And hello again! Although the weather here is trying its very best to make us lazy and stay sleeping in the heat all day, we bravely fought of the desire to sleep and played games instead. Our bags tend to be full already, so the games we brought to Brazil are all small box editions; but remember: it’s not the size that matters. We had a great weekend with Potion-making: Practice, A Fistful of Penguins and Mundus Novus.
Days of Wonder
The second map pack for Ticket to Ride is now available in Europe. Ticket to Ride: India unsurprisingly contains the India map by map contest winner Ian Vincent, but as a little extra there’s also the good old Switzerland map for two or three players in the box. However, our US readers should better look for something else as a Christmas gift for their favourite gamer as Ticket to Ride: India will only make it across the Atlantic in January.
Gry Leonardo
Gry Leonardo is looking to expand their highly praised worker placement game Magnum Sal for Essen 2012, and while they probably have a ton of great ideas already, they would like to see you come up with an even better one: design a new tool card for the (still unnamed) Magnum Sal expansion and not only will your name go down in the history books – or at least the game’s rulebook – but you might also win a free copy of the base game plus the new expansion. With your name in the rulebook to show off to all your friends.
Fantasy Flight Games
What do you do when you have a popular game? You expand it, of course! And when the expansions are popular already as well? Then you expand it more: enter Cosmic Alliance, Kevin Wilson’s third expansion for Cosmic Encounter. It doesn’t seem to bring as many new things as previous expansions, but I never heard a Cosmic Encounter player complain about 20 new races to play. The ability to play with up to eight people – if you own the other two expansions as well – will be welcomed by some as well, although I’m afraid that actual conquest of the cosmos may be faster than the game at that point.
Forbidden Alchemy, the first but almost certainly not last expansion to Mansion of Madness, is only a few days away now. This weeks preview introduces the character Dexter Drake, master magician and the challenging and scary concept of time travel.
Kickstarter
With a bit more than half a day to go, Kings of Air and Steam has hit its funding goal a long time ago. But if we can push that last $3.000 of funding, there will be airships!
Valley Games would like to say thank you to everyone for making D-Day Dice the highest funded boardgame project on Kickstarter so far. Almost 15 times the required amount, that will take some effort to outdo. Big congratulations, guys!
If you’re like me, you would like to play curling but you are much too lazy to find a frozen lake somewhere to play it on. Or maybe you’re in Brazil where finding a frozen lake is only slightly less challenging than finding Atlantis. In that case, Caveman Curling might be for you: a light dexterity game to play in the safety (and warmth) of your own home.
This weeks photo of a fruit bat was shot by Derek Keats and shared with a CC-BY-SA license. Thanks, Derek.