Slapshot Showdown: 'There are tons of opportunity for some fun trash talk'
Game designer Mike Smith on his monster-mashing tabletop ice hockey sim
Monsters playing sports? It’s a tale as old as time itself*, in gaming lore.
Did Chewbacca start this trend? Let’s spare you all the deep dive and go with, yes, yes he did, via his appalling sportsmanship during a spot of holographic chess-like Dejarik in Star Wars A New Hope.
That scene with a grumpy Wookie has spawned various monster mashes in the years since, via the 16-bit classics, of sorts, Grand Monster Slam and Mutant League Football, and, in tabletop format, Games Workshop’s gridiron-esque Blood Bowl.
In fact, even Dejarik, that wrestling match to the death in a galaxy far, far away, even got its own Earth-bound tabletop release.
Uuuuahh, and indeed, ughghuuuuuuuahh.
(Look, you try spelling Wookie-speech phonetically and see how you do. No, you shut up!)
Now ice hockey goes into monster mode, thanks to an upcoming Kickstarter. Slapshot Showdown is a miniatures-based game in which various ghoulish teams will battle each other in the rink. And occasionally try to put the puck in the net too.
Nice. So, we finished ripping the arms off our opponents for a moment and spoke to Slapshot Showdown’s creator, Mike Smith, about what players and backers can expect.
*1977
How would you describe Slapshot Showdown?
MS: Slapshot Showdown is a fantasy hockey miniature game that takes place in the world of Rinkhaven.
It's definitely Blood Bowl adjacent in theme, but has a much deeper strategy element, both in team building and in gameplay.
For example, unlike most miniature games, Slapshot Showdown doesn't use factions in the traditional sense. All players (miniatures) can be paired together freely to build your team, as long as your roster's total gold cost is under the salary cap (point total) for the game.
In addition to your chosen players, you'd select one of the team playbook cards for the canon teams from the world of Rinkhaven, and that playbook gives you a faction-like bonus that your team can utilise.
The Night Terrors is the name of the team that is themed after classic horror film monsters and their team's Playbook abilities cater very well to a physical style of play looking to eliminate opposing players. I imagine it will be very common to see people playing The Night Terrors with a roster full of menacing goons and not so often using skilled playmakers or snipers.
How does the fantasy elements change the game from a regular sports/hockey sim, and what have were the main facets kept over from reality?
MS: The fantasy element is essential in my mind and I think it's very important for people to understand that this is a fantasy hockey game through and through.
Some of the feedback to early player sculpts and art has been concerned with the lack of appropriate or realistic padding. While I totally understand why deeply enfranchised hockey fanatics might want that, I think it would lead to many players looking similar to one another if they all have traditional gear and pads.
So definitely expect fantasy twists on traditional equipment from a player-design perspective. There's a werewolf goalie on The Night Terror's starter set team and he's not super heavily padded. I'd rather show off the cool werewolf than showcase goalie pads, if that makes sense. But I hope the balance is right for most people to be excited!
As far as gameplay goes, the fantasy aspect comes to the forefront with many players having abilities that would certainly break the rules of most organised sporting events. Your players can be knocked out and there are no penalties. So don't worry about knocking out someone who doesn't have the puck and getting called for interference.
That's not to say the game doesn't play like hockey otherwise, though. As a die-hard Flyers fan, I care a lot that the game feels like a hockey game. I've tried my best to use hockey jargon where possible and to make sure flavour words line up with what someone who loves hockey would expect. For example, instances of player interaction in-game are called scrums; face-offs involve a guessing game that loosely references real face-off strategies; and scoring goals is the easiest way to win a game. The puck moves much further than the players can and sending the puck all the way down the ice to an open teammate can really change the way a turn cycle is going.
The last thing I'll touch on here is shooting. It was super important to me that shooting wasn't just some iteration of a die-rolling mechanic. Dice have their place, but it doesn't feel right for the most impactful part of a game to be relegated to simple dice rolling.
When you shoot the puck, you grab a shot dial that features a bunch of possible shot locations lined up over the opponent's goalie. You can aim at their head, glove, right leg, five-hole (between the legs), left leg, or blocker. You make this choice on your dial without showing your opponent.
