What's been added
recently?
CONVENTION
UPDATES
The UK convention
listings has been updated to include SoRCon
(Son of RamsdenCon).
A FEW MORE FAQs
We have added a few more Frequently
Asked Questions to the Breaking Away section. I really need to
rewrite the rules and put a few more examples in.
MORE TEAM
COLOURS ADDED
We know some of our customers have not only bought three extra
teams to augment the basic Breaking Away set, but they have actually
used them in a 9-player game. I have no idea what a 9-player game is
like - chaotic, I expect. So, please understand that in making the
announcement that there are now 6 extra team colours available to
augment the basic game, I am not recommending you play a 12-player
game of Breaking Away. However, there is nothing to stop you if you so
desire, and we'd be interested in feedback on how the game plays (I'd
probably recommend putting a cap on replenishments of 30). The new
colours we have added are brown, gold and silver. To my aged eyes, the
brown and the gold look a bit similar in a dim light so please bear
that in mind before purchasing.
GERMAN LANGUAGE
REVIEW OF OFFICE POLITICS
I've laid my hands on a 1999 copy of Spielbox that has a review of
Office Politics in it. I've scanned it and loaded it on to the Office
Politics review page.
I have also scanned in a small
mention of Breaking Away in the US gaming mag, Knucklebones.
PRICE INCREASE
FOR US CUSTOMERS - BLAME GEORGE BUSH
We regret that we have had to put up our prices
for US customers. The price of Breaking Away and Office Politics used
to be $33, but owing to the decline of the dollar against the mighty
sterling, we have put the price up to $38. This should have happened
on January 1st, so you've had two months of 2005 prices!
NORMAL SERVICE
HAS BEEN RESUMED
February was a bit of a fraught month on the personal
front but things have calmed down a bit, and turnaround times for
orders are back to normal - i.e. usually no more than a week from the
time the order is received until it is posted.
CONVENTION
CALENDAR
The UK convention
calendar has been updated for 2006.
BREAKING AWAY
BACK IN PRINT
After what seems an eternity, we have finally received the new
print of Breaking Away
boards and the game is back in print. Please note that on January 1st
2006 we shall reset the US dollar and euro prices to take into account
exchange rate fluctuations (the base price will remain £18, including
postage); barring a massive resurgence by the dollar this will result
in a price increase for US customers (haven't checked the euro yet), so
buy before 2005 is out!
TUNNELS &
TROLLS LIVES AGAIN
We all have skeletons in the cupboard, and among mine is the 15
years or so of my life when I was a regular player of Tunnels &
Trolls, the fast & furious role-playing game. I reckon I must have
got 3,000 hours or more of enjoyment from this game, which cost me
about £3.95. There's a new 30th anniversary edition of the
rules out and so in honour of that I have dug up an old interview
I did with T&T's designer, Ken St. Andre, from about 21 years ago.
OUR
RECOMMENDATIONS
We have updated the entry for Opera on our "We
like.." page to reflect the new release of this peerless
browser. The advent of Firefox has probably put a dent in the
viability of Opera AS as a company, and it would be a real shame if we
lost the innovative qualities of the people behind Opera, especially
as most of the features that make Firefox so good were pioneered by
Opera years ago.
We've also updated the Ian
McNabb entry. My favourite artist is making an attempt to get
in the charts at the moment with his first single in almost 10
years. If you can spare a quid, visit www.karmadownload.com
and download his single, "Let The Young Girl Do What She Wants
To"; I can think of 100 McNabb tracks that are better, but it is
catchy and if it occupies a chart place it not only gets him airplay
again but it denies a chart place to some hideous manufactured boy
band (possibly!).
UK CONVENTIONS
LISTING UPDATED
This listing had become seriously out of date but now has details of
just about all the major board gaming conventions in the UK in 2005.
THE 2004 UK POSTAL GAMING ZINE POLL
The results of the 2004 Zine
Poll are now available. This year's winner is once again For Whom The Die Rolls.
The winner of the Web Site
Poll is Dip2000.
