Check out Michelle’s collection:

Update 2: Thanks so much to everyone that participated in this contest! We will be announcing a winner within 48 hours! Winner will be posted here and we will also attempt to contact the winner individually via email. Thanks again!

Update: We’re entirely blown away by the scope and scale of the reception that this contest has received! You guys are all so awesome! For those that haven’t entered yet, be sure to scroll through all of the “shelfie’s” in the comments below and then be sure to post one of your own! We’re excited to see which game library will soon be all sleeved 100% by Mayday sleeves! Keep being awesome!

Happy Holidays friends and loyal customers!

I’ve got some exciting news: We’re giving away enough sleeves to cover your entire game collection! And if you think that’s crazy, wait till’ we tell you that we’re also going to sleeve every game that you buy within the next 6 months of winning this contest!

Kinda crazy, eh? Crazy or not, here we come!

How To Enter

You’ve got all sorts of ways to increase your chances of winning this contest and you can see them all right here:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

So What’s the Catch?

No catches to speak of. Obviously if you’re a business, we’re not going to sleeve your entire game library. This is limited to consumer gamer libraries only and up to a maximum retail value in Mayday sleeves up to $500. Once you win, you just need to tell us what games you have and what sleeves you need to cover those games. And we’ll do this for up to 6 months from the time you win the promo. International winners will just have to pay shipping on the sleeves that they request. Shipping is free within the United States. We’re going to trust that you’re entering this contest for you, and for you only. There’s no way for us to guarantee that we’re sleeving only your game library, but we trust you to be honest with us and not sleeve all of your friends games too. No, this offer does not include physically sleeving your games for you.

TL;DR Terms: No business owners can enter. We will not sleeve a business game library. Maximum retail value in sleeves we will give away is $500. We will sleeve all of the games currently in your collection and any games you purchase within 6 months of winning the contest within the $500 retail limit.We reserve the right to ship the sleeves by whatever means necessary, including whenever we can. For out of stock sleeves, paying customers maintain a higher priority and we will ship your sleeves once all paying customers are taken care of. We reserve the right to add to these terms and conditions during the contest. International winners must pay shipping. Free shipping within United States.

Hello friends, Daniel Peterson the Lead Developer for Mayday Games. This morning I awoke with something in my mind that I have not thought about in decades, Numeral Systems.

About 30 years ago when I was in my teens I was fascinated with computers. I would stay after school to use the Apple IIE. My first computer was a TI-99 4A with 16k. Yes, you read that right only 16k. My data storage was a cassette tape and it took a long time to load previously stored data. In those days you did not have a graphic user interface, you turned on the computer and saw a flashing cursor. I learned Basic, Logo and a little Pascal.

As a kid I used to make my own games to play on my computer because I did not have the money to buy them. The games were simple, the computer would generate a random number, the user would try to guess the number and the computer would give clues high or low etc. I also made a lot of adventure games that played like a choose your own adventure game. As I grew in skill I would add graphic images to enhance the experience.

I love how a computer works. The binary system intrigues me. I was intrigued that the computer only knows two things, either a circuit has electricity in it, or a circuit does not have electricity in it. Another way to look at a binary system is “yes or no” and of course “0 or 1”

I was intrigued that a computer that could do anything but only knows two things 0 and 1. Learning the Binary Numeral Sytem was ground breaking idea for my young mind.

Later I learned other Numeral Systems, Octal and Hexidecimal. The Hexidecimal number system was a gift from God at that time. I only had 16k, using the Hexidecimal Numeral System I was able to compress large amounts of numbers and data into a smaller space!

I have always been obbsessed with numbers and patterns. At a younger age in elementary school I would often sum numbers on address and license plates while I walked home from school to avoid boredom. I still find my mind doing it today. I know, it is pathetic.

The reason I talk about this is that I love board games that have patterns and are based on consistent numbers. Stone Age is a great example. The probability of the dice role to produce items that are worth consistent values is perfect!

Consistent numbers in a board game can be range of numbers instead of exact numbers Splendor is a great example of this. The cost of the cards in the first level are 3-5 gems. Since Splendor is  a race to get 15 points, of course I would rather buy the card priced at 3 instead of 5.

I love when designers mix up the numbers by creating set collection bonuses and secret goals. For example there is a card available to all players worth 5 points. But it is worth more to me because I get a bonus if I collect more of that card. Or I get 10 bonus points if I get that card and others for my secret goal. That is when a game gets interesting!

The base or the core of the game fits a nice consistent math pattern but the play of the game creates agonizing choices as the values of the cards are not always worth the same amount of points to each player because the designer has added other parts to the game to mix these values up.

I remember Paul Kruetz (an old friend, currently playing in Voodoo Swing. Picture below of Paul at Sjock festival in Belgium) telling me, “In Rock and Roll you first learn the rules, then you break the rules.” Then he taught me the 12 bar blues and then showed me how to break out of that pattern to create unique and different music.