Meanwhile, your opponent uses their own goalie dial that features the same locations and they choose one location to leave open that you can score on. The rest of the locations cannot be scored on.
Then, you each reveal your dials at the same time. If you chose to shoot at their head, and they chose to leave their head open, that's a goal. If they left anywhere else open instead, that result would be some sort of rebound or puck bounce, and no-goal.
In-game effects can affect this outcome. For example, danger is something you can gain with abilities. Danger effectively grants you additional shot locations, which drastically increases your chances of scoring. There's all kinds of fun mental games that come with this system. Will I shoot at the same spot I shot last time? As a goalie, will I leave open the same spot I left open last time, I bet they'll never see that coming! What do you do if I tell you where I'm shooting? Do you believe me?
There's tons of opportunity for some fun trash talk since it isn't a random dice based mechanic and you can really get into your friend's heads.
We did a shootout tournament at a convention, and people had a ton of fun. There was lots of emotion during the final, which was so awesome to see from people who had never played before. We also let people shoot on us at the convention booth all weekend long and basically everyone wanted to shoot more than once.
There's a team building and management element to the game. How in-depth is this?
MS: It's very deep. Honesty, it's probably the deepest part of the game. I love games that feature out-of-game depth and decision-making.
As a long time card-game player, I enjoy thinking about deck building; and in wargames, I love theory-crafting new teams and exploring synergies. Since players are not faction locked, you're very free to get creative with your team composition. When building a team, you'll choose: a playbook, your goalie, your players, and any optional upgrades you can afford.
Playbooks are double sided, so all the canon teams have at least two different playstyles. You can only use one side in each game, though. They often grant abilities that use a resource called crowd favour, which is gained a few ways in the game, mostly by doing hockey stuff like shooting, scoring goals, knocking players out, etc. So the playbooks tend to define your playstyle, and that's probably what most people would expect their faction to define for them in a different game.
Goalies are unique. They don't move like normal players, and they don't get activations or turns. What they do instead is provide an additional unique way for your team to generate crowd favour, and they usually have some sort of passive ability that automatically triggers while you're playing the game. For example, one of the goalies in the starter set automatically deals damage to any opponent that gets within two hexes of his net. The werewolf goalie I mentioned earlier generates crowd favour whenever his teammates hit their opponents.
I imagine most people will approach team building by pairing a goalie they like with a complimentary playbook, and filling out the rest of the roster based on that. The possibilities are basically endless here.
To illustrate how many options you have before even getting to player selection, I'll just run you through the planned launch math. Just four double-sided playbooks and four goalies already grants you 32 possible goalie/playbook combinations. I can't imagine that all those options will be equally powerful, but you're starting with a ton of choice; and that doesn't even include choosing your actual players. I don't imagine many people will find themselves looking at an opposing team that mirrors their own very often.
After you make all the core decisions of playbook, goalie, and players. You still have a final decision to make if you have any gold leftover. You can purchase optional upgrade cards. While these aren't always super-powerful, some of them can drastically change the playstyle of a player. For example, the gigantic undead companion of Dr Prometheus, simply called The Monster, has an optional unique upgrade called charnel strength that only he can purchase. It allows him to use his activation to pick up opposing models and throw them across the ice.
It's an expensive upgrade, and it basically makes it feel like there are two different possible versions of The Monster. Other upgrades are much simpler and cheaper, like one that simply grants the player +1 Strength.
Who have you worked with and gained support from to get the game into this position?
MS: Honestly, this has been basically a single person endeavour. I've been working on it as a thought experiment for a while. It was actually a card game when I first started tinkering. I couldn't replicate the feel of hockey without using a 3D space and once I needed that it just made sense to pivot to a full-blown miniature game.
But, I don't know any industry folks or anything like that. No benevolent bankroller has stepped in to fund me. I've just moonlighted as an indie dev after clocking out at my full-time job. Lots of long nights and weekends. This has been a DIY venture for me and I've had to do a ton of learning to get where I am.
More recently, some influencers have heard about the game and reached out or offered help. I met Brent, from Goobertown Hobbies, at our last convention, and he shouted out the game on the Paint Bravely podcast, which was super rad.
