• New Game Round-up: French Ticklers — Kanagawa, Hop!, The Inventors, Schotten Totten, and Welcome Back to the Dungeon

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/544…klers-kanagawa-hop-invent

    by W. Eric Martin I've run across a lot of teaser images and videos recently for games coming from French companies, so I thought I'd drop them in a single post to highlight all of this artistic goodness in one go and see whether any of them tickle your fancy.

    IELLO

    notes that Kanagawa

    — from Abyss

    designers Bruno Cathala

    and Charles Chevallier

    — is a game about ōkami that's scheduled to debut at Spiel 2016 in October. Beyond that, I've seen no other information on the game. The illustration is by Elk64, and I think she's a newcomer to games. Lots of beautiful illustrations to check out on her DeviantArt page

    if you want to see more!

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3018362_t.jpg]


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3030906_t.jpg]



    • I've already posted

    about the new edition of Reiner Knizia's Schotten Totten

    due out from IELLO in June 2016 in France and in Q3 2016 in the U.S., but here's a new card image from illustrator Djib, who offers this tagline: "One shot, one kilt".

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3031054_t.jpg]



    • Each week, someone from IELLO walks around the office with a video camera and records what everyone is doing, which often leads to teasers and previews for what's coming out in the future, as with this video that shows off Masato Uesugi

    and Antoine Bauza

    's Welcome Back to the Dungeon

    , a standalone sequel to Welcome to the Dungeon

    with four new characters — princess, ninja, minstrel and necromancer — that can also be mixed with that original game. The video — which is in French, mind you — shows off the new characters and monsters and gives you lots of symbols to interpret, should you so desire. (Start at the 1:10 to skip the info on Happy Cows

    — yes, cows, not pigs.)

    Youtube Video



    • Another Spiel 2016 release being teased is Hop!

    from Funforge

    , Ludovic Maublanc

    , and Marie Cardouat

    , with Cardouat also supplying the illustrations. Here's the summarized description for now: "In Hop!

    , you will travel the sky and cross the path of the legendary hippopocorns."

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3031040_t.jpg]



    Les Inventeurs

    ( The Inventors

    ) resembles designer Frédéric Henry

    's The Builders

    at first glance, but the description of what players do in this Bombyx

    /Multiverse release that's due out in October 2016 doesn't match that earlier game. An overview:

    In Les Inventeurs, you manage a team of four inventors from different eras (antiquity, the Middle Ages, etc.), taking advantage of their special skills to create the great inventions of history, improve their personal skills, and submit patents that will ideally make your team famous — although the other players might also benefit from your shared discoveries.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3031099_t.jpg]

  • New Game Round-up: Exploring Gaslands, Adding Corruption to Stockpile, and Hosting Another Festival in Kingsport

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/519…gaslands-adding-corruptio

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3002454_t.jpg]• From board game to card game — that's seemingly the trend these days, with the latest example of this being the announcement of the June 2016 release of Kingsport Festival: The Card Game

    from designer Gianluca Santopietro

    and publishers Giochi Uniti

    , Passport Game Studios

    , and Sir Chester Cobblepot

    . Here's an overview:

    In the unimaginable darkness of Kingsport, silent wanderers are called to a profane celebration. Their goal: to invoke unthinkable horrors! A dread terror that is not of this world or any other — but rather from the spaces between the stars — demands your submission. Meanwhile, unwary investigators vainly attempt to halt this appalling chapter in the dark history of Arkham.

    As the high priest of one of these shadowy cults in Kingsport Festival: The Card Game, you must dominate the city. You will invoke cosmic creatures and unholy gods to receive their "gifts", but you must take care to preserve your sanity and thwart the investigators who seek to stop you. This time, you are the bad guys. Why settle for the lesser evil?

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2833269_t.jpg]

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2925556_t.jpg]Osprey Publishing

    is currently developing Mike Hutchinson

    's Gaslands

    — "a game of post-apocalyptic vehicular mayhem" — for publication in 2017 and parties interested in playtesting are invited to sign up

    on the Gaslands

    website. The game in slightly more detail:

    In Gaslands, you field bikes, cars, trucks, big rigs, buggies, and buses as a post-apocalyptic racing team. You equip your vehicles with an array of weapons, then compete for money and prestige across a campaign that alternates between race events (for money and reputation) and wasteland scraps (for resources and the gas you need for the next race).

    Gaslands is unashamedly inspired by classic car combat games and is designed to work with kitbashed Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars.

    Nauvoo Games

    has announced a small expansion for Brett Sobol and Seth Van Orden's Stockpile

    titled Continuing Corruption

    , and as with many other expansions these days, this one consists of multiple modules that can be used independently or in any combination. New investors, bonds, commodities, and more await their inclusion in your pile.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2219440_t.jpg]• While cleaning house in the BGG News queue, I ran across an in-progress post from Phoebe Wild, and while I'd mostly covered the games she had mentioned in posts of my own (since our coordination skills are near nil), I realized that I still hadn't covered the following, so here's Phoebe's write-up:

    Publisher Harebrained Schemes

    has announced

    that the latest expansion for Golem Arcana

    — titled Durani: Champions of the Western Wind

    — has been made available for purchase earlier than expected on January 27, 2015. The publisher has also announced that this will be the final product released for the game, and that the app required to play the game will not be updated since the most recent version was created at the end of 2015. Here's an excerpt from the press release:

    We here at HBS are devastated that we can't continue to expand this ground-breaking game. We poured our hearts and souls, as well as millions of our dollars, into a landmark development in tabletop hybrid games. We're very proud of this game, with glowing reviews by everyone from Penny Arcade to Game Informer, and an Origins Award for Best Miniature Figure Rules. Unfortunately, sales have not recouped our extensive investment in software and manufacturing.

    The most recent code-update from the end of 2015 is the final state of the App, representing our best foot forward for supporting as many iOS and Android devices and operating systems as possible at that time. We recognize that there are still many minor bugs and sometimes unexpected behavior, and that future devices or OS updates may create additional bugs.

    Unfortunately this means that Golem Arcana

    is likely to be unplayable in the near future as the app becomes buggy or unusable on newer devices. If you like the game, it might be worth keeping your old device so that you can still play when you have the iPad 27.

    WEM adds: But wait! Turns out that app updates, at least small ones, are possible as on March 10, 2016 Harebrained Schemes' Brian Poel posted

    "a modest list of changes" for the Golem Arcana

    app. Adds Poel: "Once the dust settles, assuming everything goes smoothly, we'll begin to prioritize the next possible update (code or data) and we'll just keep chipping away at things as best we can."

  • Origins Game Fair 2016 Preview — Now Live!

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/546…air-2016-preview-now-live

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic984281_t.jpg]Given that BGG.CON Spring 2016 is wrapping up — and I plan to post a wrap-up of that experience in the near future — it's time to publish our Origins Game Fair 2016 Preview

    . Right now the preview is fairly small with only 35 items listed, but the Origins 2015 Preview

    grew to more than 150 titles before that convention opened, and I expect similar growth on the 2016 Preview in the two weeks prior to the opening of Origins 2016 on June 15.

    In case you missed my note from mid-May 2016

    , BGG will be at Origins for all five days of Origins, and the current plan is to livestream game demonstrations from 10:00 to 16:00 each day. We've scheduled time with some of the publishers who will be there, and I'm reaching out to others this coming week. I plan to publish our broadcast schedule on Monday, June 13 in order to give us enough time to finalize everything, although at this point we might just be playing games on camera during the final day.

    With that in mind, if you're a publisher or designer who will be selling or showing off new designs at Origins 2016, please contact me via the email address in the BGG News header and drop the info on these designs!

  • Giochi Uniti Offers Guilds and Murderers for Your Entertainment

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/537…s-and-murderers-your-ente

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2903744_t.png]• Everywhere I look, I keep coming across games that I feel I should know about, but which were announced by their publishers months ago and about which I know nothing. Perhaps this is simply the result of an ever-increasing number of games coming onto the marketplace. You cannot possibly keep track of everything coming out, much less know the rules or (heaven forbid) play the darned things. That said, I do what I can to keep up and before the game has been released sometime in 2016, I still have time to present an overview of Guilds

    from designer Christian Giove

    and publishers Giochi Uniti

    and Stratelibri

    :

    The bloody War of the Seven Kingdoms has been over for more than thirty years, and the kingdom of Anderis is experiencing a period of great expansion, thanks in part to its central position which has quickly transformed it into an important commercial crossroads. New roads have been built in the kingdom, with a new city founded at their meeting point which has grown so much that the King has decided to move the capital there and build a new castle.

    Numerous corporations of craftsmen were already present in the city, but now guilds are forming, which are larger and more wide-ranging, powerful and in competition with one another. With the goal of obtaining favor with the King, the guilds will gather together the most prestigious personages within them, not to mention those who can bring the largest influx of money or useful talent.

    What better place than the central square to find new members? For this reason, each guild places its tents in the central square every week, inviting the persons it considers most interesting to sign up by incentivizing them with precious gifts. This is certainly not a low-cost operation considering that it can cost many pieces of silver to put together the most convincing gift.

    At the same time, each guild must build its headquarters, spending large amounts of gold to enlarge it with a range of luxurious rooms suitable for its members; if this were not enough, the guilds must also take into account the King's current tastes on what is most important for a guild worthy of his approval.

    Will you manage to make your guild stand out so that it becomes the most important in the city? Which means will you be willing to use in Guilds to win the King's favor?

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2827079_t.png]• Another title from Giochi Uniti/Stratelibri that I probably should have covered earlier is Whitehall

    from designers Gabriele Mari

    and Gianluca Santopietro

    , with this title being a thematic sequel to their Letters from Whitechapel

    . Here's a short description:

    October 1888: During the construction of the Metropolitan Police headquarters near Whitehall, which would later be known as Scotland Yard, the remains of a body were found. In September, a severed arm had already been discovered in the muddy shore of the River Thames.

    There is another murderer roaming the streets of London in Whitehall, amusing himself by spreading the pieces of a poor woman around Whitehall, like some kind of macabre treasure hunt. The identity of this monster and his unfortunate victim are a mystery, the Whitehall Mystery.

  • Designer Diary: World's Fair 1893, or Everything Affects Everything Else

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/544…r-1893-or-everything-affe

    by J. Alex Kevern

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2721792_t.png]It's probably important to mention up front that World's Fair 1893

    started as something entirely different. The whole process from end to end, inception to initial production, was about two years. It all started with a simple concept I call "stickiness". The idea is that on your turn you're placing a piece somewhere to take what's there (like in, say, worker placement), but then the piece stays

    there to score for other things. I love tradeoffs in games, and this became an interesting way to make each choice have implications for several things. To me, the fun part of playing games is making those tough decisions, deciding what to pursue and what to sacrifice. I had first explored this mechanism in Gold West

    , but I wanted to create a game built around that concept as the starting point. I also won't claim I invented this mechanism either — if you haven't played the game Québec

    , it's absolutely wonderful, and I took a lot of inspiration from that design.

    Speaking on inspirations, the two biggest inspirations for the game were El Grande

    and Ra

    , two of my favorite games. If you've never played, El Grande

    is the definitive area majority game, with a wonderful tradeoff between placing more caballeros (read: cubes) on the board, activating more caballeros (so you can place them), and taking better/worse actions. Ra

    , on the other hand, is an auction game in which the winner of the auction will collect sets of tiles that score in different ways. Each player is collecting different things, so everyone evaluates a particular combination of tiles differently, which is what makes the auction interesting. I imagined a game that combined these mechanisms together — you're adding cubes to different areas trying to control them, all the while also collecting tiles that scored in different ways. This coalesced into the first prototype: a brown bag full of tiles with different symbols on them, and a hand-drawn board spanning four sheets of paper.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3031548_t.jpg]

    First "rapid prototype" of what would become World's Fair 1893



    From this prototype a few different mechanisms were established that form the core of the game and still form the basis of the final game today. Place a cube in an area to take all the tiles there (cards, in the final version, more on that later), then replace three tiles, starting with the region from which you took and proceeding clockwise. I made it three tiles (instead of two or four) because three felt like a good amount of tiles to pick up each turn, so if I wanted players to usually pick up three, I figured each time you should put out three. Sometimes game design is as easy as that; other times it's not.

    At this point, the game was more or less abstracted. When I'm exploring mechanisms, I'm always hesitant to weave in a theme too soon. I've always had the approach that I want to start with a game that creates interesting thoughts in players' heads, and doing that requires an unbounded decision space when it comes to changing the mechanisms within the game. Once I figure out how the "game" works, then comes the second step, which is coalescing it around a theme that fits, using that to refine secondary mechanisms, and tie everything together.

    The Prototype

    So as the concept slowly developed, it came time to find a theme and let the game coalesce around it. I had read a book called The Amber Room

    — don't bother as it's not that great; if you're going to read anything, read The Devil in the White City

    instead — and become interested in the amber trade, amber being the precious stone made from fossilized tree sap. As a fan of historical themes, I decided that the idea of players being amber merchants, collecting amber and other goods, and trying to control different key cities of the amber trade (Bern, Venice, etc.) would fit the game fairly well.

    In this prototype, each region had a different value for first and second generated by placing a randomized tile on the area. The game had five "goods", which scored only for set collection (collecting multiples of the same good scored more points) and were not linked to any specific area. All the actions that are in the game today were present, but the actions in an area were executed immediately when you placed there. The subtle change to have actions played in your subsequent turn came later, but I'll talk about it now because my memory is not so great. Playing actions on your next turn gave players more options. For example, in the game today, the Daniel Burnham card lets you place an additional supporter in the same area where you place your initial supporter. By allowing players to pick up the card on one turn and use it on their next, it could be used on any one of the five areas; you're not stuck waiting for the action to pop up on the specific area where you need it.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3031552_t.jpg]

    Prototype at Gen Con 2014



    I brought the prototype to Gen Con 2014 to play with trusted friends, including Adam McIver

    , who would end up doing the wonderful graphic design on the game. These playtests inspired a number of changes. I changed the game to a modular board and removed the tiles that increased the value of individual regions. In its place, the game had its first major breakthrough. (Let's call it Breakthrough #1

    .) I realized that the five goods in the game should correspond to the five areas you're trying to control. It made sense to link each of the goods to an area thematically and have each area be worth more if you had more of the associated good. It was a subtle change, but it resulted in each area having a different value to each of the players, which created interesting trade-offs in the game.

    I decided to submit the game to Randy Hoyt

    at Foxtrot Games

    . I knew ever since I had played a prototype of Lanterns

    at Gen Con that I wanted to work with them, and the game seemed like it would fit with the weight and style of game they were looking for. A few weeks later Randy emailed to inform me he'd like to sign the game. There's no better email than that. I was thrilled.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3031545_t.jpg]

    Prototype submitted to Foxtrot Games



    Intermission: The Theme

    Underlying all of the changes that are to come was a major thematic overhaul of the game. All along, we knew the game probably needed to be rethemed. We explored a number of different things, all of which worked okay — but the World's Fair theme was a revelation. Sometimes you just know, "This is it; this is the game".

    The Chicago World's Fair theme was both a better fit for the mechanisms and weight, and an infinitely more interesting and appealing theme that miraculously had not been explored in detail before in a game. Having lived in Chicago for over five years, I already had a fascination with it, so when Randy starting mentioning World's Fairs as a possible route in which we could go, the idea of focusing on the one from the city I loved so much only made sense. It helps it was the best World's Fair (completely objective and unbiased opinion).

    I really credit Randy for all of the incredible thematic details in the game. Though a lot of the development happened under the "amber" theme, for sake of ease of understanding, I've re-couched all of the terminology in the diary below to match the final game today. What were goods became exhibits, the amber in the game became the Midway tickets, and the actions became the influential figures of the fair. If you're interested in more of the thematic aspects, we discussed them in detail on a podcast

    of The League of Nonsensical Gamers

    .

    The Development

    This was just the beginning of the game's development, and we needed to figure out a way we could reasonably playtest with me in New York and Randy in Texas. Randy imported the files onto Roll20, an online platform that would allow us to playtest in our disparate locations. I love the future. We played regularly almost every Friday.

    The first thing that became apparent was that the player who collected the most exhibits would more often than not go on to win the game. The exhibits simply scored triangularly the more of a single type you collected. We also realized that we could probably do more than just reduce the number of points they're worth. After all, the more exhibits you collected, the more they were worth, so once you reached a certain point it made sense to just collect as many as possible — and if you weren't collecting a certain type of exhibits, there wasn't much incentive to start (with the exception of denying your opponent, which isn't all that fun), which meant you were better off just trying to earn points from controlling areas.

    Through lots of experimentation, we arrived at two huge breakthroughs. These would end up being two of the most mechanically important aspects of the game.

    Breakthrough #2

    : The exhibits must be approved in order to score. In other words, you needed to control the area that the exhibit was associated with in order to make it worth anything. This was critical because it integrated what were previously disparate strategic avenues: area majority and set collection. With this change, the set collection didn't mean anything if you didn't also spend energy on area majority, and the area majority wouldn't earn you much if you didn't also have exhibits to approve.

    Breakthrough #3

    : The exhibits should score for diverse

    sets. This rule is critical because of the one above. Because you must control areas to approve exhibits, and you must approve a diverse array of exhibits to score meaningful points, this means (does mental connecting of the dots) you must control different areas over the course of the game. I love this rule because it alleviates the problem of some area majority games in which you can accumulate an insurmountable lead in an area, then reap the benefits all game. The rule that you have to remove half of your supporters each turn helps with this, but even so, the game now makes you want to control different areas. The end of each round should feel like an accomplishment when you approve exhibits, but it also quickly changes your focus as you must re-evaluate which new areas you need to try to control next round. This (hopefully) keeps the game play from feeling repetitive, as the goals you're trying to accomplish continually evolve.

    Speaking of scoring rounds, the game always had three scoring rounds, but they weren't always triggered the same way. The Midway tickets were originally just a way to score points. Instead there were separate "trigger" tiles, twelve of them, that when taken would be placed on a track; once certain thresholds were reached, a scoring round would be triggered. This worked okay, but the scoring rounds were highly variable, in that some rounds would be extremely short and others very long. We needed a way to decrease the variance of trigger tiles.

    Enter Breakthrough #4

    . The Midway ticket cards are the triggers. It may not seem like a major change, but it had a twofold improvement on the game: First, it decreased the variance of the scoring rounds because there could be a ton more of them in the deck, and second, it gave the Midway ticket cards a more important role, mechanically and thematically. The Midway was what made money for the fair and was really the only part that was profitable. The Ferris wheel was the biggest attraction on the Midway and became the centerpiece of the fair, so it was fitting to make it also the centerpiece of the game.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3031551_t.jpg]

    Prototype at Gen Con 2015



    Okay, one last thing. You may have noticed the game was once tiles, and now it's cards. I originally designed World's Fair 1893

    as a tile-drafting game, mostly due to the inspiration of Ra

    . The game had a fixed number of tiles in the bag, which meant a fixed number of turns for each player. There were ten starting tiles and 108 in a draw bag. The first two rounds ended when players triggered them, but the third round ended when the tiles ran out. The timing of that third round felt quite different from the other two, flat and predictable by comparison.

