Belfort on ‘Watch it Played!’

Rodney Smith of Watch It Played! has chosen Belfort as his next game in his series.

The first video is a super thorough rules explanation of the game. If you’ve never played before then simply watch this video right before playing and everyone will be in the know!

Then his series continues as he starts to play the game with his son. What’s really cool about this is that after a couple of moves, he pauses and asks the viewers what he should do next. He allows some time to pass as people provide their thoughts, and the comment that gets the most ‘thumbs up’ votes, is the move that he will do. Pretty cool! So far we’re two episodes in, so feel free to play along with Rodney and his son as they explore the 2 player version of Belfort!

And of course, if you haven’t heard yet, Belfort: The Expansion Expansion is currently available on Kickstarter – eagerly awaiting your support!

Belfort: The Expansion Expansion – new art revealed!

Here’s another Assistant from our first expansion to Belfort called Belfort: The Expansion Expansion. This one is the Gorgon and she has some mighty fine skills! You can still support the expansion on Kickstarter!

Gorgon Background Story

What do you get when you mix stone-cold business accumen with deadly beauty? Why, the Gorgons from the dark caves in the swamps surrounding Belfort, that’s what! One might see a Gorgon or two in Belfort during the warmer months, seeking to make some gold to last through the winter.

While some may say they use scare tactics, the Gorgons themselves prefer to use the word “charm” to describe their ability to ensure that the most lucrative tracts of land remain available for their Master Architect’s use. Anyone else hoping to build in a district occupied by a Gorgon best be prepared to pay for the privilege or risk becoming part of the ever-growing rock garden in that area.

Rules

As the Gorgon’s Master Architect, you can place her in a District of your choice. To build in that district now costs other players an ever-increasing amount of Gold as the year passes. However, if you choose to build in that District, you will be paid to do so!

All Gold transfers are between the players and the supply. Note that a payment is good for the whole round in which it was made – you do not gain Gold twice if you build two Properties in the District the Gorgon is in, for example.

ProTip

Choose the Gorgon as your Assistant if you have a memory like a Dwarf – long and full of grudges! Once vacant lots become scarcer, a shrewd Master Architect (like yourself, perhaps) should take account of who wants to build what and where.

Strategically placing your Gorgon in districts where other Master Architects want to build can paralyze their plans if they haven’t factored in the fee they will need to pay the supply now.

 

-Jay Cormier

 

Belfort: The Expansion Expansion – How it came to be

Belfort was released to the world in the late months of 2011. Since then the game has done extremely well, selling out of two print runs, getting picked up for a German and a Polish version and now it’s getting a full expansion with funding through Kickstarter. The expansion started to get developed in August of 2011 – months before the base game had even hit the shelves! This is not to say that we were cocky and expecting that the game would be a huge hit, but we were excited about it and liked playing in the Belfort sandbox!

The publisher, Michael Mindes of Tasty Minstrel Games (TMG) let us know about an idea he had about wanting buildings to be upgradeable such that players could get more gold, or more Gnome placements. At the same time, Sen and I had been toying with an idea about using roles and that these roles would be tied to turn order. We had quickly brainstormed some ideas of the powers for these roles and they were very basic yet beneficial. We thought it was interesting to tie these powers to the turn order, as that would make people want to use the King’s Camp more often.

Then we got Michael’s peanut butter mixed into our chocolate. We combined the two ideas and the powers soon became Assistants. Since the players are the Master Architects, it didn’t make sense to give them powers directly. Also, by making them Assistants we could introduce a lot of new races into the game – which meant new Josh Cappel artwork eventually!! We also added a new resource called Reputation. Players started with 2 Reputation and could earn more by going to the cathedral. The cathedral was a new tile that laid on top of the board, but right in the centre – in the middle of the Keep. The Cathedral had 1 worker plank on it and if you went there you got 2 more Reputation. Players had to use Reputation to activate their assistants’ powers or gain an expansion permit to upgrade a building.

We liked the idea of upgrading a building, but we weren’t too keen on upgrading it just to get discounts on resources. We had a brilliant idea that brought in individual scoring paths for each player – and that was to tie a specific scoring option whenever someone expands their building. We tried it and it was really interesting! By telling a player that they will get more points if the buildings they build have more wood in them – well, that makes players want to build buildings with even more wood. This cause people to play the game differently than they did before – which was very interesting, and I think a good direction for an expansion.

