Meople News: Undying Weredragons

dlp games

Moorea (dlp games)
Moorea (dlp games)

Reiner Stockhausen (Orléans, Altiplano,…) has a new game coming with dlp games. Moorea will take you to the South Sea where you’ll collect wood, bamboo and seashells to create buildings, jewelry and tools to help you build other things better. Going by the 8+ age recommendation and 30 minutes playing time Moorea is more like Bohemian Villages than Orléans, but a new Stockhausen game is always something to look forward to.

Osprey Games

The Amazon holds many dangers for the unprepared. Enough dangers for the prepared, too. But even the most deadly expeditions get boring if all you ever do is look for El Dorado. Time for new objectives! In The Fountain of Youth & Other Adventures, the first expansion for The Lost Expedition, you get exactly that, plus new … well, new everything, including game mechanisms, in four expansion modules.

Sorry We Are French

Immortal 8 by French publisher Sorry We Are French is live on Kickstarter now. It’s a quick fantasy civilization drafting game that supposedly only takes eight minutes per player. That claim is believable, considering each player only plays five cards per game. Immortal 8 will support up to eight players and still play in about an hour. We mentioned those detail before, but we didn’t talk about how pretty the game is then. Definitely worth a look for the artwork, and a try for the game.

Knight Works

Dargon Keepers (Knight Works)
Dargon Keepers (Knight Works)

This was not the next game we expected from Vital Lacerda, commonly known as a designer of brain-busting strategy games. Dragon Keepers is a somewhat lighter game. It has a competitive press-your-luck mode suitable for younger children and a more strategic cooperative mode for older children and adults. In the first mode, your job is to protect dragons from the evil hunter. In the second, you train the dragons to strike back and defend themselves. Even the more complex coop mode plays in about 40 minutes, about a quarter of Vital Lacerda’s other games. The reason for this unusual brevity is that Vital Lacerda is only a co-designer of Dragon Keepers, the actual work was done by Catarina Lacerda. With her first game on Kickstarter at only 14 years old she clearly inherited her father’s game design acumen. If she decides to stick with making games, then Catarina is a young lady to keep an eye on.

Bezier Games

Ultimate Werewolf Legacy (Bézier Games)
Ultimate Werewolf Legacy (Bézier Games)

The first rule of game design in the 2010s: any successful game can be made more successful with a Legacy variant. I don’t mean that as a negative, I enjoy those games with a persistent progression immensly. And I’m sure I’ll enjoy Ultimate Werewolf Legacy as well. If you’re wondering how a social deduction game where player elimination is a necessity will work in a Legacy variant you’re not alone. I was wondering the same thing. It looks like, taken alone, each game in the campaign will work like a traditional game of Werewolf. That includes playing different characters each game – it would be pretty boring if the same players were always the werewolves. The Legacy changes will apply to the players, who can earn titles that grant them special abilities in future games, and to the village as a whole. Depending on the outcome of your games, the story of the village can take a diffferent course entirely. If you want to play again you won’t have to be an all new game, there’ll be Replay Packs. Ultimate Werewolf is a very interesting choice for a Legacy game, I’m curious about the details.

Pandasaurus Games

Dinosaur Island, Pandasaurus Games’s worker placement game where players build an entertainment park based on a prehistoric period with giant lizards, is back on Kickstarter. There’s a great collection of things in the campaign. It starts with the Dinosaur Island X-treme Edition, a new edition of the original game with really fancy, new components. Then there’ll be the expansion Totally Liquid. That’s not a new slang expression – at least I think not – but refers to the introduction of aquatic dinos. But that’s only the start of it, the expansion also comes with components for a fifth player and different expansion modules to add to your game. Finally, Duelosaur Island is a two player game with the same theme as Dinosaur Island but all new mechanics. This will all be more exciting than a stay at that place from the movie… Triassic Ressort or something like that.

Catan

It’s been twenty years since the release of Catan: Seafarers? Damn, I really didn’t need that reminder how old I am. But I won’t complain about Legend of the Sea Robbers, a collection of four linked scenarios for Seafarers that will let players experience some genuine Catan history. It’s a nice reminder that I grew up in the Golden Age of boardgames.

