Meople News: Tahiti Runners

Finally, gaming is back here in the Meeple Cave. We have a friend staying with us this week, so not only was boardgames the theme of the weekend but also of every evening this week. Including this one as soon as the news are out, so let’s get going

Alderac Entertainment

Dark Rages: London Nightlife
Dark Rages: London Nightlife

If you were following the news stream from Alderac Entertainment this week, you might have gotten the feeling your computer was getting hiccups. The first Smash Up (Paul Peterson) preview was all 01110111 01110010 01101001 01110100 01110100 01100101 01101110 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01101111 01101110 01101100 01111001 00100000 01101111 01101110 01100101 01110011 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01111010 01100101 01110010 01101111 01100101 01110011 but then the fans were all 01110111 01110100 01100110 00100000 01001001 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 and so the second one was in plain English again. If you hadn’t guessed, the subject of the previews was the Robot faction. I’m looking forward to playing Robot Pirates already. (If you need some help with the first preview on account of not being a robot, have a look here.)

Some people are still not into binary and robots – I can’t think why – but the nice people of Alderac Entertainment do things for those minorities as well. I kid, of course, I’d never consider Nightfall players a minority. Dark Rages, the next expansion, is coming soon and also showing off some preview cards. There are many new regular cards, of course, but there is also something completely new in Dark Rages: avatars. Your avatar – and you only get to have one of them – is the general of your army of monsters and/or hunters and a stand-in for you personally. The avatar can not be destroyed – the days of generals standing in the front lines are long over, after all – and grants a bonus to all members of the two factions he supports.

 Cryptozoic

Staying on card game and expansions for a moment longer, Snack Attack the first expansion to Food Fight is now available. The forces of breakfast, lunch and dinner receive reinforcements from the snack troops. Salsa Bandido and the Green Beret Granola Bar are only the beginning …

Lookout Games

Sometimes, just sometimes, living in Germany and speaking German has its advantages. For instance, around here we can already buy the new edition of Rüdiger Dorn’s Goa, a game that many people are anxiously waiting for. But don’t spend your money on German classes just yet, the English version from Z-Man Games is due out this month as well, and the money and time saved on learning a new language can be spent on games.

Minion Games

After the Manhattan Project with its rather destructive theme, the newly announced Minion Game Tahiti literally brings you back into more peaceful waters. With your wa’a, the traditional boat of the area, you travel across the calm waters of the South Pacific in search for food to bring home to your family. But the more you load, the slower your wa’a will be, so sometimes less is more. And the tikis might have some say about your success as well. But first, you have some say about if and how Tahiti will be made because it’s now on Kickstarter.

Portal Publishing

The website of Ignacy Trzewiczek’s Convoy has been updated this week and now shows some of the cards for both factions. The texts are still Polish only, so unless you speak the language you won’t find out exactly what they do, but the number of different symbols on the cards makes it pretty clear that Convoy will have some complexity to it.

Fantasy Flight Games

Something old, something new, something borrowed and both boxes show a lot of blue – I’m not talking about a wedding but about FFG’s preview posts of the week.

Netrunner
Netrunner

Something old is Descent: Journeys in the Dark about which we have been seeing previews for the last few weeks already. This week is still special because it goes into an aspect of the game that all players of dungeon crawling games must have waited for: the combat system.

Something new and something borrowed refer to the same game: Netrunner. While the game itself is not new, it’s definitely news that Fantasy Flight Games will be releasing a new edition of it. And it’s borrowed from Richard Garfield who, for some time in the 90s, was as famous for being this game’s creator as he is for Magic: The Gathering. Like that one, Netrunner was originally a collectible card game, but interestingly with an asymmetric structure: in a dark and not-so-distant future, one player takes the role of a giant corporation set for world domination while the other is the  freelance hacker who opposes them. Or maybe he’s just after their money, you never know. This new edition will not be a CCG any more but a Living Card Game. That’s at least slightly better for your credit rating – you still get a new expansion to buy every other month, but at least you get all the cards with one purchase and don’t have to go fish for them.

Tokaido
Tokaido

Funforge

For Essen 2012, Funforge will present us with a new Antoine Bauza game: Tokaido. Tokaido is a bit of a tourist game, you’re travelling along the famous East Sea Road of Japan with the declared goal to have the best food, see the most beautiful landscapes and collecting the finest items. You’re doing touristy things and the game looks to be very peaceful – you can’t run your opponents of the road – but is still intended as a strategic game. It is also outstandingly beautiful, even for a French game, and they have set a very high standard. (via BGG News)

Asmodee

Brett Gilbert’s Divinare, the fortune-telling world championship game, is almost upon us. But you probably knew that already. Asmodee is currently holding a release contest, but I guess that’s not news to you. If it was news to you, then maybe you just shouldn’t take part in the contest, your third eye is in need of contacts. And if your powers of divination are strong enough to enter the contest, then you already know whether you won or not. Wait, what?

 WizKids

Just like deck-building games, dice-building games are ideal for expansions. And when the game in question is Quarriors – are there any other dice-building games? – then no one is going to complain about more of the goodness. Quarmageddon brings 6 new monsters, including the Mischievous Imp, two new spells and, actually, more Imps because the buggers multiply.

This week marks the beginning of another new series of photos for our news posts: World Heritage Sites. The first photo shows a reconstruction of the pile dwellings that existed all around the Alps in the Stone and Brone Age times. This reconstruction can be found in Unteruhldingen, Germany. It was photographed by Flickr user Longfellowelizabeth and shared with a CC-BY-SA license. Thank you, this is an amazing photo.

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