“The Brigade – The Board Game of Fantasy Firefighting”
Pratchett and Scorsese Influence Unique Board Game Funded on Kickstarter
– Independent Melbourne based Red Genie Games successfully raised over $25,000 on crowd funding platform Kickstarter to publish board game.
– The Brigade is a game of competitive fire fighting, the setting is combination of Terry Pratchett’s “Discworld” series of books and Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York”
“Alex Wynnter and Ben Hoban reached their $20K funding goal on Kickstarter on Saturday 5th August for their first board game release as Red Genie Games. The campaign will continue to raise funds from preorders of the game until August 31st.
The Brigade is a board game of competitive firefighting where 2 – 4 players race to put out fires and gain renown as the best Fire Brigade in the fantasy town of Tinderbox. It expects to retail for up to AUD$80 in games stores, but can be ordered for AUD$60 with free shipping on the Kickstarter Campaign page.
Game designer Ben Hoban cited a 30 second scene in “Gangs of New York” where 2 fire brigades meet at the scene of a blaze and start fighting as the spark that led to the games unique theme.
“The scene just stuck with me, two rival brigades going at it while the building burned in the background, and people looted it. The craziness reminded me a lot of Terry Pratchett’s “Discworld” series and I wondered what it would look like with elves or dwarves running the Brigades; the game just developed from there”
The game joins a renaissance in the hobby that has come partially as a result of crowd funding platforms such as Kickstarter, where nearly 1700 successful board game projects accounted for over $100m of sales in 2016.
• The Brigade funded in the first 4 days which is excellent for a first time publisher on Kickstarter
• Ben and Alex met in a local game store “Games Laboratory” in Melbourne in 2015 where a monthly “Incubator” for board game development is held.
• The game took over 2 years of development and playtesting before it was ready to be released for preorder on Kickstarter.
• Ben Hoban has an entrepreneurial history in Melbourne launching a social enterprise names “Hosier Hoodies” before moving to Spain with his family.
• Alex Wynnter has had previous success on crowd funding platform Pozible in 2013 with the card game NinjitZoo.
• The Brigade has been well received with many of the top Board Game reviewers, including Tasmania’s “Dice Men Cometh” Australia’s top Board Game Podcast:
“Think ‘Gangs of New York’, but with a fantasy Daniel Day Lewis – but not THAT type of fantasy! There’s an awesome amount of player interaction, as you battle to be the best fantasy fire crew, and so much variety in the crew, their special abilities as well as the constantly changing board! Never play that other fire fighting game again, when you can play this one and fight the fire AND each other!”
Garth – Dice Men Cometh”
