Meople News: Talent Phobia

Hey everymeeple!

Since we’re back in the Meeple Cave now, normal posting schedule here and on the social media should resume. At least once I’m awake again after the trip back, which might happen at any point between tomorrow and the sun burning out. Let’s see. In the meantime, have some news!

Smash Up: Awesome Level 9000 (Image by Alderac Entertainment)
Smash Up: Awesome Level 9000 (Image by Alderac Entertainment)

Alderac Entertainment

The newest Smash Up: Awesome Level 9000 card preview explains a new concept in Awesome Level 9000: Talents. Talents are activated abilities like Actions, but they can be activated in addition to your one Action per turn, and every round as long as the card with the Talent is in play. That sounds seriously powerful, I hope Talents won’t create balance problems.

Fantasy Flight Games

My hopes for Relic, the game I jokingly called Talisman 40k, just keep getting higher: adding core ideas from the Warhammer universe apparently adds meaningful and interesting decisions to the game, at least Corruption does. Some Encounters force you to gain Corruption cards, but others give you the choice to gain one in trade for granting you another boon. Items, increased stats and even level ups are all possible. Low level Corruption cards, if they activate, are bad for you in some way. But as the classic slippery slope of Chaos goes, the more corrupted you are the more attractive further corruption is, the higher Corruption cards mostly let you have additional bonuses if you’re already corrupted enough to activate them. Of course, there is a downside. There always is. Upon collecting your sixth Corruption card, you turn into a Hellspawn and are removed from the game – and this is not the soft Relic style of dying where you lose some equipment and get a free resurrection, this is classical Talisman draw a new hero and start from scratch death. Corruption will give you some interesting decisions to make.

Portal Publishing

End of March will see a new army pack for Neuroshima Hex: the Sharrash, a species of mutated, intelligent rats. Unlike the rat people in other games that have them, their biggest advantage is not their near infinite amount of cannon fodder units, quite on the contrary their low number of fighting units is stated as one of their disadvantages. Playing Sharrash will be an interesting new challenge for Neuroshima Hex players.

Ares Games / Gremlin Project

The first pictures from Galaxy Defenders, the cooperative, tactical miniature combat game, are online. See the first two miniatures (one agent and one alien) and the first map.

Tasty Minstrel Games

You all know I’m a fan of dungeon crawling games, so imagine my happiness when I found TMG’s newest project on Kickstarter. Dungeon Roll is, in a surprising twist of fate, a dice rolling dungeon crawling game. More specifically, a push your luck game where you keep rolling your remaining party dice to defeat more monsters until you decide it’s time to retreat and take your loot and experience points – or the Dragon eats you. Victory in combat also lets you draw treasures to use in future fights. Sounds like a light yet fun game, and it’ll come in a treasure chest.

Asmodee / Libellud

The new Libellud game coming end of March aims at larger game groups (up to ten players) wanting to play in teams. In Ladies & Gentlemen (Loic Lamy) one gentlemen and one lady team up, then he tries to make as much money as he can while she spends it on clothing and jewelry. One of the mechanics named for the game is simultaneous action selection, so probably guessing your partners actions correctly is going to play a big role. An asymmetric team game, I’m intrigued.

MAGE Company

Urbania (working title) is a game by Tony Cimino (author of Wrong Chemistry) with a very unusual setting. Each of the up to seven players will take control of a group of protesters marching through the city, encountering reporters, riot control unit and each other in a card and miniature game. That sounds interesting already, and that you will have influence on the rule of order or chaos in the city sounds both mysterious and exciting. I don’t know yet if there will be a Kickstarter campaign for Urbania yet, but given the recent great success of the 12 Realms campaign, I think it’s likely.

The other new Tony Cimino project is already set to hit Kickstarter in March: an expansion to Wrong Chemistry titled Expand your Lab.

Talking about interesting theme, this one has potential to outdo everything else recently in that respect. In the horror miniature game Phobos (Michael Andresakis, Alexander Argyropoulos) the players become different personalities in the mind of the Detective who is currently imprisoned in the Amityville Asylum. The winner emerges as the Detective’s new personality. Or, if overwhelmed by his fears first, a player can still win by dragging the Detective into a coma. The materials sounds tough to press into a game, but it also sounds exciting and goosebump-raising.

This week’s featured photo shows the beehive tombs at Al-Ayn, an archaeological site in Oman. It was taken Arian Zwegers and shared with a CC-BY license. Thank you, Arian!

 

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