Stretch Goal 8 Unlocked - The Temp Agency
over 7 years ago – Sun, Aug 28, 2016 at 08:57:59 AM

Good morning! How exciting is this!? Another stretch goal!! Woot!

I want to preface this reveal, yesterday I hinted at a card that would be revealed, and well that is not the card being revealed. This is because during the testing session last night that card turned out to be boring an and dumb. So it’s back to the drawing board on it, but I think it’s fixable so no worries!

Temp Agency

The Temp agency is another thing that has been requested quite a bit. It provides you with access to previously inaccessible locations, for a cost.

The strategies around the Temp Agency are pretty straight forward, and it was used to good effect during our intense testing session last night, however it never proved to be overpowered. Which was my initial concern, especially with it only having an additional cost of 1 mint.

Onward!

Next up is a red Production type plan, that so far has proved to have very polarizing opinions during testing. Which as a designer, makes me very happy!

When one person says "This card is overpowered!" and I turn around to somebody else that says "This card is useless and I'll never buy it." i know I have something interesting on my hands.

Solo Rules

I have begun the process of drafting up potential solo rules for Mint Works, this has been requested quite a bit so I'm looking into it.

If you are interested in helping test out the solo rules, please send me a message here on Kickstarter letting me know and I'll make sure you get on the list.

Hedgehog Bookworm

Here is a picture of Sonic trying to read a book about a mouse and a motorcycle!

Stretch Goal 9 Unlocked - The Stripmine
over 7 years ago – Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 06:51:04 AM

And now we have access to a new plan! As hinted before this plan was very polarizing at the table during testing last night. How was it polarizing? Let's take a look!

The Stripmine is another new flavor of the production type cards, it does two very different things. You get 3 mints a round from it, but it doesn't give you any points on it's own. This was the crux of the debate!

We had 2 tables playing Mint Works on repeat for 4 hours. At the end of the night each table had a very different opinion of Stripmine. One table thought it was a great card and when bought at the right time could put you in very good position. The other table labeled it a death curse, as all night long any player that picked it up didn't win.

After most left for the night, I talked it out with a couple of the testers and it came down to timing of when you pick up Stripmine, and what the presence of other Production cards is in other player's Tableau's.

The result is a very interesting card that ends up having it's power interpreted very differently, and thus valued very differently by everybody. That makes Stripmine a great new add to the Plan deck.

Card Listing

There have been some requests to be able to see a listing of all cards in Mint Works at the moment. I'm going to be working on that and will post a link to it in a future update.

Mint Works in the media

I've been terrible about sharing out the various media stuff that has been happening around Mint Works! I'll try to do better on that, starting with this list of a few things that have happened over the last week.

Druid City Games

James Hudson (@DruidCityGames) had a chat with me on google hangouts last week. We talked about how the campaign was going, and a little bit about the genesis of Mint Works and a few other things. James was great and made it very fun and casual!

Board Game Breakfast

Next up, Suzanne (@425suzanne) covered some Kickstarter projects on Board Game Breakfast Monday morning, and mentioned Mint Works. The Kickstarter segment begins right about the 7 minute mark.

Sweet Kicks with Bricks

This afternoon Barry Ricks (@Bricks2312) had me on his show and we chatted more about the current state of the campaign and Mint Works. Barry was great to chat with and kept it interesting and flowing nicely.

http://www.sweetkickswithbricks.com/sweet-kicks-bricks-103-mint-works/

Onward!

We continue to knock out stretch goals, and I've got cards ready for it! Next up at $35k we unlock a new location, that provides a unique way to gain mints.

Playtesting Hedgehog

Sonic was at the testing last night, but he did not want to cooperate for a picture! Here are a few pictures from last night.

Stretch Goal 7 Unlocked - The Vault
over 7 years ago – Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 12:27:08 AM

Wowza! Here we are at the start of day 7 and we’ve already unlocked 7 stretch goals. You are the best! This game has grown in quality so much already, and we now march down the path of additional cards!

