Meople News: Primarily Meeples

Fantasy Flight Games

I sometimes wonder how they still come up with new player characters for Talisman. I mean, the game isn’t that complex, how many different character abilities can you think of? At least two more, apparently, because the latest preview for Talisman: The Firelands includes two new characters. The Jin Blooded is a master of magic. Not only does he start with two spells, he can also trade spells for fate points, fate points for spells, and he can redirect spells aimed at him or his equipment by spending fate point. The Nomad, on the other hand, is an accomplished wanderer and may ignore the effects of most fields she lands on and draw a card instead. Also, there’s another alternative ending titled the Crown of Flame. Basically, it’s a very deadly hot potato and people will not make it easy for you to pass it to them.

The latest preview for Relic: Nemesis talks more about the Enemies of the Imperium, the evil player characters that oppose everyone else. What sounds really cool about that mode of play is that encounters the Enemy cannot resolve stay behind on the board and will end up helping the other players. You wouldn’t mind finding a squad of Space Marines to aid you, would you? Conversely, cards that the other players leave behind benefit the Enemy. There will also be a Dark Alliance scenario that pits teams of one Imperial and one Nemesis player against each other.

Portal Games

It’s not much of a preview yet, but this blog post by Ignacy Trzewiczek reveals artwork for the upcoming 51st State expansion Ruins. Artist Piotr Foksowicz did a great job there.

Moonster Games

The newest import from Asia by Moonster Games is Masao Suganuma’s Machi Koro under the new title Minivilles. It’s a light dice game where each player constructs a city, either erecting buildings that have a special effect when their number is rolled or erecting landmarks that win the game.

Meeple Source

This is the Kickstarter project I’ve been waiting for. It has meeples. Lots of meeples. Up to 50 character meeples, from Fairy to Dragon, from Farmer to Cthulhu and from Spy to Pharaoh. A whole zoo of different meeples, all created by Meeple Source. I’m not usually a guy to go “squeeeee”, but I swear that I did when I saw this project.

Nosidam Games

Primary, Nosidam Games’ currently kickstarting debut project, is an intriguingly odd game. It’s an abstract game that the designer calls a deck-building game, but by the description that’s not quite accurate: you don’t build your deck during the game, you customize it before the game starts. Nitpicking about the genre aside, cards in Primary come in six different colours, each colour has a different action associated with it that somehow revolves around stealing turns from an opponent or protects you from having the same done to you. The interesting part is that you can split and merge cards: primary color cards can be merged into secondary colors, changing actions to the resulting color, secondary color cards can likewise be split into primary colors for the action. It seems abstract and light on the rules, but I smell potential.

Adventure Time Card Wars (Image by Cryptozoic)
Adventure Time Card Wars (Image by Cryptozoic)

Cryptozoic

From the series “fictional games that became awesome reality” Cryptozoic Games brings us Adventure Time Card Wars. Everyone with an Internet connection probably heard about the cartoon series Adventure Time by now, and anyone that watches it may have seen the episode Card Wars where the main characters play the game of the same name. The fictional Card Wars is a trading card game in the spirit of Magic: The Gathering, you play lands, creatures and magic and try to reduce your opponents life to zero. You do the same in Adventure Time Card Wars, but instead of collecting cards you get premade decks to play with, two each in two different boxes: one has Finn’s and Jake’s decks from the show, the other BMO’s and Lady Ranicorn’s.

Guild Ball

It takes a bit for me to take notice of a miniature war game. A miniature medieval football war game does the trick, though. Guild Ball has a deep game system to give the feeling of an actual football match, only with more blood on the pitch. The miniatures look pretty awesome, and a football game between the Butchers’ and Morticians’ Guilds sounds morbidly entertaining. A tempting Kickstarter project.

The photo of the week, taken by Christiaan Triebert and shared with a CC-BY license, shows the wooden churches of Kizhi Pogost in Lake Onega, Russia. Thank you, Chrisitaan!

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