December Report

Another month, another monthly report.

I'm going to resist the urge to do a retrospective on the year, I figure there's enough of those doing the rounds at the moment. Instead, I'll do this monthly report and a look forward to what I hope to achieve with Reiver Games this year.

Play

It's been a very busy month in terms of games played. There were a few games nights at Paul's that I actually managed to get to, Dave returned from Afghanistan, I made it to Beyond Monopoly!, the odd game over Christmas with family and then a New Year's Eve party to round things off. I managed not only a lot of games played, but also learnt a fair few new ones, which is always nice, and helps my game design.

Here's what I got up to this month:

• Incan Gold: 13 plays
• Carcassonne: 10 plays
• It's Alive!: 4 plays
• Loopin' Louie: 4 plays
• Magic: The Gathering: 4 plays
• micropul: 3 plays
• Apples To Apples: 2 plays
• Carcassonne: The Castle: 2 plays
• Guillotine: 2 plays

Plus the shrapnel with one play each: Byzantium, Canal Mania, Capt'n Clever, 6 Nimmt, Citadels, For Sale, Hare and Tortoise, Hey! That's My Fish!, O Zoo Le Mio, Race For The Galaxy, Ticket To Ride, TransEuropa and Wyatt Earp.

Micropul, Byzantium, Capt'n Clever, Hare and Tortoise, O Zoo le Mio, Race for the Galaxy and Wyatt Earp were all new to me. Micropul I played solo online, and it seemed like an interesting game, but the abstract nature puts me off slightly, and the artwork, while pretty could be more informative. Byzantium was a really nice game with an interesting mechanic in that all players play both sides of a conflict. Capt'n Clever was surprisingly deep for a kids game. Hare and Tortoise (which won the Spiel des Jahres the year I was born!) felt a little dated, but had a nice mechanic in the use of triangular numbers to control movement. O Zoo le Mio was another nice game, fun and attractive but nothing outstanding. Race for the Galaxy was my favourite new game of the month, like San Juan, but more involved and space-themed. Finally Wyatt Earp just didn't do it for me, something about it just seemed clunky. Special mention to Carcassonne: The Tower, which was my favourite new game (including expansions). The last of the main four Carcassonne expansions, the in-laws gave it to me for Christmas (though The Wife chose it - she rocks!). It adds a new dimension (literally - vertical!) to Carcassonne, and a lot more conflict to the basic game. It was this that boosted Carcassonne so high up my list of plays this month - great fun :-).

Creation

Despite the huge number of games played I still got a decent amount done from a creation point of view. The problems with TNT and the It's Alive! boxes meant I had some time on my hands. I've used this to do a lot of work on Codename: Jorvik, try out a few ideas for Codename: Artist and got a few plays of Codename: Harvest and Codename: Harry in.

Jorvik

Jorvik has come on leaps and bounds this month, I've tried out loads of new ideas, some worked, others didn't but overall progress has been made. I'm hoping to finish it this year, so I need to keep trying things out.

Harvest

I've played a few games of this, my latest submission. The game seems quite neat, and has some nice ideas, but I've some concerns about the learning curve. It's quite easy to make a mistake the first couple of times you play and that can really hurt you. Seeing as a lot of my potential customers will only play it once at a convention, I can't afford to have them put off by a bad play. I've made some suggestions and the designer is trying them out.

Escape

I've not done much on Escape this month, I turned it down last month, but the designer has come back to me, and is going to try out some changes to address the reasons why I turned it down.

Artist

Only one play of this, but it showed quite clearly how knackered the latest attempt at scoring was. The final score: me: 134, brother-in-law: 10. That needs a lot of work! I've added a couple more things which make it slightly more 'Euro', but I'm not sure whether this is a good idea. It's an abstract, so making it a Euro-abstract hybrid might mean it ends up appealing to fans of neither.

In other news, I need to do my tax self-assessment by the end of the month, so I started it in anger last night, and then got stuck. Fortunately my Mum used to do books as a living so I asked her what to do. It's not that much fun.

November Report

Another month has passed in a blur. I've been pretty busy once again for work, and a busy month for games too. Since I've been out of the country so much, I've not ended up playing many games, but I've still been busy.

Play

Not a huge amount of games played this month, but I attended MidCon so It's Alive! has a good showing. Also several games played for the first time, thanks to Paul's games nights.

• It's Alive! - 13 plays
• Magic: The Gathering - 6 plays
• San Juan - 2 plays

Plus three games playing once, and all for the first time: Fearsome Floors, League of Six and San Marco. Of the three, Friedemann Friese's F-alliterating Fearsome Floors was the one I like least - a bit too chaotic for my tastes. There wasn't much between League of Six and San Marco, both solid Euros, but I guess I have a slight preference for League of Six - plus it's Czech! I live there for a couple of months, so I have a soft spot for it.

