Littlebeard Alpha Drops!

After way too much waiting and working, the new Alpha build of Littlebeard is here! This is essentially the same version that we were testing at GameStorm 2019, but it has been thoroughly cleaned and polished for Crab Fragment Labs.

Littlebeard is a simple, fast-playing tabletop miniatures game. Players control sailing ships and battle for control of the Three Seas in our own little imaginary Caribbean. (For a glimpse at the back story, check out the nascent Tiempo Libre page at World Anvil.)

Some history on the game itself: Way back in August 2003, after we shared the stage on a Gen Con panel, Jordan Weisman from Wizkids Games asked me whether I did freelance design work. Yes, very yes. A few weeks later, I was up and running with Pirates of the Spanish Main, a tabletop miniatures game that was playable from a single booster pack of flat plastic ship models.

Jordan’s original plan was to develop it with a Pirates of the Caribbean license. But partway through the project, Wizkids decided not to pursue that license (though they eventually would), and after a few other false starts on the back story, they decided that I should also create that. I gave them something funny, which they didn’t like, and then I hired Mike Selinker to write something serious, which they liked. Because that’s a thing he can do. Mike and I polished off the game rules and the back story, and handed Wizkids a finished package in early 2004.

Pirates became a best-seller for Wizkids, spawning many expansions, winning the Origins Vanguard Award in 2005, and did eventually get the Pirates of the Caribbean license. By then, Mike and I had moved on to other projects. Actually, I had zero input on the game following that initial drop.

From time to time, I’d play the game again, including at my “pirate day” events (see the videos linked from the game page). But after a while, I became dissatisfied with the core mechanics. At first, my group tried to analyze whether the Wizkids version was significantly different from the version I submitted to them, thinking that perhaps we could just roll the game back to it’s pre-submission version.

Wizkids had indeed made a few changes: Originally a “captain” gave you the ability to make a limited move and a limited shot, rather the full move or full shot that you were allowed without one. In the published version, the captain’s ability gave you a full move and a full shot, changing the captain ability from a “nice option” to a “must have,” and sort of torpedoing the concept of choosing between movement and shooting.

There were many other little tweaks that might have been better or worse for the game. But eventually we decided that the most limiting part of the game was the dice rolling, which was required both for movement and for combat. We came to despise the combat rolls, which make sense in most miniatures battles, but were just too swingy in this one. It feels realistic to “roll to hit,” and we’re all used to it, but it’s basically bad for the game because it happens so rarely that if you miss, you lose.

So we started over. First we asked ourselves, what if dice rolling wasn’t a big part of the game? Would it become so formulaic that people would feel the need to plan several turns ahead? The answer was no, mostly because of the wiggle room in the measuring and movement. It’s not a grid-based game, so predicting the future is actually pretty hard, even without any random events.

Another thing that we felt was lacking from Spanish Main was wind. It’s a simple game and obviously something had to be left out to make it playable, but it seemed like wind was at least worth another look. We ended up building a whole new system based on “weather gage,” which gives better priority to ships that are upwind, both in the “movement” and “combat” phases of the turn: ships that are upwind move last, but shoot first.

Getting back to the Captain mechanic, we expanded on that one idea and gave the ships a set of six action points that they could spend on either movement or combat, essentially giving each ship a slightly more granular version of the original “captain” power (and making it intrinsic to all ships). You can’t fire your guns more than once, but if you move less, then you get a chance to put some extra energy into aiming.

What did we keep? Not much. The similar aspects of the two games are fairly obvious: the tabletop is the open sea, objects can represent islands, and scenarios revolve around sinking your opponents and capturing treasure. We kept the template-based movement system, changing it a little to enable wind to matter. And that’s about it.

Thus, Cagway Bay was created in 2013, and has been simmering on the back burner ever since. It enjoys the occasional upgrade and revision, usually in service of a pitch to a new publisher. So far we’ve had no serious bites, and in 2020 the game was redubbed Littlebeard, and moved into the Crab Fragment catalog. Take a look at the game page for more information about the game, including rules, scenarios, and ship plans.

And if you enjoy this game, please let us know! Feedback is the currency of this modern print-and-play age, and we are unreasonably eager to react to comments on our games, especially if they are positive!