John D. Clair is UNSTOPPABLE | BGSS ep_024

He invented card crafting — and he may have just reinvented deck building. John D. Clair designed 🚀 SPACE BASE, 🏴‍☠️ DEAD RECKONING, 🎲 CUBITOS, 🐎 READY SET BET, and 🔮 MYSTIC VALE — and his new "momentum" system in ⚔️ UNSTOPPABLE is the engine behind the smash-hit 👑 DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL board game. In this one, I review Unstoppable to the designer's face for the very first time. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙️ IN THIS EPISODE, WE GO DEEP: 🧒 Designing his first game at 9 (thanks, Mom) 💰 Quitting the day job — royalties, risk & the AEG deal 🃏 Dominion, Ascension & why deck building is a design "cheat code" ✂️ Card crafting — why it never spawned a genre ⚡ Momentum deck building & the 2009 prototype that waited a decade 🎲 Luck vs. agency — why new players blame the dice 🌶️ The BGG comments he SAVES & the review that stung 🗞️ BREAKING: Floors 5 & 6 in the works for Dungeon Crawler Carl 🔮 What's next — Stormlight Archive, Mystic Lands & Electrify 👉 If you want to get inside the mind of the most inventive card game designer working today, this one's a masterclass. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔗 LINKS ⚔️ Unstoppable — Renegade Game Studios ▶ https://renegadegamestudios.com/unsto... 👑 Dungeon Crawler Carl: Unstoppable + RPG ▶ https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/... ❤️ Support My Work — Join Cardboard ▶ https://crdbrd.app/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎧 TOO LONG TO WATCH? THIS IS NOW A PODCAST! 🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... 🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033GRnT... 🔵 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/014... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱️ CHAPTERS 00:00 - Intro — who is John D. Clair 00:52 - Designing his first game at 9 (Monster Cards) 05:19 - Maze books & gamifying mazes as a kid 13:24 - Going full-time in 2018 & the AEG deal 16:52 - Why Unstoppable went to Renegade — the IP bet 18:52 - The games he loves (and the two kinds he doesn't) 22:59 - Inspiration & giving credit to other designers 27:12 - Playing Dominion for the first time 30:46 - Why deck building is so addicting 34:38 - Ascension's influence & Dead Reckoning's 2D market 38:52 - Card crafting — a lateral evolution, not a genre 42:16 - The deck building problem card crafting solves 46:05 - Deck-driven board games — Dune: Imperium & Arnak 47:35 - Unstoppable & momentum deck building 50:45 - The 2009 prototype behind Unstoppable 58:04 - The magic moment — two dead cards into a combo 1:00:27 - Difficulty & learning to pump the brakes 1:08:08 - Luck, agency & why new players blame the dice 1:17:48 - How many plays before Unstoppable clicks? 1:18:46 - What do reviewers owe designers? 1:22:03 - BGG comments, Space Base's two bad cards & the review that stung 1:31:36 - Fixing the card market — six levels, straight to hand 1:41:44 - Has momentum transcended deck building? 1:46:01 - The bosses & designing variety 1:52:26 - My gripes — sleeving and that theme 1:55:06 - The IP vision & the future of the Unstoppable line 1:56:36 - Patching a physical game & the new co-op rule 2:00:35 - Dungeon Crawler Carl's campaign mode 2:04:47 - BREAKING — Floors 5 & 6 expansion in the works 2:05:54 - What's new in DCC — looming bosses, races & mana 2:13:39 - The "Unbeatable" difficulty & how John playtests 2:15:17 - Stormlight Archive: War of Roshar (September) 2:17:14 - Mystic Lands & the art problem of card crafting 2:21:03 - Mistborn expansion, Electrify & a 2027 auto-battler 2:23:01 - Wrap-up ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #boardgames #boardgamedesign #unstoppable #dungeoncrawlercarl #deckbuilding #tabletop #renegadegamestudios #boardgamepodcast