Meople News: Forgotten Truffles

Hurrican

There is a game that will be re-implemented this year. Is it Rise of Augustus? Bingo! It’s funny because Rise of Augustus is a bingo game where you draw symbols from a bag and players get to mark them on their objective cards. Completed objective cards rewards that hopefully make it easier to complete more objectives. None of that changes in Via Magica, the new game. The difference is that you’ll now use the tokens from the bag to open magic portals that will grant you great power. That’s always nice. No one ever complains about receiving great power.

Garphill Games

Garphill Games’ West Kingdom trilogy of games is coming to a close. After Architects of the West Kingdom and Paladins of the West Kingdom the last game will be titled Viscounts of the West Kingdom. In this game, the king of the titular west kingdom is growing soft and would rather pay of his enemies than risk going to war. That puts you, the players, in a precarious situation. As members of his court you have to remain loyal or fear retribution, but you also need support from the common people in case something drastic happens to the king. This sounds fun already, and blending deck building, tableau building, and rondel movement should easily take care of the mechanical side. That just leaves us to wonder, will Shem Phillips’s next trilogy go South or East?

Plaid Hat Games

The next crossroads to meet on will be on the high seas. After a wintry zombie apocalypse and a terrible threat to a colony spaceship, the next Crossroads game Forgotten Waters has you as pirates. Sailing fantastical waters you have a grand storyline to explore, but also a personal story to see through. It’s the same idea as the other Crossroads game, but Forgotten Waters puts its story in a more modern, app-driven implementation.

Alderac

How about a quick game and some chocolates? Or even better, how about a quick game of some chocolates. In Alderac’s Truffle Shuffle players draft chocolate cards from a shared box. Cards in the box overlap, and some of them are hidden until uncovered, similar to 7 Wonders: Duel. With the cards you draft you make your own box of chocolate and try to please your customers as best as you can. In about 30 minutes you play three boxes of chocolate. That’s long enough for a tense game, but definitely shorter than you should take to eat those three boxes.

Holy Grail Games

Running a Museum is a lot of fun, especially with the range of expansions already available for Museum. There are a ton of options for collecting the card sets for your exhibition. Now you can have some all new options. Museum: Pictura is not another expansion, it’s a new standalone Museum game. This time, instead of an anthropological museum, you’ll run an art gallery. Fortunately, that’s far from the only difference. In rough strokes the game remains the same, so if you’ve played Museum you’ll quickly find your way around Museum: Pictura. In the details, however, there are enough changes that you’ll have to rethink how you play. Pictura is its own game, and if you enjoy Museum then you can be pretty sure it’s a game for you, too.

WizKids

Games who’s only purpose is to go to war with an opponent are not usually my thing, but what Ettin does to with a drafting engine is rather interesting. Each player has an ally, the player sitting to their one side. Those two win or lose together, hence the name Ettin after the two headed Dungeons & Dragons giant. To their other side, each player has their enemy, the only player they go to war with. Players will draft cards to help them in their wars, one draft set shared with their ally, the other with their enemy. Since you’ll win together, you’ll want to leave your ally with useful cards, only what is most useful depends on the cards their enemy lets them have, just like usefulness for you depends on your enemy. There’s a lot of potential for interesting decisions here, and you won’t have to worry about downtime because everyone’s always involved in the draft.

This week’s featured photo was taken by Flickr users Anne and David, who very kindly put the photo in public domain. It shows the bishop’s residence in Würzburg, Germany. Since the photo is in an album titled From Amsterdam to Budapest, I do hope you guys had an amazing trip! (Amsterdam to Budapest. Würzburg. Würzburg Residence. (The Bishops’s palace.), Public Domain, Anne and David, cropped and resized)

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