Links: Publisher Get-Togethers, Games in Mainstream News, and Bandsaw Catan
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/506…hers-games-mainstream-new
BGG News
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Crowdfunding Round-up: Tiny Games in a Post-Apocalpytic World Built on Too Many Bones
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/517…ames-post-apocalpytic-wor
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Links: Publisher Get-Togethers, Games in Mainstream News, and Bandsaw Catan
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/506…hers-games-mainstream-new
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Links: Hippodice Winners for 2016, Stinging Criticism & Escape Room History
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/521…016-stinging-criticism-es
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Ra to Return from WindRider Games
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/52147/ra-return-windrider-games
BoardGameGeek features information related to the board gaming hobby
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New Games at GAMA Trade Show 2016: Wasteland Express Delivery Service, Guilds of London, Crazy Karts, Tentacles of Time, Imperial Settlers: 3 Is a Magic Number
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/521…-2016-wasteland-express-d
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New Game Round-up: Everything Returns — Troyes, SteamRollers, Beer Empire, Diamant, and More
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/518…-returns-troyes-steamroll
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic750583_t.jpg]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1450377_t.jpg]Time to clean out more notes to myself from the inbox. You might know some of the news below already, but if not, consider yourself now informed:
• Sébastien Dujardin from Pearl Games
has confirmed
that Troyes
will be available again in 2016, most likely in June, with the original art and with the items published separately so that those who need only the expansion don't have to purchase the base game once again.
• Polish publisher Board&Dice
is working on a Dice Brewing
expansion — something big with several modules that change basic play and add diversity — as well as a Kickstarter campaign for the base game by the end of Q1 2016. An expansion for The Curse of the Black Dice
is also in the works "with several new play modes, adventures and variations" as well as an accompanying KS campaign. Finally, a second edition of Piwne Imperium
(a.k.a. Beer Empire
) is in the works with a target release date of Spiel 2016 in October.
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2636415_t.png]• Belgian publisher Flatlined Games
released a hand-assembled version of Mark Gerrits
at Spiel 2015, and in late Dec. 2015 Gerrits tweeted
that he had created three mini-expansions for the game as Flatlined has decided
to run a Kickstarter in 2016 for "a real edition with a normal box, new artwork, matching colours, etc".
, co-designed by Antoine Bauza
and published by IELLO
sometime in 2016, includes four new characters for Masato Uesugi
. I presume that this game can be played on its own in addition to serving as an expansion for the original game, but that's all the detail I know for now.
• In addition to the title above, IELLO plans to add Yusuke Sato
's terrorists vs. SWAT hidden-role game Time Bomb
to its minigame line. For details on this title, check out the video overview
that I recorded in 2015.
• Other titles coming from IELLO in 2016 include a new version of Alan R. Moon
and Bruno Faidutti
's Diamant
(which I first noted in Dec. 2014
and which is now moving to print with art by Paul Mafayon) and a game titled Pyramids
from designers Matthew Dunstan
and Brett J. Gilbert
.
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Lang, Cormier, Lim, McNair and Murray Present 2016's The Godfather Trilogy
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/522…nd-murray-present-2016s-g
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2938227_t.jpg]• At GAMA Trade Show 2016, U.S. publisher Cool Mini Or Not
revealed one of its many upcoming games in 2016: The Godfather
, by designer Eric M. Lang
. Lang visited the BGG booth during GTS to gush about his love of the movie and demonstrate elements of the game on our video livestream, but it will take a bit of time to process those video and not have you search through 7.5 hours to find this bit, so for now I'll pass along this game description:
Designer Eric Lang, known for his "dudes on a map" games, describes The Godfather — a standalone big box board game with high-quality miniatures — as "thugs on a map".
In short, the game is a streamlined, confrontational worker placement game filled with murder and intrigue. In long, you play as competing mafia families who are vying for economic control of the organized crime networks of New York City, deploying your thugs, your don, your wife, and your heir on the board to shake down businesses and engage in area-control turf wars.
Money, rackets, contracts, and special advantages (such as the union boss) are represented by cards in your hand, and your hand size is limited, with you choosing which extra cards to pay tribute to the don at the end of each of the five rounds. At the end of the game, though, cash is all that matters, and whoever has the most money wins.
The game also features drive-by shootings in which enemy tokens are removed from the board and placed face-down in the river. The don of that family member must play cards to fish their guys out of the river and return them to duty on the New York battlefield.[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2524011_t.jpg]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2938272_t.jpg]• Strangely, the game above is one of three being published in 2016 that are based on The Godfather
movies, with the other two having been announced at GTS 2015
, albeit only in vague terms. One of those games — The Godfather: An Offer You Can't Refuse
from Nate Murray
of IDW Games
and Nathan McNair
— takes a Mafia
-style approach to the game (duh), with players secretly representing either members of the Corleone crime family or undercover policemen who are trying to end the reign of the Corleones. BGG also recorded an overview of this title at GTS 2016.
• The third title in this trilogy is The Godfather: A New Don
, another IDW/Pandasaurus title with Jay Cormier
and Sen-Foong Lim
providing the design. Here's a summary of gameplay:
In The Godfather: A New Don, players take control of one of the major mafia families, each trying to assert their power on the streets of 1950's New York in hope of taking the reins as the new kingpin of the criminal world.
In more detail, this design is an area control board game with unique dice mechanisms. Each round, players roll their individual pools of dice, then decide what area of the city they want to focus on trying to capture. Meanwhile, the current Don is able to make players an offer they can't refuse and steal dice from their limited supply. Staying on top proves difficult as every stolen die moves other players up the ladder toward taking over as Don, so the tension rises with each shake of the dice.
With multiple ways to use each die you roll, players never find themselves at the mercy of the dice, instead using what they roll to make their opponents beg for mercy.My advice? Refuse the horsehead cannoli.
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2938273_t.png]
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Links: Balancing Designs, Testing Art, and Staying True to Your Work
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/518…esting-art-and-staying-tr
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2903180_t.jpg]• On League of Gamemakers
, designer/publisher Jeff Siadek
on the topic of balance in game design: "Our first task is to recognize that balance is unattainable. Our second task is to obtain it. (All right, we'll approximate it)." He then goes on to offer suggestions on how to do this.
• ToyNews
deputy editor Billy Langsworthy writes about
designer credits on toys and games, highlighting the discrepancy that occurs between mainstream and hobby games:
Pandemic, Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride all list their creators on the box, and sometimes even the title's artist, and it makes sense. The games are closer aligned to literature in detail and the audience for these sorts of games are passionate fans who, and I'm generalising here, are more invested in these titles than casual gamers are for something like Hungry Hungry Hippos.
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2649434_t.png]• I love reading Brian Bankler's thoughts on games, such as his write-up/non-review
. His write-ups are always engaging and personal, especially since he's not racing to cover everything in the world but instead simply digging into whatever hooks him the most.
• Designer James Ernest
game publishers to test their final art:
This sounds obvious, but I think a lot of publishers don't do it. There are too many games out there where the art seems to interfere with playing the game. And sometimes you just can't see the problem on the computer screen.
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2921200_t.png]• Designer Grant Rodiek
how to go from that important first step — figuring out the core gist of your game concept — to staying true to that concept as the design progresses toward completion:
Firstly, you need to understand what your game is trying to accomplish. I think far too many designers are hyper focused erroneously on mechanism or theme. Noting you wish to make a worker placement game isn't sufficient. This is a well-established formula. A far superior goal would be to focus on a unique worker placement experience, and to hypothesize how that will come about...
Many years ago, I was trying to make a deck-building game. That was my goal. Guess what? I accomplished precisely that, and relatively quickly, too! But I also realized I had made a lousy version of Ascension.He details this process with his current work-in-progress Gaia
:
For Gaia, I wanted to make a game about pre-constructed decks that felt satisfying in a limited card pool. I wanted a head to head experience that had a strong spatial component, particularly leaning towards tiles...
For Gaia, I needed to slowly verify the following elements:
• A limited card pool can support a variety of play styles.
• The spatial element is integral to the experience.
• There is sufficient complexity to provide legs, but not so much that people cannot dig through the pieces.
• The victory condition drives interaction.
• As a player's deck is limited (9 cards), how you play your cards is compelling. -
Crowdfunding Round-up: Victory or Death or Prison or Demolition or Robot Combat or Yakitori
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/521…y-or-death-or-prison-or-d
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2928248_t.jpg]• Ian Brody's Quartermaster General
from his own Griggling Games has been well-received since its release in 2014, and now he's designed a spinoff game that's coming to market from PSC Games
: the "card driven/hand management/area control eurogame/wargame" Victory or Death
, with 2-4 players refighting the Peloponnesian War as Athens and Sparta. ( KS link
)
plans to bring Francesco Giovo and Marco Valtriani's party game Vudù
to U.S. shores under the unsurprising name Voodoo
so that more people have the chance to mix magical ingredients, curse others, and make them do silly things. ( KS link
)
• Singapore-based Medieval Lords
is funding a new edition of the press-your-luck card game Queen of the Hill
from Dominic Michael H., while also funding Little Monsters
, which plays exactly the same as Queen of the Hill
but with new artwork and card titles. It's an interesting A/B test in terms of appealing game themes and graphic design, and a test for BGG as well since we should really squash these games into a single listing. How long will it take for us to do that? ( KS link
)
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2891936_t.png]• Robots: Battle for the Coal Heart
from Duncan Davis and his Sherwood Games
has 3-6 players in a "fast-paced role-selection robot-building game" of combat for control of The Coal Heart of Unlimited Power. ( KS link
)
from newcomer Grizzly Forged Studios
and the design team of Corrao, Fuelle, Moy, Park, and Tsay tells you a lot about the game in the title: You're placing hexagonal tiles in a hexagonal grid to sabotage others while trying to capture your totem from the center of the island. ( KS link
)
• At Spiel 2015 BGG interviewed designer Jacob Jaskov
about his two-player relationship-building/bluffing game Fog of Love
, and now he's trying to bring it to a larger market through his publishing brand Hush Hush Projects
. Interestingly, Jaskov said in a note to me, " Dead of Winter
is one of the key sources of inspiration for designing Fog of Love
, with the Crossroads cards inspiring the Story cards." ( KS link
)
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2861430_t.jpg]• For 51st State: Master Set
, the new edition of Ignacy Trzewiczek's 51st State
from Portal Games
, the publisher has merged a regular preorder system with the practices of crowdfunding campaigns, offering stretch goals (city promo tiles, solitaire rules) based on the level of preorder funding received by the time the game goes to print, which will most likely be in May 2016. ( Publisher link
)
• Designer/publisher Michel Baudoin of Wacky Works
debuted in 2011 with Space Maze
, then took a few years off before readying the demolition derby game Crash'em
, in which players have fifteen seconds each round to plan three actions. ( KS link
)
from designers Tom Bleys, Ian Van Gemeren and Bart Waeterschoot and publisher Eagle-Gryphon Games
is a co-op design in which players must escape from a labyrinthine prison that is represented by a game board with four rotating rings. And if you get tired of that, you can have someone take charge of the prison to try to keep everyone else in place. ( KS link
)
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2906931_t.png]• Odd Hackwelder's Glass Face
from his own Hacko Games
is a "fast-paced game about rolling dice and slapping faces". That's probably not a claim that you'll see on many other games. ( KS link
)
• The deduction card game Get Adler!
from Randy Thompson and Caper Games
funded in January 2016, and now Thompson is back on KS to fund the Whispers
expansion that bumps the game up to eight players. ( KS link
)
• Benjamin Sperling's Yakitori
from Daft Concepts
is a 2-5 player worker placement game in which players buy, skewer, cook, and sell food for profit. Fire not included. ( KS link
)
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Editor's note: Please don't post links to other Kickstarter projects in the comments section. Write to me via the email address in the header, and I'll consider them for inclusion in a future crowdfunding round-up. Thanks! —WEM -
Game Preview: Tales & Games: The Pied Piper, or Taking a Spin on the Merry-Go-Rats
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/523…pied-piper-or-taking-spin
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2800724_t.jpg]Getting back into news-writing gear following the 2016 GAMA Trade Show is taking a bit of time, but thankfully my audio equipment is working once again, and I've now put together an overview of Agnès Largeaud
, the sixth game in the Tales & Games
series from Purple Brain Creations
and IELLO
. (My first efforts the week prior to GTS sounded like rats were gnawing on the video frames. Not good.)
When one thinks about trying to create a game out of the legend of "The Pied Piper of Hameln", one might expect a cooperative game in which players fight an ever-growing swarm of rats side-by-side, calling on the piper to strengthen their forces at critical junctures during which all seems lost, or perhaps a game of friendly competition in which players see who can draw more rats out of town — but no, Largeaud and PBC have instead set players against one another with the only goal being to outlast everyone else while staying as rat-free as possible. Sure, you might still come down with the plague, but at least you're better off than those other guys!
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Game Previews from GAMA Trade Show 2016: Crazy Karts, Robinson Crusoe, Fast & Fhtagn, Heart of Crown, and Naruto Shippuden: The BoardGame
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/523…show-2016-crazy-karts-rob
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2935361_t.jpg]BoardGameGeek broadcast game demos live for sixteen hours over two days at the 2016 GAMA Trade Show, and now we've chopped up those videos into individual segments so that you can more easily find coverage of the games that interest you. I'm starting to publish these videos on BGG's YouTube channel
, and they'll also show up on the proper game pages in the BGG database over the next few days. I'll also highlight some of the videos that we recorded in BGG News posts over the next few days, as with the recent post
about Eric M. Lang's Bloodborne: The Card Game
from Cool Mini Or Not.
• For us, GTS 2016 started with Marcin Ropka from Portal Games
introducing us to Charles-Amir Perret's Crazy Karts
, a racing game in which players compete in teams of two, with each teammate controlling half of the operations on their kart but not being able to communicate with their teammate when doing so.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2945432_t.jpg]• At Spielwarenmesse 2016, I recorded an overview
with designer Ignacy Trzewiczek, talking about what's changed with the core game and how expansions have been integrated into it. At GTS 2016, Ropka showed off the final look for this game, which is moving closer to production.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2198770_t.jpg]• Ropka also talked about the new English-language edition of Trzewiczek's Robinson Crusoe
that Portal Games will release in September 2016, with this "Game of the Year" edition featuring a new cover by Vincent Dutrait, fancy-shaped wooden bits, the "King Kong" scenario, thicker character sheets, rewritten rules, and other small changes.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2928408_t.jpg]• In early March 2016, I posted a written overview
of Naruto Shippuden: The Board Game
from designers Nicolas Badoux and Cyril Marchiol, but if video is your thing, at GTS 2016 Rich Gain from Japanime Games
showed off the design and explained what you'll be doing in this game world with Naruto and the other characters.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2945509_t.png]• Japanime Games also showed off the deck-building game Heart of Crown
, which debuted in Japan in 2011 from FLIPFLOPs to great acclaim, multiple expansions, and a standalone sequel. As in many DBGs, in Heart of Crown
players buy new cards to build an engine, but the long-term goal is to claim one of the available princesses — each of whom has a special, unique power — then build up succession points in order to seat that princess on the throne.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2854233_t.jpg]• Jeff Tidball from Atlas Games
presented the card game Fast & Fhtagn
, his Lovecraftian mash-up with elements of the Fast & Furious
movie franchise, with players racing through the city streets while encountering (or avoiding!) obstacles from worlds unknown.
Youtube Video -
Eric M. Lang Rhapsodizes about Bloodborne: The Card Game from Cool Mini Or Not
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/523…bout-bloodborne-card-game
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2943984_t.jpg]• Many games were announced at the 2016 GAMA Trade Show, with the one causing the most excitement being Bloodborne: The Card Game
, a card game coming from Eric M. Lang
and Cool Mini Or Not
. Lang described the game in some detail on camera while BGG was livestreaming from GTS, and I nodded along as best I could given that I know nothing about video games and had never heard of Bloodborne
previously. That video is included below, and for those who prefer the written word, I present this gameplay summary:
Based on the Chalice Dungeons in the video game Bloodborne — the expansive sewer and lost city areas that sprawl below the great city of Yharnam, where horrifying creatures reside — players in the card game Bloodborne compete to kill monsters and take their blood.
