Meople News: The Origins of Fury

Fantasy Flight Games

Scotland Yard, reimagined for Fantasy Flight Games, that’s pretty much the short description of Fury of Dracula. Up to four players chase Dracula himself through Europe. The vampire player moves across the board in secret and his pursuers must deduce where they may be able to catch him. Unlike Scotland Yard‘s Mister X, however, Dracula is anything but defenseless. He leaves traps and monsters in his wake, dangers for the hunters to deal with. They may counter these dangers with weapons and equipments of their own. To win the game, they must find and defeat Dracula, a dangerous opponent. Dracula wins the game by spreading his influence across Europe. All that is not strictly new, Fury of Dracula has been around for many years. But a new edition is coming soon, and it’s not a simple reprint but has some noticeable changes, above all a more streamlined combat system – somehow I read that phrase in many new Fantasy Flight editions, could it be their combat rules were too complex?

If, like us, you have been wondering what will be different in the Fantasy Flight edition of Mission: Red Planet, then this post by co-designer Bruno Faidutti will answer your questions. Some changes don’t sound like much, but will probably turn out to have a big impact on the game, like the new secret missions. Other changes have almost epic proportions: they added a whole moon to the game!

Ares Games / Gremlin Project

Gremlin Project and Ares Games are back to bring us another epic coop game. In Sword & Sorcery players each control a legendary hero brought back from the dead, fighting their way through the game’s storyline. Just like Galaxy Defenders, the previous cooperation by Ares Games and Gremlin Project, the heroes’ enemies are controlled by the games “AI”. Players will again find many ways to customize their characters and many tactical options in combat, only this time in a fantasy setting. With a new area movement and control system, Sword & Sorcery‘s creators promise a game that will be faster and more dynamic than it’s predecessor. The first part, Sword & Sorcery – Immortal Souls, will appear on Kickstarter some time September.

LudiCreations

Last year, LudiCreations kickstarted their hidden identity game [redacted], a game about spies and secret agents in search for information. They are so secretive that not even their teammates know who they are. Bluff and deduction are useful tools, but you can win the game with clever tactical use of your item cards alone. Now the expansion Garden Party is on Kickstarter, and it adds the gardens as a new game board to the embassy you’re all searching through. Also in the expansion is all the material for a seventh player.

Artana

In an ambitious endeavor, Artana are planning to go one step beyond the Legacy system of games like Risk Legacy and Pandemic Legacy. Their new Echo System will also permanently change the game depending on the outcome of each session, but that’s only the start. You will take the changes you made in one boxed game of a series to the next with you to the next box, tying a whole series together into one long experience that is unique to your game group. The first series to use the Echo System will be Chronicles, starting with Chronicles: Origins, a game about early human tribes. Ultimately, the series will span the whole history of your game world. That’s incredibly ambitious, but if they can pull it off this could become one of the most epic boardgame experiences ever.

Mage Company

Early this month, we talked about a new edition of Reiner Knizia’s Res Publica:

Reiner Knizia goes to space. New editions of his games are going well at the moment, and Mage Company will join that party later this month with a Kickstarter for Res Publica: 2230 AD, a remake of Knizia’s Res Publica in space. The mechanics look unchanged from the original: through clever trading with the other players, every tries to assemble sets of five cards that she then uses to build cities, giving her more cards on later turns, or to erect monuments for victory points. Only now cities will be spacestations, and of course the art is all new.

Well, now it is later this month, and the Kickstarter project is ready to take your money.

The beautiful, colorful lake in our photo of the week is the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone Park, USA. It’s the largest hot spring in Yellowstone and the third largest in the world. The photo was taken by Kyla Duhamel and kindly shared with CC-BY license. Thank you, Kyla!

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