The final Version of the Battlefields of
Olympus bluffing variant has been completed.
You can download the rules here:
Bluffing Variant v1.4
A big thank you goes out to Ken Roberts and Steve Kimball for
editing the rules. I would also like to thank the Board Game Geek
community and the Game Artisans of Canada for their support and
suggestions.
January 20th,
2010
Due to my current workload, I have been unable
to keep everyone up-to-date here. I do apologize. Some of my
previous posts have been lost since the site was revamped. I hope
to recover them at some point and repost the items here when I
have an opportunity.
Much of the Campaigns of Glory expansion
illustrations are done, but there is still more to do. At this
point, the core game mechanics are under review. In an effort to
clear up questions that often arise by players, I am slowly
piecing together a revised version of the existing rules. As a
side effect, I have recently posted a rough draft to a bluffing
variant on
BoardGameGeek. I have been toying around with this design for
about 6 months and it finally came together as I began to
reorganize the base rules.
In other news, Calypso: 2112 is still in
development and has made leaps of progress since the last time I
posted.
Things are moving forward! :)
July 13th, 2009
We are happy to announce that Roberta Taylor has won the name our expansion contest with her contribution, "Battlefields of Olympus: Campaigns of Glory". We would like to thank everyone who participated in the contest, it was tough picking out a winner with so many awesome contributions. Also a great big thank you to Starlit Citadel for hosting this competition.
In celebration, here is another game variant for Battlefields of Olympus. This one allows you to hold Ares and Land cards in hand. See below.
* When drawing Ares or Land Trophy cards from the Fate deck, instead of automatically playing them to their respective face-up piles, players may secretly hold them in hand, respecting a 4 Fate card hand limit. No Warrior card is drawn when the cards are added to hand.
* Instead of taking one of the usual turn actions, a player may play an Ares or Land Trophy card from hand to their normal face-up piles and draw a face-down Warrior card.
* If a player has more than 4 Fate cards in hand at the end of his turn and chooses to discard an Ares or Land Trophy card from hand, the card is placed on its normal face-up pile and a face-down Warrior card is drawn as usual.
* After playing an Ares or Land Trophy card, if there are both face-up Ares and Land piles, a Battle occurs on the player's turn.
* In additional to the normal end conditions, if the Fate deck is exhausted and there is no Land card to battle over at the end of a player's turn, the game ends.
* During scoring, subtract 2 victory points for every Ares or Land Trophy card remaining in hand.
* All other game rules remain the same.
We are still developing the artwork for the expansion. There are 3 artists actively working on this project now. Fred is diligently working on the next Warrior/Hero card, Shih-Kai is finishing up the Village Land Trophy card and Ryan is working on the Occupy Action card and what will be, the Campaign card back.
I might be inclined to show some of the illustrations soon. Stay tuned!
June 15th, 2009
I have a few things to announce. Firstly, you may have noticed a banner at the top of our webpage. Big Sandwich Games has just released a swanky new iPhone game called SUGAR BUZZ. Check it out! Clicking on the banner will take you to the iTunes store and their game. Secondly, with the cooperation of Craving for a Game, we are holding a local Battlefields of Olympus tournament at the game store on Saturday, July 18th, starting at 3pm. There will be a prize for the victorious! See you there. And finally, I just came across a review of Battlefields of Olympus by Calvin Daniels. You can check out what he thinks here: Battlefields of Olympus Review.
In other news, I thought I would post a simple card drafting variant for Battlefields of Olympus. See below.
* Draw the top 3 cards from the Fate deck and place the 3 cards face-up next to the draw pile at the beginning of the game.
* Players may select 1 of the face-up Fate cards, or they may draw a face-down card from the draw pile on their turn.
* If a card is taken from the face-up cards, the effects of the card take place. That is to say, Ares cards go face-up on the Ares pile, Land cards go face-up on the land pile, and Action cards go to hand. A face-down Warrior card is drawn for Ares and Land cards as usual. If a face-up Ares card is chosen, draw a second face-down Warrior card.
* Replenish the 3 face-up Fate cards. If there not enough cards remaining, fill as many of the 3 spots as possible.
This variant in addition to others I've mentioned previously will be included with the expansion. Please note that the rules are subject to change.
Illustration work for the expansion is in progress. I have just reviewed the rough draft of the Village Land Trophy. As for Calypso (the undersea city building card game), the design is starting to take shape. That's all I can say about that for now.
May 26th, 2009
I just came across this today... If you are fluent in French, check out the Vassal tutorial of Battlefields of Olympus on YouTube!
The YouTube video and Vassal game module were created by Grégory Guazzelli (aka Soft-bug).
More information on the expansion... The harbor Land Trophy and the new Swordsmen Warrior illustration have been finalized. I have decided to selfishly withhold the look of the new cards until a later date. More art to come!
The new Campaign cards explained.
The purpose of the Campaign cards is to give players secret objectives and additional strategic choices. For example, do you take a Campaign card, where you may fail to meet its objective and lose valuable points at the end of the game, or do you exchange a valuable Campaign card you possess for much needed Warrior cards now.
