Winners of the Train Design contest are here!
almost 6 years ago – Tue, Jul 24, 2018 at 12:47:26 AM

Ladies & Gentlemen!

The Train Desin contest was an idea offered by you - a great idea - that made it possible for you to leave your lasting mark on Snowdonia Deluxe Master Set. When we started the list (you can find all the details in this update), we had no idea how many people would throw their hats into the ring - and how many great ideas would be put forward!

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Simply put, you've done a great job designing and offering feedback. So great, in fact, that we decided to include 12 new Trains. Yes, 12 cards will be illustrated and forever added to the Snowdonia legacy. 12 Trains, and... 13 winners!  

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And the Winners are...

Let's not keep you waiting! Here is the complete list of Trains that won the contest:

• Doc Brown's Engine by Neal McClatchey (mcclatchey)
• Track Inspection Car by Rob van Dalen (Rob0Rider)
• Byron The Solar-powered Train by Jonathan du Puy (DuPuy)
  
• The Hype Train by Stuart Burnham (vk1980)
• The Mule by Dallan Christenson (dallanc)
• The Train of Ghosts by John Crawford (lostdog)
• The Mail Rail by James Cartwright (Rindel) and The Guinea Pig Train by Becky Bateson (Smudge) (Odo1)
  
• The Mallard by Giles Bennett (gilesbennett)
• The Mari Lwyd by John Shepherd (MrShep)
• Trainy McTrainface by Jeremy Berven (berv63)
  
• The Conga Train by Terence Burnett (Spagetti69)
• Doni - The Love Train by Daryle Griffith (DaryleG)

The full list of winners (and honourable mentions) can be found in this special Geeklist by Tony Boydell himself. 

What happens now?

If you're on our Train list, please contact Tony Boydell on Board Game Geek via a private message. You will discuss the possible tweaks and final version of your train. After that, the Trains will be sent to us, to become part of Snowdonia Deluxe Master Set.

We would like to thank everyone who participated once again. The competition was fierce, and - win, lose, vote - you've made a piece of Snowdonia history! You are the best!

Oh, and here's a seemingly unrelated phrase in Welsh to add to your vocabulary:

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I hope you have an awesome rest of the day (or evening, if you're closer to our time zone).

Have fun!

Błażej

Designer Update: For the Joy of being alive and Steaming. Part 2.
almost 6 years ago – Tue, Jul 24, 2018 at 12:43:54 AM

Ladies and Gentlemen!

As the Kickstarter campaign for Snowdonia Deluxe Master Set moves closer to its grand finale, we take a short breather to give you a conclusion to Tony Boydell's designer update, learn another bit of Welsh, and tell you of an awesome contest you can get into - and share with those who are still oblivious to the glory of Snowdonia.

Let's start with learning something that many of you may find extremely useful:

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It's not a question we have an answer to, but it's one at least some of you probably really want to ask. And speaking of the designer, here's a coclusion to his story of Snowdonia and its long list of expansions - both old and new!

For the Joy of being alive and Steaming. Part 2 of 2.

Despite relatively low numbers in the production runs, the first expansions for Snowdonia were, by no means, instant sell-outs; however, the rhythm of us releasing new expansions every year – along with my fun blog promos – kept the interest of existing fans and began to garner the attention of new players too! 

Getting a friend to design a scenario – and needing to pay him royalties (!) – meant we would need to up the cost AND the quantity for 2014’s The Necropolis Railway & Neuhauser Bockerlbahn.  

The Neuhauser was developed and tested independently of me (but with my Blessing) by Sebastian Bleasdale (Keyflower, Prosperity) and pals in Windsor and London; it came to my attention at the UK Games Expo in 2014 – when we were launching Ivor the Engine – and the full run-thru game was sparkling and fresh! Since then, I have been bothering other Designers at every opportunity to chip in their ideas – the fruits of which you have been seeing in this Deluxe Edition Kickstarter campaign…

Hisashi Hayashi, for goodness sake! Matt Dunstan – wow! As with all the other scenarios, Neuhauser comes with a fascinating (and eminently-exploitable) story: a storm felled hundreds of thousands of trees and, rather than watch that much valuable resource rot, local industry building a cantilevered transport system to transport it for use: railways are not just about getting the Vicar to the Cathedral on time or cabbages to the city, after all!  

The Necropolis Railway is my own dark sense of humour coming to the fore; in a game that involves digging and building with stone, it seemed hilarious – and utterly within the system – to move your dead surveyor to his pre-prepared grave-and-headstone! The real route only has a small number of stations, so that’s why the build Event is seriously-neutered and the emphasis is shifted on to track-building and bonuses. The original release had two hundred sets of (unpainted) resin coffins as an extra detail – it was originally going to be just fifty, but the pre-order demand was so frantic that the guy I sourced them from made a special ’20 at a time’ mould! The Necrop is possibly my personal favourite because the first Surveyor to be buried triggers a two more turns only ‘end of game’ condition ie. this somber procession of corpses is a race game!  

