of separate articles. What’s important is that they emerged with a whole line of games. This includes Skull King, our well-liked and best-selling trick-taking game. But our best seller of all time? That’s a take-that set-collection game called Cover Your Assets.

It All Started with Cover Your Assets

You may not know what Cover Your Assets is. After all, Brandon’s blog caters more towards the casual and hobby gaming market. But Cover Your Assets has quietly grown into one of the top 10-20 best selling card games on Amazon. Ninety-nine percent of the reviews are positive. In addition to being a best seller, this makes it Amazon’s highest-rated card game.

My parents earned success and exceptional reviews the hard way. They established the game by personally teaching it to hundreds, maybe thousands of people at conventions. Let’s be honest though – as any developer knows, even your friends and family won’t buy your game unless it’s truly entertaining.

Cover Your Assets

Cover Your Assets is a fairly simple game. The narrative is minimal – the first player to accrue $1,000,000 wins. The monetary theme doesn’t break a lot of new ground, and the rules are basic enough I can relate the gist of them to you in a single paragraph:

Each player forms pairs of matching assets of varying values which are placed one atop the other in an alternating stack. The top set in each player’s stack is vulnerable and can be stolen by other players who present a matching or wildcard. You can defend sets with another matching or wild card. This goes back and forth until one player wins. They take (or keep) the set, adding to it all the cards used to challenge and defend, increasing its value.

How Cover Your Assets Won Over So Many

How has this seemingly simple game garnered so many rave reviews and established a presence amongst the top-selling card games in the US? The reason is that Cover Your Assets’ core mechanic is deceptively quite compelling. The game begins rather slowly but grows in momentum and intensity. As players steal sets, each set’s value increases, along with the desire of other players to acquire it. The best way to defend a valuable set of assets is to cover them, either by creating a new set or by stealing one from another player.

The rush of successfully stealing valuable sets from other players, paired with the nervous anticipation of others coming after your own sets, creates a roller-coaster of elation and frustration that generates laughter and playful banter. With every interaction, players step into the role of the villain; smugly swiping a set from another player, or that of the victim when their own assets are stolen. It’s hard to do this without a smug smile or a murderous glare.

The core mechanic of stealing and defending sets of cards that increase in value is essentially the whole game. If it were a vehicle instead of a card game it would be a rumbling V8 strapped to a bicycle. It doesn’t offer a ton of control or creature comforts, but it has plenty of power to create an exhilarating experience.

This simple, yet actively engaging mechanic, paired with its broad theme and snicker-inducing name, are strengths with the game’s core audience of parents and grandparents who grew up playing games like Uno, Monopoly, and Sorry.

However, the strengths of the game with the family game crowd can determine whether or not it is discovered by younger generations of gamers (myself included). We’ve found that most people really enjoy the game once they try it, but it’s not a game that’s as likely to attract attention from this audience on a store shelf or Amazon listing as some of the myriad other casual game titles that exist.

Cover Your Kingdom, or Creating a Variant of a Well-Loved Game

Wide audiences find the core mechanic of Cover Your Assets really compelling. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to convince larger numbers of true gamers to try and buy the game. I concluded that the best way to broaden the game’s appeal and expand into a new market would to build a new version. Cover Your Kingdom stemmed from this thought.

Cover Your Kingdom

To better understand the needs of the group the game would be built for, I looked for feedback. I evaluated every review of the game I could find, on blogs, BGG, Amazon, and YouTube, looking for common themes. I noted the elements of the game people really enjoyed that I needed to maintain or enhance, as the issues, annoyances, and dislikes of those who didn’t enjoy the game. This is what I found.

Elements to Retain
  • Emotionally driven
  • Cutthroat and competitive
  • Easy to learn
  • Playable with a wide range of ages/skill levels
Areas to Improve
  • Greater depth and strategy
  • More decision making
  • Broader player count (Cover Your Assets is for 4-6 players)
  • Less reliance on luck
  • Hard to overcome an early advantage.

Modifying Cover Your Assets to Create Cover Your Kingdom

Armed with that information, I set about building a new frame to contain the spitting and rumbling engine at the core of Cover Your Assets. My aim was to retain the heart, energy, and emotion of Cover Your Assets while also adding new elements that gave players more opportunities to make decisions thereby increasing their sense of control. Expanding the player count in both directions was also a high priority.

10 Rulers

After several months of brainstorming and playtesting, we settled on the mechanics of Cover Your Kingdom. During the brainstorming time, we considered a lot of thematic options. Ultimately we landed on the quirky fantasy creature theme. It allowed for a narrative that fit the game’s mechanics really well and also provided some comic relief that helped soften some of the game’s highly cutthroat mechanics.

