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Hello backers!
It's nearly June and this month has been a crazy whirlwind of prep for many things, including the Siege of Luthadel print-and-play. Sadly, the graphic designer for this project fell ill this month and it slowed us down considerably. We always knew having the print-and-play ready for this update was a 50/50 proposition at best, and this sealed the deal (so to speak).
Still, we aren't about to leave you empty handed! Here's another batch of the incredible original art we have in hand for this expansion...
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...and last but absolutely not least, our cover illustration by Micah Epstein...
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Before we go, an apology and a mea culpa. We didn't identify the artists responsible for the pieces we previewed in previous expansion updates. Because we're terrible people. We're also very, very sorry. Allow us to rectify our error...
Elend Venture by Oliver Specht
Traitor by Mirco Paganessi
Saboteur by Michele Giorgi
Chaos in the Assembly by Gunship Revolution
Mists that Kill by Júlio Cesar Oliveira Rocha
Straff Venture by Oliver Specht
Charge by Júlio Cesar Oliveira Rocha
Insurgents by Michele Giorgi
OreSeur by Abigail Platter
Prophecy by Gunship Revolution
Yoldna by Mirco Paganessi
The Final Battle by Júlio Cesar Oliveira Rocha
Thanks again to each and every one of you, and to all our supporters reading this. You mean the world to us. We can't wait for all of you to see the print-and-play in the next update!
Cheers,
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Alex, Ed, & Pat
Hello House War backers! Alex Flagg here, Mistborn line developer and co-designer of the Siege of Luthadel. This is a chronicle I’ve been waiting a long time to offer – a postmortem on the process and progress of our first Mistborn: House War expansion, and news of what to expect in the final product.
In this update, we start with the former: a retrospective of the development of Siege of Luthadel, and the road we’ve traveled to get to the version you'll see in the print-and-play. [ED: Pat here. We are still hoping to have the print-and-play ready in the next update, though it will depend on layout. More as we know.]
A bit of warning: like the process with this expansion, this update is looooong. I do hope it will be instructive for those of you interested in game design, game development, and just peeking under the hood to better understand what the heck’s been going on with this product.
Onward!
The first concepts for The Siege of Luthadel date all the way back to 2015, after Kevin Wilson turned over the first version of House War for playtesting. In our initial brainstorming sessions, I was fixed on the idea of a “side-based” version of the game where the players could attack or defend Luthadel during the events of The Well of Ascension. We parked that idea as we focused on the final version of the core game.
Flash forward to the last few days of June 2016, as Mistborn: House War’s Kickstarter campaign blew through our wildest imagined goals with 3 days to go. The game was sure to hit, and folks were clearly excited for board gaming in the Mistborn universe, so we decided to pursue expansion plans. I reached out to Kevin again to see if he’d be willing to produce the Siege expansion, and he agreed. We moved forward.
At the time, we knew 3 things for certain about the expansion...
Seems pretty easy, right? Well, as it turns out…
The first version of The Siege of Luthadel came together in the fall of 2016. Kevin’s initial design had all the key elements we wanted – each House was either an Attacker or Defender based on their actions in the novels, and the goal of each House was ensuring their side won the siege using a “tug of war” mechanic.
The siege progressed via triggering cards that were shuffled into the Problem deck, and along the way the Attackers gradually gained military strength tracked on an additional game board. Eventually the game culminated with the Battle of Luthadel event.
Other new mechanics included "struggles," where sides bid resources to gain leverage in the siege, and new actions gained by passing your turn as in the base game. All this created a very interesting game space that we thought would nicely enhance the House War experience.
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Unfortunately, playtesting bore out some surprising facts. The most important lesson we learned at this juncture was how much the very notion of “sides” affected a negotiation game. Players treated those on the opposing side not just as opponents, but persona non grata – they outright refused to work with or negotiate with someone on the “wrong team.” This limited deals to just those on each side, dramatically undermining the very pillars of Mistborn: House War.
Additionally, most games experienced a natural player imbalance (at 3 and 5 players, one side always had 1 extra player). This imbalanced both resources and actions, and put the players in the minority at a distinct disadvantage. The minority had fewer chances to solve Problems and gather resources, and it grew worse as each game progressed. Most of the time, the majority could simply have their “odd man” work to directly counteract the minority players, slicing their efforts in half (or totally negating them in a 3 player game!).
We knew none of this would work, so we dove back into the design.
Due to conflicting schedules and work finishing the core game, the second version of Siege landed in the summer of 2017. To address the imbalance between Attackers and Defenders, we added a third side – the Mercenaries, based on the shifting alliances of Houses Cett and Penrod. We hoped this would bring actions and resources back into alignment and also add a “persuadable” House to negotiations.
