Welcome to Meeple to Meeple, uniting players around the world. A 30 minute exploration of PJ and Gareth's four-game experiences from across both sides of the Atlantic. Each episode they share their thoughts and opinions on the World of War games, including their favorite themes, games, hot topics, and much, much more. Hey guys, and welcome to a bonus episode of Meeble to Meeble. That's right, PJ has gone rogue once again and we're going to do
a solo. I was given a preview copy of an upcoming game for done by Drag and Dawn Productions, and I have the designer with me, Ren Maltomacki. Thank you, Ren for joining us. Well, thank you for inviting me. It's a real a real pleasure to be here. Yeah, well, this was exciting project for me. I had never done anything like this before. It's usually me and my partner Gareth, and we just invite designers and play games and just talk about whatever comes
to mind. So this was a unique experience, so thanks for giving me the opportunity. Yeah, I, I'm, I'm interested to, to see where this goes. And I think you are you are equally surprised where where the path may lead the discussion I guess. So I wanted to dive right in. So the game is called Verdun. It is set in the battle Verdun in the First World War and I wanted to start with the theme. I was curious about how you made the decision to set the game at this time in this event.
Is World War 1A a passionate subject of yours and your personal study, or did it? How did that, how did that come together? Well, I'm always interested of like finding a strong, a strong team or topic for for the games. That's how I start my games, that there needs to be a team or topic that I I think it's proving to be deep enough and where there is an amount of passion. I'm an aficionado of history and war history in general.
So it's not strictly speaking World War One, but wars in more general fashion. But now that we are again getting closer and closer to 110th anniversary of, of Battle of Gardun, that's, that would be like in less than two years. I, I was like interested of seeing if we could, we could
somehow revisit that. And at least here in Europe, people are seeing quite a lot of like political situation that resembles a little bit or more than a little bit what what the world was just before World War One. So when you were, when you landed on the theme, did the mechanics 'cause it's a, it's a kind of a trick taking one versus 1-2 versus 2 trick taking game, Did that naturally marriage together or did you go through multiple mechanic versions before you landed on this?
I think this was one of those games where I where I can quite honestly say that when I finally like had a marriage of team and and the mechanics, it did change very little from that from that time to what it is now. And I think we we can safely say that right now it would be completely ready to send for the manufacturing if we would only have the money for it.
And that's why we have the crowdfunding, because we are such a small studio that we can't actually produce anything unless there is some sort of crowdfunding that enables the the production. So tell us a little bit more about how the game works. The trick taking is kind of interesting. It's not a very straightforward what Amire American listeners may be used to at trick taking.
It's a little bit different. In fact, I think your description had someone mentioned a comparison to Twilight Struggle. Because the cards that you have in your hand, they might be yours, but they might also strengthen your opponent. Can you talk a little bit more about how that works in the game?
Yes, it is a sort of a trick taking game about like you mentioned a little bit, well more than a little bit unusual because there are only two suits and then as all cards are that are in the deck are also in play. On average you get half of your own team, French or German. And on average the other half is then opponents cards.
And as you have to play every single card, it's an, it's an interesting question that at which time would you like to play something that benefits your own team and therefore gets you maybe more points? And at which time do you want to play some of those cards that you really need to play at, at the time, which are then directly benefiting your
opponents? And as it's a game where we wanted to try to bring the team quite nicely in front, the the key fact in here is that every single card is kind of like a depicting a troop of soldiers and those troop of soldiers will die. So for each battle that's one trick, there will be casualties. Minimum casualties is like the the the smallest card of the winning side and the largest card of the losing side will will die. Then there are some modifiers that will modify that and even
more can die. And those debt troops are then providing negative points. And I think you could safely say that it's a, it's a game where you need to manage the, the amount of debt and winning these, these victory points, which are positive victory points, very, very, very seldomly lead into a situation where your total victory points
are actually positive. And I, I made it specifically so that that it would remind that this particular battle was an exceptionally bloody battle, an exceptionally long battle, and quite unnecessary because not much of anything actually was was achieved in the whole whole battle, even though it killed over half a million soldiers. Right, right Yep and that's a good point to remember as well. I think, I think the thing that drew me to this game is the, the theme is so rich.
And then you have successfully captured that tension between the two armies during Verdun. Like you really feel that cause it's like every time you play a card, it's you're, you're debating on whether or not you're going to give power to your opponent. But also, if I lose, do I really want to lose this many casualties?
