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It wasn't until after college that I played my very first game of Axis & Allies. I loved it! Within days of playing my first A&A game I thought about applying these types of mechanisms to a fantasy genre. My mind was racing for the next few weeks. I went into my attic and dug out my old D&D miniatures and shortly thereafter my friends and I were playing our very first game of Warparty. This was in 1998.
The basic idea is pretty straight forward: Four fantasy armies of Humans and Dwarves are allied against the Goblins and Undead. The primary game mechanism is area control, and control markers are used to represent the territory players have which is directly related to their income. Players can build expansion cities which are sources of troop disbursement and also create additional income.
The game is split into three phases: movement, combat and placement. Combat is dice-based, but in addition to attack strength, units also have a defense value, so they can save against a successful hit. Wizards and other spellcasters can influence combat (as can other aspects of the game), and they can gain experience which will allow them to advance in levels and power. The ultimate goal of the game is to destroy an enemy capital city.
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From 1998 to 2007 Warparty evolved from a small four-player game that could be played in one evening into a huge six-player game with a board the size of a ping-pong table. The game took many weekends to play as we had thousands of miniatures representing up to eight different armies. The rules were hundreds of pages long. Each army had dozens of units unique to that individual army. It was a lot of fun for our core group of tem players, but new players were often overwhelmed by it.
We ran a league for a couple of years during this period and it was a lot of fun, but we never envisioned that Warparty could really get published as there were far too many components and rules, not too mention the size of the game board, the time it took to play, and the 2,000 miniatures we had accumulated.
My gaming group was very focused in what we played. We played Warparty, period. We enjoyed it and had been playing it for years, but we had little idea or interest in what other games were out there. Around 2007, though, I met Chris Orszak, who was a huge gamer with a massive collection of board games. His vast experience with many different games allowed him to offer a lot of great suggestions to improve Warparty and scale it back to a level where we might have a chance to have it published. Along with Chris, co-designers Hal von Hofe and Jonathan Martel were on board to see where we could take Warparty.
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In 2008 we went to our first World Boardgaming Championships (WBC) with our new prototype. We had swapped out miniatures for counters and had a fair amount of success. We had a lot of people play Warparty, and we took their feedback very seriously. We met with another game designer, who wanted to take a copy of our prototype and present it to his publisher. We were so excited. We thought we were on our way!
A year of going back and forth with the designer yielded little results as the game was playtested maybe once during this period. We had no experience with the gaming industry at all, except from WBC. We didn't know how to go about the process of being published. In retrospect we never should have even been dealing with the designer, but at that point we were still under the illusion that our prayers had been answered.
In 2009 we returned to WBC with a brand new prototype, which was significantly improved, in part based on the feedback from playtesters from the 2008 WBC. We were really excited. After a year of nothing happening with the designer, we had started to talk separately with another publisher who was very interested.
Our experience in 2009 at WBC is why we continued to pursue the publishing of Warparty through all the setbacks. We had a tremendous amount of positive feedback from complete strangers. It's one thing when your friends and family tell you, "Yes, you have a fun game." It's another thing altogether when gamers who never heard of Warparty come back to play four or five times at 2-3 hours a clip. It was then that we knew we had to see it through.
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After such a great experience in 2009, it took a full year for both our publishing leads to fizzle out. I couldn't believe it. The publisher said he was very close to pulling the trigger on it and had playtested it a couple of times over the year, but in the end he declined.
In 2010 we made contact with Mark H. Walker from Lock 'n Load Publishing, LLC.. After playtesting Warparty, Mark gave us the green light to go up on Pre-order/P500, which is what LNL does for all its games. It was one of the happiest days of my life. Mark tried to bring me back to reality with an explanation of how difficult it is to go from P500 to actually getting published. For those not familiar with P500, the system is used often in the wargaming industry. Games will be available for pre-order at a discount. Once a certain number of games (sometimes 500) are pre-ordered, then and only then will the game go to print. I could not be daunted. I thought it was destiny and out of my skin ecstatic! Later I learned why Mark had warned me...
We went on Pre-order with LNL in February 2011, and I started hitting conventions in the northeast as much as I could. We went to about six cons in 2011, including WBC. Our 2011 WBC experience was fantastic. We went with three prototypes and for five days had two or three of them going morning to night. We had over sixty people play Warparty, with more than a dozen coming back to play multiple times. We had a half-dozen people play five or more times, and one guy hit a new record that I can't even touch. Vincent Sinigaglio played Warparty fifteen times over five days, and we knew him only from WBC!
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Despite the success at WBC we still didn't have enough pre-orders. It's difficult to explain to people why they should commit to a game now so that they might get it a year from now.
Finally in October 2011 we took Warparty to its final course: Kickstarter. It is do-or-die time for Warparty.
It has been a greater struggle to get this far then I would have ever imagined. Assuming Warparty is published, I doubt I will ever break even on what I put into it over the years, but it has always been an intense passion for me and I'm grateful to have come this far.
With that I will leave you with a link to the Warparty Kickstarter page, which includes two videos, one of me giving a game overview and the other from BGG's UndeadViking.
Thank you so much for reading!
Larry Bogucki
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