Sides were established by seating order - no player could sit next to a player on the same side – to ensure moves and countermoves were always possible. The Koloss shifted from an escalating threat to a player-controlled marker, which moved around a “web” of bonus spaces that benefited the House moving the army (commonly the Active Player).
The tug of war morphed into something more akin to a pendulum, with each house gaining bonus Favor or Disgrace at the game’s end depending on where the pendulum eventually landed.
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This new version vastly improved game play, with much smoother negotiations, more interesting scoring, and more open negotiations. The most important innovations introduced in this version - the Koloss generating resources, and siege results creating variable scoring at the game’s end – remained in all versions that followed.
The biggest issue with this second iteration? While sides were “even” and negotiation happened more often, there was still only one persuadable party – the Mercenary. This player ended up having the most interesting, House War-y experience, since they were always wheeling and dealing, and everyone wanted their attention. Negotiation was getting better, with alliances of convenience showing up in playtests, but the game flow still wasn't where we wanted it to be.
We decided to focus on making more of the best received elements in the next version.
The third version of Siege came together in the fall and winter of 2017, as we continued to playtest Version 2, fold in feedback, and hone in on what was working best with the expansion. Overall, players felt the expansion introduced a lot of additional complexity. In particular, the new “Pass the Turn” actions confused many, as did the Koloss track.
I rebuilt the Koloss track with two shorter, more tightly themed loops. One focused on “hard power” with Food, Skaa, Warriors, and Personality cards, and the other offered “soft power” with Money, Prestige, Favor, and Atium. I hoped this would enhance players’ control of the Koloss and its benefits.
I also tied the Koloss to Vin’s position on the Siege track; when Vin was in a space matching that faction’s color, they gained advantage and a bonus each time the Koloss moved. The binding of Vin to the Koloss is perhaps the only element of this version that survives to this day.
The new Pass the Turn actions were transformed into an evolving “Gambit” action, which sat alongside the Pass the Turn space but changed as the game went on. Bonus scoring from the Siege track continued to evolve, so the bonus could apply to either the standard or Unrest conclusion.
With all these changes in place and play smoothing out, I thought for sure we’d landed on a version we could move toward release.
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Sadly, I was wrong. Continued playtesting revealed that while the new board was working better and players appreciated the streamlined flow, certain key ideas were at odds with House War’s central goals. Fixed sides still told players who was "on their team” from the beginning, and they would often not speak to “the enemy” even when it was clearly and mechanically to their benefit. This simply wasn't workable in a game about negotiation.
The Mercenary helped, but it also became clear that not everyone felt skilled enough or wanted to play in that role. It relied on the player’s willingness to “turn their coat" at any time. When the wrong player type was “stuck” as the Mercenary, negotiation broke down and the entire game suffered for it.
Realizing the idea upon which we’d contracted the expansion was fundamentally flawed was… distressing, to say the least. Kevin struggled mightily to build something that would work, but the foundation I’d laid was poor, and the blame was on me and me alone. So I did what I always do in these situations - I put everything we’d previously done aside, and went back to work.
The short-lived fourth version of Siege, developed in the spring of 2018, was the result of feverish weeks of pondering, dreaming, outlining, whiteboarding, erasing, and cursing as I questioned every prior decision, request, and idea I’d had over the previous 16 months.
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I knew what I liked about the expansion at this point, so I built on that base, threw out everything I saw as problematic, and ventured way outside the box to see what shook out.
I ended up keeping sides, but made them secret and player-controlled. Each player was dealt an Agenda, which gave them a secret goal and aligned with one of the three factions (Attackers, Mercenaries, or Defenders). Agendas were asymmetrical, creating a “fog of war” in the early game that dissipated as players revealed their Agendas and “took a side” in the struggle.
The Koloss and Vin tracks changed yet again, with both pawns providing bonuses and moving clockwise and counter-clockwise along a double rondel through a variety of means. When they aligned, a Crisis erupted for one side or the other.
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Ultimately, Version 4 survived only a single weekend of playtesting, but it taught me many important things. The mechanics introduced a tension "to be or not to be" on a side – a tension that has persisted in all versions since. But in my state of uncertainty and with players still struggling with complexity, I allowed player feedback to kill many of my darlings (painful as it was to see them go). Voting, which I greatly enjoyed, fell to the axe because it interfered with Problem solving (the key action in House War). I also liked Gambits as a novel mechanic, but they were tossed as being too dynamic and often too powerful.
The mechanical bloodbath continued when the team got hold of this version, leaving me with a skeletal framework and a wide open field to attack. That, as it turns out, was just what the expansion needed.
