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There’s a lot of games relocating to outer space this week, as well as new faces for Zombicide and Arkham Horror.
Zombicide: The RPG
There’s a new Zombicide offshoot coming, and it’s taking the game into new territory: role-playing. The team behind War of the Ring and Hunt for the Ring are taking CMON’s zombie killing hit and turning it into a deeper emotional experience that combines bonds between your characters with shooting the faces off the undead, the former via a dedicated GM, the latter via new zombidice.
Two special scenarios will guide you through a tutorial and the reasons why your survivors have gathered, but you’re going to need to be very patient because the Kickstarter for this is pencilled in for winter 2019 and that’s not a typo.
Arcadia Quest in Space
You know how Clank! switched it’s base mechanics smoothly from a fantasy setting to the reaches of outer space? Well step forward Starcadia Quest, which does the same thing: transforming cutesy dungeon crawler Arcadia Quest into sci-fi. What’s fascinating about this isn’t just the new setting or potential new experience, but the fact it’s been billed as compatible with Arcadia Quest, although no one is saying publicly how. The Chibi’s will be coming to Kickstarter August 28.
Munchkin: A Board Game
There’s been a lot of Munchkin games, but they’ve mostly been the original with new themes. However, CMON are releasing a board game derived from the IP and no guesses where Munchkin: Dungeon is set. Andrea Chiarvesio and Eric Lang are designing, and they’ve described it as a “CMON style game” which doesn’t make much sense but presumably means lots of awesome miniatures from the work of Munchkin’s illustrator John Kovalic and a masterfully run Kickstarter campaign (which will begin next year).
Inis: Seasons
Inis is an excellent Celtic themed area control and card drafting game which is getting its first expansion. Seasons adds a fifth player to the mix, new location boards, new epic tale cards and most importantly a new season track for new wrinkles in how to play. The release date is less certain with 2018 or possibly 2019 mooted, so plenty of time to enjoy the base first.
Crossroads Goes Into Space
Dead of Winter was billed as a ‘Crossroads’ game, and the public voted on what the next game should involve. Unlike certain other polls people didn’t pick Boaty McBoatface, they picked space, so the new Crossroads game is Gen 7. Play is set on a colony ship and players are the seventh generation of crew, fighting an unknown menace.
Not only is the usual Crossroads stuff present (although the traitor mechanic hasn’t been explicitly mentioned), but there’s a way to chain games together for campaigns: yes, this isn’t a one and done legacy. No release date yet and a price tag of $100.
Christian Petersen Steps Down
Christian Petersen founded Fantasy Flight Games, designed several iconic properties like Twilight Imperium and became CEO of Asmodee North America. However, he’s announced he is now going to be stepping down to spend more time with his family, as well as other projects:
“After nearly 20 years with FFG and four years with Asmodee, I've seen our market go through tremendous change and amazing growth,” he told the press “Tabletop games have been accepted into the fabric of society and represented in pop culture more positively than anyone could have hoped for when I joined the industry. I feel fortunate to have experienced this phenomenon firsthand, and to have been part of such an incredible journey.”
“Now it's time to hand the reins to a new generation of leaders who along with the amazing staff at Asmodee North America and its studios will move forward with their own unique energy and vision. I have no doubt that they'll be better, burn brighter, and achieve ever more fantastic things. I can't wait to see what they'll do, and to play what they'll make.”
Altiplano: The Traveller
Altiplano is getting an expansion designed to make players interact more, and it’s called The Traveller. As well as introducing the title character we’re promised tweaks promoting a mixture of both planning and reaction, more competitive competition and bonus trading. The release date is October and it’ll be $30.
Trudvang Legends Comes Closer
The Trudvang Chronicles RPG raised a bundle on Kickstarter and created a world of mythology, and now Eric Lang is gong to take that and run up some cliffs with it. He’s leading development on Trudvang Legends, which he describes as ‘experimental’ and you know that means interesting. The aim is to create a tabletop game which reflects the development of ‘your’ world and the actions of your heroes, so it’s a bit legacy in the sense one play-throughs actions change the board for when another play-through brings new heroes.
The game is strongly narrative based, will presumably include miniatures given who’s involved and is on an epic scale. Lang’s had “exciting/terrifying design moments” so goodness know what’ll happen to players. A Kickstarter is looking like up to a year away.
Mythic Introduces Reichbusters
There’s no mistaking Mythic’s new game as a subtle understanding of the pressures of mid-century combat, no, because it’s called Reichbusters: Projekt Vril. Yep. It’s Weird War Two, with the allied players co-operating to invade a laboratory cum fortress to stop the magic and alien technology the Nazis have harnessed, which means you’ll be fighting zombies, mechs and soldiers over a series of escalating battles. It’s a 32mm miniatures game, but we’re expecting some big Vril powered baddies. Once again, it’s a 2019 Kickstarter.