We playtested this a few times and tweaked the powers here and there and it seemed to be going well, but then had an idea from one of our playtesters: why not get rid of the Reputation altogether. This was interesting but frustrating. It was a new currency that made everything work, so we were perplexed at how to make everything work without that currency. Eventually we decided, why not just let people use the power for free every turn? Was that too powerful? Then for acquiring an Expansion Permit, players would have to NOT use their Assistant power in order to get it. Aha! That really worked! Now players were really motivated to use the Assistants’ powers, but they were also really motivated to expand their buildings.

OK, so now we were ready. But with 10 Assistants we couldn’t be certain of how each Assistant worked with each of the guilds. Would any of them be broken if a certain combination came out? To figure this out we advertised here on this site that we were looking for playtesters for the expansion. We had over 70 groups email us wanting to participate. We sent them a pdf of the basic art file (nothing by Josh Cappel yet – just clip art!) and waited for their feedback.

We did the playtesting in three phases. After each phase we gathered all the feedback from all the playtesters, assessed their comments and tweaked the powers of the Assistants. The most valuable feedback that came in (well, it was all really valuable – but this one stood out) was to allow players to choose their Assistant every round instead of having it locked into their turn order. We found that when the Assistant was locked into turn order – it didn’t motivate more King’s Camp action. Instead, players just hunkered down and devised a strategy for their one Assistant and stuck with it the entire game. By allowing players to choose – they could choose the same one every turn, but most players would change it out, and this offered even more strategy and created even more desire to go last (because Assistants were chosen in reverse turn order!).

After three phases, we were happy with all the feedback we got and locked the rules down. There was a conversation in the middle where TMG was wondering if we could do some smaller expansions instead of a big one. Could we divide this expansion into two? Fortunately we never had to because we were really happy with the direction we were going, the feedback we were getting, and how integrated the two ideas now were. In the third phase we decided to cut the rounds down from 7 to 6. This was mostly due to the fact that the Assistants were so powerful that players were building almost all of the buildings on the board by the final round. So thematically we said that the king has given the Architects one less month to make his city even more beautiful, but to help them out he’s allowing them to use his Assistants. The very last rule we added was to start players all at 6 points, thus making taxes happen even in the first month (unless you have the Halfling Assistant!).

In the last couple months we’ve seen the art start to come together, and now the Kickstarter campaign is in full effect! If you’d like to back Belfort: The Expansion Expansion, then please do so by clicking here!

-Jay Cormier

Originally, The Expansion Expansion was called “Belfort: Reputations and Renovations” because of the now-missing Reputation points that were driving this new segment of the game.  Originally, you would lose reputation by having to rely on your Assistant’s aid.  Imagine – a Master Architect’s mere Assistant helping out?  Shameful!  Minus 1 Reputation to you!  But if you accomplished the feat of renovating an existing building to be better looking and such, your Reputation for being an able craftsman would be bumped up accordingly.

It made so much sense!  We had Guilds linked to Reputation points and other ways to use them planned – using them to affect majority scoring, trading for resources, and turn order were all in the works at one point or another.  In the end, however, we are happy with having them out of the game (for now!) as they created another thing to track physically.  The Reputationless method we’re using now is much leaner and faster – having to remember to have ANOTHER currency/resource made attaining an Expansion Permit and then build it very difficult and slow, in terms of average number of rounds it took to complete it.  What we came up with after eliminating Reputation is essentially the same thing, abstracted down:  We use the Assistant to either do their ability or obtain the work permits required to start an Expansion.  This either/or dilemma, in effect, mimics the idea of gaining or losing Reputation enough to justify the removal of that resource.

I’m super-satisfied with how the final product is turning out!  Josh Cappel’s artwork never ceases to both delight and amuse me.  His work on the rules is somehow whimsical and precise at the same time and his characterization of the denizens of Belfort make me howl in delight.  I personally can’t wait to get the Halfling, Giant, etc. into play!  And, as much as I like/resemble the Halfling, I’m really hoping that nobody picks the Imp(s)!

And here’s a first look (world premiere, I believe!) at the talented Pixies, who bring a splash of even more colour into our beloved world of Belfort!

Interestingly enough, Jay and I got our copies of the German and Polish versions of Belfort while at Alan Moon’s Gathering of Friends last week.  We’re unsure if either Pegasus or Lacerta will pick up the expansion for our European friends, but we hope so!

Thanks to everyone who has supported our Kickstarter campaign so far and we’re looking forward to getting this product out into your hot little hands.  It’s been a long time in development, so it’s high time that things got released to the wild!

