Here you go. First, most of the components (not pictured: the Move/Deploy deck and the smaller size of scoring tokens)

A close-up of the game board, showing off my sketchy photographic skills as well as my sketchy graphic design skills:

In my defense, I deliberately put as little effort as possible into the graphic design of this first prototype to avoid emotional attachment. Here’s the “playmat” where the state of the turn is tracked… you can see that this whole thing is a work-in-progress…

And finally, when I was looking through the components I happened across my old idea for a board: hexes that could be arranged into any one of several shapes. In theory, this is a far superior design for a board, because it adds to the variety of possible games and is generally far more versatile. In practice, I can’t get as excited about the hexes as about the world map. Also, I kind of think that coming up with a good map is my job as the designer… the players shouldn’t have to do that work.  Besides: Expansion!

We got to play 1,000 Blank White Cards today! Turns out it was a lot of fun. For all those who missed it, we hope to have another game soon. You gotta come, people.
We had 8 players, none of whom had played before. The site linked says 3-6, but 8 was no problem at all. We also have some rules tweaks:

• There should be a “gentlemens’ agreement” that cards should not be played that prevent other people from playing the game or delay their turn for a long time. Examples include “skip a turn” or “reverse direction of play.” These might not be a problem in games with fewer people, but waiting fifteen turns to take your own is frustrating.
• Likewise, cards that require bookkeeping are discouraged. For instance, a card that says “All cards played after this one are worth +100 points” is a bad idea, because then you have to keep track of what cards are played later. A card that only modifies one card (like doubling its value or whatever) is fine because the cards can be stacked to note the effect.
• When all cards are drawn from the deck, players must immediately fill out all blank cards before proceeding further. This is to discourage creating huge, specific, game-swinging effects near the very end.

At the end everyone was allowed to choose three cards for the “Hall of Fame” of cards that would be brought to the next session. We also decided by acclimation to induct all defenestration-related cards.

The Hall of Fame:

As a cat, Lithium is unafraid of defenestration:

And a couple of the cards that didn’t make it to the Hall of Fame, but which were funny or influential:

Sorry about the lousy image quality. All I have is a digital camera. If I can rustle up access to a scanner, I’ll post better images of the cards.

Also, the cards I acquired are great, they look very nice and shuffle well, but they’re difficult to write on. Roller-ball pens smear, as do markers, and Bics have a tough time getting started. Sharpies work great but I didn’t have enough for everyone. This would be an advantage to ordinary index cards.
Everyone: Post your stories and take credit for your cards in the Comments!

My current hopes for a game to be picked up by a publisher rest mostly with one that’s about a year and a half old. I’ve rethemed it from its original, abstract theme (”Equinox”) to the one it was really meant to have anyway: the electoral system. It’s codenamed “Mock the Vote.”

I commissioned a cartoonist friend, Dave Blair, to come up with some sample art. It turned out great! Here’s one of the cards (a nod to the old RPG, Paranoia).

Trying out something new tonight. Rather than confront you with a huge wall of 400 words, I got out my digital camera and took some pictures of the board game I’ve been designing.

The working title, by the way, is now Invasion.

This is the board as it might look during play. Missing are the “mothership” markers that mark where new pieces are deployed. Also, I plan to buy some little wooden cubes to replace the paper clips. They cost $25/1000 but I think they will be great to hold and can serve for many games.

Markers for keeping score. These are split washers ($3/100), spray-painted gold. There is another batch of them I left the natural color–they’re zinc, so they look like any other metal.

They feel really great in your hands. You’ll want to win the game so you can feel the scoring tokens. Here in my hand are the big ones that count for 5, in both the gold and “iron” varieties.

Because I intend for the auction to be a single round of secret bidding, having markers instead of pencil-and-paper or a scoring track is actually useful, in addition to feeling nice in your hands. I’m aware that this secret bidding might lead to some tense moments, but I think it will help speed the game along in an important way, versus an ordinary auction.