In general, Bloodborne is a game about risk management with a bit of group think, inventory management/upgrades, and tactical play. Each turn, one monster chosen at random attacks players, who fight back as a team, with everyone playing a card from their hand simultaneously to attempt to kill the monster. Players collect blood from the monster, assuming it dies, based on how much damage they dealt. Monsters can fight back with exploding dice that can potentially deal infinite damage.
Players can fight as long as they want, but if they die in combat, they lose their progress. Players can opt out of fighting to bank their blood and save it permanently. Collected blood counts as victory points.
Says designer Eric M. Lang, "My goal with Bloodborne was to channel the intensity and frustration of the video game into a contest between players. Lots of death."Youtube Video -
Game Previews from GAMA Trade Show 2016: Star Trek Panic, Munchkin Marvel, Mystic Vale, Guildhall Fantasy, and Love Letter Premium
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/523…show-2016-star-trek-panic
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2887923_t.jpg]• USAopoly
in Feb. 2016 to much excitement, and one aspect of the announcement that I found interesting was the realization of how many companies have a license to produce Star Trek
-related games. In addition to this one, Gale Force Nine plans to release Star Trek: Ascendancy
(covering fifty years of ST series) and WizKids Games has Star Trek: Frontiers
, in addition to its ongoing Star Trek: Attack Wing
series. I keep thinking that one company receives a license and has a lock on the market, but clearly that's not the case, as also evidenced by competing Godfather games
.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2798353_t.jpg]• Just as Star Trek Panic
mashes Castle Panic
with USAopoly's game license for Star Trek
mashes Munchkin
with that publisher's game license for the Marvel Comics universe. However ubiquitous Munchkin
already is in game stores, a license like this will introduce the game to tens of thousands of people who never would have heard of the game otherwise.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2913813_t.jpg]• Deck-building games might seem old hat at this point, even though the genre is less than ten years old, but Alderac Entertainment Group
is introducing a new iteration of the genre in June 2016 thanks to the card-crafting system at the heart of John D. Clair's Mystic Vale
. Instead of building a deck (as your MV
deck never grows or shrinks from twenty cards), players now build the cards themselves within their deck.
The video below presents an overview of the game, and while setting up for another game demo, AEG's Todd Rowland mentioned that Clair first brought the publisher a sprawling game design that included card-crafting as one element within a much larger whole. Not wanting to bury the lede, they worked together to extract that element and create a game that featured crad-crafting front and center. Thus, Mystic Vale
.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1448983_t.jpg]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2947109_t.jpg]• Alderac has a history of taking its own games and reinventing them ( Doomtown: Reloaded
, L5R
— although that was constant reinvention within the same line), and it's doing this once again with Hope S. Hwang's Guildhall
, which debuted in 2012 and had one standalone sequel in 2013. Now that first game is being rejiggered as Guildhall Fantasy: Fellowship
in June 2016, with two other standalone games — Guildhall Fantasy: Alliance
and Guildhall Fantasy: Coalition
— to follow in July and August.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1401448_t.jpg]• Love Letter Premium
is not a reinvention of Seiji Kanai's Love Letter
, but an expansion of it — in two ways. First, the components are bigger and fancier. Second, the game includes more cards, allowing for up to eight players to compete at the same time. As AEG's Rowland notes on the video, the components that allow for play with up to eight will also be released for the normal-sized Love Letter
. What's more, Kanai will be on hand at Gen Con 2016, where AEG will hold a Kanai-centered Big Game Night event.
Youtube Video -
Game Previews from GAMA Trade Show 2016: Back to the Future, Star Trek: Frontiers, TMNT Dice Masters, Chronicles 1: Origins, and Tesla vs. Edison: Powering Up!
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/524…show-2016-back-future-sta
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2673456_t.jpg]• We're not quite living in the future these days given that our hoverboards don't actually hover, so designers Matt Riddle and Ben Pinchback and publisher IDW Games
are taking us Back to the Future
with a card game that has you jumping back and forth across the decades to complete missions with certain well-known characters.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2854496_t.jpg]• Designer Dirk Knemeyer
from Artana
showed off Tesla vs. Edison: Powering Up!
, an expansion for Tesla vs. Edison: War of Currents
that draws more figures from history onto the playing table.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2793627_t.png]• Knemeyer also talked about the continuing development efforts on Chronicles 1: Origins
that Artana plans to release...at some point. As he mentions in the video, despite making release date promises in the past, the development team is in a "It'll be done when it's done" frame of mind right now and just wants to focus on making it as good as they can.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2627040_t.jpg]• Yesterday I posted an overview
; now we feature another of the fiftieth anniversary games coming out in 2016 — Star Trek: Frontiers
from designers Vlaada Chvátil and Andrew Parks and publisher WizKids Games
, with this game similarly being a mash-up of the Trek
IP with a pre-existing game, in this case Mage Knight Board Game
.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2948212_t.jpg]• At GTS 2016, WizKids Games also showed off Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Dice Masters
, the latest iteration in the Dice Masters
series from Eric M. Lang and Mike Elliott, with this being a single big box item that includes everything in one go. WizKids' Scot D'Agostino also gives an intro to the TMNT HeroClix Mouser Mayhem! Starter Set
. So many turtles! I like turtles
!
Youtube Video -
Links: Funding, Broadcasting, and Designing Tabletop Games
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/519…ng-and-designing-tabletop
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic993487_t.jpg]• In old news that I forgot to link to months ago, tabletop games raised nearly twice as much financial support on Kickstarter in 2015 as video games ($88 million to $46 million), according to
SiliconANGLE, with ten percent of the tabletop funding coming from the Exploding Kittens
campaign. An excerpt from the article:
Perhaps one of the most interesting statistics to come Kickstarter’s report is the fact while tabletop games raised twice as much money as video games and were nearly three times as likely to be funded, the total number of backers was not significantly different between the two. Tabletop campaigns were backed by 522,061 people, whereas video game campaigns were backed by 480,382 people, a difference of only around 8 percent.
• MCM Central, organizer of MCM London Comic Con, plans to broadcast the 24-hour-a-day show Strategy: The Table Top Gaming Event
from the Telford International Centre starting Thursday, August 25 and ending Sunday, August 28. From the press release: "Positioned after Gen Con Indy, Strategy
provides an ideal opportunity for a European platform to showcase upcoming games and new releases. The show will feature board games, card games, miniatures games and roleplaying games — plus dedicated tournament and playing space." The show will be hosted by Rob Hooley, former organized play manager for Upper Deck International and former events manager for Konami Europe's Yu-Gi-Oh!
card game.
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2574100_t.jpg]• The River Falls Journal
in Wisconsin profiled
designer Alexander Cobian
in Dec. 2015, and it's the type of local press that designers should always seek out as it introduces the idea of modern games to people who aren't already in the know, in turn creating an audience for the very thing being featured.
• I ran across a post on Facebook in February 2016 that announced a new service for Spiel 2016 that will package and ship your games so that you can avoid playing luggage Tetris
or make travel easier on yourself should you be wandering around Europe — but the link that I sent myself no longer works, so we'll just have to keep our eyes out for news of this service in the future.
• I've linked to many posts from designer Grant Rodiek
recently, but he keeps writing things that stick with me, so here's another article from him, one that separates flavor from theme and boils theme down into two principles
:
-----—The experience has a narrative arc.
-----—Player actions are indicative of the theme, and you do things in character.
(This article is #9 of Rodiek's The 54 Card Guild series
in which he writes about creating a game that consists of at most 54 cards, while inviting readers to join the process and create something themselves, too.)
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1166301_t.jpg]• Speaking of thematic, in Feb. 2016 the Israeli game blog Pundak
published a long interview with Roberto Di Meglio
of Ares Games
. Di Meglio details the fall of Nexus
, discusses the focus of Ares Games ("create beautiful thematic games"), and tells a few great stories, such as this detail about the design of War of the Ring
:
Another key feature of the game — the original system used to move the Fellowship — started as a "crazy idea" in one of the earliest brainstorming sessions, which was immediately embraced by all the three designers. We had a very tough challenge to achieve to provide a "realistic" experience. In the books, Sauron has no clue about the fact that the Free Peoples want to destroy the Ring; in the game, the Sauron player knows this perfectly well! How to deal with such a contradiction, and at the same time create a good simulation of the books?
This was achieved through the combination of the Hunt system, the Fellowship movement system, and the action dice system in general. Sauron cannot "attack" the Fellowship; he can just "hunt for the Ring" and decide how much attention is given to that, and how much attention to the war — allocating Hunt dice. But he is obsessed by the Ring — so he does not have perfect control of this choice. And the hidden movement system (somebody says it's the Schrödinger's Fellowship — you never know where it is, until you find it) makes the Fellowship somewhat "out of sight" for both players.And regarding the tenth anniversary edition of War of the Ring
, Di Meglio says, " Warriors of Middle-earth
is going to have a painted edition. And we are planning a third — and final — expansion after that, and we want it to have a painted version, too. After that, I like the idea of getting everything together in one box — but maybe such a 'monster edition' will be impossible to create and sell, so that's far from a sure thing."
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2926407_t.jpg]
-
Game Previews from GAMA Trade Show 2016: Islebound, City of Iron, Aura, Victory or Death, and Quartermaster General: Alternate Histories
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/524…-show-2016-islebound-city
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2928248_t.jpg]• Designer Ian Brody
has won great acclaim for his self-pulbished Quartermaster General
, and now he's taking players into battle in a whole new era in Victory or Death: The Peloponnesian War
from The Plastic Soldier Company
.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2875217_t.jpg]• Speaking of which, France and China join the action in Quartermaster General: Alternate Histories
from Brody's Griggling Games
. I thought that with the 1980s long behind us, I'd seen the end of misused "Я"s as "R"s, but apparently that graphic element will never go out of style. (I'm not bugged by the graphics in Elysium
, but I studied Russian in college, not Greek; sometimes ignorance protects you from outrage.)
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2812825_t.jpg]• Designer/illustrator/publisher Ryan Laukat
wanted to paint ships, so he designed a game that would give him that opportunity, with the added bonus that characters in Islebound
can also be used as characters in his previous game, Above and Below
.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2627609_t.jpg]• Laukat also talked about the second edition of City of Iron
, which includes some elements of a previously separate expansion, thereby messing with our clean and ordered database listings.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2530329_t.jpg]• This overview of Michael Orion's Aura
from Breaking Games
was the one that most had me going from "I know nothing about this game" to "I really want to try this". I'm a sucker for card games, after all...
Youtube Video -
A Historical Perspective on Changes Announced by Asmodee North America
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/517…anges-announced-asmodee-n
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2805787_t.jpg] April 1, 2016 is almost here, with that date being the start of Asmodee North America's new sales policies for U.S. hobby game retailers, whether brick-or-mortar retailer, online retailer, or both, so I thought I'd reflect on what's changing and why. These statements are my own (except when I quote someone) and are based on my experience in the industry and multiple interviews on and off the record; they do not reflect the opinion of my employer, BoardGameGeek LLC. With that in mind, let's go...
••• In its March 2016 issue, Inc.
Pharmapacks, a $70 million retail business in the U.S. that sells a somewhat random assortment of items through the online marketplaces on eBay, Walmart.com, Overstock, and (most importantly) Amazon.com, from which Pharmapacks earns 40% of its revenue. Here's an excerpt from Burt Helm's article:
[T]hey discovered that selling on a platform like Amazon was totally different from running their drugstore or even a standalone website... They could sell whatever they wanted, at whatever price, for whatever period of time. A marketplace vendor doesn't worry about stocking a full line of shampoos, or whether certain soaps are always on sale. If they want to sell lotion one week and hairspray the next, they can do that.
Early on, the guys decided that it would be easiest to offer whatever their suppliers had in stock. They built each online listing, and had a developer code a script that scraped the suppliers' databases to enter each product's information. When a customer ordered something, they in turn would order it from the supplier, pick it up, and then pack and ship it. That's still the model, more or less, though nowadays they order in bulk using sales projections and need three trucks and a van to pick everything up. Inventory often stays in their warehouse only for a few hours before going right back out the door. The business is less like traditional merchandising than it is like a commodities trader from a bygone era, buying and selling well-known goods and turning a profit on each transaction.The article notes that Pharmapacks averages a 3-6% net profit margin per item that it sells, while making 570,000 shipments each month on an inventory of 25,000 different products.
What does this have to do with games? Well, let's turn the clock back to December 2015 when the newly-formed Asmodee North America announced
that as of the start of 2016 it would allow only five distributors in the U.S. — ACD Distribution, Alliance Game Distributors, GTS Distribution, PHD Games, and Southern Hobby Supply — to distribute its products to retailers within the country and that ANA "will be very selective as to which online merchants will be authorized to sell our products". While Pharmapacks doesn't retail games (as far as I can tell), it's an example of the type of company that ANA doesn't want handling its products — a business interested in short-term sales numbers with no consideration for long-term growth of the gaming hobby. To excerpt once again from the Inc.
article:
The next time you buy some humdrum product on Amazon, pause for a moment and check the Other Sellers listed on the right side of the page. That lip balm? Thirteen vendors offer it. Those vitamins? Twenty. As you click and shop, a battle rages in that little box, fought every day by entrepreneurs like [Pharmapacks'] Vagenas and Tramunti on practically every one of Amazon's 410 million product pages.
This is the Amazon Marketplace, where anybody can sell just about anything right alongside Amazon's own wares. Unlike eBay, where each vendor maintains a separate listings page, Amazon tidily groups its Marketplace sellers by item, hiding away the inferior offers, to showcase the best deals up front. (In seller parlance, landing the number-one spot is called "getting the buy box.") What looks so clean on your screen obscures the messy and massive jungle of the Marketplace: There are now more than two million sellers on Amazon. While the Seattle-based giant still sells the most popular items on the site itself, Marketplace sellers now ship nearly half of the products — about two billion items each year, all told — and those sales are growing twice as fast as Amazon's, according to the consultancy ChannelAdvisor. The Marketplace started in 2000 selling used books. In 2016, it's a retail phenomenon as significant as any in the past 50 years — together these sellers ring up what ChannelAdvisor estimates to be $132 billion in sales each year. That's more than Walmart sold in 1997. Yet we know so little about who they are.For the most part, buyers are comfortable not knowing who is selling them these products. They want Product X at the cheapest price possible — or (alternatively) a cheap price convinces them that Product X will be a fine replacement for Product Y or Z — and they know that if something goes wrong, Amazon will reimburse them for the purchase price.
Manufacturers, on the other hand, may not be comfortable having their goods sold for bargain basement prices. As ANA CEO Christian T. Petersen stated in an interview with ICv2
in Dec. 2015: "When we, or one of our publishing partners, start development of a game product, we do so with a conviction that the product will have a certain value to the gamer, the consumer. On the basis of this expected value, we invest in design, creative inputs, safety testing, manufacturing, marketing, licensing, and the many other aspects of successfully getting a game to market." Having games sold a few percentage points over cost diminishes the perceived value of the item, especially when a retailer (or a distributor acting as a retailer, which has happened in the past) dumps overstock, thereby tanking the market for that game, which necessitates dumping by all the other distributors as well in order not to get stuck with dead goods.
Part of "successfully getting a game to market" involves that final step of getting the game into the hands of players. While Fantasy Flight Games
(which Asmodee acquired in Nov. 2014
) and Days of Wonder
in August 2014) sell games directly through their websites, for the most part these brands and parent company Asmodee North America sell product either directly to mass-market vendors (Amazon, Target, Barnes & Noble) or indirectly to retailers through distributors, and once those vendors or distributors get hold of the games, there's no telling where they'll end up for sale or for how much — and that's part of what ANA intends to change through the imposition of its new sales policies. (Note that all of these changes affect the U.S. only, despite the "North America" in the company's name.)