    Randy and I brainstormed solutions, and he pushed to have us try a deck of cards, rather than tiles. The deck could be shuffled, and the game could continue until the third scoring round is triggered just like the other two rounds. This worked only because of Breakthroughs #2 and #4. Actions were already being discarded when used, but now exhibits could be approved and discarded (#2) and Midways could be cashed in and discarded (#4) at the end of each round, making a discard pile that could be reshuffled into a deck when the draw pile ran out. This was a subtle change from a gameplay standpoint, but it allowed a lot of flexibility in terms of the flow of the game. There's also a broader point about game design there. The idea to use a draw deck made sense only after a couple of other subtle changes were made to the rules. (Those rules didn't originally change anything about the components, just how they were treated during the game.) It was a reminder to constantly assess a developing game in its current state as new improvements can open the door to even more improvements that wouldn't have made sense prior to the previous improvement.

    That said, having a shuffled deck also provided a number of challenges. The timing of the reshuffle is critical. If the reshuffle happens too early before a scoring round, there can be a disproportionate number of action cards in the deck compared to Midways and exhibits. There were three variables we had to play with: the number of Ferris wheel spots in a scoring round (i.e., the length of the round), the size of the deck, and the number of Midway cards — and it had to work with two, three, and four players. It took a lot of math and a whole lot of testing, but we managed to figure it out, so (hopefully) everyone who plays the game can take it entirely for granted.

    And that's the long, short story of the development of World's Fair 1893

    .

    J. Alex Kevern

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3031547_t.jpg]

    Final production game in play



    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3031550_t.jpg]

  • New Game Round-up: Old Games Made New — Acquire, RoboRally, Order of the Gilded Compass & Ghostbusters: Protect the Barrier Game

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/546…made-new-acquire-roborall

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3038921_t.jpg]• In what might be seen as a perfect branding opportunity, Brian Yu

    's Ghost Fightin' Treasure Hunters

    — the 2014 Kinderspiel des Jahres winner that's finally due out in English from Mattel

    in July 2016 — will be released as Ghostbusters: Protect the Barrier Game

    . I believe that this latter item will be exclusive to the Target retail chain

    in the U.S., but I'm double-checking that detail.

    Ghostbusters: Protect the Barrier Game

    includes four ways to play: Basic Battle, Basic Battle with Rowan, Advanced Adventure, and Advanced Adventure with Rowan. Designer Yu tells me that Rowan is a special ghost figure included in this version that cannot be killed. When Rowan's card comes up in the deck, you draw the next card, then move it to that room. If that room becomes a haunting due to the number of ghosts in it, Rowan automatically moves to the next room.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3038922_t.jpg]


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1218804_t.jpg]

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3039007_t.jpg]Grey Fox Games

    plans to release a new edition of Jeffrey D. Allers

    and Bernd Eisenstein

    's Alea Iacta Est

    at Gen Con 2016 under the title Order of the Gilded Compass

    . (Note that the image at left shows only the logo for this new release.) Here's an overview of the setting for this re-design:

    Order of the Gilded Compass is a dice assignment game for 2-5 players. In this game, each player takes on the role of a treasure hunter seeking invitation to join the most prestigious of archaeological secret societies. Players scour the globe to unearth fantastic and valuable artifacts. By assigning their archaeologist dice to the right locations at the right time, players acquire treasure maps and specialists to follow them, dive for sunken treasure, acquire rare finds at the auction house, and even enlist the help of the Illuminati. The player who has the most treasure at the end of the game earns an invitation to The Order of the Gilded Compass and wins.

    Order of the Gilded Compass uses a variable set-up in order to create fresh and interesting game play experiences. Each game has five locations in play to which players may assign their dice for various kinds of treasures and bonuses, and the game includes nine different buildings to allow for many unique combinations.

    • I skipped ACD Games Day this year to attend BGG.CON Spring 2016, which meant that I missed out on seeing the new versions of Sid Sackson's Acquire

    and Richard Garfield's Robo Rally

    that Avalon Hill

    displayed at that trade show, but thankfully Josh Githens from Czech Games Edition passed along the following image to me:

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3039023_t.jpg]


    I posted some details about the new edition

    of Robo Rally

    on BGG News in March 2016, but this is the first that I've head about Acquire

    hitting the market again, so I've contacted Avalon Hill for details and will post again if I hear anything.

  • BGG.CON Spring 2016: Games Played — Guilds of London, Imhotep, Karuba, Sea of Clouds, Codenames: Pictures & Simon's Cat: Card Game

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/547…played-guilds-london-imho

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3037275_t.jpg]BGG.CON Spring 2016 isn't quite over as I write this, but since I'm at the DFW airport waiting for a flight home, the con is over in my eyes.

    For the first time in a long while, I mostly stuck to playing games at a convention instead of interviewing designers and publishers about their new releases, and this was a welcome change from my normal experience of being surrounded by games for days but playing not even a handful of titles — and with the titles that I have played being embargoed since they haven't yet be announced. Instead of trying to dip into every new thing at BGG.CON Spring, I reverted to my con habits of old, that being to play only a few new games but to play them multiple times to try to internalize the nature of the gameplay and build on what I learned with each play. Sometimes I even succeeded at that goal!

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2958283_t.png]• Tony Boydell's Guilds of London

    was the biggest success for my tastes, with my summarization of the gameplay being "card-comboing area control". In order to move your liverymen into guilds and elevate them to the position of guildmaster, you employ cards that can be used three ways:

    1. Discard any card to add one of your liverymen to the guildhall.

    2. Discard a card to move one of your liverymen to a tile bearing the colored guild symbol on that card.

    3. Pay the costs on a card San Juan

    -style to take the action on the card.

    After everyone has played cards for the round, you resolve guild tiles that have enough tokens on them, granting rewards to those with the most and secondmost tokens on the tile, then placing one of the majority tokens on that tile as a master — with those masters being required in order to use some cards. Throughout the game, your hand of cards ebbs and flows as you put together combos for maximum impact, and everyone dances through the challenge of determining what to score when as turn order depends on your current score, with those at the back of the line acting last during a round in order to best punch those bullying frontrunners.

    I've played three times, but I still want/need to play Guilds

    with two players as that set-up features a fixed playing area instead of one that grows during the course of the game. Once I do, I can then feel comfortable squawking about the game on camera. Experience matters...


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040094_t.jpg]

    Early stages of a three-player game


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040095_t.jpg]

    Finished!


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040106_t.jpg]

    Four-player game; note how many more guilds have been mastered



    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3029488_t.jpg]• Phil Walker-Harding's Imhotep

    from KOSMOS was nominated for the 2016 Spiel des Jahres

    just prior to the opening of BGG.CON Spring.

    As SdJ jury chairman Tom Felber told me at the show, the 2016 nominee list was a bit unusual as six of the nine nominees were released in the latter half of 2015, which means that many people have already tried them out. Even so, the SdJ jury had brought three copies of all Spiel, Kennerspiel and Kinderspiel nominees to Dallas to make them immediately accessible to all — and this included Imhotep

    , which debuted in Europe in March 2016 and which won't be released in the U.S. until June 21. All three copies of Imhotep

    were occupied much of the show, but Thames & Kosmos had rushed me a review copy as well, which meant that I could still play despite this.

    After five plays with three or four players, my quick take on Imhotep

    is "meaner chicken Splendor

    " — not that the game plays anything like Splendor

    , mind you. Rather, like that earlier game, Imhotep

    features four micro-actions that don't seem like much when you view them individually. Once you interlace those actions with those of opponents, however, the competition heightens and you're rarely sure that you're doing the right thing, especially in the early game.

    In short, you take blocks from the quarry, load them on boats, then deliver the boats to ports that provide either different scoring opportunities or cards that give you (1) an action-plus on a subsequent turn, (2) an immediate play elsewhere, or (3) an endgame scoring bonus. The gameplay feels somewhat like a truncated Medina

    in that timing is everything; you want to stuff boats full of your blocks in order to maximize scoring at one location or another, but anyone can move any boat as long as it has enough blocks on it — which means that as soon as you load that triggering block, you might find yourself shunted somewhere useless.

    Yes, hurting you costs someone else an action, which might make them less inclined to do so, but they might also be protecting their own scoring opportunities in the same turn. Each round you try to suss out who might be a great hook-up partner for the round, but almost inevitably they disappoint you, leaving you to wait for the next round of boats in order to try, try again.


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    First game, first round


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040171_t.jpg]

    I like big blocks and I cannot lie


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040170_t.jpg]

    Trying the B-sides, which have different scoring conditions and more to think about


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040173_t.jpg]

    Victory via tiebreaker!



    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2727088_t.jpg]• I taught Rüdiger Dorn's Karuba

    , another of the 2016 SdJ nominees, to at least six different groups during BGG.CON Spring, and I played another four times myself. (I had already recorded an overview video of Karuba

    in Sept. 2015.)

    Karuba

    is a SweeTarts game, something you race through quickly before grabbing another and doing it again. For the most part, you focus solely on what you're doing as you lay down paths through the jungle in order to move colored explorers to color-coded temples. Only after suffering a few disappointments do you pay attention to the progress of others and try to keep pace with them in order to break the temple tape at the same time.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040174_t.jpg]



    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040176_t.jpg]• The final SdJ nominee at BGG.CON Spring was Vlaada Chvátil's Codenames

    , but since I've already played that game a ton, I instead indulged in Codenames: Pictures

    , which was present in prototype form courtesy of Joshua Githens from Czech Games Edition.

    Codenames: Pictures

    plays the same as Codenames

    , but with the cards showing images instead of words. Simple, yes? As in the earlier game, the spymaster gives their teammates a single word clue along with a number, then those teammates try to identify the spies on their team. You can now say any word you like, even something like "window" when the card in question clearly depicts a window! Such a clue isn't very helpful, after all, since you want your team to identify several cards each turn, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

    Convention goers disagreed on whether Pictures

    was harder or easier than Codenames

    , and I think such disagreements relate to temperament as much as they do experience. One fellow walked away as soon as he saw the image cards, for example, but after listening to us play, he admitted that using them might not be as impossible as it had originally seen.

    According to Githens, the images are black, white and gray in order to avoid clue-givers being able to use color words as easy clues. The image layout is now 4x5 (as opposed to 5x5 in the original game) in order to make more stuff happen; you're more likely in this situation to hit something positively or negatively instead of whiffing on a bystander. You can easily make this change in Codenames

    by using the spy layout cards from Pictures

    (or play 5x5 in Pictures

    by using the original cards).

    Heck, you can also mix the word and image cards however you like. We've already seen plenty of people playing Codenames

    with Dixit

    cards, game boxes, etc., and I expect the iterations will only further proliferate with this new edition of the game. Githens says that CGE also changed the layout and made the Pictures

    cards square instead of rectangular to show that they're not fixed on one particular way to play or one format for the components. As I've stated before, the rules for Codenames

    are a flexible framework that can be filled with whatever content you can imagine, so don't expect this to be the final iteration of the game...


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040192_t.jpg]

    Solver's perspective; close to victory...or defeat


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040194_t.jpg]

    Clue-giver's perspective


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040197_t.jpg]

    Trying to transmit clues psychically



    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2832494_t.jpg]• I had played Théo Rivière's Sea of Clouds

    from IELLO once prior to BGG.CON Spring, and I wanted to get in more plays, so I brought my copy along, playing it twice during the con and lending it to someone for a couple more plays on their own.

    Sea of Clouds

    is a drafting game of sorts, with you taking a share of loot (which consists of one or more cards) during your turn or adding another card to the share. Some cards are poison depending on what you're trying to do in the game — rotten rum, cursed objects, relics that ruin you on their lonesome but become valuable in multiples — so the value of the loot varies widely from player to player, and even over the course of the game once someone cuts off a particular relic type or starts building up a pirate horde for the thrice-a-game boarding party, which is not a party, of course, but a chance for you to steal, swap and gain.

    The gist of the game is the "bird in the hand" conundrum, with you not knowing whether the birds in the bush will taste delicious or peck your eyes out, combined with you often not wanting to leave the bird for the next sky pirate.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040359_t.jpg]

    Sacrificial monkey on board


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040360_t.jpg]

    Final holdings: a rancid selection of rum, and a rum selection of relics



    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2980561_t.jpg]Simon's Cat: Card Game

    from Samuel Mitschke, Randy Scheunemann, and Steve Jackson Games didn't interest me from the initial description, but then I heard the magic words — trick-taking! — and knew that I should give it a try, especially given the game's early debut at the con.

    Simon's Cat

    is an UNO

    -style rolling-trick game, with you either matching the color or number of the card most recently played or else taking the pile and starting a new trick. The number of cards that you take doesn't matter, only the number of piles that you take, with that player (or players) receiving a blame card at the end of the round. Collect three blame cards and you lose the game.

    The hook for this design is a six-suited deck in which each suit has a different range (1-2, 1-4, 1-6, 3-8, 3-10, 3-12), which makes for a fun challenge when you're counting cards during play — not that I was doing that or anything. The piles that you take remain face-up, making it easier for everyone to know what you lack and play into those holes in your hand. I played twice and took home a copy so that I could lay blame on others.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040378_t.jpg]


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040379_t.jpg]

    Randy Scheunemann takes pleasure in my suffering



    • I played a few other games as well: Deep Sea Adventure

    because I wanted to play with those at the table; Steam Time

    because I saw folks setting up to play, offered to teach, then accepted their offer to join them; I Hate Zombies

    because the publisher was running a special con version with lots of people and Happy Salmon

    because ditto; Lanterns

    and Isle of Skye

    because I just hadn't made the time before; Deception

    because I could get away with murder (and did); and Concordia

    because I knew that I'd probably love the game and someone who already did offered to teach it to me. (Success! Anyone selling a Concordia

    bundle cheap?!)


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040443_t.jpg]

    Every Steam Time is a good time



    One game that I didn't play but plan to in the near future is Evolution: The Beginning

    , a streamlined standalone version of Evolution

    produced by North Star Games that will be available exclusively through the Target retail chain starting around August 2016. More details on this game in a future post.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040430_t.jpg]


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040431_t.jpg]

    Nick Bentley (l) and Dominic Crapuchettes (r) of NSG get eaten by SdJ jury member Martin Klein
  • Designer Diary: It's All In The Past Now, or Designing Guilds of London

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/546…st-now-or-designing-guild

    by Anthony Boydell

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2958283_t.png]All of my children have attended Pauntley Primary, a tiny school located in the Gloucestershire countryside with views of the Malvern Hills. The village is typically-rural with its farms, detached cottages, and badly-maintained roads; where it is atypical, however, is in its history: Pauntley was the birthplace of Sir Richard Whittington (1354–1423), a medieval merchant and politician who is most famous for being London's Lord Mayor (four times). British folklore retells the story as Dick Whittington

    , with added foreign adventures and a famous cat. I was curious as to the difference between the modern "political" Mayor of London and this medieval alternative, so when one starts reading up about the Lord Mayor, one is quickly introduced to the idea of "Guilds":

    London: The biggest, most important and richest city in England in the late medieval and early modern periods. The guilds played a major role in the lives of London's citizens, controlling the way in which trade, manufacturing and business were conducted in the City. The members of the guilds, the liverymen, were rich men who were appointed to the most influential positions in the community and wielded immense civic power. The chief representative of the guilds became the Lord Mayor of London, and the leading delegates of the guilds became its aldermen. The guilds ran the City and controlled its commerce; each had its own Hall and its own coat of arms (livery) and the chief representatives met at the Guildhall to discuss the great issues of the day.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3022053_t.png]

    Guild tiles: Incomplete and complete sides visible



    Before I go on, this diary will not be going into full detail about how

    the game plays, so for more information, please read these blog posts from mid-2015 (noting that the pre- Tasty Minstrel Games

    artwork is used):

    :chalice: Part 1: A Brief Introduction

    :chalice: Part 2: The Guild Tiles

    :chalice: Part 3: The Action (Main Deck) Cards

    :chalice: Part 4: The Board and the Plantations

    :chalice: Part 5: The Mayoral Rewards (Game-End Scoring) Cards

    Guilds of London

    is a card-driven area control game in which the timing and the application of combinations ("combos") are key; if I were to make an "elevator pitch", I would suggest Blue Moon City

    meets El Grande

    meets {insert name of trading card game here}. During the game, you recruit, place, and manipulate your Liverymen in newly-forming guilds, building your power base so they can achieve the status of Master. Achieving control of guilds provides victory points and, importantly, additional (free) actions that you can exploit, aiding your future developments in the City. The player with the most points at the end of the game becomes the Lord Mayor of London.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3022058_t.png]

    Noble (Crown) action cards (from L to R):
    • Gain 2 VPs,
    • Resolve the Plantation at the end of this Round, and
    • Spot two Guilds you have a Master on to move the Beadle to a non-Crown Guild and resolve
    it at the end of this Round (even if it doesn't have the required minimum of Liverymen on it)



    Designing Guilds of London

    Due to the passage of much time, my recall is a little fuzzy, but Guilds of London

    was already an on-going project by the time Surprised Stare Games

    had a railway conversation that led to Snowdonia

    . I had just started working in London and was required to live away from home during the week; evenings were taken up with games — almost exclusively Magic: The Gathering

    — and, indeed, the first prototype was stickered on to M:TG

    commons. You don't need to wander very far in London to be smacked in the face with its incredible heritage and a little background reading revealed a rich historical world with an intriguing hierarchy of powerful, curiously-named organizations and their ornate, ostentatious rituals and traditions.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3022057_t.png]

    Compass (Artisan) action cards (from L to R):
    • If you have hired four or more Liverymen this turn, gain 3 VPs,
    • Every time you move a Liveryman with a card, you may move two Liverymen instead, and
    • If you have moved three or more Liverymen this turn, then draw three extra cards at the end of the turn



    :chalice:



    Researching the Guilds

    I do

    love to immerse myself in Theme when researching a game, preferably via collecting rare and unusual books about

    that theme. The history of Guilds of London

    begins with the book on the right; as well as being chock full of facts, it has a double-page spread with tiny photographs of the Company Liveries. This was the seed:


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2513107_t.jpg]

    Discovering the Guilds (from the Discovering Series)



    My next is another book-in-an-historical-series, this time from the 1950s and 60s; there is plenty in here about the Plantations, a key scoring element:


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2513113_t.jpg]

    Other tomes available include: British Islands, British Architects and British Seasides



    On my travels to-and-from London, I found the following close-up exploration of the form and functions of the Guildhall, the meeting place of all the Senior members; this inspired the "special buildings":


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2513122_t.jpg]

    Gog & Magog, Giants, in resplendent carved glory



    I also picked up this complete guide to how the Armorial Bearings — the Liveries, the "shields" — are structured, what the symbols are, and what the symbology means. I used this book to redraw all of the Guild shields for my prototypes. It's a beautiful book to just peruse:


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2513133_t.jpg]

    Shields and Woodcuts



    The piéce de resistance, though, is this rarity: one of just 500 copies, turning its thick, textural pages requires reverence:


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2513135_t.jpg]

    Careful, now; a delicate treasure



    :chalice:



    Developing Guilds of London — 1

    The very first prototype was a large deck of multi-function cards and nothing else; they could be played out as Guilds, be used as money, move your liverymen (your area control tokens), and (try to) take control of Guilds already in play. The range of card effects was very limited, though, and the first playing — with long-time pals Richard and Jimmy, prior to an M:TG

    booster draft — was rather lackluster.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3022056_t.png]

    Church (Cross) action cards (from L to R):
    • Spot 2 Guilds you control of different colors and draw two extra cards at the end of the turn OR
    Spot 2 Guilds you control that share a color and draw three extra cards at the end of the turn,
    • Look at the top 5 cards of the draw deck: keep 1 and discard the others, and
    • Move the Beadle to an unresolved Anchor Guild and/or draw 1 card immediately



    However, from such inauspicious beginnings have many great games arisen, and I couldn't let this rich and delicious subject drift away, so I set about re-building: I separated the Guilds from the deck of action cards, giving them tiles of their own and hugely-increased the variety of card effects, tying them to color/suit themes:

    :nostar: Anchors (Blue): allowing special movement to "the plantation", a Guild that can be "mastered" more than once in the game;

    :nostar: Scythes (Yellow): recruiting new liverymen to seed across the City;

    :nostar: Crosses (Green): boosting your card-drawing and card-flow;

    :nostar: Compasses (Red): boosting your area control effects; and,

    :nostar: Crowns (Purple): all the other things that you'd want to do that don't really fit, thematically, into the other colors!

