Showing posts with label Previews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Previews. Show all posts
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Now With Even More Curse-y Goodness
1:19 PM | 
Posted by
Chris
Here’s a little item that slipped in and out of my brain over the last few weeks: FFG have announced they are releasing a revised edition of the Arkham Horror Curse of the Dark Pharaoh expansion sometime this spring.
As a self-described “Arkham-Whore” I admit I was a little taken aback by this announcement. Dark Pharoah is by far my least favorite of the small box AH expansions, it just didn’t seem to really work all that well with the game. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought so. It “…came to become the one that deviated most from our later Arkham Horror design vision and over time came to stand apart from the Arkham Horror family as a whole.” So, a proposed fix, though this sounds more like it was completely dismantled and rebuilt. Most intriguing to me are the enhanced presence of exhibit artifacts, which rarely, if ever, were accessible in the original release, patrolled neighborhood tokens, and benefit and detriment cards.Yeah, so I'll buy it.
Full details here.
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Thursday, March 10, 2011
Wizkids Breaks the Mold with a Deck, Er, Dice Building Game
10:23 AM |
Posted by
Chris
Since sometimes gaming news has a bad habit of slipping through the cracks around the internets I unearthed this press release from way back in January. Comment follows after the press release.
WIZKIDS ANNOUNCES THE QUARRIORS DICE BUILDING GAME
(January 27, 2011 Hillside NJ) – WizKids announced today the addition of the Quarriors Dice Building Game to their summer 2011 product release schedule. Players take on the roles of Quarriors —mighty mystical warriors—who have the power to capture dangerous quarry from the untamed Wilds! They must conjure the mysterious powers of Quiddity, cast powerful spells, and summon their creatures to battle if they hope to overcome rivals and earn their rightful place as the Champion!
The game features 130 custom molded dice, 53 creature and spell cards and everything needed to play for 2 to 4 players.
“Quarriors has the frenetic excitement of a dice battle game,” said co-designer Eric Lang “with an added ‘deckbuilding’ twist: players customize their dice pools during the game using resources generated by their rolls.”
“It takes the best of deckbuilding games without the tedium of shuffling” said Mike Elliott the other co-designer of the game, “take a typical deckbuilding game, add the speed and fun of dice and in 60 minutes you’re on your second or third game trying unique strategies against your opponents.”
“When Mike and Eric first showed us the game we were amazed at how quick it was to set up and play and really get to the strategic elements of the game. We are excited to continue WizKids tradition of innovating core hobby gaming and believe this will really resonate with players who want to get the most out of a gaming session” said Lax Chandra President of WizKids.
While deckbuilding games are growing tired and played out (and "Quarriors" as a brand name is pretty weak) at least Wizkids is making an attempt at breaking the mold by changing the formula up a little bit. Games like this seem to be a great hit with the larger, more casual side of the gaming community and it makes sense for a publisher to pursue markets with the largest profit potential. Working in favor of this game is the deign team of Mike Elliot (Thunderstone) and Eric Lang (Call of Cthulhu card game, Game of Thrones CCG, WoW Boardgame) so there's a little bit of customizable game pedigree.
While details develop, price seems to be of the missing detail of foremost concern for me. How cheap can they make the game with 130 dice, cards, dice bags and a tin box? a $60 retail would pretty much kill my interest in the game entirely. Will keep an eye out for more news.
WIZKIDS ANNOUNCES THE QUARRIORS DICE BUILDING GAME
(January 27, 2011 Hillside NJ) – WizKids announced today the addition of the Quarriors Dice Building Game to their summer 2011 product release schedule. Players take on the roles of Quarriors —mighty mystical warriors—who have the power to capture dangerous quarry from the untamed Wilds! They must conjure the mysterious powers of Quiddity, cast powerful spells, and summon their creatures to battle if they hope to overcome rivals and earn their rightful place as the Champion!
The game features 130 custom molded dice, 53 creature and spell cards and everything needed to play for 2 to 4 players.
“Quarriors has the frenetic excitement of a dice battle game,” said co-designer Eric Lang “with an added ‘deckbuilding’ twist: players customize their dice pools during the game using resources generated by their rolls.”
“It takes the best of deckbuilding games without the tedium of shuffling” said Mike Elliott the other co-designer of the game, “take a typical deckbuilding game, add the speed and fun of dice and in 60 minutes you’re on your second or third game trying unique strategies against your opponents.”
“When Mike and Eric first showed us the game we were amazed at how quick it was to set up and play and really get to the strategic elements of the game. We are excited to continue WizKids tradition of innovating core hobby gaming and believe this will really resonate with players who want to get the most out of a gaming session” said Lax Chandra President of WizKids.
While deckbuilding games are growing tired and played out (and "Quarriors" as a brand name is pretty weak) at least Wizkids is making an attempt at breaking the mold by changing the formula up a little bit. Games like this seem to be a great hit with the larger, more casual side of the gaming community and it makes sense for a publisher to pursue markets with the largest profit potential. Working in favor of this game is the deign team of Mike Elliot (Thunderstone) and Eric Lang (Call of Cthulhu card game, Game of Thrones CCG, WoW Boardgame) so there's a little bit of customizable game pedigree.
While details develop, price seems to be of the missing detail of foremost concern for me. How cheap can they make the game with 130 dice, cards, dice bags and a tin box? a $60 retail would pretty much kill my interest in the game entirely. Will keep an eye out for more news.
