I always say that I’ve been very unlucky with the (non-video) games that I liked. I have a deep history of getting really into a game and then have it cancelled during its heyday due to some weird unfortunate circumstance, leaving me sad and looking for the next one that will “click” for me. Now I’m talking about the kind of games most of you have not ever even tried before, Collectible Card Games and Tabletop Miniature games primarily (Fortunately, RPGs cannot suffer this fate due to the inherent type of the medium, but they do suffer the Three Session Curse which is  thing for another post)

At the moment, none of my favourite such games are in production anymore, most of them for many years now. In order of how awesome I find them, here’s a small list and what happened to them.

• Doomtown: A brilliant card game with a very novel take on game design combining elements of traditional CCGs, Poker and Chess. Got cancelled because Wizards of the Coast egregiously dropped the ball/killed it.
• Chronopia: A tabletop miniature game set in very grim-dark fantasy theme, when grim-dark was not yet in fashion. Killed when its company reconstructed, even though it had strong sales.
• 7th Sea: Another collectible card game with a novel ruleset and a fantasy-swashbuckling setting. Died due to a series of bad decisions from the publisher
• Warzone: The brother tabletop miniature game to Chronopia which had a similarly grim-dark theme but in sci-fi. Killed for the same reasons,which was an especially sad fact as at the time it was a very strong opponent to Games Workshop’s exorbitant prices in the Greek market.
• Mordheim: Because I’m a sucker for skirmish games with strong campaign elements built-in. Suffered the same fate all Games Workshop products which are not Warhammer or WH40k suffer.
• Dune CCG: Yet another card game built on a rich sci-fi setting and with rules that fit brilliantly in the setting. Was just not popular enough to continue.
• Legend of the Burning Sands: A card game similar to Legened of the 5 rings, but simply superior in gameplay.

And these are not even all the examples I can think of but they were definitely the ones who’s passing hurt me most. This occurrence is so common that it became almost a running joke in my gaming circle that any game that I started taking a strong liking to, would be inevitably doomed. The games on the other hand that managed to survive where those that I played just in order to have *something* to play, but never liked them particularly. Games like Warlord which I found had a very good setting but never really liked its rules ((Incidentally,  liking only it half-way, just delayed the inevitable, as Warlord has been suffering a slow death for many years now))

The good thing is that because these games I listed are just so good, they tend to develop cult followings behind them which can keep their embers alive far into the future and sometimes this helps.

I recently discovered a little game engine called OCTGN which allows one to build card game definitions and then play their favourite games on it for free, and given that I’ve been itching to play doomtown once more, this sounded like an excellent opportunity. Unfortunately there was no game definition for doomtown available and I took this chance to build one.

Yes, I am aware that there is a plugin for doomtown on the LackeyCCG engine, but I’ve tried it once and I was left a bit underwhelmed. After experiencing OCTGN, LackeyCCG just felt clunky (the program actually strained my eyesight during play) and it didn’t really offer any automation. I’m guessing that one could theoretically code such automation in LackeyCCG just as one can in OCTGN but on the other hand, OCTGN just looks better and as a very big plus for me, it does its scripting in python, which I’ve been itching to start working with.

So OCTGN it was, and after a whole weekend of trial and error I’ve managed to make a working game definition which I’ve been refining for the last few days as well. At the moment I’m happy to say that the game is completely playable and this is where the aforementioned core community comes in, as it can provide the people and the excitement to spread the joy. You can find the game files for the Doomtown CCG here btw and you can also follow updates on the forum. Hit me up 🙂

Once I’ve brought the game into as good a state as I possibly can, I think I’ll start working on 7th Sea or Legend of the Burning sands.

As usually when I get into this mood, I also checked up on some of my other favourite games, but unfortunately, Chronopia has not fared nearly as well as doomtown. I keep hoping that one day, once 3D printing technology is cheap enough, the game will be revived via allowing the sharing of model schematics and terrain. Until then, here’s some concept art that a fan created in the fora of a company which I don’t think even exists anymore 🙂