Board Game News – The Gateway Gazette – 15/04/2016

Greetings gamers. This week our third-world internet claimed another victim. Paul and I will be holding a small ceremony this weekend to say goodbye to Stuart’s internet connection, may it rest in peace. Or come back to life.

In the mean time, we’re holding the CBQ fort. This week Paul confirmed to us that Tiny Epic Galaxies is indeed tiny, but how epic is it?

And now, the news.

New Games

Confession: I’ve never seen Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. It’s just one of those things – even though I’ve always heard of the movie, especially David Bowie’s portrayal of Jareth the Goblin King, I’ve just never had an urge to watch it. Something that might fill that Ludo-sized gap (am I doing this right?), is the upcoming Labyrinth board game from River Horse.

“So we have some quite exciting news…

We have been working with The Jim Henson Company and have secured the licence to make a board game based on the magical film Labyrinth!

We can’t, at time of writing, tell you much more about it at the moment, but rest assured that the film is a firm favorite here at River Horse and we are very excited to be making the game.”

Other games from River Horse include Terminator Genysis, a miniatures game, and The Hunt for Red October, a Kickstarter project coming later this year. We’ll share more information on Labyrinth as we hear it.

IDW is releasing Arcane Academy, based on the Finding Gossamyr comic series. The game was previously known as Generation Hex, and marks the first collaboration between Kevin Wilson and Eric M Lang, the latter currently being in a very good hot streak of game design.

“Challenge rival students to become the best in class in Arcane Academy, an innovative board game of tile-linking, wizardry for 2-4 players that pits young spellcasters against one another in a duel for honor and prestige. Forge potent magic items and wield wickedly powerful elemental energies to outthink and outmaneuver your opponents in this elegantly simple and quick-to-learn board game that will appeal to families and experienced players alike!”

Coming from Forged By Geeks, Defense Grid: The Board Game is a cooperative boardgame based on the popular Defense Grid series of video games.

“1 to 4 players will cooperate to build and activate towers in an effort to annihilate all the aliens that are trying to steal their cores.  With at least 10 maps, 9 familiar towers, and at least 10 different enemies, players will have to use all their strategic senses as they fight to earn every medal in a game that combines the best of the Tower Defense genre with Deck Building board games.”

Merchants & Marauders: Broadsides is surprisingly NOT a sequel to the piratiest pirate game ever devised. It is in fact a standalone title for the ever-increasing 2-player market, designed by Joshua Cappel of Wasabi and Bomb Squad Academy fame. It will be available at Gencon 2016.

“Set in the Merchants & Marauders universe, Broadsides is a standalone game in which the two opposing players need to carefully choose between defending their ship and unloading everything they’ve got on the enemy.”

Kickstarters

I’ve never had any sadomasochistic tendencies, which is probably why I’ve never had the urge to play Dark Souls. That might change now that a board game has been announced, based on the famous death-fest that is Dark Souls. Coming from Steamforged Games, this is coming to Kickstarter on the 19th of April. I’m pretty confident this will be funded, based on the IP alone.

“Designed from the ground up, the Dark Souls board game is a brutally hard exploration miniatures game for 1-4 players. Prepare to die. Because this will be the hardest board game you have ever played.

Featuring an exciting “fast setup, long reveal” mechanic that gets you into the game faster and builds the location as you explore. The sense of danger is palpable as you discover new locations and the monsters that inhabit these dark places. The core combat mechanic and enemy behavior system forces deep strategic play and clever management of stamina to survive.

The game will ship with numerous boss and mini-boss encounters, and as mentioned above, will utilize an innovative behavior mechanic that will mean no two encounters are ever the same, thus giving the game near infinite replayability.”

Brutally hard. Danger. Yeah sounds about right. Ben Affleck knows your pain.

Finally, the goats have shown their full hand. While their suspicious activities have been on the rise with the release of their own video game, and their own… calendar (ahem)….. they have finally unleashed the last part of their plan by releasing their own card game game, Clash of the Battle Goats.

Clash is a tactical card game featuring “Unstoppable Monster Goats”. The game system is based on Studio Woe’s award-winning game Gruff, which was a tactical card game of “Mutated Monster Goats” (I’m sensing a theme here). It still has more than 20 days to go, but it has reached funding and most of the stretch goals have been unlocked. Wait, why are those calendar goats in trees?

Apps / Steam

The revered Twilight Struggle was released on Steam this week. This 2-player game pits the US against the USSR during the period of the Cold War. The board game was rated the number one game on BoardGameGeek for a very long time until the airborn disease that is Pandemic Legacy blew into town. If you’ve been wondering whether GMT’s board game might be worthy of your monies, why not take the digital version for a test run for for $11.99 / R159.99.

Events

It’s almost upon us. Tabletop Day is taking place on the 30th of April, 2016. It’s simply another excuse to get together with friends and play games (like we need any). Oh, plus some retailers might share some official Tabletop Day promo items with attendees.

Check if your local store is hosting an event by utilising the Find Retailers section, or see if a member of your gaming community is hosting an event here. We’ll be doing a roundup of local events closer to the 30th.