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- ● Trading Ink for Tiles, Dealing in Squares, and Adventuring to The Red Dragon Inn• Italian publisher Horrible Guild is following its 2021 Railroad Ink Challenge: Collector's Edition not by releasing more for the roll-and-write Railroad Ink game series, but by presenting a new connection challenge: Railroad Tiles, which will be crowdfunded in Q2 2024.
This game also comes from Railroad Ink designers Hjalmar Hach and Lorenzo Silva, and it works as follows:Railroad Tiles is a quick-playing, tile-placement game in which you pick tiles and place routes to build an interconnected community.
The game is played over eight rounds. You start each round by drafting your tiles from the sets available in the common pool, then you place your routes in front of you, trying to make as many connections as possible; be careful not to lock yourself in with choices that are too constraining. Each round, you can also place cars, trains, or travelers to populate the tiny little landscape you're creating...as long as you have free space on your tiles. The available actions change from round to round, so you need to prepare in advance!
The more pieces of the same kind each new placement connects to, the more points you earn. You can also score bonus points at game's end for placing tiles in a large rectangle without gaps and for creating sets of three adjacent city tiles.
• Boardcubator, the publisher of Project L, is crowdfunding a new abstract game with chunky plastic pieces: Square One, from Patrik Chleboun and Project L co-designer Jan Soukal.
You start the game with three tiles: two yellow showing a single square and one green showing two squares in a row. Each turn, you take three actions from five possibilities:
— Take a sequence: Draw and reveal a random sequence board. This will show spaces that you must fill with particular tiles in order to receive the reward depicted on the card, whether points or new tiles.
— Merge: Combine tiles in your possession into other tiles, e.g., combining a yellow and a green to make a row of three squares or three squares in an L shape; discard the original tiles and take the new one from the reserve.
— Split: Do the opposite of merge.
— Place: Take all the pieces in your reserve required to fill the highest empty line in a sequence, and place them on that board.
—Master: At most once per turn, take all the pieces in your reserve required to fill the same row in any number of sequences.
As you might expect, the crowdfunding campaign for this early 2025 release features an expansion and a Kickstarter-only bonus item.
• In March 2024, SlugFest Games ran a crowdfunding campaign for The Red Dragon Inn: Adventure Is Nigh!, a standalone game featuring characters from the "Adventure is Nigh!" YouTube series. Here's an overview of this early 2025 release:After another wild adventure, it's time you kicked back with your buddies for a party at your favorite nightclub. Brawl, gamble, and drink your way through the night as a unique character with its own deck, traits, and mechanisms. The last adventurer standing wins!
All of the characters included can be mixed with characters from any The Red Dragon Inn game or expansion.
The Red Dragon Inn: Adventure Is Nigh! will be released in two versions, one using the artstyle from the YouTube series (as seen above) and another featuring the traditional RDI artstyle.
• In March 2024, I wrote about Kevin Wilson's Kinfire Council, which Incredible Dream Studios is crowdfunding through May 2024 for delivery in mid-2025. While at GAMA Expo 2024, I got a look at a mock-up of Kinfire Council, and it's a beast.
Incredible Dream Studios is also using this crowdfunding campaign to fund a second printing of Kinfire Chronicles: Night's Fall, with the game now being available in French or German, in addition to English. If no one is stepping up to do a localization, I suppose it's smart business for Incredible Dream to make that effort itself...
Kinfire Council mock-up at GAMA Expo 2024 Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: May 1, 2024 - 6:00 am - Become an Almighty God, Manipulate Power, and Fill Your Mouth with Bugs• Power Vacuum from Kaleb Wentzel-Fisher and Keen Bean Studio presents players as anthropomorphic appliances competing for the role of Supreme Appliance following the death of the land's leader, who is, yes, a vacuum. Sucks to be him...
The deck has cards in five suits, with the backs of the cards showing cards in only four suits. One suit is disguised as the other four, and while red is trump in general, if a trick contains only cards of this hidden suit and red, then the hidden suit trumps red.
The winner of a trick leads the next trick, and whoever played the lowest card in a trick manipulates the power board. This board has spaces for the five suits and the power supply, with "plugs" on two of these six spaces. To manipulate the power board, you move 1 unit of power from one plugged space to the other, then you move one of the plugs. Each player has an agenda that depicts two suits, and you're trying to make one of those suits the most powerful in the round and the other the least powerful. You score points for your agenda depending on how early you declare it publicly, locking in which suit you want high and which low — or you can keep your agenda secret, essentially gambling double or nothing on getting both sides correct.
Mock-up power board
Power Vacuum is crowdfunding through the end of April 2024, with delivery expected in Q1 2025.
• Keen Bean Studio has another title in the works as well, this one a co-design by Kevin Privalle and company owner Malachi Ray Rempen. Here's an overview of the 1-4 player game Almighty: A Game of Gods & Ends:You are a primordial cosmic deity who wants to build and control an eclectic pantheon of gods and act upon your various followers in all the ways that ancient deities tend to do: create marvelous miracles, bring about horrible curses, generate mysterious omens, and make increasingly outrageous demands — all to amass the divine power needed to perform even greater acts, attract even better followers, fulfill the best top-shelf prophecies, and prove once and for all that YOU are the almightiest in the universe!
Almighty is a tableau-building game of hand and resource management, with a dash of tile placement and area control. Each turn, players choose a god in their pantheon to perform an act card from their hand, impacting one or more of their followers. Acts and followers generate boons, such as Belief (used to buy new gods from an open market, as well as better acts and followers), Power (needed at increasingly higher levels to perform better acts and impact better followers), more followers (with higher, more valuable populations), and Souls (which grant endgame victory points, but offer bonuses if spent during the game). Acts are performed in one of four lands shared between all players; the more presence you have in a land, the cheaper it will be for you to build temples there, and each land grants a different amount of victory points for temples at the end of the game.
The game is broken into several ages, during which players compete to have the most boons of a specific type. Players also have three private prophecy cards to work toward, but must choose only one to score at the End of Days — the final, apocalyptic doomsday round of the game in which every player does their almighty best to make their final mark on the doomed mortal plane. The player with the most points at the end wins the title of ALMIGHTY!
• Looking for games from other German publishers, we run across Snatch it!, a 3-6 player ladder-climbing card game due out in August 2024 from Christwart Conrad and HeidelBÄR Games that has only minimal information available for now:Once upon a time, there was a pond that hummed and buzzed happily...but then the frogs suddenly appeared. They greedily filled their mouths with everything within reach of their tongues. They even snatched their prey from the mouths of the others.
Your goal in Snatch it! is to secure as much food as possible. Become a hungry frog, and grab the tastiest cards from the pond. Protect your well-filled piles from the other greedy frogs who keep trying to snatch them away from you. Only those who collect their piles before they burst will not end up with an empty belly.
• A more involved card game awaits you in Suna Valo, a design from Andreas "ode." Odendahl of The Game Builders for exactly two players that will debut in Q3 2024 ahead of SPIEL Essen 24:Read more »In Suna Valo, two individuals take on the task of establishing their own farm in the Solarpunk world of Overgrown. Located in the picturesque "Sunny Valley" (Suna Valo), nestled at the foot of a mountain and crisscrossed by a broad river, the village of Foriro has been erected — a place of new beginnings! The farmers in this village supply valuable goods using their transport drones and river ships.
The construction of your farms is made possible through farm cards across various categories. Cultivate vast grain fields, and harvest beautiful water lilies or blue flowers. Deliver your sheep's wool to the village for clothing production or collect eggs from your free-roaming chickens. But amidst your explorations of the surrounding lands, don't forget to reinforce your fleet of transport drones!
Suna Valo features an innovative purchasing mechanism. Secure the right cards before your opponent does, snatch up the more valuable ones, and host prestigious events! Each time you acquire a new card for your farm, you activate an entire column of cards, causing your farm to flourish. However, you must also earn the resources to cover the costs of these cards.
At the end of three game rounds, the player with the most victory points emerges as the winner of this peaceful competition, having contributed the most to the development of Foriro!Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 30, 2024 - 2:00 pm - Designer Diary: Books of TimeI am an innovation digger and tend to seek new interesting mechanisms in game designs, even in those not of my own making. I always look for things that allow players to review the theme by reading the description in the rulebook and to "feel" it by playing the game itself. That's why Books of Time is a special title in my portfolio and my heart.
But let's start from the beginning.
"What more can be done with cards?" I asked myself on one of these days when I wanted to train my creativity. Initially, I didn't intend to make the whole game. To be completely honest, I just got lost in sorting out this question.
I set myself in the correct mood. The Game Developers Conference was running on the TV in the background, and I started walking around the office, totally focused, taking things from desks or shelves and leaving them somewhere else — without remembering where I left them, as usual. In all this chaos running in my head, I started analyzing the card anatomy and thinking about each aspect, one by one: "How can we use the card?", "What can a single card change?", and "What can we do physically to cards to impact the way they behave?"
That was a moment when my eyes stopped at the shelf with binders. "If we punch holes in cards and use binders, we can make a game where you can create books, real books", I thought, surprised and excited about this idea.
Shortly after that, I knew this game would make players become scribes writing down the history of mankind in the form of a few books, each one describing different fields: science, industry, and history — those were my first choices.
Before I jumped into making the first prototype, I had to set the framework for it. I wanted to design a game with a heaviness of 2.5 on BGG, with a playtime of at most one hour.
The most important aspect for me was to combine every action in the game with the fact that we have those binders. I wanted to create a mechanical reason for having them in the game, not only just to get the "feeling". I wished to have everything connected with the act of actual book writing: flipping pages, adding new pages, reading pages, closing the book — all of these as the main mechanisms and the source of everything in the game (points, resources, movements, etc).
After that, I focused on crafting the prototype. I must admit that preparing it was an exciting experience, and this was probably the fastest prototype I have ever created. I loved playing with this formula and shaping the final gameplay as those binders showed new interesting possibilities for where I could go with mechanisms. It was hard to stay focused and on track, even knowing the framework I had set up for this game. This was so exciting!
Having the books open brought natural limitations to what players could perform, and while adding new pages or flipping them, the actions changed completely. The fact that those three books are actually three decks of double-sided cards that function as books made this tableau/deck-building blend of mechanisms very innovative.
