Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Risky math

Risk battles, thoroughly quantified.  Takeaway:  Even for evenly matched armies, the attacker gets more likely to win the more each side has.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Big cards from TGC

New jumbo card template
(from TGC site)
TheGameCrafter.com announces a new big card size (they call them Jumbo cards).  At 3.5" by 5.5", they're about the size of a photograph. My mind jumped to Dixit - the only game that I came up with quickly that uses super-big cards. In Dixit's case, I think it's for two reasons; one, because the cards are the focus for all players simultaneously, so everybody needs to be able to see them, and two, to show off the beautiful artwork by Marie Cardouat.

Neat-o Dixit art
(from a review by
Tiffany Smith
on BGG)
I'm always happy to see new options there, but I can't immediately figure out how I'd use this. Still, it could be fun, and now that it's there, I'm sure I can make my way toward it in future designs.  What I'd really like to see is mini-cards, but of course those are much harder to make in a print-on-demand format. The cutting doesn't get any more precise when you shrink the cards, so you have more and more of the card edge needed for a safety buffer.