I think it is the same in game design. First the game needs to be balanced with consistent number patterns. Then the game design needs to include other parts to break up the balance and number patterns to make it more interesting and force players to make agonizing decisions.

Enough of my abstract ramblings I’m off to play Tiny Epic Galaxies!

If you are interested in learning to play Viceroy, check out the well made Youtube video below. There is a second video that goes over the end game and scoring. If you haven’t picked up your copy of the game yet, you can get one here.

Here is a quick overview of Viceroy: “Viceroy is a board game for 1-4 players aged 12 and up. As they struggle for control over the fantasy world of Laar, players recruit a variety of allies, from a wanderer to a prince, and enact various laws. As the game progresses, each player builds their own pyramid of power by developing their state’s military and magical might, increasing their own authority, and gaining the precious gemstones they need to continue expanding their nation. The player who has the most power points at the end of the game become the ruler of all Laar–and the winner!”

Don’t forget to buy some card sleeves to protect your precious cards! The most popular are the premium sleeves which are made with a thicker and more high quality plastic. Thanks for reading!

Humble Beginnings

Mayday Games entered the Board Gaming industry in late 2008 with a splash as big as you’d expect a company with a single product, a single person and not even a single marketing plan. I should say as big as you’d expect pre-Kickstarter. That is to say, no splash at all. Many board game companies come into this world because of a run-away hit or an amazing license or a great idea that sells so well that a company is almost accidentally created. They come from people who are at least initially board gamers first and business people second. Mayday came about as a business first, but from a family who absolutely loves board games.
Mayday started out with only our own personal financing and a dream to help people who saw a need for something in the marketplace. Our first few products came from everyday gamers emailing us a “Mayday” call, asking for a sleeve that fit the odd-sized cards for Dominion or some cute little animal shaped tokens for Agricola. Variations of these sleeves and animeeple tokens grew and in late 2009 we launched our first game, a popular print-and-play found on Board Game Geek from a guy in Israel (Space Junkyard). By the end of 2010 we had 30+ items in our catalog and had hired our first couple of employees. At that time we had to decide what sort of company we wanted to be.
I wanted to give Mayday a competitive advantage in the industry and focus on games I could love and therefore sell. We had met with luke-warm sales with our first couple of games, mostly because they took a long time to pitch at conventions and explain to people, and because of some quality issues with the products themselves. I love euro-style games, but with a very limited budget and staff, selling them at a convention or pitching them to a distributor was just… tough. In fact, most of the sales staff consisted of my three kids, then aged 12, 10 and 8. What we needed was a family-friendly product line with broad appeal. It needed to be easy to explain, even by my kids. A game that instantly came to mind was Get Bit, by Dave Chalker, and we obtained the rights to Get Bit in 2011.

A Change

As we did so we began getting new quotes from factories, mostly in China, for this and a couple of other games (our deck building game Eaten By Zombies among them). What I came to realize was that the quotes for the cost to produce a game varied widely from one company to another. The final manufacturing quality also varied widely and wasn’t necessarily correlated to the unit cost either. We had been burned on a couple of games by a couple of factories with high prices or (even worse) with poor quality for our games/products. So I began to think critically about what sort of game company Mayday needed to become, not just in 2011 but in 2015 and 2020. What could set us apart and help us to survive in this tough industry?
I wanted Mayday Games to have the strength of top-quality manufacturing at a low cost while having the sales of a major European game company. To accomplish this I unveiled my 6-year plan to my wife and family. We would sell everything and move to China to live nearer the manufacturing. We would stay in China for about 3 years, set up our own WOFE (Wholly Owned Foreign Enterprise) in China to trade/haggle directly with the Chinese factories. We would also learn Chinese to talk to these factories more effectively about what we wanted. After China we would move to Germany or somewhere in Europe and learn German and develop really stellar distribution/sales while learning German. Also, we wanted to become a family-friendly product company that reflected the types of games my small family enjoys.
So in 2011 we put our house up for sale, sold our cars and our entire family flew from Salt Lake City to Dusseldorf, Germany to run our booth at Essen. One suitcase each was dedicated to product to sell at the Spiel, so the carry-on and 2nd suitcase were the sum total of all the worldly possessions we brought with us to live in China. How serious were we about making Mayday a low-cost, high quality manufacturer of games? Pretty serious.
We have now lived in Suzhou, China for just over 2 years and we have expanded our product offerings to include many filler/family games like Crokinole, Walk the Plank, Click Clack Lumberjack and most recently Coconuts. These dexterity and other “family friendly” games are generally low price point ($25 or less) and easy to explain in under 5 minutes. They also resonate with our Kickstarter fans as we’ve just finished up or 15th Kickstarter campaign since late 2011. Kickstarter has allowed us to expand our product line with great new games much quicker because we get the cash to print the game in advance.

