Hey, I didn’t say I had a problem. I guess that makes me cool. You know what else makes me cool? I love Arthur Rackham. I thought that there was definitely an element of his influence in the art style. Am I off base here?

Deb: Poor old Art is responsible for so much isn’t he? Only insofar as he is a muted color kind of guy!

EDADH is a zero luck game with practically no random elements whatsoever. So what’s wrong with luck, anyway? I understand that you guys wanted to do something where the outcome would be completely based on a player’s tactical and strategic performance, but how do you create drama, suspense, and tension without a random element?

Deb: Gamers are some of the most creative people I’ve met and are more than capable of creating their own drama, suspense and tension and don’t really need the assistance of a random element but we’re not knocking the use of it in gaming. It’s just that it occurred to Nigel and Lloyd that it needn’t be random or luck-based and that you can have a mechanic that resolves combat which can be exciting and within your control. The best unknown and random element is your opponent!

Nigel: I echo that: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with luck. If you want luck then there are plenty of great games that have it. However, we saw a niche in that there wasn’t a wargame that had close to zero luck – unless you take into account Chess or Go etc., but when we set out to create WFE there was no equivalent of a tabletop miniatures game that minimized luck.

Drama, suspense and tension are actually intrinsic in the core gameplay of WFE. You can never be 100% certain what your opponent is going to do until he does it. When you suss out your opponent’s tactics and strategies then you can gain the upper hand but if your opponent is smart he’ll change his tactics and can always come back at you at any point. When you’re directly playing your opponent then gamesmanship comes to the fore and you get your drama, suspense and tension and players really get emotionally involved in the game. It’s funny but when at conventions I’ve observed other games in progress and invariably when I’ve seen luck impinge on a gamer’s strategy for the worse that gamer tends to get pissed off but in the type of game where an opponent outplays a gamer, I see the losing gamer laugh!

One thing that really surprised me about the game is that it is very much a tactical wargame that reminded me in a lot of ways of UP FRONT, one of my favorite games of all time. In fact, one of the biggest differentiators for the game, I think, is that is provides a kind of avant garde wargame experience like Up Front but without the overplayed World War II baggage. Did you set out to intentionally make WAR FOR EDADH a wargame?

Nigel: WFE actually started out as a game where fairies and mermaids collected pearls and fairy dust with the goal of building the most perfect fairy castle. Sprites, devils, trolls and evil minions tried to prevent them. But before we knew it we had a wargame on our hands! Funny how things turn out.

The first half of that response laid out a perfect game for Essen ’09. The second half, not so much.

Nigel: Seriously though, we did actually set out to create a wargame. We love miniatures and the tabletop style of wargaming but we wanted to create a game where luck was minimized. We also never had the time and patience to paint up an entire army of miniatures so WFE was perfect for us. That said, we do have rules worked out where you can use miniatures as well as the cards and some time in the future we would love to bring out a line of miniatures – you can then choose whether to play with the cards or whether you fancy pushing some pretty lead around on a table with terrain. Either way you can still use the core rules and mechanic of War for Edadh.

Lloyd: Although WFE started as an RPG we decided to go for a wargame for a few reasons. One, it teaches the combat system, so when you get to the RPG you can have all your attention on the RPG thing rather than the game mechanic. Two, the wargames market is more viable for gaining a foothold from which to release the other styles of game. Three, we like wargaming.

That’s really kind of come to mean a different thing though, the whole “consim” thing. It used to be that “wargaming” somehow included adventure games and miniatures games. I can definitely see EDADH existing kind of at the middle of all that. Another thing that surprised me is that the game doesn’t feel like a CCG at all. Did you intentionally avoid any of the design concepts in that format other than, obviously, the collectible format?

Nigel: War for Edadh was never designed as a CCG but as an alternative to tabletop, miniatures wargames. As such CCG mechanics were never considered. Once the core gameplay was in place a lot of the remainder was driven by play tests and, believe it or not, the drive to create the simplest gameplay that still encompassed everything you would expect in a battle.

Lloyd: At the end of the day we had specific objectives for the game and that’s what we aimed for, rather than taking other games’ mechanics. We built our system from the bottom up.

I think that’s one reason that the game’s modular rule set is so successful. Players are empowered to kind of tailor their experience with the game to their tastes. I find it really interesting that the game accommodates everything from a simple skirmish to full-on battles across multiple terrain types with solitaire and multiplayer options. How do you build in so much flexibility without overloading the game with rules and complexity?

Nigel: Well, it was a long time in the development stages!! We designed WFE’s battle game first which is near enough the last game you would come to play as you work your way through the rulebook. Once that was created we realized that the game could be altered slightly to create quicker, simpler games. We didn’t set out to have the modularity there but once we spotted the potential we built it in because it allowed us to create a simpler version that would enable gamers to pretty much pick up the game and get playing straight away. Once we had created the Unit vs. Unit, Best of 3 and Skirmish games it occurred to us that the game could be played with multiple players so we refined the rules for that and then literally as it was going out the door to the manufacturer I had the idea that WFE could be played solo and so we adapted the rules for that.

We wanted a ‘universal’ game mechanic that could be used in any conceivable situation in an RPG, quest, battle or whatever. We have ideas for other universes, so it had to able to translate across to those also. Once we had a core mechanic it actually leant itself to other styles of gameplay remarkably well, and invited the further depth that the expanded rules of War for Edadh offer.

It sounds like there’s plenty of room for exploration. On the website you’ve already announced that there are going to be numerous expansions and add-ons that are going increase the ways that players can explore Edadh even further, even going so far as to incorporate adventure game elements, campaigns, and even RPG games using the cards. This is all very, very ambitious- particularly for a small publisher. With that in mind, what are Warrior Elite’s next steps, what are the action items and what can we expect to see released to support early adopters of the base game?

Nigel: It is ambitious but it’s worth putting out there as a goal. As I mentioned we created the RPG back in the early ‘90s – that was just the Edadh RPG using our Conflict Resolution as the core mechanic. So the RPG and adventure game already exist. If gamers like WFE (and from the feedback so far it seems that they do) then we hope to build a solid customer base that will be able to support those releases and so not only will your games of WFE be expanded but the number of different games you can play with the same cards will increase.

Our next steps are to release a couple more Warring Factions and with each of these we’ll also release a different game – a race game (with a difference) and guerrilla combat are two of these – and then there will be enough Warring Factions to support Campaigns rules. We’ve got big ideas for this where each Warring Faction will have its own distinct goals so each Warring Faction will play differently to the others. We’ve got some ideas up our sleeves as a way to say thank you to early adopters – the Edadh 300 is one of these where the first 500 or 1,000 gamers – the exact figure is yet to be determined – who get a copy of the game will be a member of the Edadh 300 and get a unique card to confirm it plus special offers in the future.

That’s more than the Sparta 300 got, at least.

Lloyd: The first releases will mean players can expand their tactical options with more troops, stratagems and terrain. We wanted each faction to have their own particular way of waging war. For instance, the Suqoya (evil minions) fight incredibly dirty as well as having formation tactics unique to them alone. Plus our expansions will be non-random. You’ll always know what you’re getting, and can choose what to get. If you want more archers to expand your army then you’ll be able to get archers.

If you only want a wargame then it’s there. If you want to expand into campaigns then that’s an option too! This could be played stand-alone or as an appendage to War for Edadh, where infiltration, trading and politics, amongst other things, have an influence on the battles you fight, and vice versa. I could go on, but the overall plan is on the website with regards to the exploration game and the mysteries game / RPG.