Fantasy Flight Games
The Diskwars combat system is one of the most quirky I know: your units are all printed on disks that you flip over their edge to move them across the battlefield, and to attack another unit you maneuver your disk on top of it. And so it is in Warhammer: Diskwars as well, of course. But what can you do with that movement system, what else can your guys do and how do you get your Bloodrager to kill a whole bunch of squishies? You’ll find all that in this week’s preview.
The Encounter Phase in Eldritch Horror, the globe-spanning follow-up to Lovecraftian horror game Arkham Horror, is the part of the game where bad, sanity-endangering and possibly lethal things happen to you. You will fight monsters, explore ancient ruins and buried catacombs and even travel to other worlds. The whole affair is more interactive than it was in good, old Arkham Horror: there you landed on a Location, drew an encounter card for it and resolved it. In Eldritch Horror, you get to pick from more options: Locations still have their own encounter deck, but there are also general encounters for location types, research encounters from clue tokens, expedition encounters and gate encounters. So, in London, for instance, you can have a London Encounter – raid the tower, meet the queen – or a City encounter – find an eldritch tome left in a taxi – or you could decide to do some research or deal with the dimensional gate some careless occultist opened. Picking your encounter sounds way more fun than drawing a card, doesn’t it?
Czech Games Edition
I got nothing to say here, I’ll just let the cover of Dungeon Petz: Dark Alleys speak for itself.
Pegasus
With Istanbul Pegasus is going to publish at least one new Rüdiger Dorn (Goa, Las Vegas, …) design next year. Istanbul will be a worker placement game of sorts: you walk the bazaar or Istanbul as a wealthy merchant, visiting 16 different locations to do business. But to take an action at a location, you have to leave one of your four assistants behind to hash out the details while you move on and take care of further business. Your assistants, young and lazy as they are, will not try to catch up with you, the only way to get them back is to return to the place you left them and pick them up again. You need to plan your way across the bazaar well as you fill your wheelbarrow with goods to transport and sell and try to be the first player to collect five diamonds through your trading. (via BoardGameGeek News)
Marrow Production
One of the most expensive Kickstarter projects we presented here at $100 for a single copy of the game, Journey: Wrath of Demons certainly delivers in the component department: there’s a ton of them, 40 of them awesomely detailed plastic miniatures (plus more from the stretch goals) and all of them look great. Journey is a cooperative game for one to four pilgrims travelling through Chinese mythology to fight the Bull Demon King. How you do that will be different in every game, different quests add different rules and goals to the game, and you’ll have the option to go on side quests to improve your abilities – if you want to spend the time while more demons enter the game. A small word of warning, however: I have no reason to doubt Marrow Production’s ability to deliver on this game, but they are a new company and this is an ambitious first project. Just something to keep in mind. If you want to see more of Jounrey: Wrath of Demons, the Marrow Production Facebook Page has a ton of images, and they all look amazing.
Portal Publishing
Boardgamers don’t have to hide their hobby any more, we’re accepted in polite society. Even so, I wish the “game box disguised as old book” would catch on because I’d totally fill my shelves with them. And especially for the Darwin-themed Robinson Crusoe expansion Voyage of the Beagle, this look is just perfect.
Cheapass Games
Kill Doctor Lucky was our third review ever, so we understandably have a soft spot for the old doctor. Wait, that came out wrong. We have a soft spot for the game, the odl man himself is going to be used for target practice again in the currently kickstarting game Get Lucky. The new game is a pure card game, there no longer is a board representing the Doctor’s mansion. Instead of aimlessly wandering from one room to the next he now wanders from character to character. The turn order still follows him, however, and you can make sure that you’ll get your shot at killing him by picking the right characters from the drawing room. And then you’ll still bring everything from guns to frozen fish to bear against the unnaturally lucky Doctor. The game should play a bit faster than Kill Doctor Lucky did, but it still has the same spitefulness.
Treefrog Games / Slitherine
After some brief confusion about Field of Glory: The Card Game between publisher Treefrog Games and Slitherine that would have removed the game from circulation, everything is once again smooth sailing and the game will be available in Essen at Treefrog’s booth. Field of Glory: The Card Game is a quick, two-player – wait for it – card game where two ancient armies face off over a five card battlefield. Before each game, you set up your army deck of twenty-four cards, so it won’t always be the same armies fighting.
The photo of the week, shot by Ben Tavener and shared with a CC-BY license, shows Iguaçu Falls in Iguaçu National Park, Brazil (shared with Argentina, but this should be the Brazilian side), one of the biggest waterfall systems on Earth. And certainly one of the most beautiful as well. Thanks for the photo, Ben!