GenCon – the Releases!

GenCon just happened. Its a big board game convention in Indianapolis, now the 2nd biggest release point for games other than Essen and definitely the largest in North America. Over 250 games came out this year and here are a few of the highlights to wet your appitite:

1.Five Tribes (Days of Wonder) – Bruno Cathala

fivetribes

DoW’s first Gamers game. Early reports on this are very good, with people really excited after initial plays, here’s some blurb:

“Designed by Bruno Cathala, Five Tribes builds on a long tradition of German-style games that feature wooden meeples. Here, in a unique twist on the now-standard “worker placement” genre, the game begins with the meeples already in place – and players must cleverly maneuver them over the villages, markets, oases, and sacred places tiles that make up Naqala. How, when, and where you dis-place these Five Tribes of Assassins, Elders, Builders, Merchants, and Viziers determine your victory or failure. “

Available – September

2. King of New York (Iello) – Richard Garfield

kony

It’s King of Tokyo, but in New York…with a bigger Board!

“What’s new in King of New York is that you can now try to become a star in the big city; more specifically, you can achieve “Fame”, which nets you VPs, but superstar status is fleeting, so enjoy your time in the spotlight. The game board for King of New York is larger than in with each monster occupying a district in the city and everyone trying to shine in Manhattan. When you attack, you can displace a monster in another district, whether to escape military forces or to find new smashing opportunities. Yes, smashing because you can now destroy buildings and get bonuses for doing so, but the more destruction you cause, the more intense the military response.”

Available – October

3. Dead of Winter: A Crossoads Game (Plaid Hat Games) – Jonathon Gilmore/Isaac Vera

dead of winter

Zombies!!! Phew it had been 27 seconds since the last Zombie game came out, getting worried there for a second…the people who made this apparently loved the Battlestar Galactica game, but wanted something quicker and with some improvements (in their opinion anyway). The result was this:

Dead of Winter is a meta-cooperative psychological survival game. This means players are working together toward one common victory condition — but for each individual player to achieve victory, he must also complete his personal secret objective. This secret objective could relate to a psychological tick that’s fairly harmless to most others in the colony, a dangerous obsession that could put the main objective at risk, a desire for sabotage of the main mission, or (worst of all) vengeance against the colony! Certain games could end with all players winning, some winning and some losing, or all players losing. Work toward the group’s goal, but don’t get walked all over by a loudmouth who’s looking out only for his own interests! “

Available – October

4. Imperial Settlers (Portal Games) – Ignacy Trzewiczek

imperial settlers

Probably the hottest game at GenCon and by the guy who did Robinson Crusoe. It reimpliments his earlier game 51st State. Hopefully it’ll get a Canadian distributor soon.

“Imperial Sttlers is a card game that lets players lead one of the four factions and build empires by placing buildings, then sending workers to those buildings to acquire new resources and abilities. The game is played over five rounds during which players take various actions in order to explore new lands, build buildings, trade resources, conquer enemies, and thus score victory points. ”

Available – ???

5. Castles of Mad King Ludwig (Bezier Games) – Ted Alspach

Castles of Mad King Ludwig

Suburbia was one of my faves from the last couple of years and this game takes the premise of that one and adds funky shaped pieces and a Mad King, I’m all over this like a virus in a post apocalyptic world.

“In the game, each player starts with a simple foyer. One player takes on the role of the Master Builder, and that player sets prices for a set of rooms that can be purchased by the other players, with him getting to pick from the leftovers after the other players have paid him for their rooms. When a room is added to a castle, the player who built it gains castle points based on the size and type of room constructed, as well as bonus points based on the location of the room. When a room is completed, with all entranceways leading to other rooms in the castle, the player receives one of seven special rewards. After each purchasing round, a new player becomes the Master Builder who sets prices for a new set of rooms. After several rounds, the game ends, then additional points are awarded for achieving bonus goals, having the most popular rooms, and being the most responsive to the King’s demands, which change each game. Whoever ends up with the most castle points wins.”