Scorpius Freighter: Truckers vs the Galactic Empire
Scorpius Freighter gives you a spaceship and asks you to move around cargo, but this isn’t just a pick up and drop game as you win by doing the most to undermine the government, so it is essentially Han Solo meets Firefly the Game. You don’t have to go illegal, but you do have to beat your opponents… The game is published by AEG, designed by David Short and Matthew Dunstan and if it does well it’ll be the start of a series in this new universe.
Tiny Epic Mechs
Tiny Epic Zombies will soon be in shops so there’s time to (kick)start the next volume in the series: Tiny Epic Mechs. This is a game of programmable arena combat between people in power armour and mech suits. They’ve got a fancy acronym - Mechanised Entertainment Combat Heroes – and meeples which fit inside the mechs. All in a small box, obviously. September is the Kickstarter date, and we will be dreaming of an alien queen expansion five seconds later.
Giant Queendomino
If you got your hands on the giant version of Kingdomino, you pretty much have to buy the new announcement in the IP: the giant version of Queendomino. The box isn’t a behemoth, but the pieces all look much bigger, and hey, we all like matching.
Pipeline
In a world of fancy miniatures and grand themes, there’s something comforting about Pipeline with it’s almost old fashioned theme of running a privatised oil company in the most efficiently profit making way possible. No mechs and ideally no explosions: “You will need more than strong economic skills – carefully crafting an interweaving network of pipelines just might ensure your victory!” Indeed.
Arkham Horror Designer’s Challenge
Do you find Arkham Horror too easy? May we suggest solving peace in the Middle East. Or, more on theme, compete against Arkham Horror designer Matt Newman in his series of challenges. Here’s Matt explaining the ‘Designer’s Challenge’:
“You heard me right: I am issuing a challenge. The first of many, in fact. Each of these “designer challenges” is planned to test your deckbuilding skills and your tactical prowess in various fashions. One challenge might involve an alternate way of building a deck or playing the game, or perhaps the challenge will require you to play through a cooperative scenario with extreme difficulty, or with special restrictions that force you to reconsider your usual approach.
My hope is that the Arkham Horror: The Card Game community can use these challenges as a rallying point of sorts. You can use these challenges as discussion topics online, or you might use them as the basis for regular gaming sessions with your friends at your local game store. Most importantly, think of each challenge as a call to action, a way to test your mettle against some of the hardest (and strangest) content the game has to offer!”
Go to the Designer Journal to find the first challenge, ‘Then it Multiplied’, and don’t complain to us when you die horribly many times.
Ganymede: Because this is basically Space week isn’t it!
Ganymede is a new game from European publisher Sorry We Are French, and as it feels like most things this week have a space theme it’ll fit right in. It’s a drafting game that tasks you with moving settlers of various types from Earth to Ganymede, and it’s been compared to Splendor (and as your scribe is a big fan of the latter he had to pause writing this to see if there were English rules as well as French and he believes there are.) It’s just been released.
The only thing bigger than space is Stellar Horizons
Stellar Horizons aims to combine the fascination at expanding into the solar system with some actual physics, because the designer is a full on scientist. But we’re not just impressed with the gameplay of running rival space programmes, we’re intrigued by the presence of both hour long scenarios and a grand mode for a whole weekend. Gameplay looks marvellously deep and intense. However, it’s still a year away.
Arkham Horror Third Edition
Arkham Horror has sat astride the Lovecraft gaming market like Cthulhu for many years, but is now being completely revamped for a third edition. Nikki Valens, of Mansions of Madness and Eldritch Horror fame, has torn the game down and built it back up, so there’s now set scenarios which proceed depending on how you play the story across a modular map of hexagons.
There’s a host of other developments, showing that great games don’t just have to sink and slumber at the bottom of the sea: there is going to be no annoyance at the idea of buying this because it is different to the second edition. It’s also set up to provide lots of expansions. You’re also getting a 2018 release with no Kickstarter.
Daenerys arrives in Westeros
A Game of Thrones: The Board Game is getting a long overdue expansion: yes, it’s the one with Daenerys and House Targaryen. She comes with a special side board to represent far off lands and there’s also an eighth faction, House Arryn. The great advantage of this game is, of course, it gets finished faster than the actual books ever will.
KeyForge has a lot of Zeroes
The words Richard Garfield and card game always cause raised eyebrows, and at first sight his new project KeyForge looks oddly familiar: a game of card playing and magic wielding as people compete to wield the power of the Archons and their different houses (and forge some keys).
So far so CCG. But KeyForge uses unique decks: yes, you don’t alter or build your deck, you buy them complete, and once you’ve dropped the training deck and gone into the full game you’ll find that the starting set of 370 cards means there are 104,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different decks possible, some of which will be on sale around the world. Want to change your deck? Buy a new one and you’re ready.
Go Go Power Rangers
The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers are still a thing, and they are getting a board game with miniatures. Hasbro and Renegade have teamed to do it, and Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid tasks you with becoming a ranger and working co-op to defeat Rita. Oh, sorry, Rita Repulsa, yeah that sounds a bit better. It’s coming to Kickstarter and to be brutally honest the miniatures look better than the special effects from the show!