This week's round-up is all about games returning to Crowdfunding. Featured projects include the return of Burncycle expansion and reprint, Draconis and Moonrakers. I will be saving my money ready for next week and the return on Dark Tower. My excitement for The One Hundred Torii last week, was stamped out when I saw the hefty price tag attached to an expansion. I think the trend towards board games increasing in price has only just begun.
A puzzly infiltration game for 1-4 players, burncycle puts you in command of a team of robots in the far future. Their mission: taking down evil, human-run corporations responsible for subjugating AI under their heel. Your team arrives at each corporate headquarters and must sneak inside, shutting down the companies' physical operations as well as their circuitous digital networks. As you search rooms and advance to the higher floors, you'll be rewarded with new items and abilities, but you'll also be challenged by threatening guards, fatal viruses and the architecture itself, which was built to fight off robotic intruders.
Key to this solo and cooperative experience is the idea of “creative action sequencing.” During each round of play, all players will contend with a randomly drawn set of programming directives, which tell them in what order their bots are allowed to take physical, digital and command actions. Players can choose to skip over directives at the cost of having an incomplete turn, or they can disobey the directions by paying costly action dice. The best players, however, find a way to work within the “burncycle”: essentially, organizing their actions so that they benefit the team while staying within the directive order.
Each of the corporate headquarters in the game use unique neoprene layouts on a larger mat, changing the geography of the game to suit your target. Each CEO also has at their disposal a special threat meter, which will trigger new obstacles for your robots as time runs out. If you don't complete the mission quickly, you may end up leaving bots behind, the victims of immobilizing power drains or destructive counter hacking.
Your team wins the game if you complete your objectives on every floor without losing your captain or maxing out your threat level.
Divine Dungeon by the extraordinarily talented Dakota Krout at Mountaindale Press. Every card is a fun reference to his witty and sometimes wacky world. Divine Dungeon enthusiasts will recognize the characters and concepts from the story, albeit with a board-game twist so that you can challenge your friends.
We’ve brought dinosaurs back to life, but who will care for these magnificent and dangerous beasts?
You are paleo-veterinarians, competing to save as many dinos as possible from modern illnesses and injuries. Roll dice, upgrade your hospital, and compete with fellow paleo-veterinarians to treat injured and sick dinosaurs. As long as the dinosaurs don’t wake up during treatment, nothing can go wrong…
In Paleovet, players take turns drafting dinosaur cards from a central river, rolling dice, and spending dice icons for various effects, most notably curing sick and injured dinosaurs. Each dinosaur card lists which icons are needed to cure it, and effect, victory points, its genetic order, and diet. Dinosaur effects can occur when the dinosaur appears in the centre of the table when it is added to your hospital, or while it remains in your hospital. These effects can change gameplay in a variety of ways.
On your turn, you’ll follow a series of steps:
1. Remove a sleep token from each dinosaur in your hospital. 2. If you have fewer than four dinosaur cards in your hospital, select a dinosaur card from the five cards showing in the centre of the table. Move it into your hospital. 3. Roll your dice. You begin with three basic dice and can purchase specialty dice later. The dice faces show the three treatments needed to cure dinosaurs, a tranquilizer dart, and a wild icon. 4. You may now spend dice and wild tokens to: a. Cure dinosaurs by matching the treatment icons on the dice to the treatments listed on the dinosaur card. Each dinosaur requires between 1 and 5 treatments to complete b. Buy additional dice by spending three matching dice icons c. Buy a one-use wild token by spending two matching dice icons d. Buy an upgrade card that provides a permanent beneficial effect by spending two matching icons e. Spend a tranquilizer dart icon to move an additional dinosaur into your hospital (if you have less than 4 in your hospital already) 5. Any dinosaurs that are not cured and have no sleep tokens on them at the end of your turn wake. When this happens, discard the dinosaur card. If it was a carnivore, you must also discard another dinosaur card in your hospital (if you have any). 6. Any dinosaurs that were cured during your turn are moved into a victory pile. You’ve now scored the points listed on that dinosaur card.
Play continues until one of the card piles in the centre of the table is empty. The round is completed, then all players total the points on their cured dinosaurs. The player with the highest score wins.
As immersive as it is breath-taking, NEXUS is a brutal and irreverent story-driven arena combat game that takes place on poorly maintained space barges. Packed with rabid and bloodthirsty fans, these barges feature an array of deadly hazards that are designed to indiscriminately kill or injure both combatants. These hazards range from floor saws that tear across the arena floors to pits that are home to monstrosities just looking for something to eat. Full of beautifully illustrated and amusingly inappropriate cards and lore, each match leaves you with a story to tell and laughs to be had by all.
Gamers will appreciate the nostalgic art style and classic RPG elements that drive the brutal theme of the game. NEXUS puts classic table-top gaming tools like dice, pen, and paper to good use; to pit genetically engineered champions against one another in visceral combat. Players will experience a rush as their dice rolls determine the fate of their hapless champions followed by thunderous bursts of laughter.
The skirmish mode, while easily picked up by even the most novice of players, has just the right amount of depth, complexity, and self-generating narrative to make each match exhilarating. Dive even deeper with RPG legacy features and build your wealth and influence allowing for countless upgrades and bribes.
Rising up from the Draconis Invasion are new hopes of GLORY. Together we might rise triumphant! The GLORY pack is a set of 3 modular mini-expansions. GLORY increases gameplay options for both the base game and Wrath expansion.
- CHAMPION cards add asymmetric powers that can be summoned at pivotal moments in the game. - BONUS cards create changing end-game bonuses such as "Largest Army" or "Most Terror". - INVOCATION cards shift the entire flow so that a purchased card can be Invoked - bringing it forth into your hand at your beckon call.
