The News Shed 1 : 16/02/2023

The time is upon us, its time for the NEW stand alone News shed :)

Paul is free and is celebrating his new found freedom to bring all of this weeks table top gaming news and crowdfunding campaigns we think you need to know about.

Transcript

INTRO

Hello Hello Hello, you wonderful wonderful Meeples...

That's right, we've been let loose with our own show...

Well Jason and James do go on a bit sometimes don't they Brian...

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That's a bit harsh isn't it... Not incorrect but harsh...

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Anyway the choice has been made and we have our own show, so we can bring you the news in a more relaxed environment, chilled, laid back...

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Yeah pretty much like we do most of the week...

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Mind you we've been pretty busy this week haven't we...

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Lots of games done this week... 

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Oh, yeah we both loved Unmatched, talking of that our copies arrived this morning so we'll break that out once we're done...

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Yep, and we were let loose down in Worthing at the weekend...

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OK, on a tight leesh, as we spent the day at the Paradice Games Convention, trying out some games coming to Kickstarter soon, catching up with our friends from Stop Drop and Roll, Mayfly Games and plenty of Worthing Boardgamers. Huge thanks to Mill and the team for organising such a great and well attended event.

What was your best bit...?

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Cake of Doom by Rainy Day games was fun to play, totally agree with you there. Think Jason got a little carried away with attacking everyone, well I say everyone but I mean James... Pearl and Amar were great hosts and Jason thinks we'll try to get them on their show once the Kickstarter for Cake of Doom launches...

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My favourite bit...

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I thought the artwork for Mycelia was incredible, I didn't get to talk to Mr Neville at all as there was always a crowd around but I'm hoping for great things from him and Split Stone Games, I'm always about the artwork, and that artwork was stunning...

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Yeah, suppose we better get on with the news now shouldn't we...

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Well you heard the new riff at the front and as we got in there may be a couple new surprise together with a new section, see if you spot it...

With that said, it's time for my little friend to hit the new button...

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Yes the new one... Hit it...!!!

NEWS

Right first up, in 2010 we got our feet wet with Forbidden Island, 2013 we got sand in places we really didn't want sand in when we crashed in Forbidden Desert and we took to the aether in 2018 with Forbidden Sky. Designer Matt Leacock and publisher Gamewright  are back in 2023 with the latest installment in the Forbidden franchise, so where are we heading now...? Well what if I told you we were off to the Jungle, and not just any jungle, a planet covered in jungle. 

Forbidden Jungle sees your team has crash-land on a mysterious jungle planet, and you need to work together to survive. You'll be searching the ruins of an abandoned planetary outpost, attempting to shift locations to power up the outpost and get the portal to home functioning. Things aren't that simple though as you'll have an escalating chain of collapsing locations which you'll need to sure up, all while dealing with the planets weird and wonderful flora and fauna.

It will play 2-5 players in around 45 minutes but, the game, as yet, hasn't had a confirmed release date 

Drafting games, cute animal tiles and high production quality...? Yes Please. The German publisher Deep Print Games has given distribution rights to Pegasus as the company show off their new 2-5 player game Triqueta from designer partners Stefan Dorra and Ralf zur Linde. 

Due out this quarter, you and your opponents will play over four rounds, draft animal tokens and trying to form a set of three for each animal type, and there lies the games name as three tokens of the same type form a "triqueta". 

In each round, you and the other players draw animal tokens and place them in multiple rows. Find the perfect moment to grab your favorite row, or you might be stuck with one you do not want.

At the end of the game, you score especially well for your triquetas. For more than three tokens of the same type, however, any billy no mates sat to the side, you will lose points instead... 

Back in 2021 designer Hiroken and publisher Joyple Games  released the game Tricktakers, well this year, with the help of the Portland Games Collective we'll finally be receiving an English release.

A quick filler game that lasts just three rounds of five tricks each. To win you want to either win two of the three rounds, Not take a trick in any of the three rounds or fulfill your character's victory condition. Yep, players will be drafting characters with asymmetric abilities after receiving their hand of five cards. The player with the King, for example, gets an übertrump card in place of any other card in their hand, they then get to choose a character first in the next round and automatically win if they sweep all five tricks in the game's final round.

The Hermit however can draw a card from the deck, discard one from their hand, and then score points dependant on how many tricks they win with a complete win if they win all five.

The deal with Portland Games Collective will also see the release of the TRICKTAKERs: Expansion Set. The set contains seven new character roles, as well as TRICKTAKERs Little, an expansion set that adds items and roles. 

Not sitting on there laurels, designer Hiroken is also running a Kickstarter campaign through February 2023 for both the English and Japanese versions of KINGs: TRICKTAKERs, which features a similar concept to the earlier release.

In KINGs: TRICKTAKERs, the game once again lasts just three rounds, but now with players simply trying to score as many points as possible. Each round, you draft a number of characters, using the front side of two characters for their abilities and the back side of a third character for that round's bid. 

The project is live over on Kickstarter now and ends on the 1st Marc h.