~ Sen-Foong Lim

Did you help playtest the Belfort expansion?

I’ve got some good news and some bad news…

The good news is that the Belfort expansion will be announced within a week or so! Yay! The publisher has decided to use Kickstarter to gauge the level of interest in the expansion. Expect to hear from us again when it launches!!

The bad news is that 2 months ago my home was robbed and they stole all my electronics. On the computer that was stolen was the contact information of all the people that playtested the expansion many, many months ago.

This really sucks because we want to credit them in the rule book – AND we’d like to get a blurb/review from any of them to help support the Kickstarter campaign.

Sooooo…if you were one of the playtesters, can you contact us? We’d like to give credit to you in our rule book and also see if you can provide some feedback that we can use in our campaign. Email me directly: explorer @ bertolt . ca (remove spaces before copying and pasting).

Thanks y’all – and talk to you all again soon with some news and art from Josh Cappel.

Belfort mini-promo now available to all!

When the second printing of Belfort came to our shores last month, they also came with a mini-promo that consisted of three new guilds! These guilds can be mixed and matched with all your other guilds to keep replayability high on the game.

There was a bit of kerfuffle when current owners of the game couldn’t get their hands on this neat little promo – but that is now rectified! The Belfort Guild Promo Pack #1 is now available on the Boardgamegeek store for $5.00!

What’s so special about these three new guilds? Well, first we have the Contractors’ Guild, which is a new Resource Guild and provides 1 Wood, 1 Stone and 1 Metal. This variety is nice and has been a favourite throughout all the playtesting!

Next is the Rules Lawyers’ Guild – which is a great name for a guild! This guild allows you to break the rules of the game by getting points outside the normal ways. Always keep an eye on someone who continues to target this guild!

Finally we have the Sentries’ Guild. This guild puts more emphasis on building walls! Usually they are buildings that are built near the end of the game, but now you can profit from them throughout the game!

We hope you enjoy this mini-promo!

On a side note: we’ve finalized the rules to our official expansion and it will be heading to our artist (the amazing Josh Cappel) very soon!

-Jay Cormier

Bamboozle Brother Update and More Love for Belfort AND Train of Thought!

It’s been a fun couple of weeks for the Bamboozle Brothers. Let’s review what we can. I do like to be as transparent as possible, but I also don’t want to put the cart before the horse and speak about something before there is a signed contract.

1. At The Gathering, Filosofia expressed interest in publishing EIEI-O but with a different title. We’re still awaiting final word and a contract on this one.
2. I showed our game, But Wait There’s More at the Gathering and a publisher has expressed interest in publishing it! We’ve been emailing back and forth contract-type requests with percentage breakdowns for royalties, so this one is looking pretty promising. We’re expecting an actual contract within a week or two.
3. A publisher emailed us that they would like to publish Swashbucklers, but since the time we gave it to them and now, Swashbucklers has undergone a few tweaks that has made the game even better. The publisher has yet to play the new tweaks and so we’re still waiting for a contract from them as well.
4. Akrotiri is getting some love from a publisher, and we’re close to getting a contract on this one as well. The caveat to this one is that the publisher wants to publish it as a 2-player only game. Sen and I talked about it and decided that we were ok with this. Since it is a tile laying game that can be prone to analysis paralysis when played by the wrong players, they wanted to put the game in the best possible spotlight, and a 2-player only game was the way to do it. We should hear back from them within a week or two on their final decision.
5. Belfort second printing is due to hit shores this month along with a small promo package of 3 new guilds (sold separately). After being hard to find for a few months, it will be great to see this back on the shelves.
6. Sen and I have finished the Belfort Expansion! It is now in the hands of the developer and will soon be heading to the wonderfully talented Josh Cappel to make some more of his lovely art! We’re ridiculously excited for our very first expansion!
7. We are working with a German publisher to bring Belfort to Germany! Contracts are currently being figured out to have a German language version of the game. That will be very cool to see.
8. We did get a few rejections recently. Hans Im Gluck decided to pass on Bermuda Triangle – but provided us some great feedback that was specific to the game. This showed us that they played the game and that for the reasons they stated decided it was not a game for them at this time. Sen and I will re-evaluate the game to see if we want to listen to their feedback and change it – or submit it to another publisher who might be more open to the concept.
9. Clunatics and Lost for Words were ‘kind of’ rejected by Pegasus Spiele. I say ‘kind of’ because they said they didn’t have enough time to localize (translate everything to German) to play the prototype. They said if we did then they’d be happy to test it. We decided to ask for it back from them for the time being and see if we can figure out a way to localize it. Either that – or submit it to another publisher that isn’t concerned about localization.
10. We got a new written review for Belfort from Shut Up & Sit Down
11. We got a new video rules review for Train of Thought from the Marbles Store.
12. We got a great new video review of Train of Thought from Board to Death where they rated it a 9 out of 10!

