Hurrican
Theo Riviere and Bruno Cathala have a very interesting two player game coming from Hurrican. Each player in Nagaraja has their own nine-square temple with relics along the edges to collect. To get there they must buy floor tiles with the right corridors in an auction. Of course, with only nine spaces per temple, your opponent has a pretty good idea which tiles you want. To complicate matters further, the same cards you use for bidding have other effects you might want to use them for instead. (via Asmodee Germany)
2F-Spiele
Fifteen years after its first release Power Grid is still one of the most popular strategy games out there, with base game and expansions still selling well. But it has been fifteen years, a lot has changed in game design and players’ preferences since then. Time for an update, and that’s exactly what’s coming with Power Grid (Recharged Version). Updated, streamlined and with a rewritten rulebook, 2F-Spiele calls it “the best version of Power Grid“. They will release the German edition on March 9th, international distributors will probably follow soon. In the near future they will go through Power Grid‘s twelve expansions to see if updates are needed and release Recharged versions of those as well. However, owners of original expansions needn’t worry, rules changes for the expansions will be published online so you can play the ones you already have with a recharged Power Grid.
Garphill Games
Garphill Games’ West Kingdom trilogy continues. In Architects of the West Kingdom you built a new city for the empire, complete with cathedral. In the new Paladins of the West Kingdom it’s time to defend it and all the rest of the kingdom. Paladins stays true to worker placement, but with a different twist than Architects. Workers in Paladins have different colors for different jobs, and each action needs the right combination. All those workers do will contribute to the defense of the kingdom against various outside forces. Vikings and Saracens are only the start. And the Inquisition is on your case as well.
Lookout Spiele
Games with big, fat score pads you write or draw your results on are back, big time. I have to admit, Uwe Rosenberg’s Patchwork is a great candidate to adapt to this format. Where the original Patchwork gave you tiles to put together into a blanket, Patchwork Doodle lets you draw the tiles onto your score pad. That way up to six players can play at once, drawing the same tiles in the best position they can find on their pad. Special abilities give you extra options to make a better blanket than everyone else. Without the original Patchwork‘s time system Patchwork Doodle is lighter than its ancestor, but makes a great family travel game.
Plaid Hat Games
You like the programmed movement of Robo Rally, but the game is too mean for you? Plaid Hat Games have just the thing! In Quirky Circuits you all work together to program one robot and help it do its job. There are four different robots, twenty-one scenarios, so clearly those robots need a lot of help. It won’t be as easy as it sounds, though. You work together, sure, but you don’t exactly know what everyone else is doing. All you can see of their cards is whether they are moves, turns or quirks. Quirk cards cause extra chaos because they must be played before any other hand card. Quirky Circuits‘ is a good deal lighter than Robo Rally, but that won’t keep me away.
Wreak Havoc Games
A lot of horror is about being alone. Isolation. A space horror game for a single player makes perfect sense, then. In Wreak Havoc Games’ Kickstarter Ghost Star you’re as alone as you can be. As Captain Meg Ohtani you travel to the Ghost Star and board a mysterious, dangerous space station. But at least your mission should be simple: find and defeat the Gatekeeper, close the dimensional gate, free your mentor, save the universe. And your only opposition are aliens that will torment you with your worst nightmares. In other words, it must be Monday.
Czech Games Edition
Take a word game, mix in some cooperation, then blend with Hanabi until smooth and boil to thicken. That’s how you get Letter Jam, a new game by Ondra Skoupý and Czech Games Edition. You get a hand of letter cards that you hold Hanabi style, facing away from you. People around the table make words with cards they can see, from those words you should deduce which letters you’re holding. In the end, you should be able to rearrange your cards so that your hand makes a word. The more players manage the more points you score. With that Hanabi mechanism Letter Jam might turn out to be quite a tricky word game.
Floodgate Games
Even competitive games can be peaceful and downright idyllic. Take Bosk, for instance, a game by Floodgate Games where you’ll grow trees in a national park. You grow the trees in spring, score points from hikers in the summer, lose the leaves in autumn and score points for covering other players’ leaves in winter. We have nothing yet how you’ll play, but just looking at the cover we can tell you Bosk is going to look absolutely stunning.
Funtails
Do you sometimes want to go back and redo something you did in the past just because you’re not happy with it, even though others loved it? Matthias Cramer is doing just that with Glen More ?: Chronicles. Just like the original Glen More you move around a rondel to pick tiles that you add to your highland clan’s territory. Placing a tile activates that tile and all adjacent ones to produce resources or convert them into more valuables ones like whisky. Completely new is the clan board where you can befriend other clans and receive bonuses. The change that stands out in existing mechanisms is that the endgame scoring now rewards smaller territories. One more thing to keep in mind when taking tiles. On top, Glen More ? comes with eight expansions, the Chronicles, included. Each chronicle introduces completely new elements, and you can mix and match them any way you like. That’s a lot of Glen More in that box, and I can’t wait to try it out.
This week’s featured photo shows a small part the Defence Line of Amsterdam, the Netherlands unique network of fortresses protecting the capital by controlling the water and strategically flooding areas to control enemy movement. This photo shows the Muiderslot, part of fortress Muiden, and was shared by the Defence Line Amsterdam Flickr account. Thanks for sharing, guys! (IMG_5242, Defence Line Amsterdam, CC-BY)