Mar 21, 20232 min read

Wanna Help Playtest?

Last blog post I mentioned I was going to Unpub to playtest some new games. Well, the results are in. Version 1 of the weather deck is ready to playtest! I have five copies ready to send out, so shoot me an email quick your name and an address to send the expansion to! First come, first served! Email me at Annapurnaboardgame@gmail.com, don’t use the website.

Here’s how the weather deck works for competitive play. You play as normal for the first round (Getting to Base Camp) and then, the fun starts. You turn over the 30 second timer and take your turn. At the end, you flip the timer and the next player has that much time to take their turn. If the timer ever runs out, that player draws a card from the weather deck. If you want to draw a card from the weather deck, just let the timer run out.

I want to hear from you. Once you’ve played at least three full games with it, let me know if you’ve found anything annoying, difficult to implement, hard to understand, or anything else. Email me with questions or problems!

I will post updates to rules and cards as they come about. (For instance for Blown Away, if there are empty spaces ‘move’ the empty space as if it was a card.) DO NOT BE AFRAID TO WRITE ON THE CARDS. If you want, get sleeves and and write on those instead.

The weather deck wasn’t the only thing I tested at Unpub though.

I tested my new game Rock Hound for the first time. Here I am with Elizabeth Hargrave (the creator of Wingspan, yes I was screaming internally a bit) for the last playtest of the event. I have a lot of changes to make and am excited to share more as the game continues to develop. Right now it’s all about arguing about rocks. For instance, is a rock speckled or spotted, and may I bribe you to change your mind?

Besides playtesting my game, I tested quite a few others and ran into some old friends.

Curt Covert of Smirk and Dagger had a table and I got to play one of his games. Adventure Party is a very fun RPG party game that is coming out soon. You can find out more about it and other games he’s publishing here —-> https://www.smirkanddagger.com/coming-soon

I ran a panel about self publishing with the creators of the game and Matthew Hocker from Break My Game on Thursday. It was a lot of fun.

I also ran into Jack from Bodhana Group. If you haven’t heard of Bodhana Group they are a nonprofit group that uses boardgames as a therapy and teaching tool. They’ve even started teaching schools and teachers about their methods. It’s awesome! They got a copy of Annapurna at a convention a while back and have been using it in their initiative. Jack was one of the ones who helped playtest the expansion, he took the picture at the top of this blog post. Thanks Jack!