We made a number of changes to the rules that provide additional opportunities to make decisions and new player interactions.

Two Stacks Per Player

Players maintain two stacks each instead of one. There are strategic advantages to placing all your sets in just one stack, so a mechanic had to be implemented to restrict the placement of sets in one stack or the other. We implemented the UI element of the kingdom mat and region symbols on the cards. This helped players easily remember where each different cards could be placed to ensure that the game remained intuitive.

Increasing the number of stacks from one to two doubled the number of options a player had each turn when evaluating which sets to attempt to steal. It also facilitated reducing the recommended minimum player count from 4 to 3 (with the possibility of adapting to 2 players).

Action Cards

We added 5 action cards (2 copies of each) to the game to create new interactions and new strategy. This also increased emotional response and provided some balancing mechanisms that prevented the formation of massive piles. This, in turn, curbed runaway leader issues.

Two Actions Per Turn

Allowing two actions per turn instead of one also increased the strategy/decision making. While you can often encounter a turn where you only have 1 or 2 actions you can take in Cover Your Assets, you will typically have 5-10 options in Cover Your Kingdom. Choosing which actions to take and what order to take them gives players a greater sense of control.

Larger Hand Size

We increased hand size from 4-5 cards to 6 cards in Cover Your Kingdom. This was in part to provide an additional “slot” for action cards, but also to once again provide additional choices to players.

Increased Card Count

Cover Your Kingdom increases the card count from 110 in Cover Your Assets to 150. We needed additional room in the card count for the action cards. Collecting 2 piles each instead of one distributed the cards into smaller stacks. It felt a bit sparse at 6 players. As the new box was already larger to accommodate the Kingdom Mats, there was room available to also increase the card count.

Optional Mechanics

These mechanics were unlocked as stretch goals in the campaign. They add further intrigue to the game. They are not necessary to play the game, but will likely be included by most casual and hobby level players as they add new variables ramping up strategy even more. Full explanations are in the updates of the Kickstarter campaign.

Individual Player Powers: Each player is granted a unique power/ability that gives them a strategic advantage over other players.

Constellation Prize Expansion: This expansion added new components to the game and a secondary method of earning points that are tallied at the end of the game.

Cover Your Assets and Cover Your Kingdom

How These Changes Made Cover Your Kingdom Unique

We added, balanced, and optimized new mechanics one by one. Along the way, casual and hobby gamers tested the game. This was to ensure we’d added enough to make the game more compelling and strategic. However, we were careful not to induce analysis paralysis or kill the pace of play. When testers from both groups consistently reported their enjoyment of the game, I knew it was ready to go.

We started with a popular and exciting mechanic, then enhanced its best features. At the same time, we addressed the weaknesses of Cover Your Assets. On top of that, we added a compelling new theme and narrative. It’s for these reasons that I’m hopeful that Cover Your Kingdom will introduce the fun and excitement of Cover Your Assets to a wider audience.

With its greater depth but an intuitive UI, we designed the game to be accessible to inexperienced gamers but still satisfying to those who crave heavier games.

Following up a breakout game is a tall task for anyone. By sharing Jeff’s story, I hope to better prepare you not just for success, but the day after success 🙂

If you like the sound of Cover Your Kingdom, check it out on Kickstarter!




Acquire

The Top 10 Old Board Games (Before Catan)

Posted on Brandon Rollins4 CommentsPosted in Behind the Scenes

In many ways, the modern board gaming boom began with Catan. It is a phenomenal game that, when it came out in 1995, revolutionized the way we saw board games. Indeed, even to this day, it holds a pretty impressive 7.2 on Board Game Geek. But board games have been around since Mesopotamia, so let’s talk about the top 10 old board games.

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It’s no secret that modern day board gamers are in love with the “cult of the new.” With so many gorgeous, high-quality board games coming out, it’s no surprise that people would flock to them. Yet fantastic board games have existed for centuries, and many of them are still in the Board Game Geek Top 1000 games of all time.

Today, we’re going to cover the top 10 old board games. Every single one of these fantastic board games came out before 1995 when Catan was released. This is how Baby Boomers and Generation Xers got their board game fix!

10. Dune (1979)

Dune Board Game

“He who controls the spice controls the universe.” In addition to being one of the science fiction novels of the twentieth century, Dune is also a darn good game, sporting a 7.6 on Board Game Geek after forty years. Like the book, characters in this game lead factions and try to take over the planet.