Available – October

6. X-COM: the Board Game  (Fantasy Flight) – Eric Lang

download

Aaaaaagh, it invovles a digital App, board games are mutating…we must all Freak out! Yes its based of that game and is supposed to be pretty good and a co-op game in real time to boot. We shall see what this leads to in the future:

The app’s primary function is to coordinate the escalating alien invasion, randomly selecting from one of five different invasion plans. Each invasion plan represents a general outline that the alien commanders will use to coordinate the arrival of new UFOs, plan strikes against your base, and respond to your successes or failures as it seeks to conquer Earth. The app manages all of these tasks and heightens the game’s tension as it forces you to respond in real-time. Then, after you move quickly to coordinate your response, you engage the enemy in the untimed resolution phase and feed the results to the app. Based upon these results, the app launches the invasion’s next strikes.”

Available – December

7. Cash and Guns 2nd Edition (Repos) – Ludovic Maublanc

cash and guns

A reprint of the game that makes Mexican Standoffs cool. Point your gun, get some money and point again. Its a really good big group game, so I’m glad its coming back:

“Each round, one player is the Boss, and he controls the pace of play. First, loot cards are revealed on the table to show what’s up for grabs. Next, players load their guns by secretly selecting either a “Bang!” or a “Click! Click!” card from their hand. The Boss counts to three, and on “Three” each player points his foam gun at someone else; due to his status, the Boss can tell one player who’s pointing a gun at him that he needs to point it in another direction. After a pause to observe threats and measure the seriousness in an opponent’s eyes, the Boss counts to three again and anyone who doesn’t want to risk getting shot can chicken out and remove themselves from the round.Everyone who’s pointing a gun at someone still in the round now reveals their card, and anyone who’s the target of a “Bang!” takes a wound marker and gets none of the available loot. Starting with the Boss, everyone still in the round takes one loot card at a time from the table — money, diamonds, paintings, the position of Boss, medical care (to remove a wound), or a new bullet (to add a “Bang!” card to your hand) — until everything has been claimed.”

8.Sheriff of Nottingham (Arcane Wonders) – Sergio Halaban/Bryan Pope/Andre Zatz

sheriff-of-nottingham_rjvblw

Don’t know much about this one other than the stuff written under here and the fact that the Sheriff looks utterly AWESOME:

“In Sheriff of Nottingham , players will not only be able to experience Nottingham as a merchant of the city, but each turn one player will step into the shoes of the Sheriff himself. Players declare goods they wish to bring into the city, goods that are secretly stored in their burlap sack. The Sheriff must then determine who gets into the city with their goods, who gets inspected, and who may have their goods confiscated!Do you have what it takes to be seen as an honest merchant? Will you make a deal with the Sheriff to let you in? Or will you persuade the Sheriff to target another player while you quietly slip by the gate? Declare your goods, negotiate deals, and be on the lookout for the Sheriff of Nottingham!”

Available – October

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One other big announcement was Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars: Imperial Assault. Star Wars based on the Descent system…nuff said!

imperial assualt

Grudge Match: Werewolf vs. The Resistance

Werewolf vs. The Resistance

These games are similar. Werewolf (aka Mafia or multiple other names) was the first and has been around for years now, but in recent times a bunch of spin-offs have appeared, such as Ultimate Werewolf or One Night Ultimate Werewolf. The Resistance is the pretender to the everyone shouting ‘he’s the bad guy’ throne. A little more strategic and a little more complex, its a very popular game down here with large groups, often played multiple times. Which one is for you though?

 

Werewolf:

How does it play?

In the basic game, there will be Villagers and werewolves. The number of werewolves (WW) will depend on the number of people playing (more people, more wolves). The WW know who each other are, but the villagers do not. Each night everyone shuts their eyes and the WW wake up and silently decide to kill a villager. That person is announced by the moderator (who isn’t playing) and the group has to lynch somebody they think is the WW. Chaos ensues as people start accusing each other arbitrarily of being a werewolf because they looked at them funny, or their chair squeaked when they were asleep, or they looked left when the dead villager was announced, or they just don’t like their shoes, pretty much anything can be construed as damning evidence of K9 blood. Once the lynching victim is decided they reveal if they were a WW or villager, and repeat until all the WW are dead or all the villagers are dead.

