“How many lands have my ft trod and my eyes seen! What horrible scenes of desolation of loss of life I witnessed in these years of continuous warfare. Adverse circumstances had made us, anti-militarists, probably the most battle hardened troopers of the Allied armies.”
—Murillo de la Cruz

In mid-2020, Gonzalo Maldonado from Salt & Pepper Games reached out and requested whether or not I’d be excited about collaborating. Historically, Salt & Pepper has licensed video games for Spanish-language editions, however they needed to begin publishing their very own designs. In addition to being a writer, Gonzalo is a reviewer, and over time he had reviewed a lot of my video games. We shared a love for historic video games, so he needed to see whether or not I’d be excited about designing one thing for his firm.

The provide was flattering, and I used to be very a lot excited about working with Gonzalo and Salt & Pepper Games, however on the time I used to be swamped with deadlines. I let Gonzalo know that I used to be completely excited about collaborating, however that it will be some time earlier than I used to be capable of get began.

We stayed in contact and sometimes brainstormed attainable concepts. Then in May 2021, Gonzalo reached out to me once more and introduced the thought of together with Albert Monteys. Albert is a well-known illustrator who has been nominated for the Eisner and received fairly a couple of different awards. The timing of Gonzalo’s electronic mail was good. I used to be simply ending some work on a design with one among my design companions (Roger Tankersley), and I used to be on a short hiatus on a few tasks with my different design associate (Trevor Benjamin).

I considered Gonzalo’s proposal and brainstormed a pair concepts. I used to be impressed particularly by Albert’s work on the Slaughterhouse-Five graphic novel adaptation, and I additionally needed the sport to honor Spanish army historical past. I settled on a pair attainable themes: La Nueve, and the Spanish Maquis. La Nueve was the nickname given to the ninth Company of the Régiment de marche du Tchad, a part of the French 2nd Armored Division (also called Division Leclerc). La Nueve fought in the course of the liberation of French North Africa, and later participated within the liberation of France. The Spanish Maquis have been guerillas exiled to France after the Spanish Civil War. They fought alongside the French Maquis in the course of the Second World War, however they’re higher recognized for his or her continued battle in opposition to Francoist Spain till the early Sixties.

The Designers

I want to design with a associate, so I reached out to each Trevor and Roger and requested whether or not both can be excited about collaborating on the undertaking. I introduced the thematic ideas and in addition sketched out an especially tough thought for attainable mechanisms within the sport. This is how I proposed that the sport would possibly work:

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To my shock and pleasure, each Trevor and Roger replied that they have been excited about engaged on the design. We virtually instantly settled on the subject of the Spanish Maquis. Although I had assumed a Spanish Maquis sport would deal with the group’s exploits in the course of the Second World War, Roger rightly pushed us in the direction of specializing in the post-WW2 counter-Franco time interval. That time interval is what the group is healthier recognized for, and it offered for a extra wide-ranging and fascinating thematic backdrop.

We every started to tackle roles within the design. In normal, I proposed a lot of the gameplay parts, Roger led the thematic integration, and Trevor targeting improvement and refinement.

Initial Refinement

One of the earliest and most impactful thematic parts Roger launched was the way in which through which we represented the Maquis fighters. My authentic idea was that every fighter would have two particular actions: one weak and one sturdy. When fighters used their weak motion, they might be discarded and might be used once more. If they have been used for his or her stronger motion, they have been faraway from the sport. This mechanism was impressed by card-driven video games (CDGs) in addition to deck-destruction video games, similar to Martin Wallace’s Lincoln. Roger proposed that the weak motion represented the Maquis working covertly, or “hidden”, whereas the stronger motion represented the Maquis “revealing” themself and working overtly in opposition to the Francoist forces. It was an important thematic framework that we’d use to craft all the Maquis fighters. This is how Roger initially described it:

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So I feel this might possibly match what you have laid out as nicely. Each maquis card has a “minimal danger” plain-clothes motion that’s much less highly effective, and a “excessive danger” militarized motion that’s highly effective.

The subsequent main shift within the design was the way in which through which the enemy labored. It was the least refined idea I had in my preliminary gameplay pitch. Trevor proposed an alternate that improved the theming, offered extra fascinating choices for the participant, and improved the general sport construction. Rather than a single enemy deck, there can be a set of “location” playing cards (which might later turn into missions) and an enemy deck. Enemies can be distributed among the many areas, and the participant would have a alternative of which location to assault. Here’s how Trevor described it:

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Instead of a single, amorphous deck for the enemies, what about this: In addition to the enemy deck, every sport has a prescribed set of “location” playing cards which might be laid out on the desk. These would minimally have a “defender” worth, although they may even have particular talents / situations. During set-up, you distribute the enemy playing cards face all the way down to the areas, in line with this defender worth (so three playing cards if the worth is 3, and many others.) On the participant’s flip, they draw their hand after which select which location to assault.

This was an instrumental change to the sport. It allowed for fascinating choices by the participant, the combination of particular results for the areas, and better selection throughout performs. It was the final main tweak to the core gameplay idea earlier than the three of us actually set to work on the sport design. The subsequent step was to create the preliminary set of Maquis fighters, enemies, and missions.

The History

As I discussed earlier, Roger led the analysis and thematic integration for the sport. During his analysis, he recognized three normal timeframes that encapsulated the Maquis’ battle in opposition to Francoist Spain: The Re-invasion of Spain (1944), Splintering of the Maquis (1945-1948), and Hunting the Maquis (1949-1952). This is how he described these intervals:

1944: Re-invasion of Spain by Spanish Maquisards in France. Franco had fortified the Pyrenees with 4,500 fortifications in anticipation of armed resistance each from former foes (the Spaniards who had fled to France) and different Allied powers when Germany fell. There was direct, large-scale battle between returning maquisards and Franco forces.

