This week there are 12 new projects to test our will power and our budgets. Weirdwood Manor has been popping up on social media for some time now. I look forward to really looking into the game play and game mechanics. I backed way too many projects last week so I may need to give it a rest for a little while. I'll try at least....
As always, remember, back with your head, not your heart and most importantly, love your games.
Weirdwood Manor is a cooperative board game that marries great adventure gameplay with some euro-inspired underpinnings, as you and your group of valiant companions battle to protect Weirdwood Manor and its enigmatic ruler, Lady Weirdwood, from an invading Fae Monster and his Clockwork Scarab minions.
The Manor is a mysterious and magical place where rooms and the pathways between them can shift as time progresses. The game features a unique temporal mechanic; every time a player or the Fae Monster takes an action, time will move forward in the game and the connections between the rooms will shift via unique rotating corridor rings on the game board. Players have some agency in how to use their actions to affect how quickly (or slowly) time moves, but beware, if the players use up their allotted time and have not defeated the monster, they lose!
You will assume the role of one of six asymmetrically designed characters as you battle against one of the three different Fae Monsters, each with their own unique mechanics and loss conditions. You’ll make use of dice drafting, card play, resource management, and location actions as you move through the ever-shifting Manor in pursuit of the Fae Monster and his minions. You can also recruit additional companions to aid you and you will improve your character’s abilities as you earn experience.
Each turn, the players will use their own deck of cards to take one primary action. Rooms they move to can offer additional actions and benefits. As well, players can make use of their own unique player and companion powers. These combinations can create varied and potentially powerful chains of actions on a player's turn.
However, after each player's turn the Fae Monster will act, using their own custom deck of cards. As the game progresses, the Fae Monster’s strength will grow and things will become more dire for the players so they will have to work together to solve the challenges in front of them. The game offers deep tactical choice and a degree of unpredictability that will make traditional leader quarterbacking virtually impossible; the players will truly have to strategize as a group to succeed as the threat deepens!
And so, if the players can defeat the Fae Monster before time runs out - or before the Fae Monster completes his own unique victory condition, the players will win the game and have kept Weirdwood Manor safe for now... until he next threat arrives!
Welcome to Kingdoms of Akandia "The Seven Realms".
The first volume in an extensive, immersive and FULL-cooperative open world. You and your friends are fighting together against the spreading darkness. You choose your group of heroes and have your own adventure over 3 chapters and 35-65 hours of gameplay with 1-4 players.
Some mechanics:
open world "The Seven Realms"
supply chains / resource management
full co-op group abilities
use mounts
mix of card and dice-fighting system
upgrade tower defence
destiny cards which changes every gameplay
and much more
Cysmic is an epic sci-fi strategy wargame set amidst a crumbling planet. Players assume the role of one of the factions on the planet that is fighting desperately to survive. Throughout the game, players gather resources, capture enemy units, and work to construct their colony ship. Once built, the colony ship must be launched once all of your units are evacuated. The faction to do so first not only escapes with their lives but also ends up destroying the planet with the force of their ship's ignition. There are no points in Cysmic. The winner is the player who completes the objective first.
THE STORY: "The Space Exploration Expedition Network (SEEk) selected several leaders in various fields to lead an odyssey to Kepler-62e for terraforming and civilization planning. Some of the members were chosen and funded by the World Council while others self-financed their way to have influence or presence in the new world. Industry experts, religious leaders, entertainers, scholars, businessmen, politicians, and entrepreneurs all took part in the mission. Once there, the project worked beautifully at first. The different groups of people lived and worked together as a familiar society with all of the benefits and growing pains one would expect from a newly formed civilization. It had its share of infighting and corruption, but even those issues never threatened the delicate balance of this new world. It was slowly becoming the utopia many had hoped it would.
As the project moved forward, an unexpected instability in the terraforming process started wreaking havoc on the landscape. The news broke quickly that their efforts to terraform and create a better world had destabilized the planet. Their new Eden was doomed.
When the colonists realized there was no hope in saving their dream of a new civilization, chaos broke out among the hundreds of thousands of people as they turned to their respective leaders for salvation. Those in leadership roles... either voted in by public opinion, volunteered at will, ascended through capitalism, or ordained by faith... now rise to the occasion as wartime leaders.
