Tabletop Scotland 2025

The second playtest of Clan Feud at Tabletop Scotland 2025

On Saturday 6th September I went along to Tabletop Scotland - the biggest and best board game convention in Scotland! It was the first time I had attended, and it definitely exceeded my expectations. I had a great time! Tonnes of stalls, loads of food options, sprawling tables for gaming and certainly too much to do for just one day! I took along Clan Feud to try and get some playtest games in. And I was not disappointed: two fantastic full sessions, with lots and lots of really in-depth feedback. Exactly what I was looking for from the event, and everything I could have hoped for when attending!

I was too slow to book an official slot in the playtest area - they had all been booked up by the time I submitted my application to test Clan Feud. I had wanted to get the game more polished and in as good a state as possible before submitting, which was the wrong call in hindsight. But it didn't matter in the end, because I set the prototype up next to the official playtest area and carried out some impromptu playtests anyway!

To start the day I did head into the playtest zone, and tried out Happy Valley - shout out to Andrea, who has come up with an honestly great card game with a nature theme. We learned the game and played a 4 player session, and right away were playing plants and insects into our and our neighbour's valleys to bag the most victory points. The strategy was about looking at what cards were in the other player's valleys and playing cards into our own valley to synergise with them, whilst avoiding a few cards that could make you lose points. The seasons changed as the game progressed, triggering different effects (the change to bees in spring cost me!) I played a bit of a swarming strategy, with 20 low-cost cards in my valley - and promptly finished dead last!! (Apparently around 14 cards is the sweet spot.) But it was still a very close game and definitely offered a deeper level of strategy upon repeat plays, when you could fully understand the different card interactions from the start and play a more tactical game throughout.

Back to my main focus: the playtests of Clan Feud. We started with a fun four player game that probably ended one turn too soon, with the rival clans congregating their armies around the centre of the board, about to play a game of pass-the-king on the final turn. We had a bit of combat building up beforehand, but up until then it had been a cagey affair with a lot of posturing but not much interaction - that next turn was really gearing up to get the blood lust flowing and the blood feuds kindled! 

There were some great reactions to the game mechanics from the players, and we had a long discussion afterwards with invaluable feedback - more than I expected to get, and all of it great to hear! I always make general notes during playtests for minor quality of life tweaks - ways to modify the wording of certain rules, or add an extra sentence to clarify things (from questions the players ask during play or generic comments they make). But the main brunt of the feedback after the game revolved around the automata English armies, and other ways to incentivise players to interact. Right now the main focus of player interaction in the base game is the King James VI pawn - with the intent being that he can be captured through combat, thus driving conflict between players. But alternative victory conditions was a great suggestion - perhaps the "King James Comes of Age" card could actually be a small deck, which is shuffled at the start of the game, giving a different overall objective each time you play?

A similar suggestion was made about the English: they could be given a specific objective to aim for too, instead of plodding after the closest Scottish army. Quite often players ask why the English don't always just go after the King as quickly as possible. The feedback suggested the English seemed too ponderous and weren't actually very threatening in the end - I will need to go back and review the event cards, and look into tweaking some of the movement speed values to really give the Scots something to worry about!

The second game went quite unusually - a distinctly friendly, four player economic affair until the very last turn. I played in the game myself, and had decided to try a pacifist, income-action-focused play style beforehand, to see if I could translate gaining lots of Scots pounds into lots of end-game victory points. But unbeknownst to me, my fellow players had decided to go for similar approaches! So it was more a game of courtly intrigue and taxing our clan's subjects than staining the heather with our rival's blood. Until the last turn that is, when the green player came over and bashed my poor yellow's door down and captured my city and castles. He said he would stop in Loch Ness so I didn't recruit more troops... I should have known the fickle clan green are never to be trusted! Clan yellow will not forget this blood feud!

The last turn's combat was mixed up between three players, meaning the blue player was left unmolested, and promptly strolled to a comfortable victory. Despite starting in the most southerly location they had been lucky with English spawning (concentrated in the North), meaning they managed to go the entire game without entering a battle. Although there is an argument to be made about incentivising players to interact or maybe restricting a runaway winner, at the end of the day the name of the game is Clan Feud - my feeling is that you are meant to be recreating generational, bitter rivalries! So runaway winners can be curtailed and policed by the players themselves ganging up on them - 3 v 1 if that is what it takes! It didn't work in this example, because I went a while without a single troop on the board as part of an intentionally pacifist strategy, and the greens and blues had declared a very early alliance and agreed never to attack one another. One of the main bits of feedback from this session was on my Scottish geography and territory naming, which I admit needs tidying up on the game board. I also need to create a clear and concise player aid sheet, since a very valid bit of feedback was that some rules are not immediately obvious and clear.

