Trist - Trist -Trist

[Tobias]

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/311303

[Frouvne]

Tobias' link går til Christian Marcussens artikel på Boardgamegeek:

Hi Guys.

As many of you know there have been changes in management and ownership with ProLudo. The company will now go back to solely distributing games and ceased it's publishing activities. When this was announced I assured you all that this would not affect Age of Piracy as this was what I was told. The producer from ProLudo simply went to another company and spearheaded the project from there. I was told that everyone loved the game and it would be ready in time for GenCon (and I kept working to finalize things). However it turns out that this company also got a new manager and Age of Piracy was not the kind of pirate game he was looking for. So after wasting a year of jumping through hoops to please everyone I was informed about the games cancellation in a brief email (a day before my deadline to finalize all the content!).

Obviouslt this both saddens and angers me to no end. I have spent an enormous effort, time and finances to see this out the door and to have it shelved due to random changes in management is heartbreaking.

What all this means is that we are now actively seeking out new publishers. However realistically it will be very hard to get a publisher to do such a component heavy “semi-ameritrash” game – and even if we get one it will take quite a while before the new publisher will have it ready.

I want to sincerely thank you all for your interest and support and hope that you will be playing this game some day. I still honestly believe that this is the pirate game that is missing from the lot.

Kind regards,
Christian

Ja, det er da virkelig trist. Det lyder som om, det har været et storstilet projekt at nå så langt. Håber, at det lykkes at finde en anden udgiver. Spillet blev i øvrigt omtalt her i huset i week-enden, da der var spillearrangement, så selvom det er en spiltitel, der måske ikke ville have fundet vej til min samling, er det alligevel et spil, der har været meget opmærksomhed omkring. Og fortjent opmærksomhed tror jeg bestemt.

[qute]

Wow, det er helt vildt.

Kan godt forstå han er nede over at have arbejdet så meget for ingenting. Damn.

Forhåbentlig finder han en anden til at udgive spillet.

[Kanzler]

Ja det er f.... synd!!

Håber virkelig han finder en anden udgiver. Jeg var med til at prøve prototypen for snart længe siden, og der var spillet bestemt meget lovende.. Jeg krydser fingre for at en anden udgiver tør give spillet chancen!

[Marcussen]

Hej allesammen. Tak for jeres tanker! Spillet er ikke dødt, og er sågar nu endnu bedre da det er blevet endnu mere poleret efter ovenstående farce.

Der er nu mulighed for at prøve en prototype af spillet i KBH de næste par dage. Tjek gerne tråden: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2217

Hyg.

[Frouvne]

Spillet bliver nu pænt omtalt på BoardgameNews, hvor Kriss Hall laver en lille salgstale for spillet under dets originale titel:

The Merchants & Marauders Opportunity

For the past week I’ve been on vacation with my family at the Virginia seashore. But before we left, I downloaded the rules to Merchants & Marauders, a pirate game designed by Christian Marcussen and Kasper Aagaard.

If you have followed the adventures of Merchants & Marauders on Boardgame Geek, then you know that the game was once going to be published by Pro Ludo under the title Age of Piracy. But after months of high hopes, the designers’ expectations were dashed when new management at Pro Ludo backed out of the deal. Christian Marcussen announced in May that the game was not going to be published by Pro Ludo, and that he would be looking for other publishers.

So when I saw that rules for Merchants & Marauders were available for download at BBG, I wasted no time. I was curious if the Pro Ludo folks had killed a potential gaming masterpiece, or merely passed on a run-of-the-mill game. Of course, reading the rules is not the same as playing the game, but one can get a decent understanding of the game’s basic mechanics and the general level of its complexity.

After reading the rules, I can say that I am impressed. I own and have played Blackbeard, and I think that Merchants & Marauders is likely just as fine a game, and maybe a better game, depending on your taste.

Certainly, M&M is a more Euro-ish look at the Buccaneer period. The mission cards in the game seem to be based more on fictional pirate melodrama than realistic pirate events. And unlike with Blackbeard, there seems to be no torture in the game, making it more child-friendly. If I owned both Blackbeard and M&M, I would surely try teaching M&M to youngsters rather than Blackbeard.

This is not to say that M&M is a childish game. It is very much an adult game, and is probably just as complex as Blackbeard. The rulebook is over twenty pages long, and the font size of the rules is not large. Rules for combat are particularly complicated (compared to the other sub-systems in the game), but anyone who can handle Blackbeard will have no trouble with M&M.

The game gives players plenty of options. Players can choose to be pirates and can zig-zag around the Caribbean looking for merchant ships to plunder. But players could also choose a more peaceful path as a merchant who buys goods at one port and sells them for a higher price at another port. And special mission cards can provide extra-large bonuses for the players who complete them.

