to forge ahead or just leave it as a garage game..

Martin (I don't hope some old painter is called Martin... ),

Why not just contact a publisher and try and see if they are interested in publishing your game? They can deal with all the hassle, money, art, etc, and you can rake in the royalties :)

Just playtest the hell out of the game, preferably with many different people. If you manage to play it for a few months or so without changing anything major, it is time to start looking for a publisher. Make sure you have a well-written rulebook. Without a good rulebook, you can forget it. By the way, it is OK if you use clip-art, or other copyrighted images downloaded from the internet for your prototype as they won't be used in the final product anyway.

Most publishers will change a few things about the game, usually theme and art will be changed and some rules may be tweaked. Most publishers don't have the time to do major rules tweaking an retesting, and most publisher will consult the designer about this anyway, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

Hey Martin,

Looks like you got some really good advice (and an invitation) above.

I enjoyed reading your post, nice to know others have same train of thaought as me. Give it your best shot without sinking a whole lotta cash into it. I think if the game works well someone will pick it up...and posting here was a good idea. Good luck man. I'd like to hear more about ya game - what sort of theme you got going on? You got me curious.

Hey what if I am in the same kind of boat Martin is, but I have more like 250 cards to make? Not to mention packaging art and the board itself? Does anybody have advice for a guy who created a great strategy game that is just a little on the complex side for most audiences? I have been looking at the software option, but since I'm not a programmer, I'm not sure where to go with this. The game I'm referring to is called "Battle Chest: Pangea". The general idea stared almost three years ago when I realized I had an awesome beer cap collection with something like two hundred varieties of caps. I stuck the caps (after careful counts and all) into a small chest and stared building a board game based on random draw of the caps; instead of dice rolls or drawing cards. Anyway, everybody that has play tested it says that this is probably the most unique aspect of the game and that would be lost in the software version... Do I scale it down? Are there enough people out there that don't mind a bit of variety and randomness??
Anyway, I'd appreciate any input or thoughts at this point...(obviously if I were to market the board game, we would use custom made chips, not beer caps - I'd hate to tackle that problem with the brew companies... or should I?)
Peace.

well said Willi B ...

Is this your final call Martin?

Hey thanks for the input (well, that is, if you were talkin to me, but either way it was helpful)
I just wanted to say something else about my game. Detection and stealth.
You can hide pieces on the board and get "detector" units to find them. Since there isn't quite enough detector possibility to cover the entire board, and since the name of the game is to assassinate the other guys main character, There really aren't any quick and easy first turn moves; at least none have been found in game testing yet, although that is still in the first stages right now. I do appreciate the advice to not have any randomness that is too quick and powerful, and I do plan to watch closely for that. Another element of the game I must convey is that other than a few rare exceptions, most of the beer caps in the chest are like a potential or a resource type of thing. Getting a level one recruitment cap for your faction for example, will simply give you access to the level one character cards. What you pull out of the deck with that cap is up to the player... is it making sense or am I out there too much?? Anyhow, unless somebody has extremely terrible luck, they should be able to stay alive even after a couple unlucky draw turns... It's really not any different than a dice game if you think about it. Mathematically the only difference is that the odds keep changing every time based on what gets played to the board and all. If I have pitched anything interesting here, please comment. Any experience you guys might have in a board game environment that has shifting odds, like a Magic the Gathering type thing, except with a "geography" involved, please share!
Thanks.

You could always make a PDF version of your game and list it on one of the download sites as a free or low cost game (< $5). Then after you get a sense of whether it's a good seller, you could consider your next move.

SJ