Dune is a rare example of an old board game with a strong theme. The original Frank Herbert novel lends itself perfectly to the area control board game genre. On top of that, there are lots of environmental problems that add complexity to the competitive elements in the game such as sandworms and storms.

Many gameplay elements of Dune are ahead of their time. The negotiating and bluffing elements came fifteen years before Catan popularized them in board games. Strong thematic connections to the gameplay foreshadowed the Kickstarter era. Dune also had complexity and heft that you could otherwise only find in wargames at the time.

9. Advanced Squad Leader (1985)

Advanced Squad Leader

Speaking of wargames, Advanced Squad Leader is an excellent one. It holds a whopping 8.0 on Board Game Geek over thirty years after its release. What’s more, the play time is listed as two to eight hours and the “weight” rating is 4.71 out of 5. I can’t even readily think of a game with a higher weight rating than that.

Why is the weight rating and the long play time impressive? You might say, “isn’t a simpler game generally a better one?” I tend to agree with that, but only up to a point. Advanced Squad Leader found a niche and still continues to fill that niche better than most other games. That niche is one in which the best game is an absolute brain-burner.

I won’t get too far into explaining this game because, frankly, the rule book is a three-ring binder. That tells you all you need to know, though. How many modern games go to that much effort to give their audiences the ultimate challenge? Can you even think of a single game that approaches that level of commitment?

8. Die Macher (1986)

Die Macher

Die Macher is another incredibly heavyweight game from the 1980s. In it, you control a political party and you must manage your resources to win regional elections. The scoring is complex and can come from a variety of different sources, giving you multiple ways to win the game.

Set in Germany, Die Macher is old enough to come from a world in which Germany was two different countries. This game outlasted the Berlin Wall, though, and we’re still talking about it. Why? Well, frankly, it’s another brain burner. The most dedicated board gamers have been playing board games for a very, very long time. Nothing quite sated the intellectual appetites of gamers like big, gritty, complex games.

Die Macher is especially remarkable because it is not a wargame, like many of the heavyweight games of its era. It’s a political and economic game, foreshadowing a world in which Civilization would one day reign as king.

7. Acquire (1964)

Acquire

Way back during the Lyndon B Johnson administration, most board games looked like Scrabble and Monopoly. There were strategic tabletop games out there, for sure. Chess and playing cards have been around for centuries, after all. But relatively few thematic games had any real heft to them. That’s what makes Acquire uniquely remarkable.

Made in 1964, Acquire is an economic board game with mechanics that we recognize in modern games such as hand management and tile placement. You invest in businesses, grow and merge companies, and please your stockholders. Basically, the goal is to get really, really rich. Simple enough, even to the point of being a cliche now. But Acquire did it better than any other game out there.

6. Modern Art (1992)

Modern Art

Reiner Knizia is an absurdly prolific board game designer who is still making board games today. You might recognize some of his other titles: Lost Cities and The Quest for El Dorado. He’s basically the David Bowie of board games. By extension of this metaphor, this game may not be his Ziggy Stardust (that would be Tigris & Euphrates), but it’s at least his Hunky Dory.

For those of you who didn’t get my dated rock and roll reference, that’s a compliment. The game’s pretty straightforward – buy and sell paintings. You want to make money by doing so. Prices aren’t rigidly set, though – they’re based on what other paintings are sold in a given round. That makes this game enduring and interesting – you’re not playing against the rules, you’re playing against other players’ behaviors.

5. 1830: Railways & Robber Barons (1986)

1830 Railways and Robber Barons

One of the oldest genres of board games is the “train game.” One of the most fondly remembered of what is now thought to be a played-out genre is 1830. Indeed, 1830 is one of the most popular 18xx games. Like Advanced Squad Leader and Die Macher, this a hefty and complex game spanning three to six hours.

What makes this game so good? Many players love the fact that there is zero chance – not a lick of luck to be found in this game. Normally, this is a minus in board game design, but for super-heavy games like this one, it’s often considered a very positive quality. On top of that, you’re not just connecting routes – there is a well-liked economic aspect of the game. You’re laying rails and playing stocks. Indeed, the point of the game is to wind up wealthy, which – cynically – is pretty well matched to the reality of robber barons.

4. Magic: The Gathering (1993)

Goodness, how do you even succinctly describe a game like Magic: The Gathering? Let’s start by saying this: Magic invented the collectible card game genre. No Magic, no Pokemon, no Yu-Gi-Oh!, no Netrunner.

The concept of buying different cards and mixing and matching to make decks was completely new. It created an incredibly varied gameplay experience that had never before been seen. These days, there are almost 20,000 different cards.

