Junk Art in top 1000 on Boardgamegeek!

screenshot-2017-01-14-14-55-46Junk Art now marks the third game that Sen and I have designed that made it into the top 1000 on boardgamegeek! Our top rated game is still Belfort, sitting near the 300 mark and Akrotiri is our second, sitting at around 600. Junk Art has a chance to reach higher than both of these due to the number of units that are being sold and the fact that it currently has a higher average than both of those games! That’s pretty neat. On one hand, it’s just a metric that doesn’t mean a ton – but on the other hand, this is a rank that is determined by the people who’ve (hopefully) played the game and rated it on bgg.com. So we are thankful to all of you have rated it – whatever you rated it – and we hope to have other games enter this prestigious list some day soon!

-Jay Cormier

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The Bamboozle Brothers’ GenCon Experience

IMG_2556Wow what a whirlwind adventure! This was my first visit to GenCon and I loved it! I hardly got to experience most of what GenCon had to offer as I was busy pitching games almost every hour of every day – but no complaints from me because that was so fun!
Sen and I followed our own steps on how to prepare for a convention (it’s actually been awhile since we’ve attended a convention that wasn’t The Gathering – which doesn’t follow normal convention rules for pitching!). We set up meetings with 10 different publishers via email so that the afternoons of Fri and Sat were packed – back to back meetings all afternoon.
Thursday night
Sen arrived the day before but I flew in and got to the convention just before 5pm…which was good because we had a meeting set up with Dice Hate Me at 5:50pm!
Our first stop was at the Oni Press booth to set up a meeting with Cullen Bunn, Brian Hurtt and Charlie Chu as luck fell in our laps when Sen found himself in the right place at the right time and learned that they are looking to make a game out of the comic Sixth Gun. Meeting was set for the next morning – perfect!
IMG_2553Now it was time to meet Chris from Dice Hate Me. We had created a separate folder for each publisher we were meeting with and then put our sales sheets in the order that we thought each publisher would like each of our games. The pitch went great with Chris from Dice Hate Me liking Law of the Jungle, 9 Thieves and a game from Sen and another designer called Burning Rubber.
IMG_2571Then we went to the Nerd Nighters charity event hosted by JR Honeycutt (whom I met randomly on a trip to Texas 1.5 years ago!). We got to chat with other designers like Kevin Nunn and Luke Laurie about game design, which was really interesting. Then we had to head back to help demo our game, But Wait There’s More in hall D. We had a good turn out and since they were all adults, that allowed us to test our new Naughty Version expansion and was ecstatic that it went over better than expected! Yay!
Friday
SpielWe started the day with me trying to get one of the 100 per day copies of Mysterium that Asmodee had but the lineup was too big even though I bee-lined it to their booth. Boo. Ok, next we had an interview set up with The Spiel. If you’ve ever been to a game convention then you’ve probably seen them as they wear white jackets with large coloured meeples on it! The interview was fun and humorous and should be posted soon.
Next up was our meeting with Cullen and Charlie from Oni Press. It was Sen, me and Jon Gilmour (designer of Dead of Winter) in the meeting with them. I won’t go into all the details but it was exciting to chat about the possibilities of a Sixth Gun board game with them! Then Cullen said we really need to chat with Matt Kindt….Matt Kindt!!! For those unaware, he’s one of my favourite comic creators! Cullen took a photo of Sen’s business card and texted it to Matt – who reached out right away and set up a meeting with us.  Cool!
Jon Gilmore, Charlie Chu, Brian Hurtt, Sen, Jay

