Opening Gambits
Hello folks! Under advice from people who know better than I do, I'm going to be trying to have a place where I can collect a lot of the thinking and design work that I do. Let's begin by talking about the two games I've been working on which are farthest along - Rex Regnat and Hench.
Rex Regnat is a 2 or 4 player modified trick-taker about the Polish Constitution of 1791. In in, you play one of four political factions attempting to shape the new constitution in their own favor. It's a lovely historical take on a relatively underexplored event, and the key twist on the core mechanic, where every card matters, makes for a really interesting play pattern. I'll be selling some copies at the Pax West 2025 Indie Night Market, so a lot of my recent bandwidth has been taken up by doing all the polish I can.
The other game which is far enough along to talk about in an early post is Hench, which is has an extremely different tone. It's a 3-6 player game about Saturday Morning Cartoon Minion Frenemies, where you're a bumbling underling of an evil overlord-type trying to get the most credit and avoid blame. Players work on missions together, using a secret, simultaneous action-selection mechanism. It encourages a lot of negotiation and table-talk, which is something I always enjoy in a game. I'm currently in pitching and late-playtesting on this project, and it's been a lot of fun.
In addition to my games projects, I also work on a Podcast about the Star Wars Unlimited Card game and do a fair bit of math and analysis in support of that project. If you like reasonably interesting card game analysis, check it out!