Vault

The Vault is an interesting twist on card interplay. Unlike the Obelisk or Museum, the vault doesn’t want you to build any of your other cards. The Vault and the Assembler are the only plans that could allow you to win by only using one build action.

Vault also has a neat interaction with Swap Meet if it’s in play as well, since you can swap out a plan that you have built with something from the supply, and that new plan will be face down. Potentially turning a 1 point card into 2 points.

Rules Updates

There have been some questions about rules regarding all of the new cards. There are indeed updated rules, however they are not in a downloadable rulebook yet. The new rules revolve around having more cards than before.

Location Setup

During setup, the four “Core” locations will always be used (Produce Mints, Leadership Council, Plan Dealership, and Manufacturer) then up to 2 other locations will be randomly added to the game.

It is recommended when introducing players to the game to only include the 4 core locations for the first game or two, once the new players are comfortable you can go back to the standard setup.

Plan Setup

Any leftover locations will be put back in the box, and all player purchasable locations will stay out of play but be within reach in case a player claims and builds one.

Then, all plans will be shuffled and 3 will be randomly removed from the deck and put back in the box without revealing them. This will ensure that you can never count on a specific plan coming up in any given game.

Those two new rules during setup will account for keeping things fresh between each play, and keep the options limited within a game when introducing new players.

Onward!

Our next stretch goal is to unlock a new location at $27,500. This new location will add in a frequently requested effect that has to do with the Plan Supply.

Token Quality & Card Size

Both polls are still running until the end of the day on Friday. If you want to get your votes in you still can. I'll be factoring in a lot of variables for those decisions and the polls will definitely be part of it.

If you want to explain your vote more, but aren't up to commenting about it, feel free to message me why you voted how you voted.

To vote on token material type go to http://poll.fm/5nmxo

To vote on card size go to http://poll.fm/5nnoz

Hedgehog Report

Sonic is currently sleeping so I can't get a new picture of him right now. Instead here is a picture that my wife took of Sonic and our cat Denna checking each other out.

Mint Works, Card Size, and You!
over 7 years ago – Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 11:43:40 AM

In the update I sent out this morning I had mentioned that I was considering dropping the card size down from a custom size, somewhat near the size of a business card, down to a standard "Mini Euro" size. The leading contributors to this decision were

• Card Sleeves are available in this size
• Additional space in the tin for more cards

I figured this wouldn't be a big deal at all, because the game is micro and portable. In addition, the cards are already smaller than normal and never spend time in your hands, like a typical card game.

A few concerns have come up regarding the idea of shrinking the cards down and I want to address them. The main concerns about sizing the cards down were

• Readability (will important things be too hard to read across the table?)
• Accessibility (will it be too hard to place mints on the locations?)
• Preference

 

Readability

This was one of my main concerns with shifting to the smaller cards, so I made sure not to size down any important information on the cards when creating the updated templates.

The result was a little less white space, slightly smaller card art, and a tighter design over all. The key items on the cards: Cost, Points, Name, Effect all maintain their existing size.

Below is an image (clickable to see full resolution) that shows existing prototype cards along side the proposed mini euro cards. There is also a base Ticket to Ride card and regular playing card for scale.

 

In terms of readability, everything looks as it should. I think this should dispel that concern.

 

Accessibility

Now this was not something that had concerned me when I initially considered shrinking the cards down, it was brought up by several people and I think it is very much worth verifying.

The two main concerns about accessibility were holding the cards and placing mint tokens on the locations. I don't think holding the cards should be a concern since you don't ever really need to keep a handle on your cards during the game. They spend the vast majority of their time on the table.

As for placing mints, I did some tests with my mint token analogs (read: Altoids) and stacked a few. These mint token analogs are 12mm in  diameter and 6mm in thickness. The diameter is the thing we care about the most at this moment as that is what the final diameter of the tokens for Mint Works will be.

