CCDD 030920 - Stare Down

Here's a conditional counterspell that's kind of the opposite of Mana Leak and company: potentially oppressive in the late game but much less reliable early on.

Dreams

Let's get personal.

My dream job for the last 25 years has been: Magic Designer.

Merchants of Araby designer diary

Ten years ago, I was a fan of Magic and madly in love with drafting. I'm still a fan, but I was then too. I wanted to make a game where you drafted cards while playing the game instead of keeping my chocolate and peanut butter separate. I also wanted to try my hand at a vastly simplified version of Magic that could act as a gateway for new players. And I wanted to make it multiplayer, because I love sitting around a table, laughing with and challenging my friends.

How mechanics can push players toward fun.

I've been designing a dungeon crawler board game for a few months now. If you're not familiar, this genre was popularized by HeroQuest and is essentially a tactical RPG without the roleplaying. It comes down to exploring a dungeon, fighting monsters, finding treasure and leveling up. This particular crawler was prompted by one of the latest to hit the market: Castle Ravenloft. I say "prompted" rather than "inspired" because playing Castle Ravenloft pushed to me to make this game, but most of the ideas that form its core existed before Wizards started developing Fourth Edition D&D, much less Castle Ravenloft. I had forgotten that was the case, but while I was dredging years of old Magic card ideas for the Great Designer Search 2, I also stumbled upon board game ideas and found the core concepts of this new dungeon crawler spread amongst them. I'll write about stolen / simultaneous ideas another day.