The Future

We have great partners here in China but continue to explore relationships with new factories to ensure the quality and price of goods allows us to keep our retail pricing low. Our sales and profits have increased each year and we are so excited to have Ryan Bruns as Mayday’s new President starting in early 2013. He came to Mayday with the objective of ensuring a quality experience for each of our customers and has worked wonders. Jeremy Blake is our new COO as well and has done amazing things for our website and the quality of the experience we deliver to our customers.
We are just now starting to make in-roads into the larger markets and attract attention from major retailers, largely thanks to things like Get Bit winning an Origins Award and Walk the Plank winning a Major Fun Award, and we expect to continue to grow by leaps and bounds in 2014 with perhaps a dozen new games to be released in 2014. Get Bit is now being printed in 6 languages and we hope some of our other titles will meet with similar success.
The casual game appeals to even the serious gamer sometimes, and we hope our casual games will equate to serious success in the future. I believe the next “big game” will be a relatively “casual” game like Dixit or No Thanks! or maybe even one of ours. If you think about the games in the mass market stores in the USA now, most of them are simple/easy to play and would be called a casual/filler game by most people in our industry.

The sacrifice has been HUGE for our family personally, but we have grown a lot because of this experience. For many games may just be a fun hobby, but for us it is a way of life. If any of you are attending GenCon or Essen or any of the other conventions we have attended for the last several years, please stop by our booth and look for the geeky couple with three kids madly pitching product and trying to go off to hunt for their next favorite game, we’d love to meet you and show you a game or two in less than five minutes.

Bios

Seth Hiatt was born in Anchorage, Alaska and is the founder of Mayday Games, Inc. He has a Bachelor’s in Accounting from Brigham Young University and an MBA from Utah State. Seth is also a licensed CPA and worked for a major accounting firm (KPMG) in São Paulo Brazil, San Francisco and Salt Lake for several years. He also worked as an accountant for a maufacturing company for several years. Seth enjoys sales, running, basketball, reading, learning languages and of course playing board games. His current favorite (non-Mayday) games are Dixit, Copycat, Race For The Galaxy and Rampage.
Paula Hiatt is from Rexburg Idaho and has a Bachelor’s in Fashion Design and a Master’s in English Literature from Brigham Young University. She is the proud mother of Abby (16), Chase (13) and Porter (11). She also recently published her first novel, Secrets of the Apple, and is an avid reader and writer when she isn’t editing rules or teaching her kids to be nerds. Her other interests include travel, history and service to others. Her favorite game by a MILE is Kingsburg, but she also enjoys Bananagrams, Puerto Rico and Blokus as long as she gets to be “RED”.

Seth and Paula will celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary in 2014.

Hello Friends,

Daniel Peterson here, Lead Game Developer for Mayday Games. Today I wanted to talk about Meteor designed by Mike Young.

Graphic Design:

When I started working on Meteor Max Holiday was the graphic designer. Max wanted Meteor to set in Space Race Era of the 1960’s. My first thought was Harley Earl and his chrome and fins. Harley Earl was Head of Design of General Motors, I love his design. All those cool cars from the 50’s and 60’s was his work.

Max had a different idea of 1960’s style. Instead of Harley Earl, Max wanted a cold war style found in the movie Catch Me If You Can. (Early design by Max for a rocket card below.)

Max left Mayday Games and started working with Tasty Minstrel Games. We got a new graphic designer, Allison Lichtfield. Once we got the art work from Marco A. Echevarria the 60’s style was gone. Instead it was replaced with a warm family friendly style. I’m really happy with the final design. At times I still wonder how Harley Earl influence would have looked.

Seth wanted Meteor to be language independent. I worked very hard with Allison to make sure the icons on the cards are accurate and consistent. It was a very difficult job and I feel good about the final product.

Back Story:

I wanted an interesting back story for Meteor. I searched the internet and I learned a lot about Meteors. First off, rocks from space are not called Meteors until they hit the earth, they are called Meteorites when they are falling from the sky. I considered renaming the game at that point but kept Meteor. Interesting that I read a review of Meteor from Russia, they called the game Meteorite. They got it right.

My first thought of a back story was to create a peaceful night. An Astronomer looking through a telescope sees a Meteor and notifies the authorities….well Astronomers don’t look through telescopes anymore, instead they capture images of light and study their data collected in one night for many months. This technology was available in 1949 with the Palomar Telescope in San Diego California.

After a few games, I realized that Meteor is not a mad frantic playing of cards but a careful management of resources. I created this elaborate back story:

“Astronomers from several countries have identified a large group of meteors on a collision course with Earth. If just one of these meteors hit the Earth it would surely be the end of the human race.