So it’s been a fun few weeks for Sen and I! We will keep you all posted on what’s what. Once contracts are signed then we can give you the scoop on who’s publishing what. We still have a few more steps to go on our master series as well!

-Jay Cormier

The Gathering of Friends: Part 6 – Pitching to Hans Im Gluck and more Toy Vault

Rob was doing a good job in bumping into publishers and setting up meetings, and we had another meeting set up for Thursday morning with Tom from Hans Im Gluck. He said he was looking for meatier games and so Rob showed him games like Coffee and Tortuga and all I could show him was Akrotiri. He really seemed to like Akrotiri, but understood that it was with another publisher. But again, it’s good to have a ‘line-up’ of publishers willing to look at our games! We went to lunch together and had another casual time with a publisher!

Later in the day/evening, I wanted to play Swashbucklers with a couple people. Rob and our friend Brent Lloyd agreed to play. This game was recently picked up by a publisher and time between our submission to the publisher and now, the game underwent a few tweaks. I wanted to play the game we sent to the publisher and then play the newly tweaked game with the same people to get their opinion.

We played the first game almost the same as the one we sent to the publisher. It was apparent to Rob and Brent that there were some imbalances to the game. So we played it again with all the new tweaks and they both loved the new version a lot more. This was good and reaffirmed that we now have to show the publisher this new version as it’s a better game. While we were playing, Frank from R&R Games came by and expressed interest in seeing the game. I had to let him know that it was already signed and he said he would look forward to seeing it on the shelf!

Then as we were winding down, Ed from Toy Vault came by and saw the last few rounds. It dawned on Rob and I that we should play more prototypes in very visible areas more often! As we were wrapping up, Ed asked if we were free to try Hog the Remote with some people. Uh – yeah, sure!! I went into the main convention area and found some people to play with us. I had played a game of Alba Longa with Peter Hawes – a fellow game designer, who previously asked if I could help him playtest one of his games the next morning with a publisher. I agreed – and later, when I was looking for people to play Hog the Remote, I saw that he wasn’t busy, so recruited him to play. I found Chris Handy was free as well and he agreed to help out. Rob found Jenna and we now had 6 people!

We played a round of Hog the Remote and it couldn’t have went better! We played it using the “Train of Thought” scoring – where one person is the ‘describer’ and everyone else is guessing and the describer has to get as many titles guessed as possible. Afterwards we talked about possible spin offs that focus on different categories like movies or books or song titles. It would mean that the first game shouldn’t be called Hog the Remote though – so a new title is in the works!

Ed then asked if people could stick around to try But Wait, There’s More and while Peter had to get some sleep, Lucio came by to replace him and Chris, Rob and Jenna stayed. I had told Ed that this game shared some similarities to The Big Idea but that it was different enough to warrant assessing. He agreed. We played a few rounds of But Wait, There’s More and it was possibly the best session I’ve ever had of that game. There was so much laughing – it was awesome! At the end Ed asked the group if this game was only for extroverts and Chris piped up to say that the game offered enough structure that would allow introverts to play. Rob added that most party games do involve mostly extroverted people to some degree, and then Jenna mentioned that she was an introvert and this was the limit of what she was willing to do in a party game. She said that the cards made the pitch funny and she didn’t have to work very hard at it at all to be funny.

Ed asked everyone which game they preferred and it was if they were both being paid by me because they said they liked them equally. Jenna slightly preferred Hog the Remote, but said she would definitely buy But Wait, There’s More to play with her friends. Overall, it was a fantastic gaming session with Ed! I’m excited about the prospects for both these games! He said we should know one way or the other in 3-4 weeks.

The rest of the Gathering for me was more social and I spent time playing some actual games with people! I played Last Will, Catacombs, the unpublished, upcoming game from Queen called Escape the Curse of the Mayan Temple (very fun), Quebec, Africana, as well as some more protoypes like Rob’s Crazy Train and Peter Hawes Railway game with Tom from Hans Im Gluck.

