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Community Highlights: Meet Brad McArtor of Mount Baker Games

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Brad McArtor. They and their team shared their story with us below:

Brad McArtor

Brad has released a new Space Fantasy-themed trading card game called Manifold TCG through Mount Baker Games. The game has been developing for nearly three years and is finally released in its limited first edition. In addition to being a great game, the goal of this project has always been to help support the local game store. Local game stores lived off of Magic the Gathering, Comic Books, and Warhammer for a long time. Comic Books have gone the way of the Dodo, Warhammer has had a couple of unsatisfactory editions in a row, and Magic: the Gathering has adjusted its model to bypass game stores and sell directly to end users. This is putting local game stores in quite a pinch: their historic revenue streams are running dry.

So, to get out of that pinch, Brad leaned on his community and joined Adam Hockemeyer (Who previously developed Ivion with Luminary Games) to make a new game. This project operated for 18 months on a zero budget; all our information was organized on Excel spreadsheets. The game lived on the tables at Pair o’ Dice Games for years. Players would see it, ask about it, and hear our developments as we went through iteration after iteration. Players would get excited, play the game for a few months, help us make changes, and then drop out. Eventually, though, the game got good. We figured out how to combine tight balancing, high-concept deck building, high-speed and highly interactive turns, and the fun of rolling dice into a smooth engine. It became clear this product would be sellable, and we already had customers lined up in Bellingham.

We at Mount Baker Games believe that the community surrounding games is important to its members’ mental and emotional health. It’s a theory referred to as the ‘third place’ theory. Humans in our society need somewhere to be other than work or home. Local Game Stores provide this. So Mount Baker Games is seeking to produce a highly retailable product with strong margins so that Game Stores can invest in learning and teaching this game and growing the player base, knowing that it will end up supporting them financially. The big downside to Mount Baker Games being so small is that we don’t have a huge marketing apparatus. The upside is that we don’t have the venture capital to make money. We can focus on our goal of providing support and leaving money on the table for our retail partners.

I met one of Jason’s players at the Fan Expo in Salt Lake City. He looked at the game, discussed its lore, and discussed our sales philosophy. I told him about our commitment to support local game stores and how he should have his game store reach out to us so we could send him a play kit. Ten days later, Jason joined the Manifold Discord; we chatted and then sent him the product. Jason is the community builder, and Dark Prime is the sort of game store that Mount Baker Games wants as a retail partner.

His commitment to his players and his interest in learning and teaching games is admirable and reminds me why I got into this business in the first place.

We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It’s been a pipe dream every step of the way. It’s finally emerging as real and still a new daily challenge.

It was June of 2020. Magic the Gathering was six months into its “Secret Lair” model, where it bypasses game stores and sells directly to end users. This is one of several dominos to fall in in the last couple of years that have demonstrated that Magic is not my future as a game store owner. So Brad set out to make something to support his and other stores for the next generation.

Unfortunately, the motivation sputtered. Brad talked about it for five months and worked on it a little. Brad had a functional engine by the holiday season, but only around 30 cards were designed. Then, in December 2020, Brad went on a holiday vacation with Adam Hockemeyer, and everything started. Adam hand-wrote all of Brad’s cards on index cards. He heard the rules, understood the engine, and figured out how to display the information cohesively on a card. Then we played our first few games, which were… not good.

The engine Brad had designed had an absurd amount of complexity. Without getting into too many gameplay details, just about every interaction between two cards, or cards and dice, required referencing a spreadsheet to see its result. It was simply untenable for tabletop play. So Adam took the incredible step of taking the engine, keeping its heart, and ripping everything off it.

But that was 2020, and this was 2023. We transitioned from “this game probably won’t happen” to “we’re still more likely not to print than to print,” to “How the heck are we supposed to afford printing this,” to “we could still fail,” to eventually having conversations with players at a convention thousands of miles from home.

There were so many steps, creating the graphic design for cards, creating the art for cards, creating the lore for the game, getting the game into stores, finding a manufacturer, etc., that we had never done before, and we had to figure out on effectively zero budget. Testers have come and gone, but Brad and Adam still toil away at this game every day, captivated by each other’s capabilities.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Mount Baker Games is a game design company in Bellingham, Washington. We’ve made a handful of games for local release, including Farce, Arkus, and Teralon. Now, we are on the precipice for our most ambitious project: Manifold TCG.

Mount Baker Games is maybe more of a club than a company. It’s occupied entirely by game designers who put in their work when they finish their day job. We make these games because we love them and play them with friends. But for Manifold TCG, we’ve got something incredible on our hands.

I’m rehashing some of my previous comments here, but:

The Game store, as an archetype, is in a dangerous place. The revenue streams that used to support stores like Pair o’ Dice Games and Dark Prime Collectibles are drying up, and they need something new. Mount Baker Games developers have been making and selling games for 12+ years, and we understand what it will take to make a product and distribution model that will raise the tide for all ships. If our game is optimized to make the game store money, we get a free salesman in every shop. That’s why we’re seeking to make a game with enough collectible cards to keep players returning and sell it cheap enough to make hobby stores a healthy return.

We don’t need the money; we have our day jobs and no venture capital to answer to. We need people to learn and play our game and support local game stores like Dark Prime every step of the way. Their success is our success, and we are committed to getting them the best product possible.

What matters most to you?
I talked to Jason at Dark Prime Collectibles in Clearfield, and he said it perfectly.

‘I’ve run this business for nine years, and the most important thing is the people. Games come and go, but the community always comes together. They play together, laugh together, and always rally to help anyone who needs them.’

This is why Jason is our ideal retail partner. This is why you should visit Dark Prime Collectibles the next time you’re in Clearfield. Being a retailer will never make him rich; he ultimately buys products at whatever price the manufacturer sets and sells them at whatever the market dictates, and those margins are typically thin. But he does it because as long as he can keep the lights on, the tables up, and the heat running, his players have somewhere to be.

I’m the same way at Pair o’ Dice Games. I could get a “real job,” work fewer hours and make better money. But giving my players somewhere to be, something to do, and providing them with the products they need to find joy between toil and rest is the real goal.

Manifold TCG is supposed to be a launch pad for this. We’re trying to make a game that everybody wants to play that is interested in supporting the community. Our goal is to make Jason’s job easier by providing him with a product priced right for his customers that doesn’t take too much of his effort and will help keep his lights on.

And, of course, a game he wants to play. Because Jason doesn’t just shepherd his community, he is a part of it.

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