I wanted to make players analyze how to expand those books, where to add new pages to create a set of actions, and what type of cards to add so that actions would chain together.
The actions themselves had to be easy — along the lines of changing one thing to another, moving up on tracks, gaining resources — so that players would not have to constantly go through the books to check which actions they have; that would be administrative and fiddly. You know what to expect in the specific type of book you are working on, sure, but what's on the other side of the page once you flip it? You can always check with no impact on gameplay, yet that's still fiddly.
Since the cards are double-sided to act as pages in a book, the ideal solution was to place the same action on the reverse of the card, while making it a little weaker than what's on the front; now you know something about this action, even without flipping the page to see what's there. Additionally, this was the only way to solve the "market" problem of having double-sided cards as I can't imagine how terrible it would be if players had to check both sides of a card when deciding which card to take.
The idea started to form into a unique smash-up of a deck-tableau-building game in which players have to manage their resources.
I prepared the first prototype, then we gathered the Board&Dice team to play, and the sound of clicking binders filled the air. The game worked, yes, but what was most important was that the gimmick worked and added to the game exactly what I wanted.
After everyone tried out this game, we had to check whether we would be able to print this design that would include thirteen metal binders(!) at a production cost that would allow us to set the retail price at a really good level. After a few e-mails with the manufacturer, we got the answer we wanted: The whole project got a green light.
From this moment, the game was taken over by our dev team, completely out of my hands. We've stuck to the rule that designers should not develop their own games. It's reasonable that the person (and the team) doing the hardcore development should not be emotionally attached to the game so that every needed change or modification would be dictated by playtest feedback (i.e., hard facts). Of course that doesn't mean the designer will not be included in the process or can't do anything other than hope the dev team will do it right. At B&D, each game we are working on has a "game champion", a member of the dev team who is responsible for monitoring the process of a particular game, and one of the key aspects of this role is keeping the designer updated about changes and the processes.
For this game, the development process took around eight months, and during this time the core game structure stayed the same, but the team brought many good ideas and improvements to the design, such as the Chronicle Book, which is a thematic round counter as well as the endgame trigger; it also adds additional decisions during a player's turn. My first idea for the common scoring tracks turned out to be too complex as all players built their own tracks during the game. This idea was interesting, but this design was not about the development of scoring tracks; the team told me to design a separate game about this if I like the idea. As I said, staying focused is important. The fewer elements that drag you from the main concept/mechanism, the better, especially in a game of the 2.5 BGG weight we were aiming for.
When the game entered the art process, we wanted a vintage-clean look so that we could make beautiful book covers and truly vibrant illustrations. The art also allowed us to think about inclusivity in the game, so the science pages would have a variety of famous scientists and inventors. We decided to co-operate with our friends from Our Family Play Games to create the ideal representation there. They also reviewed everything in the game from that perspective. The cards don't have text, but we included a section in the rulebook where players can find descriptions of the illustrated people, inventions, and events.
After twelve months of work, the game ended up in production with eight language localizations and premiered during UKGE 2023. It was an exciting experience for me. I hope you will have as much fun while playing the game...
Filip Głowacz
Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 30, 2024 - 6:00 am - CMON Buys Japon Brand; KADOKAWA Acquires Arclight• On April 24, 2024, CMON Limited announced a deal with Japon Brand General Incorporated Association to acquire Japon Brand.
Japon Brand has been a regular presence at the SPIEL game convention in Essen, Germany since 2006, introducing hundreds of tiny games to players outside of Japan — and to publishers.
While Japon Brand sells directly to individuals, its larger function has been to serve as an agent for Japanese game designers and represent them in licensing deals with non-Japanese publishers. I first recall seeing licensed Japanese games appear from Z-Man Games in the early 2000s with titles like R-Eco, Fairy Tale, and Stack Market, and Z-Man picked up several designs represented by Japon Brand, such as Parade, Traders of Carthage, and Master of Rules.
Other publishers have licensed Japon Brand titles as well, such as Asmodee with Robotory, FoxMind with String Railway, and AEG with Seiji Kanai's Love Letter, which proved to be a breakthrough title in terms of worldwide awareness of Japanese game design and which in 76 years will undoubtedly still be one of the most important games released in the 21st century.
In 2022, CMON had founded a Japanese games division, with Nobuaki "Tak" Takerube in the role of Director of Japanese Operations and Ken Watanabe as Japanese Sales Manager. Tak has been central to the growth of Japon Brand over the years, and BGG has enjoyed hosting him on many SPIEL livestreams in which he and Simon Hammar would present up to two dozen games in an hour-long blitz.
In the press release announcing this deal, CMON notes that "Japon Brand will continue to serve as an independent agent division, leveraging CMON's infrastructure and management capabilities to introduce games to the global market." More from the press release, as Google translated with some clean-up:The new president of Japon Brand will be 野村紹夫 (Akio Nomura), who has been active as a board game designer for many years and who served as a board member under the old system. Nomura describes his aspirations as follows:
"The situation surrounding Japan's analog game industry has continued to change over the past ten years. The number of people exhibiting overseas on their own has increased, and the number of overseas buyers visiting Game Market [in Tokyo and elsewhere] has also increased. However, for many individual artists, "overseas'' is still a long way off due to social and economic circumstances. I hope that the existence of Japon Brand will continue to be a source of hope for them. With the support of CMON, we expect to be even more active than ever before."
David Preti, COO of CMON Limited, also commented: "Japon Brand has always been a great ambassador for Japanese game design to the world. That spirit is extremely important, and we are honored to be a part of that long tradition."
In order to make the most of the synergy with CMON, Japon Brand is building a business structure, and without losing its traditional spirit, will continue striving to convey the wonders of "Japanese games" to the world.
In an April 26, 2024 Facebook post, Nomura says he first met Japon Brand in 2011, released his title Air Alliance with Japon Brand in 2015, directed the SPIEL exhibition for the first time that same year, and returned to SPIEL following Covid in 2023 for what he thought would be his swan song: "It's the last time, so I came up with all the ideas I could think of, and did aggressive booth decorations and management, and there was zero trouble on site. (First time ever!) I was happy to see all the exhibitors and returned home with the beauty of the final." (Again, I've used Google translation, then cleaned up the text.)
Now he plans to refresh the Japon Brand format, to "translate the company's words" anew: "Why I go to Essen. Why do we all go. Why I work as an agent. Getting clear on the standards of each purpose and accomplishment, rebuilding what is necessary and what is useless one by one."
Nomura feels confident taking on this challenge after having run his Route11 creative studio since 2005: "About 70% shaped now. Still seems a long way to go. I think it should take about three years to prepare. If this challenge can be accomplished, Japon Brand will become a sustainable structure, that is, an organization that can always change positively."
• In other Japanese news, media conglomerate KADOKAWA has purchased Arclight Games, which publishes games and game-related magazines, owns retail game stores, and manages game conventions in Japan, including Game Market.
Here's an excerpt from the press release announcing this deal, once again Google translated, then edited:Read more »The KADOKAWA Group is promoting the basic strategy of "Global Media Mix with Technology'' in its medium-term management plan ending in March 2028 in order to improve its corporate value over the medium-to-long term. As an important measure for this purpose, in addition to increasing the number of IP (intellectual property) points we create from the current 5,500 points to 7,000 points per year, we will further accelerate the media mix to increase the LTV (lifetime value) of each of these IPs. We aim to maximize the LTV.
In recent years, analog games that do not require power supply, such as trading card games (TCG) and board games (BDG), have become increasingly popular not only in Japan but also around the world, and the market continues to grow. The size of the TCG domestic market has rapidly expanded after the coronavirus pandemic, more than doubling from ¥113.3 billion in fiscal 2019 to ¥234.8 billion in fiscal 2022. The global BDG market is expected to expand from $9.3 billion (approximately 1.2 trillion yen) in 2023 to more than 2.4 times in 2036. In addition, the number of participants in Japan's largest analog game event, "Game Market'', sponsored and operated by Arclight, has reached a record 25,000.
Arclight operates Hobby Station, which has one of the top store networks in the TCG industry, and has strong planning and development capabilities that have created popular original works, as well as know-how in managing Japan's largest analog game event. Furthermore, we hold many domestic licenses for world-famous analog games.
KADOKAWA has also been involved in the analog game business for some time, and クトゥルフ神話("Cthulhu Mythos TRPG''), made in collaboration with Arclight since 2004, is a representative work in this business. Masu. In addition, we collaborated with Arclight in 2022 to release モンスターイーター ~ダンジョン飯 ボードゲーム~ ("Monster Eater: The Delicious in Dungeon Board Game"), which is based on the ダンジョン飯 ("Delicious in Dungeon") manga.
By welcoming Arclight into the group, we will expand the genre of media mix of popular IP owned by KADOKAWA, in other words, accelerate the commercialization of analog games, and also promote new games through the largest analog game event in Japan sponsored and operated by Arclight. By discovering developers and writers, we aim to further expand the number of IP creation points and accelerate the growth of the group.Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 29, 2024 - 2:00 pm - Spin Pandas, Collect Pandas, Steal Treasure with Pandas, and Keep Your Panda from Going SplatWhat's black and white and
readplayed all over? Othello — and potentially games about pandas, especially given all these new panda-based games hitting the market in 2024:
• Let's kick off with a new game from the greatest designer ever: Carl Chudyk, creator of Innovation, the greatest game of all time. His new game is Panda Spin, a climbing-and-shedding card game for 2-5 players from new publisher Moon Gate Design, a studio within French publisher Matagot. Here's an overview:In Panda Spin, each player attempts to be the first to rid their hand of cards, collecting bamboo in the process to keep their pandas well fed.
In more detail, Panda Spin is a climbing game played with a special deck of "double-headed" cards. All cards start with the orange animals toward the top. Each player receives a random wind card — each of which has a unique playing condition — and a hand of eleven cards, with the remaining cards placed in a deck.
During the game, players lay down cards to tricks as singles, in sets, in runs, or in formations (two consecutive pairs, two consecutive triples, etc.) If you're the first player in a trick, lead what you wish other than a bomb, that is, four or more cards of the same value. In turn, players must play a higher matching set of cards, e.g. a higher three-of-a-kind on a three-of-a-kind, or pass, after which they can no longer play in a trick. (A bomb cannot be lead, but can be played on any card combination.)
