Hello everybody, I had the chance to talk to Mat, one of the creators of Guild Ball, an upcoming mob football (as in soccer) miniature game. Enjoy!
Me: Who are you and what is your position at Guild Ball?
Mat: My name is Mat Hart and I’m the co-founder and co-designer on Guild Ball. Its a team effort, but I tend to focus on the core game engine design, the art direction and the world/setting building
Me: When and how did you start wargaming?
Mat: I started playing RPG’s around 30 years ago and quickly went onto GW games, in fact my first job was with GW working out of the Plaza, London store as the resident Bloodbowl „expert“. Since then I migrated onto Privateer Press and played a huge amount of Warmachine… Along the way I also played Bushido, Malifaux and a handful of other tabletop miniatures games.
Me: When did you start working on Guild Ball?
Mat: The idea for Guild Ball happened at last years Smogcon (a large Warmachine convention in the UK) when I was chatting with Loxam and we were imagining what would happen if you crossed a game like Bloodbowl with a game like Warmachine…and the idea for Guild Ball was born. We’ve been working on it constantly ever since.
Me: Is that your first job in the hobby industry?
Mat: It is for a long time, although as mentioned before I did work for Games Workshop in one of their stores a loooong time ago. But it’s the first game we’re bringing to market… And we’d like it to be the first of many great ideas we have bubbling around.
Me: How many people are working on Guild Ball?
Mat: There are two co-founders, Rich Loxam and myself. Further, we have partnered up with a video games industry art veteran called Doug Telford, who has previously worked on titles such as Heavenly Sword (PS3) and Kill Zone (PS3). We are also working with Russ Charles from Clockwork Goblin who is our amazing sculptor. Russ has recently gone full-time in terms of sculpting and has many top tier clients including PP on his books. Griffin Miniatures deals with our metal miniature production. We are working closely with Byron over at Element Games (UK) to help us with distribution.
Me: Give us a three word description of Guild Ball.
Mat: FAST; DEEP; FUN
Me: The world of Guild Ball is described as “medieval/pseudo-historical world”. Can you give us an introduction to the background story?
Mat: Guild Ball takes place in a land now known as the Empire of Free Cities; it’s essentially a pseudo-historical setting with strong European flavours. The lands of the empire are made up of a huge variety of climates, cultures and landscapes each controlled by a sovereign City.
Relatively young, the formation of the Empire was a sudden and decisive factor in the ending of the Century Wars. The Century Wars is the name historians have given the endless petty conflicts between the various independent city states as they vied with each other for dominance. The conflicts eventually escalated and culminated in a drawn out war that threatened to bleed the lands dry.
The rulers of the various city states were unable to reach a peaceful settlement and so the Guilds took action. The war was very costly to their trades and industries and so could not be allowed to continue. The Guilds took advantage of their independent status between cities and wielded their power and influence behind the scenes to create the Empire of free Cities and end the wars.
Peace and time for regrowth now means huge opportunities for amassing further wealth and power, but the Guilds are not perfect. With the prizes being so vast, they now have their own internal conflicts with each other as they jockey for position and control.
But the Guild leaders recognised the dangers and so in order to prevent further costly conflict, they have taken to using the outcome of mob football matches to effectively provide an arbitrary decision making process. The theory being that if there was a dispute between two Guilds then their respective teams decide the matter when they play. Obviously the various Guilds didn’t want to leave this to chance and so provided their chosen teams with training, equipment and facilities to try and tip the edge in their favour.
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Mob football is a game generally played between neighbouring towns and villages on feast days (hence the popularity). The game was originally played in the middle of towns and villages where the objective was to take the ball to the opposing side of town. But to prevent the inevitable collateral damage it rapidly evolved into being played in the surrounding countryside, often in a special field set aside for the purpose. At its core, players on opposing teams, clash and struggle to control leather wrapped inflated pig’s bladder and attempt to kick it into the opponent’s goal. Over the years, rudimentary leagues and tournaments have sprung up, there have even been some national level games between city states.
