Brass Pittsburgh and the Sequel Problem

Grant: Welcome back to the Design Deck. Gen Con kicks off Thursday, and Miles, we've got some predictions to grade before the doors even open. Miles: Oh, I've been dreading this. Get Indiana's got the show running July 30th through August 2nd, so the clock's ticking. Grant: Exactly. Get this. I built a whole hype versus demand framework last year, and today we find out if it actually holds up. Miles: I remember that framework. Bold claims were made. Grant: Wait for it, because one crowdfund number this year just shattered records. We're talking numbers that made veteran backers do a double take. Miles: Which one? Don't tease me. Grant: Patience, that's segment one. Miles: Fine, fine. But I want to talk Brass Pittsburgh too, that King's Foundry has people arguing whether the new railway theme actually earns the hype or just rides the brand name. Grant: Split grades incoming, I promise you that. Miles: And then there's the King's Gambit. Restoration Games is bringing back that cult Star Wars design as a Lord of the Rings reskin. Grant: Four-front card mechanic, towering deluxe box, grail game, or just a really expensive box? Miles: We'll get into it. Plus, StarCraft's top-top miniatures game. AdeptiCon nearly sold out demos and we're asking if turn-based rounds can replicate real-time chaos. Grant: Big questions, bigger toy boxes. Miles: Alright, let's start where every good grading session should be, with your framework and whether it survived contact with reality. Grant: Be gentle. Gotta get this out of the way first: preview episode, I said the Brass reprint would struggle to hit half its funding goal. Miles: And? Grant: I was wrong. Embarrassingly wrong. Miles: That's kind of the whole reason we're doing this segment, right? We made calls and now there's real evidence sitting on the table instead of vibes. Grant: Crowdfund totals, ship dates—what actually shows up at a table at a convention, not what we hoped would show up. Miles: And the timing matters: it's Wednesday. The Indianapolis floor hasn't opened. That's Thursday morning. Grant: So no floor reports, no "I walked past a line and it felt long," just the paper trail. Miles: Which is still a massive trail. Gen Con runs July 30th through August 2nd, Indiana Convention Center, plus Lucas Oil Stadium for overflow. Grant: They needed an NFL stadium for board games? Miles: Over 70,000 attendees, more than 600... 600 exhibitors, something like 20,000 ticketed events across four days. Grant: That's not a hobby weekend anymore. That's a small city relocating. Miles: So that's the stage. Question is whether the games we bet on earned that crowd or just borrowed it. Grant: My rule for grading any of it: Hype is a price you pay. Demand is a signal you read. People mix those up constantly. Miles: Meaning? Grant: A packed booth tells you people showed up. It doesn't tell you the game's any good; money changing hands before anyone's played it, that's a bet on a name, not a design. Miles: Fine, let's start with a number that's hardest to argue with. Grant: Go for it. Miles: One crowdfund campaign this year raised enough to make grown designers weep. Grant: So when a design bet nearly breaks the internet in cash pledged, is that demand talking or just really expensive hype? Miles: Let's find out. Grant: Building on that tease, Brass Pittsburgh just crossed $9.1 million on Gamefound. Miles: Whistling 9.1? That's not a typo. Grant: Nope. Board Game Wire called it the biggest board game crowdfund of 2026 so far. Miles: So the commercial half of your prediction just landed. Grant: Landed hard. Anyone betting against Roxley's name was wrong. Miles: Fine, but money answers one question. Does the redesign actually hold up? Grant: That's the real question. Brass swaps canals and cotton for railways, pipe lines, steel mills, oil refineries. Miles: Robber barons' stuff. Zatu Games reported Carnegie and Rockefeller show up as actual historical figures. Grant: Which points to variable player powers—everyone plays with different abilities—a first for this whole line. Miles: First time ever! That's a real swing on the core system, not a coat of paint. Grant: Skeptically Roxley's own campaign posts had Speaker 3: been Grant: had Gavan Brown saying he had zero interest in making "the Matrix Four. Miles: Translation: no lazy sequel riding on nostalgia. Grant: Right. Every Brass title has to earn its mechanics-that's his stated bar. Miles: Okay, my problem, though: original Brass tells a story about shared networks: you connect cities, goods flow, everyone's economy grows together. Grant: Quick note for anyone new: network building just means you're drawing links between cities. The links between locations and your network shape becomes your engine. Miles: Exactly-give people