Here is a rough outline of the rules:
* At the beginning of the game each player draws 3 face-down Campaign cards and must choose to keep one face down. The rest are discarded and reshuffled to form a face-down draw deck. There are 12 Campaign cards in total.
* At the end of BATTLE, instead of drawing a Warrior card, players may choose to draw a face-down Campaign card. Player's may keep it face down in front of them, or they may discard a single Campaign card they possess in exchange for the Warrior exchange value written on the card (see table below). A player can only ever discard one Campaign card at the end of battle and only after choosing to draw at least one Campaign card. The player defeated in battle may choose to draw two Campaign cards instead of two Warrior cards.
* If the Campaign card draw pile is exhausted, reshuffle the discard pile to form a new draw pile.
* At the end of the game, additional victory points (VPs) are awarded for meeting the objective written on the card. If an objective is not met, the VPs from the card are subtracted from the final score.
Campaign (new card type)
Number in Deck
VP Value
Warrior Exchange Value
Have a Mercenary
1
1
0
Most Woodlands
1
1
1
Most Meadows
1
1
1
Most Bridges
1
1
1
Most Fortresses
1
1
1
Most Harbors
1
1
1
Most Villages
1
2
2
Most Yellow Land Trophies
1
2
2
Most Red Land Trophies
1
2
2
Most Blue Land Trophies
1
2
2
Most Land Trophy Cards
1
3
3
Highest Ranked Land Trophy
1
3
3
For anyone interested, feel free to create your own Campaign card deck and try it out. Let us know how it works out.
As for other projects in the works, Calypso is currently in the playtesting stage. There are tokens for Hatches, Adaptors, Oxygen, Power and People. Each undersea component card has 1 to 4 connections of up to 3 types. I'm hoping to give the game a "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" sort of treatment with big glass domes and rusty iron rivets. There will be plenty of player interaction as you may have to build on your opponent's city to either hinder them or move you development further.
May 13th, 2009
Shah-Kai has sent me the first draft of the Harbor Land Trophy card illustration for the upcoming Battlefields of Olympus.
I should have more to show in
the coming weeks.
April 27th, 2009
Just a few quick updates to report. I had the opportunity to take part in Starlit Citadel's customer appreciation day a few weeks back. It is always great to hang out, meet new people and play games. We put on a Battlefields of Olympus ladder tournament during this event, and gave away a couple of copies to the winners. Everyone had a great time. Also, I'd like to mention that I am in the early concept stage of an exciting new undersea city building card game. I'm calling it Calypso in honor of the great undersea explorer, Jacques Cousteau. The game will accommodate between 2 and 4 players and will involve managing resources, overcoming potentially catastrophic events, and developing your undersea city structure.
March 19th, 2009
I have been rather busy these last few months. Between my day job and family, there has been little time for updates. Rest assured we are moving forward with development of the Battlefields of Olympus expansion. We have employed two artists to work out the look of the new cards.
Here is some new information about one of the new Action cards:
Conceal
"During battle play next next Warrior card face down."
This new Action provides another opportunity to use the existing Scout Action and creates a few other interesting consequences during battle.
January 18th, 2009
I posted the final illustration of the Archer seen below on BoardGameGeek. Check it out! Also, just wanted to briefly mention that the expansion will included 2 versus 2 team play with a twist.
January 17th, 2009
Fred Dee has been working on a concept drawing for one of the new Warrior cards in the "Battlefields of Olympus: Conquest & Campaigns" expansion. Check it out below!
Illustrated by Fred Dee 2009
January 11th, 2009
We are currently nailing down the card makeup for the new Battlefields of Olympus expansion. Here is a sneak peek at the progress. We have 12 special Campaign cards, 5 new Action cards, 6 Build Action cards, and 2 additional Land Trophy cards. The new Land Trophy cards do not have a fixed victory point value. Instead, the points are calculated during final scoring. The new Warrior deck will be comprised of 5 Heavy Infantry, 10 Archers, 12 Cavalry, 14 Swordsmen and 9 Spearmen. At this stage, everything is subject to change, but it's a good start.
January 8th, 2009
Happy New Year! To kick things off, here are more card ideas for the expansion:
Harbor Land Trophy
Value: (?), Color: Red, Yellow, Blue
{During final scoring, add to your score, the total number of Warrior cards in your possession that you have the least number (with 1 Harbor), plus second least number (with 2 Harbors), plus third least number (with 3 Harbors)}
Armory Build Action
Value: Depends on Land it modifies
{Instead of your turn, discard a Warrior card and select any Warrior from the discard pile}
Stable Build Action
Value: Depends on Land it modifies
{Instead of your turn, discard a Warrior card and select a Cavalry from the Warrior discard pile}
Barracks Build Action
Value: Depends on Land it modifies
{FUNCTION TOP SECRET}
Road Build Action
Value: Depends on Land it modifies
{FUNCTION TOP SECRET}
Tower Build Action
Value: Depends on Land it modifies
{FUNCTION TOP SECRET}
Ballista Action
{Discarding a Warrior card from hand, destroy a single face-up Warrior card of your opponent}
Reinforce Action
{Exchange Warrior cards in hand for Warriors in your reserve pile}
Illustrated by Fred Dee 2009