Meople News: Happy Holidays, everyone!

That’s it, folks! Another year has flown by. Whichever holidays you celebrate at this time of the year, I hope they will be good and relaxing, and that you will find time to play with your loved ones. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Fantasy Flight Games

Believe it or not, the Great Old Ones are not the only danger facing the town of Arkham on an almost daily basis. There are also plain, old humans up to no good. We’re talking about the Order of the Silver Twilight, Arkham’s resident occult organization that is the focus of Sanctum of Twilight, a coming Mansions of Madness expansion. Besides new dangers and new investigators to face them there is one big, new game mechanic as well: moving board elements. Things like parade floats will move around the board and carry anything on them along. They might offer a good way to get out of a tight spot. Or into one.

Portal Games

Still unsure about the Cry Havoc expansion Aftermath? Maybe knowing the new structures it brings to each faction will help. I can tell you this much, they don’t make the game any nicer. The Trogs actually come out the nicest, they only turn terrain into swamps and confuse the their opponents with camouflage. Everyone else is so much worse.

An epidemic is just about the worst thing that can happen in a small, enclosed environment like, say, a Mars habitat. So it’s only natural that that’s exactly what happens in Epidemic, a downloadable scenario for First Martians.

Plan B Games

Century - Eastern Wonder (Plan B Games)
Century – Eastern Wonder (Plan B Games)

Emmerson Matsuuchi’s Century – Spice Road was always intended as the first part of a trilogy. The nature of the planned sequels was a mystery until now. Would they be deck-building games like Spice Road? And if not, what would tie the trilogy together? Plan B Games’s announcement of Century – Eastern Wonder answers both questions. Eastern Wonder is an entirely different style of game. No deck-building, instead you’ll move your ship from market to market on the board and build trading posts. As for what ties the two games together: the special game mode The Sand and the Sea uses components and mechanisms from both to create a more complex game.

Frosted Games

Uwe Rosenberg is drifting south-west. After Nusfjord in the Norwegian Lofoten archipelago his newest project will take us to Iceland next year. Reykholt, named after a little place in Iceland, is an unexpectedly agricultural game. Despite the relatively cold climate the volcanic heat allows even tropical fruit like banana to prosper there. That makes Reykholt’s greenhouses a bit of a tourist attraction, and that’s what the game Reykholt is about. It combines worker placement with a racing game: you grow  things in your greenhouses to attract tourists, but the growth season there is very short.

CMON

Sherlock Holmes has disappeared. The greatest villainous masterminds of Europe can’t pass that opportunity, can they? The Secret Service is no match for them. If you think you’ll play the Secret Service in this game, then you’ve got the wrong end of Victorian Masterminds by Eric Lang and Antoine Bauza. You’ll each play as one of the masterminds and dispatch your minions to complete missions, destroy buildings and collect materials for your very own steampunky contraption. The four masterminds each build a different contraption which allows them to take different actions, leading to highly asymmetric gameplay. Just don’t get too comfortable in your role, the Secret Service isn’t as incompetent as you think.

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