When you pass, if you've played cards and all of those cards have orange animals at the top, flip the cards so that the blue animals are at top. Each time you flip a card, you change its value depending on its suit: e.g., the water 4 becomes a pair of Qs, the wood 6 becomes a A+bamboo (and each time you play a card with bamboo, you take a bamboo token from the reserve), the earth 8 becomes a Q+panda (with you stealing a bamboo from an opponent for each panda you play), the fire 3 becomes a 10+fire, with the fire being a value of your choice when played.
If you pass and the cards you've played have at least one blue animal, you discard all of those played cards. The winner of the trick always discards all of their played cards, then they lead to the next trick. When you play a wind card — the south wind, for example, beats a run or formation with 3+ different numbers in it — you draw two cards from the deck; subsequent players need only beat the card combination played prior to your wind. If you play a wind, you always discard all cards you played to the trick.
Mock-up cards (Image: Natsume)
When a player runs out of cards — that is, they "show out" — they score bamboo equal to how many cards are held by the player with the largest hand. When all but one player have shown out, the round ends, then you shuffle all the cards (including the winds) and deal everyone a new hand. A player immediately wins the game when they have at least twenty bamboo — but they must score their 20th bamboo by showing out; playing wood and panda cards scores you no bamboo when you have nineteen bamboo.
• Panda Royale is a dice-drafting game from Nathan and Jake Jenne of Last Night Games for 2-10 players, which isn't a range present on many boxes. The publisher is fulfilling a 2023 Kickstarter campaign in April 2024, then the game will head to retail. Here's what awaits you:Each year as the mid-summer festival begins, the seven panda clans gather to celebrate their many years of peace and prosperity. After all the feasts, stories, and games, the Elders host the annual competition wherein the bravest of all pandas gather to battle for honor and glory. The panda clans each have their own powers and abilities, and the Elders consider those strengths carefully as they assemble their teams.
In the game, each player starts with a single yellow die, and over ten rounds builds a hand of ten dice to earn the most points, with each color of dice having its own scoring properties. Players vie for the best drafting order to pick from the allotted dice each round.
• U.S. publisher Allplay is launching a new line of tiny games in 2024, with one of those releases being Panda Panda, a new edition of designer Kaya Miyano's 2023 title Cat Poker from Japanese publisher Mob+:In Panda Panda, players carefully manage their cards to try to make specific hands. On a turn, players can discard a card, draw from the deck, or draw from an opponent's discard pile. If a player discards an "A" card, everyone has to pass one card to the right.
To win, yell "Panda Panda!" when you start a turn with a completed hand. Can you collect the right cards, figure out what your opponents are going for, and time the "A" cards correctly?
• Okay, you've assembled a team of dice and a hand of cards — now how about pulling together an embarrassment of pandas?
In Villa Panda, a game from designers Miguel Suárez Olivares, Alejandro Ortiz Peña, Roberto D. Rivera, and Ignacio Villa Toro and publisher Salta Pal Lao, you start with a lone panda who desires a leadership position in its village. To earn the 12 points required to do this, you need to erect buildings, enact plans, and expand your influence by hiring other pandas to strengthen your position.
Each round, you roll a pair of dice, with the sum of these dice activating the panda cards in front of all players, then you choose one of the dice to activate only your cards. Next, you place your panda figure on the main board to obtain resources (water, bamboo, bao, or gold) or perform an action: market, build, hire, or activate.
• Believe it or not, another panda-based game from a quartet of Spanish-speaking designers will hit the market in 2024: Party Panda Pirates from Gabriel González, Adrian Alamo Borja, Pepe Macba, Victor Valdés, Detestable Games, and Draco Studios.
In this 2-6 player game, you needs treasure chests to win, and to get those chests, you'll participate in mini-games in each of the six rounds, whether played in teams, 1-vs-many, or a free-for-all. The mini-games range from dexterity-based to memory, luck to area movement, and the better you play, the more coins you earn. Before each game, you guess who will win, giving you another chance to earn coins. Coins convert into chests at the end of the game, but you also have a chance to discover buried chests on the treasure hunt board.
• Parachute Panda is a "take that"-style card game for 2-6 players from Conner Coleman, Mike Richie, and Redshift Games in which you are all pandas falling to your doom from an airplane, and since you're fated to die anyway, you decide that hitting the ground last would be a good thing for your spirit...which means you need to help others get there first.
Every panda starts near the top of the game board, and on a turn, you fall, then play cards from your hand to catch a balloon to rise higher, or manifest a grand piano at the top of someone else's column, or catch a breeze to move you out from under a piano that someone else manifested. In addition to movement cards, your hand might have attacks and reaction cards, but in the end momentum will turn all but one of you into a panda-shaped rug.
Gameplay example at GAMA Expo 2024 Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 29, 2024 - 6:00 am - VideoDesigner Diary: War of the 3 Sanchos 1065–67, or The Loneliness of the Locked-down Game DesignerWar of the 3 Sanchos 1065–67 (Wot3S) was my first game to be conceived, developed, and signed during the UK pandemic lockdowns of 2020 and 2021.
Games normally start whirring in my brain when a new mechanism or two I've been toying with collides into an interesting theme. At that point, the game gestates in the grey matter (and Google Keep checklists) when I have the spare brain capacity from my day job...and life in general! It can take between a few weeks and a few years before I'm happy enough with the idea to bring it to life and get it playtested to destruction at playtest groups and meetups before submitting to publishers. This kind of mental gestating can be draining, so when key aspects fire up, I have a notebook to hand at all times to take pressure off the brain power.
The pandemic changed all that. While I always like to design within thematic self-imposed constraints, usually limiting components and mechanisms to drive creative thinking to overcome problems, this was the first time I'd had a constraint imposed upon me. I was locked down at home with few distractions from work and social life. This led to three critical paths occurring:
1) I couldn't meet with any of my usual playtesters, so I needed to find a way to playtest the game to destruction without meeting up.
2) I was watching a ridiculous number of box sets on video streaming services and surfing the internet researching.
3) My brain was underused, so I had much more capacity than normal, meaning the gestating period was much shorter.
The way these three paths collided was extremely fast. I'd had a unique combat mechanism in my notebook for a while in which three parties could participate in a new three-way command-card system. I'd also started to watch foreign-language drama series for the first time. One of these was "The Legend of El Cid", a Spanish historical series about Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar. This was thoroughly entertaining, and I binge-watched the first season (and also the second during a later lockdown). At the same time, my search bar results for "battles involving three armies" brought up War of the 3 Sanchos. This was the catalyst for the brain-gestation period that occupied my spare-time thoughts, especially once I realized El Cid was also around during the War. At that point, the fire was lit for a three-player pocket campaign game set in medieval northern Spain.
El Cid's statue in Burgos. (Photographer: El Caminode Santiago 09 2006; Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0)
A week later, I was ready to bring this to life, and this is where another critical path intervened. How was I going to get this playtested? I'd tinkered with Tabletopia and Tabletop Simulator (TTS) in the past, but the former burnt out the screen on my Surface Pro due to the sheer amount of work required by the processor to run the app and Skype, and the latter was an issue as many of my testers didn't use it and would have to pay to get the app. I wasn't ready to fund their apps just yet, although that was an option I considered, as I was finding the user interface much more complicated than Tabletopia. (Another web app, Screentop.gg, ended up being my preferred solution, but I didn't discover it until much later.) I took the only option open to me at that time: I would have to start this game as a solitaire design, then layer multiplayer in later! This itself was an interesting constraint, and I dove straight in.
As is my wont as a qualified accountant, I started to build a spreadsheet that could generate a card list with three events and the command points on each, the idea being the events would relate to each side in the game. At this point, my access to War of the 3 Sanchos information was limited as my Spanish is non-existent. Therefore, details on Wikipedia and in The Legend of El Cid would be used initially. (Alan Paull would later come to my rescue with naming and historical research!) This meant originally the sides were called Castille, Navarre, and Aragon. El Cid himself took a back seat at this point, with the TV series just giving me inspiration for the theme.
A lot has been written about game design approaches, with painting and sculpting often used to describe the main methods. Both have their merits, although the latter seems to be considered more cool among boardgame design technique writers. With pocket games, I find sculpting (throwing everything you can think of into the design and chipping away the unnecessary) too inefficient, and I will usually paint (start with a canvas and add new layers with each iteration). My canvas will be one solid mechanism intrinsically linked to the theme I am working on. This will probably be a dull game, but there is plenty of time to do the first FF in game design: Find Fun.
First, though, I need a balanced base upon which to build the game. In this instance, it was the command cards. Another key component (often overlooked by new designers) in pocket-game design is the players. You can't get the same multiple routes to victory in pocket games as in large strategy games, so much of the variability comes from the players discovering new heuristics (those rules of thumb you develop to hang your strategy around) and out-thinking each other each game. For the first game in the Pocket Campaigns series, The Cousins' War, this was the ability for players to lie about what they had rolled and deal with the consequences if found out. This is one of the key reasons this design was such a success as this fit the theme of a time of intrigue and betrayal beautifully. I'll cover the other, much less obvious reason for its perceived success shortly.
Again, this is where self-imposed constraints kicked in. In the old days — for me, the early 2010s — card sheets were a certain size, and publishers liked to receive games that had 18, 27, and 54 (or 20, 30, and 60) cards so that the game could be printed on one sheet with no blanks and therefore minimize costs (which is critical for pocket games). This constraint doesn't really matter anymore as printing machines are much more flexible and cards come in all kinds of sizes. That being said, this is still something I like to do early on. In this instance, I decided to keep this to a 54-card deck. My thoughts were that I would have nine cards per side, so 27 in total, then I could playtest from all three sides and have another three nine-card decks that would have events with clear instructions for bot opponents.
Prototype cards
I use Affinity Designer and Publisher as my tools of choice. These are much cheaper than the ongoing Adobe subscriptions for Illustrator and InDesign that do the same things. Free (or cheap) apps like Inkscape for design and nanDECK for building deck templates can achieve the same thing (which I have used in the past when introduced to them by the likes of Rob Harper). But the interaction of the same platform of Affinity is seamless and hence why I was prepared to pay the relatively modest one-off costs.