Monsoon Publishing

Warriors of Jogu: Feint is a two player bluffing game, relatively light but looks like fun nevertheless. The whole idea of the game is to place unit cards into five different locations to win the big battle at the end of the round. Only two of those five locations will actually matter, though. You know one, your opponent knows the other. You want to have a strong force present in yours, but at the same time you don’t want to give away what you know. To make things more interesting, troops in higher numbered locations are worth more – if they are worth anything at all. Troops also cost precious morale points, and at least some have special abilities. Enough twists to make the game interesting for sure.

Z-Man Games / Feuerland Spiele

Hey, how about some previews for Lowlands / Das tiefe Land? Preparing for the flood in the North of Germany and making your farm profitable at the same time is not going to be easy, but at least you can have a look how you’ll do it.

WizKids

Star Trek: Galactic Enterprises
Star Trek: Galactic Enterprises

WizKids have announced a boardgame based on the grandfather of collectible card games. In Magic the Gathering: Heroes of Dominaria the players will travel that plane to recruit heroes to their cause and find artifacts to aid them. Just like in the card game you get the mana you need for your projects from lands you control. Creating new ley lines is a way to tap far-away resources, constructing buildings on your landscapes binds them to you more tightly. The object of all that? To save the multiverse, of course. And to save it before the other heroes do, too. That last bit doesn’t sound like it makes much sense, but I’m sure there’s a reason you can’t work together.

Talking about new WizKids games based on big franchises, how about a new Star Trek game? In Star Trek: Galactic Enterprises all the players are Ferengi out for profit. That was redundant. Ferengi are always out for profit. In this case, the path to profit is to get a monopoly on a specific commodity. The way to get there: trrade and negotiate with other Ferengi who are at least as greedy as you. A negotiation game where you build a monopoly by Christophe Boelinger, that sounds a bit like Illegal. We don’t know enough about Galactic Enterprises yet so comment on similarities between the two games. We do know that it’s more than a mere re-skin because, unlike Illegal, Galactic Enterprises will have special action cards to sabotage your opponents.

Curio: The Lost Temple is another new entry into the genre of Escape Rooms in a Box. Players are archaeologists who got trapped in a temple they were exploring and now have limited time to get out. Nothing new so far. What is new, however, is that you don’t play Curio: The Lost Temple just once and then nevermore. The promise is that the various puzzle modules will create a new adventure every time you play. I’m quite curious how that will work.

Garphill Games

As we reported before Garphill Games are done with the North for now and have moved on to the West. Architects of the West Kingdom, fresh on Kickstarter, is a worker placement game with fresh ideas. You can invest workers into areas on the board for rewards, but greedy workers can be captured by opponents who will hold them for ransom. There is also the Virtue system to punish exceedingly immoral players. You may think a little black market deal won’t hurt you, but you don’t know for sure how far you can bend your virtue before it costs you the game. Not new, but very welcome, is the replayability coming from unique player powers and a wide range of different buildings to construct and apprentices to hire. Architects of the West Kingdom is the start of a new Garphill Games trilogy. (By the way, the German retail edition will be available from Schwerkraft Verlag.)

Funforge

If a deck-building civilization game sounds like a great idea, then check out the Kickstarter for Monumental now because it’ll be the only way to get your hands on this game. Monumental will mix deck-building with cards spanning three eras of history with a big box civilization game with all the trimmings. Variable board, lots of resource tokens, buildings to put on the board and a small army of very detailed miniatures for each of the civilizations. The core game will contain five civilizations, four more are available separately. Just be warned that you’ll need deep pockets if you want all nine. The price is also the reason why designer Matthew Dunstan and publisher Funforge decided to make Monumental Kickstarter exclusive. They didn’t see a way to make the game at an attractive retail price without compromising the game they wanted to make. I respect that as a reason.

This week’s photo was taken and shared by Claudio Ungari. It shows the beautiful city of Matera, Italy. Thanks for sharing, Claudio! (Matera, Claudio Ungari, CC-BY, resized and cropped)

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