By cutting the number of distributors it works with — and more importantly by requiring each brick-and-mortar retailer to agree to the terms of its Asmodee North America Specialty Retail Policy ( PDF
) and become an "Asmodee Specialty Retailer" — ANA has an easier time tracking who's buying what. By requiring online hobby retailers to purchase items directly from ANA, the publisher will have similar knowledge on that section of the marketplace.
(During a 45-minute off-camera interview at GAMA Trade Show in March 2016, Petersen noted to me that some online retailers would effectively by buying from ANA via proxy, as with, say, CoolStuffInc, which is almost adjacent to a warehouse owned by GTS Distribution. In cases like those, Petersen said it made sense to take advantage of the proximity of the distributor to serve that customer more directly. Petersen also acknowledged that online retail outlets with an established brick-and-mortar presence, such as CSI, could continue both operations under the new ANA policies as long as the businesses are legally separated and the inventory for each business kept distinct. ANA CMO Steve Horvath and ANA VP of Marketing Aaron Elliott also participated in this interview.)
What's more, ANA is changing the discounts at which games are available to its B&M and online clients, with B&M purchasing games at roughly a 45% discount off MSRP (based on their purchase volume with the distributor) and with online receiving a substantially lower (albeit unpublicized) discount off MSRP. At GTS 2016 as part of the ANA Keynote Address, Petersen spent fifteen minutes laying out his explanation for why ANA is changing its discount policy, reaching back to the 1980s to identify how stores used to be the hub for how people discovered and learned more about games. Petersen said that game publishers adopted a discount policy at that time similar to the comic industry due to games often being sold through those same distributors, and despite all the changes that have taken place over the last thirty years, that discount policy has never been revisited, even though (in Petersen's view) online sellers provide little service to buyers beyond the mere availability to games.
Brick-and-mortar stores, on the other hand, enable the long-term success of ANA based on the availability of games, the introduction of games to people not already in the hobby, the introduction of new games to those already in the hobby, and the development of a gaming community based on shared playing spaces and events. Fantasy Flight Games, for example, has supported organized play events for years for multiple games. In 2015 alone, FFG sold more than 33,000 event kits to B&M retailers, with Elliott estimating that "between two and three times as many kit-less events occur, putting the total number of global events easily above 100,000 for 2015". Asmodee started its own organized play program titled AsmoPlay
in 2015, and it's expanding that program in 2016. Organized play programs are designed to encourage B&M retailers to promote these titles to new and existing players, and if ANA has a better idea of which stores are selling which games (which it will), it can in the future tailor event programs to match those sales records or reach out to stores to encourage more participation in such events.
In our interview, Petersen stated that ANA doesn't have hard numbers for the breakdown of sales via B&M and sales via online outlets (something they hope to change once these policies go into effect), but I believe — and multiple talks with people at various levels of the hobby have confirmed — that the vast majority of game sales are made through B&M outlets. Why change discount policies if this is true? For the same reason that Mayfair Games
instituted similar changes in 2007, and to cover that history lesson, I present this lengthy column that I published on BoardgameNews.com on October 30, 2007:
••• [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1366924_t.jpg]Mayfair Games has announced a discount cap for its line of board and card games. What's relevant from the end user's point of view is that retailers must now offer no more than a 20% discount on Mayfair products or else risk losing the ability to carry Mayfair titles in the future. For reference, here's the announcement as it appeared on game industry forums:
Dear Trade Customers,
Greetings from Mayfair Games! Our team wishes you all well. After all, we wouldn't be looking forward to our 27th year of publishing fine games without your strong, enduring support.
We're writing to you to outline our retail pricing policy. Our manufacturer's suggested retail prices ("MSRPs") reflect our firm belief in a healthy balance between "free trade" and "fair trade." Mayfair Games embraces and supports healthy competition. We feel that in order for our market — and thus our company — to prosper now and over the long term all our partners in the distribution chain need to respect this balance.
Whenever a firm threatens healthy competition among our trade customers, and thus endangers this balance, we must act in a vigorous, even-handed fashion to police the distribution and sale of our fine products. Mayfair Games doesn't intend to specifically dictate how its customers do business...but we will act in cases of predatory, irrational, or patently detrimental trade activity...
So, it's important that all of our trade customers know where we stand on pricing and discounting...
• Distributors should sell Mayfair Games products at no less than a 25% margin or no more than a 50% discount off MSRP.
• Retailers should sell Mayfair Games products at no more than a 20% discount off MSRP, or the appropriate ratio given exchange rates.
Trade customers that violate these guidelines shall be subject to sanctions. If necessary, we will cut them off.
We're well aware of the fact that our individual customers operate under individual circumstances. Some are more profitable than others. Some seek to establish themselves or need to acquire some critical market share. Mayfair Games understands, and sympathizes with, this reality.
At the same time, we've been in business long enough to know that that it's far better for us to encourage healthy competition rather than cutthroat discounting. Ours is not a mass-market business, nor is it a business based on inter-changeable widgets. Our wares are special, unique, premium games. Savage discounting is unnecessary and counter-productive for everyone in the mid-to-long term. While some individual consumers might benefit in the short-run, rabid discounting only acts to erode the profits and incentives necessary to keep our market healthy.
As it is, consumers receive great entertainment value for full MSRP. It's unnecessary — and even a bit insane — to subsidize folks who already enjoy a good deal. It is far healthier for us, our distributors, and our retailers to derive a healthy profit from the sale of our games than it is for us to see them dumped into the marketplace. Every viable firm in our distribution chain should collect its fair profit and have an incentive to further promote, buy, and sell our games.
Our trade customers should endeavor to increase their profit margins, not their discounts. They can thus improve service, which — along with the high quality of our games — should be the principal means of growing our market.
Mayfair Games asks all its trade customers to understand that we are partners in growing a healthy games market. Again, we want free and fair trade. It's healthy...for all of us. It's in our best interest...and in the best interest of the entire social game industry.
That's all for now. Take care.
For Mayfair Games,
Pete Fenlon
(CEO, Mayfair Games, Inc.)The targets of this policy change — deep-discount online retailers — are clear (although anonymous), and the terms used to describe them and their practices are damning: "predatory, irrational, or patently detrimental"; "savage"; "rabid"; "a bit insane".
Response to the Mayfair announcement has been all over the place. BoardsandBits.com and Thoughthammer.com have announced that they'll abide by the new discount policy, while Boulder Games has vowed to stop carrying Mayfair titles. Retailers on one industry forum I frequent have applauded Mayfair and said that they'll demo the company's titles — such as the Catan
line that relaunches in early November 2007 — more heavily over the holidays and beyond. Hardcore gamers on BoardGameGeek have run the gamut from personal boycotts to shoulder-shrugging. Casual gamers have no response because they don't even know about the policy change.
What's fascinated me the most are the predictions that gamers have posted on BoardGameGeek, most of which, quite frankly, are from people talking through their non-existent hats. Gamers with no retail business experience have posted ludicrous scenarios of how the Mayfair policy change will play out in the years ahead: Mayfair's sales will plummet, Mayfair will raise prices to make up for lower sales, Mayfair will have trouble signing designers due to lower sales, Mayfair will publish worse games in the future because other publishers won't want to license games to it due to its (say it with me know) lower sale volume.
How do I know these people have no retail business experience? Because they start their arguments with claims that contradict reality, and the surest way to reach faulty conclusions is to start with nonsense.
Chad Ellis of Your Move Games posted a long note on BGG detailing how retail works within the game industry, which I'll summarize for your education: Publishers typically sell product to distributors at 40% of the MSRP; distributors typically sell product to retailers at 50-60% of MSRP (with the discount dependent on the volume of business from the retailer and the goods purchased); retailers sell the product at 65%-100% of MSRP to customers.
Deep-discount online retailers are at the 65% end of the scale, offering customers 35% off the MSRP because they have relatively low fixed costs and want to encourage frequent, large, low-margin purchases. They make money on volume, so they want to move goods out the door as quickly as possible. Brick-and-mortar retailers fall on the 100% end of the scale, charging MSRP because they need the high margin on sales to cover their relatively high fixed costs. They make money on service, giving customers side benefits beyond the game itself to encourage repeat business.
Admittedly not all retail stores provide side benefits. Some of them feature no gaming space, no bulletin boards to find local gamers, no tournaments or open game days, employees or owners who don't know the games, poor return policies, no food or drinks for sale, no loyalty program, no preorder or special order program, and prices over MSRP. Some people have no game store at all within driving distance. Many people do have such stores nearby, however, and for these stores providing these types of services — along with electricity, garbage service, retail association fees, and so on — is part of the cost of doing business, a cost that must be covered by the margin on the products they sale.
Mayfair Games' open support for retail stores isn't new. In a May 2007 essay on ICv2, former CEO Will Niebling noted:
The game market needs a healthy balance of core market and broad market retailers. The former serve as our consistent retail foundation, the latter as a means of occasionally reaching out to a broader audience. Titles that appeal to the latter still sell in the core market; however, it's not a two-way street. This means that in order to sell the games that generate much if not most of the profit that keeps the industry alive and healthy, manufacturers rely on shops both within and without the core game trade.
Online game discounters cater to a subset of the core hobby gamer. These individuals know which games are new, what the BGG ratings on these games are, and what BGG even is. They tend to be very price-conscious and view anything that will cost them more money as a personal affront. (Such as, oh, I don't know, convention previews that take hundreds of hours of work...) Their view of this announcement is that Mayfair is gouging them, that Mayfair is adding a premium to the cost of its games, that Mayfair is putting itself at a competitive disadvantage, that Mayfair is engaging in price-fixing and short-sighted business practices.
Hogwash, says I.
Starting with the last claim and working backwards, "price-fixing" refers to sellers who collectively decide to charge a set price for an item, a practice that typically happens with a highly desirable item in short supply. A hypothetical example: When Zooloretto
won Spiel des Jahres, for example, and retailers became aware that the game was in short supply from Rio Grande, if they had talked amongst one another and decided to sell the few copies still in stock at $60, that would be an example of price-fixing.
Every company that provides product to retailers, either directly or indirectly, sells the product under certain conditions, some of which are spelled out in business contracts and some of which are implied. Retailers can't, for example, add a label to a product that promises something not included within the packaging.
One thing that companies can do in their business contracts is specify pricing terms for the products to be sold. Why are Apple computers and iPods the same price no matter where they're sold? Look to the contracts that Apple signs with distributors and retailers. Yes, a retailer still has the ability to sell a product at whatever price it chooses, but if it's violating the terms of the business contract it signed to get that product, it shouldn't expect to get more stock in the future. The retailer knows the terms going in, and if it disagrees with the terms, it shouldn't carry the product.
Why do companies set pricing terms? For multiple reasons, but two are important for this discussion. First, they want give their products a certain image. An article on the Starbucks coffee chain that I read recently noted that you'll never see sales or discounts for its drinks. A quote from the article: "[Starbucks chairman Howard] Schultz wants you to view his product as the epitome of opulence."
Take this line from the Mayfair press release: "Our wares are special, unique, premium games." You might disagree with this assessment, but that's the image Mayfair wants to present. Mayfair can't compete on price with Hasbro because it doesn't produce games in the millions; what's more, it doesn't even want to pretend to compete on price. It has a specialty item unavailable elsewhere (in English) and it wants buyers to think of its products in those terms.
Mayfair isn't alone in this regard. The typical Spiel des Jahres winner is heavily discounted during the holidays and available in hundreds of non-game stores across Germany. When Ticket to Ride
won SdJ in 2004, Days of Wonder refused to adopt a deep discount policy and offered the game to retailers only on its standard terms. Many retailers balked, and the game appeared in fewer locations than most SdJ winners. Days of Wonder doesn't want to sell discount games to looky-loos on the hunt for a bargain; it wants to sell beautiful games to customers again and again.
Besides, what would customers think when Ticket to Ride: Europe
debuted at €40 after they saw Ticket to Ride
advertised for, say, €25 all over the place? They'd probably feel like they were being taken advantage of, a feeling that gamers have today when thinking about being charged (gasp!) only 20% off the MSRP of Mayfair products.
As for the impact of this reduced retailer discount, how does it actually play out in practical terms? For a game with a $50 retail, a 20% discount equals $40 while a 35% discount brings the price down to $32.50 — a difference of $7.50. That's what all the fuss is about?! I don't know about the rest of you, but my wife and I spend far more than that when we go out for dinner — or even just for ice cream after dinner. Skip a $5 appetizer at some family restaurant and after tax and tip are worked in, you'll have saved the $7.50 needed to pay the exorbitant
price now charged for a Mayfair big box game (not to mention saving yourself and your family the negative health effects of a deep-fried Texas Tonion). Alternatively, don't take a flyer on some cheap card game (just because it's cheap), and you'll be able to get the game you really want.
If you bought three Mayfair games per year, you'd spend maybe $20 more — or the equivalent of one game, for those who automatically equate money with games. (I'll admit to doing so.) Mayfair is gambling that people have enough room in their budget to spend an extra $20 annually, a safe bet I feel sure.
As for the second reason that companies set pricing terms, they want to develop and perpetuate a certain business environment for the sale and continued growth of their games. Mayfair Games believes that brick-and-mortar stores provide a better environment for the introduction of its games to new players, so it's adopting policies to put that belief into action — or rather it's continuing such policies. Mayfair has already had a demo game program in which stores that order a certain small number of games can receive a free copy to be used for demonstration purposes.
Many gamers can give examples of people who they personally introduced to hobby games, and some present themselves as individuals who discovered hobby games through an online retailer. Great, wonderful — but you are not representative of game buyers en masse. Most people will not find hobby games through a random Internet search, and even those who are taught their first hobby game by a friend will benefit from the services of a real world game store. As Chad Ellis wrote in his BGG post, "My sales to people who already know about Battleground
is probably only helped by discounters...but my ability to grow the market of Battleground
players is hurt whenever a FLGS decides not to carry it."
In general, brick-and-mortar stores do a wonderful job of "gamer education", converting interested passers-by into gamers. Educating customers takes employee time, which equals money, and a retailer hopes that investment pays off so that customers learn how to navigate a store on their own, leaving employees free to assist and educate new customers. If customers head to deep-discount online retailers as they become more educated, the stores lose out on that investment and will be less willing or able to offer it in the future.
Mayfair undoubtedly has a better handle on the game industry and what it needs to do to ensure its future than any handful of people whose experience consists solely of purchasing and playing games. Its policy change has already engendered notices of support from multiple retailers who have said they'll demo Mayfair games more because they'll be less likely in the future to lose customers solely on the basis of price.
Sure, Mayfair might lose a few customers in the short term, but those who make purchasing decisions solely or primarily on the basis of price are the worst kind of customer that a business can have. These customers want low-cost goods, but they complain if the goods look or feel low-cost; they have no loyalty and make each decision on a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately basis; they value a great deal over a great product; their cheapness is matched only by their volume when complaining about how they were done wrong by some predatory company.
Businesses can't make decisions based on the whims of this unreliable group. From Mayfair's point of view, these people make up a small percentage of BGG visitors, who are themselves a speck among the number of people who play games worldwide. When you're hunting for elephants, you can't let yourself be bothered by the swarming of gnats...
P.S.: Marcus King, owner of Titan Games & Music, posted the following story in an industry forum that devotes a lot of resources and advice to game retailers. I reprint the story (lightly edited) with his permission:
On a not completely unrelated topic, last evening, after posting the earlier thanks to Mayfair, I had a couple come into my store and ask the sales clerk on duty: "Uh, we are looking for a settlers of Cat-On."
Since my sales clerk is not as knowledgable on games as I am, I stepped out and had a good conversation with the couple, in their late 40s, who wanted to find the Cat-On Game.
I showed them the game, discussed its playability, and asked how they heard of it. It was for their son, returning from a tour in Iraq, and he wanted it. They then expressed absolute sticker shock when I showed them it was $38.00.
