Ignacy Trzewiczek

Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot

News

ANNOUNCEMENT: Portal Games Announces Angry Ocean

By Portal Games on
  Portal Games announces Angry Ocean The first expansion for Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot adds new adventures, and two new non-player, character dice. Gliwice, Poland – July 1, 2016. Today, Portal Games announced Angry Ocean, the first expansion for Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot. Angry Ocean adds two new scenario packs as well as two custom dice with a character card for each. Angry Ocean includes two new scenarios. The first, Angry Ocean, the ocean fights back with krakens, rocks, wrecks, and whirlpools. In the second scenario, Old Dogs, players are veteran pirates, near retirement that are out for one last adventure. Your galleons begin the game fully equipped and cannot be modified after adventures. The Old Dogs just want treasure! This expansion also ...

ARTICLE: The Story About the Hamster

By Portal Games on
Have you ever flipped over the Hold piece and noticed a funny little piece of art? Today, Ignacy shares with us the story of how this came to be.   Today, let me share with you a super light story of a small animal that made it into Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot although it can’t even swim! This is the story behind… the hamster! *** In most cases it is damn simple – you use a card, you tap it. We all played Magic at some point in our lives, huh? The problem is, Rattle, Battle used both cards and cardboard pieces… and what’s more, some pieces (most commonly sails, cannons and hulls) don’t even have a card. They are so common that we didn’t need to include a card with rule explanation. So no tapping. That’s for sure. We went for flipping cardboard pieces. You use it, you flip it to the ...

ARTICLE: Rules Spotlight – Rattle, Battle Parts and Upgrades

By Portal Games on
In Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot we have two categories of devices that can be added to your Galleon: Parts, and Upgrades. Parts are the basic items: Sails, Cannons, and Holds. These are the main objects that give you the ability to move, fire, and store goods. They are the base layer of your strategy. They are also referenced in many ways: When something refers to a Cannon, it specifically means the Cannon Part. There are no Upgrades that count as cannons. When there is a reference to a Sail, again, this means only the Part. There are no Upgrades that provide Sails.   What does this mean for you? Well, it’s simple. That Big Bertha, or Super Cannons sure does look like a Cannon, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. It’s an Upgrade. When you want to fire with your Big Bertha, you still need to have a Cannon ready for the Fire action. This works ...

ARTICLE: Found in the Bin

By Portal Games on
I talk a lot about trashing ideas that don’t work. I write over and over about me having no mercy for ideas that don’t help the game.  About the fact that a designer should not be attached to any of his ideas and be ready to change them on the fly. Let me give you some examples from Rattle, Battle Grab the Loot. Good examples always help to get the picture. Today, I’ll tell you about drunken pirates. *** It all began with a little bit of deck building. Each player was starting with deck of cards that represented his crew. He had four average sailors, a first mate and a captain. Each round in Port he was able to hire more crewmen and build his crew. ...

ARTICLE: Too Many Choices?

By Portal Games on
We were in Vegas and we had free Friday. So we spent it visiting Pinball Hall of Fame and talking about games. I was pretty lucky – our merry company was joined by Eric M. Lang. That meant a lot of interesting discussions about game design. ‘Don’t give players too many choices’, he said at some point. ‘Player love choices!’ I objected. ‘There are games where they need them and there are games when they don’t need them. Not every game needs to have so many strategic choices.’ He was right. Imperial Settlers needs some choices. Stronghold needs many choices. Rattle, Battle? Ignacy, just give people some fun. Give them a break! I came to Poland, I looked at prototype and I took a blade. Sharp, shinny blade. And I began to cut. *** We have now two main ways of scoring points in the game – you can sink Merchants for 1 VP per ...

ARTICLE: Rules Spotlight – Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot

By Portal Games on
We’ve had a few questions lately regarding the way different dice work during adventures. Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot is all about the dice. Each die represents a ship. There are player ships (they are opaque) and non-player ships (they are translucent). Of the non-player ships (NPS) there are two different types: Normal NPS (With Ship and Grapeshot Icons) Special NPS (With Skull Icon)   Most adventures will only use one type of dice. Typically, they will be the Normal dice with a Sail and Grapeshot icon. The Sail icon will be on the left of the card, and the Grapeshot icon on the right. The Adventure card lets you know what each of ...