The guys over at Sprue Goons painted the mini for The Monster and shared it online, and chatted about the game on their podcast as well. The Monster they painted is so sweet.
Some other folks have reached out too, so hopefully that's not the end of cool influencers or podcasters working with me.
On a personal level, my friends and partner have been incredibly supportive. Once the game started gaining some traction online, I was able to convince a buddy I met through Dungeons & Dragons to do the art for the player cards. He, Glen, loves it now and is in it for the long haul.
My long-time best friend Paul is the chief playtester, and has played dozens and dozens of iterations and rulesets. My buddy Chris is a very talented gamer and has helped with some key design decisions as well.
I met the sculptor, Wolf, as a freelancer; but that has turned out to be an amazing thing. He likes hockey, and has been a joy to work with. His miniatures are incredible. He really pushes us to a new level.
Are there any sports-themed tabletop games that you're a particular fan of or have proven an inspiration for the project?
MS: Oddly enough, I'm not a huge Blood Bowl player. I have played it, but I mostly admire it from afar. The same is true of Guild Ball. I never got to play it, despite loving the concept. I couldn't convince my playgroup to buy in with me back when it came out. Those are the two most thematically similar games by far, and since I'm not deeply familiar with their rules and am not really an avid player of either of them, I wouldn't think of them as major inspirations.
I am, or was, a very frequent player of Malifaux. There's been some inspiration there for sure. Gaslands is a wonderful game, by Mike Hutchinson that definitely was inspiring. I like Marvel: Crisis Protocol as well. A big inspiration was actually Mutant League Hockey on Sega Genesis. I loved that game as a kid and the original thought that led to the game was something along the lines of “Mutant League Hockey as a card game would be super cool...”
Do you have any favourite board games you and family members enjoy playing together?
MS: So I'm a pretty big board game player. I actually work at a game store. I'm a big proponent of playing the right game with the right people, so it would be super hard to narrow down a particular or general favourite game.
With folks who are not avid gamers, I really like narrative games like Tales of the Arabian Nights, Sherlock Holmes, and Grind House. For narrative or co-op gamers, T.I.M.E Stories was excellent to play through each time a new expansion came out.
For competitive or mathy crowds, I like That's Pretty Clever!, and Gizmos. I love 4x games and deck-builders, with Scythe being my favourite of the former, and DC Deck-building Game for the latter. I've had some particularly memorable game nights with the Game of Thrones board game. If someone is super-competitive and into crunchy difficult games, Food Chain Magnate is cool, but I've only gotten through a handful of games. I play a lot of Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons.
When does the Kickstarter go live, how can people follow its production progress and when can backers expect to have the game?
MS: The plan for the Kickstarter is to launch in early 2025. I'm shooting for March, during Adepticon if I can get a booth.
As a true DIY indie game, I hope people understand if that changes, but that is the current goal and I think I can meet it. I wanted to have at least 1,000 people following on Kickstarter before launching, and the last I checked we had just passed 900 (which is incredible for an indie game, I'm blown away by the support from folks).
As for following the game, I'm the most active by far on Instagram. You can also check out my website. The site has social links and a store with some merch and a limited edition alternate sculpt for Dr Prometheus. Some people who have bought that have shared their paint job on Instagram, which is so awesome to see. I've reshared a bunch of those. There's a discord server linked there as well.
I hope to not have a long process after Kickstarter, and definitely don't want to be one of those projects that fulfils three years after backing. I'm doing everything in my power to have the game ready before Kickstarter to avoid exactly that.
I haven't revealed her miniature yet, but Wolf actually just finished sculpting the final member of the Night Terror's starter set; so one of the two teams is entirely finished. I expect to have the starter set entirely sculpted, and all the art done, before the Kickstarter even launches.
The biggest foreseeable hurdle will be production. I'll be completely transparent about production estimates, but they'll be based on the estimates I receive from the production warehouses and I won't really have anything other than that to go on.
For people who own 3D printers, I'm expecting to be able to offer some sort of STL version of the game that will be readily available much faster than the physical version. Maybe even immediately after the Kickstarter finishes. Hopefully that helps out the people who can't wait to get their hands on the game, or non-US based gamers who often have to pay a fortune in shipping fees.
For more information, visit slapshotshodown.com
