29 september 2023

De auteur van Metz over: Metz!

Metz is een nieuw spel voor 2 spelers van White Goblin Games. In Metz werd tijdens de rijksdagen de Gouden Bul van 1356 afgekondigd. Aan de hand van dit document zijn 7 keurvorsten bijeengekomen. Lukt het jou de keurvorsten voor je te winnen en tot nieuwe keizer gekroond te worden? Tijdens het spel probeer jij de keurvorsten voor je te winnen en gekroond te worden tot nieuwe keizer. Over de ontwikkeling van het spel vertelt de auteur van Metz, Gabriele Bubola, graag meer! (de tekst van de auteur is in het Engels.)

Gabriele Bubola over de ontwikkeling van Metz

I like playing board games which are simple and elegant and do not require too much handling for the players. For this reason I don’t like the mechanisms that require a common display that shifts (well, that player must shift). So I tried to develop a mechanism where players just have to replace the card they took and which creates a kind of an “automatic shift”. This consideration brought me the idea to place cards in a circle with a pawn to move. I tried to make it even more simple, brilliant and elegant so I came up with the idea that players may move a pawn as many cards as their hand. This development was automatically really well connected with the possibility for the players to decide whether to keep the card in their hand (in order to move bigger over the next rounds) or to put it down to gain a majority, a system that I really like as well. (lees verder onder de afbeelding).

While I was working over the mechanic, I started looking for a nice setting and I found the story of the Golden Bull of 1356 held in Metz really intriguing. So I started thinking about merging mechanics and setting and I came up with the idea of dividing powers considering Temporal and Secular Power so the structure of the game is quite special because Temporal Princes don’t have a power BUT they can lead players to a sudden victory whereas the Secular Princes express their powers only at the end of the game and in a given order.

I am not a designer that “once is done forget about it and go to the next” but I still like playing my games. And I still truly love playing METZ also because I found the production and the illustration top levels.

Hope you will like it!