    The second playtest, a few months later, was with Jimmy and another regular gaming pal, Jon Challis. We three chaps hunkered down for the evening and it proved a hugely-important

    session; the game not only worked, but it worked fantastically

    . I came away from that session with 80% of the game you see today and a little bounce in my step!


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3022055_t.png]

    Maritime (Anchor) action cards (from L to R):
    • Red (compass) cards are wild for the rest of your turn,
    • Every time you use a card to move a Liveryman, you may move the Liveryman to the Plantation instead, and
    • Move 1/2 Liverymen to/from the Plantation



    :chalice:



    Becoming Part of the Guilds of London?

    On a whim, after another positive session at Jon's house, I contacted one of the Guilds: the Worshipful Company of the Makers of Playing Cards

    . I was getting hooked-in to the theme and given that I now, regularly, played games at The Red Herring Pub in Gresham Street (one hundred yards from the Guild Hall), I found out it might actually be possible to become a real Liveryman! After a tentative e-mail exchange, I took the Master of the Company out for an expensive lunch (£25 for the cheese board alone!) and was, then, invited to one of their official Suppers. The Supper was a very

    posh event for which I bought a brand new tuxedo; feeling rather out of my depth amidst the great and the good, I small-talked, sipped champagne and nibbled canapés, feasted in the Apothecaries' Company Hall, and listened attentively to all the speeches. Rounding off the evening was the ancient ritual of "The Loving Cup", for which I was given a brief "what to do" from my neighbor; here's a helpful video (NOT from that evening, I hasten to add):

    Youtube Video


    Goodness! I don't think I've ever felt more out of my depth in my entire life!

    :chalice:



    Developing Guilds of London — 2

    Life, work, gaming (and the tweaking of GoL

    ) went on as normally as it could while I was split between Home and London. With the core elements from that second session in place, I concentrated on refining the cards; any shared deck mechanism stands-or-falls by the relative powers and distribution of its cards and, if power comes with a cost, the costs must be absolutely right. Fortunately, I had a gaming group with extensive trading card game experience, so we were able to spot the broken and/or under-costed combinations, beef up the weaker cards, establish effect templates, and improve the distributions quite quickly.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3022054_t.png]

    Common (Scythe) action cards (from L to R):
    • Every time you hire a Liveryman with a card/effect, hire two instead,
    • Hire two of your Liverymen OR one neutral Liveryman, and
    • Spot a Guild that you control to hire two of your Liverymen and one neutral Liveryman (this is awesome!)



    An aside familiar to designers everywhere: We often refer to "The Integer Problem" in game design, i.e., setting something at value 1 is broken/a "no brainer"/over-powered, but when set to value 2 is now neutered to the point of unplayability; in this instance, the value 1.5 would be absolutely PERFECT. Costing the powerful card effects suffered from this particular issue and it was one of the most focused parts of the game's development.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3022052_t.png]

    A selection of the Mayoral Reward cards: gained during the game, scored at the end



    Something was still missing from Guilds of London

    , and as time marched ever onward, my attention was being drawn elsewhere. Over the next few years I designed and released Scandaroon

    , Fzzzt!

    , Totemo

    , Paperclip Railways

    , Snowdonia

    and Ivor the Engine

    — though, to be fair, in the gaps between those releases I would return to things GoL

    for brief periods. Then, as you can imagine, when Snowdonia

    took off, I could barely bring myself to think about anything else! GoL

    would come out at the occasional Surprised Stare Games designer day or informal games evening, eliciting a Boydellian cry of " I must get working on this again!

    " And back on to the shelf it would go.

    During the final preparations for Ivor the Engine

    at the end of 2013, Guilds

    took its rightful position — front-and-center — in my priorities. I had brought both games along to Spiel for blind testing with some of my international pals, and as I laid out the Sheep tiles on the Top Left-Hand Corner of Wales, I realized how fighting for a Guild could be made more enticing, i.e., by adding randomly-placed "juicy" second-place bonus chits. I immediately borrowed the Ivor

    pieces and played a couple of games through that evening: It totally rocked! The next day I was visited by Richard Ham (rahdo) for an " overview video of what Tony is doing next

    " (which we ended up recording TWICE, thanks to a dodgy microphone):

    Youtube Video
    I love the ENERGY in this video!


    Such a positive reception spurred me on, and by the time Spiel 2014 rolled around, I had tested the bottom out of the "second place chits" and was ready to pitch it to potential publishing partners. As I was driving home from Spiel, I got a call from one of them (Intrafin) saying that they wanted to take it on and, within a few weeks, Klemens Franz

    started work on the layouts! I threw myself into helping Klemens because there were a LOT of different elements that needed doing: original box art, templating for 48 Guild tiles, standardizing the iconography of all the cards (105 action, 21 Mayoral Reward) and — of course — the rules. As if the volume of work wasn't bad enough, a posh spanner was also thrown in to the mix; I'll let the rulebook take the story from here:


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3026384_t.jpg]



    Here are some of the "alternative" shields I put together (Christmas, 2014):

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2325508_t.png]


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2325500_t.png]


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2325501_t.png]


    :chalice:



    The greater part of 2015 progressed in this manner: questions, clarifications, checking and double-checking, and — all the while — my excitement for the coming Spiel increasing. Imagine, then, how hard the fall to Earth was when, on August 3rd, 2015 — the deadline day for committing the project to the manufacturers — our partner decided to pull out. At the point when I thought the long climb was over, it had all proved to be a false summit

    !

    When the rage had subsided, Surprised Stare Games regrouped, made several full print-on-demand demo copies, and got back on the horse! And it's a bloody good thing that we did

    because otherwise I wouldn't have met Seth Jaffee or Andy or Michael Mindes or Daniel or Mischa! Tasty Minstrel Games has restored my Faith in the process and this game, set firmly in the Past, has gained itself a bright Future!


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3024234_t.jpg]

    After ten years, I finally hold it in my hands!



    :chalice:



    Annex: The Guilds of London Chronology

    v1.0 (early 2006): A homogenous, multi-function card flopper with no particular saving grace apart from the theme being intriguing to everyone.

    v2.0 (mid-2006): A varied, interactive and TCG-tastic card-driven, area control extravaganza with a dynamic board (the Guild tiles) and a card list that needed some serious balancing.

    v3.0 (2007-2009): Playtesting with pals (deck-tuning) and outside of my normal group at the London On Board club where we removed an entire type of action ("PLACE") by putting hired liverymen straight in to the Guildhall to be moved about instead. Reduced delay, reduced complexity — all the more satisfying.

    v4.0 (2010): The introduction of the neutral liverymen who, during resolution of area control, can "swap in" and mess with majorities and tie-breaks. This mechanism also added additional effect options to the cards for more "agonizing decisions" — essential for a game with multi-use cards! Player interaction steps up a notch.

    v5.0 (2011-2013): Lots of work on getting the two-player variant correct; this led to the decision to have a fixed board for two as opposed to the "grow during the game" board for three and four. I rejected the idea of making GoL

    a five-player game during this time: It simply made the game go on far too long, i.e., more than 75 minutes!

    v6.0 (Spiel 2013): Player interaction takes a further step up by introducing randomly-placed, lucrative "second place" chits and reducing the restocking of Guild tiles to tighten up available play space! A final, increased, set of (now) unique game-end bonus cards was added to offer many more options for scoring.

    v6.0 (Spiel 2014): A partner express their desire to publish Guilds of London

    ; I commence graphical work with Klemens Franz.

    v6.0 (Pre-Spiel 2015): The partner expresses their desire, at the last possible minute, to postpone everything until 2016. I got to Spiel anyway...with PoD copies!

    v6.1 (Post-Spiel 2015): Tasty Minstrel Games contacts me and expresses its desire to publish Guilds of London

    !

    v7 (Pre-production, 2016): With re-jigged components, Klemens revisits his files and we run through an extensive proofing cycle one more time

    — deja vu?

    Final version (UK Games Expo 2016): The launch!

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3024072_t.jpg]

  • Mayfair Games Acquires Twilight Creations

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/547…quires-twilight-creations

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3043197_t.jpg]In January 2016, Asmodee announced

    that it had acquired the worldwide English-language rights to Catan

    from U.S. publisher Mayfair Games

    , leaving some to speculate that Mayfair would die off soon without its cash cow.

    If Mayfair has died, however, it's at least chosen a suitably undead partner for the future. Five months after the Catan

    deal, Mayfair Games has announced that it's purchased "a controlling interest" in Kentucky-based Twilight Creations

    , best known for its endlessly-shambling game series Zombies!!!

    and other horror-themed games.

    Twilight Creations was founded in 2002 by Kerry and Todd Breitenstein, the latter of whom died in 2013; Kerry Breitenstein has continued to lead the company since that time, and she will "remain an integral part of Twilight Creations, overseeing the creative side of the company as the Vice President of Design and Production", according to a press release accompanying the announcement. Mayfair Games's Loren Roznai will serve as President of Twilight Creations and run the company's day-to-day operations.

    A further excerpt from the press release:

    All logistical operations for Twilight Creations are being moved to Mayfair Games in Skokie [Illinois]. All sales and distribution inquires will be handled by our Sales team in Plant City, FL. All distributors will remain the same.

    Twilight Creations wasn't scheduled to have a presence at the 2016 Origins Game Fair, which opens June 15, but thanks to this acquisition Mayfair Games will now feature the Zombies!!!

    line at that show. Mayfair and Twilight Creations will each have their own booths as scheduled at Gen Con 2016 (since those spaces were already paid for), with them sharing a combined space at conventions in 2017.

    The press release ends as follows: "We are both excited about the possibilities ahead of us and we hope you'll join us in this Zombie adventure. Stay tuned for BIG Zombies!!!

    announcements in the coming months!" In April 2016, I posted

    about the forthcoming Zombies!!! Ultimate Collector Set

    , Zombies!!! Ultimate Upgrade Kit

    , and Zombies!!!

    soundtrack being created by Midnight Syndicate; Twilight Creations had posted about those items solely on Facebook as far as I can tell, so I don't know whether those items are what's hinted at or perhaps other things. Either way, no word yet on when Agrizombies!!!

    might be released...

  • New Game Round-up: Revisiting Hogwarts, Making Fake Art, and Going Loony in the U.S.

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/547…-hogwarts-making-fake-art

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3043227_t.jpg]• For the most part, USAopoly

    has released themed versions of existing games — Clue

    this, Monopoly

    that, Yahtzee

    the other thing — but the company has taken efforts to expand its product line, as with its new version of Nefarious

    in 2015, the impending release of Star Trek Panic

    in June 2016, and now the announcement of a cooperative deck-building game titled Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

    .

    I got a first look at the game during NY Toy Fair, but details were scant at the time. USAopoly was unsure whether to label the game "deck-building" given that the casual gamer would not know what that means, but the parallels between deck-building and spellbook-building — think of Harry and friends advancing over the years from Wingardium Leviosa and Expelliarmus to Avada Kedavra and Obliviate — seem obvious once you start thinking about the two, so apparently USAopoly has now embraced the term.

    Here's an overview of the game, which I believe is due out at Gen Con 2016 in August:

    The forces of evil are threatening to overrun Hogwarts castle in Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, a cooperative deck-building game, and it's up to four students to ensure the safety of the school by defeating villains and consolidating their defenses. In the game, players take on the role of a Hogwarts student: Harry, Ron, Hermione or Neville, each with their own personal deck of cards that's used to acquire resources.

    By gaining influence, players add more cards to their deck in the form of iconic characters, spells, and magical items. Other cards allow them to regain health or fight against villains, keeping them from gaining power. The villains set back players with their attacks and Dark Arts. Only by working together will players be able to defeat all of the villains, securing the castle from the forces of evil.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3042351_t.jpg]Space Cowboys

    is known for arty projects like T.I.M.E Stories

    and Elysium

    , and its next release — Final Touch

    from Mike Elliott

    — takes a far different approach to art, with players trying to make their own, sort of:

    To earn your living as an artist — that would really be something. But what can you do if you're not creative?

    In Final Touch, players hire themselves out as art forgers willing to copy the masterworks of great artists, with all of them competing to create — or rather, re-create — the same image. But only the player who uses the right colors to finish the image will receive money for their work, and this skill is sure to reveal the best painter...or the best bluffer...

    In more detail, players play "Touch of Color" cards from their hand to either improve or smear the forgery, working both together and against their fellow painters. The first player to put the final touch on any forgery in the making earns the money for that forgery, while smearing pays out to their opponents and moves them on to the larger paydays. The first artist to earn $25 by putting the final touch of paint on a forged painting wins!

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3043308_t.jpg]• Speaking of T.I.M.E Stories

    , Space Cowboys estimates

    that the fifth scenario for that game — T.I.M.E Stories: Expedition: Endurance

    — will now be released in Sept. 2016 in France and in Q4 2016 in the U.S.

    • Laurent Escoffier and David Franck's Loony Quest

    from Libellud

    has been unavailable in the U.S. since its debut in 2015 due to Blue Orange Games' development and publication of their Doodle Quest

    in 2014. Both games feature the same elements at their core, but were developed for different audiences by their respective publishers. Now Asmodee has cleared the way

    for distribution of Loony Quest

    in the U.S. and expects the game to be available in August 2016.

    dV Giochi

    has picked up Jim Henson's Labyrinth: The Board Game

    for release in Italian in late 2016.

  • King of Tokyo Scrubbed Clean, Dressed Anew for Fifth Anniversary

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/547…-dressed-anew-fifth-anniv

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic761434_t.jpg]

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3043734_t.jpg]For the fifth anniversary of Richard Garfield

    's King of Tokyo

    , a.k.a., Yahtzee King of the Hill

    , which has had editions in thirty languages and has racked up more than 750,000 copies sold, French publisher IELLO

    has decided to do what it does best: Throw money at artists to create a huge portfolio of enticing fantasy illustrations.

    Yes, as you can see at right, IELLO has given King of Tokyo

    a new set of clothes, starting with the cover by King of New York

    illustrator Régis Torres and carrying through to almost every flat surface associated with the game. Four of the six monsters from the earlier editions of King of Tokyo

    have been buffed, chromed, and made ready for their close-ups, as with Gigazaur and Alienoid below.

    IELLO notes that these new illustrations will be used in the digital version of King of Tokyo

    , the development of which demanded a makeover for some parts of the game, as Matthieu Bonin has explained

    on BGG: "...the art we had were not compliant to that [digital version], both esthetically (take a closer look at the art on the cards — it's fine when it's printed in small, but not as quite when displayed on a larger screen...) and technically (we missed most layers to fully animate the monsters, for example...)."


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3043740_t.jpg]


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3043737_t.jpg]



    Two of the six previous monsters (Kraken and Cyber Bunny) have been sent to the bench, with them being replaced by Space Penguin

    — previously available only as a KoT

    tournament prize — and Cyber Kitty, the driver of which has some big ears to fill in the cyber department.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3043736_t.jpg]



    The power cards have also freshly illustrated, with the text being rewritten for clarity and to incorporate a more consistent use of icons and keywords. Why create 66 new pieces of art when you see only a dozen or so each game? Why not?! IELLO receives a subsidy from the French government to ensure that native illustrators are supplied with a steady flow of work, and that subsidy won't spend itself. (Also, it might not exist.)

    The backs of these cards used to bear the cover artwork, and since that's changed, the backs have changed as well, with IELLO noting that it plans to produce KoT

    card sleeves in the future for those who own promo cards or the King of Tokyo: Halloween

    expansion.

    As for the evolution cards from Power Up!

    , those can be used as is since those cards are kept in their own decks and not mixed with cards from the base game. IELLO says that a new version of Power Up!

    is also in the works, and King of New York: Power Up!

    — which contains evolution cards for both KoT

    and King of New York

    — is now due out in October 2016.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3043743_t.jpg]



    IELLO has also overhauled the rulebook (English, PDF

    ) to make the game easier to learn, and it plans to release this new version in France on June 17, 2016 and in English in North America on July 14, 2016 (with brick-and-mortar stores that participate in its preorder program receiving English-language copies on June 30). Other English-speaking regions will receive this new edition in the weeks that follow, and by the end of 2016 it will be released in an addition fourteen languages: German, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, and Swedish.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3043746_t.jpg]



    And continuing a trend that I've been seeing from a number of publishers, IELLO also has a separate new edition of King of Tokyo

    coming out that will be exclusive with the U.S. retail chain Target. This edition is the same as the new one described above other than Gigazaur being replaced with Baby Gigazaur, with IELLO noting that this toddling terror will be exclusive with Target for one year, after which it "will be available to the owners of the other versions of the game".

    As for the new parts added and old parts removed, IELLO notes that it's working with its two dozen-ish publishing partners on the "possibility of offering Cyber Kitty and Space Penguin as a mini-expansion" so that current KoT

    owners can add these monsters to their game. Kraken will be replaced with a new tentacle-bearing monster, complete with evolution cards, while Cyber Bunny is gone for good, with Bonin noting that "We chose to discontinue Cyber Bunny for legal technicalities". Clearly a lawyer monster should be joining the game in the future...

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3044055_t.jpg]

  • Designer Diary: The Looter's Guide to Looting Atlantis

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/540…rs-guide-looting-atlantis

    by Nick Sauer

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2619045_t.jpg] Inspiration

    Inspiration can come from the strangest places. I had just gotten my first working prototype of another game called Born to Serve

    — a game in which players are out-of-work superheroes fighting for a wait-staff position at a restaurant — up and running when I was approached by a game designer friend of mine to create a board game based upon a specialized board the company had. I looked at the board which had an elevated area in the center with steps down the sides. If you can imagine a step pyramid, you pretty much have it, but for some reason it reminded me of a volcano. When I thought of a volcano erupting, I thought of the destruction of the legendary civilization of Atlantis — so what would the players be doing during a game in which Atlantis was being destroyed by a volcano?