Leaders of every country attend a global meeting and decide that all differences will be set aside and that each country will contribute resources to stop the incoming meteors. The world leaders designated a handful of Launch Sites scattered throughout the world. These launch sites will be a collection point of resources and provide a place to build and launch rockets that will destroy the meteors.

Some countries can only contribute small rockets that are old and outdated. Other countries will be able to contribute large rockets with the latest technology. Some rockets need Atomic energy and Hydrogen energy and other rockets use Nuclear energy.

This is where you come into the story. You are a Launch Site leader. Time is of the essence! You do not have a second to spare. You need to quickly build and launch rockets from your Launch Site to destroy the meteors before they collide with the Earth. The problem is that your donated resources are not compatible with each other. You need to match the appropriate rocket with the matching energy. If you have resources that you can not use, you may send your resources to other players Launch Sites so that they may use the resources instead. Can the Launch Site Leaders work together to destroy the deadly meteors before the Earth is destroyed?”

I was geeking out over this theme. It explained why the rockets and energy did not match. It explained why players drew cards during altitude zone change. It takes time for the resource to get to the launch sites. Launch Site Leaders do not start off with all the available resources. They slowly came in from contributing countries. The back story explained all aspects of the game.

This elaborate back story was replaced with: “In five minutes a meteor storm will impact Earth, unless you can work together to blast the meteors into oblivion! Work cooperatively; pooling resources and launching rockets to obliterate the impending threat, or cockroaches will inherit the planet. No pressure—it’s just the fate of the world.”

The final back story is much better, simple and direct. I thought some of the players might find the elaborate back story interesting.

Development and Rule Changes:

Mike Young did an excellent job. The game is well balanced and I did not have to change much. I asked a lot of questions on the rules and specific cards. This information is included in the Card Glossary with the clarification of each card. Some of the minor rule clarifications were:
-When new Meteors were added to the Meteor Field they entered play face up. If they entered face down, they occasionally created situations that the players could not win.
-The Radioactive Meteor destroying an additional small meteor. It was expanded to include a “large” meteor that has been revealed with a strength of 3 since 3 was the size of a “Small” meteor.
-Splitter Meteor adding a Meteor without Traits….what if the cards drawn was a Fast Meteor in Altitude zone 1. Game Over!

Mike and I had one disagreement with the rules. He had a rule that once the last card of the resource deck was drawn, game over. After I lost the game because of the that one rule, I would be counting cards and it would be one more thing to track in the game. I felt it took players away from the experience. Lets be honest, if players draw the last resource card….chances are high that they are going to lose anyway. Let the players play it out and not worry about running out of cards. It was one less rule to include in the rule book.

Kickstarter Campaign:

Seth asked Mike and I to create some promo cards for the kickstarter campaign. The elaborate theme is what helped inspire me to create the Top Secret Cards. If this was an actual crisis, some countries would hold back and not contribute all they have. But as the situation grew more dire, countries would reveal their Top Secret technology. I did not want to disrupt the balance that Mike perfected, therefore the cards could not cost any energy. I did not want the Top Secret cards to clog a players hand, therefore the Trash Can icon is on every Top Secret card. It allows players to discard that card from their hand to draw a new resource card at anytime. That is why the Top Secret cards attach to a different card to improve or modify the card that they were attached to. The Top Secret Cards can only be played in certain altitude zones. This shows the desperation of the selfish countries that finally give up the good stuff when it is a desperate situation.

The kickstarter campaign was fun. I wanted it to be a call to arms and a recruitment drive. We created the Meteor Defense Coalition (MDC.) The MDC cards were inspired by the Kiss Army cards. I wanted the campaign to be done in character and all updates issued by Mike Young, the Head of the MDC and keep the entire campaign in character. The video was fun to work on, I wrote the “Screenplay” the direction of the video and found the quote from Nasa at the beginning. The video was inspired by my first theme of a peaceful night, being disrupted by the incoming Meteors. Jeremy Blake found the images and music and made the video amazing! Video seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_cMddRdIZE

GenCon:

At GenCon last year we had some demo copies of Meteor to show at the convention. The night before Ryan calls me from his hotel. He is playing Meteor with 3 other players and they can’t win a 4 player game. I heard the other players in the background yelling out, “It’s broken!” You should…..with all kinds of suggestions. I assured them that it is not broken and gave them tips and suggestions how to learn the game and play the game. I also looked over my plays and it was close to 60% win rate with 4 players. Soon I got a call and the group reported a win and everyone was happy and they dropped the claims that Meteor is broken. We knew that we had to add strategy tips the rule book and a section to teach new players how to play.

I wrote the first draft of the rule book. Later it was edited and chopped. Over 500 words were removed and it is not the rule book I wrote. This major rewrite occurred after GenCon and I was very discouraged.