ARTICLE: What Did The Rulebook Teach You?

By Portal Games on
Today I watched a very interesting video in which Gil Hova and Geoff Engelstein talked about writing rulebooks. They presented a thesis that each rulebook has two purposes: it has to be tutorial to teach us how to play the game and it has to be also reference book to help us if we have any concerns and doubts later during gameplay. For the past months I kept telling my friend Lucas, who was responsible for rulebook for Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot that he is writing the most boring set of rules I ever read to the most fun game I ever designed. We had an argument almost every day. He wrote pretty good reference book as Gil and Geoff would probably say. And he ...

ARTICLE: The Broken Token Organizer for Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot

By Portal Games on
This year, we’ve formed a partnership with The Broken Token to bring some awesome organizers to our product line and I, for one, am absolutely in love with them. They make some amazing (and affordable!) stuff that totally blows me away. When they asked to do a Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot organizer, my initial reaction was “yeah, right. I’d like to see you try!” Well, they did try, and they made something amazing! If you haven’t played Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot yet… I’ll warn you… there’s a significant amount of components to sort and setup. This handy insert removes all that. Open the box, pull out the trays, and play! It totally rocks.  Click the images below to be taken to their page… or just click here. -Chevee

ARTICLE: I Love Building Stuff

By Portal Games on
2009, Stronghold. The Invader builds Catapults, Ballistas, Ladders, Bridges… all kinds of different machines… and items to create a deadly mechanism to destroy this damn castle. Defender does exactly the same. He puts Cannons in towers, he builds Platforms next to walls, he brings Pots and Poles, and makes Traps… 2012, Robinson Crusoe. They call them castaways on stranded Island but actually you could call them Builders. Build shelter. Improve roof. Strengthen palisade. Make tools. Build dam. Make weapons. Basically – build stuff or die. 2014, Imperial Settlers. Build as many Production cards as you can. Boost your resources engine and then build more. Build all those feature buildings that give you free stuff when you trigger their ability and then build action buildings, build ...

ARTICLE: Designing Scenarios in Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot

By Portal Games on
Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot is a scenario driven game. Of course it is! It’s a Portal Games game after all! From the very beginning I knew that players would be drawing cards that describe particular adventure or sea battle. This would tell the story of the game. Soon after, I began to group those cards into categories. Scenarios were born. In the box you will find two main scenarios and a small introductory one. Each scenario consists of easy adventure cards (called Soft adventures) and hard adventure cards (called Hard adventures). Scenarios are made up of a mix of these adventure cards, starting with Soft adventures first, and Hard adventures later. You draw them at random from a deck of adventure cards, so every time you play, the story is different.

Rattle, Battle, Grab your… iPhone!?

By Portal Games on
If you’ve been playing Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot, you’ll know that sometimes, it can be quite difficult to determine which dice are closest… well, no more! I teased this a bit at Gen Con during demo games, but it is ready to share with the world. Grab your iPhone, take a picture, and let the app do the work for you! Click the image below to get your App goodness.

Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot – Contents

By Portal Games on
We messed up. No other way to word it. When you look at the contents listed in your rules booklet, you’ll notice that the counts are wrong on the components. What your rulebook says: Loot tokens: 11 Spices 18 Rum green 16 Fabrics 11 Valuables Mini Expansion – 1st Loot pack 8 Special loot tokens 8 Special loot cards As many have noticed, those numbers are wrong. The actual numbers are below. Loot tokens: 10 Spices – red tokens. 18 Rum – green tokens. 18 Fabrics – blue tokens. 10 Valuables – yellow tokens. The mini expansion actually comes with 8 tokens and only 5 cards. Some of the tokens use the same card, therefore, it is unnecessary to have a card for each token. Lastly, there is some confusion over the number of sailors included. You should have 27 regular Sailor cards plus 6 new sailor cards from the mini-expansion “1st Crew Pack”.   We are so ...

Welcome to PORTAL GAMES

We are bookworms. Movie maniacs. Story addicts. We grew up reading Tolkien, Howard, Herbert, Dick, Lem… We were watching Willow, Blade Runner, Never Ending Story, Robin Hood…

And yet, we don’t write books… we don’t make movies. We don’t make those things, because we make games. We make games that tell stories.

Latest Articles