Tag Archives: Asmadi Games

Channel A Returns!

Card Games, Kickstarter, , ,

Back in 2012 I designed my first ever card game, Channel A: The Anime Pitch Party Game. In 2013 Asmadi Games published it, bringing it to Kickstarter backers and then game stores. It’s been well-received, but once the original print run sold out, Asmadi was never quite able to get it back in print. While I’m still a fan of Asmadi Games and Chris Cieslik–and the other Asmadi Games offerings are well worth checking out!–I’m very pleased to be able to announce that Evil Hat Productions will be taking up Channel A as part of their line of board games. It’ll be their first real foray into both anime-inspired games and party games, but Channel A still has some heady company given that it’ll be alongside the likes of the Dresden Files Cooperative Board Game.

EHP is launching Channel A with a Kickstarter, and the game is getting an upgrade in the form of new art (by Dawn Davis, the same artist, who has improved her skills considerably over the past 6 years or so) and around 70 new cards (with Clay Gardner doing the logo designs for the new Title Cards). We’re calling this new version the “Alpha Genesis Edition,” and hopefully new and old fans of Channel A will find a lot to like in what we’ve changed and added. (Also: more normal cardstock!)

If you want to give the came a test drive first, Evil Hat has some cool stuff for that:

There are also stretch goals! The first is a set of stickers of chibi characters, and the second is an expansion called “Channel A: Second Season.” And we have more waiting in the wings! Kind of a lot more!

The Evil Hat folks have generally been great to work with, and their huge enthusiasm about the game has been pretty inspiring to me. Fred is a fan of the game and it really shows!

channel a ehp
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Channel A Kickstarter!

Card Games, Kickstarter,

pic1088575_mdI’ve got some really, really big news. Channel A has a publisher! Specifically, Asmadi Games, which is probably best known for We Didn’t Playtest This At All, but has put out a number of other games, including 2010 Golden Geek Award winner Innovation. It’s difficult to find a publisher willing to take on a project in general, and there aren’t too many board game publishers that really know anime either, but Chris Cieslik (the main guy behind Asmadi) has been great to work with and gets what I’m trying to do with Channel A. (The publisher of Whack a Catgirl definitely knows more about anime than your average board game publisher.) He’s also highly dedicated, and you can expect to see him and his cohorts from Foam Brain Games offering Channel A at quite a few conventions.

Asmadi has just launched a Kickstarter to fund Channel A too! The base goal is $10,000 to cover an initial print run, but we’ve got a bunch of bonuses and stretch goals lined up. Also, if you’d like to try a demo before the Kickstarter ends, Chris & co. will be at TotalCon, Genericon, MomoCon, WPI Gaming Weekend, and PAX East running demos. If you’d just like a quick look at what the game is like, the Kickstarter video does an excellent job of showing a typical round of Channel A.

ChannelA-Box3D-FinalThe new “TV Series Edition” of Channel A will feature new title cards and premise cards, a spiffy box that actually fits the cards properly, and a total of 300 cards (maybe more depending on stretch goals and such), all for a mere $25. Chris managed to innovate a new scoring system that doesn’t require voting cards (see the video for a demonstration), so this new version will feature additional premise cards and title cards. Clay Gardner is updating the look of the game too, so you can expect the kind of slick design work he’s provided for Minion Games products like The Manhattan Project and Tahiti (not to mention his excellent layout work for Golden Sky Stories). The Kickstarter features some other goodies, including buttons, custom chibi characters, and the chance to get a custom fake DVD case for your own made-up anime series, complete with a theme song!

This also means that I’ll be discontinuing the “OAV Edition” from The Game Crafter. It was always meant to be an interim thing until I did exactly what we’re doing now, though needless to say I’m grateful to the six people who bought it. The free Manga Edition will still be available, though it will continue to be a basic, no-frills version of the game.