The father was a bit surprised that a "game" could cost $38.00. Why they had just bought a nephew a set of Monopoly for $14.99 at a TRU in Kalamazoo!! How could this (smaller) game be worth more money!?!?
I asked them how often they played their favorite game. They were a bit surprised by the question, so I asked them whether they played cards, bowled, bingo, paintball or volleyball. This confused them more. I explained that all of these were examples of "playing a game" — though the games were far different, they were all games.
I went on to explain that Monopoly and Settlers of Catan were not competing products. That Settlers of Catan was a game product that competed for their time with a video rental, or maybe playing Euchre with friends. I also said, "I am not sure I really like this game, I haven't decided yet. I have played it only about 500 times." They laughed, then I explained that I was not exaggerating — I had played Settlers about two or three times a week for about four years.
They asked why I wasn't bored with the game, so I went into the replayability factor of having a randomly generated board with the tiles, and how starting positions were taken, etc. I further went on to say that if they played Catan only ten times, it would have cost them less than $2 per player, per game. I also mentioned that most people who played and enjoyed the Catan series of games played it more than ten times.
Then I closed with my best pitch: "If you buy this game and play it — and decide you don't like it — I will take a return on it, opened and played, for a full refund."
They bought two copies, one for their son and one for them. They are coming to our next game night to play Pillars of the Earth, too.••• [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2419375_t.jpg]Okay, that was a long diversion — yet it wasn't a diversion at all as everything that I stated in that column is still true. Far from going out of business due to people boycotting its titles, Mayfair Games increased sales of Catan
year after year after year. In 2013, Mayfair Games decreased retailers' maximum advertised discount to 10%
, and in January 2016 it
unknowns.de/forum/thread/49680/. (The purchase price has not been announced; one figure I've heard — $20 million — would equal roughly $1 per Catan
item sold since its debut in 1995 as Catan GmbH reports sales of more than 23 million copies Catan
items, including expansions. Fenton, by the way, now heads Catan Studio
, a publishing studio within ANA that oversees all things Catan
.)
Asmodee North America will likely be similarly affected after lowering the discount at which online retailers can purchase ANA titles — and by "similarly affected", I mean "barely affected at all". ANA has stated
that it will not "institute or impose official price floors or 'minimum advertised price' policies" on its authorized retailers, but the effect of lowering discounts works roughly the same way as a MAP, lowering the discount at which an online retailer will offer games to buyers.
Petersen understands that some people will buy fewer ANA titles as a result of these changes. At GTS 2016, ANA Executive Projects Manager Anton Torres got in hot water when he stated on livestream broadcasts from both The Dice Tower
and BGG that ANA would prefer that people buy two games under the new policy than ten under the old. While I understand the point he was trying to make — better a small number of enthusiastic fans than a mass of indifferent volume buyers — Petersen refuted Torres' statement, noting that Torres is not part of the business-side of ANA and stating that he is fine with people buying however many games they want, whether they treat them as doorstops or actually play the games.
At the same time, Petersen says that ANA isn't looking solely at sales volume when trying to determine what's best for its long-term health. More specifically, he said, "If all we cared about was moving units, we could sell games direct to buyers for 50% off MSRP and move far more than we do now." That's not ideal for long-term growth, though, because all you're doing with an operation like that is selling to an existing customer base instead of working with retailers to introduce your games to new people. To quote Petersen again from the ICv2 article:
The most significant obstacle in the growth and perceived value of the gaming business is the need for players to find other players, and for new players to enter the hobby. I estimate that the hobby loses between 10-20% of its players every year, so the creation of new players into the hobby is vital for every participant to have a thriving marketplace and have exciting new products developed.
Petersen understands that some will boycott ANA based on these new policies, but he doesn't care. Okay, he probably wouldn't say that directly, instead stating that this is a business decision that reflects long-term goals, yada yada yada, but this would be my interpretation of his statement: "You do whatever you feel is necessary when determining which games to purchase, just as you've always done in the past with everything else you've purchased, whether game, soap, cereal, or slacks. For our part, we need to do whatever we feel is necessary when determining how much to charge for the games that we produce so that we can be in a position to continue to produce games far into the future. Ideally you'll still buy our games, and we'll do our best to produce games that merit your attention."
As I stated in the Mayfair Games post, people who announce such boycotts and stick to them "make up a small percentage of BGG visitors, who are themselves a speck among the number of people who play games worldwide". Yes, BoardGameGeek is the largest game site in the world, with more than 3.5 million users in any thirty day period, with a plugged-in userbase that often knows more about what's coming out when from which designers than those who own the game stores in their town — but these BGG users are not representative of the larger world of game buyers because most games are bought by people who have never heard of BGG.
, for example, I quoted designer Fréderic Moyersoen saying that sales in the Saboteur
line have reached a total of 1,400,000 copies, and a BGG user subsequently noted
that BGGers list ownership of only 27,121 of those copies, roughly 2% of the total. Similarly, at Spielwarenmesse 2016 Mayfair Games noted to me that Moyersoen's Nuns on the Run
— a game rarely talked about or logged as played on BGG — is on its sixth printing and such a consistent seller that the publisher is considering an expansion for the future. Catan
, as mentioned earlier, has sales of more than 23 million items across the line, whereas BGG ownership for all of Catan
is roughly 300,000 items — just over 1%. Heck, as I noted in the initial ANA announcement
about its sales policy changes, Days of Wonder claims to have sold more than three million Ticket to Ride
games, while no more than 175,000 TtR
items of any type are listed as owned by BGG users.
No, not all BGGers record their collection online, but if you double these figures, the larger point remains: The pool of existing gamers is vast, far beyond what we see on our ever-busy site, and the pool of potential gamers-to-be dwarfs this number multiple times over. That larger pool of gamers and potential gamers is who ANA is shooting to serve years down the road by instituting these policies, and however much some people might complain or wish otherwise, the problems of some percentage of these three million little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that...
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New Game Round-up: Drill for Dregs, Cultivate a Garden, and Freeze in the Great Outdoors
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/518…s-cultivate-garden-and-fr
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2309919_t.jpg]• Spanish publisher 2Tomatoes
has licensed Peak Oil
from designers Tobias Gohrbandt
and Heiko Günther
, with the game still being available in a print-and-play format now for those who want to try their hand at commodity speculation. Here's an overview of the design, which doesn't have an announced publication date yet:
You are the top manager at one of the big oil companies, tasked with leading your enterprise into a future without oil. With peak oil looming ahead, you try to squeeze the last drops from oil fields around the world to gather the resources to invest into various oil replacement technologies. While you may try to emerge from the coming crisis by regular means, your competitors will most probably not, forcing you to dirty your hands as well.
On your turn in Peak Oil, you assign your agents to different action spots on the board. If your agents are in the majority at any given action spot, or you decide to send mercenaries to their help, they squelch the competition there and allow you to take the linked action. Actions include developing and harvesting oil fields, building pipelines, hiring new agents, buying new ship contracts, investing in oil replacement technologies, conducting PR campaigns, engaging in piracy, and manipulating public opinion and oil prices.
After some time, the oil — represented by a set number of small barrels you draw from a bag when developing new oil fields — will run out. This is called "peak oil" and marks the end of the game. Players tally the value of the technologies in which they invested and promoted during the game. Whoever shaped the future best (i.e. gained favor for their company) wins.[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2895231_t.jpg]
's two-player tile-laying game Orphans & Ashes
includes "more miniature orphans than any other game on the market, guaranteed".
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2922354_t.jpg]• One Thousand XP
is a new U.S. game publisher with a couple of designs forthcoming from podcaster (now designer) Chris Rowlands
is a microgame for 3-8 players in which one player is a child dressed in a monster costume and everyone else is a monster; the monsters want to determine which player is secretly the child, while the child needs to figure out which monster is hiding under the bed.
Rowlands' The Last Garden
is a more traditional-sounding game:
The world as we know it has ended. One woman is all that remains of the human race, and she is known only by her title: The Queen. As her final decree, The Queen aims to recreate the beautiful and lush gardens of her youth. However, there is very little moisture left, so The Queen will implement a new plan.
In her travels, The Queen has accumulated a collection of out-of-commission mining robots. She has reprogrammed them all into Robotanists and will use them to turn metal and rare gems into an elaborate garden. The Robotanist AI isn't the best, but they'll try as hard as they can to please their Queen. She doesn't quite remember exactly what the gardens look like, but she'll know it when she sees it. Until then, the Robotanists will work the mines, build the garden, and place gems as the all vie to be the Queen's favorite.
The Last Garden is a worker placement and betting game for 2-4 players. Each player controls a number of Robotanists as they seek to create a beautiful garden out of scraps and gems. On every turn, a player places a Robotanist onto the board and plays a card that shifts the structures in the garden or manipulates gems. At the end of a set number of days, the player who has gained the most favor wins.[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2895282_t.jpg]• Frostbite
is the first release from Darrek Olson
, and it presents players with a challenging gaming environment:
In Frostbite, players collect resources and assemble huts, but must be wary of the bitter cold while doing so. The weather changes constantly and the temperature keeps falling. Players must endure until the final shelters are created!
Each player has five action points per round to use for migrating, scouting, hunting, gathering wood, crafting shelter, and raiding other clans. Players migrate by moving their clan member tokens. They may gather wood only in forest regions and may hunt only in regions with wildlife. Hunting success is determined by die roll. When failing to kill wildlife, a card is drawn to determine the direction it runs away, possibly into another clan's territory. Once players have enough resources, they may build or upgrade shelters.
After each round, cards are drawn to decrease the temperature in different areas. Clan members die if they occupy a region that is too cold, but this may be mitigated by fur coats and shelters.
Only the clans that complete their villages will survive and claim victory.Be sure to play in the winter with the windows open!
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Game Previews from GAMA Trade Show 2016: Movie Edition — The Godfather x2, Ghostbusters, Speechless, and Fast & Furious: Full Throttle
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/524…show-2016-movie-edition-g
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2938286_t.jpg]• Both Cool Mini Or Not
and designer Eric M. Lang
announced many upcoming games at the GAMA Trade Show in mid-March 2016, and one place where those Venn diagrams of game announcements overlapped was The Godfather: The Board Game
, which Lang describes as "thugs on a map", with players also having to manage the contents of their hand as anything extra they acquire will end up being handed over to the Godfather as tribute.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2524011_t.jpg]• As noted
earlier in March 2016, multiple games based on The Godfather
films have been announced. The Godfather: An Offer You Can't Refuse
from Nate Murray
of IDW Games
and Nathan McNair of Pandasaurus Games
is a Mafia-style hidden role game that sets the Corleone crime family against undercover policemen.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2928632_t.jpg]• Cryptozoic Entertainment
raised more than $1.5 million for Ghostbusters: The Board Game
on Kickstarter, so it's not strange at all that they're bringing Ghostbusters: The Board Game II
to the neighborhood. At GTS 2016, Cryptozoic's Sara Miguel showed off some of the new gameplay elements to be found in this standalone game.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2348737_t.jpg]• Fast & Furious: Full Throttle
from Jeff and Carla Horger and Game Salute
presents players with a street-racing challenge that brings in characters from the movies to provide optional unique powers.
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2944475_t.png]• Okay, I'm cheating here since Speechless
the game from Mike Elliott and Arcane Wonders
has nothing to do with Speechless
the movie, but I posted the overview of the Back to the Future
game the other day before realizing that I could pull together this themed post. Oh well.
In any case, Speechless
is charades with a twist, with one player performing in silence while everyone else guesses in silence, possibly scoring from others' guesses along the way.
Youtube Video -
New Game Round-up: Riding the Rails in Europe, Fighting in Greece, and Rummaging Through the House
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/518…ls-europe-fighting-greece
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2881278_t.jpg]• I thought that I had covered everything on Rio Grande Games
' 2016 release calendar in a Feb. 2016 BGGN post
, but here's another title coming down the rails: Orient Express
from the husband-and-wife design team of Jeff
and Carla Horger
, who were also responsible for the 2015 release 20th Century Limited
from Rio Grande. Here's a summary of the setting and gameplay:
Europe is a continent that is both insular by nation and yet hopelessly entangled economically as a whole. You have decided to be a part of the growing railroad boom. All over the continent rails are needed to connect disparate regions for business and recreation. As your lines cover more ground it is likely that they be coveted by the very governments you have chosen to support. Eventually they will nationalize your work. Of course you will be well rewarded but your company will have to start all over with in new locations to keep moving ahead. Victory will come to those most able to merge the private and public demands. You may be the mogul that creates the Orient Express but eventually all of your hard work will become property of the people.
In Orient Express, players create passenger routes or some of the most famous railroads of Europe. When Regional Company routes are scored, they are removed from the board as those routes have been nationalized. The game is very flexible allowing players to choose what regions to build in and which ones to connect.[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2921339_t.jpg]• Djumble
is a party game from designer Nicolas Bourgoin
and publishers Cocktail Games
and Asmodee
that has a ridiculously simple concept that translates perfectly into memorable and bizarre experiences, which is something of a Cocktail Games trademark. Here's the overview:
In Djumble, players reveal cards from the deck that have descriptions such as "green", "floats", or "weighs more than 1 kg", then everyone races around the house — or wherever they're playing — to find something that fits as many of these categories as possible, then they argue about which things fit best in order to score points.
To see the game in action, check out the demo video
that Tric Trac recorded of Djumble
being played inside an Ikea.
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2431638_t.jpg]• Osprey Games
has been an interesting company to watch since its entry into the non-wargame market with Peer Sylvester
in 2015 as you have no idea what to expect next. It has a decades-old, yet never before published game about stealthy submarines
, a couple attempting to share memories that might be eaten
, a more authentically Norse-looking game about racing ravens
, a competition for Marie Antoinette's leftover cakes
, and now a two-player design from Günter Cornett
titled Agamemnon
that's due out in August 2016 at the same time as the aforementioned Let Them Eat Cake
:
None can defy the will of the gods but the gods themselves. Driven by the bloodlust of their king, the Greeks have arrived at the shores of Troy. Some seek power, some seek revenge, while still others seek the great moment in battle that will define their place in history.
Agamemnon is a fast-paced strategy board game in which two players take on the roles of ancient Greek gods during the Trojan War. By tactically deploying warriors to where they're needed across the board, each player may influence the final outcome of the battles famously detailed in Homer's ''Iliad''. Some areas will be decided by the strength of the warriors, others by sheer weight of numbers, and some by the inspiration your heroes provide.[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2896365_t.jpg]
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New Game Round-up: Zombicide Creators Welcome Massive Darkness, Alderac Revisits Valley of the Kings, and Die ate Me Gets Meta
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/526…-creators-welcome-massive
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[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1165600_t.png]• Zombicide
publishers Cool Mini Or Not
and Guillotine Games
have announced a new title by the designers of that game — Raphaël Guiton
, and Nicolas Raoult
— a dungeon crawl RPG titled Massive Darkness
that will hit Kickstarter in mid-2017. Here's an overview of the game from the publishers:
Massive Darkness brings the classic fantasy RPG experience to modern board gaming, with an action-packed campaign chock full of gorgeous miniatures and a streamlined system that keeps the focus on the heroes' actions, with no need for a game master to control the enemies.
Using the popular Zombicide system as a starting point, Massive Darkness adds all the richness of a dungeon crawl RPG. Pick your hero, choose a class, decide on which skills to spend your XP, and get loot by searching the dungeon or killing special enemies that can use the equipment against you! Face a multitude of different enemy types, coming in all shapes and sizes, whose behavior is resolved automatically...or you can try to sneak around enemies by taking advantage of dark areas of the map.
Players begin their adventure in Massive Darkness by picking a Hero – each with two special starting skills – and pair them with a Class of their choosing. Depending on the combination, another skill can be unlocked, giving players a wide range of choices and play styles. In Massive Darkness, the created Heroes go on Quests, killing monsters, collecting loot, and gaining XP. Players spend their XP to unlock new Skills, growing more powerful as the Quest progresses.
