New Project: The Black Gate Board Game

My wife’s cousin mentioned to me, at a family gathering several weeks ago, that a friend of his had been working on a board game based off of Ultima 7: The Black Gate. This afternoon, he dropped a link to a newly-launched website that serves to announce the existence of — and to show off — that game in its present state.

In this board game, much as in the original title, players assume the roles of classic Ultima personalities (presumably the Companions) and must work together to destroy the three generators, thwart the Fellowship, and ultimately destroy the Black Gate. There are also side quests to finish, dungeons to raid and clear, and a plethora of items to find and equip…including the Black Sword itself.

At present, according to Lucifuge Dragon, the game is not in anything approaching a completed state. Game cards exist as paper cutouts for now, and the board (as nice as it looks) is a poster print from Staples. On the flip side, many of the game tokens are carved and painted wooden pieces, and look wonderful. Lucifuge will continue to work on the game, however, so over time we will hopefully see it mature in its implementation.

He also remarks that he has no intention of distributing the game, especially not for profit. Although one wonders whether there might one day be a way to arrange for interested Ultima fans to either pay the printing and shipping costs for their own copy of the game, or else obtain the source images needed to go and get their own version of the game — and all its components — printed somewhere?

At any rate, I have set up a project entry for Lucifuge Dragon’s game, whereat a gallery of images of the game can be found. Hopefully there will be more to update it with at some point! You can also find some additional images of the game on Lucifuge’s Instagram profile.

3 Responses

  1. UltimaFan says:

    Awesome! Ultima VII is my all-time favorite Ultima and favorite game of all time as well. It would be a blast to play it in board game form.

  2. Thank you so much for the publicity! I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it, especially from a quality site like this.

    Regarding the distribution of the game, it’s something that I would certainly like to explore in the future. For now I’m going to focus my efforts on making a finished product but if someday, somehow I could make it available for some interested Ultima fans, that would be great!

    Just some quick info on sixthcircle.net, it is a pretty new website but the plan for it is to keep The Black Gate’s status up to date and also serve as a fun Ultima fan site and other fantasy related content.

    Thanks again!

    • WtF Dragon says:

      You’re quite welcome; I was excited when Troy told me about the project a few weeks ago, so it’s great to see it finally come to light. And man, it looks tops.