Below is a picture (clickable for full resolution) of the same set of tokens on the same card in both existing size and the smaller size.

 

Everything still fits just fine, the circles are nicely sized for the tokens and spacing still allows easy access to the placement circles. I think this should dispel the accessibility concern.

 

Preference

Now there really isn't anything I can do to change how somebody feels about a given card size, so this bullet point is something I can't address here with a picture. However, that doesn't mean we can't address it. Which leads us into the next step.

I've created another poll, this time to gauge preference of card size. The poll only addresses the concern of card size for now. As I'm not putting the option of plastic cards on the table quite yet since I've done little to no research into it.

Like the other poll, you can vote once per day until it's closed. I'm not going to set an end date on the poll just yet.

To vote on the card size preference poll go to http://poll.fm/5nnoz

Hedgehog Time

Since I wasn't able to get a picture of Sonic this morning when I sent out the update, I've got a couple for you now. First is the little dude checking out the current funding progress, and second is me attempting and failing to get a hedgehog selfie.

P.S. Inside the tin

I forgot to include some inside the tin pictures!

First we have what the inside of the tin looks like with a full set of the current cards

Below is a picture with 23 mini cards in it to show the space difference.

This image has 50 mini cards, and a full set of mint tokens.

Stretch Goal 6 Unlocked - Upgraded Tokens
over 7 years ago – Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 03:17:59 PM

Upgraded Tokens

We have now unlocked the upgraded token material! This means that in the final version of the game all tokens (mint and first player) will no longer be chipboard. What material they will be is still up for decision. Currently Wood is winning by about 2 to 1.

To vote on token material go to http://poll.fm/5nmxo

You can still vote on the poll once per day until I take the poll down. I think at this point I’m going to let the poll shut down on August 26th at 11:59pm Central. This means you have about a week left to vote!

What’s up your sleeves?

So, to be honest I hadn’t really considered sleeving the cards for Mint Works, which is a funny thought to me, since I’m pro-sleeving typically. So when questions about the types of sleeves started to come up I wasn’t ready to answer them! So I’ve been working out an answer these last few days.

Currently, the cards in Mint Works are a little shorter than the typical Business Card size. Which is a standard size, however it’s not a size that anybody really makes sleeves for. Which makes the game MUCH harder to sleeve. So I started to look into other ways to solve this issue, changing the card size.

I wanted to find a card size that would still fit in the tin, but also be standard and have sleeves available. This landed me at Mini Euro sized cards, the cards used in base Ticket to Ride. These cards are about 68mm x 45mm. I took a moment to size down a plan card to see if I can make it work, and the result was very positive!

Above is a test print of a sized down Mini Euro version of the Windmill next to the existing Windmill card. This is very promising and I think we will be able to move forward in this direction.

Now, this change will actually benefit everyone, not just the sleevers, because we have more room in the tin now thanks to the shorter cards! This means a good portion of the tokens can fit next to the cards rather than on top of them, increasing our vertical space within the tin significantly.

This means more room for more cards! Which leads me to… 

Onward!

From here on out we will be adding new Plans and Locations at each stretch goal. Be warned however that these new cards have not been as tested as the ones before it. We will be testing these new cards actively as of right now to ensure they are properly balanced and fit within the game in a desired manner.

What this means, is that as we unlock these cards I’ll share the strategies about them, but they may be altered slightly or even significantly between initial reveal and final release. I don’t want to release a broken game, and I’m sure don’t want to play one, just because I announced a card one way and stuck with it. I’ll be keeping you in the loop on the cards as we unlock and refine them.

Another bonus here, is that I’m happy to take suggestions for Plans and Locations going forward! You can message me here on Kickstarter or leave a comment with your ideas. Just keep in mind that we want to keep this as a friendly open and inviting game to bring players in to our hobby, so avoid intentionally negative interactions with other players (Stealing plans/mints, Altering another player’s tableau, etc.)

A hint for this upcoming plan: It will be a yellow support type plan.