Pax Pamir: Second Edition

The End of the Beginning
over 5 years ago – Sat, Sep 22, 2018 at 10:39:22 PM

Thank you. Seriously. 

Pax Pamir was always a project made possible by the support of friends and family. In fact, without a few words of encouragement the game might have never happened. Back in the spring of 2013 or 2014, I had more-or-less given up on the project. The design was stuck and I wasn't sure how to fix it. Then, after neglecting it for months, a friend from BGG named Chris Montgomery wrote me a little note of encouragement about the design. By sheer happenstance, that encouragement came at about the same time Drew came to live with my wife and I in Austin. With the game back in my mind and Drew back at our dinner table, Pax Pamir happened. It converted our quiet evenings into raucous playtest sessions and became a constant source of conversation in the house. Thank goodness our partners tolerated the hostile take over. 

There are many specific thank yous that should be mentioned, but I think I'm going to wait before doling them out in detail. As you might expect, the success of this campaign is owed to many people: friends, family, mentors, partners, and, of course, all of the various people who have stumbled upon my work in one capacity or another and then decided that they wanted to see more things like that. Answering backer questions and moderating the comments section of this Kickstarter was an absolute treat. We are deeply grateful to have such thoughtful and kind supporters. 

More specific thank yous will be saved until the completion of the project. For now, I wanted to provide everyone with a little idea of where we go from here and what you should expect from us going forward.

Perhaps most importantly, Drew and I have a little more development work to do. There is one issue of tempo that I think can be improved in the design and a few deck balance adjustments I want to make. We're going to be fiddling with the design for the next couple weeks and then starting another development wave with our playtesting teams. We're also going to be putting the solo mode under a lot of scrutiny and making sure it's up to snuff. I also have a mountain of rules feedback to get through. I will do my best to make sure the TTS module stays current with the design, but that probably won't happen until after the next round of playtesting is over (so ~6 weeks or so).

While development continues, I'll prepare the graphics for the last few cards (I think I have about ~15 to go). I'm also going to tap a few illustrators to see if we can punch up the action icon design. In a couple weeks I'll have some cloth samples from a few factories we are considering for the cloth map design which will determine what kinds of illustrations will be possible for the map itself. We had originally planned on doing a single-color screen-printed map, but there may be some other options which we're investigating now that would allow for more colors and heavier materials with sewn edges. I'm also going to be starting to hammer out final designs for the resin coalition pieces and see if we can get some samples. If it makes sense to hire professional help from sculptors or illustrators for either of these things, we won't hesitate to do so, but we need to decide on our exact materials first.

I'll also keep writing design and development diaries, though they will now have considerable spacing in between them with one exception. There's been much talk about why I swapped the three empires in the first edition for coalitions in the second. Last night, I started writing a response to this concern, but it got so long that I've decided the question is better answered by a proper essay. I should have time to knock that out next week. 

We also will be setting up our pledge manager. This too can take time and I'd guess it will be a month before we have it in place. For late backers, there will likely be a small price increase in the game to cover the costs of the pledge manager. The pledge manager will be open until we submit our final order to the factory. 

And that's about it for now. Drew and I will not be online much over the next couple of days. At this moment, Drew is driving through upstate Wisconsin and should arrive in Saint Paul in time for lunch. We're both taking the weekend off (our first work-free weekend in several months), so apologies in advance for not responding to messages this weekend. Our current plans are to play some pinball and then pickup some Afghani food from the place down the street. Tomorrow, a little hiking with the kiddos is in order.

Live Stream Count Down!
over 5 years ago – Fri, Sep 21, 2018 at 01:11:38 AM

Hi everyone!!

To celebrate the final hours of the campaign, we are going do a Tabletop Simulator stream of Pax Pamir! Go to our Wehrlegig Twitch stream at 8 CDT to watch myself, Cole, and some friends play through a few virtual games of Pamir! Feel free to join the conversation on Twitch as we play until we see the final pledge.

Thank you all again for your support and input across the campaign. Hope to hear from you during the live stream!

Drew

Final Stretch Goal Reached and Upcoming Live Stream
over 5 years ago – Wed, Sep 19, 2018 at 02:09:03 PM

Wow.

When Drew and I set the final stretch goal we weren't sure that we'd be able to hit it. If it was going to happen, we figured that it would be a last-day affair. We had no idea that we would smash through it with nearly two days left in the project. Awesome work everyone!

We don't have any other stretch goals in mind. There are a couple of things that we're thinking about doing with the production if we can afford it, but it's nothing that we'd want to peg to a certain funding level at this point. This project has easily met and exceeded our most optimistic scenario and has given us room to make lots of little improvements as we see fit. There are a few things along those lines in the works right now, but I want to wait and see how they develop before letting everyone know the exciting news. 

Second, I wanted to let everyone know that Drew and I (and a few friends) will be live streaming the game to ring in the end of the campaign. The stream will be on our official twitch starting at about 8PM CDT tomorrow and we'll play till the campaign is over. I'll post another update tomorrow when we kick things off.

For those interested in how the game plays, a couple people have written unsolicited play reports that may interest you. The first is by Kyle Glyn. The second is from someone on reddit. 

 Alright. That's it for now!

A Few Small Updates (including info about the solo game!)
over 5 years ago – Sat, Sep 15, 2018 at 12:42:48 AM

Hi everyone,

I just have a few quick updates today. Drew and I have been busy pushing things along behind the scenes. Running the Kickstarter continues to take up most of the time we have allocated to the project, so a lot of our development and production work is going to kick into gear after the campaign is over. That said, thanks to the TTS module, we've actually been able to easily knock off games here and there. Recently we did a kind of casual teaching video that you can find here.

Speaking of casual teaching videos, Ricky Royal, who is designing the new automated opponent for Pax Pamir, sent me a video this morning where he shows it off and plays through the first several turns with it. Obviously the game (and the variant) are still not 100% done, but you can get a pretty good sense of how slick it is from his video.

I suspect we'll have time to stream one or two more playthroughs before the end of the campaign, and I'll be sure to let everyone know when we have those planned. We're hoping to stream a game at least during the final hours of the campaign to celebrate.

Regarding progress on the production, I'm happy to announce that we've unlocked the upgraded climate marker and are closely nicely on the final stretch goals. I wanted to take a moment and say something here that I've said in comments here and there throughout the campaign. We don't have renders for these stretch goals because, quite frankly, I don't know if my artistic abilities are up to the task. The reason these things are stretch goals is because the extra funds allow us to consider hiring actual artists and sculptors. It seems increasingly likely, for instance, that we'll be able to bring in an artist to create a really lovely set of action icons.

On that note, I'm now seeking out someone to draw the map for the game. This is a tricky job, and I'm looking for someone with both experience as an illustrator and as a Nastaʿlīq calligraphy. I've got some good candidates, but these kinds of things take time, so I doubt I'll have anything to show before the campaign ends. And, of course, if you know of anyone who you think would fit the bill, feel free to send me a message here on KS.

Stumble along with us for our first live TTS play (live now!)
over 5 years ago – Sat, Sep 08, 2018 at 11:00:58 PM

Howdy folks,

Tonight, Drew and I are joined by our good friends Graham and Chas for a little four player game of Pax Pamir: Second Edition. This won't be a teaching game (we'll do one of those later), but if you'd like to stop by and see what the game is like in play, you can find it over here. 

This is our first ever live stream of a game. We're using Twitch. So, I'd expect some number of comical technical difficulties, but our dry run went pretty well so hopefully we can keep those at a minimum. 

We'll be posting a recording of the full play-through over on Youtube sometime after were done.