Despite its incredible customizability, the core concept of the game is pretty simple. You play cards called lands to generate mana. That mana can, in turn, be used to play other cards. You use those other cards to attack your opponent until they’re dead. For a game so simply conceived, the sheer variety of cards allows for an extraordinary amount of nuance.

3. Tichu (1991)

Tichu

Have you ever noticed that Board Game Geek is not a big fan of traditional card games or games that resemble traditional card games? You won’t see Uno, Skip-Bo, or Poker ranking very high on the Board Game Geek rankings. Honestly, this is one aspect of the site that I take a big issue with. People have to narrow of a conception of what a game is and what a game should be!

Then you have Tichu, which is currently sitting at 133 of the greatest board games of all time. Tichu is essentially an old Asian 52 card game with four extra cards added: dog, phoenix, dragon, and Mah Jong. It’s so straightforward that Board Game Geek essentially has the rules in their description of the game.

Board Game Geek’s Description of Tichu

When it’s your turn, you may either beat the current top card combination — single card, pair of cards, sequence of pairs, full house, etc. — or pass. If play passes all the way back to the player who laid the top cards, they win the trick, clears the cards, and can lead the next one. The card led determines the only combination of cards that can be played on that trick, so if a single card is led, then only single cards are played; if a straight of seven cards is led, then only straights of seven cards can be played, etc.

The last player out in a round gives all the cards they won to the player who exited first, and the last player’s unplayed cards are handed to the opposite team. Fives, tens and Kings are worth 5, 10 and 10 points, with each hand worth one hundred points without bonuses — but the bonuses are what drive the game. At the start of a round, each player can call “Tichu” prior to playing any card. This indicates that the player thinks they can empty their hand first this round; if they do so, their team scores 100 points, and if not, their team instead loses 100 points. Cards are dealt at the start of a round in a group of eight and a group of six; a player can call “Grand Tichu” after looking at only their first eight cards for a ±200 point bonus. If both players on a team exit a round prior to either player on the opposite team, then no points are scored for cards and the winning team earns 200 points (with Tichu/Grand Tichu bonuses and penalties being applied as normal).

The first team to 1,000 points wins.

2. Crokinole (1876)

Crokinole

Crokinole is by far the oldest game on this list. It’s also a game that most people manufacture on their own. That makes it a very odd duck among old board games, let alone Board Game Geek’s Top 100 list, where it currently resides at #79.

Basically, make a circular shuffleboard. Put eight pegs near the middle. You and other players flick disks at the board, trying to score by staying in the center.

That’s it. It seems like a brainless game and it stands in stark contrast to Advanced Squad Leader, Die Macher, and 1830. Yet it has enough strategic bite that even the hardened board game veterans of Board Game Geek love it. Indeed, it’s the perfect mix of dexterity and braininess that satisfies a hardcore gamer’s intellect while being simple enough to get others in on the fun.

1. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: The Thames Murders & Other Cases (1981)

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

Thousands of board games existed before the year 1995. Who better to reign atop them all than the greatest fictional detective of all time?

The concept is straightforward. You play as Sherlock Holmes and you have to solve a mystery. You travel up and down the streets of Victiorian London, interviewing suspects, looking for clues, and slowly piece together what happened.

In Sherlock Holmes’ world, there is no luck and there are no dice. The game is afoot and the only way you and your teammates will figure out what happened is by using your powers of deduction.

To say this game is ahead of its time is a massive understatement. It’s a cooperative game coming from a time when most games were competitive. It was heavily researched at a time when most board game themes were phoned in. There is even a way to play the game all alone, well before solo board games were the trendy topic they were today.

When you piece everything together like this, the preternatural success of this game is, well, elementary.

Final Thoughts

We all love the latest and greatest board games. But don’t forget about the top 10 old board games! There are some extraordinary games that predate the modern board game era, and we do ourselves a great disservice by not playing them.

Go to your nearest thrift shop and see if you can pick one of these up. You never know what you might find 😉




5 Board Games With Great Components for $33.01 or Less

Posted on Brandon RollinsLeave a commentPosted in Behind the Scenes

Great components are critical to board games. Hardcore gamers pride themselves on mastering games with unique gameplay and complex rules. We all love beautiful art and many of our purchase decisions are made based on pictures we see online.

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But that said, nothing can beat great components. Much of the draw of board gaming comes from the physical experience, and so much of that comes from the components. Fiddly pieces can ruin otherwise great games. Likewise, great components can make simple games memorable.

