Re: [piecepack] Announcing the winner!!

["Mark A. Biggar" <mark@...>]

Rob LeGood wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> The moment is at hand, the winner of the "History Repeats Itself" 
> contest is about to be announced.  I'm sending this to the main list
> without knowing the author's names, so I'm hoping that Karol will
> send a follow up email announcing the actual winning names.

> The winner of the 4th piecepack contest is "Pharoh's Heir", 

First off, let me congratulate the author of "Pharoh's Heir" on winning
the contest.

> The runner up is a very enjoyable racing game called "Chariots".  This 
> is a beer and pretzels games with some interesting mechanisms.
> Movement resolution is inspired by the Starfleet Battles method
> of movement of dividing turns into "Impulses".  If you've never
> seen this, read the rules and you'll see what I mean. It's quick
> to learn and fun to play and had the group asking to play more
> once it was over.  For me, what kept it out of first place was
> that it quite didn't go far enough.  During each lap you get two
> special actions to use which are Chariot racing themed.  I would
> have loved to seen more of these.   Basically, it felt like you
> could put any theme on this game and it would still be the same
> game.  I would have liked to see more special actions added to
> the game to make it feel more Chariot like.  I strongly recommend
> the author to take the game away and expand it.  You have a potential
> sleeper hit on your hands!  Good job!

Thanks for the kind words on my game "Chariots".  I had originally
wanted to theme the game on the original Greek Olympics.  This was
only part of the game (the running part); I had planned on having
some other events (long jump, wrestling, weight lifting, discus, etc.)
but ran out of design time and playtest time.  So I re-themed the part
I had working as chariot racing.  I actually think the game mechanisms
work better as chariots then as a foot race.  Yes, it needs more special
actions, especially an optional expansion set that adds all those combat
actions that we expect in a chariot race (like whipping the other 
drivers or horses, running chariots in to the rail for crashes, etc),
but again I ran out of time and couldn't play test any of them.
Although I do have the problem that there aren't more coins and so will
need a new method of denoting special actions.

--
mark@...
mark.a.biggar@...