I think that every time we played the game, it was a matter of, and I know you're, you know this as well, but every time we played the game, the winner was always the one with the least amount of negative points. That's how it goes, yeah.
But how to how to reach that, that least amount of negative points for that there are no straightforward and and easy explanations that would give you an overall gaming strategy that if you apply this strategy, it always works because it, it is very interactive, which is I think a little bit unusual for trick taker that there is player interaction and some, some communication issues, especially when you play with four players and you need to try to consider that, OK, how do I communicate
with, with my team member that, OK, this is my plan. I'm planning to do that kind of thing. And hopefully you can help me with this because there are there's no hidden communication allowed. So all the things that you communicate has to be done so that everyone hears that or sees that. And that limits your possibilities of of making a joint strategy that that would be helpful because you cannot tell that what do you have in your hand that's not allowed.
Yeah, that was that was probably the most comfortable aspect of the game. At four players is so many trick taking games just using basic playing cards here in America, it's very much you've got a partner, but you can't share any any of what's in your hands. So that was really comfortable and yet and yet it felt like there was so much more on the line than just taking a trick. So that and that was fantastic.
So. Yeah, I'm, I'm quite happy how it turned out to be. It it it like you say, it captures the the tension and you feel a little bit bad when some of your troop cards die. And that quite often seems to mean that some people are really quite strongly considering that when can they play their own high cards, which would be then the cards that allow you to win. But then again, the high cards are also the highest casualty value. So if they actually end up being dead.
Yeah, that's that, that's a dilemma that you need to consider that when do you want to to take a little bit higher like bid or or or so. And yeah, that's that is something different. So tell me a little bit about the art. Did you? Did you design the art? Did you use public images? What how did how did the art come about? And who is responsible? Well, all the card art on on on that game are actual propaganda posters from the World War One.
Most of those on the French side are actual French propaganda posters. Most of those that are on on the German cards are actual German propaganda posters. But all of those graphics are actually what what the propaganda ministries of of of different countries were using to advertise the war for their own own people. And especially the German ones. If you read German language, some of those from today's perspective, they have, let's put it this way, interesting messages that that are.
Relevant. Relevant even today and a little bit depressing how much the same kind of message we are still getting in in today's world. It's 210 a year, 110 years and have we learned anything? Maybe there is more technology, but that doesn't mean that situation would be that much different than compared to what it what what it was back then. So that's really interesting because I, I couldn't tell if these were actual historical images or if the artwork was
done. So that's all part of the public domain. So there was like it was free. All you had to do was access the images and use them. Is that correct? That is correct. It's not that easy to find those, but like I said, I like history and I have been studying also. How do you how to find these these sort of things? And now I I can safely say that there are some quite good libraries that provide that sort of material.
Right. So how long have you been working on Verdun like when the first idea came till the launch this summer? How long has that process been? Well, this has been unusually quick thing because I think the the the idea came last September and the first playable prototype was right after Essen Spiel. That would be then late October last year. And we haven't had kind of like major changes in, in, in the game since January.
So right now it's been only polishing the the rule book, doing some small things like making sure that people are all around read the rules in the same, same way and that there are no, sorry, there are no concepts that are kind of like just assume that people will know it anyhow. So that's how we go. How many languages will the game
be released in initially? Well, we will release it in English and German and of course we are always interested in finding publishing partners who would be like willing to do other languages. On some of our earlier games, we have also done some other languages. But we have learned our lesson that due to go for instance to Italian market, you need to have some more permanent Italian
presence. And same goes for Spanish market and French market where we have all where we have done a couple of products on all of those 3 languages. But German market we have fairly permanent presence.
I spent something like two months every year in Germany and we have also some some team members who actually live in Germany and English is then the obvious choice because I, I do all of my game design anyhow in English doing anything Venus is foolish because there are you know like less than well about 5 million people in here and not all of them are board gamers. So. Right, right.
That, that's interesting. I would have thought you would have been releasing it in French as well, just given the the French and German sides, but that's that's really interesting. So how long have you been with Dragandone? Well, I founded the company in 1999, so quite a while we have been doing well. Essentially the company started as as doing the things that I find worth of doing. So it's kind of like my my own company supporting all the things that I find fun and
interesting. But since 2008 we have been producing board games in more and more regular pace. We started with one game a year and now it seems that we do about four products every year. Not necessarily for games, but for products, maybe like two games, one expansion and then something else like a book or ACD or music or something else, some some kind of add on material that could be handy. So we try to do wide variety of of different things.
