It’s another slow week for news. Maybe game publishers are hibernating already, who knows. But instead of going through with my threat and just making something up, I’ll advertise something that I consider important. Many of you have probably heard of Patrick Rothfuss, bestselling author of The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man’s Fear and, one day in the far future, a third book. If you’re watching Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop, then you saw Pat playing Lords of Waterdeep. He’s also Keeper of the Sacred Beard and a suspected Owlbear, but that’s not important right now. What is important is that he is running a charity: Worldbuilders. It works like this: people and companies that create worlds – primarily book publishers, but there are a whole bunch of game publishers present as well – donate things. Regular books, signed copies, out-of-print things, games, whatever they think is worth something. And then people like you, me, or pretty much anyone else in the world can donate money, and for every $10 donated they are entered once in a lottery at the end of the season and may win one of the donated items. Some items are also available through auctions, most games seem to fall in that category. All the money collected goes to Heifer International, a charity that wants to end hunger in the world by not by giving families in need food, but by giving them the means to produce food, for instance a sheep or cow for milk or a water buffalo for crop farming. You might say donating is a Christmas gift to a family you don’t know, but who’s life will be vastly improved by it. If I got you interested, please head over here.
Fantasy Flight Games
Now we have a battlefield, next we needs armies to field for battle. I could swear I said something similar about another Fantasy Flight game recently, but this time I’m talking about Warhammer: Diskwars. After you set up the scenario and scenery, players build their disk armies. The process is very much centered on the heroes: you pick your heroes first, two for a regular game or three for a large one, and then recruit a regiment for each hero. The hero disk tells you how big that regiment may be, and how many command cards you may have in hand. The game rules force some diversity into your troops, you have to have certain numbers of small, medium or large disks, can not have too many with the same name and so on. That is sensible army building, anyway.
With all the rules explained for BattleLore 2nd Ed., one burning question remains: what troops will you be commanding in the battle? This new preview post takes a closer look at both armies, the Uthuk Y’llan invaders and the Daqan Lords. You can tell quickly by looking at the card that the two favor very different strategies: powerful attacks and fear for the Uthuk Y’llan against the literal wall of steel of the Daqan Lords.
Alderac
The product page for the next Smash Up expansion Science Fiction Double Feature is up now, including the downloadable rulebook. It reveals that this expansion doesn’t introduce any new rules or keywords like the previous one, it’s just a big bag of more smashupy goodness. But if you scroll down and click on game art, you will find some new card spoilers – the Mimic is certainly going to be popular when Dinosaurs are in the game …
Adam Walker Studio
Kickstarter is a great place not only for big game projects to get money up front and minimize the publisher’s risk but also for quirky projects that might never have seen the light of day without crowdfunding. Viking Horde is from the latter category: a papercraft game about viking sea battles. That’s exactly what it sounds like, you’ll have to assemble your own dragonboats from a paper kit – but once assembled those things look amazing. With those homemade boats, manned by different types of vikings, you can enact your own marine battles, optionally with wind and loot rules – just do it on dry land, the boats are made of paper, after all.
This week’s featured photo shows Saint Peter’s Square, a part of the Vatican City cultural heritage site in the Holy See. The photo was taken by Navin Rajagopalan and shared with a CC-BY-SA license. Thanks a lot, Navin!