This happened! Jon Gilmour, Charlie Chu, Brian Hurtt, Sen, Ja

So now it was time to jog on over to our first actual pitch of the day. The exhibitor hall is ginormous that no single photo can do justice and so it can take quite awhile to get from one side to the other – not just because of the size of the hall, but also because of the amount of people you have to navigate through. This place was packed!!
RnRFrank from R&R Games was ready for us when we arrived and we chatted quickly about our game that we already have signed with him and learned that they’re really just trying to figure out the art for it as they want to get it right. Then onto the pitches. I love pitching to Frank because he’s very straightforward and that keeps things quick and still professional. We’ve perfected our pitch process now and so we really know how to use our time wisely with publishers. You never know if a meeting is going to get cut short or not!
Our process now is to bring out the previously mentioned folder (with sales sheets in order of importance for that publisher), and go through all of our sales sheets quickly. We preface the pitch by letting the publisher know that we plan on going through a bunch of different games quickly, using the sales sheets, and then the publisher can pick and choose which ones they’d like to see or learn more about. This is a great approach because now the publisher doesn’t have to feel like a schmuck by saying no over and over again. Instead they can simply say that they want to hear more about this one and that one – without having to say that they don’t like these other ones!
Frank liked our game 9 Thieves and Chrono Chickens! As per usual though we needed to keep the prototypes for the rest of the event to show other publishers. We could always come back near the end to hand over any prototypes.
FoxtrotNext we met up with Randy from Foxtrot who liked 9 Thieves and The Mystery of Mister E! A fan of the deduction game!
ZManWe met up with Zev from Z-Man and showed him our mini Akrotiri expansion as well as the rest of our games. He liked 9 Thieves as well! Martin from Filosofia came over and we chatted about our game Junkyard that they’re going to re title to Junk Art and will be released as the second game in the Pretzel lineup after Flick Em Up. We also chatted through a scenario for Flick Em Up that we were asked to design! He showed us the first expansion for Flick Em Up and it was awesome! Horses and ramps!! What a cool game!
APTravis from Action Phase was next and he really liked Law of the Jungle, 9 Thieves and Pig Goes Moo. He was cool with us sending him Print and Play files for the games though, so that’s cool!
Then we got to meet with Hasbro! We met Dougall at The Gathering this year, and so we were already very Hasbrocomfortable and friendly with him. We pitched our games in the usual way and he was blown away (I might be exaggerating to inflate my sense of self importance) by the quantity of games that looked good! We played 9 Thieves and a couple games from other designers – Snap Shot and Burning Rubber. Then our time ran out but he wanted to see more so he set up a time on Saturday morning to the rest. Fantastic!!
RenegadeWe had to boogie to our next pitch which was with Scott from Renegade Games. He expressed interest in SimpliCITY and Pig Goes Moo!
IMG_2570And thus concluded our pitches for the day though we did a couple hours of demoing But Wait There’s More which is always fun and funny. It’s so great watching people experience the game for the first time and realizing how funny this game is!
We thought we were meeting up with Matt Kindt after this but we rescheduled for the next morning. So I played my first non-prototype game at the con and it was Flip City from Tasty Minstrel Games! Neat game! Then we met up with Level 99 Games and played their new battle game, Exceed. We were joined by Josh Cappel and had some interesting conversations about graphic design.
Saturday
We started the day by meeting up with Dougall from Hasbro again. We only had 30 minutes but it was enough to try a couple more games and for him to express interest in Chrono Chicken – but only if we can come up with a better theme (and we think we have one!), as well as The Mystery of Mister E! That could fit in their Clue line up of games.
Then we shimmied over to meet up with Matt Kindt at the Oni Press booth. This was the highlight of the con for me. Matt, Sen and I talked for about an hour, with Brian Hurtt coming in halfway through to join in on the conversation. We chatted about the possibilities of turning Matt’s comic, Mind MGMT into a board game – and wow, that was cool to just brainstorm with him! We’re going to think about it and see if we can make something happen! How cool would that be??!!?? Matt was a super cool guy who has recently fallen in love with board games. His passion about games was great and we have some good ideas that will do his property justice!! So excited about this – I. CAN’T. EVEN.
Potentially the beginning of something amazing! Sen, Brian Hurtt, Matt Kindt and Jay!!

Potentially the beginning of something amazing! Sen, Brian Hurtt, Matt Kindt and Jay!!

