December 2023 Newsletter
Deephaven tickets now on sale!
Come to Deephaven! A narrative megagame about overly-ambitious dwarves building a new city fortress. Players will delve deep into the mountain to discover unique resources, forge legendary weapons, develop thriving trade and culture, and fight back against the many dangers they uncover!
There’s a lot more information about Deephaven over on the event page which you can find here: https://www.dukesofhighland.net/events/deephaven
For this one, I’ve added a little disclaimer to the event page - a “You might like this if…” and a “This may not be for you if…”, so make sure you read that before you sign up. It’s very different from anything else we’ve done so far with a lot less structure and a higher requirement to talk to other people. It definitely leans more towards the RPG side of the hobby but it’s still an excellent (mega)game.
As a teaser, there are 2 elements that help make this game awesome:
Firstly, there’s a massive block tower (definitely not Jenga) that stands in the middle of the room which represents where you mine resources deep in the mountain. With the permission of the Delvers (one of the guilds), anyone can have a go at digging for a resource, but there’s always the threat of the mine collapsing and unleashing something hilariously terrible upon the entire game.
Secondly, there a huge whiteboard where the world that you are collectively building will be created. The Cartographers (another guild) will be mapping out cave systems, buildings, farms, etc. onto the board and that’ll in turn create other stories. By the end of the game you’ll have a beautiful shared world that you helped form.
So use the button below to get your tickets in time for the holiday season! What a great gift for the geeks in your life.
To get your tickets click here
River City Con Den of wolves
As previously mentioned in the last email, tickets to Den of Wolves at River City Con are now are on sale. As a reminder, the convention has a cost associated with it, but the event itself does not, so even if we don’t get the numbers for the game, at least we can all hang out and play games together. And the convention is 3 days long so you should get your moneys worth.
Here’s a copy-paste reminder for you:
https://tabletop.events/conventions/river-city-con-2024
The above link will take you to the Tabletop.events portal that River City Con is using for all their tickets and event information. In order to play in Den of Wolves, you’ll first need to buy a convention ticket.
Pre-registration tickets for the convention are as follows:
Full weekend badge for adults and teens: $45
Full weekend badge for 6 - 12 year old: $15
Saturday Admission Only: $32
Pre-reg pricing ends on December 24th. Save $10 on a weekend badge by pre-registering now!
Kids under 6 are free.
For more information about the game, check out our website:
Interview about Gods of the Ancient World
Well looky here, I got interviewed about Gods of the Ancient World on a megagame podcast. I’m famous! (is that right, a single interview means fame?!?)
The bloody good blokes over at The Great Game podcast interviewed me to talk about GAW. They grill me about how the game works, how I designed it and how it went on the two runs we’ve done. I had a lot of fun and I hope you’ll find it interesting.
You can find it over at Spotify here:
https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thegreatgame
Or over on apple podcasts here:
So what are we videogames?
Got an interesting couple of items for you today. First up is Gloomhaven, but the video game implementation. An absolutely fabulous version of a very popular game and honestly, I’m not sure I’ll ever play the board game again - it’s just too fiddly.
My unpopular opinion is that the board game should never have been a board game in the first place, it feels like the designers tried to turn a video game into a physical implementation with mediocre success.
Anyway, enough of that. The video game is great and if you can find yourself a couple of friends to commit, you’ll lose a year to it it’s that good. Just don’t expect to play much else!
So what are we boardgames?
And ironically, here’s the reverse - a video game turned into a boardgame. The video game Deep Rock Galactic got my friends group through the pandemic when we couldn’t meet in person to play board games and now they’ve released the board game implementation.
Turns out they did a really good job. Not only is it a decent game, it also captures the video game perfectly. As fans of the video game, this feels very true to the game and we’ve had a lot of fun with it. The only thing it needs is a campaign mode but lucky for us, the latest Kickstarter is bringing that next.
This is highly recommended for fans of the video game.
So what are we televisioning?
I’m not a football/soccer fan at all, in fact I often joke that’s why I left the UK - I was kicked out! Welcome to Wrexham is a docuseries about a couple of famous Hollywood actors buying a non-league football team from north Wales and attempting to make it successful.
Here’s the thing, you don’t actually have to like sports to like this show - for me, it’s all about building the community and brining them along for the ride. Ryan and Rob really seem to care about the people and you can feel their emotion when they connect with the players and the supporters. It’s not a Hollywood-written story so there’s not always a satisfying story arc but it is very real.
Next year is going to be amazing and I can’t wait to share it with you all. I do this for the community and I love meeting like-minded gamers who make it all worthwhile.
So until next year, I hope you have a very merry Chrismahanukwanzakah and happy Festivus for the rest of us.
~Tony