Fantasy Flight Games
There are two things that have adventurers in fantasy games pee in their plate armor: dragons and the undead. We learned last week that Fantasy Flight’s Runebound will have a big, bad dragon lord to fight as one of its scenarios. The second scenario, which we see in this week’s preview, digs up the other big threat. In The Corpse King players must fight Vorakesh, the titular Corpse King, before he can overrun Terrinoth with his undead hordes. Just like you would expect from a necromancy scenario, zombies pop up all over the world. They should be eliminated wherever possible because they strengthen Vorakesh in the final battle and don’t let heroes trade in cities that suffer from a zombie invasion. Helping the heroes a little at least, they gain companions that will help them when fighting the king of corpses – if they don’t die from zombie bites first.
I really thought this had been released by now, but apparently Descent: Mists of of Bilehall is still in development. This week, a new preview for this Descent expansion that focuses on the Overlord instead of the Heroes has popped up, and it’s truly terrifying. The two new types of monsters will make the heroes’ lives hell: Reanimates are almost impossible to kill as long as they remain in a squad while the Broodwalkers, corpses that are animated by bug colonies inside them, punish heroes severely for entering melee with them. New in the Overlord’s bag of tricks are the Tainted cards that reward the Overlord for knocking out heroes. Mists of Bilehall will be so much fun. For the Overlord.
Most previews for Eldritch Horror: Under the Pyramids have focuses on the big, nasty things players will encounter in Egypt. But there are simple, regular encounters in the three new locations of this expansion, too. And not all of them want to kill you, some encounters even give you a chance to heal your mind or body.
Red Raven Games
Ryan Laukat, creator of Eight-Minute Empire, Above and Below and others is on Kickstarter again. His newest project is called Islebound and sends you on a high seas adventure with pirates, sea monsters and your own city to build. Each player controls one ship and its crew and takes it around the ocean to visit different cities and use their services. Each city on the board has a unique ability, and using them well is one part of winning. You don’t have to be a friendly visitor, though, you can conquer cities and be paid every time a competitor stops by. Besides your ship and your crew, you also have the capital of your future empire to manage. That is not a city on the board, so you can’t visit, but you can have buildings erected there that give you different bonuses. Between those bonuses, the cities you visit, your crew and your strategic decisions about conquest and diplomacy you, Islebound might be Ryan’s most complex game yet.
FryxGames
There is one upside to FryxGames’s Terraforming Mars being pushed into next year: we get to see more preview cards! The Protected Valley is a special geographical feature, a fertile patch of land that will be below ocean level when you start getting water to Mars.
Evil Hat Productions
I apologize in advance if my inner fanboy shines through on this news item. Evil Hat Productions have announced a cooperative card game based on Jim Butcher’s novel series The Dresden Files. I’m not only a huge fan of cooperative game, I also love Butcher’s novels about Harry Dresden, the only wizard listed in the Yellow Pages. (Except for Changes. I know many will disagree, but personally I didn’t like Changes.) So a cooperative The Dresden Files game is my holy grail. The game will not only be set in the world of Harry Dresden and contain him as a character, you’ll also meet many of his allies and enemies as you make your way through the plot of the first five novels. Expansions with more characters and more plots are pretty much a certainty. Where can I deposit my money for the 2016 Kickstarter?
Anyone interested in board games – which I assume includes all of you – will sooner or later run into the Silk Road, the ancient trade route going from Europe all the way to China. It comes up in a fair number of games. But games don’t give the right impression of the kind of landscape the routes run through like our photo of the week does. Of course, that’s just one example of the many different landscapes, but it looks very impressive. The photo was taken by Flickr user lensnmatter and kindly shared with a CC-BY license. Thanks a lot!