Early Christmas shopping? Science sabotage for fun game: a Kickstarter campaign

David Bruggeman has written a July 5, 2016 posting about the Lab Wars board game, his second one in support of the UK scientists and creators, Caezar Al-Jassar and Kuly Heer,

… The game (set for 2-4 people ages 12 and up, with gameplay of 30-60 minutes) has players building up their own labs and reputations while sabotaging their…colleagues(?).  Some of these sabotages are based on actual events, and if your version of the game includes the “Legends of Science” expansion pack, you will have the chance to play with famous scientists and their lab equipment.

David has embedded a video showing how the game is played in his July 5, 2016 posting (Pasco Phronesis blog).

There is a Kickstarter campaign for the game which has 28 hours left to it. Their goal was £5,000 and they now have £45,269. Don’t be scared away by the £, pledges, it is possible to pledge in other currencies.

On going to the Lab Wars website, I was thrilled to find this,

LabWarsBox

Canada-friendly shipping? Thank you for including a Canuck flavour to your campaigning.

From the Kickstarter campaign page,

What's in the box!
What’s in the box!

 Box components

  • 1 two part box made of 128gsm paper stock and 1.5mm cardboard
  • 1 glossy rulebook 128gsm paper stock
  • 137 cards at 300gsm card stock (as above)
  • 50 flask shaped research points from punchboard/cardboard chits
  • 1 legendary scientist meeple as the first player marker – (artwork of Marie Curie coming soon!) – unlocked at £7500 as a stretch goal
  • Cardboard divider to easily separate decks

There are also German, French, and/or Spanish language print versions available too according to the Kickstarter page.

Pledges start at £1 (you get a thank you and a PDF of the experiments and historical sabotage that form the base of the game. £19 (approx. $27 USD, €24, or $35 CAD) will get you a game.

I found out more about the UK scientists behind the game on the Lab Wars About Us page,

We’ve played board games for many many years but found that there was nothing out there that represented the fun and wacky aspects of scientific research. The game was originally inspired by the book “The Secret Anarchy of Science” by Michael Brooks and our own personal experiences. Being a difficult and laborious industry, some famous and/or dodgy scientists have often led to underhanded tactics to get ahead of their peers. Using this as the driving force we decided that  we should create a game around this concept so that players could be devious against one another with a science theme.

So while on holiday in Spain the summer of 2015 we came up with the original concept of Lab Wars. We immediately sourced card, pens and scissors so that we could playtest it and pretty much spent our entire holiday playing it for hours trying to perfect it.

We purposefully made the game with non-scientists in mind and have playtested it for many many hours with people who are not familiar with science. We feel we have created a game that is fun, unique with mechanisms that allow replayability. …

If you’re interested, there isn’t much time left.

Note: Kickstarters can be chancey. Even people with the best of intentions can find they have difficulty following through. If you think about it, someone who planned to produce and ship 500 widgets is likely to find that producing and shipping 10,000 widgets (due to the success of their Kickstarter campaign) is an entirely different affair.

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