So a really fun and satisfying day with plenty of gaming - I would highly recommend Tabletop Scotland to any board game enthusiast for next year! But more importantly Clan Feud was well received by the playtesters, and there was lots of interest from passers by as we were playing. Which has given me a great confidence boost to keep working on the game, developing it further, and try to drive it ever closer to eventual publication!

The Inspiration and Creation of Clan Feud

My first sketch of the Clan Feud game board

Clan Feud is my first game design - and the catalyst to me becoming a board game designer. Like most hobby board game enthusiasts, I have always loved playing games, and I dabbled with writing some of my own rules growing up (add-ons or re-skins of existing games). Then I got heavily into RPGs during COVID, and dungeon-mastered a couple of bespoke Dungeons and Dragons campaigns for my friends. Players never do what you expect - in fact they showed nefarious glee in thwarting all of my best-laid plans - and went forging off on their own encounters, which of course then had to be improvised on the fly. These experiences really gave me confidence in myself and my creative abilities, and made me think that perhaps I could embark on a creative endeavour one day.

When I was a kid I wanted to be an author - writing a book has been a lifetime dream of mine. And over the years, I associated it with one topic in particular: a historical fiction novel about feuding Scottish clans. I am a Scotsman, from Aberdeen in the North-East of the country. My mother's maiden name is Gordon - the name of the historically most powerful clan in that region (not that I am in any way related to the noble members of the family). Years ago, as I read through the Wikipedia history of the Gordon clan whilst at university, the struggles and fighting amongst Scotland's clans leapt out at me as fascinating, exciting, thrilling, and worthy of a story to be told.

So I had the seed of an idea in my mind - a theme. Fast forward years later, and I had not touched that idea or done anything with it. But I had been playing a lot of board games - working my way through the top rated games as ranked on the Board Game Geek website. Making my own game did not even cross my mind for the longest time - I knew nothing about actual game design, I just liked to play games.

The tipping point came in October 2024, as I travelled alone from Aberdeen to Chicago, to run the Chicago marathon. I knew I would have a lot of time on my hands - I would be in the city for a week, and I wanted to rest before the race and wasn't going to be up for strenuous activity afterwards. So I took a pad of paper in my hand luggage and started to make notes, in the plane and in my hotel room. As I travelled around Chicago seeing the most trafficked tourist sites I thought more about the game. How could I convert the bloody feuding between the various Scottish clans into a condensed and playable board game?

I guess I had been almost subconsciously ruminating on the idea for a while beforehand, and immediately settled on the idea of a player board combined with an overall game board - Risk meets Euro games. Or more specifically, War of the Ring second edition (my absolute favourite board game) meets Brass Birmingham and Castles of Burgundy. Clan Feud ended up being a mongrel amalgamation of all three really. I was also inspired by probably my favourite video game - Crusader Kings III; I wanted to add individual player rulers and have politics, court intrigues and assassinations. But in the end all that was too much, and I instead went with a wider focus, with conflict spanning the whole of Scotland.

My first sketch of the Clan Feud player board

I have included two photographs of my original sketches for Clan Feud - showing my original hand-drawn map of Scotland with territories roughly marked out. This very high-level initial drawing actually did not end up changing too much in the "final" design that I am currently working with - certainly you can see a lot of similarities. The player board has evolved, but its essence is still the same from this initial drawing from Chicago. I had a lot of ideas in the beginning; but over time and playtesting I refined the gameplay and experience. Right from the outset the three phases were established, but the loan feature for example did not last long (heavily inspired by Brass Birmingham no doubt!).

When I arrived back in Aberdeen after my trip to Chicago (the marathon had not gone completely as planned, a new PB scuppered by cramp at 30 km but I at least did manage to finish in under 3 hours), I immediately set about creating a prototype out of paper and card - and raided seemingly all of the boxes on my shelves of board games for components. The original prototypes were not pretty, and did not last long either - I refined and improved after every playtest. And the game continued - and continues - to evolve; but its origins stem from a boyish fascination with his family name and local history, playing DnD online with my friends during lockdown, and having free time whilst running a marathon in another continent!