The fifth, most radical, and most important version of Siege rose out of a very simple question from Pat...
“What if I don’t want to be on a particular side?”
I took that question and sequestered myself for 3 weeks, noodling it over. The notion of sides - of attacking or defending Luthadel - was at the very core of the expansion from the start. While I’d looked at sides from many different angles, changed what it meant to be on a side, and even let folks choose no side if they wanted, I’d never considered making which side someone was “on” a player’s choice. Yet The Well of Ascension features all sorts of faction waffling, most notably House Cett, which flips from besieging to defending the city once Vin puts them in their place.
Dynamic sides gave players maximum freedom to choose which side to throw their lot behind – a very fitting undercurrent for a game about politicking and vicious self-interest!
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Removing fixed sides without removing sides as a concept forced a tectonic level of change in the design. I’d removed the pendulum Siege track in Version 4, since players didn’t want to skip solving Problems to push one side or the other, and a new method was needed to determine which side ultimately triumphs.
I realized that tying Problem solving directly to the outcome of the siege was the solution. By making the siege’s evolution a result of core game choices, rather than a series of alternative choices, all players could naturally engage with the siege as part of doing what they already had to do to win.
This naturally reduced or eliminated much of the complexity seen in earlier designs. Now, players could simply discard their solved Problems in support of one side or the other, and the relative importance of these Problems contributed directly to the siege’s outcome. The emphasis on choices, and letting consequences flow naturally from those choices, was the crucial revelation of this new build.
Good choices shouldn't come without risk, particularly in games. Fortunately, the Mistborn universe is full of risks taken for compelling reasons. Take, for example, the Koloss. While we’d gone through four different versions, the Koloss were consistently criticized both for “not being powerful enough” and for “not feeling dangerous enough.” Players wanted something that felt like you were seizing control of an unstoppable horde of rage-monsters that could turn on you at any moment.
With this in mind, I tossed the Koloss track entirely and turned them into a “hot potato” – something you’d want to take from time to time, but not hold onto for too long lest you get burned. An accumulating pool of resource tokens (the Spoils of war) tempted players to take the Koloss, and a Problem-based trigger (Rampage) made them an unpredictable threat.
I also made Allegiance tokens win-conditional. Only tokens from the winning side were worth Favor, which made supporting a side another risk-reward matrix.
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I was uncertain about this new version. So much was different, with so many changes cascading out across the build that I honestly had no idea how it would go over. As it turns out, this was my lucky break. Initial reactions were universally positive - to the point where we took this version to Gen Con 2018 for a special backers-only preview session.
Finally we were on track. Art orders went out and we built a graphic design assets list with an eye toward blind playtesting. I felt a glimmer of hope. But you know what they say about hope...
Version 5 went into blind playtesting in the fall of 2018. This being our first truly hands-off playtesting, we had to build the infrastructure to handle broader spectrums of plays without any Crafty staff present to answer questions. Throughout the fall and into the winter, we waited and put our focus into the challenging task of getting the art right.
When we got results back at the end of the year, the feedback was difficult to parse. This version worked, and there weren’t many explicit issues, but player reaction was… off. Some groups found the Koloss too powerful while others thought it had no “teeth.” Some groups thought Allegiance was too important, and others found it easy to disregard. Some groups felt they had too much control over the siege, and others felt helpless and unable to impact the course of events.
There was an undercurrent that something was missing, but no one could really articulate what it was. Much like earlier versions of the Koloss, everyone knew something wasn't exactly right, but no one could tell us what it was, much less how to address it.
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After sinking six to seven months into Version 5, and with pressure mounting to be done, I tried to buff out the issues and fold in feedback for Version 6. I updated the Koloss rules again, this time adding Rampage cards that acted like mini-Problems the controller had to solve to avoid various negative consequences. I amped up the Spoils to ensure the Koloss moved more frequently. I played with Vin’s impact on the game state, letting her assist or punish players based on their current side. I adjusted Allegiance to grant 1 Favor for each token on the winning side, and inflict 1 Disgrace for each token on the losing side (no Alleigance tokens counted if Unrest hit 8, though – more on that later).
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The end result was a bit cleaner, a bit better, and hopefully a bit closer to done. But the truth is... Game development is a marathon, not a sprint. By Version 6, I was at about Mile 20. I was drained, focused only on the next step, and wondering if the process was ever going to end.
Version 6 came together earlier this spring, and hit playtesting like a bug against a windshield. While much of the core developed in Version 5 was working smoothly, players who sat late in the turn order often found themselves locked out of interesting choices. Certain players hoarded the Spoils and forced the game into a death spiral of Unrest. Others gave up trying to control the siege because they felt their opponents had a lock on which side would win (an echo of Version 1’s biggest issue). Many players still struggled with the expansion's complexity. Another radical approach was required.