    I guess my cynical sense of humor was still active from the recent Born to Serve

    work because I had the following brainstorm: If I were forced to flee a high-tech society to go live in some podunk kingdom where they didn't even understand what electricity was, I would be grabbing as much high-tech gear as I could to set myself up as a wizard. I was also going through the series Stargate SG-1

    at the time, so I'm sure there was some subconscious inspiration from that going on as well.

    I decided to simulate all the high-tech gadgets with cards and have a variety of scoring systems for each group. The game would be a set-collecting one in which players tried to grab as many cards as they could before lava from the central volcano wiped out everything. As I built the card sets, it became apparent fairly quickly that the board I was using didn't work for what I was trying to accomplish. I needed a larger state space for the game in order for the scoring to work the way I wanted. I ended up withdrawing the design from consideration and began engineering a board around the scoring system itself.

    Development Process

    In some myths, the city of Atlantis was rumored to be a series of concentric circles, so I made a round board with the city on the outer edge and the volcano that would rain lava down on the city in the center. The first board I built was literally round as well. I created the cards with PowerPoint, which I usually do as I seem to be one of the few people on the planet who actually finds the software easy to work with.

    After one solo playtest in which I played all four players, I realized that there needed to be additional cards that granted players special abilities to spice the game up a bit. The original equipment cards were just victory points in the early version of the game. I banged out twenty of these action cards to add to the eighty-card deck and set up to play again. I got about a third of the way in when it became obvious that these special abilities had to be on the equipment cards themselves so that in addition to giving players victory points at the end of the game, you could also discard them to help yourself during the game. Another session with PowerPoint gave me the card set I wanted and brought the game surprisingly close to its final form. This all happened in about two months, which is a record short design time for me.

    The rest of the work on the game was a lot of details. The Mass-Energy Converters, Fusion Batteries, and Unified Field Generators all had slightly different scoring systems. The yellow cards (Fusion Batteries) started life as regular Fibonacci sequence which, for reasons I can't honestly remember at this point, gave me some sort of scoring concerns. The modified sequence that exists on the cards today fell into place first for these three sets. The UFGs took a little longer, and I created them because I wanted to give players a reason to collect different sets.

    In the process of doing this, I kept simplifying how they scored — which sounds a lot easier than it actually was at the time. The blues (Mass-Energy Converters) got hit last. Originally, you needed one donut to score the circles at all, with each additional donut effectively adding one to the multiplier. Playtesting quickly revealed that the blues kind of sucked, so they ultimately got changed into how they score today. A side note here: The donuts were originally half-donuts, which quickly got called "rainbows" by just about everyone who played the game. I really hated that name for them.

    Anyway, the other thing that shifted at this time was the card mix. I locked down the number of cards (80) first. How the deck used to work was that the maximum on the scoring chart was the total number of that type of card in the deck: ten Fusion Batteries, five or six UFGs, etc. I think it was one of my gaming friends who gave me the idea of raising the number of cards in a color but allowing players to score only at whatever the highest value on the table was. I also tend to design my games with expandability in mind, so between this and my friend's suggestion I decided to lock all the main sets at 15 cards each with five UFGs, the idea being that I could add new suits at a future date that players could swap in for existing ones.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2929858_t.jpg]The blue cards went through two more changes, one game related and one cosmetic. Their original discard ability was to be able to draw the top two cards at your current location. This was close to the Fusion Batteries' two-actions-per-turn ability, which was pointed out to me by about a zillion playtesters. It took me an unreasonably long period of time to come up with the current ability, but it definitely works better.

    The cosmetic change was the scoring chart on the card. Originally, all of the cards, including the browns, had a scoring chart on them. In the case of the blues, it was actually a scoring matrix that basically took up the entirety of the card that wasn't the top bar or the discard ability text. The matrix confused a lot of players, and the change to the blue scoring system I described earlier only made it harder to understand. Then there's this thing called artwork that most players seem to prefer on their game components, so between these two factors the matrix got pitched and replaced with the current system, which seems to work better for most players.

    Final Adjustment

    The final, and in my opinion, best change was the addition of the kingdoms, which happened only comparatively recently. They were inspired by the concept mentioned in a gaming podcast, and I apologize for not remembering which one specifically as I have seriously fallen off the podcast bandwagon over the past couple of years. The concept mentioned was the idea that a good game should tell a story, and the story here was that you were fleeing the collapse of Atlantis. Logically, there should be a point in the game when the players can actually do that.

    I came up with the number of players minus one idea and actually got the point values pretty much right out the gate. If I remember correctly, originally fleeing was another action like moving or grabbing a card, but I changed it almost immediately as I wanted the decision on when to pull the trigger to be a little harder. It also made more thematic sense to me as — even though it doesn't look like it on the board — you are supposed to be flying a quarter of the way around the world or more with your air car.

    Speaking of the board, the kingdoms also gave us something to do with the corners. To show you how late these were added, I had originally looked at the possibility of a round game board. For any future game developers/designers out there, spoiler alert, it's really expensive. Since we were kind of locked into doing a conventional square board, the kingdoms conveniently gave us something to put in the corners, and since we needed only three, this left room for the game logo on the last one.

    That is the story of the construction of Looting Atlantis

    , and I hope you found it as entertaining as destroying that mighty civilization will be when playing the game.

  • Links: DaVinci's BANG! Lawsuit Shot Down, Gender in Munchkin & Mark Rosewater on Twenty Years of Magic

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/547…it-shot-down-gender-munch

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1170986_t.jpg]

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1599343_t.jpg]• In 2014, DaVinci Editrice — which publishes games as dV Giochi

    — filed suit against Yoka Games

    and ZiKo Games

    . DaVinci, which has published Emiliano Sciarra's BANG!

    (along with many expansions and spinoffs) since 2002, alleged copyright infringement based on the publication of 三国杀

    ( San Guo Sha

    ) in English as Legends of the Three Kingdoms

    ( LOTK

    ) in 2012 by ZiKo Games, with Yoka Games having been the publisher of that game in Chinese since 2007.

    As noted by the U.S. District Court

    in the Southern District of Texas in 2014, "The parties agree that Bang!

    and LOTK

    have nearly identical rules for playing the game." What differs is that BANG!

    is set in the U.S. wild west of the 1800s and features characters and artwork typical for that locale, while LOTK

    has artwork and characters based on the historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms

    , which dates to the 14th century. The court denied

    Davinci's request for preliminary injunction, which would have prevented ZiKo Games from further distribution of Legends of the Three Kingdoms

    , but it allowed DaVinci to pursue its claim that ZiKo and Yoka "improperly copied protected features" of BANG!

    In late April 2016, the court ruled against DaVinci, noting in its summary that " Bang!

    's characters, roles, and interactions are not substantially similar to those in LOTK

    . The aspects of the roles, characters, and interactions that are similar are not expressive, and aspects that are expressive are not substantially similar. ZiKo and Yoka are entitled to summary judgment of noninfringement."

    The ruling makes for fascinating reading, and you can download a PDF of the ruling here

    . Some excerpts:

    Unlike a book or movie plot, the rules and procedures, including the winning conditions, that make up a card-game system of play do not themselves produce the artistic or literary content that is the hallmark of protectable expression. See Boyden, 18 GEO. MASON L. REV. at 466. Instead, the game rules, procedures, and winning conditions create the environment for expression. Id.; see also Nat'l Basketball Ass'n, 105 F.3d at 846 ("Unlike movies, plays, television programs, or operas, athletic events are competitive and have no underlying script.").

    This general rule is consistent with the decision in Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99 (1879), in which the Supreme Court ruled that a particular bookkeeping system was not copyrightable. The language and illustrations that the plaintiff had used to explain his system were copyrightable, but they did not protect the system itself from use by other parties. The Copyright Office has applied the rule that copyright does not protect a system's operation method to games. The December 2011 fact sheet for Copyright Registration of Games states:

    Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author's expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.

    In Bang!, the Sheriff and Deputies are pitted against the Outlaws and the Renegade. Other than these alignments, the events in a Bang! game are not predetermined because the interactions between the roles have no underlying script or detail and are not fixed. Making certain roles aligned and others opposed is part of the game's winning conditions, but these determine little about how players will progress through the game. See Boyden, 18 GEO. MASON L. REV. at 466 (copyright does not protect systems that set the stage for expression to occur). Like basketball, Bang! has created a number of roles, defined their alignment with and opposition to other roles, and created rules for their interaction, but has not created a scripted or detailed performance for each game. Using Spry Fox's example of Gone with the Wind, Bang! identifies characters analogous to Scarlett O'Hara's two romantic interests, Ashley Wilkes and Rhett Butler, giving them names and appearances consistent with their setting. Unlike Gone with the Wind, however, Bang! has no specific plot or detailed information about the characters that tells us what these characters will do or how they will interact with other characters.

    The character content found protectable in Capcom is distinguishable from the character content in Bang! The Bang! characters' abilities are largely drawn from stock-character abilities. Like a punch or kick in a karate game, Bang! characters' abilities are common in games in which the object is to kill the other players, such as enhanced attack ranges and strength. These abilities are neither original to DaVinci nor as imaginative as the moves found protectable in Capcom. The other similar characteristic between Bang! and LOTK is the characters' life points. The court in Capcom specifically held measures of player viability to be commonplace and not protectable, and this court agrees.

    Even if the Bang! characters' abilities were not stock, they are still not expressive because they are essentially rules of game play. The character of Rose Doolan, for example, has the ability to strike opponents from a longer distance than other characters. (Docket Entry No. 61, Ex. 6 at 110:6-10). This ability is no more expressive than the ability of a rook in a chess game to take an opposing piece from all the way across the board, as opposed to a pawn that may attack only from the next square. The rook's ability affects other characters or roles in the game because the attack range increases the queen's and king's exposure. But this special ability is neither literary nor artistic. It is an aspect of game play, a subset of the rules that make up the game system.

    DaVinci argues that because each Bang! player is assigned a character and a role, the alignment of the roles combines with the expressive elements of the characters to create protectable expressive content. This argument fails because any character can be assigned to any role. In one game, Rose Doolan could be the Sheriff who works with one of the Deputies, Slab the Killer, to kill the Outlaws and Renegade. In the next game, Rose Doolan may be the Outlaw who must kill Slab the Killer, who is the Sheriff in that game. The characters' interactions change from game to game. See Nat'l Basketball Ass'n, 105 F.3d at 846 (basketball is not protected because the action is not "scripted"); Boyden,18 GEO. MASON L. REV. at 466 (copyright does not protect systems that set the stage for expression to occur). The combination of roles and characters also adds little to the overall expressive content of the game, given that the content of the game itself is not fixed. It is the equivalent of casting actors to roles in a movie that has no detailed script, no specific plot, and no detailed information about the characters.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1871016_t.jpg]• In May 2016, Steve Jackson Games

    surveyed Munchkin

    fans about their personal background and experience with the game line. Now SJG's Andrew Hackard has posted findings from the survey

    on Medium

    , including an overview of why the survey asked about users' genders in the way that it did:

    Gender is a specific mechanic in most Munchkin games. Some treasures are better or worse (or completely unusable) depending on your gender, and some monsters get bonuses or penalties when fighting a character of a specific gender. The Munchkin rules say that gender is dual; a character is either male or female, no other options (with a very few cards that cause exceptions, often by removing a character's gender altogether). Starting in the very first Munchkin game in 2001, changing gender resulted in a one-time combat penalty "due to distraction." This idea comes from early fantasy roleplaying games, many of which had effects that would involuntarily and permanently change a character's gender. Munchkin was originally designed as a parody of D&D and similar games, and this was one of the tropes that was brought over for the sake of that parody.

    It's not 2001 anymore, and we now have thousands of people who play Munchkin and have never seen games such as D&D, much less explored the history of those games. We occasionally get social media comments, emails, and even physical letters taking us to task for belittling transgender players. Some of them are heartbreaking.

    Speaking on behalf of the entire Munchkin team, it is not and never has been our intent to poke fun at the struggles faced by people who don't match society's gender norms. It has always been our view that the penalty for changing gender in Munchkin derived from its involuntary nature, not the gender change itself, and we have encouraged people to remove the penalty  —  or the entire effect  —  if their group found it problematic.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic163749_t.jpg]Magic: The Gathering

    head designer Mark Rosewater appeared at the Game Developers Conference in March 2016 and gave an hour-long talk titled "Twenty Years, Twenty Lessons Learned" that provides a ton of material for designers of all types of games to consider. (For those who don't like video, Rosewater has started to post the material from his talk

    in his weeky column on the M:TG

    website.)

    Youtube Video
  • Crowdfunding Round-up: Long Shots and Hail Marys

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/548…long-shots-and-hail-marys

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3024485_t.jpg]• For years people wondered whether Martin Wallace's Princes of the Renaissance

    would ever be available again. Now Mercury Games

    is Kickstarting a new edition of the game, and the response has been...muted? Those annual Warfrog titles were hotly anticipated by a certain segment of the gaming community, but perhaps we're living in a different era these days — or maybe it was the same few people asking for the game over and over again... ( KS link

    )

    • Another P... R... title for this round-up comes courtesy of The Pirate Republic

    , a design by Tom Butler through Green Feet Games

    that sets players in the West Indies during the 1700s, with them trying to commandeer ships, raid towns, and otherwise do piratey things to complete missions and commandeer victory. ( KS link

    )

    • All of the other p... r...s in my inbox are press releases, so we'll have to transition instead via genre trope, in this case jumping from pirates to superheroes, with Clover Games

    ' Central City: Heroes

    being a 1-4 player co-op of building superhero characters, then bashing centrally into the city to complete five missions and take out the archnemesis, ideally without having your secret identities revealed. ( KS link

    )

    • From superheroes we'll turn to the fast (and possibly furious) vehicles in Championship Formula Racing

    Douglas Schulz and Ultra Pro

    , with this Speed Circuit

    -inspired design recreating F1 tracks and bringing historical racers behind the wheel once again. ( KS link

    )

    • Driving junked and tricked-out vehicles in a post-apocalyptic environment is another common movie trope, but in Matthew Morris' Wasteland Justice

    from Madbeard Games

    , you aren't necessarily trying to destroy one another but instead be the first to move your vehicular mayhem across the finish line — and if no one else is mobile enough to do so, then you win automatically. ( KS link

    )

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2865209_t.jpg]• The hook for the trick-taking Heroes and Tricks

    from Eduardo Baraf, Jonathan Gilmour, and Baraf's Pencil First Games

    is that players add cards one at a time to a special box (which also serves as game storage) so that you know only the color and suit of the card most recently played. Clever? Annoying? That's for you to decide! ( KS link

    )

    • Another KS trick-taker of sorts comes courtesy of Sunish Chabba, who is dressing up the traditional Indian game of Ganjifa

    as Guru Ganjifa

    , while also including rules for a few other games that can be played with the same ten-suited deck. ( KS link

    )

    • Staying in Asia (sort of) we have Anthony Burch's World Championship Russian Roulette

    from Two Rooms and a Boom

    publisher Tuesday Knight Games

    , a press-your-luck bluffing game in which you try to be the last one alive (since you can also shoot at others!) or the first team to collect 15 VP. You can even pocket your bullets to increase your odds of survival — as long as you don't get caught. ( KS link

    )

    • You also duel in an untraditional way in Kettou

    from Thomas Song and Table Forged

    , with an audio track (or a designated reader for the round) calling out the desired target, then players racing to slap the right card to score a hit. Players also use special abilities on their samurai cards while loading combat cards into bushido slots to further damage their opponent. ( KS link

    )

    • Duels also take place in the dice-rolling design Garden of Bees

    from Eoin Costelloe, Ciara Costelloe, Brian O Moore, and Decking Awesome Games

    , with players amassing an army of bees in order to take out one another and have the garden to themselves. ( KS link

    )

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2991622_t.jpg]• Armies come in a more traditional form in Days of Ire: Budapest 1956

    from Katalin Nimmerfroh, Dávid Turczi, and Mihály Vincze and the publishing partners Cloud Island

    and Mr. B Games

    . Built around the history of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, this card-driven board game allows players to compete in a one vs. many mode with one player controlling the Soviet invaders, a co-op mode in which you fight against the game itself, and a solo mode. ( KS link

    )

    • If you prefer more cartoonish battle, turn to Ryan Boyle's self-published PWNs: A Game of Strategic Mayhem

    , with players using terrain effects, ability counters, and card effects to knock others out of the game, with you trying to have the most members of your team still active when one team succumbs. ( KS link

    )

    • Cartoons are also at the heart of Knuckle Sammich

    from Daniel Landis, Christopher O'Neill, and Ninth Level Games

    , which uses the characters from Kobolds Ate My Baby!

    in a Love Letter

    -style microgame that first appeared in 2013 in a POD edition. ( KS link

    )

    • The prize for most unusual setting for a game this week goes to Newton's Noggin

    from Bill Morgal and Worthington Publishing

    , with players using think cards to manipulate ideas in Isaac Newton's head Tetris

    -style to create the concepts at the heart of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica

    . ( KS link

    )

    • I recall asking Ludocom

    for info on Vignobles

    in 2012, but no, the game wouldn't be ready for Spiel 2012, so onto the back burner it went — and there it sat for years. Now, though, Fabrice Arcas and Guillaume Peccoz's hand-management game about life as a wine merchant in southwest France is finally nearing completion. Has the design improved with age? Can you detect elements of oak and special actions in the tasting? ( Ulule link

    )

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1369968_t.jpg]


    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: Giants Come on Board Dungeons & Dragons, and Players Drop Ship in Island Hopper

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/548…me-board-dungeons-dragons

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3048557_t.png]WizKids Games

    and Wizards of the Coast

    are extending their board game partnership — which started in 2015 with the Temple of Elemental Evil

    board game — into 2017 with the announcement of Dungeons & Dragons: Assault of the Giants

    . This design by Andrew Parks

    is based on the "Storm King's Thunder" D&D storyline that starts in August 2016, but the board game, which bears a $100 MSRP, won't be available until Q2 2017. Here's an overview of the game:

    Dungeons & Dragons: Assault of the Giants challenges players to command one of the six types of giants and claim the right to rule over all giantkind. Command giants and assault settlements to score points and secure important resources, including food, treasure, ore, and runes. The game contents include fourteen giants miniatures, measuring from approximately 4" to over 5½" in height.

    Tasty Minstrel Games

    notes that it plans to release Orléans: Invasion

    for the U.S. market, with the game possibly making it out in time for Gen Con 2016, but possibly not. This expansion consists of scenarios, buildings, and event cards that work with both Orléans

    and Orléans Deluxe

    .

