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This week, 7 Wonders brings Armada out of development hell, Asmodee launches an entertainment wing and Warhammer is after your phone, your cards and your money.
Chaosium are producing a board game
Although Chaosium have been a flag-bearer in Lovecraftian gaming for many years, they haven’t produced their own dedicated board game in, well, many years. After the studio was kept alive, the board game experience of their saviours meant a new Chaosium one was inevitable and lo and behold, here we are!
Miskatonic University: The Restricted Collection is a Reiner Knizia, push your luck game set in the library of… you can guess. It’ll be coming to Kickstarter and bills itself as having all your favourite Mythos accoutrements like madness.
Choose Your Own Adventure: The Board Game!
Your scribe’s entry into the world of gaming is lost in the shrouds of memory, but a strong factor was the gamebooks, including Fighting Fantasy and Choose Your Own Adventure, them of the white rimmed covers.
Imagine my excitement then, on learning Z-Man Games are curating a board game based on one entry in that series, House of Danger, from Forrest-Pruzan Creative, they of Harry Potter: Howart’s Battle. There is no hint on how the diverging paths (and crazy content) of the original is going to become a tabletop game, but we can’t wait to find out.
Funforge goes Monumental
When it comes to civilization building games, a grand title like Monumental is perfect, and that’s what Funforge have called their project, which is raising funds on Kickstarter now. Four players can pick from five legendary civilizations, expand across a modular tile system and challenge each other for cultural and military victory.
What’s different here is a deck building element, with each civ having a card deck which they use to play actions, and the way cards are laid in a 3 x 3 square from which you choose a row and column, adding a lovely new wrinkle. In addition, gameplay is predicted at 90 minutes so it’s great for those evenings when you want to take over the world but don’t have much time. Oh, there are miniatures… and it’s Kickstarter exclusive.
Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: Champions
With almost as many colons as skulls in the game, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar Champions is a new trading card game based in the Games Workshop universe. It’s being created by Lightseekers and seeks to blend physical and digital gameplay together. You will buy physical cards, of which we’re promised hundreds, and use these to play a game.
You can also use phone apps to access augmented reality on the cards, and bring your cards into the digital game: everything you buy physically can be used digitally too. Lightseekers have done this sort of thing before and are practiced, and believe they have a long future with Games Workshop. Release date is July.
SXSW Announce a Game of the Year
South by South West in Austin, Texas, used to be a brilliant music festival but in recent years has developed and expanded into other areas of creativity, which is why they announced a Tabletop Game of the Year and yes, it’s Gloomhaven again. It’s rather good.
Fire in the Library!
Like a cross between Flashpoint and Ex Libris, Fire in the Library casts you as librarians trying to save titles from an Alexandrian like book collection / conflagration for the good of knowledge and basic attraction to tomes. It’s a push your luck, with the failure part presumably being toasted. At just $19 for a basic pledge on Kickstarter, it’s also great value.
Railroad Rivals comes to Kickstarter
Also on Kickstarter at the moment is Forbidden Games’ ‘Railroad Rivals’, in which you compete with your friends to bid for city and stock tiles, with good city placement raising the price of your holdings. There’s also points for delivering goods, it’s set in developing America and the game itself comes in a variety of flavour including one with wooden pieces.
The latest Harbourverse game is Embark
Harbour started off a nice line of small box but big idea games in a shared universe from Tasty Minstrel Games, and the newest one is Embark. It only takes 15 minutes, and sees you competing with your rivals to fill up boats with special types of crew, send them off to gain points from exploiting their special skills and avoiding a clash with warriors. No release date yet.
7 Wonders Armada emerges from the mists of time
As 7 Wonders is a game based in the past, it’s fitting that their Armada expansion feels like it’s been in development just as long, as it was first mooted in 2011. People familiar with the original idea and the current one say all that remains is the name but, finally, Armada is coming.
An expansion to the base game which adds a naval board which you manipulate to score points in the familiar 7 Wonders colour system (e.g. red is military strength, blue is pure VP.) Arrival is expected to be Essen.
Asmodee opens a TV and Movie division
The next step in the Asmodee saga is here, and it’s not buying anymore studios (for the moment); it’s opening an entertainment division to turn it’s many, many IPs into TV shows, movies, graphic novels, the whole media shebang. No word yet on what forms this will all take, but we’re already holding a candlelit meeting to hope for Arkham Horror as the Netflix bingeathon. If there’s no news next week it’s because your scribe is pitching a plot.
Here’s a quote from the division’s new boss, Andy Jones:
"The success of our previous ventures into books and graphic novels, set in Asmodee worlds, demonstrated our fans' desire to engage with their favourite stories in formats beyond the board games they love…Through these new forms of content, our vibrant characters and engaging narratives can also reach new audiences around the world."