BREAKING
AWAY BACK IN PRINT
Breaking Away is once again available. Many thanks for the patience of those who were
kept waiting for a few weeks to buy the game; we have now
cleared the backlog of orders and if they aren't already
the games - with their shiny new boards - should be with
you soon.
U.S.
PRICE INCREASES WHEN USING PAYPAL
For many years now we have subsidised
the cost of posting games to North American customers.
Typically it costs around £6 more to post to the US than
it does to Europe, yet the price for US customers for
Breaking Away and Office Politics is only £4 higher -
and remains so if you are paying in sterling, or sending
a cheque to Jim Burgess.
With the dollar purchases, however, we also find
ourselves subsidising the US trade deficit, albeit to a
microscopically small extent, and so we have increased
the U$ PayPal price of Breaking
Away and Office
Politics to $33. The U$ cost
for the whole
Fiendish range remains
unchanged.
VARIANT
FOR BREAKING AWAY
A Breaking Away variant has been designed by Ton Segers. It's based on
a "Madison" which is a type of race developed
in New York in the early part of the last century.
In a Madison, teams consisting of 2
cyclists have to ride (in alternate turns) a certain
distance (100 laps or an hour) gaining points (5-3-2-1)
every 5 laps. The final sprint doubles these points
(10-6-4-2). The winner is the team that has concluded the
most distance. In case of a tie the team with the most
points is victorious.
NEW
TRAFFIC LIGHTS LINK
Want to try out Traffic Lights online?
Well, you can, except it is not "our" Traffic
Lights, but a very similar game with the same name
designed completely independently by a guy called Joe
Walters. Life is just weird, sometimes, isn't it?
NEW
ISSUE OF MISSION FROM GOD
Mission From God is the directory of
UK postal gaming zines. It contains details of virtually
all the postal gaming zines currently publishing in the
UK, plus selected zines from overseas. A revised version
of the 2002 issue (originally published in November 2002)
is now available for download as a zipped (776kb) file in PDF
(portable document format). The revised version contains
a broader spectrum of opinions on the zines plus a few
zines I overlooked, such as A League Of Our Own and
Jumpers For Goalposts.
An HTML version of Mission
From God is also available.
FIENDISH
GAMES, THE COMPUTER CO.
We get the odd enquiry from people who have downloaded
games from the now defunct Fiendish Games web site and
who are now having problems with the games they have
downloaded. We are sorry but as we have no
connection with Fiendish Games the software company we
can't help with these queries. Small Rockets seem
to have taken over responsibility for the old Fiendish
games computer games.
DOING
A GCSE GRAPHICS COURSE?
About twice a month I get e-mails from students who
are producing a board game as part of their GCSE graphics
course. They seem to think I know something about
the subject. What little I know is outlined in this
article about the game design
& production process.
DESIGNING
YOUR OWN GAME
We get about one e-mail a month from games designers
seeking advice on getting their game published. We
provide what advice we can but not everyone is going to
want to follow the Fiendish Board Games model, so if you
want to do a bit more research on the subject you might
find our new Games
Design section interesting reading. We've also added
a lot of links of a games design nature to our Games Companies and
Gaming Resources
pages.
NEW
WEB ADDRESS
The old Demon account has served us well over the
years but it is time to move to our own domain. Some
swine beat us to the URL www.fiendish.co.uk
by just 10 days so we have settled on www.fbgames.co.uk.
We've also added a visitor-tracker on the front page which
enables you to see where out visitors are coming from and
what keywords they are using. Very useful if a bit
worrying in a big brother sort of way.
FIENDISH
BOARD GAMES?
"Didn't you guys used to be called Fiendish
Games?"
Yes, we did but another company liked the name too and
offered us some money for the rights to it. So we took
the money and will invest it in our next game, The
Metric Mile.
Being lazy blighters though we have not bothered to
change the bank account so please continue to make
cheques payable to Fiendish Games, not Fiendish
Board Games (unless you are sending a cheque from abroad,
in which case make the cheques payable to John
Harrington).
P.S. The other Fiendish Games seem to have disappeared
off the face of the earth. Their games are being
hosted by www.smallrockets.com
Please note that the license for Devil Take The
Hindmost has now expired and is no
longer available from Fiendish Board Games.
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