Barony: Royal edition

Think inside the box!
about 1 month ago – Tue, Nov 12, 2024 at 03:18:37 AM

Greetings, nobles!

What a huge day! Many thanks to all who have jumped on board the Barony train recently! We have passed a huge milestone...!

Another stretch goal unlocked

Thanks to everyone's support, we now have enough funds to include component boxes for each player! These are a functional and beautiful way to store your pieces - both while the game is packed away, and while you play. Here are some images from our samples to show what they will look like...

Next up, we have another nice upgrade...! We intend to silkscreen BOTH sides of the wooden pieces. Now, one side will be decorated, and the other will have the crests of each player's character.

With approximately a week remaining in the campaign, we are very hopeful of knocking this stretch goal over, as well as the few we have planned to follow it. Thanks again for helping to make Barony: Royal Edition better and better!

A special thank you!

Thanks must go to BGG user @4Xcution who noticed in our sample photos that we had mixed up the lion and bear icons - this will of course be corrected for the final version :) Thanks so much for your help :)

Need to know more?

A lot of backers have joined us over the last day or so. If you are new, welcome! Be sure to read back through the updates for information on all the goodies that will be inside the Barony box, especially the expansion content. If anyone has any questions, please ask away! I will do another FAQ in a future update, if needed. Also, don't forget to check out BoardGameGeek to read and watch the reviews people have made on this great game!

I will update everyone again, soon!

- David
Grail Games

More about Sorcery!
about 1 month ago – Sat, Nov 09, 2024 at 07:27:35 PM

Greetings, nobles!

...and a very warm welcome to all supporters who have joined our campign since the previous update :) Indeed! Thanks must go to ALL our 415 backers who have helpd make Barony: Royal Edition come to life so far!

General news...

We are now well into the second half of the campaign and we continue to build momentum each day. I am hopeful that we will be able to knock over all our planned stretch goals by the end of the Kickstarter. We have started thinking about special bonuses that might be able to be added should we reach even further!

We are about $2000AUD away from unlocking our next goal - the boxes to hold the player components...!

What is the Sorcery expansion?

For those new to the world of Barony, I thought I would give a summary of the Sorcery expansion (included within the Royal Edition!) and what it adds to the game. Don't forget that you can read the draft rule books and try the game out on TTS if you wish to explore further...

Barony's first edition released in 2016, and a year later, Sorcery was released. The two main features that it added, were:

• Components and game pieces for a fifth player
• Magic tokens and the ability to cast spells

Of course, adding a fifth player was nice(!) but in the original edition, if you wanted to play with 5 players you had to include the terrain tiles that came with the Sorcery expansion. This meant you had to play with magic and spells. In the Royal Edition, this is not the case and you can now play a "vanilla" game of Barony with 5 players.

The extra components for Sorcery...

How does magic work?

When playing with Sorcery, some terrain tiles on the board contain Mysterious locations (you can see one under the yellow box in the photo above). The first player to visit one of these hexes gets to place a Control token on it and take 3 Magic tokens from the supply. The second player may do the same but only receives 2 Magic tokens. A third player only receives 1 Magic token. (If playing with 4 or 5 players, a Mysterious location no longer holds any mystery for them and they would place or receive nothing for going there).

Control tokens give the player 3 points at the end of the game. But what do you do with your Magic tokens...? Cast spells of course!

Every game, 5 of the 9 spells are randomly selected. These are available to all players to cast as their turn. These spells might affect your movement, how you recruit knights, or how you construct cities. Here are two examples...

But that's not all! Spells of the same type can be combined, so, if you paid 2 Magic tokens on your turn, you could perform both these spells (above) together, moving a knight 2 spaces (not 1) AND ending that movement on an enemy-controlled mountain!

Casting spells really stretches the game wide open. Suddenly, bigger and more powerful moves are available to a player... if they plan for it and have the Magic tokens available to perform the spells :)

It also makes play around the board more varied - do you spend time amassing knights to combat your opponents (for example), or try to visit as many Mysterious locations as early as possible?

And don't forget the Heroes!

Don't forget that Barony: Royal Edition also comes with the Heroes mini-expansion included in the box! If you would like more info about how that integrates into the base game, check out update 2.

Any questions?

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact us via the Kickstarter comments or direct messages. I will update everyone again, soon! :)

- David
Grail Games

Getting even more deluxe!
about 1 month ago – Thu, Nov 07, 2024 at 02:36:48 AM

Greetings, nobles!

Believe it or not, another stretch goal has fallen today, and we thank each and every one of you for your support! Without you, this wouldn't be happening :) Thanks for coming along for the Barony: Royal Edition journey :)

Screenprinted score tokens!

The latest stretch goal to be passed allows us to screenprint one side of the scoring markers with the crest of each player. Below is a photo from the sample I showed and discussed in yesterday's update...

As mentioned yesterday, we are going to alter the yellow pieces to make the screenprinting more visible.

By the way, for players new to the game, you might be curious as to why the values on the score board are so... unusual?