The advantage of these apps is that you can create a card template that links to a spreadsheet so that you can make modifications affecting all cards by editing in your spreadsheet, then running the merge program again. (I've also seen Dávid Turczi use Mail Merge in Word to similar effect with a bit of VisiBasic programming.) This helps the other FF in game design: Fail Fast. The quicker you can play again and fix faults — another FF! No wonder Friedemann Friese is such a game-design genius! — the longer the muse remains upon you to inspire more development.
This is the fun bit for me. Formulas were used to create a balanced deck initially as well as listing terminology and actions. Before I had played, I had six nine-card decks: three for bots and three for players. Initially I had thought to have each player's deck separate, but on impulse I shuffled in Castille's and Aragon's bot decks with my player cards for Navarre.
I hacked together a rough board using the map from Wikipedia (again this would be fixed later as the map wasn't from the proper time) to create regions with values for control and a score track like all great area-control games. This is where the second new mechanism — the combat chart — would be introduced as the score track seemed perfect for this. My idea was for a three-way combat system in which the bigger the army, the more likely it was to get in its own way. Long-distance communication in the 11th century was still in its infancy, so errors in battle would often occur. I wanted to replicate this. Some people will be able to do the probabilities, but most will run on gut feeling.
Prototype set-up on Screentop.gg
This is where the combat system you see now came to life, and it has changed little since, beyond refining constraints like the number of dice and playing with the King's die structure (originally a d10) during development with Alan Paull. The 3 Sancho Kings needed to be represented, so a meeple and a special King die were thrown in, along with counters to represent the troops. This is one of the most critical elements of the design of small area-control games and is the other reason I alluded to earlier that The Cousins' War (and later The Ming Voyages) found some success. Limiting the number of troops to the right number is critical: too many, and players aren't faced with meaningful decisions on where to control, then unintentional snowball effects occur; too few, and players become frustrated at not being able to do enough things.
It is at this stage that initial development began like all games: play, tear down, rebuild, repeat. Not always interesting, but always rewarding. The bot instructions were constantly changing to give them new powers and evolve the decks from being symmetrical to asymmetrical to take account of the different starting positions on the board. Each side needed a different flavor, especially for solo play, so that playing from each side would be a different experience with different heuristics to discover. This is where the lockdown constraint allowed me to design a game in a manner I would never have thought of trying before. It also occurred to me that I had sculpted rather than painted this game. All the layers (bar one that appeared in later development – El Cid) were there from the beginning. I was just chipping away at options, numbers of dice/tokens, and so on, but I had clearly found the fun and had a solid design.
We were then released from lockdown, and I had a chance to pitch this design to Alan Paull at Surprised Stare Games. He was instantly taken with the concept, and with many hours of professional development — a skill that is very different to design and that Alan has in bucketloads; just check what he did with Kingmaker — we then started to work on the multiplayer versions. The three-player version came together quickly, and it played very differently to solo. This is often the case because the table talk and picking on the leader in area-control games often helps it to self-balance.
The two-player version proved more tricky to balance. It started as "pick a Sancho, put the two-player decks in and add the third for the bot". Each player and the bot would take a turn, but we just couldn't make the bot effective without it becoming overpowering in solo. In a discussion with Alan, I suggested we should allow the player of the card to control what the non-player Sancho does. This would bring the two-player game to life and give us another game that felt different from solo and three-player. I am very proud of this aspect. I was always in awe of how Agricola plays differently strategically at every player count, and we seem to have achieved that with the three different player counts of Wot3S — not a jack of all trades, but a new master at each player count.
Many more development sessions ensued that led to the inclusion of El Cid to help with some balancing, changes in the King die configuration from a d10 to a custom d6, and a combining of the player and bot decks to halve the cost of the cards. (Game cost is another constraint that kicks in late on.) The region boundaries were tweaked, and a solo board with the decision disc added.
Two critical changes in this process came from group playtesting, particularly with players who aren't regular command-card game players. The first was turn structure. Players struggled with the aspect of everybody doing something on their turn, and it was eating into the brain budget for them. Alan and I thrashed this out, and it dawned on us to call each player's turn a round, with that player being commander for it. This was such a simple rulebook rewrite that took out a lot of explanations, and people just "got it" when taught how to play.
The second was a case of one of my darlings being killed. A golden rule of command-card games is that command points (CPs) can be spent on only one action, so this is how Wot3S played — but with the change from each player having a turn to each player commanding a round, we ended up with the perception that some events were more powerful than spending the CPs on just one thing. Alan contacted me and said he'd tried allowing the CPs to be broken up. I instantly applied my Feedback Filter (FF again...) and said no, the decision tree will be too big, but he was stubborn on this, so we agreed to playtest. (Again we were locked down, so I built Wot3S in Screentop.gg.)
I was stunned. This small change was unbelievable. It was usually pretty obvious what not to do, so the decision tree was much smaller than I had anticipated, basically boiling down to a few choices each turn to mull over. With this flexibility for the commander, we could remove the need for them to access their own event. This went down really well in playtesting, and I am glad Alan talked me into it!
In addition, Alan threw his energies (as is his wont) into researching the subject and calling on co-publishers, other experts, and Gamefound followers to help us tighten up the theme and naming.
Youtube VideoIntro video for War of the 3 Sanchos from our Gamefound campaign
If you got this far, then I am impressed! This was a labor of love that kept me sane during lockdowns and even helped me learn new skills, such as building online prototypes with Screentop.gg to allow Alan and me (and others) to continue playtesting and refining. Klemens Franz worked his usual magic, helping us keep the card count to 27 and bringing the board to life. Frosted Games and 2Tomatoes Games helped tremendously on their visions of how the game and rulebook should look. All of this teamwork has led to the biggest Pocket Campaign game to date, and a game I am proud to see coming to life to be released into the world.
David J. Mortimer
Image: Rolf Wognsen Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 28, 2024 - 6:00 am - Master Maple Syrup, Shake Up Piña Coladice, and Make Your Sausage SizzleWhat are putting on the table today? Food or games? Well, how about combining the two to get a taste of both?
• Sausage Sizzle! is a new edition of Inka and Markus Brand's 2012 dice game Würfel Wurst that publisher 25th Century Games will release in October 2024.
You start each round by rolling the eight dice: four showing six different animals and four showing the numbers 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and 1, with the 1s being represented by sausages. Set aside at least one die, then re-roll the remaining dice, continuing to do this until you decide to stop or are forced to. Choose an animal that you haven't yet scored in the game, then score points equal to the number of this animal you rolled multiplied by the lowest number you rolled. Sausages are normally terrible, but if all the number dice show sausages, then you multiply the number of animals by 7 instead of 1.
After six rounds, whoever has scored the most points wins.
• If you're like me, you accompany breakfast sausage with maple syrup, so let's turn to Sébastien Bernier-Wong's Masters of Maple Syrup, self-published through Firestarter Games.
In this two-player tableau-building game, players take turns choosing the action that both players will take, with the active player getting a slightly better version of this action. Develop your property by adding trees to harvest sap from and utilities to improve your syrup production. When any player has ten cards in their tableau, the game ends, and players tally their score based on the value of cards in their property, along with any scoring bonuses granted by cards played.
The first edition of Masters of Maple Syrup is no longer available, but Bernier-Wong plans to crowdfund a new edition.
• Breakfast might be too early for drinking, but if not, give Piña Coladice a try.
Each turn in this dice game for 2-4 players from Yann Dupont and IELLO, you roll the five dice up to three times, ideally then claiming one of the coasters in the 4x4 grid. The earlier you claim a coaster, the more points it's worth — and if you place four of your cocktail markers in a line, you win instantly. Piña Coladice is due out in July 2024 in France, with an English-language edition coming as well.
• Another breakfast accompaniment might be Toasty Toasts, the first game from designer Coco Chen, who crowdfunded the game in mid-2023 and now has it for sale on her website.
In this 2-4 player card game, players draw cards at the start of each turn, then take two actions, such as adding toppings to their base toast, creating flavor combos, starting more toast, playing action cards, or covering their toppings with another piece of bread to create action-immune sandwiches. When the "Time to Eat" card is drawn from the deck, everyone stops playing with their food and tallies their points.
• Should you care to order out instead, perhaps you can engage the services of a dabba walla — but unless you live in Mumbai, that's probably not going to happen.
Dabba Walla is a game for 2-4 players from Felix Leder and Patricia Limberger that publisher Queen Games plans to debut at the Origins Game Fair in June 2024 before it hits retail later in 2024. Here's an overview of the setting and gameplay:Read more »Every morning in Mumbai, over five thousand workers dressed in white swarm out to deliver more than 200,000 "dabbas" (multistoried lunch boxes) to the offices of the Indian metropolis. These "Dabba Walla" have been an iconic fixture in the cityscape since 1890. The food is freshly prepared at home by families, then collected from their front doors by the Dabba Walla. Even though some of the dabbas travel very far, they are delivered punctually via a network of intermediate stations with an amazing reliability of 99.999%! Now it's time to join the Dabba Walla on their daily journey through Mumbai...
The game Dabba Walla consists of two phases:
— Pick-up phase: Take turns moving your Dabba Walla through Mumbai to collect dabba cards. Each time you pick up a card, you then play one of the three in your hand to take the depicted dabba tile — a polyomino of 1-4 squares — and place it in your cart, stacking tiles higher and higher as the rounds progress. Dabbas come in four colors, and you must place them on flat surfaces, filling holes with empty dabbas if needed. If you connect two half-chai symbols on tiles on the same level, you draw a random chai tile with a bonus action. Keep all played dabba cards in a personal discard pile.
— Delivery phase: After everyone has placed fifteen tiles in their cart, it's time to deliver lunches! Pick up all the cards you played, then complete a number of delivery rounds equal to the highest level that someone has stacked their dabbas. Each round, each player plays and reveals one dabba card from their hand, optionally playing chai tiles as well. Sum the value of each color of dabba, then everyone scores their dabbas on the current level based on these values, removing the tiles from their carts. (Note: If not all players have dabbas on the current level being scored, they still play a card, but they score nothing.)
Once all the dabbas have been delivered, players score for their remaining chai tiles, then whoever has collected the most tips wins.
