Fantasy Flight Games
Other previews for Star Wars: Armada have explored movement and how commands work. This time, it’s time to open fire. Your ships have different weapon systems on board rolling different dice when they attack. Which dice a weapon rolls is tied to their range, the longer away it can hit a target the less accurate a weapon is. Shooting things in a space opera is never that easy, however, everything has those annoying shields. Armada vessels use different types of shields, they may either halve the damage taken, or redirect it to a different section of the ship. Evasion, for simplicity’s sake, is also a type of shield. Shields can be used once per turn, or they can be used a second time on the same turn but then burn out and don’t regenerate any more.
Star Wars is what is happening at Fantasy Flight currently, next to Star Wars: Armada they are also working on the Descent adaptation Star Wars: Imperial Assault. The first new preview for that game looks at the heroes of the rebellion and their special abilities. I’m happy that they seem quite different from the Descent heroes and not just clones from the other game. Fresh preview number two explains the campaign mode in Imperial Assault. While levelling up and buying equipment work like you would expect them too, and thus very similar to Descent, there are some pleasant differences here as well. Semi-random Side Missions will not only give players the chance to earn extra experience and equipment, they will explore the backstory of the player characters and give you a chance to team up with famous heroes like Luke Skywalker or Han Solo. I don’t know how much personality those heroes can display in a game that is still a dungeon crawler of sorts, but I like that we will actually be able to interact with them at all.
To complete the set of Fantasy Flight previews for the week, here’s more on XCOM: The Board Game. We’ve read a lot about the timed phase where you make plans while the companion phone app yells at you that aliens are invading. This time, we see what comes after. In the resolution phase, as the name implies, you resolve all the actions set in motion before: use your satellites against orbital attacks, defend against invasions with your Interceptors, complete research projects to give you an edge in future turns and, most important to actually winning the game, complete missions.
Eiglo Games
Infected: Humans vs Zombies is an initially cooperative card and dice game and Eiglo Games’ first Kickstarter project. I say initially cooperative because, you probably guessed it, players start out as humans but can be turned into zombies during the game. You roll dice on your turn to find out what your actions are: attack, draw cards or heal. Cards can do all kinds of things, give benefits to only you or your whole team, equip you with weapons – or turn you into a zombie. Woops. In a game with an odd number of players, it might also turn you into a bandit, opposing both sides at once. Different abilities and who gets turned into a zombie (and when) should make games quite different from one another.
Kickstarter
Paul Tseng’s Outer Earth is an interesting looking card game about terraforming on Kickstarter. Players buy planets in auctions then terraform them with development cards before selling them again. But development cards don’t all go together, to put them on the same planet they have to connect together by their pipelines. At the same time, you want the development colors to have the right colors so you can pick up bonus revenue cards when the planet is sold. It’s a quick game with charming illustrations, the art reminds me of old sci-fi video games, but without the pixels.
Spielworxx
Portuguese game designer Alexandre Garcia has signed up with Spielworxx to publish his game Dilluvia Project in 2016. Dilluvia Project is set in a not too distant and not very pleasant future where Earth has reached it maximum capacity for producing food, and global warming has swallowed the first coastal city. Without much progress in space travel, there is only one place left to go: under the sea. Players’ companies are working on the underwater city of Dilluvia where they erect different structures, bring in the right mix of population, place workers and manage their resources. Space is naturally limited, and some spots are more valuable than others, so competition will be fierce. Now, in more than a year before release, some things will probably change, but Dilluvia Project won the price for best long game in the prestiguous Hippodice Designer Contest, so it’s safe to assume that those changes will only be in the details.
This week’s featured photo is not the most complete view of the cathedral of Chartres, France, but it’s doubtlessly a unique perspective. Thank you for the photo and for sharing (CC-BY-SA), Dawn Endico.