During the game, you can only score points in two ways: By building a City (which awards you 10 points, so you move your marker down one space), and by going up in rank (by spending 15 points in Resource tokens, so you move your marker one space to the right). The game ends after a player reaches the highest rank (the right-most "column" of the score board). Then, end-game points are added on to these totals. It's pretty unique!

What's next?

More deluxe-ness!! Our next stretch goal has a larger gap for us to reach for, because it is quite a bit more expensive to include than the others stretch goals to date... but we sure hope we get there!!

Yes! If we get to $35,000AUD in funding, we can include 5 cardboard token boxes which give you a nice storage solution for your player pieces! Here is an image of the drafts of these boxes to show you what I'm talking about :)

I will share more photos in the next update :) And yes, you can place the pieces in the boxes more neatly than this if you prefer!

Update on German-language stretch goal:

We currently have a third of the backers from German-speaking countries that we need to unlock the digital German rule book. Seeing as we are now into the second third of the campaign, hopefully we will reach that mark!

That's all for now!

I will update everyone again, soon. If you have any questions or comments, please ket us know. Thanks again for your support - we promise to reward your support with our commitment to delivering an awesome product to your door as soon as we are able :)

- David
Grail Games

Playing around with pieces!
about 1 month ago – Tue, Nov 05, 2024 at 06:29:11 PM

Greetings, nobles!

Thanks once again to every single one of you who has backed Barony: Royal Edition :) We are stoked that this game will be made, and we cannot wait to get this deluxe version of a modern classic into your hands!

Checking out the latest factory sample...

On Monday I received a sample of Barony from the factory that includes pretty much all the stretch goals we intend to introduce via the campaign. Recently we had had a few requests for more details about the larger pieces (recently unlocked). So, below is a 1 minute video showing what these pieces will eventually look like (please excuse the backing track - I had to block out my family's noise around me :P )

Two things to note:

• You may never have the game so crowded as this - I did not set up the entire board for this video, and crammed a lot of pieces in, so you can see that I didn't knock anything over.
• The screenprinted design on the yellow pieces is not easy to see. We have decided to alter the yellow paint on all pieces to a different shade in order to increase visibility :)

One other very important development:

• It's true - thanks to those who shared their worries - increasing the depth of pieces by 25% has actually made it difficult to fit more than 3 pieces on a hex comfortably. Thank goodness we tested this! We have decided NOT to increase the depth of the Knights and Villages (though they will retain their "unlocked" +25% height and width increases). So, the Villages and Knights will have a few mm shaved off the depth of the pieces compared to what you see here. Villages and Knights are the pieces that will most often share their spaces with each other. Also, they are (in a gameplay sense) the "weaker" pieces, so thematically it also makes sense to have the Cities and Strongholds look more imposing compared to them.

I hope everyone understands this change is for the improvement of gameplay and shouldn't make much difference to how the game looks and feels :) Thanks for your support and help in fixing this.

I want to keep some of the stretch goal ideas we have secret for now, but here are a couple more photos of things from the sample :) More photos and videos will come in future updates!!

Here you can see how the Heroes expansion will be packaged. The rules (we can only fit EN, but FR will be available via QR code) are printed on the inside of the deck box when you unfold it. The rules are also in the main rule book (both languages).

Thanks again! It looks like I will be updating you again tomorrow, with news of another fallen stretch goal :) Huzzah!
- David
Grail Games

News from the flip side!
about 1 month ago – Sun, Nov 03, 2024 at 11:38:46 PM

Greetings, nobles!

Welcome to all who have joined up to support our journey over the past two days - many thanks for helping us to bring Barony: Royal Edition to life!

What's on the flip side?

...More artwork! We have now unlocked another stretch goal that allows us to decorate the reverse side of the player aid boards. These will now have a holding space for your player pieces. Here are some images from mockups, showing how this board may work...

You can see that we need to ask our graphic designer to do some further work here, as some of the pieces don't quite fit, but we will get this design finalised ASAP.

When might you use this feature? Once players are familiar with the game, the player boards aren't as useful because the players don't need reminders of what they may do on their turn, so we thought the option to keep your pieces on these boards instead would be a convenient and organised option for experienced players.

Coming up next is the stretch goal to screenprint one side of the scoring pieces with the crests of each player. Help the other players know for certain when you are crushing them on the score board :D

German-language update

FYI we now have 32/100 backers required to hit our stretch goal to unlock a digital German translation of the rules!

What's still to come?

A couple of supporters have asked about the larger wooden pieces (a stretch goal that we unlocked a few days ago and discussed in a previous update). They were concerned that the pieces shouldn't get so big that multiple pieces wouldn't fit well together on the same hex of the Barony board.

That's a fair call, and so, in the next update I will show photos/video of the game in play with these newly size pieces. I have just received a pre-production sample via courier from the factory so I can put these pieces to the test!

Thanks everyone! I will keep you updated as we go. Remember to comment or DM if you have any concerns or questions :)
- David
Grail Games