As the Dead of Winter, Summoner Wars and Stu ed Fables studio turns 10,
founder Colby Dauch looks back on a decade of boundary-pushing games
Words by Sam DesatoffB
efore founding Plaid Hat Games in
2009, Colby Dauch was a big fan of
Heroscape. His enthusiasm for the
game set in motion a career that
began with a simple fansite and a freelance
design job at Hasbro.
“I became a super fan, and started a website,”
Dauch says. “ en ended up working on the
game [as a playtester]. I developed several
di erent games for Hasbro, and then decided
that I should make my own game.” at game
was Summoner Wars.
Dauch shopped Summoner Wars to
Hasbro, who said it wasn’t the right t. Next,
he tried Fantasy Flight Games, which also
turned it down. Dauch says he tried the larger
publishers rst because they would have the
nancial strength to back his game, but the
idea of starting his own company was never far
from his mind. In 2009, he did just that.
Summoner Wars is a tactical card game that
pits two faction armies against one another. e
action takes place on a grid-based battle eld,
which makes positioning an important part of
planning your attack. Since launch, the game
has in ated to include 24 factions and taken
home several prestigious awards.
To keep up the momentum from Summoner
Wars, Dauch went on the hunt for other designers
to bolster his burgeoning company. He reached
out to friends from the Heroscape community and
connections made while working for Hasbro.
“Jerry Hawthorne and I worked together
doing freelance for Hasbro,” he says. “We metthrough Heroscape, and got work through [the
game] at Hasbro. After I got the company up
and running, I turned to Jerry and was like,
‘Hey, you got any game ideas?’”
It turns out that, yes, Hawthorne had an
idea up his sleeve. Released in 2012, Mice and
Mystics is a co-op story game about a team of
humans-turned-mice who must save their king.
In the base game are 11 story chapters – several
expansion chapters have been released since.
Mice and Mystics opened many doors for
Plaid Hat; following the game’s release, the
company received a call from video game
developer Irrational Games to make a board
game adaptation of BioShock In nite. And just
last year it was announced that Shrek and How
to Train Your Dragon studio DreamWorks was
developing an animated Mice and Mystics lm.
In 2014, Plaid Hat published Dead of Winter,
the rst entry in its Crossroads series. Players
are thrown into a group of survivors during a
zombie apocalypse – the twist is that players
each have a own secret goal that may or may
not involve betraying the rest of the group. Plaid
Hat followed Dead of Winter last year with its
second Crossroads game, Gen7.
Dead of Winter’s undead-infested universe,
meanwhile, has since been explored further in
spin-o game Raxxon and served as the subtle
backdrop to the Specter Ops series of hidden
movement games, which has expanded with a
sequel and social deduction title Cross re.
2016 saw Plaid Hat release SeaFall, the
ambitious – if awed – Age of Sail legacy gamefrom Risk Legacy and Pandemic Legacy pioneer
Rob Daviau.
Hawthorne followed up Mice and Mystics
with 2018’s Stu ed Fables, the rst game using
the new AdventureBook system – all the action
unfolds, literally, inside a storybook. Players
take on the role of stu ed animals and must
protect their young owner as she makes the
transition from a crib to a bed. Earlier this year,
Plaid Hat released Comanauts, the second
game in the AdventureBook line. Dauch
reveals plans to release a new AdventureBook
game later this year.
Supplementing the Crossroads and
AdventureBook series is Plaid Hat’s line of ever-
expanding card games. Aside from Summoner
Wars, that line includes 2015’s Ashes: Rise of
the Phoenixborn and 2016’s Crystal Clans.
Each title continues to receive new decks and
factions that help encourage replayability.
With Plaid Hat celebrating a decade of
business, Dauch shares some of the philosophy
behind the company’s designs. At the forefront
of his approach is the idea of inclusion via
storytelling – the AdventureBook series in
particular is ripe for diverse characters.
“Representation is pretty important to us
as a company,” he says. “We have a strong
focus on trying to tell more than one kind of
person’s story. I think it’s important when a
person can see themselves in a character that
they’re playing. If we’re going to try to grow
games, that’s part of it: make sure all people
feel welcome.”PLAID HAT GAMES
THROUGH THE AGES
2009 2012 2013 2014 2015 2018
April 2019 tabletopgaming.co.uk 53