Throughout the game, players encounter different monsters, including Minions, Agents, Roaming Monsters, and Bosses. A unique mechanism of the game is the Guardian. Any of the monster types have a chance of spawning as a Guardian, meaning it will use a random piece of equipment in the fight against Heroes. However, if players are able to overcome this difficult encounter, they will acquire that piece of loot![Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2957948_t.jpg]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic503156_t.jpg]• We recorded a bunch of game overviews with Alderac Entertainment Group
at the 2016 GAMA Trade Show ( Mystic Vale
, the return of Guildhall
, etc.), but the publisher has still more coming in 2016, including Ryan Miller
's dice-rolling, hero-recruiting Fantahzee
in August 2016 and Valley of the Kings: Last Rites
, the third iteration of Tom Cleaver
's deck-building card game Valley of the Kings
, which introduces the various citizens and roles of people in the ancient Egyptian kingdom.
• In early March 2016, Greater Than Games announced
the winners of its "_________: The _________ Game" contest, with the two winners being published under the Dice Hate Me Games
brand, along with a third in-house design. The winners are:
— Time Management: The Time Management Game
from Nathaniel Levan
: In this quick-playing, tile-laying game that serves as its own expansion, players are workers at the Office of Time Management, managing the space-time continuum. Their goal is to add temporal workers to the work force and arrange them in such a way to ensure the safety of the continuum and to save time — and save time!
— Trick-Taking: The Trick-Taking Game
from Tovarich Pizann
and Bob West
: The world's greatest magicians have been assembled to establish who is the best illusionist of all time — but as with all great magic, there is much sleight-of-hand afoot, and the magicians will use cunning and great mentalist powers to steal each others' tricks!
— Traitor Mechanic: The Traitor Mechanic Game
from Christopher Badell
and Peter C. Hayward
: Players are automobile mechanics, all working together to fix cars. However, one of them has been hired by a rival auto-shop to undermine their efforts and make this auto-shop go bankrupt. You must work together, fix the cars, and attempt to reveal just which one of you is the...traitor mechanic.
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Links: Delivery Troubles, Narrative Games, and Animals on Stage
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/488…arrative-games-and-animal
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2507368_t.jpg]• Designer Gil Hova
of Formal Ferret Games offers advice
to first-time publishers — well, all publishers really — on the costs and trouble spots involved with shipping your games to backers of your Kickstarter project. An excerpt:
The plan was to ship a few cases of the games to SFC for Asia/Australia/New Zealand fulfillment, and put the rest on the boat to go directly to the Amazon Fulfillment Center (FC). Additionally, there were two cases of promotional cards (blank Drug Cards) that were supposed to have been sent directly to me.
I didn't think this was a complex shipping plan. I now know it is. The plant put everything on the boat: games for U.S. backers, games for Asian backers, and my two cases of blank Drug Cards. As a result, any game going to backers in Asia had to circle the planet; they had to go from Asia to the U.S., and then to the UK, and then back to Asia.
In the future, for any shipping plan more complex than "put it all on the boat", I will request that the plant not ship anything until they confirm the shipping plan with me. That will hopefully prevent this sort of issue from recurring.• Old news from the inbox: Joshua Kosman at San Francisco Chronicle
with 2015's best board games for that paper's annual holiday buying guide. Which games get the "jumpy man" this year? Mysterium
, Elysium
, Mogul
, Trambahn
, and Isle of Skye
.
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2617634_t.png]• In The Wall Street Journal
, Christopher Chabris delivers
"The Inside Story on Narrative Games", highlighting what separates Pandemic Legacy
and T.I.M.E Stories
from other games:
The legacy and narrative formats violate two familiar premises of most games: The rules never change, and you can play as many times as you want. Traditionally, a game is defined by its rules. If you don't let pawns turn into queens, you aren't playing chess, and if you make captures optional, you aren't playing checkers. The success of Pandemic Legacy and T.I.M.E. Stories shows that this rule itself was made to be broken.
• In The Seattle Times
, an article by Tracey Lien is headlined
"Artificial intelligence has mastered board games; what's the next test?" One answer: different types of games, namely those with incomplete information. From the article:
"The game of two-player-limit Texas Hold 'em poker has almost been solved," said [Tuomas Sandholm, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies artificial intelligence], who described "solving" a game as finding the optimal way of playing it. "In the larger game of two-player no-limit Texas Hold 'em poker, we're right at the cusp of it. We currently have the world's best computer program, but we are still not better than the very best dozen or so humans."
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2607545_t.jpg]• Carlo A. Rossi's Zoowaboo
from Pegasus Spiele was featured on the German television show "Das Spiel beginnt!" in March 2016. In the game, animal cards are revealed one at a time after players have been presented with a raft. As long as everyone thinks that the animals can fit on the raft, another animal card is revealed. As soon as someone votes "No", then all those who voted "Yes" have a limited amount of time to make those animals fit.
On the show, kids competed against adults in eleven games, with one of them being a giant-sized version of Zoowaboo
.
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Crowdfunding Round-up: An April Backer and His Money Are Soon Parted
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/527…-backer-and-his-money-are
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2951242_t.jpg]• At the Tokyo Game Market in 2015, one of the biggest hits was Yusuke Sato's TimeBomb
, a hidden-role game with terrorists trying to sabotage a SWAT team's attempts to defuse a bomb. In the intervening months, many folks have bemoaned the fact that it's not readily available. Indie Boards & Cards
recently announced that it acquired English rights to the game, now called Don't Mess with Cthulhu
. The retheme was meant to sanitize the game for U.S. audiences, but perhaps limits its reach; disarming bombs is a box-office staple, but the Great Old Ones have yet to spread far beyond geek culture. ( KS link
)
• Pyramid solitaire now has a thematic cousin in Sans Alliés
(or, if your French is poor like mine, just "Sansa", like the Game of Thrones
character) from Past Go Gaming
, the publishing imprint of designer Geoffrey Greer. As the title implies, this is for one player only, an armchair general bent grim-browed over a table, planning a campaign to strike at the heart of a genericized enemy nation using ground, air, and sea attacks. The simple graphic design and top-down perspective are clever nods to the stylistic approach of grand-strategy wargames. ( KS link
)
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2729904_t.jpg]• The Great Art Controversy of the past six months revolves around the new "Emperor's Edition" of Colosseum
, an older design from Wolfgang Kramer and Marcus Lübke that's been out of print for years — due in part to sluggish sales and another part due to a rights issue over the original illustrations. Tasty Minstrel Games
, in its quest to bring a bunch of older games back to the market, has picked this one up and given it a new look in keeping with the rest of its catalog (prompting the aforementioned GAC). ( KS link
)
• The sheer mass of terrible attempts at party games that make their way to the KS platform is a bit of an in-joke amongst our veteran readers, so it's always a breath of fresh air to see a game like Monikers
pop up amid the dreck. This time, creators Alex Hague and Justin Vickers are back to fund the Something Something
expansion, which adds eleventy-one more cards. As with all the best party games, the cards are the canvas, and the players are the painters. ( KS link
)
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2913950_t.jpg]• Hey, you guys! Three decades later, 1980s pop culture nostalgia is running as strong as it ever was. Matt Riddle and Ben Pinchback continue their tour de force through the land of acid-washed jeans and big hair, teaming up with Albino Dragon
to make The Goonies: Adventure Card Game
, the first co-op from the duo. (Disclosure: I was hired to edit the rulebook for this game.) The game throws thematic flavor at you, but its mechanical skeleton stands on its own, the same way that Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! generates a chuckle from the title but is actually a solid pop-punk outfit. ( KS link
)
• Carebears, look away, because Kharnage
is a game of savagery. Humans, orcs, dwarves, goblins, and pigs — all scrabbling in the mire. This title, from Devil Pig Games
and a pair of designers who go only by Yann and Clem, holds the distinction of being the only game I'm aware of that has "breaking the table" as an actual victory condition. Ostensibly, this is just a brutal game of king-of-the-hill, but its real value may be as a fiery crucible to test the mettle of (what you thought were) your strongest friendships. ( KS link
)
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2925556_t.jpg]• Stockpile
, the debut title from Nauvoo Games
and designers Brett Sobol and Seth Van Orden, raised a modest $28K on KS back in November 2014, but went on to receive critical acclaim as one of the more accessible stock-market simulations in recent memory, so it's no surprise that the first expansion, Continuing Corruption
, has already raised more funds than the base game did. The expansion contains four modules that can be played together or separately by all you wolves of Wall Street. ( KS link
)
• The token microgame in this round-up, Sub Rosa: Spies for Hire
, is no token inclusion at all, but I wanted to make the pun because it's a game with five cards and 28 tokens. (Please clap.) Designer Robin David is sporting that dreaded "First Created" moniker, but he has previously published games via print-on-demand sites, so this isn't his first rodeo. Microgames usually involve bluffing and bidding, and Sub Rosa
is no exception, with most of the game happening above the table. ( KS link
)
• The folks at Dice Hate Me Games
enjoy the meta element of creating games with themes to match their mechanisms — literally. Thus was birthed its recent design contest
and, eventually, the "Meta Games II" KS project featuring three games: Traitor Mechanic: The Traitor Mechanic Game
(Christopher Badell and Peter C. Hayward), Time Management: The Time Management Game
(Nat Levan), and Trick-Taking: The Trick-Taking Game
(Tovarich Pizann and Bob West). Given the jokey tone of the endeavor, launching on April 1 was a logical move. ( KS link
)
• We often hear about movies stuck in development hell ( The Dark Tower
, anyone?), but not usually board games. However, Dr. Gordon Hamilton's Santorini
has been waiting more than three decades to see proper publication. Pure strategy games like this one are rare these days; perhaps that's why Roxley Games
saw fit to make this its third release. The game now sports a Greek mythology veneer — beautifully rendered in cutesy glory by illustration team Mr. Cuddington — to go along with the pantheon of special powers. ( KS link
)
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Editor's note: Please don't post links to other Kickstarter projects in the comments section. Write to me via the email address in the header, and I'll consider them for inclusion in a future crowdfunding round-up. Thanks! —WEM -
New Game Round-up: Roll the Dice in La Granja: No Siesta, Prepare to Flick Up Tomahawks, and Rattle, Battle on an Angry Ocean
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/526…la-granja-no-siesta-prepa
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1013640_t.jpg]• On Brettspiel News
, Daniel Krause has posted
an overview of Matthias Cramer
's revised version of Glen More
following test games at Ratinger Spieletagen (a weekend gaming event) in March 2016. Krause notes that the design is still being developed, with the main change being a switch from three rounds of play with scoring at the end of each round to the inclusion of character tiles that trigger a scoring when acquired; in addition to this predetermined scoring, the player who takes the tile can choose whether to score chieftains, whisky, or tiles.
• Christoph Post of Brettspielbox
also posted about Ratinger Spieletagen, and in addition to talking about "Glen More 2" (which is not the final name), he highlighted
from Andreas Odendahl
, which will be coming out from ADC Blackfire Entertainment
and Stronghold Games
. Here's an overview of that game from the designer:
In La Granja: No Siesta, a standalone dice game following up the boardgame La Granja, players need to collect resources to cross them off on their scoring sheet in order to get the most victory points. They can hire helpers to use their special effects. They build a barn to store goods and sometimes they need to have a little time off and have a siesta!
The dice game singles out the dice mechanism from the board game and transfers it into a much lighter game. Every round the players roll the dice and draft them until everybody has at least three dice to score.
Once a player completes the siesta track, the game comes to an end. Whoever collected resources in the most effective way wins![Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2502709_t.jpg]• In a mid-March 2016 post
, I covered some of the forthcoming items from Portal Games
, including something for Ignacy Trzewiczek
's Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot
. Well, turns out that European distributor ADC Blackfire Entertainment lists
a Gen Con 2016 release date for something titled Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot: Scenario Pack – Angry Ocean
. Portal Games has declined to share any info about this item right now.
has announced a second expansion for Gaëtan Beaujannot
, with Flick'em Up!: Red Rock Tomahawk
scheduled to debut at Gen Con 2016. Here's an overview of this expansion, followed by a teaser video:
The infamous Cooper clan has begun taking over small villages. Those villages, however, belong to the Native Americans who are armed with bows and tomahawks and ready to defend their land in five exciting scenarios — but they best be careful around the Cooper clan's new weapon: the relentless Gatling gun...
Youtube Video -
New Game Round-up: Sharks, Wonders, Juggalos, and the Start of a New Season for Baseball Highlights: 2045
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/527…ders-juggalos-and-start-n
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2958527_t.png]• Everyone always talks about this game or that one jumping the shark, but what are you going to do when the sharks start flying through the air, hunh? Try to jump them then, and they'll tear your stomach out!
Why would the sharks be in midair, you ask? Due to all the tornadoes swarming around, duh! Thankfully you can stay safely inside, and experience all of these terrible things from afar thanks to Sharknado: The Board Game!
, a cooperative design based on the Sharknado
movie franchise on the Syfy channel that features multiple scenarios and everything you'd expect based on this game's origins, including chainsaws, bombs, loss of limbs, and (of course) plenty of hungry sharks.
This Eric Cesare
and Anthony Rando
design from Devious Devices
is due to hit Kickstarter in Q2 2016 ahead of a release in late 2016.
editor/developer Paul Grogan notes
that an expansion for Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization
with alternative leaders and wonders that substitute for cards in the base game is in the works and will likely be shown at UK Games Expo in June 2016 — assuming that development has finished by then.
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2935928_t.jpg]• Into the Echoside
from designers Robert Bruce
and Louis Simpson
and publisher Psychopathic Records
"is a Juggalo version of a deck building game where players delve into the deepest levels of the Nethervoid, gain allies from some of the most notable characters in the Juggalo universe, and fight creatures of infinite evil to aid them in their quest to halt the evil that threatens to consume the mortal realm!" Juggalos, for those who don't know, are fans of the musical group Insane Clown Posse, which has been performing since 1989, and Into the Echoside
is scheduled to debut on July 20, 2016 at the annual Gathering of the Juggalos.
• Mayfair Games has noted that as of April 1, 2016 "Asmodee North America will also be handling all customer service for component issues and rules questions" related to the Catan
game line, even though Mayfair will "continue to facilitate events and sales of Catan
during the 2016 convention season".
has announced Baseball Highlights: 2045
tournament kits for 2016 that include a Single Player Play Mat
as a grand prize and a Double Player Play Mat
as part of the kit that stores can use to organize the games. Both of these items are available for purchase separately ($25 and $50 respectively), and EGG also plans to eight new starter teams for Baseball Highlights: 2045
: teams 17-24, representing Canada, UK, Pan Asia, the Caribbean Basin, and other locations.
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New Game Round-up: Details on Star Trek: Ascendancy, and the Return of Zendo (Maybe)
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/528…ar-trek-ascendancy-and-re
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2963697_t.jpg]• Gale Force Nine
has finally released more information about Star Trek: Ascendancy
, a design from Aaron Dill
and Sean Sweigart
for which we previously had only the briefest of overview videos
recorded at BGG.CON 2015. Here's what we now know:
Boldly go where no one has gone before. In Star Trek: Ascendancy — a board game of exploration, expansion and conflict between the United Federation of Planets, the Klingon Empire, and the Romulan Star Empire — you control the great civilizations of the Galaxy, striking out from your home worlds to expand your influence and grow your civilization. Will you journey for peace and exploration, or will you travel the path of conquest and exploitation? Command starships, establish space lanes, construct starbases, and bring other systems under your banner. With more than 200 plastic miniatures and 30 star systems representing some of the Star Trek galaxy's most notable planets and locations, Star Trek: Ascendancy puts the fate of the galaxy in your hands.
