Meople News: Innovative Wil and the Shadow of the Roller Coaster

If you’re already following us on Facebook or Google Plus then these two items won’t be all that new to you. (If you don’t, by the way, now is a good time. We don’t bite… much.) This one is not really news, just something I discovered this week: Taikyoku Shogi. This game may deserve the title of largest, most convoluted board game ever. Played on a board of 1.296 squares, you play it more than 400 pieces of more than 200 different types with different movement rules. Yikes!

The other item has a small risk of making you explode into school-girlish screams of joy, so I’d advise you not to read/watch it in public. Geek icon Wil Wheaton is hosting a new show on Youtube called Tabletop where he plays boardgames with celebrities. I admit freely that I feel a deep hatred for many celebrities, but I trust Wil not to select those – and the ones I mean wouldn’t understand the rules, anyway. This show will definitely go to my subscriptions:

 

Asmadi Games

Carl Chudyk’s civilization-building card game Innovation will have its second expansion this year: Innovation: Figures in the Sand. Figures will introduce a completely new type of cards – the historical figures – that follow different rules than the innovation cards. Instead of dogma effects, figures have karma that is triggered by specific actions. Every player can only have one figure in play at a time, old figures fade to the score pile. A lot of new options and certainly even more chaos in four player games.

Days of Wonder

Small World Realms (Philippe Keyaerts) is one expansion that matches two games: Small World and Small World Underground. That’s a lot of value for your money, if you own both base games. But even if you have only one, Realms will add a lot of replayability to that one with the ability to build hundreds of new maps from the map pieces. It also includes a bunch of premade scenarios and some special pieces to match them, like the legendary Rusty Throne.

Tasty Minstrel Games

I don’t find any better words to describe David Short’s Ground Floor than the Tasty Minstrel used in their mailing list: “You have no money, no employees, little information, a personal specialty, and 9 years to become a business mogul. GET TO WORK!” That does sum up the game pretty well, it’s a euro style economic game, more on the heavy side strategy-wise, that puts you in the position of the founder of a start-up company trying to bite your way to the top of the business. If you were thinking about attending management classes, wait for Ground Floor instead and you’ll likely learn more and certainly have a better time.

Gary Games

It’s expansion time in the deck-building world. This time, it’s Ascension that is growing a bit bigger. The new expansion Ascension: Immortal Heroes will work as a stand-alone game for two players or expand Ascension: Storm of Souls with a new story and to be playable with up to 6 players. That’s what it says on their website, anyway, so if you only call Ascension: Chronicles of the Godslayer your own you might want to find out if the expansion is compatible first.

Black Tea Studios

If you’re still on the fence about funding the Kickstarter Project for Shadow Days, maybe seeing the manual can help your decision.

Pandasaurus Games

Honestly, who came up with that name? I love it! The upcoming game from Pandasaurus is Roller Coaster Rush, a card game where you construct a roller coaster and then send some test drivers over it to see who gets sick. All that with a time limit per turn determined by the time the other players took. Roller Coaster Rush will be kickstarted soon.

Because I’m not only a addicted to boardgames but almost as addicted to World of Warcraft, the only choice in photos for the week was a Panda! This particular one was photographed by Lyndi & Jason and shared as CC-BY-SA. Thanks guys!

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