Though still widely acclaimed for his strong economic games, the last decade has seen Martin Wallace’s name become synonymous with a cadre of fantastic card-driven games. Games like Discworld: Ankh-Morpork and A Few Acres of Snow have let players immerse themselves in exciting worlds in a matter of minutes, whilst not sacrificing strategic depth along the way. London is one of the first of this strain of Wallace games, and well deserves a return to the spotlight — a return we have been very excited to have been a part of!

London is a centuries-spanning game of rebuilding the capital after the great fire of 1666. Players compete to build the city in their image, managing their tableaus of building cards, the income they’re generating and the poverty that results, in trying to earn the most prestige.

Perhaps the single biggest advantage you have when bringing out a new edition of an older title is the wealth of feedback that the community has provided over the years. In the case of London, this meant that we knew that our audience was unsatisfied with the two-player version of the game. Martin, himself, had a few suggested amendments, tweaking the wording of some of the biggest offenders in the deck, as well as how buying land interacted with poverty accumulation. The two-player game was immediately boosted, but the changes proposed ignited a much larger chain of developments that we had not predicted.

Originally in London, buying land had consisted of paying a cost in order to gain territories that granted immediate card draw, end game points, and a permanent reduction in the amount of poverty you produced. It’s that last benefit that lead players to scramble early on in order to grab as much territory as possible, so as to play the rest of the game without overloading on poverty – a major source of negative points. In the proposed change, it was replaced with an immediate opportunity to discard a fixed amount of poverty accumulated so far, which drastically changed the rhythm of the game, as players now had to space out their land grabs. It was the framework, but also an entirely different game.

With players no longer scrambling across the board for land to purchase, it prompted us to consider what value the board was providing to the game? Yes, it situated the players in the city in an obvious way, but the various London boroughs were essentially a series of points, card draws, and poverty reduction. We began a process of trying to figure out how to bring the board into the core game, playing about with options to have poverty cubes placed on the board to more literally express the lowering pressure of poverty as living space was expanded. We iterated on these ideas, but for each step towards a more thematic inclusion, a piece of mechanical elegance was lost.

Instead, we tried moving the boroughs the players were buying away from a board into a deck of cards. This turned out to be a potent move, allowing us to build more character into those locations, both aesthetically and mechanically. It meant we could pick out iconic pieces of London from the various boroughs and have the incredibly talented Przemysław Sobiecki bring them to life in a way that tangibly lifted the overall experience. It also gave us more scope to introduce more variety into the boroughs, both in terms of the variety of values provided, but also by allowing us to integrate some of the interesting abilities from the deck. This revitalized the buying land action, morphed from a rushed land grab to a careful choice each player would need to make several times each game.

These changes made up the core of our development of London. We then went ahead with internal and external playtesting to sort out any kinks in the core deck, tweaking values and language to form a well-crafted package. Alongside, we brought in artists to supplement the pre-existing art, including the aforementioned Przemysław to do the borough cards and Natalia Borek to replace some of the previously abstract core deck illustrations. To top it off, we made good use of our in-house design talent to give the components a graphical overhaul, merging clarity of information with a careful aesthetic touch.

In the end, we’ve come up with a game we hope will excite both players who are familiar with the first edition and those who will be experiencing it for the first time. It’s been a gratifying challenge to work on our heaviest economic game to date, and a pleasure to work with such a renowned designer as Martin Wallace, to craft something we are incredibly proud of. And, stay tuned for a wild new title from Martin and the design team at Osprey some time next year.

It's not unfair to say that Filip lives and breathes cardboard. Hailing from a background in teaching at a board game café, he now spends his days coaxing games out of pieces of cardboard and packs of cards. By night however… no, he’s probably off playing or designing more games.