The great unknown lies before you; with every turn is a new adventure as your ships explore new space systems, encounter new life forms and new civilizations, make wondrous discoveries, and face challenging obstacles, all drawn from the vast fifty year history of Star Trek. Will you brave the hazards of Rura Penthe to harvest vital resources, race to develop Sherman's Planet before your rivals stake their claim, or explore they mysteries of the Mutara Nebula on an ever-growing, adaptive map of the galaxy. With an infinite combination of planets and interstellar phenomena, no two games of Star Trek: Ascendancy will ever play the same!GF9 plans to release Star Trek: Ascendancy
in Q3 2016, with two expansion sets — Cardassian Union
and Ferengi Alliance
— due out before the end of 2016. GF9 notes that it plans to post new information about the game each week on its website
.
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[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic192910_t.jpg]• In mid-March 2016, I posted
an overview of Imperial Settlers: 3 Is a Magic Number
— the next mini-expansion for Ignacy Trzewiczek's Imperial Settlers
, which includes new cards for all five factions — and now Portal Games
has announced a May 25, 2016 worldwide release date for this $16 item.
• In a press release announcing a new demo program for brick-and-mortar game stores, Stronghold Games
teased three additional releases forthcoming in 2016, one with the unhelpful name "To be announced" while the other two are Kraftwagen: V6 Edition
and The Fog of War
. Asked for details, Stronghold's Stephen Buonocore promised information sometime later in April 2016.
• In its Kickstarter for Pyramid Arcade
notes that if the KS reaches $100,000 in support, it will start work on "a follow-up project called Zendo Arcade
for 2017". Kory Heath's Zendo
is not included in Pyramid Arcade
as that game requires many full stashes of pyramids in a narrow range of colors in order to work well. From the project description: "This number covers the total cost of development and printing of the first 5,000 Pyramid Arcade
sets. Bringing in this amount both ensures that we have the cash available to immediately start working on Zendo Arcade
and convinces us that there is enough market interest to go forward with this project."
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New Game Round-up: Pizza in Naples, Pictures in Codenames, Broadsides in Merchants & Marauders, and Multilingual Maids in Tanto Cuore
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/527…es-pictures-codenames-bro
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2960325_t.jpg]• In mid-March 2016, I mentioned an upcoming title in Quined Games
' Master Print Series — Papà Paolo
by designer Fabrice Vandenbogaerde
— but knew nothing about the design beyond those bare facts. Now Quined has filled in some of the details:
Papà Paolo brings you to the beautiful city of Naples, birthplace of one of the world's favorite dishes: pizza.
In Papà Paolo, 2 to 4 players compete to deliver the most pizzas to the hungry customers of Naples. To do this, you must outsmart your rivals by being a clever investor, bidding on the right city tiles, and creating your own little district of Naples.
Over the course of five game rounds, players first have to plan their actions carefully, choosing whether they want to invest in new pizzerias, make express deliveries, get sponsored by the bank, or decide to expand their district. Once all players have used up their action tokens, players get rewarded by receiving Lira, which they can then use in a bidding phase to determine how many deliveries you can make, and how many pizzas you can deliver. Once you deliver pizzas to your hungry customers, they reward you by boosting your abilities, making each action more powerful as the game progresses.[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2963496_t.png]
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[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2599086_t.jpg]• Z-Man Games
has announced
a Gen Con 2016 debut for Merchants & Marauders: Broadsides
from Josh Cappel
that bears this brief description: "Set in the Merchants & Marauders
universe, Broadsides
is a standalone game in which the two opposing players need to carefully choose between defending their ship and unloading everything they've got on the enemy."
• As many have anticipated, Z-Man Games will release Matthias Cramer
's Dynasties: Heirate & Herrsche
in English. No word on a release date at this point.
noted in its April 5, 2016 newsletter that it's acquired the rights to both Iori Tsukinami's area-control, trick-taking game Joraku
from Moaideas Game Design
and Jesse Li's Ponzi Scheme
from Homosapiens Lab
.
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1751753_t.jpg]• Japanime Games
plans to use Kickstarter to produce versions of the deck-building game Tanto Cuore
and its standalone expansions ( Expanding the House
and Oktoberfest
) in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and any other language in which it can gain the financial support of at least 250 backers.
• Dale Yu, editor at Opinionated Gamers
, has posted a pic
of one of the many prototypes that will show up at The Gathering of Friends, an annual invite-only convention run by designer Alan R. Moon. The convention started simply as a way for friends to play together, but it's evolved over the years into a platform for designers to pitch to publishers and publishers to showcase upcoming games, such as Vlaada Chvátil
's Codenames Pictures
from Czech Games Edition
.
I got a glimpse of this design at Spielwarenmesse 2016, but it was still in rough form, so I have nothing to say about it beyond my continued admiration at the malleability of Chvátil's Codenames
. The design is a delightfully interactive 5x5 shell that can be — and has been — filled with almost everything that people can imagine, and I'm curious to see what twists have been brought to the game in this iteration.
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Image: Dale Yu -
Crowdfunding Round-up: Pyramid-Wielding Dictators Raid the Chthonic Rails, Bound for the South Pole
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/528…d-wielding-dictators-raid
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2746707_t.png]• At NY Toy Fair 2016 in February, I ran into designer Andrew Looney
, who was practically glowing while talking about Pyramid Arcade
, a collection of 22 pyramid-based games created over the past two decades. Looney views this collection as the culmination of his design career, the thing he wants to be known for a century down the road when we're all collecting dust and our progeny can't stop fiddling with their neckjacks when playing tabletop games.
I caught up with Looney again at GAMA Trade Show 2016, and we caught his enthusiasm on video ahead of the Looney Labs
launch of the Pyramid Arcade
Kickstarter, the first in the company's history and something they've undertaken because this project is bigger than anything it's released in the past. ( KS link
).
Youtube Video [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2949101_t.jpg]• Action Phase Games
has been riding Kickstarter like a Wild West superstar, jumping from one project to the next with nary a break in between. Its latest project is a monster compared to the string of small box releases before it, with Aeon's End
being a co-op deck-builder from Kevin Riley in which players must defend the forgotten underground city of Gravehold. ( KS link
)
• The Thunder Alley: Crew Chief Expansion
from Richard Launius adds many new options (crew chief cards, star drivers, season play) to Jeff and Carla Horger's Thunder Alley
, and it's being released by the Horger's Nothing Now Games
, with permission from original publisher GMT Games. ( KS link
)
• Just as the obscure Japanese release TimeBomb
transformed to Don't Mess with Cthulhu
, the equally obscure Japanese release Terrible Monster
from Shun and Studio GG has transformed to, um, Terrible Monster
. Okay, the name hasn't changed in this tiny two-player battle game from Sweet Lemon Publishing
, but the art has, with the cute line drawings being replaced with an indie U.S. comic style. ( KS link
)
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2967413_t.jpg]• Soda Pop Miniatures
and Ninja Division
are working together on Rail Raiders Infinite
, a sci-fi western board game from David Freeman in which players try to loot a train that unsurprisingly for a SPM release features chibi-style art and miniatures. I'm not sure where infinity enters the picture except perhaps in the optimism expressed over the possible number of backers. ( KS link
)
• The Vampire, the Elf and the Cthulhu
from Luca Ricci and Giochix.it
fulfills the Cthulhu portion of this c.f. post, but in this game players deal with the Great Old One and other fantasy elements in an abstract way as they represent writers who through card play are trying to complete a novel. ( KS link
)
• Lovecraft's creations also pop up in NecronomiCards
, Andy Hunt's self-published card game that has players putting runes into sets in order to cast summon spells and unleash special effects upon an entirely suspecting tableful of opponents. ( KS link
)
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2913319_t.jpg]• Pleasant Company Games
has adopted an understandably harsh look for Snowblind
, a dice-based press-your-luck and risk management game from Simon McGregor, Simmy Peerutin, and Rob van Zyl that has players competing to get their expedition to the South Pole first. ( KS link
)
• A race of a different sort takes place in Revenge of the Dictators
from Black Box Adventures
and designers Damoiseaux, Latten, and Manzhelevska, with the player-dictators racing across the U.S. to reach Washington DC first. They need to cooperate along the way to disarm the country's nuclear facilities (and thereby protect their homelands), but dictators don't have the best reputation for working well with others. ( KS link
)
from designers Aaron Kluck and Jon Mietling and publisher Portal Dragon
features transparent crew cards that combine with role cards to create different combinations of powers that players then use to create and upgrade airships. ( KS link
)
• Designer Kris Gould of Wattsalpoag Games
has a new set of five expansions — hotel cards, guest markers, jumbo jets, and more — for his 2008 title Jet Set
in Jet Set: Jumbo Jets – Expansion Set 2
. ( KS link
)
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2960146_t.png]• Corné van Moorsel's Fit the Word!
from his own company Cwali
is a different take on the "fill in the blank" gameplay seen in Cards Against Humanity
and its many spinoffs. In this game, each player receives their own sentence, secretly chooses a word/phrase card to fill the blank, then mixes up those cards with everyone else's before trying to guess who has created which combinations. ( KS link
)
• In Robin David's Sub Rosa: Spies for Hire
from Uncanny Cardboard
, players bid for control of the spies in question or use their bid tokens to activate the powers of those spies, which might mix up those aforementioned bids. ( KS link
)
• Thrashing Dice: Assassin Edition
from Tailor Games
is a revised version of Biela and Matusik's Thrash'n Roll
from 2015, with this version now supporting both solitaire play and band battles with up to five players. ( Spieleschmiede link
)
• I'm not sure what to make of Rodger Deering's Dungeon Crusade - Book I: Genesis of Evil
other than to say it looks like the work of someone who has been focused on nothing else for the past decade. ( KS link
)
Editor's note: Please don't post links to other Kickstarter projects in the comments section. Write to me via the email address in the header, and I'll consider them for inclusion in a future crowdfunding round-up. Thanks! —WEM -
New Game Round-up: Duelling on Level 99, Getting Lost in R'lyeh, and Busting Yet More Ghosts
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/529…evel-99-getting-lost-rlye
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2939109_t.png]• U.S. publisher Level 99 Games
is beefing up its two-player Duelist Line in late 2016/early 2017 with the release of the Duelist Library, a collection of five new two-player-only titles. Four of these games will be available individually, while the collection includes a bonus fifth game as well as "a package of additional expansion cards that tie the various games together", according to the publisher.
Three of the titles have been announced to date, with one of them being Professor Treasure's Secret Sky Castle
from Jason D. Kingsley, a "a competitive puzzle game in which you and your opponent race to find keys, unlock treasure chests, and collect priceless treasures from around the world and history".
Ballistic Reignfrom Michael
and Lisa Eskue
is set in Level 99's World of Indines, home to BattleCON
, Argent
, and more. Here's an overview of the setting and gameplay:
War has come to the World of Indines. As the Mercenary King Gerard Matranga makes his bid to become the absolute ruler of Relecour, the fearful barons lock themselves away in fortresses of ancient stone. Mercenaries from across the world take to the field of battle, waging a proxy war on behalf of their opulent masters.
Take control of one of the Mercenary Companies of Indines in Ballistic Reign and put your mastery of battlefield strategy to the test! Build great siege engines, cast powerful war magic, and erect impenetrable fortresses on the field of battle. Use your workers carefully to balance between maintaining your forces and manning the units and structures you build. Invest your time in spell research, economic development, defense, and offense by working together and against other mercenary companies and capturing neutral locations in your campaign. Only the shrewdest tactician will be able to conquer their foe and bring peace to Indines once more!
Play as ten different Mercenary companies from the World of Indines universe, each with their own weapons, spells, and leader! Recruit from over seventy different units and strongholds to build your forces![Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2971634_t.jpg]
expands upon the metalevel gaming in Level 99's Millennium Blades
:
For centuries, the heroes of the world have used the power of Millennium Blades trading cards to protect the world from evil. The most powerful weapons in their arsenal were Fusion Cards – cards that combined the incredible powers hidden away within the game, bringing out their true potential. With the world in chaos once more, a new champion must master Card Fusion in order to defend earth!
Using your collection of trading cards and mystical Fusion Gems in Card Fusion Chaos, you combine cards together to create the most unbalanced, overpowered cards you can imagine. Clash with your rival to uncover shards of the Master Fusion Gem. The first player who can acquire enough shards to assemble the Master Gem will be declared the new champion of earth!
Card Fusion Chaos includes more than eighty already-overpowered trading cards that you can combine into more than 350,000 unique fusion combinations![Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2969891_t.jpg]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2896407_t.jpg]• In June 2016, Atlas Games
will release Lost in R'lyeh
, a card game from Kedric Winks
in which the last player with cards still in hand loses the game. Here's an overview of gameplay:
Each turn choose to play either event cards and horror cards. Play the largest card sets you can to unlock ever-mightier powers. When the time is right, transition from playing cards from your hand to eliminating your array of escape cards. What's more, decide each turn whether picking up the whole stack will help you win, even though you're ultimately trying to get rid of cards.
• While Uwe Rosenberg's A Feast for Odin
will be released in Germany in September or October 2016, Frank Heeren from Feuerland Spiele
that the game will be out in English from Z-Man Games
ahead of the this: "They are aiming for Origins Game Fair, but the plan is tight, so it might be Gen Con in the end for the English release." He adds, "It will be our biggest game so far and we are very ex
Codeited about it. With 4.8 inches in depth it tops even Caverna!"• Designer Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games has dropped word of the next project he'll announce: a "legacy Euro" game titled Charterstone, with an overview of that game to be revealed by the end of April 2016. (The link jumps to a spot mid-video when Stegmaier diverges from his previous topic to reveal tiny drops of information.)[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2970534_t.jpg]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2971312_t.png]• Geek & Sundry has posted a list of the promos
available at participating stores on International TableTop Day on April 30, 2016, so if you want to increase the percentage of items in your collection that bear the likenesses of Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton, you now know what's coming.
launched a Kickstarter for Ghostbusters: The Board Game II
on Monday, April 11 — with this standalone game featuring three new scenarios, KS-backer exclusive glow-in-the-dark pink dice, a whole mess of ghost and Ghostbuster miniatures, and more — and the project has already topped its $250K goal after only two hours. Craziness, man. (KS link)
Curiously, original Ghostbuster Ernie Hudson reprises his role as Winston Zeddemore in the teaser video on the KS project. One person has even backed the KS at the $2,500 level, which allows you to be a ghostbuster, receive a backstory by the writer of the Ghostbusters
comic, and have a miniature of yourself. (And now the KS has passed $300K while I was busy doing something else aside from this post. The power of nostalgia combined with a 24-hour early bird discount!)
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New Game Round-up: Setting Up Defense Grid, Reviving Arcane Academy, and Expanding Public Service
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/529…fense-grid-reviving-arcan
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2969781_t.png]• Forged by Geeks is a new U.S. publisher that plans to release Defense Grid: The Board Game
, a board game version of the Defense Grid
video game franchise, in early 2017. Here's an overview of the gameplay:
In the cooperative deck-building game Defense Grid: The Board Game, players must face off against waves and waves of aliens as they try to #ProtectTheCores. How you construct your deck for each mission is just as important as where you place your towers and which ones you choose to power each round.
Defense Grid: The Board Game includes at least ten missions and six AI characters from which to choose. Over the course of the game, players unlock new AI improvements, AI abilities, towers, and cards that they can use to go for the Gold Medal on each mission as they fight to #ProtectTheCores.[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2971623_t.png]• In August 2013, I wrote about
, a design from Eric M. Lang
and Kevin Wilson
that U.S. publisher Th3rd World Studios
planned for release in 2014, but then never delivered. That title has now been picked up
by IDW Games
for co-publication in August 2016 under the title Arcane Academy
. Here's an overview of the setting:
Challenge rival students to become the best in class in Arcane Academy, an innovative board game of tile-linking, wizardry for 2-4 players that pits young spellcasters against one another in a duel for honor and prestige. Forge potent magic items and wield wickedly powerful elemental energies to outthink and outmaneuver your opponents in this elegantly simple and quick-to-learn board game that will appeal to families and experienced players alike!