Dabba Walla contains two expansion modules to provide additional ways to score or change the value of dabbas being delivered.Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 26, 2024 - 2:00 pm - VideoPublisher Diary: Calico Goes Digital...and Starts a New AdventureI don't play a lot of digital games. In person, at the table, holding a deck of cards in my hand, moving pieces on a board — that's my preference. My colleagues Shawn and Robb at Flatout Games, however, really love digital games. They have played a lot over their lifetimes.
When we were developing the first Flatout Games CoLab board game, Calico, the team — which included designer Kevin Russ, developer David Iezzi, and graphic designer Dylan Mangini — decided that the rulebook should include scenarios and achievements, "like a video game would". We've heard that many players, particularly those who play solo, like this feature, and we've since included it in all of our bigger box games: Cascadia, Verdant, Fit to Print, and Nocturne.
I don't think we ever had digital implementation in mind exactly, but the team would tell you that having their board game turned into a video game is an ultimate achievement.
By the time Calico fulfilled its Kickstarter backers, we were several months into the Covid-19 pandemic. We'd all been playing more board games digitally — thanks, Board Game Arena! — and digital games, specifically digital implementations of board games, were on our minds.
And out of the blue, in 2021, Monster Couch reached out. Would we consider making Calico a digital game? Holy noodle! Would we ever!
Monster Couch is a small company of about 25 people based in Poland, whose previous project was Wingspan, including all of its expansions. The team at Monster Couch was looking for games that could be adapted to include new — and stand out — content, and we were excited to be working with a company that focuses on a small number of projects at a time.
With Calico, they wanted to take the concept (making a quilt, attracting cats) and create a digital game with its own identity. One of the biggest ways that they have done this is by adding a story mode. Players take on the role of an aspiring quilter in a series of mini-games that use Calico's mechanisms, and you visit an extraordinary world inspired by the works of Studio Ghibli in which cats have great power and influence over people's lives. This has taken Calico far beyond its original puzzle and has the potential to appeal to both fans of the original game and new [digital] audiences.
We really like this approach. The adaptation of an analog game into a digital game should build on the features that lend themselves to digital games. For example, cats are clearly the stars of Calico. In the digital version, players are able to customize their cats, allowing each player to personalize the game. The Monster Couch team also focused on the 3D animation of the cats, making sure, for example, that the quilts yield under the weight of their paws when they inspect your handiwork.
The Monster Couch team also built on the scenarios and achievements of the board game, taking the "Master Quilter" challenge further than we had in the analog version, although as with the analogue version, this remains a great way to test your skills.
The perk everyone probably talks about with digital implementations of board games is that the scoring is programmed. Can I place a tile here? Does it score? The digital version will tell you! I've certainly stumbled through many first plays of digital games, learning the rules as I go. While the Flatout Games team spends the time figuring out the best phrasing in a rulebook to support this, a digital games development team needs to make sure all the coding is spot on.
For Monster Couch, they aim to make learning the rules of a game as seamless as possible. As anyone who has played digital games knows, this is done through a tutorial. This part of digital game development is challenging and demands lots of trial and error.
While the Monster Couch development team pushed themselves in new areas of animation and story building, there was also one tiny change we had to agree on: What to name the game? There was already a digital game called Calico on Steam, and Monster Couch was clear that we needed to distinguish the games. The team landed on Quilts & Cats of Calico, which is a mouthful, but I think it conveys a bit about the digital game's story mode.
A lot of people play the Calico board game because of its solo mode. In some ways, this probably makes the design a more natural fit for a digital implementation. An element of Quilts & Cats of Calico that the Flatout Games team appreciates is that it is easy to play a quick game, without losing the charm of the analogue version. This new implementation means that people who prefer digital games will have the opportunity to try out the Calico puzzle.
Additionally, one of the reasons that Monster Couch looks at analog games to bring into the digital world is to allow friends and family to play these games even if they live in different parts of the world. The Monster Couch team, while focused on digital games, really enjoys tabletop games. It was a big task to create four-player games in which each player can have their own set-up and be able to see other players' boards, but the Monster Couch team believed it was worth taking on.
This whole process has been a window into the digital games world and piqued my interest in coding. I have also been trying out more digital games, such as the Monster Couch implementation of Wingspan (love it!), the new Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley (Hyper Games), and even (so so late to the party) Slay the Spire — but I am happy to stick to making analog games and letting the experts run with their skills and creativity.
And now Quilts & Cats of Calico is out there in the world on Steam — and coming soon to Nintendo Switch! It has been fascinating to see a digital version of our game come to life. I can say with a lot certainty that Monster Couch poured many, many hours of heart and soul into the implementation, and we hope that Calico fans, old and new, are enjoying it!
Molly Johnson
Youtube Video Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 26, 2024 - 6:00 am - The Fellowship of Bauza, Cathala, and Dutrait Head to Middle-earthLet's retroactively add one more item to my teaser post from Thursday, April 25 thanks to this late-in-the-day revelation from Belgian publisher Repos Production:
An Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala design from Repos Production? The team responsible for 7 Wonders Duel?!
In case this illustration from Vincent Dutrait — yes, him again! — doesn't clearly indicate the setting of this game, the image features a MEE (Middle-earth Enterprises) trademark and copyright notice and an Asmodee France post bearing this image declares: "One game to rule them all."
The teaser is all we have for now, so maybe this illustration can double as a representation of every gamer checking their phone late at night to see whether Repos has posted anything else about what this design might be... Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 26, 2024 - 2:33 am - Jamey Stegmaier Offers a New Vantage for GamersFor several years, U.S. publisher Stonemaier Games has announced games, then shipped them to direct buyers shortly afterward, with the title then hitting retail outlets shortly after that. In short, the publisher has stock of the game in hand before even announcing it, which means Stonemaier can't fail to deliver the game on time.
For Vantage, though, Stonemaier is taking a different approach. In the Stonemaier newsletter, designer Jamey Stegmaier writes, "Vantage is nearing the end of the playtest process and will start production later [in 2024], but the journey to bring this game to life is too big to cram into our standard 10-day pre-launch reveal."
Maybe when you read this description, you'll understand why Stonemaier is taking a different approach for this 2025 release:Read more »Vantage is an open-world, co-operative, roguelike adventure game for 1-6 players that features an entire planet to explore, with players communicating while scattered across the world. With nearly eight hundred interconnected locations on cards and over nine hundred other discoverable cards, the world is your sandbox.
You begin each game of Vantage on an intergalactic vessel heading towards an uncharted planet. After crashing far from your companions, you have complete freedom as to how you explore, discover, and interact with the planet. You view your location from a first-person perspective, and you can communicate with and support other players, but you are separated by vast distances, so you can see only your current location.
Vantage is not a campaign game, and it is completely self-contained with no expansions — just a few accessories like metal coins.Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 25, 2024 - 2:34 pm - VideoCorey Konieczka Invites You to The Mandalorian: AdventuresU.S. publisher Unexpected Games has announced its next game release: The Mandalorian: Adventures, a co-operative design by Corey Konieczka for 1-4 players.
Here's an overview of this Q3 2024 release, followed by a trailer that shows off bits of gameplay:When offered a lucrative job, a lone bounty hunter begins a journey that will put his skills to the test and redefine his world.
The Mandalorian: Adventures allows players to experience a new part of the Star Wars universe on their tabletops. Navigating unique maps and missions, players must co-operate to accomplish their goals and avoid defeat. Play as one of eight unique characters, each with their own deck of cards and strategies that will help you fight enemies and solve dilemmas to complete mission objectives. All of the action takes place in an illustrated map book as players recreate iconic moments from season 1 of the hit Disney+ series. With an intuitive system that's easy to teach, the game grows with new rules, components, and mission types added over time – some even featuring a hidden traitor mechanism...
Youtube Video Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 25, 2024 - 1:45 pm - VideoTeasers for Australis, Luthier, Purrballs, Multiple Exits, and The Devil's Advocates• Throughout April 2024, German publisher KOSMOS has been teasing its late 2024 game releases on Instagram, and in addition to what I covered in mid-April 2024, KOSMOS has announced five more titles, starting with Australis, a 2-4 player game from Leo Colovini and Alessandro Zucchini that bears this short description:Stand your ground in the East Australian Current where you have to make your way as a sea turtle!
You have a chance of winning Australis only if you have a wide range of strategies. Choose the right dice cleverly to form growing schools of fish and settle corals on different coral reefs. At the end of each phase, you will compete with your dice in an exciting contest.
Which of you will be the best in this ecosystem of incredible diversity?
• Inka and Markus Brand's EXIT: Das Spiel series of escape room games will expand by three titles, the first two of which are co-designed with daughter Emely Brand:
— EXIT: Das Spiel Family – Schloss Gemeinstein/Mission Candyland, in which 2-4 players aged 8+ represent "a cool team of animal superheroes" that forms a secret club to solve riddles.
— EXIT: Das Puzzle – Die Bibliothek der Träume ("The Library of Dreams"), in which any number of players first construct a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle, then use the details in the image and the included story to solve seven riddles.
— EXIT: Das Spiel – Adventskalender: Das Intergalaktische Wettrennen ("The Intergalactic Race"), in which you help "Team Santa Claus" in a race across space.
• Finally(?), we have Adventure Games Family: Dimension Fünf-Sieben ("Dimension 5-7"), the newest title in the narrative-based, co-operative Adventure Games series from Matthew Dunstan and Phil Walker-Harding, with Jan Cronauer being co-designer on this title that's aimed at players aged 8+ instead of the usual 12+.
• In March 2023, I wrote about Luthier, the second title from Paverson Games following its 2023 debut with Dave Beck's Distilled.
More than a year later, in preparation for a July 2024 crowdfunding campaign, Beck revealed the final cover of Luthier, and artist Vincent Dutrait has outdone himself:
• In a January 2024 post, I mentioned that Rio Grande Games had an upcoming title from Tom Lehmann and Matt Leacock titled "Meep Crisis". RGG's February 2024 newsletter had a new, far more geeky title for this release: The Trouble with Purrballs.
• Speaking of Tom Lehmann, he says that the next Res Arcana expansion is due out in Q4 2024, with online development work for Res Arcana: Perlae Imperii being underway for playing on Board Game Arena.