That's interesting. So do you think you're going to you're going to release either in ACD or perhaps MP3 or some downloadable version of like a soundtrack to go along with for Dunn? Maybe we have done that for a couple of our games. We have the factor 42. That's that's work replacement game set in a in a dwarven society and in our fantasy world, all all the dwarves are communists. So it's kind of like a socialistic utopian world where where you are running a factory.
And for that we did soundtrack. I think it's something like 45 minutes of suitable sounds that are like as a background track for for for the game. We did something similar also a couple of years earlier for one of our fantasy games. So it's possible it's likely that we will add that in this stretch goals at some some higher level. It takes quite a lot of effort to to kind of create something that is more than marginally useful.
So it it it has to be something where we are also by ourselves happy that it it communicates not only kind of like the the base, base idea of of the game, but it should also communicate the mood that we want to to to bring in in, in that. And well, that would be nice, but not. So you said you you founded Dragon Dawn in 1999. So congratulations on 25 years. That's quite an achievement. How long have you been in the board game hobby personally?
Well, I would have to say that I, I was very keen on playing board games as a child and I found that many of the games back then were lacking. They were too much of luck based games and I think I started making my own first board games at the age of six, 7-8, something like that.
Of course they were not very good at that time, but I think it's a Safeway of saying that since then, and that would be then something like early 80s, I have been team getting with with board games, but the first published board game is 2008. OK. And what was the first modern board game that got you away from the the typical roll and roll and moves and luck based games? What was that first game for you?
That's a good question. Let me think the old Dune probably that was published a long time ago. When was it? Let's see, I'm quite sure that this is from something like 80s. OK, Yeah. And I'm now meaning the the old version, obviously, and not the one that just came out. But then again, obviously games like Settlers of Katan and Watch are somewhat understandably in in in that sort of list. Right, so what's next for Dragon Dawn after we're done? Is there anything you can tell
us about? Yeah, sure. We are doing. Oh, and now we've found out it's the the original Dune is from 1979 and I think I played that in something like 84 or 85 and I found that it was brilliant back then and it was so different than than the say alternatives like monopolies and things like that. So made a big difference. Anyhow, we have Mind 77, which is kind of like a successor for this factor 42 that I mentioned.
It's worker placement game that has simultaneous action selection and an interesting double Rondell system where you need to choose where what your worker wants to do. And there is a little bit of communic, a little bit of cooperation in the game. But it's a, it's a, it's not a cooperative game. It's it's a competitive game with a small cooperative element and that we are planning to have in in game found probably something like September this
year. And then the trick taking games that would be like the next trick taking game after Verdun is also pretty much ready. It needs some visuals. But other than that, I think it's it's fairly ready and that's for next January. And after that, hopefully we can finally run Soulspire, which is the biggest product that we have ever done. It's the next version of our Rondell based dungeon crawler. I have been doing that since 2014, so 10 years by now and it would be nice to get it
finalised. But it's such such an immense amount of work that it has taken quite a lot of time. And in in recent game testing rounds, people are still finding that there are areas which could be improved and we don't want to release it before we are sure that it kind of covers all of those areas where someone has said that OK, this could be improved and that could be improved.
Now it's close to that, but we need to still run one more round to see that that we have kind of managed to Polish all of those details into a level where we can be happy and the players can be happy. Right. So it sounds like you are a busy man with a lot coming down the line so. Yeah, that's what well, this is what I do. As As for living, there are a few small things that they maybe a day or two every every month that I do as profession, but other than that it's just game
design. Well, thank you so much for joining and letting me participate in this journey in a small part. So Verdun is coming to Kickstarter July 23rd, correct? Yes, that is correct. And any anything else you want to say, let us know where our listeners can find you and your products and. Well, DDBDD bgames.com and there should be like information about all of our games and upcoming campaigns and also access to the store. OK, fantastic. So be on the lookout. That's July 23rd.
We're done. We'll be out on Kickstarter. It is Dragon Dawn Productions, ddpgames.com. So again, Ren, thank you so much for joining. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Thanks everyone for listening, please subscribe and as always, we'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas, so make sure to leave those in the comments and don't forget you can also chat with us both on Instagram at Meeple to Meeple.