Eric M. Lang

I was runner-up in the first world championship at Gen Con, and my opponent was Casey Galvin, who ended up, he was kind of my predecessor at FFG.

They hired him from the community as a developer to kind of help Eric balance and develop cards because he's a world champion.

So he was an expert at the game and great to kind of lead play testing and help Eric manage the metagame.

But anyways, in that game, that World Championship match, there was a card called Heads on Pikes in the early set.

To a certain extent, it just discarded your opponent's whole deck.

Why don't you tell us, like, it's an opportunity.

Please just talk to us about the history of LCGs and your role in it and anything else you want to tell us.

Yeah, so I was hired as a developer to work with Eric Lang on both Game of Thrones and Call of Cthulhu.

Yeah.

And I know Eric Lang recently posted something kind of to the contrary of that, but he's a rare beast, right?

He gets to choose things others don't.

Yes.

you know, marketing situation.

I want to say scheme, but, like, it became just, like, a marketing fulfillment kind of situation, right? Like, these games, like, you know, Eric Lang puts a game out from CMON.

Like, did he need to do that, right? Like, that's going to make a billion dollars, right? Like, does, you know, like, CMON's, you know, CMON's having its problems now, but, like, CMON, Asmodee, AllPlay, there's a lot of companies that do not need to do that, and they do it anyway.

And obviously, there's financial decisions and reasons why they do that, I think it, I think it inevitably in the end, it broke what Kickstarter was initially meant to do and did best was getting games to market that would never have a chance to go through retail or publishers that would never have a chance to go to retail and given them the opportunity.

Cthulhu Death May Die is my number 39 by designer Rob Davio.

And Eric Lang.

And

Eric Lang.

Yeah, I

don't know if I've ever had a game that's just by Rob Davio.

This is the follow-up to Oathsworn, which we adored.

Avalon: the Riven Veil is very much a weird adjacent t- to troops on a map game in the same rough wheelhouse as things like Blood Rage or perhaps other things by Eric Lang.

And we've had a number of discussions about Avalon: the Riven Veil.

I was ...

And so that was fine.

I don't know of a way to expedite the card play other than play a whole bunch of slow games and then get really practiced.

But I don't think Avalon: The Riven Veil is worth it, right? There are so many games by Eric Lang alone [laughs] that I think get you where you wanna go.

Uh, I, I wish this was 90 to, 90 to 120 minutes for the look, for the theme, for the card play.

your different dominions.

Eric Lang.

Correct.

Yes.

literally looked at Dice Masters.

It's

Eric Lang.

Yes.

And I... got all of my friends to come playtest.

This was Chaos in the Old World was this board game, Eric Lang board game they were working on at the time.

And I dragged all my friends in to be playtesters, to playtest this game, and really pursued this.

And I actually...

And I think, you know, ev- ev- everyone likes their own, uh, games, but I think my games are just getting stronger and stronger and stronger for being simpler, simpler, simpler, simpler.

And I've talked about the time I had dinner with Eric Lang, and I asked him, "Why are the, uh, attack and the cost of every card in Blood Rage the same?" And he said, "Because the less work the players have to do there, the more that they can put into, like, the fun part of the game." Like, the more mental-

Mm

... uh, load the fun part of the game can take up.