So when the Guilds invested vast sums of money into an already popular pastime the public went crazy for the game. Guild Ball was born amidst a blaze of interest and publicity and with it, a whole new business and revenue stream for the Guilds. Games are now played out in front of vast crowds of fans, whilst behind the scenes the results can mean fortunes are won or lost on the kick of a ball.
Me: Are there any classic Fantasy elements in Guild Ball like monsters or magic?
Mat: Much like in “Game of Thrones”, monsters and magic are quite rare in the Guild Ball world… That’s not to say they don’t exist so I’m not ruling out future exploration in this area. But in terms of orcs, goblins, elves and so on they don’t really have a place in our world.
Me: So far you introduced 4 guilds, will they have significantly different play-styles, and if yes, can you give short description?
Mat: Absolutely, it was one of our core design principles that each team will/must have a distinct play style and feel.
The Masons Guild are a precisely balanced team. They are great at damage, they’re resilient and good at moving/scoring with the ball. Playing this team rewards flexibility and adaptability to the circumstances of the game.
The Butchers Guild team are all about raw damage. They are quite resilient but offense is the best form of defense. Playing this team rewards bold, aggressive play styles.
Me: That sounds like my kind of team!
Mat: The Fishermen Guild team are all about flow and movement. They are nimble and hard to pin in place, they can strike like lightning and score from some way out. Playing this team rewards quick thinking and good positioning.
The Morticians Guild team are about disrupting the momentum of their opponents. They are incredibly resilient. They have the ability to affect the ebb and flow of the game and turn your positioning to their advantage. Playing this team rewards planning and strategic thinking.
Me: The game of Guild Ball is described as “mob football”. In real life, soccer is a very tactical game. How important is position and tactic in Guild Ball? Or in other words, what keeps the game from degenerating into a blob melee around the ball?
Mat: As Guild Ball was built with tournament play in mind, we have built in a huge importance to good solid strategic thinking and tactical execution of plays. We have designed the game to reward movement and kicking/passing the ball which leads to a fluid back-and-forth flow to the game. Further, we have built in a meta-game of bluff and counter-bluff as precious Influence points are allocated across the teams. Also, models have easy access to placement effects like Pushes and Repels to manoeuvre around a melee more freely. The game will only degenerate into a scrum if both players want it to basically.
Me: How does the pass mechanic work?
Mat: Like our other mechanics, it is fluid and simple to resolve. With one dice pool roll you are able to factor in distance, pressure on the receiver, pressure on the ball, and anyone who might be able to intercept along theway. But this all sounds like its tricky to successfully complete a pass, but that is not the case. We got frustrated with other sport games where passing was tactically a poor decision due to the associated risk. And so we made it statistically easier to pass the ball and built in a reward mechanic (Momentum system) to encourage players to ping the ball about.
Me: Please describe a typical turn in Guild Ball.
Mat: A typical turn begins by determining Initiative order. Players simply roll 1d6 and add any Momentum left over from the previous turn. Momentum is the inset to zero and the player with the highest dice roll decides who activates first.
Players then gather their Influence pool. Influence is a stat that every model has, it describes the ability that model has to affect the game. Influence is then allocated out to models, each point of Influence basically allows one action, although some actions, like charging, cost more. This is done for the entire team by the player with initiative first and then the other player. This is where a meta-game of bluff, counter-bluff and misdirection kicks in. You can, and should, disguise your intent with how you allocate Influence.
Players then take turns to activate and complete the actions of a single model. Once a model has used all its allocated Influence points for that turn, it’s done.
Models without Influence points can only move when activated.
Players can move, run, kick/pass the ball, attack, defend, shoot on goal and so on as the game requires.
Once all models have been activated the turn ends and the next commences.
Me: How long does it take to play a typical match? When does a games end?
Mat: We’re currently playing games as a first to 3 goals scored which is working quite well…but we’re going to do a whole bunch of play testing to polish this aspect. Typical games are lasting around 70-90 minutes we’re finding but as players get used to their models and what they can do we’re finding games are getting quicker. We’ve designed the game to allow for 2-3 games in an evening and for 32-64+ man events to be run quite easily.
One of the other things to consider will be hidden agendas objectives.We’re still working on those but they will have a part to play deciding the end game too.
