Designer Diary: The Magnates: A Game of Power

Board Game: The Magnates: A Game of Power

In 2014, we published a game about western European history: 1944: Race to the Rhine. This year it will be about ours.

The Magnates: A Game of Power tells the history of the first Republic of Poland, from its heyday to its doom. The game was crowdfunded in Poland in 2014 by 442 backers, and this year we can present to you the English edition of this title!

Now I'm leaving the microphone to the designers — Jaro Andruszkiewicz and Waldek Gumienny — so please, sit back, and enjoy this diary. I hope you will like it!

Every Soldier Carries a Marshal's Baton in His Knapsack

Waldek Gumienny: It was Napoleon who said that every soldier carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack. Similarly, one can say that every player is potentially a Game of the Year Award Winner. However, it is not an easy thing for a player to become a successful designer and publisher...

My career was almost by the book as I passed all the stages before becoming the designer — a little like a top chef who started his career from the post of a kitchen porter.

I started as a game master. If you want to play a game such as Empires in Arms/Empires in Harm involving seven to nine players over several months, and you want to play it by e-mail, you'd need someone who can be on top of things, who would prepare and organize the game. The game scenario, which saw Poland defending against Russia, and Revolutionary France fighting reactionist Austria and Prussia, was the platform which allowed my meeting with Jaro. Otherwise, it would be quite difficult for us to cross each other paths. Jaro was at the time a CEO of an advertising agency in Poland's capitol; I was an ordinary student. The third of us, Ozy, was still at the high school.

Sometime later, Jaro become a driving factor behind a popular discussion forum, with an attempt to create a unifying platform for the Polish wargame scene. He was toying with the idea of becoming a publisher. I helped him with the translation of the rulebook of a very interesting game. This is how Friedrich become available in Polish. In this game, Richard Sivél uses just a few pawns and few decks of cards in order to simulate the Seven Years' War at the grand strategic level. It was interesting to see how complex history can be told with the clever use of a simple and abstract rules.

Translation of the rules required (from me and my helpful wife) getting very deep into the game concept and mechanisms. To my surprise, the English version of the rules missed some subtle issues of its German original. Richard was very engaged in the whole translation and helped to clarify some of the discrepancies I encountered. Finally, he took my translation to a sworn translator to make sure that there were no mistakes in the Polish rulebook. It was another surprise, but understandable given that it took him twenty years to finish this game. No wonder he wanted everything to be perfect, even the Polish translation. It was another important lesson for me!

The Final Result Exceeded Our Expectations

PHALANX was established in 2009. In the beginning, we were acting under franchise of the well-known Phalanx Games B.V. Ozy was at game conventions with Steam and Rise of Empires, while I was exchanging e-mails with Martin Wallace. My goal was to get the license to publish a Polish edition of his game about the history of Poland: God's Playground. We managed to reach the agreement. Martin is not only a great designer but also turned out to be a very friendly person.

Originally God's Playground was solely a three-player game, which was an issue for us as we all had life partners. How can you play a game with a fellow couple if you can accommodate only three players? We wanted to include another player!

We quickly started altering the game to allow for the fourth player, with a goal of just adjusting the game rules, not touching the core mechanisms. In the end, we not only added the fourth player, but also decided to redo the graphics.

The final result — Boże Igrzysko — exceeded our expectations. The game was nominated for the Polish Game of the Year Award, and it won it in tight competition with the outstanding Spiel des Jahres nominee K2! It was a huge success for us – our first published game and a gold medal for us.

Speaking About the Idea...

Unfortunately, the game was quite hard to sell. The theme often attracted people who had no previous experience with games, and this game is not, definitely not, a gateway to the hobby. Three hours of play and a rulebook numbering several pages – no, that it is not a good game to start with.

The year 2011 was a break out point for our company. Not only were we granted the Game of the Year Award, but we also took part in the international coproduction of another Martin Wallace game: Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, based on the novels of Sir Terry Pratchett. We have changed the land of history for the land of fantasy – and the whole print run was sold in four months!