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3048533_t.jpg]• I love seeing Kwanchai Moriya's artwork on games, and the cover of Scott Almes

    ' Island Hopper

    from Eagle-Gryphon Games

    seems to encapsulate the nature of this design in that one shot. Here's a more wordier description of play:

    You and your friends all make a living by selling goods amongst a chain of beautiful tropical islands. Sounds great, right? Well, there's a problem. None of you are successful enough to buy your own seaplane, so you all pitched in and bought one together, which means that each day you all have to use the same plane to make all of the day's deliveries – and some of you aren't going to get paid. To make matters worse, the plane is in such disrepair that the instrumentation is broken, the compass demagnetized, and the windshield is covered in cracks, duct tape, and the remains of a few unfortunate seagulls, so the pilot might as well be flying blind...

    Each day in Island Hopper, players auction off the Captain's seat; the player who becomes the Captain is in charge of flying the plane for the day, but cannot make any deliveries of their own. To make their deliveries, the other players bribe the Captain to fly to the islands to which they need to go, thereby earning themselves cash. When it's time for the Captain to fly, the Captain must close his eyes, pick up their goods tokens, and attempt to land them in an island's harbor. A successful landing means that players can fulfill their contracts and the captain collects his bribe — but if the goods splash into the sea, you might find yourself under water...

    At Spielwarenmesse 2016, BGG recorded a video overview of Fujita, Ohki and Oikawawith's party game Imagine

    — which functions something like Pictionary

    but with illustrated see-through cards that allow you to build images or even animate stories — when Cocktail Games showed off its edition of a design that first debuted at Tokyo Game Market in 2015. Now Gamewright

    has announced that it will release Imagine

    in English, with the game debuting at Gen Con 2016 in August.

    Yes, Gamewright will also be at Gen Con this year! How many publishers can possibly fit in the Indiana Convention Center? All of them?!

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3048420_t.jpg]


    Youtube Video
  • New Game Round-up: An Elder God Sandwich from Launius, Kirkman, Louder, Cathala and Maublanc

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/549…-sandwich-launius-kirkman

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3048599_t.jpg]Richard Launius

    can't leave those Elder gods alone, which is a good thing for gamey Lovecraft fans since it leads to the creation of new games such as Fate of the Elder Gods

    , which is co-designed with Chris Kirkman

    and Darrell Louder

    and scheduled for demos at Gen Con 2016 by Fabled Nexus

    to coincide with an ongoing Kickstarter fundraising campaign.

    As for what's going on in Arkham this

    time, here's an overview of the setting and gameplay:

    In Fate of the Elder Gods, players take on the ever-maddening role of cults trying to summon ancient evil and herald the fall of mankind! Each cult is in competition to be first to summon their god, but they all must also repel intrepid investigators working to seal off the gate to beyond with Elder signs. Gather arcane artifacts, cast powerful spells, embrace the Dark Gift of your Elder God, and be first to hasten doom...before it's too late!

    During the game, players use a variable hand of spell cards to do one of two things to aid their cult in their mission: Use the spell's Astral Symbol to navigate the areas around Arkham on the unique Fate Clock board, or use the symbols in a location's Astral Column to ready a spell. Readied spells can be cast at any time, but while in a cult's Spell Reserve their primary Astral Symbol can aid in readying future spells, creating an engine for pumping out more potential power.

    As cults travel to the six locations on the Fate Clock, they activate specific powerful abilities, such as gaining useful artifacts at The Museum or enabling their Elder God's Dark Gift at The Ceremony. As cults send more and more cultists to a location, they may gain control there, adding even more powerful abilities. However, cults must be careful how they navigate Arkham as a location with lots of activity will attract pesky investigators. Tempt fate too many times and the investigators may raid your cult's lodge, placing Elder Signs, and generally getting in the way of summoning your Elder God. Gain too many Elder Signs and it's game over!

    If any cult can manage to raise their Summon Track to 9 before the investigators save humanity, their Elder God awakens and they win! Of course, "win" is a relative term as it will certainly herald the end of the world — but that's a small price to pay for eternal servitude to the Ancient Ones.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3048598_t.jpg]

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1980675_t.jpg]• Greater Than Games is also looking for funding on KS for a new edition of Przemysław Świerczyński's Exoplanets

    that features a revised and clarified rulebook, new ways to play for more advanced players, and the possibility of fifth-player components depending on funding.

    • According to designer Mac Gerdts

    , Steam Ship Company

    from PD-Verlag

    won't be released until 2017. Says Gerdts on BGG

    , "It still has to become a better game before publication." Gerdts does, however, promise a new expansion for Concordia

    : "With only 20 cities it will feel as tight as never before!"

    • Along the same lines, Libellud

    now expects

    to release Régis Bonnessée's dice-building game Dice Forge

    in 2017 instead of in 2016.

    • In late May 2016, I teased

    HOP!

    from Funforge

    . Well, now I can tease another release from Funforge with multiple images, but little in the way of information. Here's a first look at the September 2016 release Pocket Madness

    from Bruno Cathala

    and Ludovic Maublanc

    with illustrations by the always welcome Mathieu Leyssenne

    in which you'll meet nice people like Shub-Niggurath, visit lovely places like Innsmouth, and cross the path of friendly creatures such as the Shoggoths:

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3052207_t.png]


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3052208_t.jpg]

  • New Game Round-up: Deus in Africa, Tricks and Tweets, and Old-School Quests, The Tiny Epic Way

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/549…a-tricks-and-tweets-and-o

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3052450_t.png]• The tiny epicness of Scott Almes

    and Gamelyn Games

    will continue in 2017 with the anticipated release of Tiny Epic Quest

    , with 7 Wonders

    artist Miguel Coimbra illustrating the design. Gamelyn's Michael Coe says, "The illustrations for the game should be wrapped up around the end of October [2016], and we're planning for a possible November Kickstarter." As for what the game's about, here's an overview:

    A world of peace has been torn asunder by the opening of a vile portal from the goblin kingdom. Nasty goblins now pour into the peaceful groves and villages of the elf world, setting the realm ablaze. Now you, the heroes, must quest in order to right this wrong. There are two paths to victory: closing the portal or slaying all the goblins. Which one will you choose? Either way, your quests will be aided by the help of the surviving, and sacred, mushroom folk — and by the epic items that have been lost in the realm's deep dungeons. The world is ending quickly, so you must act fast to save it, but you also need to know when your luck will run out...

    In Tiny Epic Quest, players embark on a sandbox adventure nostalgic of old Nintendo games like The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy. Each player controls a band of three elf heroes questing to save the world and the sacred mushroom folk from the intruding goblins.

    Each round is broken into two phases: day and night. During the day, players travel far and wide, visiting villages to acquire quests, monuments to learn powerful spells, mushroom groves to seek guidance, and treacherous locations in search of artifacts! Acquiring artifacts empower the heroes with unique abilities; this may improve a heroes' movement or combat, or their ability to learn spells or mitigate harmful dice rolls.

    Heroes must travel by foot, by horse, by raft, by boat, and by gryphon to get to all the places they need to go to satisfy their quests — or to position themselves for what night brings. Each type of movement is different, and limited, players need to take careful consideration when traveling, and how they travel, if they wish to accomplish all of their goals.

    During the night, players must face the challenges of their quests, and decisions, by rolling dice, hoping for fortune, and knowing when to quit. Will you press on? Or is it time to save your progress and rest? Tomorrow is another day.

    The game ends once the portal is closed or all the goblins have been eradicated. The player who has acquired the most victory points by slaying goblins, learning spells, and completing quests is crowned the winner!

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2804603_t.jpg]

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2943829_t.jpg]• Designer Bryan Johnson

    's Island Fortress

    fell into a publishing quagmire multiple times on its way to print in 2013, so for his next two releases, Johnson has gone the route of self-publication via The Game Crafter. Aviary

    debuted in February 2016, with this trick-taking game presenting players with ten birds in the aviary along with assignments from their teacher reqarding which birds they should see from where in order to score points.

    • In Johnson's two-player game Death Pit Duels

    , players first draft fighters via an I-cut-you-choose method, after which they compete head-to-head for coins to enrich their master.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2219643_t.png]• I first mentioned

    an expansion for Sébastien Dujardin

    's Deus

    being in the works in October 2015, and now an overview of Deus: Egypt

    — which Dujardin's Pearl Games

    expects to release at Spiel 2016 in October — is available, with players traveling to another land (or not):

    In Deus: Egypt, you are now the head of an extraordinary ancient civilization: Egypt. Can you lead this dynasty to expand and impose itself upon the surrounding lands?

    This first expansion for Deus adds 96 building cards: 16 for each area of development. Players can use this deck in place of the one in the base game, or swap in one or more groups of 16 cards for those in the base game. Each group of 16 cards delivers a new set of rules and strategies.

  • Crowdfunding Round-up: A License to Print Money and Rob Banks

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/550…e-print-money-and-rob-ban

    by Dustin Schwartz

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3031887_t.jpg]• In crime fiction, heists tend to either be executed perfectly or end disastrously. In Perfect Crime

    , a Henry Jasper design by way of Grublin Games Publishing

    , the players are fighting for one of those two outcomes. Some players will be Charlie Croker types with a penchant for theft while others represent the bank’s security team. If you don’t like asymmetrical play or just don’t have any lawful good types in your group, you can all team up together as the robbers. Whoever said crime doesn’t pay? ( KS link

    )

    8th Summit

    is continuing a recent history of collaboration with board gaming’s Great Old One himself, Richard Launius. This two-fer project is Launius as you’ve seldom seen him before: no tentacles in sight, and only one of the two games contains dice. The common thread is that, like most of 8th Summit’s catalog, these are games where “adventure” is paramount. Saving Time

    (co-designed with Mark Zoghby) is a co-op title in which repairing rips in the timestream are your fetch quests; Gods of Adventure

    sets meta-cooperative action in a dungeon crawl. ( KS link

    )

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2957948_t.jpg]• Any time the conversation turns to making money hand over fist, Cool Mini Or Not

    is on the tip of everyone’s tongues. They continue to blow the doors off with funding, and their newest title, Massive Darkness

    , is well on its way to setting a record as their most funded new property ever. This new design from the Guillotine team of Guilton, Lullien, and Raoult hews close to the tried-and-true fantasy RPG formula, but I doubt anyone begrudges their launching a product into that lucrative market. ( KS link

    )

    • While your kids might be playing out in the sandbox this summer, you could do the same thing indoors — that is, provided you’re a fan of Cody Miller’s Xia: Legends of a Drift System

    , which tops many lists of sandbox space epics. Now Cody is back in the Far Off Games

    design chair, and with Ira Fay in the co-pilot’s seat this time, for the Embers of a Forsaken Star

    expansion. (What’s with all the stars around here being either forbidden or forsaken?) Of note, the expansion contains 3 new ships, orbiting ice comets, and a solo variant. ( KS link

    )

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3039637_t.png]• Hisashi Hayashi is one of the most well-known designers to emerge from the Japanese design scene, with several crossover hits being picked up for U.S. publication. And so it is again, though Trick of the Rails

    may be his zaniest game yet. The title gives away the origins of this Frankengame: trick-taking mashed up with 18XX

    -like portfolio management. It’s been five years since he first showed it off at Tokyo Game Market, and now Terra Nova Games

    has licensed it and given it a graphic reskin. [Disclaimer: I was hired to edit the rulebook.] ( KS link

    )

    • The E•G•G series of small-box titles from Eagle-Gryphon Games

    was frontloaded with releases, but all’s been quiet on the nestin’ front for over a year — that is, until the launch of the new campaign for SiXeS

    , a Scattergories

    -like listing game from Steven Poelzing and (former CEO of EGG) Rick Soued, and Elevenses for One

    , a solo game by David Harding. EGG also announced more titles coming to the series, including one from Stefan Dorra, whose seminal For Sale

    was partial inspiration for Eggs and Empires

    , the first game in the E•G•G series! Circle of life. ( KS link

    )

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2949601_t.jpg]• In 2014, a jazzed-up third edition of Aron West’s Catacombs

    emerged dexterously into the light of the Kickstarter day, not from beneath Rome but from the bowels of the Elzra Corp.

    headquarters near Toronto, Canada. With that success under their belts, Elzra will push forward with what appears to be a good thing, now making an entry-level version (because $119 MSRP can be a tough sell) called Catacombs & Castles

    . For third-edition owners, this can serve simply as expansion material, so everybody wins. Well, no, I guess not, since Catacombs

    is a one-vs-all experience (or team-based, in the case of Castles

    ), but you get my point. ( KS link

    )

    Movie Plotz

    was the very first “wallet game” from Button Shy

    , a line of microgames that is now a dozen titles big and has brought in more than $85k in KS pledges to date. Movie Plotz

    is a pitching game that has players one-upping each other as they gradually storyboard outrageous movie scripts, one detail at a time. The campaign is for a reprint of the sold-out base game (evidently it was a hit at the box office), and a standalone sequel that trots out even more movie tropes to riff on. ( KS link

    )

    • For all the cultural limelight that board games seem to be enjoying, the rate of success for cardboard-to-digital implementations is not great. But that’s not deterred Karl Fenner of Common Man Games

    , who is finally ready to roll out Police Precinct

    , the co-op game by Ole Steiness that’s been the backbone of the publisher’s identity for the past three years, to app users (with full support for iOS and Android phones and tablets). Just make sure you sweep the premises for bugs before you head out on patrol. ( KS link

    )

    • One sure sign that you are a dyed-in-the-wool board gamer is if owning a bespoke gaming table is on your bucket list. (Raises hand.) But that sort of expense is tough to swallow, and perhaps tougher to justify to finger-wagging relatives — you know, the kind who drive luxury vehicles? Ahem. But I digress. The good news is that Chad DeShon, the man behind BoardGameTables.com

    , has an affordable solution in “the Duchess”, a gaming table with an inset, neoprene-padded playing surface. And with an entry-level price tag of $500, even stern Uncle Judgy McJudgerson might approve. ( KS link

    )

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3055706_t.jpg]



    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

  • Indie Boards and Cards Acquires Action Phase Games

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/550…quires-action-phase-games

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3055909_t.jpg]Travises unite! Oakland-based Indie Boards and Cards

    — which started in 2009 with a one hundred-copy release of owner Travis Worthington's Triumvirate

    and has now sold more than one million copies of its titles — has announced a merger with Indianapolis-based Action Phase Games

    , which debuted in 2014 with Heroes Wanted

    from owners Travis R. Chance and Nick Little.

    After the merger, the combined company will retain the Indie Boards and Cards name, with the Action Phase Games brand being used as an imprint for the Heroes Wanted

    line and, to quote the press release, "other select projects". No changes will occur with retailer terms since both companies use PSI (Publisher Services International) for distribution beyond the reach of their multitude of Kickstarter-funded projects.

    Excerpts from the press release announcing this deal:

    "Having experienced tremendous growth over the past seven years, Indie Boards and Cards was at a critical point," said Travis Worthington, CEO of Indie Boards and Cards. "I just couldn’t keep up with our existing business and continue to grow the company without bringing on a very talented group of game designers and developers. Travis R. Chance and Nick Little are excellent additions, with a proven track record of making great games and providing great convention coverage and customer support. Together we are going to be unstoppable!"

    "I am very excited to be working within Indie Boards and Cards," said Travis R. Chance, Director of Product Development & Marketing at Indie Boards and Cards. "We now have access to financial resources and market reach that we never had before and are looking to expand the number and quality of games we release each year. Ever since the news of merger discussions started to spread, we've been seeing a lot more game designs from both established and first-time game designers."

    "There are a lot of games and design concepts that have been sitting on the back burner at both Indie Boards and Cards and Action Phase Games that we'll be able to work on now that I am able to focus on board game development full time," said Nick Little, Director of Product Development & Manufacturing at Indie Boards and Cards. "I also look forward to working the convention circuit with Travis & Travis to find the gaming world's next big blockbuster hit."

    Due to the merger, Indie Boards and Cards will now have a presence at the 2016 Origins Game Fair (since Action Phase Games already had a stand there) as well as at Gen Con and Spiel later in 2016.

  • New Game Round-up: Container Sails Again, and White Wizard Introduces Hero Realms

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/550…sails-again-and-white-wiz

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic332933_t.jpg]• After many years of being lost at sea, Franz-Benno Delonge

    and Thomas Ewert

    's Container

    is headed back to port — I mean, print — via Mercury Games

    . This publication is a homecoming of sorts as Mercury Games is co-owned by Kevin Nesbitt

    , who developed the design when Valley Games first published Container

    in 2007 and who designed the Container: The Second Shipment

    expansion, which was released in 2008.

    Whether Container

    will be a straight reprint or something revised from the original — as with Mercury's new edition of Martin Wallace's Princes of the Renaissance

    — is still in the works. In response to a question, Nesbitt noted that the expansion won't return to print, but he said, "I kept some notes over the years for ways I could further improve upon those ideas. Players will have some new and reworked mechanisms to have fun with, and depending on how well they work and how much complexity they add, they would be included in the base game or in an expansion (or possibly split between the two)."

    Nesbitt added, "It's too early to say what, if anything, will be different about the reprint, but the original developer (me) is on board the project once again, and the designers were both very happy with the final product last time around."

    One thing that will definitely differ in this new edition of Container

    , which Mercury expects to release in 2017 with new artwork, is the composition of the ships, which were created from dental composite resins

    , according to Nesbitt. "It's too early to guess at the final material", he says, "but I think it's safe to say that we'll be using a more conventional material with a little more shatter-resistance. We're leaning towards a material that allows for a little more detail in the ships and containers, and that could mean real miniatures. (It feels funny calling large ships miniatures.)"

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3056523_t.png]• I kept pestering White Wizard Games

    for info on Hero Realms

    , which was originally billed as a fantasy-based reimplementation of Darwin Kastle

    and Rob Dougherty

    's Star Realms

    . Now WWG has dropped tons of info on the game in the form of a Kickstarter project

    , and there's a lot to absorb. First, an overview of the game itself:

    Hero Realms is a fantasy-themed deck-building game that is an adaptation of the award-winning Star Realms game. The game includes basic rules for two-player games, along with rules for multiplayer formats such as Free-For-All, Hunter, and Hydra.

    Each player starts the game with a ten-card personal deck containing gold (for buying) and weapons (for combat). You start each turn with a new hand of five cards from your personal deck. When your deck runs out of cards, you shuffle your discard pile into your new deck. An 80-card Market deck is shared by all players, with five cards being revealed from that deck to create the Market Row. As you play, you use gold to buy champion cards and action cards from the Market. These champions and actions can generate large amounts of gold, combat, or other powerful effects. You use combat to attack your opponent and their champions. When you reduce your opponent's score (called health) to zero, you win!

    Aside from the 144 cards in the basic Hero Realms

    game, WWG is also releasing:

    —Five character packs, with each giving you ten starting cards specific to a fantasy character type (cleric, wizard, thief, fighter, ranger).

    —Two Boss decks — Lich and Dragon — which allow one player to fight as the Boss against everyone else or for two players to compete with bosses head-to-head.

    —A Campaign Starter Deck with solo and co-op campaign rules that let you gain skill and gear cards to improve your abilities so that you can effectively level up to try to complete the three missions included in the pack.