What’s awesome about it?

  • You can play as many people as you like
  • You can add tonnes of extra roles to add more ooomph to the games
  • Its funny as hell and even if you are killed you get to see who the WW are and enjoy people making ridiculous accusations.
  • Being a WW and lying your face off can be tremendous fun if your into that sort of thing.
  • Its purely about convincing people of your opinion, nothing else.

What’s not so groovy?

  • people can get sad when someone shouts at them for no reason
  • you can die and be out of the game early, which isn’t great with a lot of people playing
  • someone has to moderate the game and therefore not play.
  • If you don’t like lying you’ll have a horrid time as a werewolf.
  • There is next to no strategy, beyond manipulating people to do what you say (which can sometimes be reduced to SHOUTING LOUDLY THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN).

 

The Resistance

How does it play?

The Resistance is looking to bring down the Corporation. The Corporation have infiltrated the good guys and will try and sabotage their missions, but they don’t know who the bad guys are. Set up is the same as WW, you are secretly given a role (nice or naughty) and the Resistance need to try and figure out who the infiltrators are. There will be 5 missions and 3 must succeed in order for the Resistance to win. A leader will be chosen and they will select a certain number of people to do a mission. The rest of the table must then vote if they are happy with that group, if yes, then the group does the mission, if no , the player to the left becomes the new leader and chooses a new posse to go out a kick some booty. To pass a mission, each player secretly plays a pass or fail card, they are shuffled and revealed. If any fail card is played, then the mission is lost. Repeat until we have 3 fails/successes.

What’s awesome about it?

  • There is a strong deduction element to it, as you use peoples votes as to whom should do missions, to try and narrow down the infiltrators.
  • You can lie in a slightly more manipulating way. Because the information that comes up during the game gives you some evidence (or not) to back up your claims.
  • No moderator required.
  • Plays really quickly

What’s not so groovy?

  • Some people can be a little over-analytical and bog the game down
  • It ‘only’ goes to 10 players
  • It’s really freaking hard to win as the Resistance.

 

 

Which is better?

Werewolf! That’s because I like arguing and indiscriminate accusations. Most would probably say The Resistance (or its sister Avalon), because it has more of a game to it, but they are WRONG, so there you have it. The latest version of WW, One Night Ultimate Werewolf is an excellent new version that literally lasts one night, but because of the number of roles involved, it provides some strategy as well as the blind shouting. You would have fun with either however, but WW with a great moderator really can’t be beaten.

Second Place is First Place for Losers – Race Games

Yo, I got a need for speed. Racing games are always fun and tense as you all desparately push for the finish. Well, actually, not always as you will see with a couple of these.

Formula D/De

formulad Its an oldy but a goody. Back in the day when there weren’t 300 new games released every day, there were leagues around town that played this game like a Formula 1 season, with 16 races recorded and final standings etc…because this was THE race game. Yes, it is luck ridden, yes the dice can screw you over because you decided to burn it down the straight using a D20, with the only roll that can ruin your race being a 20, which you then rolled, and everyone at the table pissed themselves laughing at your expense…but hey, when your not that guy and the other guy is that guy, its so funny when it happens to them, so don’t get mad. So yes, you roll dice. Starting with a D3, you gear up to a D6, D8 and so on (moving the number of spaces you roll). However, you must slow down to go around the corners, hence the burning tires to brake. It needs to be played fast like any race game to give the feel of actual racing. People should not over-analyse this, especially when playing with 6+ players, which is the best numbers to play with. It has numerous expansions for different maps, with the new edition having crazy alternate rules, like getting shot at when driving through the rough side of Chicago. We have it in the library, its the old version, but it has oodles of extra maps.

