Fun:
- Essen fair is this week and Board Game Geek is all over it. They have their usual GeekBuzz list of what is hot at the convention. Seems like civilization/city builders are the order of the day with Colonial: Europe’s Empires Oversees, Antiquity and Quebec. Stalag 17, a war game, tops the list. Other games are Wilderness (Exploration – the Bear Grylls way), Top A Top (kids card game), Pergamemnon (ancient army deck building battle game), Takenoko (Japanese farming game), Ascension: Return of the Fallen (expansion to the deck builder) and Dungeon Petz (worker placement spin-off of Dungeon Lords)
- Board game pieces spring to life – Gem sperm
- Pimp my Game: Thunderstone custom dungeon
- Die of the year (in my opinion)
- A couple of fans have developed an expansion to Settlers of Catan called Oil Springs. There you can have access to another resource, Oil, that greatly improves your productivity, but can cause disaster for the island of Catan. I read through the PDF and it was really interesting.
- Space Bastards: This one wins for name of the year. Alien races, coming together, making babies, eating other aliens, mass mayhem, fun to be had. Best quote on the description on BGG is, “Space Bastards is a game in which you can enjoy and observe the picturesque aliens as small animals in an aquarium – while siccing them on your opponents, of course...”. Released at Essen, US availability TBD.
iOS:
- Tabletop Army Manager released – manage your miniature armies with this tracking aid
- Imperial released, then pulled – apparently it didn’t work and they are offering refunds.
- Ticket to Ride updated to choose AI, review the board after the game and iOS 5 capable
- Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization postponed to Feb ‘12
- LeHavre postponed to Jan ‘12
- Tigris & Euphates any day now!
- Controversial game War on Terror is being ported to iOS at some point in the future
- Android update – BGG App updated to read forums
News:
- Any fans of The Dice Tower know that one of the hosts, Eric Summerer, is completely obsessed with the old space-themed Avalon Hill game Merchants of Venus. A friend of mine, Gil Hova (designer of the game Prolix), did a small write-up on NerdNYC about a problem with rights to the game as two publishers, Stronghold Games and Fantasy Flight, have both announced reprints of the game. Purple Pawn also wrote about the unfortunate situation.
- Also in the iOS world, Playdek has announced that they are working with a bunch of new publishers including Eagle Games to bring their games to the digital environment
- Kickstarter, the site that gives inventors and small companies that much needed seed money to finish their projects, has raised $1.1 million for board and card games so far in 2011. Last year Alien Frontiers set the board game world ablaze with their game funded by Kickstarter.
Happy gaming!
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