1945-1948: Splintering of Maquis. By 1947 hopes of huge space management have been gone. Franco forces simply repelled the re-invasion of Spain. Remaining Maquis took to the mountains and entered a section of commercial sabotage, assassinations, and financial institution robberies. Lots of small scale conflicts, many bands of maquis working within the mountains.

1949-1952: Hunting the Maquis. Franco responded by coaching and fielding an extremely succesful pressure of counter-guerillas, dressed and working just like the guerillas and sowing terror on their dwelling floor. These counter-gangs even attacked native populace within the guise of maquisards to discredit them. Franco forces have been looking down and scattering remnants, with many maquisards attempting to flee again to France. Lots of missions to attempt to rescue their fellow maquis, get wanted provides, rob banks to provide cash to guerilla households, and proceed to harass and disrupt the army, communications, smuggling weapons, and many others.

These three time intervals fashioned the thematic background for the three mission decks within the sport. We additionally drew from these ideas to determine the sorts of enemies within the sport.

From Design to Development

Next, we refined how the Maquis have been dealt with. Originally, I had envisioned a single Maquis deck of about twenty playing cards. You’d begin with the complete deck in every play, and your option to play playing cards for his or her weak or sturdy actions would drive the composition of the deck. In order to extend selection and replayability throughout video games, we shifted to a mannequin through which you’d have entry to solely half of the Maquis in every sport, and early playtests drove us to scale back the variety of Maquis in play from twenty to 12.

Now we had the framework of the sport that very a lot mirrored the ultimate design. The subsequent order of enterprise was improvement. We centered on balancing the Maquis, missions, and enemies; creating constant terminology throughout the sport; refining the gameplay construction; and higher integrating the theme.

Throughout mid-2021, Trevor, Roger, and I labored via this technique of refinement. There have been a pair crucial choices we made throughout this era, maybe a very powerful of which was “How does the participant win?”

In the early variations of the sport, we used a win situation comparable to what’s within the base sport now, that’s, the participant is attempting to realize totally different victory degree thresholds as decided by victory factors. However, we additionally began designing alternate win situations as situations. For these, successful was binary: You both received or misplaced — however gamers had particular, particular targets moderately than merely attempting to realize increasingly victory factors.

We loved each fashions, and the system supported each. It was at the moment, with the core gameplay refined and us on the level of constructing subjective choices, that we launched our playtest.

Organized Playtesting

In September 2021, we launched a large organized playtest. I reached out to 3 communities: The 1 Player Guild on BoardGameGeek, particular teams on Facebook (the Solo Board Gamers and Solitaire Wargamers teams), and Twitter. The response was overwhelmingly constructive. In the tip, we restricted the variety of testers to 75, with about one-third of the testers coming from every group.

We have been assured going into the exterior playtest that the core sport design for Resist! was sturdy, however what we actually wanted was in depth information assortment in order that we might gauge total stability and issue for the sport. We wanted to check plenty of variables (particular person mission power, Maquis, and many others), however primarily we have been involved with these questions:

• What was the extent of issue for the core sport when utilizing a random set-up of Maquis?
• What was the extent of issue for the core sport when whenever you drafted Maquis?
• What was the extent of issue for every of the eleven situations when utilizing a random set-up of Maquis?
• What was the extent of issue for every of the eleven situations whenever you drafted Maquis?

While there have been some subjective and open-ended questions we additionally requested, it was goal information assortment that we wanted in an effort to correctly reply the 4 questions above. Fortunately, due to the scale of the playtest pool and the wonderful responsiveness of our testers, we have been capable of acquire a whole lot of particular person sport outcomes. That allowed us to make data-driven choices about stability tweaks throughout the core sport and the situations.

Of course, our wonderful playtesters helped us in lots of different methods. Throughout this course of Trevor primarily led the hassle to refine all of our guidelines textual content, particularly to make sure consistency, primarily based on tester suggestions. To say the responses have been crucial to the event of the sport can be a large understatement.

The organized playtest ran for about two months. At that time we had collected sufficient information and suggestions to lock down the design. During this identical interval we had already been assembly with the writer (Salt & Pepper), artist (Albert Monteys), and graphic designers (Meeple Foundry). But now with the sport design and improvement full, we might transition into artwork and graphic design integration.

Art and Graphic Design

We met with Albert to debate the paintings, and with Diana Toma and Samuel Zaragoza to debate the graphic design as we have been working the organized playtest. I already talked about how enamored all of us have been with Albert’s beautiful artwork, however we have been simply as fortunate to be working with Diana and Samuel.

To offer you an thought of what the sport elements regarded like of their prototype type, this is a pattern Maquis card, adopted by the ultimate model:

And this is a comparability of a mission card:

And an enemy card comparability:

As you possibly can see, one way or the other Albert, Diana, and Samuel have been capable of take our tough ideas and switch them into one thing actually magical. The artwork is evocative and delightful, whereas the graphic design is an ideal mix of practical and chic. I could not be happier with the ultimate look of the sport.

Resist! beginning delivery to backers in August 2022, one month forward of schedule, which is a minor miracle within the present state of manufacturing and delivery within the board sport world. The sport shall be that can be purchased at SPIEL ’22 in Essen, Germany in October.

David Thompson