separate powers and now it's four different tool kits racing each other instead of one shared engine. Grant: Which some players will love; more replay variety, less solved strategy problem. Miles: Sure, but it's a different game emotionally—canals and cotton already carried baggage—slavery, colonial trade—and Roxley's materials address that directly. Grant: They did? Miles: Railways and oil barons carry their own. Carry their own baggage, monopolies, labor abuse, robber baron excess—same weight, different century. Grant: Here's my actual grade: the money proves nothing about the table. Wargamer called the original the world's favorite board game on release. Miles: Wait, the literal top ranked game on the whole site? That ranking. Grant: A sequel to that raises nine million whether the new rules are brilliant or broken. Miles: Fair; reputation alone fills a Gamefound page. Grant: So mine's incomplete; B for ambition; no grade for design until people actually play it in Indianapolis. Miles: I'd land lower, B-minus. Asymmetric powers on a network game is a real gamble, and Gilded Age theming has to earn its seriousness, not just its steel mills. Grant: Different grades-go find the Roxley demo table Thursday and see who's right. Miles: Funny thing, Brass isn't the only resurrection walking the floor this weekend. Grant: Oh? Miles: There's a grail design coming back from the dead too, except this one is trading on rarity instead of a best-seller list. Now flip that on its head. Brass had a fan base already lined up. This next one has one that's been begging for 25 years. Grant: The Queen's Gambit thing? Miles: Sort of. Wargamer broke this back in March. Restoration Games and Space Cowboys are reviving Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit, the 2000 game that turned into an unobtainable grail on the secondary market, except now it's Middle-earth. Grant: They rescan Naboo into Minas Tirith? Miles: Pretty much. It's the Lord of the Rings: The King's Gambit, Rob Daviau Leading Design, and SlashFilm had the exclusive on the reveal. Grant: So a cold game nobody could buy becomes a license re game. Does that carry the magic or just the price tag? Miles: That's the real question, and it's built off the books, not the films: four fronts running at once, Pelennor Fields, Minas Tirith, Pelargir, and the road to Mount Doom. Grant: How's that actually play? Miles: A single shared hand of cards for all four battles. Every card you spend somewhere is a card you don't have somewhere else. Grant: Thus, so your hand's the currency, and you're rationing it across four different accounts: starve one front, feed another. Miles: Exactly, and Mount Doom doesn't care if Minas Tirith falls; brutal tradeoffs. Grant: Fine, the mechanic checks out; what I don't trust is the marketing. Restoration's own press release calls it the "ultimate grail game." That's a lot of pressure for something that isn't even funding yet. Miles: Right. Zatu Games and Restoration's own creator update both say crowdfunding on the deluxe edition opens September 2026. Retail version follows 2027. Grant: So whatever's on the floor at Gen Con this week. Miles: Is a demo, not a sale. Nobody's ringing a register. Grant: Good, because I've seen the renders,--towering three dimensional menace tear at some kind of Mordor piece rising off the board. Miles: The same coverage-it's striking stuff. Grant: Striking stuff that photographs well on the pledge page and adds forty bucks to the tier. Does it change how Four Fronts actually play or does it just make people gasp? Miles: Guess we find out once people push cardboard around it instead of a camera. Grant: Speaking of translation problems: Miles: Next door, somebody's translating a completely different one, real-time speed forced into turns. Grant: Switching gears from grill games to a video game brand hitting the table for real. Miles: StarCraft. I've been waiting for this one all convention season. Grant: Archon Studios' StarCraft tabletop miniatures game finally shipped March 31st, and it's a skirmish war game. Small squads, one map, you're fighting for objectives, not just kill counts. Miles: Right, and for anyone who never touched the video games, StarCraft is a real-time strategy game. Game: everybody's moving and building at the same time, no turns. Grant: Which is the whole design problem: you strip out the clock and what's left holding the tension together? Miles: So how'd they solve it? Grant: Gamefraggers' breakdown lays out the round structure, movement, assault, combat, then scoring and clean-up; every round same five beats. Miles: That's a lot of sequencing for a game built on chaos. Grant: Its "initiative per round," basically: whoever wins initiative picks who acts first in each phase. It's their answer to "who's faster. Miles: Does it actually feel like StarCraft, though? Or does it feel like a war game wearing a StarCraft skin? Again:-- Grant: Honestly I've only read the phase breakdown, not played it, but on paper initiative swinging every round is a way to stand in for real time pressure; it's not the same feeling, but it does real work. Miles: Mm-hmm. I'll believe it when I see Zerg actually overwhelming someone at the table! Grant: Fair-let's talk money before we grade it. Gamefraggers pricing rundown has the two player Founder's Edition-Terran and Zerg-around two hundred nineteen dollars. Protoss comes in lower; about a hundred nine dollars. Miles: That's steep for a starter, but it's not wild for minis gaming. Grant: No; it's in line with the category. Miles: What actually matters to me? ICv2 reported the game nearly sold out on day one at AdeptiCon. Grant: Nearly sold out at a convention that's mostly Warhammer people? Miles: That's the tell. Video-game-to-miniatures crossovers usually flop-remember Halo Ground Command never even made it past prototype stage. Speaker 4: Right. Grant: So AdeptiCon selling out is basically the only real demand signal we've got before Indianapolis. Miles: Exactly why I want to watch the Gen Con demo line, not the marketing. Grant: My grade, mechanically-a B. The phase structure is a smart answer to a hard problem, even if it can't fully fake real time chaos. Miles: I'd go higher on excitement, lower on proof; a B minus until I see Zerg rushing an actual table. Grant: Fair split. Three games in, three different bets, and now the only question left is, what do you actually do with your badge Thursday morning? Okay, before we let people loose on the show floor Thursday, grades-real ones, not vibes. Miles: You go first; you're the one who opened this episode admitting a bad call. Grant: Right, right, so does that list get a fourth name after today? Miles: Does it? Grant: Brass Pittsburgh-I called the Rays validation. It's validation of the brand, not the redesign. I said those were the same thing-and they're not. Miles: That's an honest miss, not an excuse. Grant: What about you? Where'd you whiff? Miles: Queens Gambit, I assumed deluxe components automatically meant deluxe demand. No sales data yet, just my own bias towards shiny plastic. Grant: Big shock, the guy who catalogs every classic car also loves shiny things. Miles: Low blow! Where did you get one right? Grant: StarCraft. I said the initiative system would split reviewers down the middle, and it did, right here, 30 seconds ago. Miles: Fair. Mine was Pittsburgh's Ray's number. I called that. called that one before it hit, and it landed almost exactly where I guessed. Grant: Okay, floor plan. Someone standing outside the convention center Thursday morning with three demo slots. What do they burn them? Miles: StarCraft, no question. You need hands on those minis and that initiative track to know if it plays fast or plays fiddly. Grant: Agreed. Brass, though, skipped the demo. Buy retail when it ships. The game plays are known quantity. You're paying for components at that point. Point and Miles: King's Gambit isn't even available yet. Crowdfunding's not live. Wishlist it. Don't line up for it. Grant: And don't judge any of the three by line length. Long lines mean marketing worked, not that the design's good. Miles: Starcrossed Q at AdeptiCon told us people showed up. It didn't tell us if the game's actually fun after round six. Grant: Exactly. Hype gets you in line. Only the table tells you if it's worth the wait. Miles: So here's the actual homework for us, not the Not the listeners: September. Grant: SEPTEMBER? Miles: King's Gambit's crowdfunding campaign opens. That's when we get real numbers instead of press release numbers. Grant: And Brass fulfillment starts landing in people's houses not long after. That's when the redesign either earns its raise or doesn't. Miles: Two checkpoints, two grades we can't fake. Grant: I'll bring the spreadsheet. Miles: Of course you will. Grant: That's a wrap on Gen Con week. Miles: Grant, your hype versus demand line is sticking with me on the Pittsburgh Brass, which Grant: Right. A sequel to the top game on BoardGameGeek was always going to hit that record. Miles: is why I still want proof the new variable powers hold up at the table, not just in the pledge count. Grant: Fair. Money talks, but it doesn't design the game. Miles: If you're at the show, watch Queen's Gambit and StarCraft get demoed before you trust anybody's hype. Grant: Got a game you want us to take apart? Miles: Tell us at design.thedeck.com or tag us on social. New episodes drop every Thursday. Grant: Subscribe so you don't miss September's fulfillment check-in. Thanks for hanging out with us. Miles: See you on the show floor! Grant: And Miles: Peace. Grant: Peace.