How was I going to get more content added to the rule book to help players learn the game and include strategy tips when a significant amount of text got cut from the rule book? Frustrated and discouraged was an understatement of how I felt at that time. I was devastated!

We started getting feedback from the review copies that players were struggling to learn how to play Meteor. Ryan asked me to write a Tips Sheet. A lot of the content on the Tip Sheet was the tips discussed during the conversation that the occurred night before GenCon. I hope this makes a difference and it helps players learn one of my favorite games. The Tip Sheet can be found at https://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/117620/meteor-tips

I can’t thank Mike Young enough for creating Meteor it is an amazing game. I have played it 175 times so far and I still love it. I got to personally demo Meteor at International Tabletop Day in California and it was neat to see new players fall in love with it too. You can get Meteor here, https://maydaygames.com/card-games/meteor.html

It is an honor and a privilege to work on Meteor. I also thank all the kickstarter backers for making Meteor a reality. I hope you find as much enjoyment playing Meteor as I do.

Daniel

Hello Friends,

Daniel Peterson here, Lead Game Developer of Mayday Games. Today I wanted to talk about some of the development behind Dead Man’s Draw.

I played Dead Man’s Draw on my iPad and I really enjoyed the game. When Stardock Entertainment announced the kickstarter, I thought, “how are they going to write the rule book?” The app slowly taught players the Suit Abilities through a series of games. I was curious how that would happen on the tabletop.

The Kickstarter project by Stardock Entertainment did not meet the funding goals and Seth told me that Mayday Games worked out a deal with Stardock Entertainment to relaunch it.. Seth handed me a copy of Dead Man’s Draw and asked me to look over the rules.

The original rule book from Stardock Entertainment read:
“The game starts with the lowest value of each suit in a separate pile (face down) from the main deck.
During each players’ turn he/she draws cards from the main deck. As a card is drawn, the card’s ability is activated upon entering the board.*
*The only exception is the key/chest combo, whose abilities are only activated upon collection , gaining random cards from the bust pile equal to the number of cards that were collected from the board that turn.
However, if a player draws two of the same suit in a turn, or if a card’s ability causes the board to have two cards of the same suit, he/she busts and discards all cards drawn that turn into the bust pile.*
*The only exception is if an anchor is drawn, causing all cards drawn before the anchor that turn to be collected by the player even if a later drawn card would cause a bust. (The anchor itself is not protected and must be discarded upon bust.
Each player’s collected cards are organized into stacks of the same suit, resulting in a possible max of ten suit stacks per player.
Important: only the HIGHEST valued card (always the top card) of each suit stack counts towards the player’s total score.
For example, a cannon suit stack with values 7, 4, and 3 will contribute 7 points to your total score NOT 14 points.
The game ends when the main deck has been drawn out. Each player adds up the top value card of each suit stack and the player with the highest score wins.”

I was familiar with the app and I understood the rules. What about a player that has never played the app? I did not think the above rules were sufficient for a new player.

The rules in the app are, “Tap deck to draw or tap cards to collect. Collect cards to get the highest score only your HIGHEST card from each suit adds to your score. Draw as many as you Dare! But draw the same suit twice, and your turn ends. There are 10 suits, each suit has cards 2-7. Cards have special abilities when you draw, play or steal them.” The computer is programmed to manage everything else! It was a challenge to get “everything else” that the computer was programmed to manage into the rule book.

I quickly learned that a rule book has to accomplish more than just teaching players how to play a game. The rule book also teaches players how to MANAGE a game. The above rules are excellent for teaching players how to play Dead Man’s Draw but it does not teach players how to manage Dead Man’s Draw.

I began writing a new rule book. Seth introduced me to Chris Bray at Stardock Entertainment and he answered my many questions. It was an odd project, I played countless games on my iPad and observed the game and asked Chris any questions that I could not figure out from playing the app.

I had a difficult time learning how the computer was programmed to manage the discard pile. At the start of a game, I know that all the “2”s and “4” of mermaid are in the discard. I am counting cards and keeping track of exactly which cards are in the discard pile. Things did not add up, cards would not appear when I drew a map that I knew were in the discard pile.

Finally, I had to ask Chris about the discard pile. He answered, “One difference with the digital version is that the discard pile will never give you a card that can bust you (so if that’s all that is left in it, it won’t give you a card at all). We did the same with Swords & Hooks in the digital version as players would be confused and frustrated when a card that was usually good would put them into a situation where they were forced to be busted. In the physical version it can be a lot of fun though, as you get big peaks of emotion when a player thinks they just made a great combo and end up busting themselves. It also makes the maps more of a risk as you always have a chance of only getting cards that will bust you.”