Massive Terraformers that once bent the landscape to their will have now been taken over by powerful organizations and converted into colony ship construction and launch platforms. These rival factions compete for information and resources across the dying planet as their last hope to escape offworld in the original Colony Ship plans that brought them there to begin with.
After society splintered, the information splintered with it. Each faction holds part of the module plans to build the colony ship but must retrieve the others to finish their build. Instead of working together, they now battle for resources and information. Workers and civilians are hastily trained in combat to protect the individual faction bases from each other while still performing their regular job duties. Soldiers are tasked with capturing enemies with the knowledge of providing blueprints for the construction of the colony ship modules.
Once the leaders obtain the blueprints and construct their colony ship, they must launch it before the impending destruction of their homeworld. The immense energy exerted from a single colony ship launch will likely doom the rest. Which faction will gain the resources necessary to escape first? If this new world war doesn’t destroy this utopia, the planet surely would."
GAMEPLAY SUMMARY: Gameplay consists of managing your empire until you can safely evacuate your people offworld. Players must recruit units, explore their surroundings, wage war against enemies, manage their economy, and obtain the resources necessary to construct their Colony Ship. The game is played in rounds made up of 5 turns per round. Each turn, players play one Unit card or Tactic card and then perform a bonus action. Each round ends when all players complete 5 turns. The next round starts with whomever currently holds the first player token.
OBJECTIVE FOR WINNING THE GAME: Be the first player to build their colony ship and launch off the planet. Be careful evacuating your units before launching or else your conscience may not allow you to leave.
In Pioneer Rails, you represent a railroad owner who has seen an opportunity to expand your empire across the new lands of the frontier. You’ll be competing with other railroad owners to plan your railway in the best way possible to connect establishments to the railroad and satisfy the demands of the locals.
Pioneer Rails is a Flip & Write game where you’ll use poker cards to extend your railway tracks and build a poker hand at the same time.
Each turn you’ll choose one of the revealed poker cards. The suit of the card helps you extend your railway, connecting you to new towns and surrounding features. When you connect to a town, you’ll gain the ability to do a one time bonus. When you surround a feature with your tracks, you’ll activate it for end game scoring. The value of the card is added to your poker hand, which you'll score additional points for at the end of the round.
Each game you’ll also be competing over 3 goals, meaning every game you’ll be pulled in different directions.
The mechanism of surrounding features to activate them gives Pioneer Rails a satisfying ‘puzzley’ feel to the game. The variable objectives and the poker cards give enough replay-ability so no two games are ever the same.
Travel back in time to the greatest city in Mesoamerica. Witness the glory and the twilight of the powerful pre-Columbian civilization. Strategize, accrue wealth, gain the favour of the gods, and become the builder of the magnificent Pyramid of the Sun. Now with all the expansions, promos and more, packed in one box and with upgraded deluxe components.
In Teotihuacan: City of Gods, each player commands a force of worker dice, which grow in strength with every move. On your turn, you move a worker around a modular board, always choosing one of two areas of the location tile you land on: one offering you an action (and a worker upgrade), the other providing you with a powerful bonus (but without an upgrade).
While managing their workforce and resources, players develop new technologies, climb the steps of the three great temples, build houses for the inhabitants of the city, and raise the legendary and breath-taking Pyramid of the Sun in the centre of the city.
Each game is played in three eras. As the dawn of the Aztecs comes closer, player efforts (and their ability to feed their workforce) are evaluated a total of three times. The player with the most fame is the winner.
Antares Kingdoms is an euro-style kingdom builder card game set in a medieval fantasy world. Players each represent one of twelve factions vying for the claim of Serpens’ Champion, a title awarded to the kingdom deemed greatest by an elusive dynasty with great influence.
The game develops over three decades of opportunities, warfare and harvest. Each year players perform two actions to Build, Draw, Rank up and Foresee Future, and can use gold to Expedite and buy Dominions to better navigate the unknown yearly events.
Players strive to construct buildings and units relating to the six facets of their kingdom (Common Goods, Township, Resources, Military, Special and Wealth), earning achievements for progression in each. When a decade concludes, progress is carried over into the next as the board resets.