Ok, back to earth and onto our next pitch which was more of a show and tell than a pitch. IDW/Pandasaurus had asked us to make a dice game for The Godfather as well as a Scotland Yard-esque game based on the comic Powers. We wanted to show them our progress on both of these games. First up was The Godfather game and they LOVED it! We’ve spent a lot of time play testing and tweaking this game to a point where we’re really happy about it! So glad they love it! Next up was Powers – which was presented as a Beta game. We walked through the direction we’re going with it and they were in full agreement on our decisions so far! Whew!
BD-TMGWe had to dart over to Tasty Minstrel Games after this to show Seth and Andy our Belfort Dice Game that we’ve been working on. We let them know that this was still beta as well. Normally we wouldn’t show a publisher a game that was beta but in both these last cases they seemed to make sense. It was a good opportunity to show what we’re doing and if they had any feedback that would change the direction of the development then it’s better to know now. And they did have direction! They thought there were probably too many dice in the game. They’re going to price it out, but we’re already thinking of ways to reduce the number of dice needed.
Then I got to meet Ryan from Mayday Games. While it’s great to catch up and meet with publishers we already knew, the big benefit of coming to GenCon for us was meeting new publishers and starting a relationship with them. Ryan was fun and after pitching one of our games and getting ready for our second he gave us a really nice compliment. He said that we’re the most organized and professional designers he’s met! That’s pretty nice to hear! We do take pride in our professionalism and strive to stand out from other designers (damn, why am I sharing this with everyone else then??!). Ryan liked a bunch of our games – Chrono Chicken, 9 Thieves, Law of the Jungle!
Next up? Shari from Ad Magic. Shari had agreed to publish our game Clunatics but wanted gameplay to be smoothed out a bit more. We fooled around with so many different ways to play this game and finally had a great suggestion from one of our play testers and it worked really well.  We showed her how the new version played and she really liked it! Yay! She assigned a project manager to the project and now we’re off to the races with this one! We had enough time so I pitched a game I’ve worked on with another designer named Shad Miller called Rack Your Brains. She had seen the sales sheet before and thought it looked interesting. I walked her through the first few rounds and she got it immediately and really liked it! We were in a rush but we left it with her and the project manager so I’m not sure if it’s happening yet or not!!
So we literally had to jog to a different hotel as we had signed up to give a seminar called, “How to pitch to publishers, the Bamboozle Brothers way.” We had borrowed a projector and we had a PowerPoint presentation to go along with our skits that went through all the steps on how we pitch our games to publishers. We had about 20 people attend the seminar and they seemed really engaged throughout, asking questions and taking notes. I really liked doing it and I think it’s just another thing that Sen and I do to try and give back to this community.
At 5pm we had our last But Wait There’s More demo to run alongside the publisher. Another set of fun people came and enjoyed themselves! Tons ‘o laughs.
For the first time, we got to actually go to a sit down restaurant for a meal! Crazy! Up until then we had been eating from food trucks and from inside the convention centre (dangerous – but the pot roast sandwich was delicious actually). We met up with JR Honeycutt, Tim Brown, The Spiel guys, Josh Cappel, Daryl Chow, Daryl Andrews and more at The Yard for a meal and lots of great conversation. Great stories from everyone about how their pitches went.
On our way out of the restaurant we bumped into Michael Coe and Nathan Hadfield from Gamelyn Games. That was serendipitous since we were on our way to a different restaurant to meet them! We chatted about our upcoming game that they’re publishing of ours called, Rock Paper Wizards and agreed to meet up again later in the evening.
First time meeting! Michael Coe, Jay, Sen, Josh Cappel, Nathan Hadfield

First time meeting in real life! Michael Coe, Jay, Sen, Josh Cappel, Nathan Hadfield

Crash-SCBack at the hotel we had arranged to meet up with Patrick from Crash Games. We really thought that he would like our game SimpliCITY. We were a bit bummed that SimpliCITY wasn’t getting a lot of love at the con so far. It’s our favourite game of the ones we were pitching. I think it has to do with the sales sheet I made. I think the art makes it look too busy and basic. Anyway, we played it with Patrick and everything was humming along and we scored after the first round. Then you could almost hear the click as Patrick ‘got’ the game. He really liked it!
IMG_2614Then it was back to the hall to meet up with Gamelyn Games again. We chatted about the direction they wanted to go with Rock Paper Wizards and Josh sketched up some ideas for the cover. That’s a fun meeting! We’re thinking of aiming it more towards a family friendly type of audience since we know that gamers will like it no matter how it’s packaged. Michael really wants to get this game into mass market so the packaging really needs to appeal to that market. Then we played Tiny Epic West – the next game in the Tiny Epic universe, and had fun playing it and providing some feedback afterwards.
Sunday
Renegade-SC-giveSunday was all about re-visiting publishers to hand over our prototypes. We had some decisions to make about which prototype should go to which publisher. It’s a great position to be in when multiple publishers want your games! So we had to factor many things into which publisher we should give our games to, but their need for exclusivity – that was a big one. Some publishers requested this and that makes it hard for us! We did give some of our games to publishers that wanted exclusivity but usually it was based on their enthusiasm for our game and their promise of how much time they needed. We also found out that Dice Hate Me was also interested in our word game, Lost for Words! Huzzah! I’d love for that game to find a home!
Patrick from Crash won the Bamboozle Lottery! He gets to take one of our prototypes back with him!