Me: Guild Ball uses a “dice pool vs. target number” mechanic. Can you give us a quick example how attacking another player works?
Mat: As you say, Guild Ball uses a D6 dice pool system. What this actually means is that the active player grabs a number of D6 based on their relevant skill plus any applicable bonuses and this forms their dice pool. They then roll this dice pool and all the dice that hit the Target Number (or better) counts as ‘Hits’.
To calculate the dice pool, each character has three key stats. The first is the relevant Stat of the active player…to keep this simple we’ve adopting a general ability we call Tactical which you use for most actions…this is the number of dice you roll plus any relevant bonuses from skills or situational stuff like charge attacks.
The second is the Defence stat of the target model…this is a target number ranging from 2+, easiest to hit,
through to 6+, hardest to hit. The last is the Armour stat of the target model, this is a low-ish number generally between 1-3.
The flow is simple and very easy to pick up:Ox wants to attack the Fisherman captain, Shark. He knows his Tactical stat is 4. He asks his opponent what Shark‘s Defense and Armour is. Answer comes back 4+ for Defense -he’s a slippery one!- but only 1 for Armour because he is lightly armoured for speed. The Butcher’s player charges, giving him a +2d6 bonus on his attack, and therefore rolls a total of 6D6. Average dice means he should get 3 hits but he goes one better with 4 dice showing 4 or higher.
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He now deducts the Armour value from the roll and nets 3 hits on the Shark. He can then go on to spend those hits on raw damage, or push back, or knock-down, or even tackle the ball off the forward, all worked out using his unique playbook on his card.
If you look at this flow, there is an elegance there: the active player refers just once to his card to calculate his dice pool, his opponent looks just once at his card to advise the target numbers and armour values. The dice roll is easy to read, you can physically move the dice with hits to one side away from the misses, you can then physically deduct the armour value from the hit dice to give you your net result. Job done…no maths required and yet you have taken into consideration your melee capability, plus your opponent’s defence and his armour value.
Me: Your “playbook” is a feature that reminds me of the mechanic used by Arena Rex.The playbooks of some players are pretty complex, for example Shark’s and Angel’s playbook have two different start points and three branches with multiple points to cross between them. Can you please explain how it works? And aren’t you afraid that to many options might slow down the game?
Mat: Exactly! We found this to be a major problem in play test and have revised the design to keep it simple, fast and yet still as deep in terms of tactics. The playbook you’ve all seen has actually been worked on somewhat and is with our graphic design guy to polish out the look and feel. We’ve moved away from the ‚follow a path‘ through the playbook as we found it slowed the game down dramatically. We’ve still kept the core elements of player choice and tactical flexibility in options but have simplified the whole process. It looks very different now!
Old version
New version
Essentially each hit generated now allows greater access to results, working from left to right you only pick one result from the playbook now. The more hits you get the better the results and more options you have to pick from. Boar’s playbook is quite simple, other models with a different tactical use will have more options to choose from at every level.
What’s interesting is that we have not removed anything from the previous playbook in terms of cumulative damage and similar things but the whole thing is much simpler.
This is much faster than the previous system and provides as much depth…we’re really happy with where we’ve got to with this mechanic now.
Me: Can you give us a short introduction into the influence and momentum systems?
Mat: I spoke about Influence early when describing the flow of a normal turn. One thing I didn’t mention was that Influence can also be used to trigger special abilities and plays that models have. This is on a per-cost basis and they act very much like spells or feats do in other wargames.
Momentum is a resource-based mechanic that allows us to reflect the ebb and flow of a football game. We’ve not seen anything else like this before so you could say it’s unique to our game, but regardless, the momentum system allows for a flexible pool of resource that goes up and down during a turn depending on the success or failures of the team and its players.
Momentum is generated by actively doing things…which can then be spent to boost actions, shoot at goal, trigger out of turn actions, and many other options.
Essentially, the more a team does successfully in a turn, the more momentum a team has, and so the more likely it will perform better in that turn.