Players can also become pirate hunters. As players raid the merchant ships of various nations, the governments of the victimized ships offer bigger and bigger rewards for the destruction of the player pirates. A player can collect large rewards by finding, fighting, and defeating another player who is a successful pirate. This direct player-to-player combat is something that was deliberately left out of Blackbeard (Blackbeard players could send non-player warships at opposing players, but these were seldom a dangerous threat).

To repeat: I have not played the game, and the actual game may not live up to the promise of the rules. But I found the rules to be very promising, and I hope major publishers are seriously considering publishing M&M.

Because of the large number of cards, tokens, and miniature ships M&M will not likely be a cheap game to publish. But I could see it fitting in with the toy-heavy Fantasy Flight line of games.

Or maybe Z-Man Games could do another pre-order offering like they did with Agricola. This should take much of the risk out of publishing an expensive game.

Merchants & Marauders may represent an opportunity for the right game company. I hope the right folks are giving it the consideration it deserves.

Kilde:
http://www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/ ... portunity/

[Stony]

Der lader til at blive tilføjet endnu et trist kapitel til historien om Merchants and Marauders.

Istedet for at gentage mig selv, smider jeg et link til mit indlæg på BGG:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2583247#2583247

[Marcussen]

Hejsa... En lille opdatering.

For en 3-4 måneder siden sendte vi tre prototyper ud til nogle udgivere som alle ville udgive spillet! Alle tiders. Vi har så brugt en masse tid frem og tilbage på detaljerne, og skriver snart under med en fin udgiver. Der går desværre lang til før spillet udkommer da der er kø på udgivelserne

Nu er jeg igang med næste store projekt. Et Civilisations spil.

Hyg

[Kanzler]

Hejsa... En lille opdatering.

For en 3-4 måneder siden sendte vi tre prototyper ud til nogle udgivere som alle ville udgive spillet! Alle tiders. Vi har så brugt en masse tid frem og tilbage på detaljerne, og skriver snart under med en fin udgiver. Der går desværre lang til før spillet udkommer da der er kø på udgivelserne

Nu er jeg igang med næste store projekt. Et Civilisations spil.

Hyg

Det lyder godt nok spændende! Begge dele! Tillykke med at I "endelig" har fundet en udgiver. Glæder mig rigtig meget til at prøve den endelige udgave. Så jeg venter tålmodigt lidt endnu

[Marcussen]

Hejsa... En lille opdatering.

For en 3-4 måneder siden sendte vi tre prototyper ud til nogle udgivere som alle ville udgive spillet! Alle tiders. Vi har så brugt en masse tid frem og tilbage på detaljerne, og skriver snart under med en fin udgiver. Der går desværre lang til før spillet udkommer da der er kø på udgivelserne

Nu er jeg igang med næste store projekt. Et Civilisations spil.

Hyg

Det lyder godt nok spændende! Begge dele! Tillykke med at I "endelig" har fundet en udgiver. Glæder mig rigtig meget til at prøve den endelige udgave. Så jeg venter tålmodigt lidt endnu

Takker

Jeg kan så også nævne at spillet i dets nuværende form er endnu bedre og mere lækkert end det du i sin tid prøvede. Men nu kommer der en ny udgiver, og de ville jo ikke være rigtig udgivere hvis ikke de ville lave noget om også - Så det bliver interessant, men også lidt skræmmende da jeg er 95% tilfreds med spillet i dets nuværende form.

[Mik]

Der går desværre lang til før spillet udkommer da der er kø på udgivelserne

Det er før set at SÆRLIGE spil springer frem i køen.
Så kan man jo tænke sit...

[qute]

Bare det kommer ud.
Jeg mener spillet skabte noget debat på bgg. Især de små skibe var folk meget glade for

Mvh
Anders
(som mener vi skal have mere legetøj i spillene)

[Marcussen]

Der går desværre lang til før spillet udkommer da der er kø på udgivelserne

Det er før set at SÆRLIGE spil springer frem i køen.
Så kan man jo tænke sit...

Ja - vi er ikke særlige nok.

Nej, der er nok nærmere tale om at udgiveren har en del titler som sælger sig selv alene på navnet og som allerede er annonceret. Så uanset hvor godt eller særligt vores spil måtte være så vejer de kommertielle hensyn mest.

[Aratar]

Jamen, tillykke med udgivelsen, Christian! Det må være dejligt at være at have en kontrakt på plads efter den lange proces

[Marcussen]

Så er der skrevet under fra begge sider...

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/382481