I quickly learned that the tabletop version of Dead Man’s Draw is not the same as the digital version. Not only did the Map play nice on the digital version, but the Hook and Sword were also programmed to play nice on the digital version. It is fun to watch the play through video created by Stardock Entertainment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcH8sXFwKpg Around the 6 minute mark the players joke with each other as Chris will bust by activating the anchor suit ability, he also has the trait that he must play two cards if he draws the anchor. But he chooses to use a map first which causes a bust. I agree with Chris Bray, ” In the physical version it can be a lot of fun though, as you get big peaks of emotion when a player thinks they just made a great combo and end up busting themselves. It also makes the maps more of a risk as you always have a chance of only getting cards that will bust you.”

I have information direct from Stardock Entertainment. I have the iOS and Steam version of Dead Man’s Draw. I’m also reading what Malkie13 (Joe S) is doing with the print and play files on Board Game Geek.

I’m literally looking at four different versions of one game! My head was spinning at this point. What made it more difficult is that the words were not consistent. The area that players place cards is called, the river, the board. The place where players store their cards is called the bank, suit stacks, the hand. The amount of information, game terms and differences were staggering!

After sifting through all this information, I had to determine some solid game terms for the tabletop version. Bank, Play Area etc. I also had to determine which version will be played on the tabletop. I chose to go with the original Stardock Entertainment version that they played. Yes, Maps, Swords and Anchors cause busts!!

Players can play the tabletop version exactly like the app using Malkie13 rule set https://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/100743/dead-mans-draw-rules-booklet.

Players can play the iOS version and Steam version here http://www.deadmansdrawgame.com/ Steam version has the Mermaid Variant.

If you want the original experience developed by Stardock Entertainment. I’m talking the “bare knuckled, not nice” version then pick up Dead Man’s Draw from Mayday Games here https://maydaygames.com/card-games/dead-mans-draw.html We also include bonus cards so that players may play the Mermaid variant on the tabletop.

Almost a year has passed since these events occurred. Dead Man’s Draw has been translated into Italian, Spanish, French, German and Russian. Also we have released an Interntaional Tabletop Day version.

We have had many flaws and errors with the rule book. Most of the employees currently at Mayday were new at this point. We made many mistakes. We had so many different copies of this rule book floating around and each version had different errors. We honestly did not which one was the most current or correct.

I would be asked to edit parts that I have never seen nor written, it was a mess. The feed back of players has assisted us to fix many errors in later printings.

The version posted on BGG at https://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/105958/dead-mans-draw-card-game-rulebook-mayday-v-10 is not the same rule book that was shipped with the game.

We have had many company meetings and have put many processes in place to mitigate the errors that can spawn from one version to the next. We only have one rule book now for the games we are currently working on.

Even with all these errors, I feel really good about the rule book and I really appreciate the amazing game created by Chris Bray, Derek Paxton and Leo Li.

It was an honor to work with Stardock Entertainment. It was neat to see how the video game industry worked vs. the board game industry. I am so jealous that they can write a condensed version of the rules and the computer will take care of everything else.

I am grateful for all the kickstarter backers to make Dead Man’s Draw a reality. Without you this game would not be on my tabletop!

Daniel

It has been way to long since I sat down and wrote anything to let you all know what is going on in the world of Mayday Games.  It is Tax Season which means I’m forced to reflect upon the last year and, for better or worse, render an accounting of how things have gone.  The good news is that Mayday continues to grow and we have a lot of great things in the works for the rest of 2015.   But before I spill the beans on that let’s look back at our prior years.

Kickstarter

It will come as no surprise to anyone when I mention Kickstarter first and foremost.  We were totally blown away with 2014’s KS results, due mostly to the stunning results of our final campaign of 2014, Viceroy.  If you haven’t heard of Viceroy you owe it to yourself to check it out.  I have to say that the success of the project was due in no small part to this “Final Thoughts” video:

But even more in the forefront of all our minds are Mayday are our other unfulfilled projects.  There is Meteor which should begin shipping in the next 2-3 weeks, but more importantly there are 4 other projects that are not quite finished.  That includes Coconuts Duo, Hold Your Breath, Chopstick Dexterity Mega Challenge 3000, and Dead Man’s Draw.  Sure those backers of those games to the US, Canada and most of the rest of the world got their games long ago, but our loyal fans in the EU (Europe) have not!

We are keenly aware of this and are anxious for all of those to finally be delivered.  We went into those projects determined NOT to airmail product from the USA to the EU and force our backers to pay more customs/duties/VAT and so we set up a process to get the games into the EU from the US via boat and then from there to backers.  The good news is that when these backers DO finally get their much-anticipated rewards, they will be coming with no customs or extra fees, since we pay for all of the VAT tax when the product comes into the EU initially.  The bad news is that we had to carefully sort through every single order to ensure we sent everything that was needed for those rewards to ship AND we had to ship them via a freight forwarder, which seems like it is taking FOREVER.