Snow Tails

snow tails My favorite race game and my wife’s favorite race game too. Dog-sleigh racing…YES! No dice this time, just cards. You have a hand of 5 and can play 1, 2 or 3 cards on a turn (the twist being that they must be the same number i.e. you can play one 4, two 4’s or three 4’s). 1 card for each dog and 1 for the brake. You add up the sum of the dogs and subtract the brakes to get your speed. If the left dog is a 5 and the right dog is a 3 though you will drift to the left, which is how you turn. There are all kinds of obstacles including trees, other racers, narrow straights to navigate around and every time you hit something you take a dent card which knocks your hand size down from 5 to less than 5, depending on how badly you smushed up your sleigh. Some people can get a heavy dose of AP (Analysis Paralysis) playing this as you try to figure out exactly how to play those cards, but the designers have dealt with this brilliantly by including this in the game: You give it to someone when they are having a Big Paws…. big paws

Jamaica

jamaica First around the Island of Jamaica doesn’t win, but does get a butt-tonne of Gold, which you need to win. Along the way you will collect treasures, guns and food to help pay the costs to move (its quite an expensive business moving a Pirate ship) and fight your opponents. The player on turn will roll two dice and place them in the morning and afternoon slots. Every player will then pick a card from their hand and will receive the gold/guns/food/movement depending on what is on that card on its morning/afternoon slots. If ever you land on the same space as another player a battle occurs in which the winner gets to steal a bunch of stuff off of the loser. Again, its best with more players because there is a greater chance of landing on each other and fighting, which is what a Pirate game should be all about. Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrr…..

Powerboats

 powerboats

Now we are talking! Tonnes of 3-sided dice and speed boats. Now that’s a racing game! Roll one dice to go, then speed up by rolling two, then three…faster you idiot, what can go wrong? Well, everything obviously, cos that would be a rubbish game if all you did was go faster and faster. Wait! A drag racing game, is there a game about that? Maybe it could be a real time game, involving a crap tonne a quick dice rolling…hmmm just braistorming here. Maybe I’ll suggest it to our Wednesday bi-weekly game design crew? Woah, did that get off-topic. So anyway. You can either add one dice, take one away or stay the same, re-rolling or keeping any number of those dice. So it takes a while to slow down, removing one dice at a time and its slow to turn as well (its water dude, a way less brakey/gripy material). There are lots of islands you have to zig-zag around, as well as annoying opponents as well. Similar to Snow Tails, if you crash to much into stuff you sink (well, you don’t sink in snow tails, but don’t be pedantic). This one feels like the most racey of the games I talked about, as people play quick and are trying to find the best lines to navigate around the islands. The dice has some luck, but because they are 3 sided and there are a lot, you can manipulate them cleverly to slow down and speed up by keeping and re-rolling the (hopefully) right dice.

Lewis and Clarke: The Expedition

lewis and clarke

This is my grey area game, is it a race game…really? Well, kind of, as the first person to get to the Pacific Coast wins, but then again, you could call any ‘first to’ game a race game, at its heart it is a hand management and worker placement game, but a very good one. How efficiently you manage your resources and workers will determine how quickly you move along the path to the Pacific. Your aim is to send your scout as far  ahead as possible and then set up camp  when you run out of cards to play. However, if you have excess cards, goods or workers in your boats your Scout moves backwards and you set up camp further down river than you hoped. Its a Grade A brain melter in its purest form, that will leave you unabashedly making weird, can’t decide what to do, faces as you try plan out the order in which to play your cards and workers. This is not one for the faint hearted. Its not overly complicated, but you will have some serious ‘I have no idea what to do’ moments, so if you are into that, get it, cos its one of the best. If you like your race games dicey and quick, avoid this like the bubonic plague.