    And as you might expect based on Star Realms

    , WWG has plans for much more:

    We will release an ongoing campaign of cooperative adventures, with a story that takes place over time. Make your mark in an adventure that takes place in Thandar and beyond! As the story develops, the game will develop, and the characters will progress with new options that will keep the game fresh and exciting!

    For competitive players, Hero Realms launches with all of the deep strategy featured in Star Realms. And, just like in that game, we will continue to grow the game with optional expansions that will expand the scope and the depth of gameplay options. We will also provide support for organized play so that you can battle for prizes and fame.

  • Game Previews from GAMA Trade Show 2016: Munchkin: Trading Card Game, Arcadia Quest: Inferno, The Others: 7 Sins, and Mad Libs: The Game

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/551…show-2016-munchkin-tradin

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1871016_t.jpg]• With the 2016 Origins Game Fair starting in but a day, it's time to finally close the door on our GAMA Trade Show coverage from March 2016 as I had not quite published all of the videos that we recorded there. Oops.

    To start with, while I posted the videos featuring Eric M. Lang

    talking about Bloodborne: The Card Game

    ( here

    ) and The Godfather: The Board Game

    ( here

    ), but not about three other games he's designed or co-designed that are due out in 2016. He's a busy guy, yes, he is.

    First up is an overview of the Munchkin: Trading Card Game

    , which Lang co-designed with Kevin Wilson and which will of course be published by Steve Jackson Games. This game, the title of which isn't final, adopts the humorous approach and look of Munchkin

    , while having nothing in common with its gameplay.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2642988_t.jpg]• Lang and Cool Mini Or Not feel like they're joined in the hip given how successful they've been together on Kickstarter, and one of those collaborations is The Others: 7 Sins

    , which should be released in mid-2016. Lang doesn't give an overview of the game in this video, but he talks about his designs in general and demonstrates how resilient the miniatures in this game are. I'd like to see a follow-up video that explores such tests further...

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2569660_t.png]• Another Lang and CMON 2016 release is Arcadia Quest: Inferno

    , which is co-designed by Thiago Aranha, Guilherme Goulart, and Fred Perret. As with The Others

    , this game has already been funded on KS and CMON now expects it to be delivered to backers in October 2016.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2845929_t.png]• The final GTS video stuck in the queue features Andy Looney

    showing off Mad Libs: The Game

    , which hit stores in late March 2016. I love that the Mad Libs

    publisher reached out to Looney Labs about designing a game based on the long-lived party activity. Apparently they cared enough to find someone who they thought would match the spirit of Mad Libs

    itself!

    Youtube Video
  • New Game Round-up: Medici Gets a Little Brother, Millennium Blades Returns, and The Game of 49 Scores

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/551…s-little-brother-millenni

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2672797_t.jpg]

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2790372_t.jpg]• Australian publisher Grail Games

    already plans to release a new version of Reiner Knizia

    's Medici

    at Gen Con 2016 in August. Beyond that, Grail plans to release the spinoff title Medici: The Card Game

    in Q1 2017. Here's an overview:

    Medici: The Card Game is a new design by Reiner Knizia that shares the setting and feel of the classic Medici board game, without using that game's auction mechanisms.

    In 15th century Florence, players try to acquire the most valuable goods for their merchant ships by drawing 1-3 cards from a common deck each turn. After drawing, the active player must take the final card they drew and may select one or both of the previous two cards drawn (if available). They then load these commodity cards on their boat. Cards that are not taken remain available to future players. Once a player's boat is full (seven cards with two players, five cards with 3-6 players), they are out of the round and the day is scored.

    Players score points for the value of their ships' holds, but also for the number of commodities of each type that they have stored in their warehouse. The highest earning merchant over three days wins the game. Some cards do not take up space on ships, while others contribute to the value of a hold, but cannot be stored in warehouses.

    • Many Knizia games have been appearing and re-appearing in print from Japanese publishers in the past year, and Group SNE

    will debut the title

    above at Family Game Festival

    on June 19, 2016, with this event seeming to be (to my untrained eyes) something along the lines of Tokyo Game Market.


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3059867_t.jpg]



    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2468179_t.jpg]Level 99 Games

    has announced that it will reprint owner Brad Talton's Millennium Blades

    — which debuted in April 2016 and sold out almost immediately — via a new Kickstarter campaign in July 2016 similar to the one it ran in May 2015. The Millennium Blades

    expansion Set Rotation

    should be released in late 2016 at the same time as this reprint, along with Promo Pack #3

    (which introduces two new playable characters) and Promo Pack #4

    (which consists of four new Master-level card sets, each themed around one of the bosses in Set Rotation

    's Cooperative mode).

    • Talton and Level 99 Games note that BattleCON: Trials

    , the next title in its BattleCON

    Universe, is getting ready to move to production.

    White Wizard Games

    plans to release the Star Realms

    expansion United

    in 2016, with this expansion including dozens of new cards, some of them multi-faction cards such as the one depicted below:


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3056700_t.png]



    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3024922_t.jpg]• I find myself mentioning the U.S. retail chain Target over and over again in these new game round-ups, and that's because the company is making a big push in the hobby game market, both by expanding the number of titles that it carries and by working with publishers to carry new exclusive titles. In the former category, I present Mark Corsey

    's The Game of 49

    from Breaking Games

    .

    As Mark noted in a June 4, 2016 Kickstarter update

    : "Two years ago today, on June 4, 2014, we launched the Game of 49

    Kickstarter campaign with a goal of printing 1,500 copies. Two weeks from today, on June 18, 2016, Go49

    goes on sale at 2,000 Target stores nationwide."

    I played games numerous times with Mark in the late 2000s, mostly when he visited my game group in Concord, NH, where he almost always arrived with a plate of cookies in hand to share with everyone. He's got a great spirit that always came out while chatting and playing, and I'm pleased to see his game succeed. Congrats, Mark!

  • Gen Con 2016 Preview — Now Live!

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/552…con-2016-preview-now-live

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1062504_t.jpg]Phew! The 2016 Origins Game Fair is now in the can. The BoardGameGeek crew was on site in Columbus, Ohio for five days, livestreaming dozens of game demonstrations and interviewing plenty of designers, publishers, and passers-by. We'll cut up those videos into smaller bits, then post them on our YouTube channel

    and on the individual game listings in the weeks to come.

    While you wait for those videos in case you missed the livestreams — which can still be viewed in their entirety via the links below each date in the top post on this thread

    — I invite you to turn your attention to BGG's Gen Con 2016 Preview

    .

    Yes, we're already looking to the future, to the Indianapolis convention where hundreds of new games will be presented to thousands of gamers. The Gen Con 2016 Preview starts with 135 titles on it and will only grow from there, with publishers submitting new information from now up until the day Gen Con opens, that being August 4, 2016. I still have more info to add from notes in my inbox, and if you have details of releases not already listed, feel free to email me at the address in the BGG News header at the top of the page.

  • Cover the World in Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/553…d-ticket-ride-rails-sails

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3066862_t.jpg]I just launched the Gen Con 2016 Preview

    yesterday, and now Days of Wonder

    has obligingly added a new title to that list — Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails

    , the next iteration of Alan R. Moon

    's long-lived and highly successful Ticket to Ride

    game series.

    Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails

    , which carries an $80/€70 MSRP, will debut at Gen Con 2016 in August, then be released in stores worldwide in early September 2016. Here's an overview of what's familiar and what's new in the game, with images to assist in the explanation. (The complete rules are available in English, French and German on the DoW website

    .)

    Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails takes the familiar gameplay of Ticket to Ride and expands it across the globe — which means that you'll be moving across water, of course, and that's where the sails come in.

    As in other Ticket to Ride games, in Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails players start with tickets in hand that show two cities, and over the course of the game they try to collect colored cards, then claim routes on the game board with their colored train and ship tokens, scoring points while doing so. When any player has six or fewer tokens in their supply, each player takes two more turns, then the game ends. At that point, if they've created a continuous path between the two cities on a ticket, then they score the points on that ticket; if not, then they lose points instead.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3066867_t.jpg]

    World game board


    Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails puts a few twists on the TtR formula, starting with split card decks of trains and ships (with all of the wild cards going in the train deck). Three cards of each type are revealed at the start of the game, and when you draw cards, you replace them with a card from whichever deck you like. (Shuffle the card types separately to form new decks when needed.)

    Similarly, players choose their own mix of train and ship tokens at the start of the game. To claim a train route (rectangular spaces), you must play train cards (or wilds) and cover those spaces with train tokens, and to claim a ship route (oval spaces), you must play ship cards (or wilds) and cover those spaces with ship tokens. Ship cards depict one or two ships on them, and when you play a double-ship card, you can cover one or two ship spaces. You can take an action during play to swap train tokens for ships (or vice versa), and you lose one point for each token you swap.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3066876_t.jpg]


    Some tickets show tour routes with multiple cities instead of simply two cities. If you build a network that matches the tour exactly, you score more points than if you simply include all of those cities in your network.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3066868_t.jpg]

    Sample World destination tickets, including a tour in the upper right


    Each player also starts the game with three harbors. If you have built a route to a port city, you can take an action during the game to place a harbor in that city (with a limit of one harbor per port). To place the harbor, you must discard two train cards and two ship cards of the same color, all of which must bear the harbor symbol (an anchor). At the end of the game, you lose four points for each harbor not placed, and you gain 10-40 points for each placed harbor depending on how many of your completed tickets show that port city.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3066877_t.jpg]

    Ship cards and joker; spot the anchor symbol used to build harbors


    Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails includes a double-sided game board, with one side showing the world and the other side showing the Great Lakes of North America. Players start with a differing number of cards and tokens depending on which side they play, and each side has a few differences in gameplay.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3066874_t.jpg]

    Great Lakes game board


    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3066875_t.jpg]

    Sample Great Lakes destination tickets
  • Crowdfunding Round-up: Falling Angels Meet Rising Hopes

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/551…g-angels-meet-rising-hope

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3046487_t.jpg]• Sometimes I choose the game to be listed first in these c.f. round-ups by what I think will most interest readers; at other times, I'm simply searching for a game with a flat cover image that will look decent in this space. Whatever the reason, here's Fallen Angel

    from Terry Cheung and Asteria Games

    , a worker placement game of sorts in which you place dice in areas to do stuff — possibly modifying them via cards beforehand — with multiple dice being allowed into an area as long as you follow the placement rule and an end of round bonus going to those who have the largest sums in particular regions. Hmm, not much of a story going on when presented that way, but there we are. ( KS link

    )

    • Many people are trying to push out games on Kickstarter based on the current Clinton v. Trump U.S. presidential election, but most of them are painful to behold, so we'll instead turn the clock back a century to look at Patrick Steven's Bull Moose

    from his Numbskull Games

    , a 3-5 player game that revisits the fractured U.S. election of 1912. ( KS link

    )

    • Simone Cerruti Sola's Kepler-3042

    from Post Scriptum

    flings you into a future in which you're exploring planets in the Milky Way via a finite store of energy, matter and antimatter. Don't use it all in one place! ( KS link

    )

    • Speaking of matter, Stéphane Vachon's Planetarium

    from Game Salute

    allows you to smash matter into your planet (or your planet into matter), then you can use that matter to play cards that evolve your planet to exert dominance over the solar system. ( KS link

    )

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2917818_t.jpg]• In its second go on KS, HOPE

    from Olivier Grégoire and Morning Players

    jumps us ahead two thousand more years into the future, a time when we members of Human Organization to Preserve Existence (HOPE) need to terraform planets via tile-laying to preserve our very existence — which is why we put that phrase into our organization's name in the first place. ( KS link

    )

    Hero Realms

    , a fantasy-based take on Darwin Kastle and Rob Dougherty's Star Realms

    from White Wizard Games

    , has blown up to $175k in support in less than a day — which shouldn't be surprising given (1) the love that Star Realms

    gets from fans and (2) the more expansive (and expensive) support options that feature character packs, boss packs, and more. ( KS link

    )

    • With Clash d'Ardèche

    , Dutch designer Jan Willem van Dijk of Gaudete Games

    brings English-speaking players a fight for the best camping grounds in the French countryside. ( KS link

    )

    Honeycombs

    from 4 Sisters Games gives players multiple games that are played with the same set of 55 hexagonal tiles, with each tile having a different arrangement of the same six symbols. ( KS link

    )

    The Robots Are Coming Today?

    , a project from first-timer Sarah Rogers, posits a future in which you need to find new sources of income to replace your current earnings since the robots are eager to take charge of your position. ( 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

  • Origins Game Fair 2016 I: The Networks, Liars' Dice, Trick of the Rails, Dreamwell, and Days of Ire: Budapest 1956

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/553…networks-liars-dice-trick

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic984281_t.jpg]BoardGameGeek livestreamed game demonstrations, designer and publisher interviews, and ice cream taste-testing for five days at the 2016 Origins Game Fair, and despite that event having ended only on Sunday, June 19 — a mere four days ago — BGG owner Scott Alden has already processed much of that video, transforming it into dozens of short clips that will end up on the individual game and publisher pages in the weeks ahead.

    You can watch the entire five days of video — complete with false starts and random nonsense — on BGG's Livestream channel

    . Alternatively, you can watch for all of the individual videos to appear on our Origins 2016 playlist

    on YouTube, with select videos appearing in this space. With Gen Con and Spiel not too far off, I'll try not to fall too far behind in posting them so that I can keep up on other things as well.

    Thus, to start we'll have Keith Blume talk about the who, what, when, how, and why of Richard Borg's Liar's Dice

    being reintroduced to the North American market via L4 Studios

    and Mr. B Games

    :

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3039637_t.png]• Mr. B Games is also partnering with Terra Nova Games

    to release a new edition of Hisashi Hayashi's trick-taking rail/stock card game Trick of the Rails

    :

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2991622_t.jpg]• Yet another co-production with Mr. B Games is Days of Ire: Budapest 1956

    with Cloud Island

    , with this one vs. many design representing a conflict not normally covered in the game world.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2896170_t.jpg]• Designer/publisher Gil Hova

    of Formal Ferret Games

    has been hopping around the world to show off The Networks

    , and now the game is out in its finished form, wowing many gamers who got it to the table at Origins 2016.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2838571_t.jpg]• Designer Nick Little of Action Phase Games

    shows off Dreamwell

    , a trippy tile-based game of meeting friends and making sets.

    Youtube Video
  • Origins Game Fair 2016 II: Adrenaline, Codenames: Pictures, Menu Masters, Hive Mind, and Running with the Bulls

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/553…-adrenaline-codenames-pic

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3061997_t.png]• Let's keep rolling with our coverage of the 2016 Origins Game Fair, starting with an overview of Andrenaline

    from Filip Neduk and Czech Games Edition

    , which sounds like the most Euro-y first-person shooter board game possible.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3040176_t.jpg]• Vlaada Chvátil's Codenames

    has proven to be a surprising success for CGE, selling more than 400,000 copies in less than a year on the market, and at Gen Con 2016 the sequel/standalone expansion Codenames: Pictures

    will be released, challenging players to transmit information to their partners in new and not-so-new ways.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3043511_t.jpg]• You're challenged to follow the recipe in Menu Masters

    from Jordan Weisman, Zach Weisman, and Calliope Games

    , but in order to do that you need money, need to be first at market to have first choice of goods, or crowd the market so that others can't afford what you want.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3043516_t.jpg]Running with the Bulls

    from Paul Peterson and Calliope Games is like a Pachinko machine come to life — except that it's on a board, with you as the balls and the bulls as bigger balls that will crush your spines and remove you from play.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3043513_t.jpg]• Calliope Games released a bit of info about Richard Garfield's upcoming Hive Mind

    prior to Origins 2016, and I immediately jumped to the question of whether this is a redesign of Garfield's nearly two-decades-old What Were You Thinking?

    The answer: Yes and no, but mostly yes.

    Youtube Video
  • Origins Game Fair 2016 III: Hero Realms, Fish Frenzy, Tin Goose, Swipe Out!, and Holmes: Sherlock & Mycroft

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/554…i-hero-realms-fish-frenzy

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3056523_t.png]Star Realms

    has been a big deal for White Wizard Games

    since its launch in 2014, and now co-designers Rob Dougherty

    and Darwin Kastle are trying to go even bigger with Hero Realms

    , which adds in special character packs, boss enemies, and a campaign mode.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2859670_t.jpg]Swipe Out!

    from R&R Games

    is a quick, silly family game that stands out mostly because the designer — Oswald Greene — has been involved with numerous Grand Theft Auto

    titles and is now transitioning to family games since he has a family of his own.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2431481_t.jpg]• A Sherlock game not based on deduction? Seems impossible, but Diego Ibañez's Holmes: Sherlock & Mycroft

    from Devir Americas

    exists and we demoed it on camera, so however improbable it must be the truth.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2947115_t.jpg]• Patrick Nickell of Crash of Games

    announced

    in late May 2016 that he had obtained the rights to release a new edition of Finca

    , and if the wood bits shown here in the unrelated Fish Frenzy

    by Brett J. Gilbert are any indication, the new Finca

    will look as chunky and woody as the old one. Aside from ogling the bits, you can also learn something about how Fish Frenzy

    plays from this video. Dual purpose!

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2625316_t.jpg]• Of the handful of titles that Rio Grande Games

    ' Jay Tummelson presented in the BGG booth at Origins Game Fair 2016, Matt Calkins' Tin Goose

    was the one he was most excited about, talking about it twice as long as anything else. Learn what's going on in this (group)thinky design...

    Youtube Video
  • Origins Game Fair 2016 IV: Mystic Vale, Dominion: Empires, Clout, Morocco, and Heir to the Pharaoh

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/554…-mystic-vale-dominion-emp

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2868179_t.jpg]• The Dominion

    empire that Donald X. Vaccarino and Rio Grande Games

    has constructed over the past decade is impressive, and it expands still further with, um, Dominion: Empires

    , which RGG's Jay Tummelson took the time to introduce to us at the 2016 Origins Game Fair.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2904705_t.png]

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic198518_t.jpg]At Origins 2016, Patrick Nickell of Crash of Games

    announced a license for a new version of Clout

    from Jesper Myrfors and Paul Peterson, with this new version being non-collectible and possibly having myriad other changes before its anticipated Q4 2017 release.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2677174_t.jpg]• After watching this overview of Matt Riddle and Ben Pinchback's Morocco

    from Eagle-Gryphon Games

    , I am once again curious as to why they have a vendetta against juice vendors. What's the story here?

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3022944_t.png]• Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria! That's (sort of — okay, not really) what you're getting in Alf Seegert's two-player game Heir to the Pharaoh

    from Eagle-Gryphon Games.

    Youtube Video



    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2913813_t.jpg]• John D. Clair's Mystic Vale

    from Alderac Entertainment Group

    ended up topping the GeekBuzz chart at Origins 2016. Find out what's going on in this non-deck-building game that feels exactly like a deck-building game...