Arcane Academy is based on the critically acclaimed, all-ages comic series Finding Gossamyr, which is set in a fantasy world in which math is the language of magic.[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2840020_t.jpg]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2817129_t.jpg]• On Opinionated Gamers
, editor Dale Yu has presented
an overview of a Quadropolis
mini-expansion in the works from François Gandon and Days of Wonder
, with the expansion currently consisting of twenty public service buildings, each with a special scoring condition (e.g. +1 VP per park in your city) in addition to the regular scoring.
plans to release Benjamin Schwer's Yeti
in the U.S. in September 2016, following the game's debut in Europe in mid-March 2016 from Pegasus Spiele.
• For its English-language version of Yusuke Sato's TimeBomb
replaced the terrorist vs. SWAT setting with one of investigators trying to keep cultists from waking Cthulhu. For the French-language version coming from IELLO
, the game will be titled Timebomb: Sherlock vs. Moriarty
. Notes
IELLO's Matthieu Bonin:
The challenge for us was to keep the bomb disarming theme (which is perfect for this game, I think), but without the unfortunate link to tragic recent (or future) events.
For this reason we needed a strong theme, something that people can identify immediately as being totally fictional, and Sherlock achieves that perfectly: everyone knows Moriarty is evil, and trying to bomb Big Ben is something quite likely from him. But no one can accuse him of being anything [other] than the great British crime lord we all know...
There was no easy theme for this game, but Sherlock became the obvious one.[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2962971_t.jpg]
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New Game Round-up: Dark Souls on Your Table, and Diamonds in Your Treasure Chest
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/530…s-your-table-and-diamonds
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2973872_t.png]• Apparently I need to start paying attention to video games as more and more of them are making their way from the consoles to the dining room table, as with the news that Steamforged Games
will release a Dark Souls
board game, with the project hitting Kickstarter on April 19, 2016. Here's a game overview from the publisher:
The Dark Souls board game is a brutally hard exploration miniatures game for 1-4 players. Prepare to die.
The game features a "fast set-up, long reveal" mechanism that gets you into the game quickly and builds the location as you explore. The sense of danger is palpable as you discover new locations and the monsters that inhabit these dark places. The core combat mechanism and enemy behavior system forces deep strategic play and clever management of stamina to survive.
Dark Souls includes numerous boss and mini-boss encounters — including one against the Dragon Slayer Ornstein and Executioner Smough — and utilizes an innovative behavior mechanism so that no two encounters are ever the same, thus giving the game near infinite replayability., Steamforged stressed that it has "worked closely with the team at BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment" and that "with the entirety of the Dark Souls
universe available to us" the core game will include enemies and bosses from both older games and Dark Souls III
.
Core game? Miniatures? Kickstarter? Popular video game series? And, lo, did the cash rain down upon them, burying them up to their happy necks with gilded treasure...
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Teaser image of possible miniatures [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2558560_t.jpg]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2776693_t.png]• North Star Games
has signed a deal with Funforge
for a French version of the Evolution
base game, with this version due out before the end of 2016 in all French-speaking countries.
• Uli Blennemann from Spielworxx
that an upgrade kit for Stefan Risthaus's Arkwright
, presumably to match the changes in Capstone
's second edition of the game, has been printed and should be available before the end of April 2016.
• Blennemann also states that ADC Blackfire
is producing a small extension for Martin Schlegel's just released West of Africa
that will be available "shortly".
• Jinkies! Designer Bruno Faidutti has shared
the cover of the new edition of Diamant
, co-designed with Alan R. Moon, that IELLO
will release in Europe in July 2016. As noted in a write-up on Tric Trac
, this version includes both the pawns and game board of the original Diamant
as well as the artifact cards and the should-I-stay-or-should-I-go cards of Incan Gold
. (Yes, we should probably merge the game listings of these two titles, but I don't know whether we will.)
For those who haven't played, Diamant
is a great press-your-luck game that handles up to eight players, with everyone exploring a cave together to pocket whatever gems they can. However, everyone must split the haul evenly, so as you progress in each cave, you hope that other explorers will be unnerved by the danger signals around you and leave the cave, thereby allowing you to grab more gems for yourself. The risk, however, is that danger actually arrives, in which case you lose everything you would have gained from that cave.
I've played my copy of Diamant
more than eighty times and recently sleeved the cards as they were starting to stick after so much use. It will be good to have a decent replacement for it!
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New Game Round-up: Revisiting Vanuatu, Joining La Cosa Nostra, and Obtaining Happiness from Tramways
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/530…g-vanuatu-joining-la-cosa
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2924300_t.jpg]• In March 2016, I noted
that Quined Games
planned to release a second edition of Alain Epron
's Vanuatu
at Spiel 2016 as part of its Master Print Series, with this edition including both the Rising Waters
and Governor
expansions.
Ahead of a Kickstarter project for this new edition that will launch in late April 2016, Quined has issued the following press release about Epron's failed attempts to deliver a new printing of the game in 2012:
A few years ago, we decided to publish Vanuatu. We fell in love with the game and decided to breathe new life into this forgotten gem. We decided to give the game a whole new makeover and we decided also to include the expansion The Rising Waters. We were aware at the time that there had been problems with the initial crowdfunding campaign, and although we had nothing to do with this campaign, we have now decided – together with designer Alain Epron – to give the unfortunate backers who never caught their copy a generous compensation.
Every backer of the original campaign that did NOT receive their game (or the expansion) will receive their copy (or copies) for FREE. Yes, because we are nice that way. How will this work? Well, we kindly ask each one of the backers to send an e-mail to kickstarter@quined.nl with your full name, address, phone number, and a copy of the original e-mail you received during the original Ulule/Indiegogo campaign, clearly detailing the precise quantities of the copies that you ordered originally. The mail address mentioned in that original e-mail should be the one you send the e-mail from as proof. One word of warning though: Since this is a gift to you previous backers, one thing we do ask of you though is to cover the shipping costs. We hope you understand this. We will also arrange for a pick-up option at the following fairs: Spiel 2016 (DE), Spellenspektakel 2016 (NL), and Spel 2016 (BE). So shoot us an e-mail before 31-08-2016 and we will be in touch.[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2971870_t.jpg]• Quined Games plans to follow up that KS with a separate crowdfunding campaign in June 2016 for an English-language edition of Johannes Sich
, which he had self-published in 2014 through Hard Boiled Games
. This release will be title #17 in Quined's Master Print Series. Here's an overview of this design:
In La Cosa Nostra, you take on the role of a mafia boss. In the beginning, you control a crew of gangsters and a couple of businesses. During the game, you will hire new gangsters to do the dirty work and collect your money. Investments lead to new lines of business or monopoly positions: take control of the drug dealing, moneylending or prostitution. Bribe politicians and cops, invest your money in night clubs, casinos or the waste management industry. To get the big deals, you need to cooperate with the other families — but never rely on those "friendships". The others will take the first opportunity to stab you in the back, so you better do it first...
Each player controls gangster cards that serve to either gain money or attack other players. Actions are planned secretly, placed face down, then played in turn. Often you need certain business cards to succeed. If you don't own them yourself, you can negotiate deals with the other players. The players bargain, spy, threaten, and deceive each other.
Each of the four rounds brings new action cards into the game, and the number of gangsters increases. Thus, the possibilities for actions become more diverse, the jobs more profitable, and the attacks more powerful. Co-operation gets more attractive and treason alluring because at the end of the day money is the only thing that counts.[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2974065_t.jpg]• To continue the trend this post of covering games prior to their appearance on Kickstarter, here's an overview of Alban Viard
's Tramways
, which will appear from his own AVStudioGames
in October 2016 in time for Spiel. Yes, this whole thing is also secretly a Spiel 2016 preview post. It's already getting to be that time!
Tramways, which will appear in Kickstarter in May 2016, is being incorporated into the world that Viard has been building one game at a time over the past few years:
The 1920s: Small City was founded just a few years ago and is still a fledgling town at this stage. Nonetheless, the Town Center is prosperous, and the managers of the weird CliniC have been duly incarcerated for years by this point. Now it is time to reach a new step: Building a new map transit.
In Tramways, you take the role of one of the managers of the local CliniC who were fired last month when it was discovered that you had acquired wealth on the backs of patients and their poor health. You are now at the head of a team of engineers, ready to build the best and most effective network possible for Small City. Your aim is to find the best places between buildings and citizens so that they can use your networks (and not those of your opponents, who are always ready to buy the most interesting development areas). Be assured that a happy citizen who is able to move where and when he wants will thank the best transport companies. There is nothing that satisfies a chief manager more than seeing citizens happy...
The game is divided into six rounds, each of which is divided into two halves:
• During the first half of a round, players compete to acquire the best development cards to create their most efficient deck. An original auction phase also determines turn order — and being the first player increases your stress level.
• During the second half, they play a train game, using their deck to try to build a great network between the different buildings of Small City. They try to move passengers without stressing them during the transit, in the end obtaining happiness points, which is the aim of the game.
The more that players use the symbols on their cards, the more actions they can do, but they also increase their stress level at the same time, which leads to negative victory points...[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2906588_t.jpg]
Prototype components -
New Game Round-up: Works in Progress — Zombies Around the Dark Moon in 80 Days
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/531…gress-zombies-around-dark
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic226824_t.jpg]• Twilight Creations
has announced
that it plans to release a Zombies!!! Ultimate Collector Set
in 2016, with this item being a giant carrying case that can hold all fifteen Zombies!!!
sets released (to date).
The case — shown below as a work in progress — will be available on its own or jam-packed with all fifteen Zombies!!!
titles. The publisher notes in its announcement, "We originally wanted to do this as a Kickstarter, but to save you all (the customer) money we will be offering this through retailers as well as [via] direct sales. Hopefully this will be available by Halloween — if all goes well."
, Twilight Creations revealed that Midnight Syndicate will produce a "dark instrumental album, which will feature new and previously recorded material blended with movie-style sound design" to serve as a soundtrack to accompany the playing of Zombies!!!
. From the press release:
"We've been talking about doing this project for a long time," said Edward Douglas. "With Zombies!!! celebrating its 15th anniversary in 2016, now seemed like the perfect time. We're working closely with the Twilight team to create something that really enhances their players' gaming experience."
"Musically, it will be interesting to work in a modern setting," added Gavin Goszka. "Most of our albums have been set in the Victorian and early 20th century, so this will definitely be something different and exciting for us and our fans."Twilight Creations anticipates releasing this soundtrack in September 2016, and it will be included in both the empty and game-filled versions of the Zombies!!! Ultimate Collector Set
. An Ultimate Upgrade Kit
is also in the works for Zombies!!!
, with details of this item to be announced at a later date.
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[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2320134_t.jpg]• Continuing the theme this post of "works in progress", in this blurry pic from The Gathering of Friends, Stronghold Games
owner Stephen Buonocore "revealed" the Dark Moon
expansion Shadow Corporation
. Whether this is something under development, under contract, or under consideration for possible publication in the future is, like the picture, unclear.
[twitter=719350747364765696] [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1519443_t.jpg]• In early 2014, I wrote
that French publisher Purple Brain Creations
was publishing a new version of Gary Kim's Royal Turtle
as part of its "Tales & Games" series.
Now the name of that familiar fable is coming up once again as PBC plans to launch a new series of "storybook games" — one aimed at an older audience than "Tales & Games" — in 2016 with a new version of David Parlett
, with this design being revamped to have players live the story of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days
. As noted on Tric Trac
is handling the graphic design of this game (and the subsequent series), and he's taking inspiration from the look of Pierre-Jules Hetzel editions of the Verne novels released in the mid-1800s. The design is still a work in progress, but I practically fell out of my chair when I saw the pics below that PBC's Benoît Forget posted
on Facebook. So gorgeous!
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Then Forget followed up by posting this teaser
of what might come in the future, stressing that David Parlett is not the author of every game in this series — simply a placeholder for this work in progress by Vuarchex:
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Crowdfunding Round-up: One If By Land, Two If By Sea, Three If By Kickstarter
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/532…-land-two-if-sea-three-if
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2493452_t.jpg]• It's an accepted fact that lolcats are the pillars of web culture, and designer Aza Chen is building a brand on that reality, having signed three of his cat-themed games for wider distribution with three different publishers: First it was Cat Tower
with IDW Games
, then Kitty Paw
, and now Cat Box
with Grail Games
. Unlike the previous two, Cat Box
has no dexterity element, but is instead a card game of pattern building and secret goals. ( KS link
)
• David V. H. Peters has designed several network-building games, and two of those — namely, Paris Connection
and the SdJ-recommended Samarkand: Routes to Riches
(co-designed with Harry Wu) — are available now in Queen Games
' fourth KS project of this calendar year. In the former, you're building train lines through France and manipulating stock, while in the latter you're marrying into important families and building trade networks to ensure the wealth of your newfound relatives. ( KS link
)
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2938270_t.jpg]• "Bringing your A game" takes on a whole new meaning in connection with Ave Roma
, designed by Attila Szőgyi and published by A-games
. The game is not for squares; it takes the Roman road less traveled by incorporating a circular game board. If you enjoy worker placement or games about the political intrigue of ancient Rome (of which I'm a fan, if only for the opportunity such games afford to drop choice Ben-Hur
quotes during game night), then don your toga and step right this way. ( KS link
)
• Tabletop miniatures has its fair share of dieselpunk settings, but board games? Not so much. Voodoo Games
is attempting to fill that niche with André Schillo's Xibalba
. The nuance of the thematic backdrop is a bit confusing, but the main gist is an alternate-1940s when an alien race visited Earth and sparked a global scramble. The precious alien resource (this time our MacGuffin is called "paragon") must be had at all costs! ( KS link
)
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2945727_t.jpg]• Given the initial success of the MOBA-style brawler Rum & Bones
from Cool Mini Or Not
, we knew season 2 was coming sooner or later. Designer Michael Shinall and the CMON team are back with a new standalone set, Rum & Bones: Second Tide
. The base box introduces more new factions to keep filling up R&B
's oceans. Second Tide
leans more into the game's MOBA heritage than before, with heroes now having upgradeable abilities. For owners of the original, there's an upgrade pack to bring all previous heroes on board with the new system. ( KS link
)
• Block wargame enthusiasts may be familiar with VentoNuovo Games
, a European publisher with five previously published titles. The man behind the company, Emanuele Santandrea, has decided to take his newest design, Moscow '41
, the KS route. It simulates one of the most important military campaigns of WWII; the Russians playing goal-line defense, the Germans in Moscow-or-bust mode. The genre is unfamiliar territory for me, so I don't know if this ground is well-trod, but even if you're thinking "been there, done that", did you get a T-shirt? Because this campaign has T-shirts. ( KS link
)
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2976515_t.png]• I'm sure it's no accident that the KS launch of Bottom of the 9th: Clubhouse Expansion
coincided with the arrival of spring baseball. Well played, Dice Hate Me Games
. The battle of wits between pitcher and batter introduced in Bottom of the 9th
by designers Darrell Louder and Mike Mullins is getting new content. The expansion brings new players, equipment cards, tournament rules, a chunky new box, and a revised manual. So long as it doesn't change my favorite part of the game: crushing a moon shot off the rusty arm of Riddle! ( KS link
)
• If you were to sit down and come up with a name for a publisher that would instantly convey classic ameritrash, Vorpal Chainsword Games
would be a likely contender. Designers Joshua Carlson and Cory Scanlan have created Ravingspire
, which sets the players as adventurers wandering around a mad wizard's tower — and I do mean wandering because it employs the dreaded roll-and-move. The game certainly carries an aura of the '90s (see the KS video for further proof) but also seems aware of modern game design conventions. ( KS link
)
• The award for best title in this round-up goes to Shenanigans: The Musical
. The game from designer Gregory Carslaw and publisher The People's Orchestra
takes the belabored social deduction genre and gives it a smart new coat of paint. You're members of an orchestra trying to root out the person who is screwing up the number with their poor instrumentation. In a unique twist, the publisher, a registered charity, will dump any profits generated by the project into its initiatives to make orchestra accessible to more people. ( KS link
)
• Innovation is coming! Innovation is coming! Gamers are always on the lookout for something fresh and new, and Kickstarter is still a place where the unorthodox can thrive. The single most innovative game product design I have seen in years is P. D. Warne's use of lanterns and shadows to create a virtual game board. He's calling it the Larklamp magic lantern game system, and it functions as a sort of bamboo-and-paper game "console", with interchangeable side panels that can be swapped out like game cartridges. Snyxtrap
is the first release for the system, but Warne has plans for other games down the line. ( KS link
)
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Editor's note: Please don't post links to other Kickstarter projects in the comments section. Write to me via the email address in the header, and I'll consider them for inclusion in a future crowdfunding round-up. Thanks! —WEM -
Links: Nominees for the 2016 Origins Awards, Mensa Select for 2016, and Ernest and Peterson's Game Golem
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/531…ns-awards-mensa-select-20
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2979816_t.jpg]• On April 15, 2016, the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design announced the nominees for the 2016 Origins Awards
, the winners of which will be revealed at the 2016 Origins Game Fair
in Columbus, Ohio in June. Attendees at that convention can vote on the nominees as well to determine a fan favorite in each category. The nominees are:
—Board Games: Champions of Midgard
, Orléans
, and Star Wars: Imperial Assault
—Card Games: 7 Wonders: Duel
, Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn
, and Welcome to the Dungeon
—Collectible Games: DC Comics Dice Masters: War of Light
, and Yugi's Legendary Decks
(in case you're as baffled about that as I am, it's three TCG-exclusive sets released to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Yu-Gi-Oh!