Other goodies in the library:

Mississippi Queen Ave Ceasar Royal Turf Roborally Hare and Tortoise

Dice – Games with Meat on their Bones

Yspahan

yspahan_spiel1

Yspahan (said: Ees-pa-haan) was the first modern Euro game to use dice in such a way that allowed players to control the randomness, while using that same randomness as a way to promote replay-ability. The object is make points by filling areas of the city or a camel train with goods. 8 dice are rolled to determine what goods will be available, with the lowest set of numbers placed on the bottom row, highest dice on the top and then each set of numbers working from the second lowest up. This means that if every number is not rolled, some goods will be missing that turn. You can use goods to obtain buildings which will give you abilities, and if the dice left to choose from blow, then you can always choose to take a card, which gives you something groovy.

Its a quick game, taking about 40 minutes and has a number of strategies available, definitely worth a bash if you are down in the cafe.

Alien Frontiers

AlienFrontiersBoard

One of the very first successful board games that spawned from Kickstarter. Its a kind of worker placement game, where your choice of where to play your workers is slightly limited by the dice you roll. The object is to try and get the most victory points through colonizing the planet in the center of the board. As with any strategic dice game there are numerous ways to manipulate the dice you roll to allow you to get what you want, mainly using special power cards or abilities gained through controlling parts of the planet. Competition for stuff is ferocious and people will be blocking spots left, right and center to deny their opponents what they want. The board art is also fabulous with that 50’s sci-fi feel and the bits are also really cool.

Kingsburg

kingsburg_011

This one could almost be a gateway game, and I would put it up front with the other family friendly games (except Game of Thrones…although that depends on the family), but for the fact it runs a little long with 5, which is a shame because its best with more players. Whats the idea on this one Bill, I hear you ask? Well sit down Children and let me tell you….

“Roll three dice and placeth them on ye olde board decorated with destinations that range from the miserly 1, to the Kingly 18 (literally, there is a King on that spot). The grander the number the more you get”

“’But that’s not fair to people who roll rubbish numbers’ I hear you cry”

“Fear not! For if you roll lowest you place first and may splitteth your dice up, perchance to place them on 3 locations”

Enough of that. You use the stuff you get to make buildings that give you points and powers, as well as defense against incoming mosters that will attack you every turn. ROAR.

Its easy to pick up and there are a squillion buildings to buy, 2 squillion if you buy the expansion!

Space Cadets – Dice Duel

dice duel

This is a team co-op game. Each team will control a space ship that flies around the board shooting at the other team attempting to destroy them first. Engineering controls the dice the team uses, for example if they roll a 1 they can give it to ‘Weapons.’ This is all done in real time, with players setting the dice aside, a la Yahtzee, when they have what they want and re-rolling the dice they don’t want.

Basically the faster you do stuff the quicker you’ll move, shoot and protect yourself. However, this involves a lot of co-ordination and will inevitably degenerate into people shouting at each other repeating themselves over and over again, while getting louder and louder in the vain belief that this will somehow expedite the matters at hand. It plays up to 8 and only takes 30 minutes and is a blast to play. Definitely worth a try.

Escape the Curse of the Temple

Escape_600_300_90_c1

Similar to Space Cadets, this is a team game done in real time, but with an actual sound-tracked timer that plays spooky music counting down the 10 minutes you literally get to escape the temple. I played this with my 6 year old daughter, who in her second game, ran from the table claiming that it was too stressful and she couldn’t cope. You roll the dice to move from room to run, trying to unlock crystals to open the door to escape. If you roll a black mask then that die is cursed and you can’t roll it till you free it with a yellow mask. Someone WILL roll 5 black dice and start screaming ‘I can’t move’ while their team-mates are half a game away and will have to run all the way back to rescue them. It has a simple version as well as a complex one with curse and bonus tiles that help or hinder you (my favorite being the curse of being unable to speak, combined with 5 black masks and attempting to communicate with other players with vigorous hand signals while they totally ignore you). Its really fun, if quite stressful at points…

Classic Euro’s – Gaming circa 2005

10 years ago Euros were all the rage. They involved low luck, simple rules, shorter playing time, slightly abstracted components and a lower level of player interaction that rewarded strategic play. We are talking pre-2005 here. When we were lucky to get 20 good new games are year (now we get hundreds). We still get ‘Euros’ today but often they will try and involve a little more theme and interaction. The great designers of that period were Reiner Knizia, Wolfgang Kramer and Andreas Seyfarth. The term often used to describe these games is ‘elegant’ and if you haven’t had to chance to play them, get on down to the cafe and give one a bash, we’re always excited to teach these classics.

