Calendra, Part #38: Our First Session Reports

Design Journal - Calendra

❖ Version History ❖

September 2022
A major project for Librarium Games this year has been trying to integrate more and more into the Board Game Geek Community. Why you might ask? ~ Well, as we have gotten more involved in the game design universe we have spoken with more professionals in the industry, and it very quickly became clear how important it was to participate in this forum based wikipedia-like website (and how foolish we were for not embracing this concept sooner).

To make this make more sense, consider the BGG website like a small city. The whole purpose of this city is to welcome anyone and everyone who is willing to contribute meaningful and useful information/content about the board game world, as a way to collectively organize all of this data into one accessible place on the internet.

Over the last decade, this goal has brought together everyone actively involved in the industry, and has successfully created an atmosphere where all of your questions or curiosities about nearly any tabletop experience can be answered. There are very well-knit forums of discussion, public pages of ratings, conversations, images, videos, weblinks, and any other content you can imagine for every game you’ve ever heard of, and probably about 10,000 others that you haven’t.

The significance of this website for us comes down to establishing a better presence. To give our play testers, our google searchers, our unknown curious friends, and anyone else out there in the world an additional place to get information about our games. While our website is also very useful for this, the entirety of Librarium.games is governed by me, which of course comes with a healthy dose of bias. BGG gives our game a place where anyone and everyone can come through and publicly discord or contribute to our existing web content.

As a major element of this, the Librarium Games Design Journal has been added on there, but an even more important discovery was how important it is to do ethnographic research on our products. The BGG community has a very cool place where “Session Reports” can be submitted and studied by the websites moderators for legitimacy. Once cleared, these reports give visitors real-world and real-time examples of how the game looks in gameplay, not just how it sounds in a rule book.

In the month of September, we decided to start filming our play sessions of Calendra so that we could contribute some cool videos of this process to BGG, and here are the examples of how that looks within our first two reports:

Video Play Through #1 of Calendra for the Record

Session report #1: 5th of September 2022
This is our first session report play through of Calendra. Here are the layout of the players and the setup of the game:

Player 1: Spring, Aimee Hudon (Top Right Corner in the video)
Player 2: Summer, Neil Demers (Bottom Right Corner in the video)
Player 3: Winter, Nicole Kaufman (Bottom Left Corner in the video)
Player 4: Autumn, Ben Seagrave (Top Left Corner in the video)

To recap quickly how the game works: 
1. All four players of the game have 25% of the total cards in the game. These cards are color coded by “season” & each player represents 1 season for the duration of the game.
2. These cards are completely randomized in to small decks that the player will use 10 cards from during each round of play to try and form special combinations of cards. 
3. When a combination is formed using any combination of colors (referred to in the game as ‘seasons’), the round ends and an exchange of cards is made by the winner. 
4. If a round ends without someone winning the game, then a new round is played by shuffling the small decks and drawing a new hand of 10 cards.
5. If a combination of cards is formed using only the color/suit/season that the player represents in the game, then they win the game, and the game ends. 


1st Round of Gameplay:
The first round of the game is started by Aimee (player 1), who is playing as the Spring time player (Green). Starting from her, the top facing cards at risk are: 

❖ Summer Plague ❖ 
❖ Ferric Magician ❖
❖ Autumn Magician ❖
❖ Springtime Changeling. ❖

Aimee (player 1) wins the round with: Count and Countess (off-suit), using the Winter Countess and the Ferric Ancient. 
She wins the Spring Changeling from Ben’s Deck in the end of round exchange, trading away her Summer Plague.
Play went on for: 4 Turns.

2nd Round of Gameplay:
The second round of the game is also started by Aimee (player 1), who is playing as the spring time player (green) and won the 1st round. 
Starting from her, the top facing cards at risk are: 

❖ Spring Weather ❖
❖ Summer Ancient ❖
❖ Summer Beast ❖
❖ Autumn Plague ❖

Neil (player 2) wins the round with: Count and Countess (off-suit)
He wins the Summer Ancient from His own deck in the echange, trading away nothing.
Play went on for: 5 turns.

