Days of Wonder
Not all expansions are big, sometimes a small expansion can bring significant changes to a game. The Five Tribes mini-expansion The Thieves of Naqala will only bring 7 new cards, one new djinn and the six eponymous thieves. From the little detail the announcement post gives away, the thieves will add some direct, negative player interaction to Five Tribes – in other words, you’ll be able to mess with your opponents directly.
Z-Man Games
Pandemic fans have it pretty good recently. First there was Pandemic Legacy, which is one of the best gaming experiences ever, soon there will be Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu that will pit you against the Great Old Ones instead of measly measles. And after that, Z-Man Games just announced Pandemic will get historic with Pandemic Iberia. In the year 1848 you will fight against four terrible diseases – malaria, typhus, the yellow fever, and cholera – on the Iberian peninsula. Part of your job will be treating sick people, like you would expect from a Pandemic game. But in Pandemic Iberia you will also work to provide a clean water supply to the people to prevent diseases from spreading and build railroads to make sure you arrive where you’re needed in time.
Stonemaier Games
Legacy type games where you make permanent changes to the game every time you play it are the big thing at the moment, and the few games using the Legacy mechanic so far have barely scratched the surface of what is possible. Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games is working on his own Legacy game, a worker-placement game titled Charterstone. Though the game is still in the early stages of development, Jamey already revealed that it will be a worker-placement game where the players build a village together, and every structure they build will become a permanent worker space for all players to use. Unlike other Legacy games, the idea of Charterstone is that you can keep playing the game when its campaign is over; it will remain static from that point on, but will be a fully functional and enjoyable worker placement game.
Cosmic Wombat Games
Cosmic Wombat Games – I can only repeat how much I love that name – have relaunched their Kickstarter campaign for Campaign Trail. It was cancelled the first time around simply because it didn’t pick up enough speed and missed its funding goal, but this time it looks much better. Nothing about the game itself seems to have changed, the players still compete for the presidency of the US collecting votes in each state, the main mechanic are still cards with up to five different uses to pick from. It still sounds simple on the rules and fun to play. The only downside you might see now is that the game may seem too sane compared to the real theater that is the US primaries, and that’s hardly the game’s fault.
Fantasy Flight Games
The Star Wars universe is full of colorful characters, and Fantasy Flight’s Imperial Assault just adds more with every expansion. Two new Rebellion heroes in The Bespin Gambit are the subject of the latest preview post. One of them might be considered a Jedi Rogue – not to be confused with a rogue jedi, that’s something else entirely. He uses a lightsaber and the force, but his truly outstanding skill is his ability to hide in the shadows after an attack, making him harder to hit and bolstering his attacks. The other is a spymaster who misleads the Imperial forces with false orders and supports his allies from the back row. Both of them add a lot to any party that would have them.
Plaid Hat Games
Preorders for Rob Daviau’s latest Legacy project SeaFall are now open at Plaid Hat Games. After Risk and Pandemic, SeaFall is the first of Rob’s Legacy games not based on an older game. Courageous explorers, merchants and/or conquerors, the players set out to explore the great unknown across the ocean, with everything you expect from a Legacy game: destroying old components, opening new ones, permanently modifying things to make this copy of the game completely your own. A campaign of SeaFall should last around 15 games. And if the board looks empty to you: it will be your mission to discover what’s out there.
Industrial era monuments are a rarity on the world heritage list because, lets face it, we started doing pretty much the same thing all over the world and mostly it doesn’t look very nice. The Van Nellefabriek near Rotterdam, Netherlands, is exceptional in being a prototype for a modern factory with pleasant working conditions, with large glass facades letting natural light in. A shame that not so many later factories learned from it. This week’s feature photo of Van Nellefabriek was taken by Vincent van der Pas and shared with a CC-BY-SA license. Thank you, Vincent!