Patrick from Crash won the Bamboozle Lottery! He gets to take one of our prototypes back with him!

Some of our games went home with two publishers if they didn’t care about exclusivity, so it was smart of us to bring two copies of each game! We are so SMRT! One publisher was doing print and play and Hasbro wanted us to mail him copies afterwards as he didn’t want to carry all of them back with him. So we got rid of all of our prototypes with the exception of Herdables. Boo. And we had just found a way to make the game even better too. The good news is that Huch and Friends likes that game and was interested in publishing it (and gave us the OK to pitch to other publishers at GenCon). So now we will let them know about the recent changes and that might motivate them to publish it!

So as of right now, we have no prototypes without a home! That’s a great feeling!! GenCon was even more exciting than I thought it was going to be. I wish I was there longer as we had more publishers we could have pitched to if we had the time. Next step for us is to email all these publishers to touch base with them after the con, and to ship out prototypes to Hasbro. Stay tuned if there are any takers!!
-Jay Cormier

Geekie Award Time Again!

Screenshot 2015-06-29 08.09.33Last year our game, Belfort, won the tabletop game of the year award – and we were ecstatic! Really proud of that win! Part of the prize for winning was being interviewed on Krypton Radio for their show “Event Horizon” and that episode is now live! Check it out here.

And now we’ve found out that another one of our games has been nominated this year for a Geekie award!! We’re excited to see our new party game, But Wait There’s More as a candidate alongside many other strong contenders (view them all here!)! May the best game win. Who knows, maybe we’ll even show up this year!! 🙂

-Jay Cormier

Belfort: The Expansion Expansion Review

Bex-coverThis review was posted awhile ago – but he has tweaked it so much and added so many more photos that I thought I’d share it again. His enthusiasm for the expansion is fantastic! I’m really proud of that expansion because it really feels like we added something new to the game – without bogging it down or making it more complicated. Great review Mark!

-Jay Cormier

Indie Cardboard reviews Belfort and the expansion!

belfort_topOur friends over at indie cardboard have reviewed our game, Belfort along with the Expansion Expansion. They love it and their review is fantastic – not just because they love it (though that is pretty awesome!) but because the review is pretty much ALL review and not a rules dump! I wish more board game reviews were like this. Check it out here.

-Jay Cormier

Belfort…in Belfort!!!

How cool is this? Jacob Coon – a fan of Belfort, contacted us on the Twitter to say that he’s been to Belfort – meaning the town in France! The one that has the pentagonal shaped fort that was the inspiration for the name of our game! Not only that, but he took his copy of the Belfort game and took some lovely photos! Check them out!! Thanks Jacob – these are really awesome pics!

IMG_5153 IMG_5154 IMG_5143

-Jay Cormier

Video of Belfort winning the Geekie Award!

We now have the very embarrassing video of Belfort winning the Geekie award! It’s not embarrassing because we won – that’s frickin’ awesome – no it’s embarrassing because no one showed up to collect the award!! Check out this video at 3 minutes to see what I mean!! Still – it’s amazing that we won and we’re both very happy – though miffed that we didn’t attend!!

Geekie Award for TableTop Games

-Jay Cormier

Reviews of all of our games keep coming in!

Reviews seem to be popping up all the time for one of our games so we thought we’d share wheat people are saying about all the Bamboozle Brother games recently. Check out these great comments! Really makes me happy to see so many people enjoying the game we’re making! Thanks for the kind words everyone!