Discworld: Ankh-Morpork is truly a fantastic game, especially at conventions as it takes only a few minutes to explain the rules to a total newbie. They can be then left on their own with the game, without having much trouble, as everything is described on the cards. The game takes approximately one hour. Sometimes a few, if you play more than one game in a row. (Very often players started another game just after finishing the previous one.) Oh, if only we had such a light version of God's Playground, I thought...

Speaking about the idea, I learned from Jaro that he had already made such a game meeting all of my criteria: light, 2-4 player, one hour to play, very climactic, not complicated.

—"Oh yeah? Then tell me, why haven't we published it yet?"
—"I am still not satisfied with the result; it is still not the Polish Republic of Rome variation I dreamt about..."

Jaro then told us the story:

Quote:

Sometime in the 1990s, I discovered a wonderful game: The Republic of Rome. It was an interactive multiplayer game based on diplomacy that presented fascinating ancient history. Roman conquests and enemy invasions, gladiator games and bad oracles, assassinations, political struggle of factions, briberies, slave insurrections, civil wars, and governors' unrests – all of these were included in one game! There was even a collective loss if the Republic collapsed. At these times, a five-hour game was not a problem as most of us had a lot of time to play.

I imagined that a similar game could be created based on the ancient history of my Motherland: Poland. Its historical political system was based on the Roman Res Publica, and even the name of the entity had roots in Latin (Rzeczpospolita = Res Publica). It seemed doable to adopt the rules. Turn equites (knights) into nobles, Roman families into magnate houses, and Consul into Hetman. However, being an ambitious designer, I didn't want to copy the work of others. Using some inspiration or adapting some minor mechanisms – that was okay. But just changing writing on the cards? No. It would need to be more than that.

On top of that, apart from similarities, there were also important differences between the two republics. First, Poland was ruled by the kings, while the Res Publica had no kings. Second, the power of an Emperor was practically unlimited, while the power of a King was subject to written limitations. Finally, an idea crossed my mind and I scribbled it down on a piece of paper: The King is a pawn and not a player. This was followed by the map of the Commonwealth, divided into provinces, subject to various enemy invasions.

At this time, Jaro was discussing the idea with another Polish designer, Jaroslaw Flis, but their discussion had not resulted in a completed design. Nevertheless, in 2002 Grzegorz Bakera came up with his idea of the game, which was a simple card game based on two standard decks of cards. Every player has a set of thirteen cards in his color; that was the first deck. The other deck was composed of internal and external events, which could be either good or bad, for both the player or for the country. Depending on the scenario, the game was to last 8-13 turns (rulings of the kings). Grzegorz handed over this project to Jaro, probably because he was then preparing the Polish version of GMT Games' Paths of Glory. Jaro added some chrome to these mechanisms as well as historical events that introduced the factions of the Court and of the Hetman.

And he included a game board in which the number of areas had been decreased from 38 to 15.

Here's another version of the board concept from twelve years ago. From the start it looked similar to the final board!

And here are the noble families whose coats of arms were supposed to be one of the important game features. Everything is printed on a small counters; you can feel the spirit of the 1990s, can't you?

How Can We Make a Patriotic Game Without Presenting the Greatness of the Old Times?

Fortunately, I found a way to merge the needs of a lighter God's Playground with the existing concept of the card game. In God's Playground, the basic asset of the players were the sabres, the noble clients of each of the magnate houses. The assets were secretly assigned into provinces, then a cube representing a minor noble could be spent to perform various actions. How to make a similar mechanism in a card game?

We could simply employ Jaro's concept of using the standard 13-card sets per player. However, the event deck should use the Tarot symbols for the different kinds of policies: sword (military), denars (money), chalices (religion), and batons (power). That should be quite easy to assign various events with these policies, but how many cards should be in each of the decks? I still thought about the desired limitations: 2-4 players, one-hour play.