Friday, March 04, 2011
Mayday Games to Release Eaten by Zombies
12:14 PM |
Posted by
Chris
Killing a little time waiting for FedEx to arrive with my copy of Mansions of Madness and I stumbled across this in the BGG forums.
Mayday Games to Publish Eaten by Zombies.
It's yet another deck-building (I know, right?) game, this one with a zombie (I know, right?) theme.
While it would be easy to dismiss just based on that alone, I have major respect for the DIY enthusiasm of small publishers, so I'm adding this one to my tentative interest mental list.
Maximum zoom. Enhance!
Mayday Games to Publish Eaten by Zombies.
It's yet another deck-building (I know, right?) game, this one with a zombie (I know, right?) theme.
While it would be easy to dismiss just based on that alone, I have major respect for the DIY enthusiasm of small publishers, so I'm adding this one to my tentative interest mental list.
Maximum zoom. Enhance!
From the release
You start with five heavy sticks (each worth +1 fight) and five hide cards (each +1 flee) as well as two sandwiches (+1 Flee & Draw one card). You shuffle these 12 cards and draw 6 into your hand. You then face one of the 25 zombies from the Zombie Deck with a fight value ranging from 1-8 and a flee value of 1-4. You must announce Fight or Flee and then proceed to play some/all of your 6 cards in your hand.
If you successfully fight/flee you then take the total fight/flee value to the scavenging portion of your turn (think of it as a “buy”) where you acquire items such as Shotguns, fists full of ammo, crowbar, binoculars, fire on a stick, grandma pantry, deadeye or other cards which you then put INTO YOUR HAND for use in the very next turn and draw back up to 6 cards from your draw deck. Played cards go to your discard pile, including any zombies you have succeeded in killing.
If you flee then the zombie card goes to the zombie discard pile. As you draw zombies into your hand (from shuffling your discard pile) you are stuck with them in your hand forever unless you play them into the zombie horde attacking on another player’s turn, so the zombie horde gets tougher over time.
If you are unsuccessful in killing/fleeing then you must loose a number of cards equal to the flee value of the horde. These lost cards come from either your hand or as a blind draw off the top of your draw pile and go back to the scavenging area, weakening you. If you run out of cards you succumb to your wounds and become a zombie, now trying to kill the other players on each turn.
If a player ever ends up with six zombie cards in his/her hand the zombie players win as the remaining players have gone insane. Each time the zombie deck is gone through and reshuffled you add one more zombie to the horde for the rest of the game, making perpetual survival impossible.
It isn’t a matter of if you’re going to die but when. Be the last player standing and win. If at any time the entire zombie deck is depleted (because the players have killed all of them rather than using flee), all remaining players alive win together.
This is a unique cooperative/competitive game where you really feel the tension and inevitability of doom. You spend the first few turns building up your deck only to see the zombies increase in power and slowly drain your will to live as the game progresses.
2-4 players, 20 minutes per player.
If you successfully fight/flee you then take the total fight/flee value to the scavenging portion of your turn (think of it as a “buy”) where you acquire items such as Shotguns, fists full of ammo, crowbar, binoculars, fire on a stick, grandma pantry, deadeye or other cards which you then put INTO YOUR HAND for use in the very next turn and draw back up to 6 cards from your draw deck. Played cards go to your discard pile, including any zombies you have succeeded in killing.
If you flee then the zombie card goes to the zombie discard pile. As you draw zombies into your hand (from shuffling your discard pile) you are stuck with them in your hand forever unless you play them into the zombie horde attacking on another player’s turn, so the zombie horde gets tougher over time.
If you are unsuccessful in killing/fleeing then you must loose a number of cards equal to the flee value of the horde. These lost cards come from either your hand or as a blind draw off the top of your draw pile and go back to the scavenging area, weakening you. If you run out of cards you succumb to your wounds and become a zombie, now trying to kill the other players on each turn.
If a player ever ends up with six zombie cards in his/her hand the zombie players win as the remaining players have gone insane. Each time the zombie deck is gone through and reshuffled you add one more zombie to the horde for the rest of the game, making perpetual survival impossible.
It isn’t a matter of if you’re going to die but when. Be the last player standing and win. If at any time the entire zombie deck is depleted (because the players have killed all of them rather than using flee), all remaining players alive win together.
This is a unique cooperative/competitive game where you really feel the tension and inevitability of doom. You spend the first few turns building up your deck only to see the zombies increase in power and slowly drain your will to live as the game progresses.
2-4 players, 20 minutes per player.
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
FFG Officially Announces Rune Age
9:02 PM |
Posted by
Chris
To expand on what Dan mentioned earlier, Fantasy Flight Games has officially announced Rune Age. Follow the link the their full announcement.
And yes, it's yet another deck building game, the 5th game to use the Terrinoth setting begun in Descent. The description promises a faction-specific set of cards for each player as well as scenarios with different victory conditions to set it apart from the 75 other deck building games that have been released since Dominion swallowed the gaming universe.
I will try and keep my inherent cynicism at bay while we wait for more info to develop. Who am I kidding, it's FFG, I'll buy it.
And yes, it's yet another deck building game, the 5th game to use the Terrinoth setting begun in Descent. The description promises a faction-specific set of cards for each player as well as scenarios with different victory conditions to set it apart from the 75 other deck building games that have been released since Dominion swallowed the gaming universe.
I will try and keep my inherent cynicism at bay while we wait for more info to develop. Who am I kidding, it's FFG, I'll buy it.
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