Mercenaries Wanted Designer Interview

Pete K, our Community Manager, sat down with Mercenaries Wanted designer Dennis Vögele and had a chat about Cephalofair's upcoming card game for our Insiders. Enjoy!

Pete: Hi Dennis! While I think some Insiders may already have an idea of who you are, for those who don't, can you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do for Cephalofair (and the 'Haven community)? 

Dennis: Hey, my journey into boardgames started in the 90s, when my sister and I got our first copy of Settlers of Catan. Many years and many games later, I backed Gloomhaven's 2nd printing in 2018 and got very involved with the game's community. I ended up moderating and eventually running the r/Gloomhaven subreddit for a number of years and am still involved (thankfully with a team of moderators now). In that capacity I got to know Isaac and started playtesting Jaws of the Lion and Frosthaven with him. Eventually, he offered me the opportunity to help develop the game. Over the years, I've worked as a designer and/or developer on various Cephalofair projects such as Gloomhaven 2nd Edition, Frosthaven, and Gloomhaven Mercenary Packs, etc. 

Pete: Tell us about Mercenaries Wanted! What is the game like, what were your design goals, and who do you think will enjoy playing it? 

Dennis: Mercenaries Wanted started, like so many ideas, as a shower thought. It occurred to me that the characters stats which are listed on the back of each class's mat could provide the basis for a card game in which each mercenary is represented by a single card. The question then was: what game would you play with those Mercenary Cards? I started experimenting, and after many iterations, landed on the final design of Mercenaries Wanted. Given that the Haven games come in big heavy boxes, my goal was to create a game that allowed players to engage with Gloomhaven's world in a smaller fashion. That meant keeping the price of the game and the playtime much lower than a traditional haven experience. I also felt that the rich Gloomhaven setting deserved to be explored with more different styles of games. I hope players that like drafting games and unique fantasy settings, but want something slightly meatier while still keeping playtime under 1 hour, will enjoy it. 

P: What games is it inspired by, and in what ways? How do you think it stands on its own in a unique way? 

D: The first inspiration are those old Ace/Top Trumps games from the 90s. They were sold as little themed decks, for example cars or dinosaurs, where each card in the deck had 4 stats which could be compared to one another. For example, a dinosaurs height and weight, or a car's top speed or acceleration. Other drafting games such as Magic: The Gathering, Sushi Go, or 7 Wonders, inspired the drafting playstyle. The biggest inspiration was the 'Haven games that these mercenaries, items, and jobs come from. I'll also mention Bloodbowl: Team Manager as a game that inspired the idea of the metagame that is mercenary party HR management. My goal was to keep the game's complexity fairly light in comparison to a haven game, but make it a bit of a step up from drafting classics like Sushi Go and 7 Wonders.

What makes Mercenaries Wanted somewhat unique is the Tournament mechanic: during the game, you are drafting mercenaries to go off on jobs and earn coin, but after each job, you bank one or two of your mercenaries for the tournament round at the end of the game. Your immediate job needs and the tournament needs do not always align, so you're constantly weighing your priorities while choosing which mercenaries to draft. 

P: I really like the sound of that!  For me when I play 7 Wonders, for example, once I start going down a "Science" path I sometimes feel incentivized to keep taking science cards all game without deviating a lot. In Mercenaries Wanted I love the idea of needing to weigh what a mercenary can do for you now vs who is worth keeping around for later. I imagine the idea is that this, along with responding to whatever your opponents are doing, requires you to shift strategies or finding new synergies as you go throughout the game, is that accurate? How high do you find the player interaction to be throughout? 

D: A good drafter knows that a lot can be gained by paying a bit of attention to what others are going for. For example, if one opponent keeps taking mercenaries with elemental affinities, maybe you'll think twice if it worth trying to contest them on the elemental tournament event. Mercenary abilities are intentionally not too directly, aggressively interactive, as we found abilities like that were very divisive in playtesting. Instead, interaction is indirect since you are competing over jobs and tournament events. That being said a little bit of "hate drafting" can go a long way on a more cut-throat table. 

P: From the previews we've seen, it appears each mercenary has a unique ability. What was the process like in terms of making sure those abilities fit mechanically in this game, while staying true and thematic to those mercenaries in their larger 'Haven games? 

D: That is correct, each mercenary's ability is unique. The abilities were really my primary avenue for translating the haven mercenaries to this different game system. A stat line, some tags, and elemental affinities can only do so much in that regard. My hope is that haven fans will enjoy the "aha!" moments of recognizing iconic aspects of classes, such as the Quatryl Tinkerer having access to Chimeric Formula. I started by designing many of these top-down (flavor first) abilities for characters and then rounding things out with bottom-up (mechanics first) abilities to solve mechanical needs such as having sufficient synergy pieces. One of the most fun parts of the game is finding synergies and combos between the mercenaries, so I wanted many of the abilities to play off of one another. That being said, I also wanted the game to stand on its own and be fun and inviting for players who are totally new to the setting. 

P: Veteran players might notice that some of the mercenaries in this game are from a different ancestry than that mercenary might have been in Gloomhaven/Frosthaven/etc. What was the thought process there? 

D: Not including the mercenary packs and Forgotten Circles, we currently have 39 haven classes: 18 from Gloomhaven, 4 from Jaws of the Lion, and 17 from Frosthaven. That number is a bit too small for a drafting game. To make the game work with up to 6 players, and to ensure enough variety, I wanted at least 60 mercenary cards. The Gloomhaven RPG introduced the idea of alternative ancestries for existing classes, so I decided to add alternative versions of all of the Gloomhaven and Jaws of the Lion classes. Not only did that get us to over 60 cards, but it also allowed us to introduce some cool new class art into the game! 

P: How does this game play for people who have never played Gloomhaven before? Is there any prior knowledge of the series that you need to be successful? 

D: The card names, art, stats, and flavor text should convey the theme even for players with no prior Gloomhaven experience. If anything, I'm hoping the game succeeds in grabbing the attention of new players who will then get to have the reverse "aha" experience: being excited to see how the character on their mercenary card plays as a full blown class in a Haven game!

P: I see that there's a solo mode for this game -- how does a drafting game work in a solo mode? 

D: In solo mode, you simulate the experience of a draft, so you draw four cards as usual and pick one, then you draw three and pick one, then two and pick one, and finally draw one card. The tournament event cards each have target thresholds for solo play based on lots of solo play testing, so instead of competing against other players, you try to achieve a predetermined minimum.

P: How long does the game take to play? Does that time vary much with player count? 

D: The game plays consistently in about 35-50 minutes once you know the rules. Since all turns are taken simultaneously, the game length is largely unaffected by player count. Instead, the game length simply depends on the speed of the slowest player. The one exception is solo play. Solo games are pretty snappy, typically taking around 20-25 minutes in our experience.

P: Thank you for your time, Dennis!

Thank you Pete and Dennis! You can pre-order Mercenaries Wanted for shipping in early 2027 directly from the product page. If you're planning to attend PAXUnplugged in December, we'll have a limited number of early release copies available as well.