Thursday, December 8th 2005

by the Writer's Guild of Wunderland

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This year, for a change, we got our Holiday Gift to the Rabbits done nice and early, and judging from the chatter on our mailing lists, most people have already received theirs at this point. (Sorry International Rabbits, yours will probably be late... a sorting mistake led to inadequate postage being placed on most of the cards being sent out of the USA, and they've been coming back marked postage due...)

In any event, here's a look inside the little envelopes that many of you have already received by now, and others will hopefully be getting very soon.

As you can see, it's a set of cool new Fluxx promo cards! For years we've been wanting to make a Keeper called Earth to add to regular Fluxx so that we could also make a Goal called Peace on Earth... we decided that this was the year to do it after publishing EcoFluxx and realizing the Earth could also be fun when included in that game.

Then, having decided to make a set of Holiday promo cards, we couldn't resist the idea of making a Christmas Tree for our newest game, Family Fluxx, which includes the new Keepers it requires, the Gift and the Tree. This card makes Family Fluxx the perfect game to play with your family on December 25!

Lastly, the mailing includes a newly updated version of our Micro-Catalog, and a holiday greeting card featuring our broccoli Tirade.

It's a bit less extravagant than our holiday gifts have often been, but it had to be for us to send it to 9000 names on our mailing list! (If you know we don't have your mailing address, or just want another copy: this year's gift is already available in our Dollar Store.)

We're hoping that by mailing these cards out nice and early, many people who might have forgotten about us will look for our games this holiday season. And guess what? It seems to be working! Yay!

In other news, Russell is stepping down from his job as our Rabbit Coordinator. He has been working for us with this title for over 2 years now, but always as a part-time job... and unfortunately, his real day job still has him working so much overtime that he just can't give us very much of his attention. He is working too hard, and is no longer having fun, so he is taking off his Rabbit Coordinator hat. Please continue to be patient about bio and Rabbit point approvals... and stay tuned for what this means for our convention schedule next year. We already have one candidate for the job of Rabbit Coordinator, but if any other Rabbits are interested in this part-time, paid position, they should contact Kristin.

We're all very sorry to see you go, Russell, but believe us, we know what it's like to be too busy. Sometimes, you just gotta cut back. But thanks ten million times for all the great help you've given us these past few years! You've been a real asset to our team, and I know we will remain good friends.

Meanwhile, we've been continuing to playtest and tweak the ruleset for the new way of playing Just Desserts, which I announced last week. I'm still really pleased with it, and the feedback we've been getting has mostly been very positive... but that doesn't mean we have all the kinks worked out yet.

The new way of playing has a Set-like quality to it, in that players compete to be the first to notice something and call it out; however, the bonus we've been using for giving someone their Favorite stymies and undermines this element of the competition.

So, much as we've found it fun being able to intercept someone else's Guest by saying "Wait, I've got his favorite," I've decided to ditch that. Instead, the reward a player gets for delivering a favorite will be an extra card draw. (Now the person who makes the call first always gets to serve the Guest, but they get an extra tip if they bring out the person's favorite thing.)

Another place I've decided to make a change is in the end-game. It gets tedious reshuffling the last few picky eaters until everyone has been served, so rather than letting it drag out, the game now ends after the Guest pile has been exhausted twice.

Lastly, much as I like starting my games with 3 cards, I have to concede that the first few turns usually end in the Guest leaving hungry, and there's just no good reason to force a slow start. So, the initial handsize is 5 cards again.