3rd Round of Gameplay:
The third round of the game is started by Neil (player 2), who is playing as the summer time player (red) and won the 2nd round. 
Starting from him, the top facing cards at risk are: 

❖ Winter Queen ❖
❖ Ferric Queen ❖
❖ Summer Count ❖
❖ Autumn Plague ❖

Neil (player 2) wins the round with: Ancient and Countess (off-suit)
He wins the Summer Count from Ben’s deck (player 4) during the exchange, trading away the Winter Queen.
Play went on for: 2 turns.

4th Round of Gameplay:
The fourth round of the game is started by Neil (player 2) who is playing as the summer time player (red) and won the 3rd round. 
Starting from him, the top facing cards at risk are: 

❖ Winter Changeling ❖
❖ Winter Plague ❖
❖ Summer Changeling ❖
❖ Summer Queen ❖

Ben (player 4) wins the round with: Three Queens (Off-Suit)
He wins the Summer Changeling from His own deck during the exchange, trading away nothing.
Play went on for: 3 turns.

5th & Final Round of Gameplay:
The fifth round of the game is started by Ben (player 4) who is playing as the Autumn time player (Orange) and won the 4th round. 
Starting from him, the top facing cards at risk are: 

❖ Spring Magician ❖
❖ Spring Plague ❖
❖ Autumn Beast ❖
❖ Spring Count ❖

Aimee (player 1) wins the game with the: Spring (Changeling, Queen 7-7, Countess, Warrior 8-2, & Weather). The hand is Winning with Points, scoring 42 Points.
The score is achieved with the Changeling, Queen, Countess, & Weather in the Court Row (1+7+8+1)*2 = 34 Points + 8 Points from the Garden Row Warrior for 42 Points in Total!
Play went on for: 5 turns.
-Game Over-

Video Play Through #2 of Calendra for the Record

Session report #2: 12th of September 2022
This is our second session report play through of Calendra. Here are the layout of the players and the setup of the game:

Player 1: Spring, Alex Massar (Bottom Left Corner in the video)
Player 2: Summer, Adam Magdaleno (Top Left Corner in the video)
Player 3: Winter, Rory Hart (Top Right Corner in the video)
Player 4: Autumn, Neil Demers (Bottom Right Corner in the video)

To recap quickly how the game works: 
1. All four players of the game have 25% of the total cards in the game. These cards are color coded by “season” & each player represents 1 season for the duration of the game.
2. These cards are completely randomized in to small decks that the player will use 10 cards from during each round of play to try and form special combinations of cards. 
3. When a combination is formed using any combination of colors (referred to in the game as ‘seasons’), the round ends and an exchange of cards is made by the winner. 
4. If a round ends without someone winning the game, then a new round is played by shuffling the small decks and drawing a new hand of 10 cards.
5. If a combination of cards is formed using only the color/suit/season that the player represents in the game, then they win the game, and the game ends. 


1st Round of Gameplay:
The first round of the game is started by Alex (player 1), who is playing as the Spring time player (Green). Starting from him, the top facing cards at risk are: 

❖ Autumn Plague ❖ 
❖ Autumn Magician ❖
❖ Winter Beast ❖
❖ Springtime Count. ❖

Alex (player 1) wins the round with: x3 Changelings (off-suit), using the Winter Changeling, the Summer Changeling, and the Autumn Ancient as the third Changeling. 
He wins the Spring Count from Neil’s Deck in the end of round exchange, trading away his Autumn Plague.
Play went on for: 4 Turns.

2nd Round of Gameplay:
The second round of the game is also started by Alex (player 1), who is playing as the Spring time player (green) and won the 1st round. 
Starting from him, the top facing cards at risk are: 

❖ Spring Plague ❖
❖ Summer Magician ❖
❖ Spring Magician ❖
❖ Spring Beast ❖

Neil (player 4) wins the round with: Count and Countess (off-suit)
He wins the Summer Beast from Adam’s deck in the exchange, trading the Spring Beast.
Play went on for: 4 turns.

3rd & Final Round of Gameplay:
The third round of the game is started by Neil (player 4), who is playing as the Autumn time player (orange) and won the 2nd round. 
Starting from him, the top facing cards at risk are: 

❖ Ferric Archer ❖
❖ Spring Weather ❖
❖ Winter Queen ❖
❖ ~Unknown~ (Card was never flipped) ❖

Alex (player 1) wins the game with: Ancient and Count (on-suit)
Play went on for: 3 turns. Game took place in 21 minutes and 21 seconds.
-Game Over-