Yay, only the second week of weekly news, and already I couldn’t keep my schedule of “every Friday evening” that I set for myself. In my defence, I was busy playing games, or to be more specific, poker with some work mates. It may surprise some of you, but it was my first time of really playing poker – it’s just not so big here in Germany. It was good fun, and my strategy of just betting randomly with no relation to my cards to confuse people worked. It had nothing to do with me not having a clue what I was doing. So, what are the news of this week then?
Fantasy Flight Games announced The Hobbit, a new game based on J.R.R Tolkien’s novel designed by Reiner Knizia. The board there does remind me of his Lord of the Rings game, I hope this one will be a bit more forgiving. Also by Fantasy Flight, and in stores now is Arcana, a card game about the guilds of Cadwallon, the Kings of the Storm expansion for the A Game of Thrones card game and Mad Zeppelin – a game about treason against the empire and each other, aboard a zeppelin. Sign me up!
Bruno Faidutti posted the rules for the upcoming Isla Dorada, which is great, I just wish he had posted some more of that stunning artwork, too.
Isn’t it wonderful to live in modern times, where even board games get trailers – like White Goblin Games’ Essen release Khan. They also have rules online for their other new release, Inca Empire, and if the game sounds familiar to you, it’s a new name for Tahuantinsuyu, now with added pronouncability. Both games can be preordered on their website.
Also at Essen, like everything to do with board games right now, Pegasus Spiele will release two new games: Firenze, a strategic tower building game in renaissance Florence and Junta: Viva El Presidente, a sequel to the classic game of losing all your friends Junta – I’m really curious about that one, hopefully they made the game play a bit less tediously than the original while keeping in the meanness.
From Mayfair Games, closer to the end of the year, you can buy the updated and re-released version of the Catan card game, Rivals of Catan.
And still on Catan, the new World Champion of Catan is Erwin Pauelsen from the Netherlands, congratulations!
My French may be a bit rusty, but it looks like Antoine Bauza’s Rockband Manager will be released by Edge Entertainment at the end of October. I’m not telling you what the theme of the game will be …
And finally, Portal Publishing added another explanatory post about 51st State.
If you are missing news here about your upcoming game, or your favourite publisher, please leave a comment here, I’m still building up my list of news sources.
This week’s photo of the town hall of our home city Bonn was taken by Flickr user(s) Jean & Nathalie who were kind enough to make it available with a Creative Commons License. Thank you guys! The original can be found here