• U.S. publisher Fort Circle Games hosted its first gaming event, Circle DC, in early April 2024. I followed pics of gaming and prototypes from afar, and the one that caught my eye most was Mar Hepto's The Devil's Advocates, mostly because of the theme...although I'm hoping that the treatment is mocking rather than serious given how ludicrous the "Satanic panic" was and how foolish its spinoff moral panics still are today.
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• At GAMA Expo 2024, I spoke briefly with designer Bennett Payne of new publisher B Field Games, and he gave me an overview of Magneterra, which he plans to bring to Kickstarter.
Magneterra mock-up at GAMA Expo 2024
The short take on the game is that you move figures around the board to battle monsters as well as other players, with the long-term goal of claiming the magnet from the tallest pillar on the game board (which sits in the middle front of the image above). As you can see in the video below, your figures are magnetic, and when you move next to a pillar, the magnet on top of it will jump onto your head(!) — but you are not tall enough initially to claim the magnet atop the tallest pillar. You must travel the board to claim other magnets, possibly stealing them from others, until your magnetic strength is strong enough (and tall enough) to yank the winning magnet down onto you.
Youtube Video
• In May 2024, info will be spilled about the item named below. Will it consist of more than a scented plastic playmat? We'll see...
Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 25, 2024 - 6:00 am - New Walls around a Larger OrléansWe have a late entry for my April 22 post about giant collector's editions with new material, with German publisher dlp games announcing a tenth anniversary edition of Reiner Stockhausen's Orléans.
The appropriately named Orléans Jubiläumsbox includes the Orléans base game, the three large exapnsions — Invasion, Trade & Intrigue, and The Plague — all eight Ortskarten expansions (Neue #1-5 and Promo #1-3), and three new Ortskarten tiles, along with the dice to make use of them.
Unlike most of the items included in that earlier post, Orléans Jubiläumsbox will not be crowdfunded. Instead dlp games is taking pre-orders on its website for delivery late in 2024, with a note that this item will not be available through retailers, but might show up at SPIEL Essen 24 should the publisher still have copies available.
Anyone wanting a more on-brand "Hundred Years" edition of Orléans must wait until 2114...
Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 24, 2024 - 4:07 pm - Construct the City of Chandigarh, and Perform Rituals in Pagan: Fate of Roanoke• U.S. publisher Capstone Games will release Pagan: Fate of Roanoke at Gen Con 2024 in August, marking the North American debut of this two-player asymmetric game from Kasper Kjær Christiansen and Kåre Storgaard that German publisher Wyrmgold released in 2022 following a crowdfunding campaign in 2021.
Here's an overview of this design:The essence of this game is a witch's struggle against a witch hunter. As the witch strives to complete a ritual of renaturation, the hunter tries to discover her true identity among nine villagers. Each turn, the two players use their action pawns on active villagers to draw cards, play cards, and gain influence. Each player has their own variable card deck of fifty cards; with these cards, the witch can brew powerful potions, improve their familiar, and cast enchantments and charms, while the witch hunter enlists allies, claim strategic locations, and ruthlessly investigates the villagers.
As the witch, your objective is to collect enough secrets to perform a ritual so potent that the entire region will fall under your spell and Mother Nature will reclaim the island. As the hunter, you gather all the allies and support you can muster to bring the witch to justice before her fatal ritual comes to fruition.
Wyrmgold has released a handful of expansions for Pagan: Fate of Roanoke that introduce new scenarios, introduce new villagers, and allow for deck customization, and Capstone notes that it will release Pagan expansions in the second half of 2024.
• Capstone Games has partnered with German publisher Spiolworxx to release new releases from that German publisher in North America, with the first three titles to appear being Raising Chicago by Matt Wolfe, EPOS: A Gentes Game by Stefan Risthaus, and Dolcissima Vita by Giansimone Migoni.
• What's more, Capstone Games will release Uwe Rosenberg's Tangram City in North America in April 2024, with Pirates of Maracaibo from Ralph Bienert, Ryan Hendrickson, and Alexander Pfister debuting at Gen Con 2024 ahead of a Q3 2024 retail release.
• U.S. publisher Barrel Aged Games debuted in 2017 with the golf-style card game Stool Pigeon that it's now licensed in five countries, and at Gen Con 2024, it will debut two games in the U.S. that it has licensed: the trick-taking game Fruitoplay from Romaric Galonnier, Luc Rémond, and Explor8 (covered here in September 2023), and the tableau-building, card-comboing game Plantopia from Daryl Chow of Origame.
• In January 2024, I covered two upcoming titles from Spanish publisher Ludonova — Flatiron, a SPIEL Essen 24 release from designers Isra C. and Shei S., and a new edition of Junk Art from Jay Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim — but Ludonova has another game hitting the market earlier than those two: Toni López' Chandigarh, which was released in Spain in early April 2024 and which Asmodee will release in North America on May 24, 2024. Here's an overview of this 2-4 player game:Read more »In 1951, the Indian government commissioned the renowned architect Le Corbusier to design a new capital for the state of Punjab. Thus, Chandigarh was born.
In the game Chandigarh, players in the role of urban planners are in charge of building this modern city from scratch. They will construct buildings, try to take advantage of buildings constructed by others, use the abilities of the different municipal employees, and try to position themselves in the key locations of the city, all with the aim of achieving the patterns of the plans they have chosen. Whoever scores the most prestige points wins.
In more detail, the city of Chandigarh is represented by a 4x4 grid of sector tiles, with each sector having multiple plots. These sectors intersect at junctions, with the edges of these tiles creating streets between the sectors. You each start with a project card that shows an arrangement of buildings, along with two different colored buildings from the four colors available; your architect starts on a junction in the city.
On a turn, you can move your architect up to the total numbers of footprints on your active project cards, stopping at each junction (if you wish) to place a building from your reserve on an empty plot next to a street that's adjacent to the junction you occupy. If you occupy the final plot of a sector, place one of your supervisors on this tile. Alternatively, on a turn you can choose a new project card from the display, placing it on the left or right side of your row of active project cards and taking buildings from the reserve based on the card you just placed and the card adjacent to it. If you now have four cards in a row, you immediately score the card at the opposite end of the row from the card you just placed. Score the points listed on this card each time the pattern on it occurs in the city.
Four specialist tokens start in the corners of the city, and if you construct a building of the specialist's color in the sector where they are located, you gain the power of that specialist for the remainder of the game and move them to a different sector. Each specialist has six different abilities, some that score you bonus points and others that give you special powers during play.Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 24, 2024 - 6:00 am - Trek Into The Unknown, Reload Bolt Action, and Revive Rackham• U.S. publisher WizKids is bringing Star Trek to game tables once again, but instead of a design that focuses solely on combat, as with Star Trek: Attack Wing, the game attempts to cover more aspects of the Star Trek universe.
Here's an overview of the 2-6 player game Star Trek: Into The Unknown – Federation vs. Dominion Core Set, which is designed by Max Brooke and Michael Gernes and due out in July 2024:Teleport to the bridge of the most legendary starships from Star Trek as you launch an epic adventure across the galaxy!
Star Trek: Into the Unknown features the most detailed Star Trek ship models in tabletop gaming, all designed to scale. Large ships like the U.S.S. Enterprise or the Jem'Hadar Battle Cruiser will tower over the smaller ships, and all come pre-painted to an incredible amount of detail.
Miniature on display at GAMA Expo 2024
Traverse headlong into the unknown where you'll negotiate and fight alongside iconic characters using your quick wit and tactical maneuvering to overcome complications and challenges. True to Star Trek, research and diplomatic actions and not just combat have lasting impacts on the game, causing missions to evolve in surprising ways.
Choose your officer, deploy your crew, explore the galaxy, navigate anomalies, position your ships to strike, or negotiate terms with the enemy. Players will instantly immerse themselves as the egalitarian Starfleet or as the oppressive Vorta and Jem'Hadar as they decide how to handle tense mission objectives and unexpected complications.
Preview kit on the table at GAMA Expo 2024
Embark on a journey to remember through an extensive campaign narrative. Your decisions matter, and they affect the outcomes of your unique story. With upcoming expansion featuring new missions and new ships to command, Star Trek: Into the Unknown is dedicated to delivering an expansive universe to your doorstep.
• Warlord Games and Osprey Games have announced a third edition of Bolt Action from designers Alessio Cavatore and Rick Priestley for release in September 2024. Here's an overview of this miniature game system, which has more than three dozen expansions to date:Bring the great battles of World War II to your tabletop with Bolt Action. Strike out from the beaches of Normandy towards Germany. Sweep across the deserts of North Africa in lightning raids. Battle the enemy and the sweltering heat in the jungles of Asia and on the islands of the Pacific. Fight doggedly from street to street in Arnhem, Stalingrad, and Berlin.
Whatever your preferred style of play or your historical interests, the diverse army and scenario options will allow you to build a force that fits. Field everything from standard rifle platoons to heavily armored tank forces, fast-moving reconnaissance patrols, and even artillery units.
This third edition features refined and updated rules and starter army lists to get new players straight into the action. Seasoned veterans, meanwhile, will find new tactical depth in the detailed force composition mechanics and a wide variety of fresh challenges in the scenario generation system. Rally your forces, study the terrain, and prepare for battle — the fight continues!
• French publisher Monolith Board Games — which has released several miniature-heavy games since its founding in 2016, such as Conan, Mythic Battles: Pantheon, and Batman: Gotham City Chronicles — has acquired all of defunct publisher Rackham's assets, announcing this development as follows:2024 is a year of rebirth for many universes, from the forces of Light, Fate and Darkness readying their forces anew in the seething kingdom of Arklash, to the struggles at the galactic fringes of another universe, warring in Ava and Damocles.
We are absolutely delighted to announce that we have acquired all the universes developed by the late Rackham. These universes have been by our sides for a long time — and will now be with us for many years to come, complete with new adventures!
Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 23, 2024 - 2:00 pm - Designer Diary: Evil Corp.1. The General Idea
February 2021: My game Daimyo: Rebirth of the Empire comes out in stores, which paradoxically leaves me with a big gap in my schedule. I need to quickly find a project that excites me to occupy my free time. Unfortunately, no old prototype seems worthy of interest to me now.