Essen 2015 had us sharing a stand with Martin Wallace’s Treefrog and - due to an issue with the publication of Guilds of London - forced to find an alternative to help cover the show costs! Fortunately, there was Matt Dunstan’s Trans-Australian Railway just tampin’ for a release and an archived Geekmail folder attests to the desire for a Daffodil Line reprint. 

Trans-Oz is the first scenario that seriously messes with the weather: drought, floods and feeding your parched workers enough water to get across the desert without dying! The addition of a quirky set-collection element – the three different gauges of track – also contributes to the more complex nature of this scenario. It’s tough but a lot of fun! 

Matt never seems to sleep and it was but a few months later that he was pitching his China/Tibet idea: the building of the highest altitude (modern) railway and the need for oxygen to keep your workers working at a reasonable (as opposed to impaired) rate. You will discover this intriguing scenario next year, of course, along with Hisashi Hayashi’s (Trains, Minerva, Yokohama) Mount Hakone scenario: hot springs, electrified railways and wood in addition to the usual digging, building and track-laying shenanigans!  

My own Bluebell Railway, Wye Valley Tourer and Malta Railway scenarios have been/are being regularly discussed/analysed/developed/spoiled in my BGG blog (Every Man Needs A Shed) but, in summary, the former loves building and has a Cricket Match mechanism; the Wye Valley has postcards and beer drinking; while the latter – still fresh from my head – mixes up several of the Deluxe Edition’s custom –eeples (water, dynamite, flowers) and adds ‘Bus Events’ for a quirky, sun-baked expansion.  

Would that it were to finish there, eh? The world is bursting with railway history that will lend itself to the Snowdonia treatment; just some of them currently residing in InDesign folders and/or sleeved with old Magic cards include: The Varsity Line (Oxford to Cambridge), The Trans-Siberian Railway (a BIG one, that!) and The Orient Express (with murder).  

So: stow your baggage in the racks provided, sit back and please enjoy the glorious gaming journey that awaits you!

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Finally, as we've promised in the beginning, here's something you an take part in yourselves, or share it with some friends: a great opportunity to get a copy of Snowdonia Deluxe Master Set. Just click here (or on the picture abive), and enter! You have to be swift, however, as there are only a dozen or so hours left!

We hope you have a great day - and see you in a few hours! After all, we have a Train Design contest to deal close today, and Mr. Boydell is already working on the list of winners!

Błażej

A Video (filled) Update!
almost 6 years ago – Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 10:41:36 PM

Ladies and Gentlemen,

being right in the centre of Europe, we are trying to survive the heat wave (about 50% of our team), or loving it (another 50%). The weekend is fast approaching, so just before it starts, we wanted to present you with a few fun videos.

As always, let's start with learning a bit of Welsh, this time getting to know a phrase all who suffer from the heat wave could find most useful:

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Apparently, the fans of Tom Heath's Slickerdrips channel voted to see Snowdonia played and reviewed (Perhaps some of you wonderful people had something to do with it?), and now we can proudly add Tom's videos to our line-up.

First, let's take a look at the playthrough:

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And now, for those of you wondering what Tom had to say about the game, here's his impressions video of Snowdonia:

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We're very happy to hear all the great things he had to say about the game, and with another video that you can use to help other people find out about Snowdonia Deluxe Master Set on Kickstarter - apart from the Legends, and the Welsh lessons.

And speaking of Welsh lessons...

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Spoiler alert: no, it's not!

Have a great day!

Błażej

Designer Update: For the Joy of being alive and Steaming. Part 1.
almost 6 years ago – Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 12:51:54 AM

Ladies and Gentlemen!

With over 3000 backers, Snowdonia Deluxe Master Sethas become the most popular Kickstarted game in NSKN Games's history - and it is truly an amazing feeling. To celebrate this we convinced Mr. Tony Boydell himself to write a special text we could offer as an update to all of you.

However, before we jump into the history of Snowdonia design, let's learn a bit more Welsh, shall we?

And now, without further ado, let's hear it from Mr. Boydell himself:

For the Joy of being alive and Steaming. Part 1.

Snowdonia was always designed to have bolt-on scenarios; at the time of publishing, the two ‘basic edition’ railways (Mt Snowdon and Blaenau Ffestiniog) were joined by mock-ups of what would become the Jungfraubahn and an entire game in its own right: Darjeeling. I suppose the reason for two initial scenarios was down to Uwe Rosenberg’s Ora Et Labora which came with the Ireland and France decks – two ways of playing the core game to add a little thematic and mechanical variety.

As scenarios go, Snowdon and Blaenau are very different in play style - ie. you can’t win one railway by applying your play style from the other – and this is where my informal design guide for Snowdonia was born: build on the core system by adding some - but not too many! – wrinkles.

