What can you tell us about Rising Sun (the board game, not the Dominion expansion)?
- It's the new Dominion expansion, best guess currently is that it will come out in March.
- Art has started, unless it hasn't, I sent Jay the artist notes but haven't seen any sketches yet.
- Spielbox wanted a promo and to find out if a new expansion was coming, and we told them the name and estimated date, and they immediately put that up on a kickstarter. So that's how you guys know this set is coming already.
- The promo has no special connection to the expansion.
- More information may be a few months away. I really don't know, but we get nothing special out of getting people excited now about a set coming out in March.
Edit: man I don't know how I was supposed to read this question correctly. All I know about the board game is that it exists.
Do you meet with IRL playtesters at a game store, or do they come to your house?
I do both. At various points in my life it's been all one way or all the other or always both. Currently I have games twice a week at my place and then sometimes make it to a game store. Where I play with whoever wants to play.
What are the chances that you do something like this or that again?
Ah, Swindler. Everyone complained about me thinking about that last turn but man this game is tricky. I don't even remember doing that commentary.
They both could happen again. It's never super-exciting to play because I mean I'm just some guy. With the quarterfinals happening for the Championship now, I immediately thought, I could do some commentary. I can always pointlessly tell stories about cards, or mention what the TGG bot would be doing. I haven't felt like stepping in and treading on any of the other speakers yet though.
What card avatar do you use on TGG?
Smugglers! And man, there's a card to crush the bot with. It will just endlessly pass on buying cards.
Nowadays, do you prefer to use "each time" instead of "when"? (Frigate and Deliver both use “each time.”)
I think probably "each time" would have been better in general from the start, though now there's a lot of weight behind "when" so probably I keep using that in most places.
What do you think of those Quartermaster games where they gain a bunch of cards, but the cards just sit on them forever and you never put them in your hand?
If the set had had even more time spent on it, maybe it would have come up, and I might have tried a version that always alternates, see how that goes (if there's a card, take it, otherwise gain a card onto it). The bot has taught me to be terrified of Quartermaster pile-outs; it will get out four of them in any game with it, and they will pile up cards. I like having the card be as flexible as possible, but it certainly looms, this ability to just stock up cards you're never taking.
What do you think of Falconer, aka my favorite Dominion card?
I still like it fine. I'm a big fan of the Sheepdog family in general, Reactions that you can play in some circumstance. That's how Reactions should have always been, and started out as, and at last they got back there with Sheepdog.