Fantasy Flight Games
With Wisdom and Warfare a new expansion is on the way for Sid Meier’s Civilization The Board Game. Again it comes with more of everything: more relics, more technologies, more wonders to build and more strategic options to explore because of them. But not only that, it also has (optional) new combat cards that now have a health value that impacts the outcome of a battle: wounded units are weaker. You can now also pick your Social Policies, opening an even wider range of strategies. More information is coming soon.
franjos
German small publisher franjos is trying something new this year: instead of their usual fare of short games with light rules they’re currently looking for funding for Domus Domini on German crowdfunding platform startnext.de. Domus Domini is an evening-filling game by Planet Steam designer Heinz-Georg Thiemann about the building of a new church at Cluny. Each player runs an abbey with a mission to supply food for the workers. Deliver the most food in a year, gain the most victory points, but also gain the least money to expand your abbey. The rules are available in German and English on the games homepage to help you make your decision.
Cryptozoic
With Batman: Arkham City Escape Cryptozoic just released a very interesting asymmetric two-player game. One player takes control of all the inmates of Arkham Prison, which are all popular Batman villains, including the Penguin, the Joker and many more, trying to escape from Arkham. The other player only gets one character on the board to stop them. That is, obviously, the Batman, who will use his cunning and his trusty utility belt to stop the mass escape. In game terms, the villain player is trying to cross the board with his cards to score, the Batman player tries to stop them before they can escape.
Watchtower Games
Another asymmetric two-player game – it’s a good week for those – is the debut performance of Watchtower Games. In this one, a hero descends into the deep, dark dungeon to face the Dungeon Lord, but only after defeating some of his minions. Unusually for a dungeon crawl game, there is no board. Instead, the hero finds his way through the branching story on the story card, picking the challenges he’s better equipped for, while the Dungeon Lord picks the monster cards to put in his way. Each conflict is resolved by rolling dice before the hero moves on to the next challenge. Or not. A dungeon crawl that plays quickly, and is easily and cheaply expandable with new cards. Great idea, me like. For some more details, here’s a video of designer Tom Green explaining the Story Cards.
Bed Beard Games
A game with a very unusual background story is the first Kickstarter project by Bed Beard Games. But don’t let the name Civility fool you, this game will be anything but civil. The story so far: bored with the utopian human civilization on Earth living in perfect happiness and making no move to explore the universe, the Creators decide to give them a little push. They open portals to different pasts and could-have-beens of the world and force the people of Utopia to fight against medieval men, early men and even the wizards of the City of Magic. Each city has different strengths and abilities, and with different goals to achieve each game, you’ll get a lot of play out of Civility before you get bored like the Creators.
What you see in this week’s featured photo are the ruins of the Somapura Mahavira, a buddhist monastery at Paharpur, Bangladesh. The photo was taken by Stefan Krasowski and shared with a CC-BY license. Thank you, Stefan!