Again, it was a question from Pat that pushed things forward: “What does the game look like if we remove Unrest?’ That lit the fire that saw us through the rest of the design.
Like sides, I’d always viewed the game's core mechanics - like Unrest - as untouchable. Eliminating Unrest meant losing the ability to pursue a low score victory when someone ran away with the game, but it also opened up new mental and design space that seemed promising. After all, Kelsier’s revolution – the narrative that Unrest modeled – was a facet of the first book, not the second.
Pat, Ed, and I spent a very, very late night in southern California quickly revising the game to see what it would look like, and the next day’s playthrough was encouraging. I came home with only a week before my local game convention, committed to following this rabbit down its hole and through to the end.
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This iteration was fast and furious - but the questions were, too. With so much in flux, I actually did something I’ve never done previously. I built two entirely different prototypes - each with its own rulebook, Problem deck, and Personality deck - and I compared them in back-to-back playtests.
What I learned surprised me. Removing the elements didn’t make the game shallower, but rather freed players of many (mostly invisible) struggles they’d previously had with the expansion. Losing Unrest and consequently one of the three game end states (Attackers win; Defenders win; no one wins) made the game much easier for players to keep in their heads, and let them focus more clearly on the interplay of sides and the siege. A new mechanic I was sure would make Problems too confusing instead helped players make more interesting, educated choices (more on that in the next update).
Most importantly for me, the reduced mechanical clutter revealed the lingering clunky elements that stood between me and the final version. Not only was I seeing the forest for the trees but I could finally see a path leading out of the forest.
Whew! There you have it – a harrowing journey through 7 versions of the Siege of Luthadel expansion leading, hopefully, to the last one. That's the version we currently have in playtesting, and in the next update I hope we'll be able to present a deeper, mercifully shorter look at Version 8, along with a few surprises.
Thanks for sticking with us through this long and winding process, and for all your support along the way. We’d never have made it this far without you.
All the best,
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Alex and the rest of the Mistborn: House War team
Hello everyone!
Someone once said that a game's development is never truly over. Rather, at some point, the game is simply published.
Someone else once said, "Real artists ship." ;)
Well, neither of those folks is at Crafty HQ right now. Alex is, and he's asked for a bit more time to push Siege of Luthadel through blind playtesting. He's focused on the expansion's thematic presentation and certain scoring mechanisms. He's confident he'll resolve these lingering issues soon, but it probably means we'll be pushing the print-and-play to May or June. We'll keep you posted.
If any of you are at Gamestorm 21 this weekend, you may find Alex running some variations of Siege of Luthadel. He's stress-testing a few possible iterations, and everything you see should be considered a work in progress - for now.
Alex has promised a designer's diary in the next few weeks, and we'll be posting that - or the first half if it goes super long - in the April update. The journey on this expansion has been long and interesting, and we're excited to finally pull the curtain back on the process.
In the meantime, here's another art preview for the expansion - including one of our favorite Mistborn illustrations ever!
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Once again we'll have an end cap at the Best Four Days in Gaming, where we'll be showing off & selling all our Mistborn and other game products. We'd love to see you there!
As it happens, there aren't enough of our usual suspects to fill out our booth team. If you'll be at Gen Con and would like to spend a chunk of the weekend with us, please drop us a line at [email protected].
We ask for about half the exhibit hall hours over the weekend, and in exchange we offer a generous housing package, a free 4-day exhibitor badge (get into the hall before it opens every morning!), Crafty polos, a spot at our annual Gen Con dinner, booth credit, and of course our sparkling company!
Once again, the email address to inquire about a spot on the team is [email protected].
As a reminder, our newsletter is the best way to learn more about our current and future catalog, including new Mistborn releases and the upcoming Mistborn Dice Kickstarter campaign. You can sign up for it here...
One last piece of housekeeping: with Alex & Ed at Gamestorm 21 and Pat at WonderCon this weekend, there won't be anyone to reply to incoming email or comments here on Kickstarter. Please forgive us if we don't get back to you on anything until around Tuesday this coming week.
That's all for this month. We'll be back in April with a peek inside Alex's brain. Sorry in advance!
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Alex, Ed, & Pat
Greetings backers!
It's been longer than we would have liked since our last update, but we come bearing good news and many pretty things. Let's dive right in, shall we?
