We’re still in the post GenCon calm, but there’s a few expansions coming (including druids!) and a rather tasty game which takes you to the gingerbread house!
Isle of Skye bring the Druids
Given that Isle of Skye is set round a real island, it makes sense we’d see expansions drawing on its culture - so here comes the third bite of the apple with Druids. Yes, Isle of Skye: Druids brings the much misunderstand religious figures into the game.
What this means in practical terms is you’ll still need a base set which progresses normally until the buying phase, which now has two sections. You can buy from other people but you can also buy from the Dolmen board, gaining landscape tiles with special rules. There are also extra score tiles and this should be out any week now.
Agricola brings the Bubulcus and Moor
Bubulcus can refer to cattle, and Agricola is getting a new expansion called the Bubulcus Deck. There are 120 cards, and they seem to be split between craftspeople and the lesser improvements, although this is dependant on our attempts to read German… The artwork fits in with the modern re-release of the base game.
Speaking of which, that 2016 release had revised rules and art as well as the animeeples, and an older expansion called Farmers of the Moor is being reworked to match. That means horse meeples, and yes, your scribe loves that sort of thing. Moor is out now, the deck October.
Caverna Meets Iron
Lookout Games have got a new expansion coming, but the name is a mouthful: Caverna: Cave vs Cave – Era II: The Iron Age. Let’s break that down: this isn’t an expansion for the main Caverna game (The Cave Farmers), but for the two-player variant Cave vs Cave.
The new expansion is called Era II: The Iron Age, which adds four extra rounds to the end of the old game and brings iron to the mix. Find it, smelt it, wield it… but there’s no direct combat. It’s all Uwe Rosenberg and is out October.
It’s all gone Hansel and Gretel
You know the trend for turning once dark fairytales on their heads by turning the ‘baddies’ into misunderstood focal points? Welcome to Phil Walker-Harding’s Gingerbread House, in which you play witches trying to lure fairytale folk into your tasty homes.
Yep, you’re the villains but you’re not trying to eat the people you trap, and yes I am sad about that, but you get their ratings on who has the tastiest house. All of which sounds marvellously insane and this is a tile layer from the man behind Barenpark, so we’re excited. Probably looking at a September 2018 release.
Dungeon Derby
Blood Bowl took American Football and gave it a fantasy spin, and Dungeon Derby takes racing and turns that into setting both familiar and not. Players form clans who bet on heroes who have to race through a dungeon, and they get to cast spells and do other things to hinder / help their favourites. It’s horse racing with swords and probably orcs.
There’s most definitely a party vibe here, although we doubt it’ll tear your aunt away from the Grand National DVD game. Check out the live Kickstarter for info.