From it's original release as a video game across computers and consoles back in 2018, the game Dead Cells made the jump to the mobile platforms in 2019 and 2020. Now the game is set to move from the digital platforms to the analogue as the designers Antoine Bauza of 7 Wonders fame and Ludovic Maublanc of Cyclades: Bauza fame bring the indie video game to a table near you.

Dead Cells sees players controlling a Beheaded – a strange character who’s seemingly able to survive without a head – as they explore a series of labyrinthine biomes within an enormous castle.

Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game will adapt the original exploration and backtracking video game into a dungeon-crawler for one to four players.

In the game, players will be able to choose from various playable versions of the Beheaded before exploring the castle. During the game, players can travel through branching paths within the castle’s different biomes, with each type containing its own rogue’s gallery of enemies for players to fight.

Whenever players encounter an enemy, they will be able to use their unique deck of Beheaded cards to perform a variety of actions, with every class having their own approach to combat. Fighting enemies and exploring the castle will give players the opportunity to acquire more power scrolls, weapons, equipment and Cells: all of which will make them stronger.

Cells gathered from enemies can be spent at The Collector in order to grant the player character permanent mutations which will remain with them, even if they die during their adventures in the video game board game. Mutations will go into character decks, giving them new cards to use in fights – with players able to choose from three decks: brutality, survival and tactics. 

Players can also grow their loot capacity with blueprints, as well as increase their health pool and slots for items. Alternatively, players can spend their Cells in a mysterious well that may or may not have a purpose.

Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game will be co-published by Motion Twin – the developer and publisher of the original Dead Cells video game alongside Scorpion Masque and Evil Empire.

The Kickstarter campaign for Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game will be launched sometime this quarter, with estimated delivery dates in 2024.

We all know Camel Up, or have at least seen it being played at game events since 2014. We then had expansions and indeed an inevitable launch of a card version in Camel Up Cards in 2016, imaginative title.

Well Pretzel Games feel it the right time to release an updated version of it's card based Even Toed Camelus Racer, with Camel Up: The Card Game.

The original game gave us the charming racing game pitting players against each other as they placed bets on camels and their placing. The exciting twist is that players are able to find out how a few of the camels will move. This leaves the fate to the player as they bet on how far the mystery camels will move and whether they will indeed take the lead.

The new edition features beautiful brand new art from Chris Quilliams who has previously lent his artistic flair to such games as Pandemic and Azul.

Other than the cosmetic upgrade the new addition introduces a 'Crazy Camel' mechanic that players of Camel Up Second Edition may be familiar with. This crazy racer takes off on the track backwards, opening up a slew of new challenges for the players to contend with.

So get your camels fed and fired up ready for the release sometime in the second quarter of this year.

NEWS

You can't really go too far in your own gaming oddysey withough coming across the the famed artwork of Jakob Rozalski's war torn, mech filled dieselpunk alternative 1920's Europe.

Scythe was brought to our tables back in 2016 by the designer Jamey Stegmaier,  alongside his publishing company Stonemaier Games. It was followed by a few expansions, board and component upgrades together with a campaign version in the form of the Rise of Fenris.

Well as we mentioned last week, Mr Stegmaier seems to have been hard at work as the sequel to his critically acclaimed game will soon be gracing our tables. 

The past few days have seen more information come to light in the form of various interviews with the community together with a Youtube video released by Jamey himself, outlying a few turns of his new game Scythe: Expeditions along with a video covering the similarities and differences between Scythe and Expeditions..

Expeditions will have players investigating a meteor-strike that has struck the area around the river. Players will be members of the various fictional nations of the Scythe setting following on from an expedition led by Dr Tarkovsky, with the aim of discovering new findings, artefacts and glory.

On your turn start by moving a counter on your main player board so that it covers 1 of your 4 actions available to you on your turn. Move, Play, Gather or Refresh.

Move pretty much does what it says on the tin, you move your mech to a new location, revealing it if need be. Some locations located in the Northern part of the board are corrupted by the crashed meteor and require you to cover actions available from that location. Whether it is Orange Power Corruption or Blue Guile Corruption until it's cleared the gather action from that location is limited. 

The play action allows you to play a card from your hand to your action row, be it a quest card, action, item or character card. Firstly it's main action situated in its top left corner which may or may not be enhanced by previous played cards in your action row or your Mech Player mat together with a second action usually activated by a coloured worker which you can place on the card to perform the stated action.

Gather is when you perform the actions on your current location, this may involve recruiting new workers gathering cards from map locations or even melding meteorite fragments in order to give you and your mech ongoing abilities.

Refresh is in essence a turn enabling you  to gather all your cards from your action row, back into your hand, together with recalling workers from your cards to your Mech Player Mat. You would also need to take this action if for instance moving your action cube to a location that would involve you playing a card from your hand when your hand is indeed empty.

Whenever players gain a quest card, they are able to play it on their turn – thereby making it active quest. Should a player’s mech be on the location associated with the quest card they played, they are able to use the Solve ability to conclude the quest: as long as they are able to pay the required cost. Solving quests grants players useful benefits that will add them in their adventures through Tunguska.