    Youtube Video
  • Origins Game Fair 2016 V: Arkwright, Haspelknecht, Salvation Road, The Fog of War, and The Dragon & Flagon

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/554…arkwright-haspelknecht-sa

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2964484_t.jpg]Sydney

    and Brian Engelstein

    — two-thirds of the design team of The Dragon & Flagon

    from Stronghold Games

    along with father Geoff — visited the BGG during Origins Game Fair 2016 to jump on tables, swing from the chandelier, and explain how to play the game.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3021515_t.jpg]• Brian Engelstein then stuck around to explain The Fog of War

    , a Stronghold Games title credited to Geoff E. on which Brian E. apparently did much playtesting and development work. I'm not sure what constitutes a "credit threshold" in the Engelstein household; perhaps the family can explore that topic in a future Ludology

    episode.

    Youtube Video



    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2512177_t.jpg]Peter Gousis

    , co-designer of Salvation Road

    with Michael D. Kelley, thanked me for publishing this video the day that copies started arriving to Kickstarter backers from Van Ryder Games

    , but I think that coincidence is solely on them. In any case, here's how you're trying to survive the post-apocalyptic wasteland this

    time.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2776693_t.png]Capstone Games

    is debuting on the U.S. market with a new edition of Stefan Risthaus' Arkwright

    , a title first released by Spielworxx that then vanished as its short print run was snatched up by gamers. Capstone has made a few additions to the design to provide more play variety in the long run.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3070755_t.jpg]• The next project coming from Capstone Games is a new edition of Thomas Spitzer's Haspelknecht

    , which was the third title in his coal trilogy, but the first from Capstone since it serves as an introductory experience compared to the other two designs.

    Youtube Video
  • Origins Game Fair 2016 VI: Tyrants of the Underdark, Imperial Settlers: 3 Is a Magic Number, Catacombs & Castles, Sausage Party, and Betrayal at House on the Hill: Widow's Walk

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/554…-tyrants-underdark-imperi

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2801874_t.jpg]• My lack of knowledge about Dungeons & Dragons

    is on full display in this overview of Tyrants of the Underdark

    , the first D&D board game from Wizards of the Coast

    publishing partner Gale Force Nine

    — although as Jean-Paul Brisigotti explained at Origins Game Fair 2016, much of the design came to GF9 via Lords of Waterdeep

    designers Peter Lee and Rodney Thompson.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2964327_t.jpg]• Ignacy Trzewiczek' Imperial Settlers

    from Portal Games

    had a new faction announced for it during Origins 2016 — Aztecs

    , with this announcement by way of Poland — but at Origins itself one day prior to that announcement we took a look at the 3 Is a Magic Number

    Empire Pack.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2949601_t.jpg]Aron West

    from Elzra

    showed off the disc-flicking game Catacombs & Castles

    and explained how it compares to their similar-but-not-that-similar Catacombs

    .

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2776662_t.jpg]• I love real-time games, but I've found few people in my area who dig them as much as I do, so it was with great relish that we welcomed Mike Selinker

    to the BGG booth to give us a taste of Sausage Party

    from Lone Shark Games

    . Click on the link below for a spicy preview.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2984192_t.png]• Selinker also presented the much anticipated Betrayal at House on the Hill: Widow's Walk

    , which Avalon Hill

    will release in October 2016 in time for holiday spooking and playing.

    Youtube Video
  • Origins Game Fair 2016 VII: Defenders of the Last Stand, Fate of the Elder Gods, Shark Island, Superhero Solitaire, and Gloomhaven

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/555…i-defenders-last-stand-fa

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3075584_t.jpg]• Designer Richard Launius

    turned up at the BGG booth three times during the 2016 Origins Game Fair to talk about upcoming titles, including his take on the post-apocalyptic genre with Defenders of the Last Stand

    from 8th Summit

    .

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3048599_t.jpg]Fate of the Elder Gods

    — another Launius design, put together with Chris Kirkman and Darrell Louder

    of Greater Than Games

    — has you trying to bring about the end of the world by summoning your Elder God before anyone else can summon theirs.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3003216_t.jpg]• Our Launius trilogy ends with an overview of Shark Island

    , a co-design with Pete Shirey from Upper Deck

    that pits one shark player against everyone else in the water and on the shore. Can the shark create enough terror in time to win?

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3034687_t.png]• Are you ready to fight crime and defend the forces of good while putting red cards on black cards? If so, then have a peek at Superhero Solitaire

    from Robert Kouba and 8th Summit's Jason Maxwell, which transforms the solitaire game Klondike

    into a special-powered bash-up.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2437871_t.jpg]Isaac Childres

    ' Gloomhaven

    from Cephalofair Games

    takes the prize for "longest demo video" at Origins 2016, but the game has a lot to show off and is hugely anticipated, so it was good to bank that time at the show. (Lesson learned for Gen Con since it's good not to feel too stressed to shove in every game possible when you want to highlight something people really want to see.)

    Youtube Video
  • Origins Game Fair 2016 VIII: Wasteland Express Delivery Service, ManaSurge, Herbaceous, Salem, and Tau Ceti: Planetary Crisis

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/555…ii-wasteland-express-deli

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2935763_t.jpg]• I keep hoping that we'll get a wave of post-nonapocalyptic games — you know, games in which people do fun things and enjoy decades of a satisfied existence among neighbors who are equally filled with the joys and frustrations that result from modern-day life, but apparently I'll have to wait a bit longer for such things as right now we are previewing Wasteland Express Delivery Service

    from the design trio of Matt Riddle

    , Ben Pinchback

    and Jonathan Gilmour and the publishing duo IDW Games

    and Pandasaurus Games

    .

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3052867_t.png]• "A game of hot potato with fireballs" — that's the short description of Frank Sronce's ManaSurge

    from Daily Magic Games

    ' Isaias Vallejo.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3048690_t.jpg]Herbaceous

    is a press-your-luck set collection game from Steve Finn and Eduardo Baraf

    of Pencil First Games

    with great looking art from Beth Sobel in which you're trying to score different sets of herbs by mooching from the communal supply in addition to collecting your own plants.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2877079_t.jpg]Joshua Balvin

    's Salem

    has been in the works for years, having funded on Kickstarter in 2012 but making it into the public for the first time at the 2016 Origins Game Fair, with Passport Game Studios

    having come on board as a production partner.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2927092_t.png]Tau Ceti: Planetary Crisis

    from Stan and Mike Strickland

    and Outer Limit Games

    aims to give you a 4X experience in space.

    Youtube Video
  • Origins Game Fair 2016 IX: Kung Fu Zoo, Kreo, Battlestations, Dark Souls: The Board Game, and Heroes of Land, Air & Sea

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/555…-kung-fu-zoo-kreo-battles

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2669721_t.png]Charlie Price

    's demo of Kung Fu Zoo

    — a dice-flicking game of caging animals and using special powers — in the BGG booth at Origins Game Fair 2016 ended with Aldie saying, "I want to back that for two copies" — but Aldie backs a ton of games on Kickstarter so that might not mean anything to you.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2991279_t.jpg]• As with The Grizzled

    , Julien Prothière's Kreo

    is a cooperative game that was first released in France by Sweet November, but has now been picked up by Cool Mini Or Not

    for release in English. Other than those similarities, however, the games play nothing alike, with players in Kreo

    serving as Titans who are trying to assemble a world.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2903180_t.jpg]• Designer Jeff Siadek

    of Gorilla Games

    explains what's changed in the second edition of Battlestations

    , which is being released twelve years after the original. In the game, players are still trying to keep their spaceship intact and moving through space, gaining experience as they do in this RPG-like board game.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2993345_t.png]• Scott Almes and Gamelyn Games

    are giving "tiny epic" a brief rest and instead focusing on a giant 4X fantasy experience in Heroes of Land, Air & Sea

    , which won't be out until 2017 but which you can get a taste of right now.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3078490_t.jpg]Dark Souls: The Board Game

    was a smash hit on Kickstarter, but what is the game itself about? Co-designer Richard Loxam

    from Steamforged Games

    visited the BGG booth at Origins 2016 to demo some of those details.

    Youtube Video
  • Origins Game Fair 2016 X: Killer Snails: Assassins of the Sea, Seikatsu, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Board Game, and Love Will Tear Us Apart

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/555…killer-snails-assassins-s

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2934101_t.jpg]• We featured many games on our 2016 Origins Game Fair livestream, and the one that excited me the most was Killer Snails: Assassins of the Sea

    from designer Nicholas Fortugno and publisher Killer Snails

    . I'm not saying this is the best game shown in our booth, but it was the most unexpected in both subject matter and the publisher's approach in bringing the game to market.

    Youtube Video



    And whatever you think of the game, you really should watch the video of these killer snails. Amazing!

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3080265_t.png]• Everything old comes back again, right? That's probably why zombies resonate so well in the public culture; you inherently understand the principle of zombies because you see someone wearing wide-flared bell bottoms or hear about a remake of some movie that struck you as ghastly even as an undiscriminating teenager and wonder, "Why is everyone into this stuff once again?"

    Admittedly pop-culture zombieism is sometimes a plus, and the return of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

    to game tables after more than a decade's absence will likely excite some percentage of former and current fans. Here's an overview of this title, which Jasco Games

    will release on October 28, 2016.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1490121_t.jpg]• We had a fair amount of unscheduled time at Origins, but thankfully the hall is filled with exhibitors and designers, so we were often able to pull people on camera to talk about something other than the game release most immediately on their mind. Here, for example, Ryan Bruns of Mayday Games

    talks about his experience of game conventions as an exhibitor and how little of a show he actually sees, especially at Gen Con — which opens five weeks from today!

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3080135_t.jpg]• We also found time to demo a few games that hadn't even been signed, such as the tile-laying game Seikatsu

    from Isaac Shalev

    and Matt Loomis

    — although from the whispering voices that I heard at Origins 2016, you'll probably be seeing this title on tables sooner rather than later.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3079927_t.jpg]• You might have noticed pummeling sounds in the background of our Origins 2016 videos. Directly across from the BGG booth was a fenced area in which people beat on one another with foam swords and other weapons. To explain the pummeling in more detail, Stephanie invited someone from the Belegarth Medieval Combat Society on camera to talk about what they do, both at Origins and at other events.

    Youtube Video





    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic1714957_t.jpg]• We closed Origins 2016 with a mammoth conversation with designer/publisher Matt Fantastic

    of Prettiest Princess Games

    , who explained Love Will Tear Us Apart

    in the first couple of minutes of this 48-minute video (!) and I finally played the game on camera in the final few minutes when Stephanie Straw arrived back in the booth after touring the convention hall. Probably NSFW, but I will humbly suggest that this video is well worth your time.

    Youtube Video
  • New Game Round-up: Sail an Angry Ocean, Prepare to Go Backstage, and Ascend Above and Below

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/556…-ocean-prepare-go-backsta

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3081166_t.jpg]

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2824791_t.png]

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3048413_t.jpg]Okay, I've posted all of our 2016 Origins Game Fair coverage — 162 videos in all

    — in one week (and less than two weeks after Origins ended!), with only the five uncut, day-long livestream videos still to be posted. (They're ~15GB each, and YouTube is taking forever to process them.)

    What next? The Gen Con 2016 Preview

    bears 228 listings, and while I have another 10-20 messages in the inbox about Gen Con right now, I feel mostly caught up, so let's use this round-up to kick out a bunch of short notes about this and that.

    • As mentioned

    in April 2016, Portal Games

    will release a scenario expansion pack for Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot

    at Gen Con 2016. Angry Ocean contains two unique dice, a character card for each, and 28 other cards. In "Angry Ocean", the ocean fights back with krakens, rocks, wrecks, and whirlpools, while in "Old Dogs" the players start with fully-equipped galleons and focus solely on the treasure.

    • Canadian company Lion Rampant Imports

    will release two Schmidt Spiele titles — Wolfgang Kramer's Vampire Queen

    and Guido Hoffmann's Castle Flutterstone

    — in North America, with the former due out in August 2016 and the latter in Q3 2016 in a new English/French edition.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3080705_t.png]

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3080706_t.jpg]Stone Blade Entertainment

    has opened preorders

    for Ascension X: War of Shadows

    , with copies bearing a Chaos Rider

    promo and due out in July 2016.

    Shakespeare: Backstage

    , an expansion for Hervé Rigal

    's Shakespeare

    from Ystari Games

    , adds new actors, new objectives, and new costumes to the game, along with backstage cards that allow players to place unwagered cylinders on the deck and spend them on special abilities, "such as placing fewer rest tokens, adding hats to actors, or increasing ambiance".

    Catan Studio

    plans to re-release Klaus Teuber's Struggle for Catan

    in August 2016 in a tuckbox edition for $13.

    • On Facebook, artist Pascal Quidault

    has shared

    cover artwork for "the new edition of game Sherlock Holmes

    , published soon by Space Cowboys

    ". Ystari's Cyril Demaegd is a member of Space Cowboys, so the transition of this title from one publisher to the other is not surprising.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3081216_t.jpg]

  • Crowdfunding Round-up: East to West and Lair to Nest

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/556…d-east-west-and-lair-nest

    by Dustin Schwartz

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2948038_t.png]• A few years ago, the lone household name to emerge from the burgeoning Japanese hobby game scene was Seiji Kanai, but lately Hisashi Hayashi has been giving him a run for his money. Yokohama

    is yet another Hayashi title that’s being brought over for U.S. audiences, this time by Tasty Minstrel Games

    , one of a small group of publishers that attends Tokyo Game Market to scout for import prospects. This could prove to be a landmark moment, as TGM has historically been a sea of small card games, with few (successful) designs of a more traditional euro bent. ( KS link

    )

    • I’ve noticed a trend with real-time games: more often than not they include a reference to their timed nature somewhere in the title. And titles don’t get more on the nose than Dungeon Time

    , a co-op game from Carlo A. Rossi by way of Ares Games

    . After their most recent half-million dollar KS campaign for a sprawling dungeon crawl, Ares is looking for success with sand timers. I’m reminded of a Bob Hope quip from 1942’s Road to Morocco

    , as he and Bing Crosby survey an endless desert: “This must be where they empty all the old hourglasses.” ( KS link

    )

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3030150_t.png]• In Joshua J. Mills’ Rocky Road à la Mode

    , you are put on the other side of your nostalgic childhood memories: in the pastel-colored driver’s seat of a Good Humor truck, pumping the strains of “Mister Softee” through your rusty loudspeaker and leaving sated kids grinning in your wake. One of my favorite mechanisms is the “time track” (first popularized in Thebes

    , but more recently evinced in Patchwork

    ) that allows for variable turn order, and it’s put to good — even thematic! — use in Green Couch Games

    ’ sixth release. ( KS link

    )

    • The ironic thing about the newest Queen Games

    project, the dice game Risky Adventure

    from Anthony Rubbo, is that it’s *not* a risky venture for potential backers. Queen’s production timeline is a well-oiled machine, with a new release falling off the end of the conveyor belt and into distribution every couple of months. The “risk” in the gameplay involves players having to mark the targets of their die rolls beforehand, not unlike the basketball trope of calling your shot. So maybe that means Steph Curry will be really good at it? ( KS link

    )

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3077195_t.jpg]• Only one more game to go before completists can have a full carton of E•G•G titles from the Eagle-Gryphon Games

    hatchery. Their current project features the trick-taking game Sluff Off!

    (known in previous incarnations as Zing

    , Wizard Extreme

    , and Die Sieben Siegel

    ) from noted designer Stefan Dorra and the set-collection game Harald

    from rookie designer Rémi Gruber, as games #9 and #10 in the series, respectively. For the raised eyebrows in the third row, “sluff off” is a trick-taking term meaning to throw off suit, but artist Kwanchai Moriya has worked in some nice visual puns besides. ( KS link

    )

    Mayday Games

    is establishing their own relationship as a pipeline of titles from Tokyo Game Market to the U.S., this time partnering with nerdy inventor Chih-Fan Chen (of Flip City

    fame) and Homosapiens Lab for Nerdy Inventions

    . It’s a dice game with a light steampunk aesthetic, illustrated by the designer himself. You never know when a game’s going to catch on with audiences in a big way, and Mayday is hoping this is their next hit property. ( KS link

    )

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3005968_t.png]• Though the presentation is a bit more dignified than in Homestar Runner, burninating the countryside is a viable option in Whelps to Wyrms

    . After their sleeper hit Nautilus Industries

    turned some heads, Lamp Light Games

    is back with this tile-exploration game from Ricky Perez. Dragons don’t like to share, but this is mostly a “wyvern and let wyvern” affair, with the fiery streak coming from the game-controlled counter attacks. ( KS link

    )

    • It’s probably safe to bet that Tim Fowers won’t be absconding with the more than $100K in pledge loot, but that’s what one player is trying to do in his self-published Fugitive

    . This asymmetric two-player game of bluffing and deduction was inspired by the thematic trappings of his previous design, Burgle Bros.

    That game’s “Rook” is our titular fugitive here, hounded by a federal marshal who tries to outguess his moves and thwart him at every turn. A debonair charmer with sticky fingers or a lawful good type with a badge; which will you be? ( KS link

    )

    • Barely had Millennium Blades

    been released to the retail market when the game sold out at the distributor level. Brad Talton and the folks at Level 99 Games

    are scrambling to meet the unprecedented level of demand for this zany game that simulates competitive CCG play, so they’ve put the pedal to the meta and launched a new KS campaign. Newcomers can get the original goods, while current users can get a new hit — I mean, new promos, all with the recognizable illo work of L99 regular Fábio Fontes. ( KS link

    )

    • Back in early 2014, District Games

    , in collaboration with Eagle-Gryphon, successfully raised funds for a game called Warage

    (rhymes with “porridge”). Though the publishers only call it a “strategy card game”, it’s of the constructed-deck variety; a CCG-like without the collectibility. Now, designers Chiarvesio, Grasso, and Puglisi are bringing this game back from the void, as Warage: Reborn

    . The game wants to succeed in a scene that’s notoriously tough to make a dent in, but perhaps this time they’ve got the recipe juuuust right. ( KS link

    )

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3021873_t.png]



    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

  • Designer Diary: Americanizing Terra into America

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/541…ericanizing-terra-america

    by Ted Alspach

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3017313_t.png] Background: Publishing Terra

    In early 2015, Bézier Games, Inc.

    decided to publish the English version of Friedemann Friese

    's Terra

    . This was an easy decision once we found out it was available as I was a fan of Friedemann's Fauna

    (which was an SdJ nominee in 2009). While Fauna

    was focused on animals, Terra

    covered geography and history, two subjects I'm much more interested in than random animals (although I really liked Fauna

    despite that).

    In Terra

    , players are asked three questions. One of them is always a location that corresponds to a region on the giant map of the world that makes up most of the game board. The other two questions are two of three possible categories: a year, a length, or some other number, which are all represented by segmented bars along the bottom of the game board. Each card has a full color photo on it, and the cards have a map/explorer feel to them. When it's your turn, you place a cube on the answer you think you know best from any of the three questions. Turns continue until you run out of cubes or decide to pass. (Answering incorrectly loses that cube for the next round, so you don't want to shotgun the board with cubes, or you'll be at a disadvantage in future rounds.) After everyone has passed, the answers are revealed and players score points: 7 points for a correct answer, and 3 points for an answer adjacent to the correct answer. The rules are essentially the same as in Fauna

    , with a few tweaks to simplify scoring.

