Gone Cardboard News: A New Age of Steam from Mayfair Games?
Mayfair Games has announced that it will release a new edition of Age of Steam, with streamlined rules from designer Martin Wallace. While the components of Mayfair’s AoS edition will be compatible with the existing Warfrog edition, the game will have a number of changes, including:
- Simplified banking rules that allow players to take loans when needed
- No income reduction system, and no bidding for turn order
- Simplified track-building costs, and a new city growth system
Mayfair has announced neither a release date or price for the new edition, nor which board or boards will be included.
In a BoardGameGeek thread following the Mayfair announcement, John Bohrer, owner of Winsome Games and the developer of Age of Steam, said that the Mayfair edition won’t include the Winsome rules, the original Rust Belt map, or other features from the Warfrog editions of Age of Steam. In fact, Bohrer posted back in October 2006 that Age of Steam will be reprinted in early 2008 by a German game publisher.
So what will see over the next 12 months? Competing titles called Age of Steam from two publishers with similar but not identical rules? More details when they appear…
Source: Mayfair Games; Winsome Games
Posted by W. Eric Martin on Feb 1, 2007 at 11:00 AM in Game News, Gone Cardboard News / 1196
Comments:
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Oooh, we got “Steam” heat,
Posted by Larry Levy on Feb 1, 2007 at 02:41 PM | #
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Isn’t it odd that we all think of Age of Steam as a Warfrog game, yet somehow Winsome Games seems to own some substantial slice of Martin Wallace’s creation? I don’t really understand it. Seems like Winsome games allows Warfrog Games the right to publish their own game. Bizarre. Posted by Kevin_Whitmore on Feb 1, 2007 at 10:30 PM | #
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As near as I can figure it, Kevin, Wallace asked Bohrer to develop Age of Steam, just as he had developed all of Martin’s earlier train games (including the game AoS came from, Lancashire Railways). I don’t know if there was ever a thought to making it a Winsome game or it if was targeted for Warfrog all along. But since Winsome Games *is* John Bohrer, this development work is the source of the licensing. The legalities of the current situation are beyond me, but I’ve seen no indication that anything will stop Mayfair from producing this new game (or Winsome from releasing their new edition of the original). One thing I find a bit amusing is the talk of Intellectual Property in this dispute. Bohrer has consistently refused to post the rules for his games, citing the need to protect his IP. He now points to the current situation as proof that he wasn’t paranoid and others have agreed. But since it hasn’t stopped another company from producing a different version of the game, it’s not clear to me what John accomplished by hoarding his precious IP rights. Anyway, it’s a messy situation, but other than some finger pointing and an apparent parting of the ways, I’m not seeing any damage being done. And we gamers get TWO new games out of it! Now if we can only keep them straight… Posted by Larry Levy on Feb 2, 2007 at 09:41 AM | #
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From ICv2.com “Mayfair Games has announced that it will release a revised version of Warfrog Games’ Age of Steam game, by Martin Wallace. The revised rules have been developed by Wallace to streamline play and simplify learning the game. All of the new, high quality components will be backward compatible with the original version. The Mayfair version will also feature new artwork. The new game will remain challenging, but be easier for new players to learn, play faster, and have less between turn downtime.” http://www.icv2.com/articles/home/10014.html Posted by Ward Batty on Feb 2, 2007 at 11:16 AM | #
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