Looking forward to December, I hope to make it to Beyond Monopoly! my local games club once, plus with less travel for work, holidays with our families and the return of my gaming buddy Dave from Afghanistan, I'm hoping for a decent month of gaming.

Creation

Turning to creation it's been a pretty good month. Sales of It's Alive! have been almost twice last month's poor showing. I've received a whole bunch of prototypes too.

It's Alive!

It's been a good month for It's Alive! Twenty sales, plus a few orders by friends, and my first sales to Japan and Sweden. It had a disappointing outing at MidCon, but a good month over all. I also decided to get the last lot of boxes professionally made. The professional boxes are slightly higher quality, and getting the last few made will save me about eighty hours of construction.

Codename: Escape

Unfortunately I've had to drop this one. I enjoyed the game, but the theme (which is some ways is superb), is a little too controversial. I wanted to tweak it a little, make it more fantastic and less controversial, while still in the same vein. The designer wanted to keep the original theme, which of course he's entitled to do, so I've passed it over. Hopefully it'll see the light of day elsewhere.

Codename: Harvest

Another new submission, which after reading the rules, I've requested in prototype form. Hopefully it will have arrived by the time I get home.

Down In Bristol

We're down in Bristol this weekend visiting The Wife's family, but I've managed to get a little gaming in.

On the way down we stopped off at Dunk and Lucy's and saw Tim and Vicky too. Dunk and Tim are two of my oldest friends so it's always good to see them, but sadly it's fairly infrequent. We went out for dinner and then spent a couple of hours catching up. When the ladies went to bed, Dunk, Tim and I had a couple of fairly drunken games of Codename: Escape which I had brought along to show them and folks down in Bristol. We played a variant on the rules as submitted, which I'd played with Paul on Thursday. They both enjoyed the game and recommended it for publishing. I need to play it a lot more times though before I make a decision.

I popped over to my parents' house for dinner last night, and after dinner finally finished off the prototype of Jorvik I started a while ago. I've also coloured the cards quickly with meaty felt-tip markers, I don't care how tidy it looks, it just needs to make the prototype easier to play. Because I expect the distribution of cards to change I don't want to invest too much time in making the cards as I expect to have to make more and bin some of the ones I've already made.

In other news, It's Alive! has finally received a real panning on BoardGameGeek. Ted Alspach, creator of the Board 2 Pieces cartoon strip on Boardgame News, and designer of several games has given it 2.1 out of 10! I guess he really didn't like it.

October Report

It's been a long time since I did my last monthly report, I've been too busy with It's Alive! and travel for work. Now that things have calmed down a bit I'm going to start up again.

Play

I had the joint highest number of monthly plays since records began (admittedly only last August). Last time round it was because we'd been on holiday with a group of friends, this time because The Wife and I had a hankering for Magic: The Gathering again. I also got to Beyond Monopoly! once which led to the following playlist:

• Magic: The Gathering: 40 plays!
• Carcassonne: 5 plays on holiday
• Pirates of the Spanish Main: 2 plays on holiday
• It's Alive!: 2 plays

Plus the shrapnel: San Juan, No Thanks! and the Sherlock Holmes Card Game.

Sherlock Holmes and No Thanks! were new to me (I thought I'd played No Thanks! before, but I was thinking of 6 Nimmt). Of the two I prefered No Thanks!, but neither of them bowled me over.

It was really nice to play more games with The Wife, I love it when she's in the mood for games - she even bought San Juan :-).

Creation

This was a month of frantic travel for work, so I didn't have much time for making games, but I've made a few It's Alive!, talked Jorvik artwork with my dad and received yet another prototype (Codename: Escape).

It's Alive!

It's been a slow month for It's Alive! both in terms of production and sales. Now I've got a few weeks at home I'm going to step up production and build up a decent stock again, and I've a few ideas to boost sales over the next few weeks. There's a couple of conventions on the horizon that I'm considering...

Codename: Jorvik

Codename: Jorvik has been ticking along. I tried another idea (taking Dave's excellent idea to the next level), mainly for production/packaging purposes, but it seems to be working, and I need to finish the prototype so I can test it properly. Paul has offered to test it for me, he and his wife are big 2-player gamers, so they're the perfect target market.

Codename: Escape

Yet another prototype turned up during October. In fact, rather conveniently, it arrived at the Post Office (I wasn't in when they tried to deliver it) the day before my local games club met. I collected it from the Post Office and took it with me, and we got a game in at the club. I love the theme (and it certainly attracted plenty of attention), but I'll need to play it a few more times before I really get a feel for it.

In other news, I'm toying with the idea of going to a convention in Birmingham this month. Why only toying? It'll be fairly expensive, and I launched It's Alive! at a convention in Birmingham in July. I'm worried that everyone there who might be interested will have already seen/played/bought it.