When it comes to player cards, I wanted to keep the God's Playground rule that allows a player to use only half of the possessed minor noblemen markers. Thus, in any of the eight turns of the game, a player should be allowed to use only half of their cards.

But wait...how can we divide thirteen cards by two? Damn... Then I had to ask myself: What do I need eight turns for? If you divide sixty minutes by eight, that allows for a mere seven minutes to play the entire turn. If we stick with four turns (as in God's Playground), it will allow for a much more reasonable fifteen minutes per turn.

I deeply wanted the game to have a big and nice-looking board. How can we make a patriotic game without presenting the greatness of the old times? And it was to my regret that we met Piotr Słaby only after publishing God's Playground in Poland. The map and the board as drawn by Piotr – it would be a masterpiece! Therefore we needed "God's Playground The Card Game" with a board!

Martin Wallace divided Poland into five provinces, which was not historically correct, but it worked. Each province had a dedicated enemy. So if we split the turn into two phases, one phase would be the internal events – cards placed within the provinces — and the other phase would resolve attacks of the enemies striking said provinces. In this way, we have disposed of ten of the thirteen cards each turn — but what to do with the remaining three cards?

In God's Playground, apart from the five provinces, there was also the Royal Court where the first player was granted the post of the Hetman. However, I had in my mind the comment of a fellow player who invented other posts so that all of the kids he played with could have a post. Thus, I added more posts, and we now have the Hetman (military), Treasurer (finance), Primate (religion) and Chancellor (political power). Since in the Royal Court phase each player can use only three cards, they are now forced to choose one post for which they will not apply. No randomness, only tough decisions to make.

As you can see, and as it was noted in some reviews, the actions performed by players are very simple: place a card, reveal a card, check the highest, and take another card. No big deal at all? Yes, but the first two phases (senate and internal events) are based on rivalization, while the third phase (external events – conflicts) are based on cooperation; in this phase, we sum up the value of played cards against the strength of the enemy card. The trick is that if players play all the high cards in the first two phases, they will lose the conflicts collectively.

I had serious doubts whether such a simple game concept would be attractive for players. Fortunately, when I told Ozy about it, he persuaded me to prepare a prototype to test it. Ozy proposed different kinds of effects, and it was my job to link them with historical events from Jaro's list so that players could feel that the mechanisms were fully consistent with theme. I had to read a couple of books to learn even more about this period of history. Fortunately I already had some on my shelves...

And We Started Playing!

In the first version of the game, the Cards of Rights were placed inside the provinces, i.e., the events described on the cards took place within the provinces. Players have played their cards inside each of the provinces, influencing the course of the events. The cards were marked with a player's coat of arms, and at the end of the game players were awarded VPs for the collected event cards.

The Conflict cards have been divided into five colors, dedicated to each of the provinces and a specific enemy. For example, Lithuanian's enemy is Muscovy (Russia). The strength of the conflict varied, depending on its historical impact. Each color contained also a Partition card, being a tough one to beat. Since there were three historical partitions of Poland, the first one went to Prussia, the second to Muscovy, and the third to Austria. But what about the remaining two provinces? Ukraine's partition card is the Chmielnicki's uprising – the event which started the process of Polish decline. And the greatest threat to Lesser Poland is the Ottoman War as the Treaty of Buczacz and the loss of Podolia was a kind of preliminary partition of the country.

But the conflicts had not only been threats, but also chances to gain new territories. That's how the fiefs have been included within the game:

• Livonia, an obvious choice, was a northern gate to Lithuania. Many wars have been fought to gain this land by Muscovy, Poland and Sweden.
• Smolensk land had not actually been a fief, but as the Gate of Moscow, it often changed possession depending on which country was stronger at the moment.
• As for Moldavia, the dreams of possessing this land lasted for a long time. It allowed Poland to become a country from (Baltic) sea to (Black) sea.