These additions modify the strategy without changing the core mechanics that Draconis Invasion fans love.
You control a shadowy 24th century faction, hell-bent on reordering history to set off a chain reaction which will bring about your utopian vision for the world.
At your disposal is a fleet of chronoships, capable of traversing all four dimensions of space and time. You will hunt through all of history to hire the brightest minds to your cause, and each will be given command of one of your precious chronoships.
However, you are not the only one with a grand vision for the future and must watch out for rivals, who will attempt to meddle with your plans!
The aim of this 1-4 player worker placement game is to be the first to complete three Butterfly Effect Missions. These are iconic moments in history, from the rise of the Roman Empire to the Industrial Revolution, from the Second World War to the colonisation of Mars. Each Butterfly Effect Mission will require knowledge to be collected or technology to be developed.
Chronoships travel through wormholes to visit different locations in space and time, known as Time Zones (TZs). There are 12 TZs in total, TZ1 represents the ancient past, whereas TZ12 represents the distant future. New Alternate TZs will also spawn throughout the game, the “Butterfly Effect” of players meddling with the space-time continuum.
Each player will start by drafting two crew-members to activate their first two Chronoships. These crew-members will be famous people from history or the future and each will have different primary and secondary abilities. It is possible to control an additional three Chronoships by recruiting new crew-members to command them.
Primary abilities enhance the collection of one of five types of knowledge: Military, Exploration, Science, Politics or Culture.
Secondary abilities come in 13 varieties which will help the player to compete with their rivals, ranging from Merchants to Medics, from Spies to Superstars.
Utopia provides a unique experience every time, as the combination of different crew-members, technologies and missions call for the constant revision of player strategies.
Dive deep down into the ocean and discover a vibrant underwater world in this exciting single-sheet print at home game.
Manage your oxygen reserves as you plunge beneath the ocean surface. Will you seek out fish and coral in the narrow sea caves? Or race to be first to reach the ocean floor?
On a turn 2 dice are rolled for all players. Using one of the dice results, players will mark their game sheets to show the position of their diver. The lower value dice might limit your options, but if you pick the higher value, you must use an amount of O2 equal to the difference. Choosing when to strike out is vital for seeing the most on your limited time beneath the waves!
Star Realms: Rise of Empire is a new standalone pre-quel to the popular Star Realm series game with 141 cards, and a 12-game legacy scenario campaign. Rise of Empire introduces three brand new factions: the Consortium, the Scavengers, and the Kingdom. Rise of Empire will take players on an epic adventure over the course of 12 scenarios where players will permanently alter the market deck cards while tracking their battle wins and losses. Players will compete to achieve various objectives, earning them Campaign Victory Points and unlocking the secrets of the worlds around them. Rise of Empire can be played stand-alone or combined with all previous Star Realms content after you’ve finished the campaign.
Features 12 Legacy Scenarios 9 Sticker Sheets Starting decks for 2 players featuring 3 brand new factions 8+ Legacy Component Envelopes Narrative Campaign for 2 players Competitive and Cooperative mode Plays on its own, or combined with any other Star Realms set. An all-new 60-card trade deck featuring new mechanics like "when acquired" abilities! Market/Campaign Board Full-color rulebook
Moonrakers is a game of shipbuilding, temporary alliances, and shrewd negotiation set in a space-faring future. The players form a loose band of mercenaries, but while they are united in name, actual alliances are shaky as players are pitted against each other in the quest to become the new leader of the Moonrakers.
Moonrakers is a deck-building game in which players choose Contracts to attempt alone or with Allies in order to gain Prestige and Credits. After negotiating terms with Allies, players use their decks of Action cards to play Thrusters, Shields, Weapons, Reactors, and Crew to fulfil the requirements on each Contract. Each type of Action card has additional effects such as extra Actions, drawing additional cards, and protecting players from Hazards encountered while attempting Contracts.
Players create powerful decks and gain special abilities by upgrading their ships and hiring Crew Members. This helps them accomplish more difficult and rewarding contracts alone, letting them keep more Prestige and Credits for themselves.
Allies negotiate who will receive the Prestige, Credits, and risk of Hazard from Contracts, but if you don't make your offers enticing enough players may be tempted to betray you! The first player to 10 Prestige wins, but be careful as hazards encountered on Contracts reduce your Prestige!
The Kickstarter edition includes the First Encounter mini-expansion with ~15 cards.
Silver Coin: Age of Monster Hunters is a solo, cooperative, or competitive game for 1-5 players who will travel the map in search of missions to slay the monsters that are troubling the people of six kingdoms.
The game is set in the fantasy realm of Atosia, a great continent that spans across the known world. It is divided into six big kingdoms, each carrying its own history, culture, and mysteries. The world has survived a great calamity that struck the land eighty years ago. Ever since things have changed and the continent has seen a sudden spike of creatures old and new that plague the land and are troubling the local populace. Amongst all of that, individuals have appeared who took advantage of this situation and will do anything, including slaying these so-called monsters, if it means they get a bag of coins in return.
In Silver Coin: Age of Monster Hunters, you are playing as one of these monster hunters. You travel the land in search of missions that will, if successfully completed, grant you rewards in the form of coins. But to successfully tackle all the challenges thrown your way, you will need to learn some magic, gather the knowledge about the very things you need to kill and equip yourself with items and skills that will help you on your journey.
Each turn players will draft cards, play cards, and buy special action cards or dice, then they will use their tokens to choose the actions they will take each turn in an attempt to optimize their way through the game.
Be resourceful, be strong, take the long path or the quick, the easy way or the hard, but most of all, make sure that when the game comes to an end, you are the one with the biggest bag of those silver coins...
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