I wanted to get in at least one game of Belfort with the upcoming expansion. I found some complete strangers to play the game (it’s so easy to find people to play games with at the Gathering!). Two had played the game before and one hadn’t, but they were all interested in playing with the expansion. The playtest went smoothly with one player saying that he’d only ever want to play Belfort with the expansion in the future because it brought the complexity up to a level that he enjoyed more. The game ended up in a tie between me and another player, and the tie-breaker is number of resources – and we both had the same amount of resource, so it was a complete tie!!

While I was wrapping up, another person came by and when he found out I designed Belfort he was effusive in his praise for the game! He said he even had a review of the game coming out next week in his online magazine called Gamer’s Alliance! He was pretty excited for the expansion, so I showed him how it worked. He was excited to eventually try it!

On the last day Rob and I were walking around, looking for a game to play and bumped into a complete stranger. We asked him if he was looking for a game and he said he was. We asked him if he had any idea of what he wanted to play as Rob and I were easy to please. He asked if we heard of a game called Belfort..! That was pretty cool! So, since Rob hadn’t played the game yet, we set it up and found a fourth player interested in playing and played a game of Belfort – without the expansion as they were all first-timers. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and Rob even squeaked out a win in a close game!

After the Prize ceremony on Saturday I had a friend who lives near Niagara Falls drop by for a visit and we drove to Buffalo in search for Buffalo wings. It was actually harder than we thought as we didn’t really know where we were going. We found a place and I got to relax with a buddy and eat some wings and drink some beer! A great ending to an amazing week!

All in all, it was an exhausting weekend that was also a complete blast! Tons of new friends made, tons of contacts made in the business, and lots of games played. Can’t wait until next year!

-Jay Cormier

The Gathering of Friends: Part 1 – Overview

I just got back from the Gathering of Friends and have a lot of things to share with you! This is the first of many posts reviewing my experience at the Gathering of Friends.

First of all, what the heck is the Gathering of Friends, you ask? Well, Alan Moon – the prolific designer of such hit games like Ticket to Ride and Elfenland – decided 23 years ago to get some friends together to play games over the course of a week. Every year since then it has grown in attendance. For the first few years, only an invite directly from Alan himself could get you to the Gathering. Eventually, he noticed that there was clearly a desire of many others who would love to attend, but Alan still wanted to ensure only the right kind of people attended.

The new policy is that anyone who has been to the Gathering at least 2 years can nominate someone to attend, and then that person needs to be seconded by two other people who have also attended the Gathering for at least 2 years. So it’s a pretty exclusive club. This year, and for the next three years, it takes place at the Sheraton on the US side of Niagara Falls.

Thanks to the Game Artisans of Canada, I found myself with an invite! Whaaa? Me? Yeah! Another member of the Game Artisans of Canada, Mike Kolross has been attending for about 5 years now – thanks to his ability to make components for the game, Descent that Alan greatly enjoyed. Last year, he and Rob Bartel, another member of GAC, made a portable/travel edition of Alan’s Ticket to Ride out of wood (kind of like a fold up cribbage board) and it was a huge hit. Mike then made another one for Christian Hildenbrand from Amigo Games (for his wife actually) and through Christian and Mike I got my invite to the Gathering!

I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I heard that Alan doesn’t mind that designers are pitching games to publishers, but that he preferred to make the Gathering more about playing games with friends. So I didn’t follow Step 20 and set up any meetings in advance with any publisher. That said, we did know which publishers were going to be there, thanks to email updates from Alan himself. This allowed Sen and I to prepare by assessing which games of ours would fit best with each publisher (Step 17). We could have done better at this – by making some solid notes about each.

Following Step 21, I packed up one bag full of prototypes. With so many prototypes to carry around, I’ve decided that the best way to do this is the large baggie system. I take all the components of a game and put them into one large baggie. Of course I put some components in smaller baggies and then into the larger baggie to make it easy to set up and play. Then I labeled each baggie with a sticker that had the logo of the game as well as my contact information. I heard a story from Frank DiLorenzo from R&R games where he had a prototype of a pretty good game, but it had no contact information on it whatsoever! Ouch! Sen and I pretty much like to have our contact information in as many places as possible – on the baggie, on the Sales Sheet (Step 14), on each page of the rules in the header, and even on some other component of the game – if it makes sense.

