Zurmat was just highlighted by The Player's Aid for being one ot the best wargames for 2022. You can learn more about that by watching their video below:

The Player's Aid 2022 Top Ten

One of the questions on the video was "Why isn't this game getting played more?" Great question, and I believe one of the reasons is the price. There are so many components involved that the game costs us an arm and a leg to print in the US. When the game is sold wholesale to distributors we just break even... Obviously that's not the way to run a business! 

In addition, the game as it stands sits just shy of 2 lbs, which means with packaging it crests the 2 lbs limit, meaning it is also more expensive to ship. One more pain point for potential customers!

So for Sadr City we are reevalutating all the components. Principally, can we use 3" tiles versus the 4" originally used in Zurmat? Can we get by with smaller tokens for buildings as well? Changing these two items would reduce the table presence as well, but I've sort of felt that the games actually take up too much table real estate as well. 

My biggest concern with making the reductions is just how cluttered a busy tile would be once buildings are added to a big pile of population disks along and then add units on both sides to top it off. Very busy. Too busy??? Playtesting will have to help us with this I'm afraid.

I'm also looking at replacing some of the cards with counters as well. Have to wait and see what the priting boards look like. If there's extra space on the sheets that may be the best way to save us money, although that may add weight as well.

Finally, this exercise in constraint is important not just for Sadr City in particular, but for the fantasy version of Zurmat we plan on making under Christopher's Valor Mountain line of games. We really have to improve our pricing before we go down that path! Stay tuned...