March 2023 Newsletter
The goings on of the Dukes of Highland.
The Past
On March 4th we ran Den of Wolves, the internationally ran Megagame, ranked as number 2 in the world (according to me). Suffice to say, we had an amazing time.
There’s an after-action report (AAR) here which goes over some of the highlights of the event. Of course there were many many more shenanigans than that but these are some of the key moments and my favorite stories. And here’s a link to dozens of pictures (thanks to all the photographers of the day)
And if you’re feeling bad you missed this, there are plans to run at least 3 more MGs in the future, so read on!
The Present
Now that Den of Wolves is behind us, we’re all focused on June and the world premier of Gods of the Ancient World (GAW). As mentioned in my last blog post update, I’m pretty darn close to having the rules finished and just doing the polishing and playtesting. In fact, we have a 7 player playtest on Friday with the military game and the Gods game to see how they’ll interact with each other. It’s easy to get my friends over when I bribe them with pizza and bourbon!
I’ve got a big chunk of the components created by now and it’s great to see them all come together. In the picture below, you’ll see the amazing map which is 3 foot by a whopping 6 foot long. There’s also some soldier units, counters indicating region loyalty, some ship minis and other bits and pieces ready for the playtest.
I’ve also just sorted out the control team for GAW for June; there should be about 7 of us next time so a little more control-heavy than DoW and we should not be as rushed as we were in DoW. (Apologies to those of you that said you’d be willing to help control in the post-game survey for DoW, I only recently spotted those and didn’t email you for the GAW game. I’ll be sure to include you in future games asking for help).
The Future
And the moment you’ve all be waiting for… TICKETS ARE NOW ON SALE! Visit Ticketbud to buy your tickets by pressing this big, juicy green button:
Buy your tickets from Ticketbud
Tickets for Den of Wolves sold out in about 17 days so be sure to grab your tickets early this time. And as always, feel free to sign up with your friends I’ll do my best to make sure you get to play on the same team. Teams will be mostly 6 strong this time so unless you sign up with 5 others, you’ll likely be on a team with some folks do you don’t know (yet). There’s loads more information over at my website on the theme and game specifics.
The casting questionnaire will be sent out a little closer to the event, once all the tickets have been sold.
A couple of important changes for this event:
Ticket prices have gone up :( I’m sorry to say but ‘tis the way things have to be. I’m putting in way to much effort to not at least break even (I haven’t yet lol), and then there’s inflation is what it is right now. To give you some additional context and rationalization, ticket prices for the Louisville based events are much more in line with ticket prices for Gencon and other game organizers around the world and I believe they’re still a fair price. I’ll always try to be transparent with my customers and appreciate any feedback you might have. If the ticket price is simply prohibitive to you playing, please ping me directly and we can work something out.
Food will not be included as part of the ticket price this time. The new venue, whilst super cool and more professional, has very strict rules on group food. Had I included food, ticket prices would almost need to double for it to be worthwhile and I figured players would not be OK with that. What I can say is that I will build in an hour break at around lunchtime and you are welcome to buy food from somewhere local. For that matter, you can bring food individually, but you may not “share” food, otherwise it becomes group food. It’s a little strange, but at least there’s a way around it.
Later in the year
As you may have seen on the event page at the dukesofhighland.net website, we are running GAW and DoW at Gencon this year too. As always, you’re welcome to join us for that but you’ll need to sign-up via the Gencon systems. I believe tickets go on sale for events in May this year.
The Dukes are a member of the MegaGame Coalition and in total we plan to run 7 megagames over the course of the convention. More details coming in the next newsletter.
If you’d like to help control to any of the 7 events, send us an email and let us know. There are perks for everyone who helps (more information coming in the future).
The Far-off Future
I can’t help myself, I’m already thinking about what games to run next year. I’ve come up with about 4 options and need a little help deciding which direction to go.
Here’s the choices,
Run a homemade variation of the “Aliens invade Earth” a-la Watch The Skies. I’d take the design we ran last year, and use that as a basis so we have something we own 100%.
Expand GAW so that we include additional factions (almost like an expansion pack). I’m thinking Germanic tribes or Egyptian empire and their pantheon of Gods.
A brand new design based on the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. I love the idea that 40 people get together to solve a Lovecraftian horror mystery together. My wheels are already spinning with ideas.
There’s a ready-made megagame called “It belongs in a Museum”, an Indiana Jones/Tombraider/The Mummy-themed MG, of which I love the theme of. Here’s an AAR of it over on BeckyBeckyBlogs.
If you feel strongly about any of them and/or want to help with design in any way, shoot me an email and I’ll get you involved.