We are polishing YoiShen, adding more cards to Workdays, things are moving forward! Slowly in the summer heat, but forward.

Ancient Powers, a Fate-based roleplaying game, saw yet another year of amazing playtests at NorwesCon! So, we started up a Facebook Page just for it, to make it easy to ask questions, post scenarios, and maybe do a little online roleplaying. We won’t stop you!

The Luci Awards are coming to Evergreen Tabletop Expo in 2018! We’ve been working hard on YoiShen, getting it ready to enter. Cross your fingers!

We started small with OrcaCon, a little networking, some playing of games, generally a good time was had by all. But now…now we ready ourselves for the Spring Convention Season, starting off with a slew of demos at Emerald City Comic Con! We’re polishing up Work Days and YoiShen, dusting off our backpacks, and finding our coffee punch cards for Top Pot (best coconut milk mochas ever!). Join us on Friday from 10-12 and Sunday from 2-4 for Work Days and Friday from 6-8 and Saturday from 12-2 for YoiShen.

We welcome 2018 with open arms, and a quick trip to the upcoming OrcaCon, always a favorite for Kickstarter panels and hanging out. This is followed with the first of a year’s worth of playtest events, which will be happening on the last Sunday of the month from 2-6.

We have an exciting years ahead! Pass the Tentacle, Work Days, and YoiShen are all getting polished and made ready for Kickstarters (one at a time, of course!). Other games are in the works, so stayed tuned for more info!

Gotta have something to carry the game in! From the ubiquitous white box that is a right of passage for all game designers, to something a lot more polished. It is always good when a box can also double as an advertisement!

On the right is YoiShen’s first box. How cute! How…plain, but it gets the job done. Box Two in the middle…well, we got tired of not knowing which one of the dozens of Plain White Boxes was YoiShen’s! Box Three was printed up for conventions, and made it’s first appearance at Geek Girl Con. There are some art issues, but such a huge step up from Plain White Box with title glued onto it.

The board…the very field of battle. In YoiShen, it’s meant to represent a casual encounter deep in a forest surrounded by Japanese Maples and expanses of slate. It’s a gathering place for Ninja Warlords to debate, drink tea, and prove who the better strategist is.

After looking through our photos…I discovered that I never took any photos of board one. I suppose I shouldn’t be too sad..it was a glaring and hard to look at blue and yellow grid. Board Two, on  the left, was a sandy compromise, with copy and pasted bamboo clipart. A marked improvement, but not what we had envisioned. Board Three, in the middle, was printed in a hurry at FedEx Kinkos (seriously, they know us there, get to know your friend neighborhood printer!). While a marked improvement, it didn’t quite fit onto the Trivial Pursuit board that it used to be. Board Four, on the right, was printed at Print and Play Productions, and while not perfect, is BEAUTIFUL. The colors are vibrant, it’s holding up better than the Kinko’s Board, and is so smooth.

YoiShen has dice…lots of dice, and I find it fascinating on how the dice sets have evolved over and over again…

	All five sets of dice. While it may not seem like it, large strides where made with each set after Set Two. Set Three added a new dice and saw some balancing, Set Four and Five where cosmetic: How can we make the dice look as awesome as playing the game felt, and keep it friendly to those who are color blind?
	Set One: The Original! Way too many one pip dice, and the balance was really off. Stickers by The Game Crafter, dice blanks by some Random Reseller on Amazon.
	Set Two, same as Set One, but the time on nifty indented black dice from The Game Crafter.
	Set Three saw the introduction of the Specter Die–and a way to mitigate too powerful dice combos. We also re-balanced a whole bunch, and the game started playing so much smoother.
	Set Four: Pretty Black stickers.This set saw the introduction of icons and grey was replaced with red. Each color had its own element. Dice and stickers are from Print and Play Productions, but while the game will have the same dice balance from Set Three and on, the icons and colors were really hard to see.
	Set Five: The Most Recent! Colored backgrounds look better, and larger icons are easier to see. I am not sure if the red one has enough contrast to make it color-blind friendly. Dice and stickers from Print and Play Productions. Why did we change from The Game Crafters to Print and Play? The dice and stickers are comparable in quality, customer service is top-notch for both companies. Price is a little more with PnP, but they are faster as well.

Due to unforeseen construction (like quite unlike a commute on the I-5 through Tacoma…) OrcaCon has moved to Bellevue! Join us at the Bellevue for OrcaCon 2018. We will have YoiShen and Work Days with us, and we look forward to playing new games and meeting new developers.

We had such a great time at Dragonflight and our very first PAX West! We demoed YoiShen–much to the delight or our playtesters. Everyone had a great time, and I know I will be playing this one hundred of more times as I work on the new art for Work Days. I spent a few (quite a few) quality hours with YoiShen, Photoshop, and the file uploaders at Print and Play (great customer service by the way! They were right on the ball when I picked the wrong box size to go with the file I submitted).

Whew, is it ever! IN one day we signed up for three conventions, for a total of 16 hours of playtesting YoiShen! It’s always so exciting to see new faces, get great input, and eat at exotic new locals (like…oh…Taco Bell, that’s exotic, right? Maybe Wendy’s. Been a while since I’ve been there.)