Starting from a blank sheet, I'm going to try to make the game I want to play:
Idea 1: Deck-building with alternating activation.
I want to offer confrontational deck-building (Star Realms-style) but more strategic in the way of playing the cards. I don't want to "empty" my hand every turn, but the order of play of the cards has great importance and is strongly influenced by the actions of my opponent. This naturally results in the idea of creating an alternating action system in which after drawing five cards, each player plays one card alternately until their hand is exhausted before drawing again and starting a turn again. This should bring about the desired action/reaction feeling.
Idea 2: A very tactical game in which each action is a strong dilemma.
I want to get closer to the feeling of the Legend of the Five Rings-style confrontation TCGs, one of my best gaming memories. I try to remember what I liked so much about this game: a constant tension that came from managing timing and priorities. I want a game in which timing is essential, in which we will delay an action in order not to be countered, a game in which we will try to offer a target to an opponent to make them play actions that could counter us in order to be able to play our showpiece quietly. Also, I would like us to be able to use the cards in different ways to offer choice and dilemma. The card will necessarily be of interest for its power, but it must be able to be used in other ways at the same time. I don't know yet how...
Idea 3: Not a deck-building game, but bag-building.
One day, I ordered some coin capsules, thinking it would make interesting hardware for a game. I wondered whether this hardware would be relevant for this new prototype. What is initially a material desire quickly influences the game design because using round 2cm tokens allows me to quickly consider having a board and different locations that take up little space. I wrap this concept up quite quickly with the previous idea: these locations could offer an action or a bonus, a bit like a worker-placement game. I am therefore going with the idea of having several colors of tokens (in place the cards), colors that will mainly be used to define on which location they can be played. It’s taking shape...
Well, I don't have a game, but I know precisely where I want to go and the main idea is very clear:
confrontational bag-building with alternate activation, timing management, and priority management.
2. From the Idea to the First Tests
I gave birth to a first prototype quite quickly. I'm going with a space opera atmosphere. (Who knows why? It's not at all a theme that fascinates me.) The goal will be to conquer planets (plateaus) to dominate the galaxy. The planets will have to be conquered over several turns to create the feeling of "I lost the battle but not the war", while allowing players to abandon positions for a while, then return to them later. To take the planets, I will use a tug-of-war mechanism. Whoever has the most strength at the end of the turn wins the effect of the planet, then advances the conquest marker, and at a certain level, the planet is definitively mine and a new planet opens. There must always be several battlefields simultaneously.
I'm going on the principle of having three types of ships (tokens/cards). Each color has a specialization: combat, technology, and purchase. That's good as it comes full circle with the idea of locations that allow effects to be triggered, and it allows strategies to be combined.
I grind it all out and get a first prototype:
First test at the end of May 2021
I am excited about the test! The feeling I want is already quite present...
...but everything is heavy/complex, there are lots of useless powers, the development part is poorly integrated into the game, and the balance is obviously very random. Also, my partner hates the theme — a bit like me in the end! I do a huge cleansing and switch to a classic medium/fan theme, which is important to be able to put the design through the dozens of tests to come.
Second test on June 1, 2021
The test is super conclusive. There are obviously plenty of flaws, but what I'm trying to check at this moment is the overall feeling, the feeling of how it plays and the interest in the game — and on these points, I am more than satisfied. If only all my prototypes were like that...
At this level, we will say that 80% of the game's mechanisms are present: The bag-building, the four different locations, the tug of war, and the deploy/activate/recruit action triptych. The game now needs to have better balancing to start seeing the flaws more deeply. In any case, we're already having a lot of fun playing it.
3. The "Improbable" Signature and the Final Edition
It turns out that at the end of June 2021 I have to see Benoit from La Boîte de Jeu, publisher of Daimyo. I'm curious to show him this work-in-progress to get his feelings, to know whether I'm imagining things or I actually have something promising. As a Magic player, his advice will be invaluable. At this moment, I'm not thinking about publishing; I'm just happy to have a project that motivates me.
Anyway, at the time, I knew almost no one else in the gaming world. The fact is that the day before seeing Benoit, after a few balancing tweaks and a pretty cool last game, my brain said: "And if he likes it?"
The presentation to Benoit at the end of June 2021
We test the game, and as it progresses, I think I can see interest in Benoit's attitude. We don't finish the game for some reason, so we play it again the next day. Quite a good sign to want to play again...
After the second playing, Benoit shows a real interest in the game, editorially speaking. We talk a lot about the design, how it could be published, the possible artistic directions, and (obviously) the points to work on. There is no commitment, but we still went very far in the discussion.
A few weeks later, La Boîte de Jeu comes back to me to validate this interest and offer me a contract. I am very satisfied to be setting out again on an editorial adventure with a team for whom I have a lot of respect, both personally and professionally.
We found the artistic direction of the game early after deciding to reverse the roles. We will play the "bad guy", and our goal will be to terrorize human villages, with a little quirky side. It takes around three months of intensive work to complete the game's development. During this period, I was able to benefit from the expertise of the publisher to remove all the blocking points in the game. Changes will mainly occur on three major points:
• The beginnings of turns are too often identical => We add the chests to loot and the power stone. This allows for more varied openings and adds tension and rhythm between the players.
• Magic poses a lot of balancing problems => Its management was personal, so we implant the demons to stabilize the balancing and once again bring tension thanks to a "race" effect on their activation.
• The game's increase in power is too slow => We go to eight monsters in the bag (instead of ten), and we reduce the purchase cost of all the monsters to make the game more explosive from turn one.
Most problems are therefore resolved within three months. Game balancing and micro adjustments will then be made throughout the edition, which will last more than a year. I would like to take this opportunity to thank La Boîte de Jeu, who did some crazy editorial work — and a big thank you to Djib and Olivier Derouetteau, who brought the game to life with superb graphic work!
A very striking anecdote: Evil Corp. was the strict opposite of Daimyo on all points. Daimyo took seven years between the idea and its release, whereas Evil Corp. was signed three months after the idea in a version quite close to what the game is today. In short, day and night...
Now It's up to You!
I hope you like the game. From now on, the game is in your hands; it no longer belongs to me. How will you welcome it? In which configuration will you play it the most?
In any case, for my part, it is a satisfying feeling to be able to offer you a game which is the exact feeling of what I had in mind on the first day.
Jérémy Ducret Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 23, 2024 - 6:00 am - BGG's Origins Game Fair 2024 Preview Is LiveGiven all that happened today — Asmodee becoming (sort of) independent again, Goliath buying Lucky Duck, me gushing about a game that's both new and nearly thirty years old — I almost forgot to publish BGG's Origins Game Fair 2024 Preview.
Thankfully, I caught that oversight in time to meet my self-imposed publication deadline. Go, me!
The preview has only sixty titles at the moment, with more than a dozen of those titles available solely for demo. The Origins 2023 Preview ended up with "only" 124 titles, so maybe I'm halfway done at this point, roughly two months before Origins Game Fair 2024 opens. If so, that would be odd — but also normal, given that the not-yet-live Gen Con 2024 Preview already has more than one hundred listings. That show is the centerpiece of U.S. tabletop gaming events, so everyone's already looking ahead to that show in August. If you're looking to look ahead, too, look for that preview to go live on Monday, June 3...assuming that I remember in time.
Some of the titles you can lay your hands on at Origins Game Fair 2024 Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 23, 2024 - 2:00 am - Asmodee's Parent Company Embracer Group Will Split into Three CompaniesAsmodee's parent company, Embracer Group, has announced — and I quote — "a transformative step for value creation through a separation of the group into three market-leading games and entertainment companies: Asmodee Group, 'Coffee Stain & Friends' and 'Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends'". (The official names of the final two groups will be announced later, which makes me wonder why Embracer was so rushed as to make this announcement before it knew precisely what it was announcing, but I'm not a business owner who must make such decisions, so what do I know?)
Currently, Embracer Group consists of eleven operative groups:
• PC/console games: THQ Nordic, PLAION, Coffee Stain, Amplifier, Gearbox Entertainment, Crystal Dynamics / Eidos-Montréal
• Mobile games: DECA Games, Easybrain
• Entertainment and services: Dark Horse Media, Freemode (with PLAION also being listed here)
• Tabletop games: Asmodee
But Embracer made a deal in late March 2024 to sell Gearbox Entertainment for US$460 million so that group will soon be leaving, similar to how Embracer sold Saber Interactive for US$247 million in mid-March 2024.
What's left will be reorganized into three groups:
• "Coffee Stain & Friends", described as "a diverse gaming entity with a dual focus on indie and A/AA premium and free-to-play games for PC/console and mobile, with a high degree of recurring revenues", with net sales for the parts of this group over the previous twelve months being SEK 10.9 billion (approx. US$1 billion).
• "Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends", described as "a creative powerhouse in AAA game development and publishing for PC and console, as well as the stewards of The Lord of the Rings and Tomb Raider intellectual properties, among many others", with net sales of SEK 14.1 billion (approx. US$1.3 billion).
• Asmodee, "a global leading tabletop games publisher and distributor with an extensive studio network and IP catalogue", with net sales of SEK 14.8 billion (approx. US$1.35 billion).
The parent companies of these three groups will be headquartered in Karlstad, Sweden, while Asmodee's operational headquarters will remain in Paris.
Embracer Group is currently listed on stock exchanges as EBCRY, but under this reorganization into three groups, the listing for Embracer Group will be changed to whatever "Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends" will finally be named, and shares of Asmodee and "Coffee Stain & Friends" will be distributed as a dividend to the shareholders of Embracer Group, with the distribution of Asmodee shares taking place within the next twelve months and the distribution of "Coffee Stain" taking place in 2025.
Why is Embracer doing this? The short answer: "it is the assessment of the Board of Directors that the current Group structure does not create optimal conditions for future value creation both for Embracer Group's shareholders and other stakeholders". From the press release:"The Board of Directors, together with executive management, propose to transform Embracer Group into three separate, listed companies. This transformation is an important step in unlocking shareholder value. With this new structure, the three entities will be able to focus on executing their core strategies and leveraging their own strengths, providing more differentiated and distinct equity stories to both existing and new shareholders. After careful evaluation of various strategic alternatives, we strongly believe that this decision will benefit all stakeholders and position us for continued success in the future", says Kicki Wallje-Lund, Chair of the Board of Embracer Group.