They also have a lot of cubes…

Puerto Rico

– Andreas Seyfarth

puerto rico

This was rated the best game in the world by gamers on boardgamegeek (the main board game website) for 5+ years. Its main game mechanic is role selection (like in Citadels), whereby a player will choose an action to do, which everyone else also gets to do, but he gets to do it first and a bit better! The theme is creating a plantation in Puerto Rico (No!!!! Really!!!) to grow crops and sell them or export them for points. Building certain buildings also gives you certain advantages to direct your strategy. People would often complain about the ‘player to the right’ syndrome i.e. the game has so little luck, that if the player before you was weak he would pick sub-optimal roles and could throw the game to the player to his left. However, in general, people who complained about that were usually knobs and you wouldn’t want to play with them anyway! Its really good. Play it.

Tigris and Euphrates

(Written by Del our Friday Night Game Expert) – Reiner Knizia

t&E

Tigris & Euphrates is the most Knizia game ever Knizia’ed. Being from Knizia’s “awesome games” period, T&E has unique mechanisms seldom repeated in modern eurogames. It has the elements that made Reiner Knizia a household name:

  • collecting different kinds of points but you 
  • pulling random crap out of a bag,
  • theme and mechanics
  • tiles Tiles TILES, and of course
  • getting all up in your opponent’s faces

Build kingdoms in the cradle of civilization, vying for influence amongst the 4 factions of early society. You can try to become a new trader-baron, ousting the previous one with the support of the church. Or you can attempt to merge two kingdoms and, in the clash of cultures, hope to profit and come out king.
Since it’s from the old-times when space at the old Interactivity was limited, Tigris & Euphrates is hidden in the “Through the Desert” box.

Ra

– Reiner Knizia

RA

RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA…..You get to say RA a lot playing this game. Its an auction game, where you get to bid for tiles that get you points and the token that you will use to bid with for the next round (they range from 1-16 and you have three to use each round). Its set in Ancient Egypt, but could just as easily be set in a sewer or a chicken coup or perhaps even dystopian future where children kill each other on TV. The fun of the game is in attempting to put a value your own bidding tile in relation to:

  • The bidding tile you’ll get next round
  • The tiles you’ll get for points
  • The amount of time you think the round has left
  • What other players want and need.

I like this one a lot, its pretty quick and fairly simple, but there is a lot to think about. Oh and did I mention you get to say RA a lot.

El Grande

Kramer and Ulrich

el grande

Did I mention low player interaction. Well I lied when it comes to this one. It’s an area majority game (whoever has the most bits in an area gets the most points) where you pretty much spend the whole game ganging up on the leader and pretty much anyone else who gets in your way. It has a big tower that you put cubes in and a huge King piece that looks like THIS…not phallic at all.

el grande king

Its one of my favorite games ever, but is sadly out of print. But as it came out in 1995, I am hoping for a 20 year anniversary edition next year. Here’s a few words on it from Chris Rudram of Day of Board Gaming fame:

“If you really want to test how strong your friendships are, play this. If you like being ganged up on, unreasonably, or better yet, being the one to always claim you are losing while you win… play this.”

Princes of Florence

– Kramer and Ulrich

princes-of-florence-3

I was going to do write something nice about this one as well. A lot of people love it, but to me its dryer than a desert rock in the midday sun and I would rather grate my own eyeballs than play it. Jack, the other half of IBGC loves it and said we should add this, but he’s not writing this so…..err….here are a few words from Chris on this who has similar feelings to me:

“Fun, if taking part in a cattle auction before playing an obscure version of Tetris in order to have the chance to pick a scoring card is your idea of fun.”

Sorry PoF fans!