By the end of the third decade, players engage in comparing their achievements in the end game challenge. Here, outsmarting your opponent can be exercised with Dominion cards - which boost achievements secretly - keeping other players guessing whether they will win in a category or not.
After comparing all achievements earned throughout the game and Dominions at the end, the player with the most victory points (or Truemark Points) wins the title of Serpens' Champion!
Fighters of Europe – Battle of Britain is a fast-paced and simple tactical warfare game of air battles during WWII in the sky over Britain in 1940. Relive the fury of air combat over Europe during World War II. Direct each airplane in multiple fighter and bomber squadrons to lead attacks on the enemy’s airfields, manufactures and other ground objectives. No dice, no rulers, only dozens of airplanes! A fast-paced and streamlined game mechanic that plunges you right into the heart of battle.
Move each airplane individually on a hex grid. When you manoeuvre to get an enemy airplane in your sights, it must try to dodge or else take damage. Some airplanes can use bombs to destroy ground installations. Stay in formation to keep the initiative and dominate your opponent. Each airplane has its own attributes in terms of speed, armour, and special abilities. Each piece is illustrated as close as possible to its historical model to maximize your immersion! The base game contains a large modular board, player aids and all the tokens you will need to play. This includes several squadrons of Hurricanes and Spitfires as well as Messerschmidt Bf109, Heinkel 111 and Junker 88.
Fighters of Europe is scenario-driven. The base game comes with 10 different scenarios. With practice, you will be able to set up your own scenarios very quickly.
Grab a hammer and some steel, it’s time to forge! The Blacksmiths Guild of Ravenshire is in need of a new Forgemaster. You and your fellow smiths are competing to see who can make the most money and become the new Forgemaster.
Forges of Ravenshire is played over 4 seasons or rounds. Each season starts with the gathering phase where players will acquire contracts, recruit guild members, and gather resources. Players roll their dice workers and place one of them on an available location to gather resources. Then retrieve a different dice worker to gather even more resources. However, the various workers are from different guilds and when retrieved will activate the guilds you have invested in. All players will take turns placing one of their workers and retrieving another worker 3 times.
After the gathering phase is the production phase. Take those 3 dice workers you have taken and now place them on different areas of your forge to gather more resources, make charcoal or steel, and forge contracts to make money.
At the end of every season, check to see if any special titles have been earned. Titles bring prestige and hard-earned money.
Finally, roll your 3 dice workers again and prepare the town of Ravenshire for the next season.
We've applied a fresh coat of paint to this deckbuilding word game, including brand new novel covers from a variety of artists. New starting decks add more decision making and variety to the first few turns of the game.
The brand new Genre mode gives players unique tech trees that open up novel ways to play.
A quick-paced Deadline variant adds drafting to Paperback and allows for zippy simultaneous play.
Typos let you nab that card that's just out of reach, but you'll pay for it later with a hard-to-use letter.
Want to play solo? The new Spy mode pits you against an automata enemy spy who creates problems you need to address until your deck is strong enough to end the game.
Unlockable cards that continue to expand the card pool and introduce new abilities..
A classic variant pack so that you can still play Paperback the classic way.
Tactigon is a two player game with a simple ruleset and quick set up. Games typically run 10-15 minutes, so most players like to play multiple games in a sitting.
There are two basic concepts at the root of Tactigon:
Firstly, the geometry of the pieces are related to how they move. For example, the “Prism” piece resembles a triangle, so it is able to move up to 3 spaces in a turn.
Secondly, “slower” pieces are more powerful than “faster” pieces, so each piece has key strengths that can impact your strategy.
There are also two ways to win in this game, either by controlling certain spots on the board or capturing your opponent's key piece, the Pentagon. You must always be on your guard while aggressively manoeuvring in order to gain the advantage.
The rules are simple and the gameplay is intense.
Based on the classic card game Garbage (or Trash), Elimino is a fast paced card game that features strategy, luck, and sabotage!
In Elimino, each player races to complete their numbered collection of cards in successive rounds while stealing from and sabotaging each other to try and get ahead. However, the further a player gets ahead in the game, the bigger of a target they place on their back. Designed and developed by 11 and 13-year-old sisters, this all-ages game is quick to learn and challenging to win.