But to counter the out-of-control snowballing that might happen,
Momentum is also crucial in ‘interrupting’ play and allowing out of activation actions by models. This is a hugely powerful aspect of the game and adds layers of depth, especially defensively.
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The key to balancing this mechanic is working with the obvious advantage to going first, thereby being the team that gets to generate momentum first and possibly being able to take some degree of control of the turn…and so momentum also feeds into the Initiative roll for the subsequent turn. Basically, left over momentum at the end of each turn is used to add to your Initiative roll and then momentum is reset.
Think about it, momentum is now a deliciously difficult decision making resource: do you spend it and try for an advantage knowing you might lose initiative in the following turn as a result? Or do you bide your time, hoard it and then push for a counter-turn next time? Tough decisions – but fun!
The momentum mechanic also encourages positive play: even if you feel limited with your options you can always do something and generate momentum for the team with each model.
In play, this is a great resource, really feels like you’re building a play up and then striking at the right time, just like a good game of football!
Me: How will people pick their team? Are there point costs for the individual players?
Mat: We’re looking at a fixed team size process, games are played 5 versus 5 with each team allowed to bring a mascot or pet. We will use a gold pool for ‚Sponsorships‘ which is a mechanism that allows models to bring additional wargear, abilities and other in-game effects. This gives players a variety of options and allows them to tailor their team to suit their playstyle and planned strategies.
The costs of ‚Sponsorships‘ is balanced to enable us to develop and design models that have differing power levels… awesome models will have some fairly expensive Sponsorship options while less awesome models will be comparatively cheaper to ‚trick‘ out with cool stuff.
So it should be fast to choose your 5 players and then some degree of thought and planning to go into their ‚Sponsorship‘ options. We’re looking to design the process to be viable at the table, rather than pre-planned, to be able to tailor to the opponent and the ‚Guild Schemes‘ objectives players might have.
Me: Are there plans for alternative game modes?
Mat: We’ve played 11-a-side versions of Guild Ball which are great fun but does need a 4×4 board. We’ve also sketched out a high level design for campaign/league play and will put this up as a stretch goal in our Kickstarter project.
Beyond that, we have a number of interesting ideas that can build out and enhance the Guild Ball game in slightly different ways but still retaining the core feel… think about how Riot do it with League of Legends in terms of Summoners Rift, Twisted Treeline, Dominion etc.
Me: The interest in your project is already huge and everyone who visits your facebook page sees that you are very determined and committed to do this in the best possible way. What can we expect from the Kickstarter if this interest translates into a truckload of money?
Mat: A truckload of money simply gives us more options to design and build more stuff quicker! One of our greatest expenses is artwork and hitting the big numbers in our project would enable us to commision much more artwork.
But further to that, you only have to visit our Facebook page and see the dozens of simply brilliant ideas for new teams and other things that our community are already generating. A successful Kickstarter will allow us to expand the game rapidly and build this into a key player in the wargames world.
Me: Where do you see Guild Ball in 5 years?
Mat: In 5 years time, I see Guild Ball as an established wargame with around 10-15 teams, each with 15-20 models on their roster to select from. I see an awesome community that is actively involved in shaping the game and what is possible.
I see the campaign/league mode released and supported with a range of variable-pose ‚generic‘ team models to allow you to grow your own star players. I see a thriving tournament scene with regular events across the world. I see a movie script…a video game…full iOS and Android in-game support style apps. I see a range of novels and a roleplaying game set in the world of Guild Ball.
We simply have big plans for this game…We hope you do too!
Lastly, I see us sticking to our principles of outstanding production values and delivering excellence wherever possible…we will never do anything less than this!
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And no restic…ever…EVER!
Me: That sounds very good, especially the restic part. Thank you for your time.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this detailed introduction to Guild Ball. If you want to learn more, visit www.guildball.comor their facebook page.
The launch of the Kickstarter campaign is set on February 21.
Guild Ball has plenty of cool ideas, a unique setting and last but not least some interesting concepts for miniatures.
The Tabletop Fix is a newsblog about wargames and miniatures.
Unofficial - Independent - Non-Commercial. I have been writing about the tabletop and miniatures industry since 2010.
