Meople News: The Halls of Mombasa

Stonemaier Games

The latest newsletter from Stonemaier Games contains, next to updates about their other projects, the announcement of an expansion for Euphoria: Build a better Dystopia. The expansion will include new recruits to help your dystopic cause and new markets to build and purchase victory points at. What exactly those recruits and markets will be is still undecided. Actually, you have the chance to design one of them and, if your idea is picked, have your name and picture immortalized on your card.

Repos Production

Antoine Bauza revealed a little of what 2015 will bring to 7 Wonders in his blog. He doesn’t say anything about a new expansion, which of course doesn’t mean there won’t be one, but he does tease us about a new stand-alone game. Playing in two players has always been the one weak point in 7 Wonders – in my opinion, at least – so I’m happy and curious about 7 Wonders Duel, designed specifically for two and in cooperation with Bruno Cathala, another great game designer. This shows all the signs of becoming one of my Essen 2015 highlights.

Fantasy Flight Games

More and more elements from Arkham Horror are finding their way into its little dice brother Elder Sign with the Gates of Arhkam expansion. With the expansion, players will be able to acquire skills, cards that are not discarded after use and give characters permanent advantages. Those advantages will be sorely needed when dealing with the new Event cards. Some adventures now show the Event icon, indicating that whoever tries to resolve it has to draw an unexpected, unforeseeable complication. Those events may actually be beneficial, but they may also lock dice before you even start the adventure or worse. Saving the world is not getting any easier with this expansion.

Relics: Halls of Terra (Image by Fantasy Flight Games)
Relics: Halls of Terra (Image by Fantasy Flight Games)

A game based on Talisman was virtually guaranteed to collect a number of expansions. The second expansion for Relic, the Talisman/Warhammer 40.000 crossover by Fantasy Flight Games, has just been announced. You’ll leave the battlefields against the forces of Chaos behind for a while and visit mankind’s birthplace: the Halls of Terra. An altogether different selection of dangers await you here, and you’ll need cunning and diplomacy to get various political factions of the Empire on your side. If you do, however, they make strong allies. And you may even be lucky enough to stand before the God-Emperor of Mankind himself, and be rewarded for your dedication with a powerful holy relic.

Atlas Games

Grimm’s Fairy Tales have always been pretty gloomy. From getting lost in the woods or sleeping for 100 years to simply being eaten by wolves, bad things can happen to everyone. And the wolves don’t have a better time, either, they end up at the bottom of a well with stones sewn into their belly. Like I said, gloomy. Atlas Games obviously thought so, too, because the next Gloom game will be Fairy Tale Gloom, where you get to make all the suffering characters miserable all over again. If you don’t know Gloom, it’s a card game played with transparent cards where new cards may add to the cards they are played on, or cover something that you rather wanted to keep, and where your goal is to make your four characters die in misery.

Portal Games / Stronghold Games

Portal and Stronghold Games will bring back Stronghold near the end of the year in a revamped second edition. Obviously, the objective of the game will still be to either attack the fortress on the board, or defend it from the attacking players. It’s an inherently asymmetric game. Compared to the original Stronghold, this second edition will have more streamlined rules, resulting in quicker play and an easier scoring system, and will also have new artwork. Expect it to be ready in time for Essen.

Wizards of the Coast

Once upon a time, back in 2010 and 2011, Wizards of the Coast had a line of boardgames based on the world’s most famous roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons. The three games in that line – Castle Ravenloft, Wrath of Ashardalon and The Legend of Drizzt – where all cooperative games for one to five players, taking the players into dark dungeons to explore them, kill monsters, find treasures and get out alive. A new entry in that line is coming in April, and old D&D nerds will recognize the title as one of the most (in)famous adventures ever created: Temple of Elemental Evil. Just like its predecessors, Temple will be a cooperative game for one to five and include multiple scenarios with different quests.

eggertspiele / Pegasus Spiele

Inka and Markus Brand return to their Kennerspiel des Jahres Village, at least thematically, with their newest game My Village, coming later this year from eggertspiele/Pegasus Spiele. My Village will use dice to drive the game, but will not be a simply reimplementation of Village with dice, gameplay will differ in ways yet unknown. Nevertheless, it will be a game of about the same weight as the original Village.

Another game from eggertspiele this year will be Alexander Pfister’s Mombasa. Set in 19th century Africa, players are investors putting money in trading companies, hoping to turn a profit. To earn money to invest, players have to improve their plantations and dig for gold in their mines. The funds those created can be invested in companies, or they can be used to purchase new action cards. The description makes it sound like there’s a deck-building aspect to Mombasa. With a length of 1-2 hours, this might be yet more Kennerspiel material from eggertspiele. Both games will certainly go on my want-list.

This week’s featured photo is a detail shot of one of the doors of the mosque of Divri?i, Turkey, an 11th century mosque with amazingly detailed decorations on the outside walls, in contrast with an entirely unadorned interior. The photo was taken by Sarah Murray and shared with a CC-BY-SA license.

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