Besides the specific benefits and enhancements the quests provide players, the cards in Expeditions also grant players with an end-game scoring multiplier, with the hearts shown on the quest cards they’ve collected working in a very similar fashion to the popularity mechanic in the original Scythe.

Stegmaier commented on the quest system in Expeditions, stating that playtesters were “really like how the quests play into the emergent narrative of the game, as the quest cards were designed specifically for their matching locations.”

Though Expeditions will reportedly “evoke similar feelings to Scythe,” the board game’s gameplay mechanics will be different, focusing on exploration and adventure over the euro-game elements of the original title.

Expeditions is set to be released sometime in July for a retail price of £70/$70, with a deluxe pimped out edition featuring oversized metal mechs costing £99/$99, and when I say oversized, they are big... and mettaly...

BGG Top 5 Hotness

Before we hit crowdfunding this week, and as we have some time we thought it would be great to bring you a little top 5 from the Board Game Geek Hotness list once a week. 

So these games on the list may be already out, due to come out, or crowdfunding at the moment, it tends to be a list based on what people are searching for on Board Game Geek right now.

We know it can be a little turbulent so the list is accurate at the time of recording. Here we go

In 5.

We move from the gloomy haven, to the freeze our proverbial bits off in Celophairs 100 Scenario Campaign Dungeon Crawler Frosthaven.

In 4.

We just talked about it and it's Mr Stegmaiers return to the alternative 1920's as we go searching for mysterious meteor fragments in Scythe Expeditions.

In 3.

Board Game Tables .com live Kickstarter campaign has one game in particular of the 4 available on its project getting people all wound up. The game in question is Sail, a trick taking game unlike any other, seeing you take on the Kraken through various scenarios.

In 2.

We touched on it earlier as the digital video and mobile game makes it's leap onto a table, it's  Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game.

In. 1

Well I'm not going to say too much as it's this weeks Crowdfunding release I'm about to tell you about and thats the cooperative, campaign style, survival crafting board game Stonesaga.

CROWDFUNDING

You've just heard me mention it on the BGG Hotness List and it's on Kickstarter right now and the game in our Crowdfunding spotlight this week is Stonesaga.

Stonesaga is a cooperative, campaign style, survival crafting board game set in a unique, persistent world shaped by your and the other players choices.

Dsigned by Max Brooke famed for Star Wars: X-Wing 2nd Editionand  Legend of the Five Rings RPG, alongside designer with Luke Eddy of Star Wars: Legion fame. The game is being published by OOMM games.

The game is for 1 to 4 players with each game within the campaign an hour or two resulting in a full playthrough lasting 30 plus hours. It's designed for 14 and overs and the project ends on March 1st.

Stonesaga, lets you unfold the epoch-spanning story of the people of a remote glacial valley, guiding multiple generations of characters who make a life there amidst harsh conditions, wondrous mysteries, and of course the giant monsters.

Each game session covers one generation of people within a society, continuing from the last and permanently changing the valley in various ways based on in-game events and the players’ decisions.

You'll follow a certain rhythm:  when faced by a new opportunity or crisis, the people of the valley must meet their society’s new needs. Meanwhile, the valley’s other inhabitants – immortal beasts – will seek to fulfill their own needs as their natural instincts will dictate. You will have to navigate both sets of challenges, using might, dexterity, conviction, and awareness to survive as a tribe in the wild.

The game introduces a completely new discovery based crafting mechanic. Do you think that a sharpened stone and stick could combine to create a spear? Use the crafting action and find out. You will need to discover the properties of various crafting materials as you expand your crafting “recipe” knowledge.

Work together as a community to build your village together. From a simple fire pit and tent to a forge and library, create a civilization that lasts the generations.

Whats a survival game without a little exploring and Stonesaga rewards exploration and chooses to let you experience the world in a unique way each play session. Working on the established rules of the world, you will discover unique materials, monsters, and areas of the world that you won’t be directed towards. Stonesaga lets the curious and inquisitive thrive.

Designed for drop-in, drop-out play and flexible for all playgroups availability, Stonesaga can be played by one group from start to finish, played with a rotating cast, or even passed between groups seamlessly. Components are sometimes permanently altered, but never removed or discarded entirely.

The core box for the game is coming in at around £82 or $99 getting you the base game and any associated stretch goals.

Grab the Core box with the Meals and Myths and Nature of the Beasts expansions together with associated stretch goals for £165 or $199.

Or if you planning to go all in then it's going to set you back £249 or $299. This will get you the core box, the Meals and Myths and Nature of the beasts expansions. Upgraded components and dice, a neoprene playmat, a faux leather journal, an art/cookbook, a recharge pack for the game as well as all stretch goals.

As I said the project comes to a close on March 1st over on Kickstarter.

OUTRO

Well chap, how do you think our first solo run did...?

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Couldn't have said it myself...

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Game of Unmatched then...

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Bagsey me Dr Jeykell and Mr Hyde...

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OK, you get Red Riding Hood...

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Right say goodbye to everyone and you can go and get the game set up...

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and it's a goodbye from me, keep safe Meeples, keep those dice rolling, the cards shuffling and we'll be right here for you next week...