ThisTown-logoThis Town Ain’t Big Enough for the 2-4 of Us

  • Recommendation: Yes! Games won’t take longer than 15 minutes, max, if that. For what it is, it is an excellent little game. If you were panning for gold, this game would be a real gem. – Kevin Garnica
  • A really fun tile laying microgame. Plays fast and has interesting moments. I really liked how you score points based on how many symbols your OPPONENTS have in the same town. Very creative. Worth checking out. – Andrew Bellavie
  • This is an EXTREMELY good/fun game for the price. Impressed with the “bones” of this one.- Xenothon Stelnicki
  • Great lunch time game and filler. Simple rules and plays well at all player numbers. Can add multiples of the game to make the game longer. – Pat Gagnon

butwaitboxBut Wait There’s More

  • Once you’ve had a taste of “But Wait, There’s More!” you’ll never want to go back to the relatively lacklustre fun of games like Apples to Apples and Snake Oil again. The genius of this game lies in the fun of the pitch – you have a little bit to go on from your hand of attributes & some randomness when you draw from the deck, and it’s all 100% hilarious and fun. Best of all, everyone gets a pitch for the item each round and then everyone votes on what they thought was the best pitch – a nice touch to make sure everyone’s participating and having fun. Highly recommended! – Nicole Hoye
  • One of the very few party games I enjoy – at all. And it’s freaking hilarious. – Sean Ross
  • Can’t wait! I love this game!!! I laugh until I cry every single time I play…- Tim Sowers
  • Played this Saturday night at Gen Con with a full table of 10. One of the best gaming experiences we had all weekend. We fit in two complete games in under an hour (and that included the time it took to learn the rules) and everyone had a great time. This was an easy buy and I’d have bought the game on the spot were it ready. – gescott01

Tortuga-BoxTortuga

  • Tried this at GenCon 2014 and really enjoyed it. – Arthur Rutyna
  • This one was a very fun time for us. Sure, there’s not a lot of strategy going on here but, the mechanics make for an enjoyable game. I like how the treasures move from the island to Tortuga throughout the game depending on how many crew members or boats you have available to you. We were a little confused at first but, really got into the swing of things and enjoyed ourselves. The best part to me were that the scores were super close, with the winner only winning by one point and the loser only losing by three. As I said, this is a very fun game! – Joseph Peterson

The new cover will now feature the Game of the Year stamp from Dice Hate Me!

Belfort

  • Had low expectations due to its fantasy setting, but it is surprising fun game to play. Another one where I feel every game I have played was time well spent. It has become a staple in my top 10. Expansion(s) have only enhanced it. – Bob Nash
  • Belfort is a very good worker placement game. I like how the points are score in this game. The guilds available being different each game adds a lot of replay value. The production of this game is one of the best that I have seen. The rules, the boards, the player aid, the cards and ressources (each with a different shape) are all great. – Dominic Morier
  • The theme and mechanics combine for a really good game. – James Hatfield
  • What a wonderful worker placement. It has lot going on, but it all seems to blend together seamlessly. The card drafting and area control are not to be overlooked. Overall, one of the best WP games I have ever played. – Brian Thomson

Bex-coverBelfort: The Expansion Expansion

  • This is my all time favorite so its a Always Wanna Play List for me – Adrian C
  • Great expansion for Belfort. When I buy this, I don’t see myself playing without the expansion anymore. – Miguel García

 

 

Train of Thought box artTrain of Thought 

  • This is such a great idea, having players guess a word but by only being able to speak 3 words and with having to incorporate the previous answer to explain the next. We loved this and for any fans of party word games, this is a winner. – Joseph Peterson

Bamboozle Brother games at GenCon 2014!

Are you going to GenCon? Want to get your hands on some upcoming Bamboozle Brother games? Well you can!! Here’s a list of our games that will be at GenCon this year and a map below showing where you can find them:

Queen

Tortuga-BoxTortuga – available for purchase

 

 

 

Tasty Minstrel Games

ThisTown-logoThis Town Ain’t Big Enough for the 2-4 of Us – available for purchase (after that it will only be available on TMG’s website – so grab a copy now – only $5!)

  • Belfort and Belfort: The Expansion Expansion – available for purchase

 

Toy Vault

butwaitboxBut Wait There’s More – available for demo, Type in these codes into the Event finder on the Gen Con webpage to sign up:

  • Thursday 1pm: Game ID: BGM1462531
  • Thursday 3pm: Game ID: BGM1462534
  • Friday 1pm: Game ID: BGM1462535
  • Friday 3pm: Game ID: BGM1462532
  • Saturday 1pm: Game ID: BGM1462533
  • Saturday  9pm: Game ID: BGM1462536
  • Saturday 11pm: Game ID: BGM1462537
  • Sunday  2pm: Game ID: BGM1462538

GenConmap2014

Take some pics of our games at GenCon and send them our way! We’d can’t make it this year but would love to see our games out there being played – or even stacked up on a shelf!!

-Jay Cormier