Prototype progress

The last week has seen a lot of preparation for Congress of Gamers and the UnPub ProtoZone event on Columbus Day weekend in Rockville, Maryland.  I've been putting together a new prototype for "East India Company" in anticipation of getting some playtesting and exposure of the game in an exhibition environment.  My son helped me with the basics of Adobe Photoshop to put together a nice map layout.  I've got an order in to Superior Print-on-demand (Superior POD) for a mounted version of the mapboard that I hope will be ready in time for CoG.  Meanwhile I've been assembling materials to make up some nice game pieces.  So it has all been coming together, and I look forward to showing off my work-in-progress.

My focus has been more on constructing the prototype than on refining the gameplay, so the rules tweaks that will be in place are the ones I identified at the last round of playtesting at WBC.  I hope to get more comments and improvements out of the CoG designers room.  From there I should get a sense of how close to pitch-ready the game really is.  I'm getting pretty excited about EIC, and I look forward to sharing my excitement in a couple of weeks.