A lot of times, the quality of components in a board game is determined by price. After all, miniatures and custom pieces tend to be expensive. That drives up the cost of the game, sometimes to a prohibitive level that no gamer is willing to pay. For example, you have great games like Twilight Imperium that cost over $100. Most people aren’t willing to pay that.

Great components are not just the playthings of the wealthy, though. Today, I want to show you five great games with great components that can be purchased for $33.01 or less. For gamers, these games are sure bets. For game developers, they’re great case studies in achieving excellence on a budget.

Please note: you won’t find affiliate links here. The Amazon links I’ve provided are purely for your convenience!

1. Santorini – $19.89

Coming in at $19.89, Santorini is a fantastic abstract strategy game with a cute theme. It takes 30 seconds to learn and it’s a shockingly brainy game that punches way above its weight class. I’ve spoken at length about why this game is so great, but it bears repeating.

The stackable plastic towers provide an incredible sense of value for what you pay. Games with this kind of table presence often cost $50 or higher, and I am genuinely baffled at how they managed to pull this off. It’s not just for show either, physical height achieved by stacking pieces is a critical part of the gameplay.

If you take anything away from Santorini as a game developer, it should be as follows. Great components can give your game a physical presence that people will remember for a lifetime. Even years after its release, Santorini is still enjoyed by many and talked about a lot.

2. Photosynthesis – $33.01

Not everyone can make custom plastic pieces for their board games. The skill level and the start-up capital needed to make that happen are prohibitive for a lot of indie game developers. You can still go a long way with nothing more than cardboard. One of my favorite examples of cardboard used creatively is Photosynthesis.

At a price of $33.01, Photosynthesis delivers a staggering amount of value. Like Santorini, Photosynthesis is a competitive abstract strategy game. The trees are the main draw of this game, which are used to gather light, plant seeds, and crowd out other trees.

The trees themselves consist of nothing more than interlocking cardboard. They ship flat and you assemble them yourself. They’re pretty sturdy and they last a while. Normally components like this would be used for decoration, but Photosynthesis uses them smartly as actual gameplay pieces. This creates a really cool effect wherein you and your competitors assemble a multicolored forest of cardboard trees.

3. Forbidden Sky – $19.99

Forbidden Sky blows my mind. It’s easily the most challenging of the Foribbden games. What strikes me about this game is not the gameplay mechanics themselves. No, what shocks me is that it’s only $19.99.

Why is this shocking? Quite simply, the game consists of electricity-conducting magnets and a light-up rocket ship. This is in addition to your standard board game fare: cards, tiles, and so on. Granted, it can be a bit fiddly sometimes, but I respect the ambition. It’s not often that a game makes me say “wow,” these days – and Forbidden Sky did just that!

4. Colt Express – $31.49

I’ve spoken about Colt Express, but it’s been a long time since I’ve played it. However, I remember this game plain as day. Like Photosynthesis, you assemble larger parts out of cardboard. In the case of this game, which somehow only retails for $31.49, you build an entire train.

Much like Santorini, physical height is important in this game. Your characters can be inside the train as well as on top of it. Great components allow this game to represent complicated information in a simple and approachable way. That’s a magic trick if I ever saw one.

5. Ca$h ‘n Guns – $31.75

Original photo by PZS69 found here. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Speaking of armed robbery in board games, Ca$h ‘n Guns is only $31.75 on Amazon. It remains one of the simplest, funniest party games even years after its release.

The theme is funny, the art is serviceable, and the components are fine. What really makes this game stand out is a single brilliant component – foam toy guns. Pointing fake foam guns at other players is a crucial part of this game – inseparable from the whole experience. The physical comedy of this makes the game worth every penny.

Honorary Mention: Splendor – $35.79

Original photo by xDAllaNxD found here. (CC BY 3.0)

Okay, okay – Splendor might be $35.79 on Amazon, making it a misfit for an article with “$33.01” in the title. I included it as an honorary mention because Splendor is a great board game devoid of the typical gimmicks that you associate with great components. Splendor is simple – it has cards and poker chips. Really, it could not be simpler.

Your board game may not need large plastic pieces, cardboard constructions, or foam props. You can still achieve excellence with your component design. The cards and the chips in this game are so high-quality that you know the game is going to last a decade of heavy use. It’s generally really well put together, sturdy, and accessible.

Final Thoughts on Board Games with Great Components

Great components can be the difference between a good game and a fantastic game. The physical experience of playing a board game is so important to gamers. As a game developer, you need to remember this from day one of your designs. As a publisher, you can make great components without breaking the bank. These six games provide excellent examples of great components at a low cost.