Beer Knight -- What Can It Do For Me?

It won't make you rich and famous. It won't buy you a new car. It will make you laugh. I hope. You'll let me know.

Art - first.

What do you get when you cross a beloved icon, with a beloved film from the 1970s, and a beloved mustache owned by the star of said film? You get SATIRE. This is definitely satire, which means I am not stepping on anybody’s toes. For reals. I hope.

SMOKEY THE BIER, KNIGHT OF REYNOLDS

Like a lot of Knights, this one just kinda popped into my head. I decided to add a Rauchbier — and even though I’ve had a lot of excellent local smoked micro beer, my inspiration is Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier — which can be found over at the most excellent and super tiny but packed with good Geramn stuff Edelweiss Market.

And yes, SMOKE is a polarizing flavor — but if you don’t want yours, just slide it down the bar to me. I love a good smoked beer.

Smokey The Bier. Just use the simple formula (Beer + Bier + Bear) + Bandit = Burt/(Smoked *Smokey) and tada, now you have a tiny idea of the weirdspace inside my noggin. How often do you get to use the word noggin in real life? Not very. And because we are in the B words, he’s got a battleaxe on this shoulder.

SMOKESHOW

STB’s ride went through a bunch of iterations to get here. At one point, he was riding a Smoke Monster (shoutout to my LOST crew)… and I do think the Smoke Monster will be back in some form. Maybe a Monster Challenge? Anyway, the whole time I had this weird mashup in my head of the Kim Carnes song Bette Davis Eyes, and the famous photo of Marylin Monroe from Seven Year Itch. And the whole time I thought that there is NO WAY I can possibly take those two things and add a Horse and a Beercan and pull it off.

Smokey Eye’s is definitely one of the weirder drawings I’ve done. I think it’s the “human” lips that pushes it over the top.

WEIZENWHACKER

Allow me to present the latest in War Hammering — the Weizenwhacker. Take one german style wheat beer, add the soul of a stand up comedian not above kneecapping a critic, and you get a blunt weapon that non-stop tells really bad jokes while giggling.

Behind the Scenes - Second.

I knew it was a 2 player game. I knew it was targeted at the Gamer Geek who enjoys both D&D, Ticket to Ride and Exploding Kitten s — who also lives at the VENN intersection of Beer Nerdom. I am not saying that I’m making a game for me. Because as you all know, I exist in a weird bubble outside of normal space time and demographics. But there’s def. a lot of me appealing to me in this game. I felt confident that I also know enough people in general that also occupy that space, and that they had two friends, who also had two friends, and on and on and on until Beer Knight is the only game played in the known universe. MUWAHAHAHAHAH.

Moving ON.

I had BEER, I had DICE, 2 players, and the goal of creating a pub friendly game. As BeerKnight Friend #00001 Sage says, “It’s the kinda game you throw in your bag on the way to the pub”*

I wanted to appeal to the D&D player who wanted to play something that touched that universe, but required 99.9% fewer rules, did not require an internet connection, dndbeyond subscription or any fealty to WOTC.

And BEER. Beer comes in cans… Knights in armor are also in cans. Sorta. Close enough. And if you have a Knight, they need a Steed to ride and a weapon to swing. Beer also comes with some handy built in stat blocks. ABV, IBU, SRM — each brew has three primary stats — the Alcohol By Volume AKA Strength, the International Bitterness Units** AKA How Bitter is this Beer? and The Standard Reference Method — not a particularly enticing name, but a very accurate gauge of the color of the beer. If I assign a very very very simple LOW, MEDIUM and HIGH value to ABV and IBU, I can generate a POWER rating for that beer. The SRM comes in when breaking the beer into Categories like GOLDEN, AMBER, DARK etc.

And blammo I now have a spreadsheet of numbers to work with — I pick 24 different beers, figure out their powers, step those down to the matching mount, and I have a working combat system that has a consistent logic*** that I can use to create an expansion deck (Kickstarter #2 already in the works) of 24 new Knights and Mounts.

My approach to Weapon Powers… that’s another story — AKA-– I need a week to figure out how to explain it ;-)

K. If you’ve read this far, you deserve a beer. Pick something nice. Maybe go visit your local pub or bottle shop and ask the beer nerds there to introduce you to something amazing. BTW it’s Beer Week in Portland and Stormbreaker is (was?) pouring 5$ pints of their Alt beer and their Triple Double IIPA — SO GOOD. They did not pay me to say this. They totally could though.

Alterior Motive German Style Alt | 5.2 ABV | 33 IBU | Fermented cool, and lagered for three weeks. Clean and crisp amber with light maltiness and a touch of roast. Finishes dry with a nice hop bite.

Triple Double OBA 2019 Gold Medal! N. American Beer Awards 2019* Silver Medal! IIPA | 8.5% ABV | 90 IBU | Mosaic, Citra and Amarillo hops give this brew juicy flavors that balance the slight upfront bitterness.

Until next time.

BEERMEISTER OUT>



*Sage, feel free to correct my most likely misquote. I believe I got the message right, but probably munged the wording.

**Alpha Acid Units — yes these are probably a better measure and when I buy hops for homebrewing I’m looking this number and not the IBU, but IBU is still prevalent and easy info to get, where AAU is probably not showing up on your beer can (yet).

***That I immediately try to break with adding special abilities — more on that later.