We know this is frustrating, especially since some retailers in Europe have ordered the product via other means from a US or other distributor who now has the game already.  The good news is that while some of these games may be available on a limited basis already, they will NOT include the KS bonus rewards or extras or add-ons that our backers get.  I also expect in almost every case that the few retailers offering these games already will have to charge more for the game than our backers pledged for since they had to airmail them in from oversseas.  We know this is NOT an ideal situation and we are very sorry, which is why we are committed to this NOT happening again.  In fact, while we have several games that are ready or nearly ready for Kickstarter, we are NOT going to launch them until these 4 older projects are totally fulfilled, and we have a good dent on Meteor and Viceroy too.

The Path Forward

Please know that OUR GOAL has always been to fulfill these rewards as soon as possible, we want nothing more than to get these out to you. Suzi and Natalie are working tirelessly on processing comments, address changes, order modifications and communicating with lots of backers who are understandably frustrated.  Let me be clear, this is OUR FAULT and we are striving to fix it as quickly as possible.  We feel your pain and are frustrated too.  So what can be done going forward?  Well lots of things.  Of course we can fulfill these 4 projects to Europe but what else?

Well while Meteor is already late, about 4 months late.  We had hoped to deliver it in December 2014 and here it is early April.  We aren’t happy about this either but the good news is that the game is coming in within the next 2 weeks.  It is already in the Port and we are just waiting for it to clear through the mess that is the West Coast Port and arrive to us in Utah.  We expect that to happen soon, but we are at the mercy of the port.  We are just glad the game is produced and we are ready and waiting to fulfill it.  The other good news is that we got a few copies airmailed in for advanced reviewer copies and the response to the game has been amazing.  Check out Bower’s Game Corner’s final thoughts on the game, we couldn’t pay him to give the game a better review!  I mean he says straight up “This is the best finished game I have played in 2015″…  but watch his full analysis below:

Yeah… pretty good review for this game, so hold on a bit longer faithful backers!

Viceroy KS Fulfillment

So what about for our next game after that… Viceroy?  We have over 5,000 backers for this one compared to our usual 1,000-2,000 backers, so how are we going to do this?  Well since we have had such poor luck getting rewards out ourselves, especially with all the problems from the Port, we are trying something totally different.  Rather than get all of the rewards into our Utah warehouse, we are sending all rewards outside of the USA at the same time as we send them to the boat to ship to the US.  This means that our international backers SHOULD get the game even before we do!

That’s right, we are using a local fulfillment house near the factory to airmail everyone’s rewards out. We fully expect all non-US backers to get the game before we even get the boat to the US, and since we will still ship out our US rewards at least 2 weeks before any distributor gets the game, that means it will be IMPOSSIBLE for a store to have the game before any backer.  Ok, well that is for everyone except our store backers, who of course will get it ahead of time too.  Still though, there are only 29 of those worldwide and they did back the project too, so they deserve it early as well.  The good news is that, while Viceroy is still going to be late, it will not be NEARLY as late as these last projects.

We are trying this as a test run for all future projects but expect this may be the way we go in the future for all projects, if the feedback from our backers is good.

Final Thoughts

So where does Mayday go from here?  Well for one, we have learned our lesson about our release dates.  We are committed to setting more realistic release dates for all our projects in the future and hope these projects will be the last ones we are ever late on.  Yes, we really expect that to be the case.  Please bear with us all you loyal fans, we really are trying and we really are SORRY for all the delays with our latest projects.

In other news, our warehouse has never been more full and we’ve never had fewer out of stock products before.  Yes we are out of our super-popular MDG-7041 card sleeve right now, but that is really our only major product that is out of stock and we hope to have it back in within a few weeks too.  We are trying everyone and are so excited for the rest of 2015.  Thanks again for all your support and a big thanks to the Mayday Team.  If you haven’t met Ryan Bruns or any of the rest of the Mayday Team, please come find us at GenCon or Essen or one of the other shows we attend.  We were recently in Las Vegas for the GAMA Trade Show and Allison and Natalie and Ryan and I had a great time meeting with stores, distributors and other publishers.  We love this industry and are grateful for the support all of our customers provide us to allow us to continue to grow.  Thank you.

Seth

You’ve all seen our popular game, Click Clack Lumberjack. We’re in the works of reprinting CCL and thought the existing design could use a revamp. The box is now larger and the contents are much better (three(!) different bark colors, clear rulebook instructions, more game variants). Axe yourself, do you have what it takes to make the cut?

The graphics are almost complete for this game called AssassinCON (created by Binh Vo). Here’s a quick summary of the game: “Welcome to AssassinCon, the annual convention where assassins meet to show off tools and skills and decide who is the best in the world! This year the contenders have decided to take it out of the judge’s hands. Do you have what it takes? Join in this great HIDDEN ROLE game to find out!”

