I thought that after Essen things would calm down a little. obviously I was wrong, because now we have way too many new games around and can’t wait to try them all. We spent the entire Saturday and Sunday playing new games, and we didn’t try them all yet. Some words of advice: don’t start learning 2019: The Arctic around midnight. We took a while to understand what we were doing, but when we finally got it we didn’t want to interrupt the game, so even with the switch back from daylight saving time, we only got five to six hours of sleep. I’m getting too old for this. We also learned Alcatraz: The Scapegoat on Sunday, played more Québec, more Dungeon Fighter and some others. Also, there was cake. Perfect weekend!
Fantasy Flight Games
The Forbidden Alchemy expansion (Corey Koniezcka) for Mansion of Madness is shaping up nicely. You can have an experienced medic join your party, that’s always a plus when that many things are trying to eat your face off. On the other hand, you can discover all new ways to have your face remove, like failing at alchemy puzzles. And you thought the side effects of your cold medication were bad.
Speaking of expansions, the rules for the Fame and Fortune (Kevin Wilson), the first expansion to Civilization: The Board Game, are online. And because expansions apparently come in three, here are four new units from Banners of War.
Apart from expansions, here’s some interesting information for everyone interested in the second edition of A Game of Thrones (Christian Petersen). When a second edition is announced and advertised as more than just a reprint, we all wonder the same thing: what is different? That’s exactly the question answered this week.
Mayfair Games
White Water, Frederic Moyersoen’s new game, now has a release date: February 2012. White Water is a raft race where each raft is manned by 4 crewmen taking orders from two different players. I’m curious about the dynamics of controlling the raft togehter, but we’ll all have to wait for more information.
Tartan Grizzly Productions
Apart from a nifty name – I may steal it to title a news post at some point – Tartan Grizzly Productions also has a contest, giving away copies of Pamplona – Viva San Fermín (Massimo Pesce). Players participate in the famous bull running event – as runners and as bulls. You earn points by getting to the finish line unharmed, but also by goring your opponents.
Cryptozoic
Cryptozoic released a burst of news this last week. First of all, The Walking Dead Board Game is available now. I can’t tell what was going on with the licensing between this game and Z-Man Games’ The Walking Dead: The Board Game, probably they avoided conflict because the Z-Man game is based directly on the comic while the Cryptozoic one is based on the TV series. Still, when going to your friendly local game store to buy either of these games, make sure you pick the one that you wanted.
Also available now, and with absolutely no risk of being confused with anything else, is Penny Arcade: Gamers vs. Evil. As a deck-building game based on the most popular (computer) gamer web comic ever, Gamers vs. Evil lets you take the role of popular heroes like the Cardboard Samurai and set out to defeat evil. From the description, the mechanics seem vaguely similar to Ascension, but you get the whole game with art in original Penny Arcade style- Bonus! Like every good deck-building game, there is also an expansion already in the making: Rumble in R’lyeh.
Having gotten the taste of deck-building games, it’s hard to stop with just one – the genre is still popular and the games are so easy and natural to expand that publishers love it. A World of Warcraft deck-building game is just the most natural thing to happen when you hold the rights to produce Warcraft boardgames already. We don’t know when, but Clash of Champions is coming.
Zoch Spiele
When Zoch Spiele announced their fall game collection, there was a lot of kid and family games in it, among them Da ist der Wurm drin that already won Kinderspiel des Jahres this year. For us adult gamers, there are two games that might be interesting.
One is Aquiliea, a gladiator placement game. Still wanting to be family friendly, it appears no gladiators are violently slaughtered in this game, but if the game is meaty enough that‘s easily forgiven. Aquiliea was designed by Italian design team Cielo d’Oro and is advertised as a mix of luck and strategy.
The other one is a party game called Schnapp’s (translates as Take it!) by Carlo A. Rossi that takes the classic party game subject of describing a picture and letting the others guess it, but adds handicaps like for example inserting “schnapp’s” after every word of the description. It’s a party game, but with the right people it should be fun.
Kickstarter
We already talked about it after Essen: Mutant Meeples by Ted Alspach. Mutant Meeples is about finding the shortest way from one place to a crime scene somewhere on the streets of Meeptropolis. To get their, your team of superpowered Meeples has to work together because, even with all their special abilities, they can only stop when they hit a building or another Supermeeple. The concept is similar to Ricochet Robots, but now you have superpowers to spice things up. And Meeples, we can’t forget the Meeples.
This week’s picture of Golden Lion Tamarins was taken by Steve and shared with a CC-BY-SA license. Thank you, Steve!