Spielworxx
German publisher Spielworxx has announced three new games that will probably all be available later this year. The first, La Granja by Michael Keller and Andreas Odendahl puts you in control of a small farm on historic Mallorca. Your job there is to produce various goods to deliver to the nearby town of Esporles over six rounds. With the goods you deliver you complete tasks which award victory points and may grant other advantages.
Arkwright by Stefan Risthaus will be the exact opposite of the quite farm life on Mallorca. Here, you turn into a magnate in the Industrial Revolution and try to lead your industrial empire into a profitable future. Arkwright will hopefully be available in August or September, meaning you can pick up your copy in Essen.
Number three is set at roughly the same time: Thomas Spitzer completes his Coal Trilogy (so far consisting of Ruhrschifffahrt 1769 – 1890 and Kohle & Kolonie) with a yet unnamed game about the beginning of coal mining in the German Ruhrgebiet, one of the centers of the Industrial Revolution in Germany.
Alderac
I enjoy posting Smash Up previews, it’s as simple as that. So with great pleasure I present to you the newest card from the Science Fiction Double Feature. Those Super Spies are a damn nuisance. Killing minions I didn’t even get into my hand yet? Come on, that’s cheating!
Historical Games Factory
Historical Games Factory is going to be busy this year. In the first half of the year, they plan on releasing Noah’s Ark (working title), a real time game for kids where they draw animal tiles and place them on their ark as fast as they can. In August or September there will be Retaliation (also working title), a mechanically not too heavy game about Polish soldiers training abroad and then participating in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944.
On top of those two, they plan on starting a new brand to release non-historic games. (Wait… Noah’s Ark?) Five games for that brand are already being worked on. One is a real time dice and card game about battling wizards, one is a semi-coop dark sci-fi game about the first Human/Alien-contact and one is a big civilization game. So… a real time game, a dark sci-fi game and a civilization game that the people who made Sigismundus Augustus call big. Where do I sign up for a subscription? The final two projects are a secret for now, but we know that one will be released at Spiel 2014 and the other will be crowdfunded on Spieleschmiede.
Hans im Glück
With the Toy Fair in Nürnberg open, Hans im Glück have revealed some interesting things for this year.
There will be another expansion for evergreen Carcassone called Sheep and Hills (Schafe und Hügel). New tiles let you create hills and vineyards that you can claim for points, of course. Your sheep will not be save, however, there is a wolf among the new tiles as well.
Number two is also an expansion, but a more exciting one. Die Stadt am Zwin (City on the Zwin) expands Stefan Feld’s Bruges. We don’t have any details yet, but I’m curious how Feld will expand Bruges, the base game didn’t leave any obvious openings.
The third new project is Helios. In this game, all the players are high priests of the Greek sun god, building temples in his honor but also expanding cities and advancing civilization when convenient. The games description states that “the power of the sun drives everything”, lets see if that is a game mechanic or just flavor. (all via BGG News)
From our photo series of UNESCO World Heritage sites, this week we have the Ksar of Ait-Ben-Haddou in Morocco. The photo was taken by Tomasz Dunn and shared with a CC-BY license. Thanks a lot, Tomasz!