The game development resulted in the design becoming more and more complex. Just look at another version of the playtest board:

New counters and other stuff was included. It has become a real board game. Kings and the Senators had their markers, influencing players' decisions.

Instead of plain VPs, players were contesting to become the most religious, most wealthy, most influential, and most militarily competent.

And a new Fief was added: Silesia. This was a historical possibility that was not properly executed by the Vasa dynasty. Did we need other reason to add our home province to be one of the lands represented in the game? Opole, the place where I live, is down there on the board...

But I felt that the game had grown up the wrong way — or to be more strict, that's what I was told by Monika, my wife, who was the first enthusiast of the project. She said that the game as it was completely differed from the first prototype we played a year ago, so I had to think it over again and get rid of all the unnecessary stuff, leaving only the core of the game. It took us a few long evenings in Nürnberg, where three of us had a chance to meet and play the game together to produce the final outcome.

The game is addressed to casual players, and such game should be based on cards, whereas our game was starting to be based on counters. Therefore, I needed to remove counters marking possibilities and place the acquired cards into the player's hands.

But where is the VP track? Why have you removed it? Normally in a game, the collected VPs are safe and you cannot lose them. But what was the important thing for the magnates? They all cared about...estates. It was the only value of their status, so instead of simply gaining VPs, players should instead struggle for the possibility of acquiring new estates —
and estates are not placed on the moon. They are located in a specific area, and we already have the areas in the game: the provinces. The conflicts will work in the same manner; the player shall lose their estates if they will not defend their province against the enemy.
One of the hardest issues to resolve was to place no limit on the number of estates a player can have in a province, but naturally make it more profitable to have the estates in different provinces instead of concentrating them in only one province.

And the board was then simplified.

The game mechanisms proved to work even better in the playtest. It occurred that we could add the fifth player as well, so the game was finally dedicated to the range of 2-5 players.

A 90º Change

Piotr could finally start working on the graphics, with quite nice effects.

But we must admit that the look of the final game was seriously influenced by Bogusz Ohlaszeny, who proposed the use of another (much better) historical map as a background.

But Jaro would not be himself if he hasn't turned everything upside down — or at least proposed a 90º change. He presented us with a strong argument, noting that since we had decided to add the fifth player, we should also make the board visible for all of them. To be fair, no player should have to sit opposite to the text on the cards, right? So Bogusz prepared a second version of the board.

However, a few notes to Piotr were given to optimize the look of the board.

At last we had it, the final concept of the board, and Piotr could start to draw the final version!

At a Carpenter's Workshop

We love solid game components, so in our imagination almost all markers had to be wooden ones. The mock-ups still used the cubes (taken from God's Playground), but after the successful crowdfunding campaign, with the support of almost 450 backers, we were able to produce many dedicated wooden components.

At first, we had to prepare the projects, trying to align our dreams with the production limitations.

Then we had to pay for the three cubic meters of wooden planks — I have no idea how many cubic feet it would be — weighing 2,000 kilos (approx. 2,500 pounds).

The planks then had to be cut into slats.

The next step of production required the use of dedicated knives, and we ordered a set of eleven of them to be able to produce all the forms for the project.

After placing the knife into the milling machine, the proper slat is being cut from one side.

We were so excited because of this production that we made a video from the workshop. (Please turn down the speakers...)

Asymmetric shapes require each cut to be made with different knives, so producing a wooden piece shape requires one (palace), two (monastery), or even four cuts (fortress). That's how the player's pawns (magnates) and the Prussian agents and Russian grenadiers are produced.

Here's a set of knives required to produce the Magnates pawns:

Palaces...

...monasteries...

...and fortresses.

And here are the pawns after cutting and shaping.

As you can see, the effect is truly outstanding.

And so, we dare to say, The Magnates became the magnificent successor of the Polish edition of God's Playground. Sometimes dreams come true (with a lot of work and stubbornness).

Thank you for reading this diary!

During the Spiel 2015 fair, you will be able to play this game at the Polish Publishing League booth 2-B110. See you there!