So, having been laid off several months ago, I found myself with a good deal of free time on my hands and I decided to resurrect an old project. It was a complicated game with a lot of variables in the table top wargame genre. Well, the variables finally did me in and I threw in the towel. There was just too much to figure out, too much to try and balance and make playable.
What does any of that have to do with Vikings?
The day after I gave up on the wargame attempt, I was sitting at my computer doing up some resumes and stuff, thinking in the back of my mind about board games. I really enjoy board games, most particularly cooperative board games like Zombicide and Pandemic. I was thinking about adversaries.
What type of thing would make a good board game adversary? Someone or something that could be played against by a group of people. It would have to be instantly recognizable as a threat, like zombies or an alien invasion or something.
And then, there in the middle of the afternoon as I was looking for a job, into my brain fluttered the idea: Vikings!
At that moment the idea of the game poured into my head. I made a few notes and called my dad. Not because my dad happens to be an experience board game designed. Not because I have to tell him everything I do. Oh no, I called dad because he HATES board games with a burning, fiery passion. The only board game he likes at all is Zombicide. I figured if I told him about my game idea and he liked it, it was worth pursuing.
Well, he liked it. Within 2 days I had version 1.0 of the rules written up. He, being an accomplished artist (his name is Howard Cobb, you can check out some of his stuff over at www.howardcobb.com. You might recognize some of it, since he did the concept art for costumes in Underworld and a few other movies) offered to draw up a game board. I cobbled together other bits out of cardboard and old playing cards. Then we sat for the first test play.
A little side note- Great Heathen Army (this is the working title; I promise to change it to something far more interesting before the game goes to publishing) is a resource control and kingdom development game that is based on the idea of defending Wessex from the Great Heathen army circa 876 AD (No, I haven't watched The Last Kingdom. I didn't hear about it until after I had drafter version 1.0 of the rules).
So, the test play went OK, so we arranged a larger test play, with more participants. And the game broke. It broke hard. I went back to the drawing board and came up with version 2.0 of the rules, which went back for a replay. It worked, but still had some kinks.
Now we are up to version 2.1. The biggest flaw I'm looking at now is game length. It takes about 3 hours to play 7 turns (thats as far as we've ever gotten because it takes 3 hours), mostly because players spend 20 minutes talking before each turn, trying to micromanage strategy. So, version 2.1 streamlined player options to make things move a little smoother.
I plan to update this blog with my play testing adventures. If I run into difficult problems, you'll see me in the forum!
Cheers!
