shiny!

That’s great news all around.  I’m thrilled (but hardly surprised) at the success of the Treefrog line.  And Hammy and Martin were a great duo in the past and should be so again.  (Besides, getting Martin away from the books and back to his designer’s chair has GOT to be a good thing!) Finally, an updated version of Brass is wonderful news.  Congratulations to the Frogs!

Brass is one of the few games that 1.5 years after it’s release, I’m still taking with me to game clubs almost every month. Such an excellent game!

A “streamlined” version?  I’m not sure I warm to the idea given that I think of BRASS as a perfect game as it stands. But if Martin is aiming at a wider marker who can blame him.

What I really can enthuse about is the idea of expansion maps for the present game - solely because one can tend to get stuck into a repeated pattern of play.  But I guess new maps are difficult given that the game is based on actual North of England geography in the Industrial Age.

I’m quite sure that in streamlining it, Martin will give the game a different feel so it won’t be just a new edition of Brass with some slight tweaks. I suspect it’ll be more like the difference between Steam and Age of Steam.

I really, really think Brass is a merely average game with clunky mechanics, but I’m very interested in seeing how the game will be “streamlined” and designed for exapandibility (milking it for all the money he can I guess).

One can only hope it turns out better than expected…

>milking it for all the money he can I guess

I don’t know what Stefen meant by this comment but to me it hardly sounded complimentary.  What must be remembered is that Martin is now a professional games designer.  Such money he gets to support himself and his family (plus putting away for a pension!) comes from his designs.  So any ‘milking’ he does is no more than the rest of us do when we go to work each day. 

How much cream is on that milk depends on how good he is at his job and so far I feel he’s pretty good at it.

Well Derek, I didn’t imply anything negative—per se. I was just mentioning the fact that Wallace has seen all the maps published for Age of Steam and I think he wants in on that action. I’d just rather have him spend his time working on full fledged games than little expansions, which add little to the board game design field in general.

Slighly off topic, what ever happened to the BoardGameNews info on the game “Automobile” by Wallace? Because their description of the game was really off… they mentioned “To get money, you need to issue shares; shares issued in later rounds give you more money to work with, but you lose development time. Whoever manages the best return for their ten shares over this 120-150 minute game will win,” which as nothing to do with the actual game, at least not in the game I played last night.

I guess they realized this and removed it or what?

-Stefan (with an ‘A’).

Stefan, that description of Automobile was from my 2008 UK Games Expo coverage. I interviewed Martin Wallace at the Expo, and he described the next four games in the Treefrog line, having just released Tinners’ Trail at that time. Given that Automobile wasn’t published for another twelve months, I’m not surprised that the game changed. The gameboard at that time also included a map of the U.S. that was divided into sales regions, a map that disappeared prior to the game going to print.

Eric

Stefan, in a perfect world, I’d rather see Wallace devote his time exclusively to cranking out original designs as well.  But he’s been criticized in the past for having a poor head for business (with some justification, as far as I can tell) and now that he’s a fulltime designer, either he’s gotten smarter or is getting (or listening to) better advice, because he’s finally starting to act like a businessman.  I mean making Brass more accessible and opening it up for expansions (most of which will probably be created by others) is just smart and could easily provide a welcome trickle of steady revenue to Warfrog.  It hardly sounds like a sell-out, particularly in light of the rest of Treefrog’s ambitious schedule.  The most important thing to me is that Martin be able to continue creating his great games, so if this makes that more likely, I’m all for it.

By the way, I hope people are carefully reading the Treefrog endnotes and credits, because there’s cute little zingers in all of them.  In Steel Driver, Wallace thanks Harry Wu for “spurring me on"--make of that what you will.  And he ends the designer notes for Automobile by saying “The game is all about making money, you either have the talent to do that or you’re a teacher”.  Martin, of course, was a schoolteacher prior to becoming a full-time game designer.

I never said he was selling out, he is just using it to get money. Nothing wrong with that… everyone needs money (some more than others apparently).

I don’t know if this will make him creating more games likely or not. I’m not a huge fan of his games, so I could care less either way, I just like the idea of having quality over quantity.

Either way, it is up to him, he can do as he pleases. I’m still interested in seeing the new Brass as I didn’t get the hype over the last one. Hopefully this one will let me “see the light?”