Working on this game has been a blast. Garbage Day (created by Shane Willis) is a dexterity card game in which roommates try to avoid taking out the garbage by stacking their trash on the shared trash can. If you case one of your fellow roommates to knock the trash pile over they have to clean it up byt they want to do the same to you. Pass trash off onto other players, stack what you can on the pile, and hide trash in your room to avoid responsibility; but be careful! If your room is too full you’ll have to clean it!

That’s it for now! Stay tuned for more sneak peeks in the future.

-Allison

These videos will cover what’s going on at Mayday as well as anything else in the gaming world that interests me or that I have been playing.

Thank you

Daniel Peterson here, Lead Developer for Mayday Games.

The last six weeks of my life have been overwhelming. Death of a family dog that we had for over 10 years, a new dog. My Mother passed away and our son got married last Friday. We have endured the pain of loss and death, we have experienced great joy as our family has grown bigger.

This has been my first holiday season at Mayday Games. I also manage the warehouse and I have had many long days of shipping these past few weeks. We have shipped the Black Friday Sale items, and we are still working on getting all the Kickstarter projects shipped out; Hold Your Breath, Chopstick Dexterity Mega Challlenge 3000, Coconuts Duo and now Dead Man’s Draw.

Viceroy, well Viceroy has been an amazing experience for us at Mayday Games. I wish I could thank all 5,887 backers personally. Because 5,887 people have put enough trust in Mayday Games, Viceroy will be published in English! Thank you all!

I’m exhausted, but I am excited about the new games coming soon.

It has been a reflective time for me and I have reconnected with many old friends in my life. I have also been reflecting on my experiences at Mayday Games.

I got involved with Mayday Games because I am friends with Ryan Bruns. We would often play games at my house during his lunch break. At times he could not play games because he had to meet with some one to play demos for Mayday Games. I offered to play test for him and help him out with these demos, so we could get back to playing games on a regular basis.

I am one of those people that learn best from reading the rule book. Ryan would ask me to read rule books of games that Mayday Games was either publishing or reviewing to publish. At this point I didn’t care if Mayday Games valued my opinion or not. I would give my opinion and advice and recommend what I would do different and let Mayday Games determine if my feedback was valuable or not.

One of the first games that I ever worked on was Hold Your Breath. Ryan Bruns asked me to review the rules. The feedback regarding the first draft, was generally about how the game was being presented. I learned a few things from being a musician, one of those things was to never lose an opportunity to tell someone the name of your band.

I was surprised that in the Hold Your Breath rule book they wanted to call the game HYB instead of Hold Your Breath. I stressed the marketing and promotion opportunities to say Hold Your Breath over and over instead of HYB.

I also recommended an Anchor Token to keep track of the lowest depth before players swam back to the surface. In my mind I pictured an 8mm wooden cube that matched the players meeple. The final product has an amazing wood cut token that looks like an anchor.

My only contact with Mayday Games at this time was Ryan Bruns, I have not met Seth Hiatt yet and I did not know much about Mayday Games or their operation details or what was going on in the company.

I was asked to review Hold Your Breath rule book again. It was improved but still not good in my opinion. I offered to rewrite the rule book. Ryan introduced me to Christopher Urinko one of the designer of Hold Your Breath. It took a few days to write the rule book. Christopher Urinko was excellent he answered all my questions and helped me learn the fine details of his game.

I was proud of that rule book at the time, but as I look back at it now, it was not a good rule book. It was too wordy, redundant and had many other flaws.

While I was writing the rule book I had a difficult time describing to players where to put their meeples during set up. “Place your pirate meeple near the top of the board but not on the board.” I realized that if I create a Surface space on the game board, it would be much easier to explain the set up of Hold Your Breath.

What I did not know is that the graphic designer was just days away from sending the files to the factory. The graphic designer already had a predetermined space and the rule book I submitted was severely chopped up and edited. I was not happy with the end result and I insisted that my name is not on the credits because I knew it could be better than it was.

A year has come and gone. I’m glad that they did not publish the rule book for Hold Your Breath that I originally wrote. It had many flaws. I’m glad that some of my suggestions were added, the Anchor Token and the Surface Space. I’m glad that the graphic designer added parts of my rule book to the final rule book. Yes, the rule book could be better, but I think it is sufficient for players to learn how to play Hold Your Breath. The graphic designer did not remove my name from the credits.

Most of all I’m glad that I got to work with Chrisopther Urinko and Daniel Jenkins. Hold Your Breath is a fun little game. I’m so grateful that I had the experience of working with creative people on this project. I would never be able to come up with a game as good as Hold Your Breath. I’m not nearly as creative as the designers that I get to work with.

Hold Your Breath will always have a special place in my heart, it is the first game I had the privilege to work on.

Daniel Peterson