    Both games are sort of a cross between the variety of topics in Trivial Pursuit

    and the "get as close as you can" mechanism in Wits & Wagers

    , but the oversized board, full-color images on the cards, and additional mechanisms really set them apart.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3017299_t.png]So it's late spring 2015, and Bézier Games wants the English version of Terra

    out by Spiel 2015. Not a lot of time, though by using a German printer (piggybacking with other foreign publishers who were doing their own localization of Terra

    ) it saved shipping time, which gave us an extra month to get the game ready. Initially, I figured we'd do a straight translation of the rules, cards, box, and the little text on the game board, and *boom* we'd have an English version ready to go.

    Then reality set in. The U.S. is one of only three countries in the world that doesn't use the metric system, and all of the length answers on the cards (and the board) were in metric. Kilometers, millimeters, centimeters, whatevermeters — that just wasn't going to work in the U.S. While most game players can do some of that basic math to figure out the inches, miles, feet, yards, etc. relative to metric values, it's a pain simply because we don't think in metric, so playing would be a chore. Weirdly, pretty much all other English-speaking countries do use the metric system, though, so if we switched to good-ole imperial, they wouldn't be able to play (and they really *can't* do the math because they never need to convert unless they are dealing with Americans). The compromise was to make the board double-sided, with imperial on one side and metric on the other, and to have both imperial and metric units on the cards. Just that was a tremendous amount of work.

    After starting the laborious process of adding imperial measurements to the cards, it was apparent that the English translation wasn't going to cut it; the translation was most likely done by a European who had an excellent command of the English language, but it was clear that English was not their native language. The phrasing was off, there were odd words and colloquialisms, and it was a little challenging to read, so every card, the entire rulebook, and the box were redone to make them more English-friendly.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2601440_t.png]During *that* process, we realized that while the game covered worldwide geography, many of the topics were things of little or no interest to most Americans, like soccer, various international organizations, and several other topics that were a result of either German or European familiarity that just didn't work for Americans. The U.S. is about 90% of the English boardgame market, so again, these things had to be fixed. In this case, it meant that we had to come up with dozens of new cards to replace the topics that didn't work.

    Finally, there was the board. The German board (and the one used for all other languages) was very 8th-grade textbook-looking, which works great for Europeans who don't have a negative view of educational games. In the U.S., though, saying that your game is fun "and educational, too!" pretty much means that no one will even look at it. This isn't because Americans don't want to learn about things, but because there are so many crappy educational "games" made all the time that the word, when applied to games, has a different, mostly negative connotation. Thus, we hired an artist to redo the game board in a satellite-imagery style.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3017300_t.png]The game did (barely) make it out for Spiel even with all the additional work that had to be done.

    During all of these changes, I kept wishing that there were more topics about things I was interested in, but then I realized that Terra

    just wouldn't work for most of those topics because the majority of them would have location answers based in the U.S., and they wouldn't be spread around the world evenly. Furthermore, while Terra

    's "year" answer track ranged from 5000 B.C. to the present day, most of the things on my want list took place in the last few hundred years.

    America Is Conceived

    By the time Spiel 2015 rolled around, I had already pinged Friedemann to ask whether I could do a new game based on Terra

    , but focused instead on America. Friedemann and HUCH! & friends

    (the German publisher that owns the rights to Terra

    ) agreed, and I set to work. The first thing I did was write up all of the things I wanted this game to have that Terra

    didn't. Here's my initial list:

    • Focus on America; all locations will be in the U.S. or in Mexico/Canada.

    • Just two tracks: year and number. Every card will have the same three categories of questions.

    • The location "regions" would be states, though some might be combined where it makes sense.

    • The year track will be detailed for the last fifty years, then grouped in larger and larger increments to the B.C.s.

    • The cards will fall into the following five categories: Entertainment, History & Politics, Geography, Technology & Science, and Games & Sports.

    • The player to the right of the player with the box chooses a category, then the player with the box thumbs through the box to find a category card that matches it, moving all cards in front of that one to the back of the box. The player who found the card reads first.

    As I look at this list now, the general direction was there, but pretty much every item above was tweaked at least a little. Here's how that happened:

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3017304_t.jpg] • Focus on America; all locations will be in the U.S. or in Mexico/Canada.

    Well, Mexico and Canada went out pretty fast. (Americans don't know Mexican states at all and tend to have a very limited knowledge of Canadian provinces and territories.) On top of that, Canada is so freakin' huge it would have been two-thirds of the board. Because there's one ocean on each side of the U.S., each of which is adjacent to a whole lot of states, oceans went out as being an area to place a cube.

    • Just two tracks: year and number. Every card will have the same three categories of questions.

    This is the only item from the original list that was solid from the start. In fact, this allowed me to change the design of the cards from Terra

    's to the three-column design in America

    , which allowed me to use labels for each column (State, Year, Number) right on the card box, so the questions didn't have to use those terms, thereby allowing the question text to be larger and more succinct. This set-up also prevented the need to have metric or imperial measurements on the board as the card asks specifically for a measurement type (which is usually imperial, due to the nature of the game), and you just answer with a number of that measurement.

    The location "regions" would be states, though some might be combined where it makes sense.

    It didn't make sense to combine the smaller northeastern states where a lot happens and leave the bigger western states as single answers, so every state — regardless of size — was a possible answer for the location question. That decision allowed me to simply put "state" on the box in the column below the state question, so you know that the first (leftmost) question is always a state. The only problem that created was that the District of Columbia, where the city of Washington D.C. is located, is not a state, and a lot of historical stuff has happened there. In the end, the call was made to avoid questions for which D.C. was the answer. (Most of them were pretty obvious anyway.) Finally, what to do about Alaska and Hawaii, which have no adjacencies? Well, I made them adjacent to each other, and nothing else, for gameplay purposes.

    The year track will be detailed for the last fifty years, then grouped in larger and larger increments to the B.C.s.

    Well, this sort of worked that way. The year track consists of five-year intervals from now until 1950 (sixty years, I was close), then gradually increases to 25-year intervals by 1700, then it makes a big jump to 1492, which is as far back as we go. (Sorry, native Americans!)

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3017301_t.png] The cards will fall into the following five categories: Entertainment, History & Politics, Geography, Technology & Science, and Games & Sports.

    Close. The categories don't really matter (see below), but there are an even number of cards in the following five categories:

    —
Entertainment (movies, television, music, books)

    —
History & Geography (combined these two)

    —
Products, Inventions, and Technology

    —
Games, Sports, and Fun Activities

    —
Food & Restaurants

    Food turned out to be one of the most fun categories to include because there's so much stuff that originated in the U.S. or that was made popular by America. I had to be pretty creative with some of the location questions to avoid clumping in California, New York, and Illinois for all topics, but in the end there's a really nice variety of locations for the topics.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3017303_t.png] The player to the right of the player with the box chooses a category, then the player with the box thumbs through the box to find a category card that matches it, moving all cards in front of that one to the back of the box.

    This was a good idea in my head, but in practice it was difficult and confusing to players. This evolved until it ended up with the player with the box choosing which *side* of the box from which to read, and then the player to his left answers first, meaning the player who chose the question goes last at the table. Not quite I cut, you choose, but close!

    Bonus points to me for coming up with a system to allow all the cards to be used once, with no repeats until all of the cards have been seen: After a card is scored, it is removed from the box and placed directly behind the "center" divider card. This works out so that the card you placed there will have its other side come out to the box end eventually. It's a slick system that seems very obvious in hindsight.

    Content Creation

    Once the system was in place, it was time to create the cards. America

    ships with 168 double-sided cards, which (I'll do the math for you) is 336 topics, or 1008 questions — each of which needed to be thought of, written, formatted, researched, and tested. Games like America

    are very much dependent on the content of their cards, so a tremendous amount of time went into figuring out the topics and the questions/answers within those topics. After coming up with the 336 topics, I hired several writers to help research and write the questions and answers. In order to make that work, I had to develop a style sheet that listed all of the criteria, such as the questions being only so many words long, that every question and answer had to be focused on the U.S. (not just locations), and how long the "factoids" that appear on each card have to be — then I edited every single one of those, tested them, and had the cards proofed. Whew!

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3017357_t.png] Solving the "I Dunno" Dilemma

    During playtesting, one thing that I noticed — and this is true in Terra

    and Fauna

    , too — was that players were very involved in topics which most of them knew something about it, but that level of interest dropped considerable when they didn't know (or have any idea about) a topic or some of the questions. It's not fun to not know something, and random guesses can work in America

    , but they aren't that satisfying. Of course, there's no way to ensure that everyone who plays will know something about every topic. However, the way America

    works, you can always leech points from other players by placing next to their (likely correct) answers — but sometimes it seems like nobody at the table knows the answer to a question. Thus, what I refer to as the "don't pass" line (from craps) was born.

    In addition to the standard answer spots, players can also place their cubes on the "No Exact" or "No Exact or Adjacent" spots, with a set each for States, Locations, and Numbers. If players get the feeling that no one knows an answer (maybe they haven't placed on that answer bar yet, or everyone is whining that they don't know anything about it), they can place a cube on one of these spots, and if they're right, they get points! Like all other spots on the game board, only one player can place on each of them, so there's some tension as to when to place (if at all) on those spots. It makes topics that otherwise would be an "it doesn't matter, none of us know that" into a fun little bluffing thing where you might place a cube out on a spot and state, "I remember that from a PBS special" when you really have no idea, then watch others pile up around you, then when everyone has used up their cubes, plop one down on the "No Exact or Adjacent" to scoop up a quick 7-point score.

    These new spots underscore that there's a really solid game engine under the glossy trivia hood, which gamers will appreciate, and non-gamers will enjoy without realizing why.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2860338_t.jpg] Finalizing America for publication

    One of the other concerns regarding the game was the price. America

    is a trivia game, and most trivia games are $25 games that are dropped off at non-gaming stores by the pallet around the holidays, hoping to score big and then be forgotten. (I'm sure they don't hope to be forgotten, but they usually are.) The goal for America

    has always been a little different; the idea is to redefine what a trivia game can be for Americans, with fun, engaging questions that are combined with elegant gameplay. I don't want America

    to be forgotten after a holiday blitz, but instead to be a game that can be pulled out time and again. The way the card replenishment system works, players will get more than fifty games out of it without ever seeing the same card twice — that's a lot of replayability.

    But with an oversized game board, wood pieces (even though they are cubes, they're big, chunky cubes), and a ton of full-color cards, there's no way America

    could have bargain-bin pricing. It ended up at $45, which is still more than I would like it to be at, but the quality of the components and the gameplay make it a great deal (and if you do the math, that's less than 90¢ per game).

    All sorts of other tweaks were made to the game during development, including adding a little icon behind the state question that indicates whether the answer is east or west of the Mississippi River (which just so happens to divide the country almost equally in terms of number of states, even though the amount of land on the west side is much greater than that on the east side).

    There are a bunch of fun little in-jokes on several cards, a very meta card with the topic of " America

    the game", and the cube colors are red, white, and blue (as well as silver, black and light blue). And if you and your friends can handle it, you can also play with the "back" of the game board where the state names are blank...

    America

    will be available at Gen Con 2016, and shortly thereafter in stores everywhere!

  • New Game Round-up: Spiel 2016 — KOSMOS Expands Andor, Invites Cunning, Revisits Luther, and Asks You to Leave the Room

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/557…-kosmos-expands-andor-inv

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3061605_t.jpg]

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3086480_t.jpg]Spiel 2016 is still more than three months away at this point, but some companies have started to reveal their late 2016 titles, so expect more such round-ups like these from now through mid-October. (The Spiel 2016 Preview will go live August 8, 2016, the day after Gen Con 2016 ends. One con at a time!) That said, we can still take an early look at what KOSMOS

    will release:

    • While Die Legenden von Andor: Die Letzte Hoffnung

    has been announced as the final title in Michael Menzel

    's Andor

    trilogy, this September 2016 release from KOSMOS is actually a standalone title (instead of simply an expansion) and it will be followed in February 2017 by Die Legenden von Andor: Dunkle Helden

    , a five- & six-player expansion that adds four new heroes to the game.

    • The description of Martin

    and Erika Schlegel

    's Luther: Das Spiel

    is brief for now, so it's not clear what the nature of gameplay is like. KOSMOS does mention that an enclosed brochure includes background information on Luther's work, but other than that detail we have only the following for now:

    For the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses of 1517, players can now live as Luther's contemporaries, following in his footsteps, traveling the cities where he worked, and encountering important companions of the Reformer.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3086491_t.jpg]Michael Rieneck

    's Mit List und Tücke

    is billed as having "twenty cards with which to cut and thrust" and other than 52 influence crests that's it for game components. Here's an overview:

    The King is dead; long live the Queen! Or vice versa, really, as in the intriguing game Mit List und Tücke it's hard to tell what everyone is up to and who will have the greatest impact until it all ends. Yes, the bishop's poison has been touched, but has it been administered to the abbot or is it still waiting to be used? What's happening with the witch? And the executioner is waiting for his next job...

    At the beginning of a round, each player has four character cards in hand. On your turn, you play a card in front of you and follow its instructions. With some cards, you can carry out actions on your opponent and bring an end to the round's influence — but only if you don't fall victim to your opponent in the process.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3086538_t.jpg]• Four years after the release of the base game, Andreas Steiger

    's Targi

    gets an expansion in the plainly titled Targi: Die Erweiterung

    , which like the item above is due out September 2016. An overview:

    The expansion of the tribe goes on in Targi: Die Erweiterung. With water as a new element, the tribe has more flexibility in how it will extend itself. To send a Targi to a drifting sand dune can be an advantage at the right moment, and whoever searches near the Tuareg woman — the Targia — will be rewarded.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3086569_t.jpg]Word Slam

    from the team of Inka

    and Markus Brand

    will likely be a hard pass for English speakers, but for those learning or already speaking German, I present the following:

    In the communication game Word Slam, two teams compete against one another simultaneously.

    In each round, one player on each team tries to get their teammates to guess a hidden word or phrase using only the 105 explanatory cards available in the box — no words! A player can use as many explanatory cards as desired, and whichever team guesses correctly first scores a point.

    • The Brands are also responsible for a trio of "escape room" games from KOSMOS — EXIT: Das Spiel – Das geheime Labor

    , Die Grabkammer des Pharao

    , and Die verlassene Hütte

    — with each of them being a single-play experience for €13 that puts 1-6 players in a sticky situation with nothing more than a notebook and a spinning code dial of some sort to get them started on the path to freedom.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3086619_t.jpg]

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3086627_t.jpg]

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3086626_t.jpg]

  • Friedemann Friese, 2F-Spiele and Stronghold Games Feature Fabled Fruit and Fuji Flush

    Link: boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/557…le-and-stronghold-games-f

    by W. Eric Martin

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3087415_t.jpg]German publisher 2F-Spiele

    and U.S. publisher Stronghold Games

    , who cooperated on the publication of Friedemann Friese

    's 504

    in English in 2015, have announced a "Strategic Partnership" that will result in Stronghold Games co-publishing "all new future 2F-Spiele tiles in English globally effective immediately". The titles will be printed together at Ludo Fact in Germany, so according to Stronghold Games' press release about this announcement "this will also enable a virtually simultaneous worldwide release of the titles".

    To go hand-in-hand with this announcement, 2F-Spiele and Stronghold Games have released info about two new Friese titles that will debut at Spiel 2016 in October: Fabled Fruit

    and Fuji Flush

    . Let's start with the larger of the two, called Fabelsaft

    in German:

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3086825_t.jpg]

    Once upon a time there was a marvelous forest full of gorgeous fruits. These fruits came in vivid colors with the sweetest tastes, and the best part was that the fruits could be squeezed and mixed into the most delicious juices.

    You are animals living in this forest, searching for the most savory fruits. You find them with the help of friendly forest-dwellers. They give you fruits, trade them with you, or help you in other ways. It is most advantageous to be the first at these locations. If you are already at a location, you get a fruit from the animals arriving after you.

    You are greedy and thirsty. Who will be the first to satisfy their appetite for fabled juices?

    2F-Spiele describes Fabled Fruit

    as a "Fable game", noting that a Fable game "is one where the gameplay changes over time", and while that sounds like a Rob Daviau-style Legacy game at first the longer description reveals differences:

    The first time you play, the game starts in its initial state, which is a relatively simple state. But as you explore deeper into the game system, the mechanisms and gameplay experience will evolve. You play the game many times, and each play changes the game slightly. However, the game is never permanently changed. At any time you may easily restart a Fable game from the beginning, either after you have run through the entire game system, or at any time during the multiple plays you will get from this game system. The Fable game will remain just as playable on the twentieth play as it was on the first play of the game.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic3086849_t.jpg]The other title — Fuji Flush

    , a.k.a. Futschikato

    — has an interesting history, despite it not yet being released on the market.

    In March 2016, copies of a game titled Doppelt und Dreifach

    started showing up in the mailboxes of well-connected gamers in Germany, with the designer being listed only as "Der Bruder von Christian Anders" (the brother of Christian Anders). Then copies showed up at the Gathering of Friends convention as well. One recipient created the BGG listing, but the game didn't create a huge splash given that it was a simple card game, had no marketing, and was seen by only a few hundred people.

    I skipped the Gathering in 2016 (as I'm already committed to nearly a dozen conventions for work this year, so the "just for fun" one takes a backseat), which means that I hadn't heard of the game until Chris Schreiber told me about it at Origins 2016, describing it in terms of Abluxxen

    (*little starbursts*) and thereby making me want it immediately.

    As it turns out, Friese was pulling a Richard Bachman and trying to see what kind of reaction this unknown game from an unknown designer would get from gamers in the know. (Friese tells the complete story in a BGG GeekList

    .) The answer so far is "very little", but now that the Friese name is attachd to it, we'll see what happens from here. The BGG description, however, is scant:

    Be the first player to get rid of all of your cards!

    Join forces with fellow players to beat cards played by other players...or independently play the highest card to outdo all your opponents together, flushing their cards down the drain!

    Fuji Flush is a fast, fun, easy-to-learn card game that will have you shouting as your cards are sent down the drain!

    ...so let's turn to the Doppelt und Dreifach

    description instead:

    Doppelt und Dreifach is an abstract card game by an anonymous author. It consists of cards numbered 2-15, with higher numbers being rarer. Each player holds six cards at the beginning. In clockwise order, players play one card each. If it is higher than any other card currently on the table, the lower card is discarded and the player who had played it has to draw a new card. However, if two or more players play the same number, the card values are cumulated. When it's a player's turn and their card is still in front of them, they can discard it without redrawing. First player(s) to get rid of their cards wins.

    [Blockierte Grafik: http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic2931249_t.jpg]


    The press release concludes by announcing that "Additional titles will be announced at a future date", but I will circle back to an earlier line in the announcement, one that clarifies the "all new" phrase in the partnership for "all new future 2F-Spiele tiles". This line: "This arrangement does not include existing 2F-Spiele game lines currently published with other partners"; the only existing 2F-Spiele game line that I can think of is Power Grid

    , so if anything is coming along those circuits, we might have to wait a little longer to find out.