)
—Family Games: Codenames
, Co-Mix
, Dohdles!
, Fuse
, and Me Want Cookies!
—Miniatures Games: Frostgrave
, and Wrath of Kings
• The Mensa Select winners of 2016
have been determined by the attendees of the annual Mensa Mind Games event, which was held April 16-17, 2016 in Arlington, Texas. The winners are:
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2979777_t.jpg]
Image: American Mensa [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1376840_t.jpg]• The U.S. branch of IELLO
has announced a new release policy
in which preorders of their games by brick-and-mortar stores will be shipped to those stores two weeks before online retailers and mass market stores receive their copies. This policy starts with its release of Sea of Clouds
, and Kenjin
, although due to shipping delays those titles will have an April 21, 2016 street date at B&M stores, only one week prior to their release at other locations.
• Television station KARE in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota shared the "board games are booming" trend with a story of a British family
that traveled to the Fantasy Flight Games Center in Roseville, Minnesota instead of Walt Disney World. (The TV host goofed, though, as the games are designed, not manufactured, in that part of the world. Anyone who shows up at the Games Center expected to see X-Wings rolling off the production line like Krispy Kreme donuts will be extremely disappointed.)
• Designers James Ernest
and Paul Peterson
showed up on Twitch channel Hyper RPG!
's show "Grab Bag" to take parts from Tsuro
, Loot
, and Mage Knight Board Game
, then design a new game with them. What did they come up with? A co-op game called Mr. Dragon Bro
!
Youtube Video -
New Game Round-up: Shooting Zombies on Route 666, and Bringing Kaleidos to the U.S.
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/522…ombies-route-666-and-brin
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2981902_t.png]• I first wrote about
's Route 666
in April 2015, and now here we are again one year later with the game getting an official release date from publisher Space Cowboys
of Q3 2016, with the game also being available at Gen Con 2016 in August. Here's a more detailed overview of the game compared to what we knew before:
In the fast-paced and morbidly kitschy game Route 666, you and your fellow players embark on a road trip going south from Chicago along America's famous Route 66 — now infested by zombies. As you travel though a deck of adventure cards rife with dangers, you battle zombie hordes, drive abandoned school buses, scavenge for gas and bullets, and explore a darkened, tainted American countryside full of shambling undead, haunted carnivals, and plumes of toxic gas. Your goal is to stay alive until you reach the safe, sandy beaches of the California coast.
Three different stages of adventure cards create an experience of increasing difficulty and ensure that each playthrough is unique. Each round begins with an auction that determines both player order and which cards you will encounter. Since the resources used for bidding are the same as those used to battle the oncoming zombie hordes, your survival depends as much on your resource management as it does upon winning those bidding wars. The player who either accumulates the most points or survives the longest wins.
Zombies of all types await, with cannibals, anti-personnel mines and radioactive wastes also being among the hazards awaiting the players. Who will survive the zombie onslaught?A press release announcing the game included this quote about the design from Wallace: "My objective was to create an adventure style game with connectivity between actions and encounters, where there are unforeseen consequences to what might seem to be rather mundane events. I am becoming increasingly drawn to designing games that have a stronger 'narrative'. I think it is an interesting challenge to create ways to tell a story within a game but in a way that the game can be played repeatedly. I also have to congratulate Space Cowboys on amazing development work. They have created a game that looks as if it is part of the world that the story is set in."
It might be hard to tell from the thumbnail image at top, but Route 666
's box is made to look like a repurposed family game from decades past. Space Cowboys' distributor, Asmodee, doesn't show the back cover in its press material, but the mock-up I saw at Spielwarenmesse really sold this look. If only they can distress each game prior to shipping it. (The comics anthology Raw
did this back in 1985
, and I still recall the impact this had on my comics-bagging self.)
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[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2937396_t.jpg]• Etienne Espreman's Bruxelles 1893
will return to print again in the U.S. in Q3 2016, according to Asmodee
, which distributes titles from Pearl Games
in North America.
• Designer Gil Hova
has announced plans for Bad Medicine: Second Opinion
, an expansion for Bad Medicine
that will add 100-150 new cards and "a new mechanism that can add 'surprise' cards to your pitch".
• German publisher AMIGO Spiel
has announced
that the recently published Wizard: Jubiläumsedition
is being pulled from the market as the card backs show "strong signs of wear on the card backs after a short time". If you have such a copy, write to hotline@amigo-spiele.de for a replacement.
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2981516_t.png]• Cool Mini Or Not
has signed a deal with Spartaco Albertarelli
to release his party game Kaleidos
in the U.S. in Q3 2016, more than twenty years after the game debuted in Germany and was recommended by the Spiel des Jahres jury.
How do you play Kaleidos
? Either individually or in teams, players all look at the same image and has sixty seconds to write down as many things they see in the imagine as possible that begin with a randomly chosen letter. Once time is up, players reveal their answers, scoring 1 point if someone else named the same thing and 3 points for an answer uniquely their own. After playing on and scoring a predetermined number of images, whichever player or team has the highest score wins.
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Image from one of the Kaleidos expansions -
New Game Round-up: A Gathering of Games, Cathala's Archipelago, and Old Favorites in New Boxes
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/532…games-cathalas-archipelag
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2488794_t.png]• I've already posted about a few of the prototypes that were played at The Gathering of Friends convention held in mid-April 2016: Codenames Pictures
( here
), a Quadropolis
mini-expansion ( here
), and Dark Moon: Shadow Corporation
( here
).
Sean Jacquemain of The Daily Worker Placement
has covered
a handful of his favorite prototypes from the Gathering, including a 7 Wonders: Duel
expansion that "deals with ancient Gods and how you can win their favour", Bézier Games' Colony
(which I previewed in March 2016
), Pretzel Games' Junk Art
(which will debut at Gen Con 2016 after a sneak peek at Origins), Adrenaline
(a first-person shooter from Czech Games Edition
that was included in my 2015 Gathering round-up
, and Bruno Cathala
's Yamataï
.
This last game — Yamataï
, which possibly isn't the final title — is tentatively a 2017 release from Days of Wonder, something Cathala relayed to me when I had the chance to play the prototype at Gen Con 2015. (Yes, Cathala and Days of Wonder both spend a lot
of time honing and testing and retesting!) Here's a short description from Jacquemain:
Yamataï has players exploring an archipelago, picking up resources, and constructing buildings and temples.
Actions are determined by selecting tiles that come with a supply of boats and a special ability and they determine your turn order for the next round. The stronger the tile you select, the later you'll go in turn order. As you sail throughout the islands, you must decide between picking up resources or constructing buildings. Resources can help you in a number of different ways, but as you take them you free up space for other players to lay claim to the land.
You also have the ability to hire characters with unique powers associated with them. Some are only worth points, but others will give you an advantage during play.This write-up of Yamataï
on a French gamer's blog includes more pics of the prototype, with the pics showing the beginning and ending of a game. The cards at the bottom of the game board are for selecting turn order and determining your action for the round, the cards are top are the characters you can hire, and the cards at right are the buildings that can be constructed to any player.
This design already felt pretty polished at Gen Con 2015 — although the wheels did come off at one point as we couldn't seem to end the game — so I'm curious to see what's changed in the months since then.
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[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic903244_t.jpg]• Designer Ignacy Trzewiczek of Portal Games
has confirmed
that a rethemed edition of Prêt-à-Porter
is due out in 2017.
• Along the same lines, Thomas Ewert — co-designer of Container
along with Franz-Benno Delonge — has posted an update
on the status of the game: "The contract for Container
has been expired for several years already, and all rights have reverted back to their respective designers/heirs. We are discussing the possibility of a reprint of the game with a new publisher and will keep you all informed if there is any news."
• On April 7, 2016, I mentioned
a couple of items that Stronghold Games
had teased when announcing its demo program: Kraftwagen: V6 Edition
and The Fog of War
. Now Stronghold has teased a few more items: an upgrade kit for the first edition of Stronghold
by Ignacy Trzewiczek (him again!), as well as an Undead
expansion for the second edition of Stronghold
, which Portal Games and Stronghold jointly released at Spiel 2015 and in 2016. New editions for all!
-
Widow's Walk Brings More Betrayal to the House on the Hill
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/533…-more-betrayal-house-hill
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2984192_t.png] Avalon Hill
delivered a shock to many gamers on April 20, 2016 by announcing
, a huge expansion for Bruce Glassco
's Betrayal at House on the Hill
that will hit stores on October 14, 2016. Here's an overview of the expansion from the publisher:
The house on the hill has a wicked reputation. Those who dare to darken its door often leave steeped in madness and despair — if they leave at all.
Now the horror reaches new heights with Widow's Walk, the first-ever expansion for the critically acclaimed board game Betrayal at House on the Hill. The house is expanded with the addition of twenty new rooms, including the roof, a previously unexplored floor. Also in its halls you will find new monsters, items, omens, events, and fifty brand-new haunts, penned by lead developer Mike Selinker's all-star cast of contributors from the world of gaming and entertainment. In Widow's Walk, terror and panic are taken to a whole new level.
Enter if you dare. Exit if you can...Get it? Widow's Walk
includes a roof for the house and "terror and panic are taken to a whole new level"? Good multi-level wordplay there; perhaps Selinker wrote that text himself...
The Avalon Hill announcement lists more than forty people who are credited with contributing to the haunts included in Widow's Walk
, and the list includes names that you'd expect to see from the base game (Glassco, Selinker, Rob Daviau), names of other board and card game designers (e.g., Paul Peterson, Justin Gary, Liz Spain, Christopher Badell, Jonathan Gilmour, Elisa Teague), and names that you probably wouldn't have expected (e.g., Adventure Time
's Pendleton Ward, Feminist Frequency
's Anita Sarkeesian, Cards Against Humanity
's Max Temkin, Depression Quest
's Zoë Quinn, The Doubleclicks' Angela Webber).
As for the compatibility of Widow's Walk
with the existing editions of Betrayal at House on the Hill
— both the original from 2004 and the 2010 second edition — Michael Robles, Community Manager at developer Lone Shark Games, has noted on Reddit
that the expansion "is compatible with all editions".
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Links: Tabletop Season 4, Gaming in the Bookstore, and More Hasbro-Inspired Crowdfunding
Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/532…gaming-bookstore-and-more
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1317492_t.jpg]• Wil Wheaton has announced
the game line-up for the fourth season of Tabletop, an online series showing games being played by Wheaton and others. The titles being featured include Eldritch Horror
, and Star Trek: Five-Year Mission
. I'd expect a bit of role-playing in that last one, assuming they use The Next Generation
role cards, which seems like a must. Filming begins before the end of April, and Wheaton expects to start publishing episodes in June or July 2016.
• As I noted
in March 2016, U.S. bookstore chain Barnes & Noble held "Casual Game Gatherings" in 56 B&N stores each Thursday night during March 2016 to introduce one "light strategy game" to newcomers and established gamers. Now B&N has announced
that it will hold a "Tabletop Gaming Meet Up" at all 640 of its stores in the U.S. on Saturday, April 30, starting at 4 p.m., with these events featuring the following five games: Machi Koro
, Munchkin
, Qwirkle
, and Ticket to Ride
. (April 30 is International TableTop Day
, so many brick and mortar game stores will be holding their own events that same day.)
The press release notes that "Participants will have the chance to play against each other to win prizes, including a Machi Koro
Diamine Promo Card Pack, a Qwirkle
Brainteaser Book, Superfight
Promo Card Sets, and more. Customers should contact their local store to find out the full list of prizes available." A further excerpt from the press release:
"Seeing our customers respond so positively to the game gatherings we hosted at select stores was not only rewarding, but it crystalized what we believed all along: customers in local communities are looking for an alternative evening out. For so many, Barnes & Noble is already a place to meet up, socialize and spend quality time together. Our Tabletop Gaming Meet Up is designed to do all that and more," said Kathleen Campisano, Vice President, Toys & Games at Barnes & Noble. "We will feature a unique array of games that celebrate collaboration, encourage strategic thinking and even provide a little healthy competition."
"The tabletop gaming industry has always had a wide appeal to Americans as a fun, engaging pastime, but we see Barnes & Noble's entry into events and gatherings as a game changer," said Andrew Lupp of the gaming industry organization, PSI. "Few retailers can offer a store environment that's already tailor-made for gaming. Barnes & Noble has always had a fantastically curated selection of games. Now they're creating the social experience and building new communities to bring these games to many more gamers around the country."For those who don't know, PSI helps game "manufacturers to optimize their presence in the mass market, book trade, and specialty retail channels", including Barnes & Noble.
• In 2015, Z-Man Games
hosted multiple "Pandemic Survival" events that culminated in a World Championship at Spiel 2015. For 2016, the publisher has helped organize Pandemic Survival tournaments in 25 countries — with these tournaments being listed on the Z-Man events page
— with the 2016 Pandemic Survival World Championship to be held in Barcelona, Spain in November 2016. The winning team can take a trip to any city that appears on the Pandemic
board. For those not in the know, here's an overview of Pandemic Survival:
Pandemic Survival is an extreme version of Pandemic in which teams of two players compete simultaneously with the same objective in mind: Be the first team to find all four cures or be the sole survivor at the end of the game. During this unique experience, each team faces the same starting situation: identical roles, infected cities, and the same player cards in the same order. Only your strategic choices will differentiate you and prove to be a winning or losing strategy! 12 teams maximum.
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1015189_t.jpg]
[Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2982735_t.jpg]• While Hasbro
reported strong sales and earnings for Q1 2016 — $831.2 million in revenues (up 16% from 2015) and $48.8 million in earnings (up 83% from 2015) — the games category stayed the course from the previous year. (HT: Dan Bray) From Seeking Alpha
:
Games category revenues declined 2% for the quarter to $231.1 million. Pie Face continued to be a strong contributor to growth, along with growth in Yahtzee and Duel Masters. Growth in these brands was more than offset by declines in other gaming brands for the quarter. The Games category was flat absent the impact of foreign exchange.
• Speaking of Hasbro, the company has launched its second crowdfunding-based game design competition, following on its first such campaign in 2015
which will lead to the publication of The Mr Toast Game
in 2016 (as detailed here
). This time Hasbro is searching for "face-to-face games" (as opposed to face-to-butt games?), and it's accepting submissions through the Hasbro Gaming Lab website
from designers in the U.S., the UK, Canada, France and Germany through May 15, 2016.
• Gift site Vat19
has posted the following educative missive, which prompts the question: Which other games might be enhanced by a showering of devil's blood?
Youtube Video
