Meople News: Champion of Wind

Table Tyrant Games / Rule & Make

There are many worker placement games. Smiths of Winterforge is not strictly one of them, but you could call it a worker movement game. The options your single worker has are restricted by the layout of the dwarven city Winterforge: He can only move from district to neighboring district, and if he moves further he has fewer actions to do anything useful. That makes the way to become the greatest blacksmith of Winterforge a good deal more difficult. You have to buy materials, create masterful works from them, and build your own guild along the way to help your efforts, and all that while you have to walk everywhere.

Kickstarter

We talked about The City of Kings on last week’s news already. Let me repeat the highlights.

A cooperative fantasy adventure game … with seven stories that chain together for a longer plot, heroes that develop their own role through the choice of their skills and randomly generated monsters. … it’s also a worker management game. Each hero has a number of workers they can send out to gather resources, explore the land, and build structures. … the big thing about The City of Kings is variability: heroes have 90 stat points to customize and twelve abilities each, the random creature system has ten million possible monsters that want to murder you, the board is randomized from tiles. It’s safe to say you won’t see much repetition here.

We promised to remind you when the Kickstarter is live. Well, this is it.

Talon Strikes Studios

The Middle Ages have always been a popular setting for any kind of game, but I can’t think of any boardgame that’s specifically about jousting. Until King’s Champion, that is. But as it is with so many things, the two hurtling towards each other in heavy iron clothing with pointy implements is just the flashy finale. There’s a lot of planning and preparation that goes into it, and that’s why King’s Champion is a worker placement game. The basic game has five buildings, but there more for use in advanced games. Many things you gain from those workers are, of course, related to the coming joust. Equipment, squires, and abilities are just a few things that can help you win the joust. Outside of the contest, you’ll also take care of political influence and your house’s reputation. Because jousting is strictly a one-against-one contest, King’s Champion is a two player game for now, but a lot of the discussion on the Kickstarter page is about how an expansion might accommodate more players.

Stonemaier Games

Scythe is one of the most popular strategy games at the moment. That’s not only because of it’s unique 1920s Eastern Europe with giant killer robots setting, but also because it’s a great economic worker placement game. So imagine my delight and lack of surprise that an expansion is in the making. Scythe: The Wind Gambit will have two expansion modules. The first gives each player an airship to add to their troops, and to not let things get boring too quickly airships will have two random abilities in every game. The other has eight tiles with different game end conditions, so every game can end in a different way and will need a different strategy. Take note that Stonemaier Games are not planning a Kickstarter or pre-orders for The Wind Gambit, this is a game you’re supposed to buy in retail.

Scythe: The Wind Gambit
Scythe: The Wind Gambit

This week’s featured photo was taken by Ernette Jaganas at Paoay in the Philippines. It shows the church of Paoay, one of the Spanish-build baroque churches in the Philippines. Thanks for sharing this photo, Ernette! (Paoay Church, Ernette Jaganas, CC-BY)

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