I print out the rules for all my games and put them all into one folder as they’d get wrinkled up if I put them into the baggie. If a publisher wanted a prototype, then I’d fish out the rules, fold them in half and stick it in the large baggie with the rest of the game. Prior to this trip we had many other Game Artisans who wanted me (and Rob Bartel, who also attended) to pitch their games to publishers on their behalf, since they were not invited. I didn’t mind doing this for other Game Artisans, but the game had to be something I enjoyed and something I would feel comfortable pitching. So for the weeks leading up to the Gathering I was getting prototypes mailed to me from other chapters in hopes that I’d like their game and could pitch it to publishers. I liked three games of the ones I was sent and agreed to pitch them. This just meant that my backpack full of prototypes now had three more games stuffed in it! In my backpack I was carrying these prototypes:

1. Junkyard – even though this game has exclusivity with Wiggles 3D until June 1st, we wanted to show some other publishers, in case Wiggles ultimately decided to pass on it
2. Clunatics – this one is being assessed by Pegasus Spiele, but we wanted to bring it to show other publishers (and we were clear with new publishers that the game was currently being assessed by Pegasus)
3. Hog the Remote
4. But Wait, There’s More!
5. Akrotiri
6. Eat at Joe’s
7. EIEI-O!
8. Swashbucklers – currently being signed by a publisher, but we wanted to test one last thing with the game
9. Belfort – plus the expansion prototype
10. An untitled prototype that is Alpha stage, currently called Box Office
11. Captionary
12. Bordeaux – prototype from GAC member, Matt Musselman
13. A Game of Cat and Mouse – prototype from GAC member, Al Leduc
14. Iron Horse Bandits – prototype from GAC member, Graeme Jahns

Yowza! That’s a lot of prototypes! In the next post I’ll review how the Gathering is laid out and then get into what it was like pitching to publishers at the Gathering, and finally share which of our games garnered interest from them as well.

-Jay Cormier

Belfort Expansion Update

Well we’re elbow deep in Belfort Expansion awesomeness! We’ve completed Phase 1 of our playtesting and are now just getting into Phase 2, with the first playtest report coming back already (thanks Daniel!).

We knew that this expansion needed a lot of playtesting since it added some new dynamic content – so we enlisted the help of our fans – and our fans responded en masse! We had to stop accepting playtesters when we reached 70! We have 70 groups of gamers all over the world – from Singapore to Australia to all over North America – testing our expansion to ensure it’s as balanced as possible.

We had a lot of great input from all the playtest reports from Phase 1. We read each one, and looked at them all as a whole – which helped us identify what needed more focus or tweaking. Then we released Phase 2, but we threw everyone a curve ball by adding a completely new aspect to Phase 2! We were excited about Phase 1 and how it would change how you played, but what we’re trying to do with Phase 2 has us positively giddy! We can’t wait to show the rest of the world! And there will be even more surprises – so those of you who are playtesting Phase 2 still won’t know everything…!

So a big thanks goes out to everyone who signed up to playtest the expansion! We hope to have as many session reports in within the next 2 weeks so we can make the final tweaks and send it off to get some lovely art done by Josh Cappel!

For those that aren’t playtesting it but want to know a bit more about it, here are some hints:

• Notice on the Calendar that it’s divided into 3 seasons?
• Wouldn’t it be great if there was another way to score points in Belfort?
• Belfort combines 3 core gaming mechanics (area majority, worker placement, resource management) – could we add another core mechanic?
• Imps, Hobgoblins and Ogres?

-Jay Cormier

Belfort Expansion Playtesters Needed

Are you interested in playtesting the upcoming expansion to Belfort? Read on…

Looks like there will be a couple of Belfort expansions coming out this year! The first expansion will be a very small expansion – probably 3 new guilds. It will be super affordable and very accessible. The second one will change things up a bit and add a whole new layer – but actually make the game speed up! Crazy right?!

More good news, we’ve been given the green light to send out the prototype files to people interested in helping us playtest the prototype. There are so many permutations of how this new expansion works as it adds even more dynamic content. Add that to the fact that we have interchangeable guilds and we have a lot of testing to do!

If you are interested then you can send me an email (jay@bamboozlebrothers.com) and I will send out the files in a week or so.

The expectation if you sign up would be that you do indeed get at least one playtest session in, and that you complete a pretty simple form that will give us feedback about how it went. We couldn’t have any public reviews made about the playtest sessions until we’ve finalized all the rules of course. The file will be simple to print out and play with your existing game of Belfort.

So if you’re interested – send us an email! If you’ve yet to get your copy of Belfort and have wondered if it’s a good game or not…here’s another positive review of the game, this time from a site called Ludocracy!

-Jay Cormier