"This move has been made with the intention to unleash the full potential of each team and provide them with their own leadership and strategic direction. This is the start of a new chapter, a chapter that I intend to remain part of as an active, committed, and supportive shareholder of all three new entities, with an evergreen horizon. This move towards three independent companies reinforces Embracer's vision of backing entrepreneurs and creators with a long-term mindset, allowing them to continue to deliver unforgettable experiences for gamers and fans across the globe", says Lars Wingefors, co-founder and Group CEO of Embracer Group...
The Board of Directors have concluded the following:
• The entities will have sufficient scale, coupled with clearer operational strategies and financial profiles that enable simplified equity stories to attract a larger pool of investors. Current shareholders can freely decide on their capital allocation between the three entities.
• Each entity will be able to fully utilize its own balance sheet, its own set of financial targets and optimal financing structure and capital allocation strategy that enable their growth ambitions.
• The new structure enables the best possible greenlighting models, portfolios and go-to-market strategies for indie games as well as AAA games through two separate, more focused entities.
• Ongoing and future collaboration around IPs, companies and people will still be enabled and encouraged across the entities on market terms.
What will Asmodee consist of as a standalone company? Here's how Embracer describes it:Asmodee is a leading international publisher and distributor of board games, trading cards and digital board games with 23 fully owned studios and 300+ IPs and constitutes the Tabletop Games operating segment of Embracer Group. As per LTM December 2023, Asmodee generated net sales of SEK 14.8 billion, with Adjusted EBITDA of approximately SEK 2.3 billion, EBITDAC of approximately SEK 2.0 billion, Adjusted EBIT of approximately SEK 1.9 billion, and free cash flow after working capital of approximately SEK 2.1 billion.
After FY24/25 Asmodee has an ambition to grow organically in line with the market, which translates into a mid-single digit organic growth in addition to any acquisitive growth. Asmodee's ambition is also to expand its margins from current levels as a result of an improved revenue mix and continued cost management while maintaining a high cash conversion.
The spinoff of Asmodee with a listing on Nasdaq Stockholm is expected to have value-enhancing benefits through greater focus on its core strategy, portfolio and markets. The ongoing transmedia collaboration around Middle-earth and many other IPs is expected to continue after the completion of the spinoff. As a global leader in board and trading card games, with a proven track-record of profitable growth, Asmodee is well-positioned to build on its strategy and continue to prosper as a standalone entity. The spinoff is also expected to enable Asmodee to quicker resume its value accretive M&A strategy.
23 in-house studios develop tabletop games for all types of players across Social, Tabletop and Lifestyle, including a steady addition of new content to key brands. The catalog of 300+ owned IPs include the beloved board games Ticket to Ride®, 7 Wonders, Azul, CATAN, Dobble, Exploding Kittens, and an extensive number of distributed games and IPs. Asmodee is also developing a wide range of licensed tabletop games based on The Lord of the Rings, Marvel, Game of Thrones, Netflix, Lego® and Star Wars™, including the recent successful trading card game release of Star Wars: Unlimited...
Ahead of the initiation of the separation process of Asmodee and in line with already planned governance evolutions, Stéphane Carville, current [Asmodee] CEO, and Marc Nunes, current COO and founder, will join and play active roles in the Board of Directors of Asmodee. Thomas Koegler, a longstanding operational and executive leader at Asmodee and current deputy COO, will in the coming months become Asmodee CEO supported by key leaders within Asmodee.
However, as part of this restructuring Asmodee has entered a financing agreement with JP Morgan, BNP Paribas, SEB, Societe Generale, and Swedbank for a loan of €900 million (US$958 million) that must be repaid in eighteen months, with Embracer noting that this loan "is an important part of the debt refinancing of Embracer Group following its restructuring program, which was finalized 31 March, 2024." Embracer currently has a loan for SEK 8 billion that matures in February 2025, and this new loan will help it refinance the current one.
Importantly, from the perspective of someone who cares about tabletop games over video games, the press release for this agreement notes that "[t]he loan is ringfenced with no recourse to Embracer Group, separating Asmodee's assets and funds from those of Embracer Group, and it is only secured by Asmodee assets." To quote more from this press release:The intention is to continue to deleverage, through both the expected significantly improved Free Cash Flow in the remaining Embracer Group (excluding Asmodee), as well as the proceeds from the divested assets of Saber Interactive and Gearbox Entertainment in the course of FY24/25.
On a pro forma basis as per LTM [last twelve months] December 2023, Embracer Group, including the expected sales proceeds from the divestment of assets from Saber Interactive and Gearbox Entertainment, but excluding Asmodee, will have a Net Debt-to-Adjusted EBIT of around 0.6x. On a pro forma basis as per LTM December 2023, Asmodee will have a Net Debt to Adjusted EBITDA of approximately 3.9x. As part of the transformation and ahead of each separation the full capital structure, including both equity and debt, will be reviewed in Asmodee and "Coffee Stain & Friends" to create the best possible long-term foundation for each entity as a separately listed company.
Hmm, so Asmodee is taking on debt to lessen the burden on the non-Asmodee parts of Embracer? That's my takeaway as a non-finance person who is likely reading all of this material at a surface level. I welcome comments on what I might be missing or misunderstanding... Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 22, 2024 - 5:42 pm - Goliath Acquires Lucky Duck GamesGoliath Games, a toy and game company headquartered in Hattem, Netherlands, is increasingly living up to its name. In January 2024, Goliath acquired an exclusive license to all the games marketed under the Funko Games brand, and on April 22, 2024, Goliath has announced the acquisition of Lucky Duck Games, which was founded in 2016 by Vincent Vergonjeanne.
Here's most of the press release about this deal:Jochanan Golad, CEO of Goliath, says: "As a global games business, we see there are two major growth areas in games: (adult) party games and strategy games. Consumers and kidults particularly are playing boardgames like never before; this trend was already there, but the pandemic had greatly accelerated it."
Lucky Duck Games' library of high-quality strategy titles will complement Goliath's existing multi-category catalog.
Golad further expressed admiration for Lucky Duck Games' swift rise in the strategy space. "Vincent and his team have done an astounding job in such as a short time to become a notable player in the strategy games category. We are very impressed by the games they've brought to market."
Vincent Vergonjeanne, Founder of Lucky Duck Games, echoed the sentiment, affirming the shared entrepreneurial ethos between the two entities. "Goliath's entrepreneurial spirit perfectly aligns with ours. This partnership empowers us to continue investing in cutting-edge strategy games while leveraging Goliath's expansive global distribution network to reach an even broader audience of tabletop gamers," Vergonjeanne stated.
Vincent and his management team will continue to run Lucky Duck Games autonomously as an independent studio within the Goliath group of companies, maintaining its commitment to designing and launching innovative strategy games on a global scale.
In a Facebook post about the deal, Vergonjeanne writes:Read more »Goliath is a match made in heaven for us. A family owned toy-focused worldwide publisher, with who we found a deep complementary partnership, from our people's skills to the type of products we have learn[ed] to find and publish.
Not only is it the best possible next move for Lucky Duck Games, but on a more personal note this is a meaningful moment for me too.Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 22, 2024 - 11:45 am - Pick Up Giant Boxes of Dune, Munchkin, Star Trek: Ascendancy and MoreBuy a game now, or wait for the second edition later? Or maybe catch it on clearance? Or perhaps wait 5-10 years in order to pick up the collector's edition that will inevitably be available — and crowdfunded! probably with new material! — should the game succeed? (And if it doesn't succeed, then why would I want it in the first place, right?!)
For all those who missed — or ignored or didn't know about — a game in the first place, here's your second chance:
• New Zealand publisher Gale Force Nine has two such collections in the works, with one being Star Trek: Ascendancy – The Final Frontier, which will be crowdfunded in late 2024. This "ultimate" collection will include the 2016 Star Trek: Ascendancy base game from Aaron Dill, John Kovaleski, and Sean Sweigart, all seven expansions — Borg Assimilation, Ferengi Alliance, Cardassian Union, Andorian Empire, Vulcan High Command, The Dominion War, and The Breen Confederacy — as well as new planets, civilizations, and tech cards; new alternative ships; and "an exciting requested race".
• The other GF9 collection on the horizon is Dune: Kwisatz Haderach Edition, which will include the 2019 Dune base game from Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge, and Peter Olotka; the three expansions — Ixians & Tleilaxu, CHOAM & Richese, and Ecaz & Moritani — along with "new luxury components, a never-before-seen expansion, and a brand-new way of playing the game". This item will be crowdfunded in 2025.
• Through May 18, 2024, U.S. publisher Steve Jackson Games is crowdfunding Munchkin Big Box, which is a large — yet not nearly comprehensive — collection of Munchkin titles from designers Steve Jackson and Andrew Hackard, with the art on all 650+ cards coming from John Kovalic.
Non-final box design
Munchkin Big Box is due out in late 2024, and it will contain the Munchkin base game, Munchkin 2: Unnatural Axe, Munchkin 3: Clerical Errors, Munchkin 6: Double Dungeons, Munchkin Bosses, Munchkin Side Quests, Munchkin Side Quests 2, and fifty new Munchkin cards, not to mention a game board, a side board, dice, standees, stickers, Kill-O-Meters, and other bits.
Non-final component design
• In March 2024, Eagle-Gryphon Games crowdfunded Baseball Highlights: 2045 – Bases Loaded Edition, a collection that puts everything related to Mike Fitzgerald's Baseball Highlights: 2045 in a single box...along with a new fifteen-card All-Star expansion and a dozen new promo cards that will also be available separately for those who already own this deck-building game of futuristic baseball.
• And for a change of pace, Cryptozoic Entertainment is bringing DC Deck-Building Game: Crisis Collection 2, which contains DC Deck-Building Game: Crisis Expansion Pack 3 and DC Deck-Building Game: Crisis Expansion Pack 4, straight to retail in August 2024. You read that right — straight to retail! Who would have thought it possible?
This collection does include two new promo cards — Red X & Project Thaumaton — but they are available separately should you have already collected the Crisis titles on your own.
Read more »Source: BoardGameGeek News | BoardGameGeek | Published: April 22, 2024 - 6:00 am
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