The holidays are usually a quiet period for games publishers. It's a rare break from the ongoing convention circuit and a time when everyone is celebrating with family. Most publishers spend a good chunk of their holiday "break" focused on intense development that can be difficult to juggle alongside the daily grind. This is almost always the case for us, and we spent this past holiday break almost entirely focused on...
One of the reasons we held this update back a little longer than we originally hoped is that we wanted to be able to make the following happy claim: all but two illustrations are complete!
Admittedly, those two illustrations are the cover image and the board art, but they're also both very close...
Outside these two images, we're entirely done with Siege of Luthadel illustration, which is a huge milestone for the project. It wasn't possible until we were (nearly) certain of the component mix, and it held up the next bit: graphic design. That will start in earnest as soon as our graphic designer frees up.
Here's a sample of what he'll have to work with...
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In other news, blind playtesting has been underway for some time now. It was in fact another huge chunk of our winter break, and this cycle has produced several key revisions to the expansion. We knew the Allegiance tokens weren't producing as much round-to-round fun as we wanted, and in the last week certain key feedback has paved the way for Alex to dramatically upgrade the mechanics around those components.
Alex expects to be working on this issue for the rest of this month and through most of March, and for those of you in the Pacific Northwest there will be a chance to test out his new tweaks at Game Storm (see the Events section below for details). Don't worry if you can't make it, though, as we're planning to release the whole expansion as a print-and-play release for all backers. We currently expect this to happen with the April update, but we reserve the right to shift that around - just in case.
Chinese New Year is nearly over, and soon after we'll be speaking with our friends at Liya International about what to expect for the manufacturing run. We will have more to say on the delivery schedule once we've conferred with them, but in the meantime you can expect updates monthly until we're done. Some of those updates may be fairly small - limited to "nothing new to report, everything we've already said is still on target" - while others may be full of new illustrations and/or other news about House War, Siege of Luthadel, and other Mistborn products.
Just today the rules for Mistborn: House War were released on Dized. Click here to download the Dized app for Android and iOS.
What's Dized? It's a companion app for board gaming, chock full of cross-indexed and easy-to-reference rules sets plus engaging tutorials for many of your favorite tabletop titles, and now you can call upon Dized anytime you have a rules question about Mistborn: House War!
The Mistborn: House War rules are technically a beta release, and we encourage you to post any issues you find with them as a reply to this post. Alternately, you can email your comments to us at [email protected]. We want to help Dized build the very best tool possible for our game, and we welcome all of you to help as you like in making that happen.
Thank you in advance for any and all of your contributions to this huge upgrade in gaming.
Mistborn: House War has been making the rounds! Some of you were asking about how things went at PAX Unplugged. Here's a taste of what went down in Philadelphia...
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There's plenty in there about our other products as well, including a bit about the next Mistborn Kickstarter that's coming up soon. We'll talk more about that at the end of this update.
On the topic of upcoming events, there's a demo of Mistborn: House War tomorrow. Here are the details for those of you in and around New England...
Boskone: Mistborn: House War Game Demo
Organizer: Joshua Bilmes
Day & Time: Saturday, 15-Feb @ Noon Local Time
Location: Harbor I – Gaming · 50 min · Gaming
Plus, Alex Flagg & Ed Healy will be at the following conventions in March...
GAMA Trade Show (publisher / retailer event)
Dates: 11-Mar to 15-Mar
Location: Peppermill Resort - Reno, NV
Dates: 28-Mar to 31-Mar
Location: Red Lion Hotel on the River, Jantzen Beach - Portland, OR
ATTENTION! Alex Flagg will be a guest at Game Storm 21 and will very likely be showing off the latest version of Siege of Luthadel! We should be able to confirm whether this is happening in the March update, and if we do we'll include details so you can join or watch the event if you're attending the show.
To close out this rather large update, we wanted to take a moment to explain a little something you may have noticed in the PAX Unplugged videos above, and which we mentioned to a few folks who stopped by our booth. It's about one of our other Mistborn gaming lines. No, not the Mistborn Adventure Game - though we have new material in the works for that as well. No, this is about the dice.
When we ran our very first Kickstarter back in early 2015 to fund the Mistborn Allomancy Dice set, we were immediately asked if we would produce dice for the rest of the symbols. We were also asked - perhaps in jest - if we would consider producing actual metal dice. Well...
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Those are graphic mockups rather than finished dice, of course, but the factory's nearly ready to start pouring loads of metal to make the real thing - and that's just a small taste of the campaign.
We'll have more details in a future update, but the very best place for all the latest on our new Mistborn dice, and all our other products, is the Crafty Games newsletter. You can sign up for that here...
That's all for this time around! Until next time...
Stay Crafty!
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Alex, Ed, & Pat
Crafty Games