Given that the majority of components for a scenario are ‘just cards’ (around the outside of, or over the action spaces on, the board), this made scenarios extraordinarily cheap to produce and outrageously good value for money for the players: typically TWO new ways of playing for about five euros!

As with any game that runs a central system with thematic extensions – Power Grid, Concordia, Age of Steam etc – a designer is only limited by time and the continued connection to their game. Snowdonia was the catalyst for a fast-growing obsession with railway history; the more I researched my local Town, or the heritage railways I passed on my working-in-Wales travels, the more ideas for scenarios grew! 

The year after Snowdonia’s first release, the 2nd edition was published with three expansions (two ‘official’ and one crowdfunding exclusive), I was selling the 750 copies of The Daffodil Line (my local railway) and I’d gifted Lookout Games with a German language-only Bayerische Zugspitzbahn deck. For the fresh-faced Snowdonia addict, 2013 was an Essen Spiel of chasing around the halls trying to source all five!

The Daffodil Line runs from the town of Ledbury, through my home town of Newent and on to the rail-and-sail distribution hub that was Gloucester. Much of the line was built over the route of the prior Herefordshire canal system which, immediately, suggested I flip the need to ‘empty’ track cards in to the need to ‘fill them in’. The collection of sets (bunches) of Daffodils comes from the charming backstory to the line’s naming: the growing and transportation of narcissi. To support the need to ‘fill them in’, given the limited initial supply of rubble cubes, I introduced the Works alt-action of smashing stone into rubble and an expansion fell fully-formed from the page to the printing press. 

The Bayerische Zugspitzbahn was born of a lengthy Wikipedia/Google search marathon and was a more seat-of-the-pants design. It’s really an extension of the Blaenau Ffestiniog requirement for a surveyor to be in the right place to allow building, with a cable car added on for good (thematic) measure! It’s also the first scenario with building space bonuses be something other than straight points – something that I would return to again-and-again to add some real spice the humble [E] action. 

Mount Washington and Jungfraubahn are about snow and, the latter, about blowing things up! The Cog (Mount Washington) was a last minute addition to the 2nd edition campaign – with an American company taking the strain, I wanted an American-themed railway to be included. It’s a fairly vanilla scenario that offers plenty of choice for players who like to build; the thematic wrinkle involves the end-of-game ‘slide down the mountain’ performed by the Surveyors which is a direct homage to the workers on The Cog who ended their day by free-wheeling down the mountain on home-made trolleys. 

Jungfraubahn is a heavier addition with it’s mystery cards that need to be dynamite-ed to reveal the number of track cards between stations AND the fun of atomizing rubble with explosives for points, or digging it out the old-fashioned way for points and resources! Jungfraubahn is a favourite of many players who prefer a meatier scenario because of the need to consider how to split the excavation work rate, the timing of setting dynamite, exploiting snow showers and grabbing lucrative build spaces.

To be concluded...

Once again, thank you all for being with us, and just before we wrap this up, let's learn a phrase most useful in a fan-favourite scenario mentioned above:

Now we're ready to chuck some dynamite!

Have a great day!

Błażej

Fulfillment plan & even more Welsh!
almost 6 years ago – Tue, Jul 17, 2018 at 08:51:46 PM

Ladies & Gentlemen,  

In an update las week (you can read it here) we talked about production of Snowdonia Deluxe Master Set. But production is by far not everything, and fulfillment has comes with its own challenges. And speaking of challenges...

You know we tried, and if you want to, now you can too! It's absolutely fine if you mutter the name under your breath, as you go through the following paragraphs.

So, based on the number of backers from each country/region, we are going to organize fulfillment centers so that as many backers as possible get their rewards locally. We have already arranged for US, Canada and EU, but we won't stop here. 

Because we have so many backers from UK, there will for sure be a dedicated fulfillment center covering UK and perhaps (depending on Brexit) a few countries around. Another fulfillment center will be in Asia (Hong Kong or China) which will deliver games to people from East, South-East and South Asia and probably Australia. If we get more backers from Australia, we will look into the possibility of organizing a fulfillment center there as well. In most of the above countries, a package with a single game should arrive customs free. 

Furthermore, we're exploring the possibility of having multiple EU fulfillment centers, so that picking and packing time (plus transit time) is reduced to a minimum. There is a good chance that France and Poland will also be added to the list of fulfillment centers on top of Germany and UK. 

With this plan in place, if overseas shipping comes with no major surprises, we should be able to finish the whole delivery process (international shipping, packing, and fulfillment) in about 2.5 months for almost all destinations.

Now, all that's left for you is... wait. And one of the best way of using the time spent on waiting is - obviously - learning a language. So, to close it all up, let's have one more phrase. This time, a much easier one:

Once again, if you want to make the project grow even more, help others find out about Snowodnia Deluxe Master Set using one of our videos.

I hope you have a great day,

Andrei