Reviewed game:  Jerusalem Available from Abacusspiele

Nowadays the amount of games published is impressive and is not easy for a game to pass the test and avoid the dusty shelf. We all know that is not a good practice to judge a game after reading the rules or just after a single play: otherwise the pressure of the new comings is impressive and so, seldom, we offer a game more than 2 chances.

We are used to write first impressions and also previews from the rules: I want start to write a series of review based on the impressions after just 2 plays. the title of the series will be: Take Two.

Jerusalem is a clever area-control game from Michele Mura, designer of Lungarno and Easy School. Players are Barons trying to get prestige taking control of key area in Jerusalem. 

At the beginning of the 12th Century, European families conquered Jerusalem. The city became a theater for power struggles and bloody clashes. The King's Palace, the Holy Sepulcher, and the Tower of David were the keys to control of the city. Crusades, new Patriarchs, and the politics of the region constantly altered the fates of the families. Which Baron will prove most able? Who's castle will tower over the rest?

Here in the preamble and in the nice graphics is all the theme: the game itself is quite abstract and Michele Mura shows again to be a German designer despite he is from Pisa.

The game is played in 5 rounds every round split in 4 phase: bid, deploy, collect and events. 

In the first phase players are bidding for Offices cards to set the turn order and the amount of squires you can deploy in phase two. Every turn also are drawn as many actions cards as players. Going first means you can chose which action card take, you get more squires but you can't react to other players playing on the board after you apart blocking an area with your Baron. All this including little benefits offered by some Offices will make the bidding one of the crucial part of the game: is not a trivial decision to choose the right Office and it could be other players are looking for the same.

The second phase is deployment. In turn order each player place all his squires (some could be preserved for the next turn) and the Baron. The city of Jerusalem is divided into five Districts. Each District, in turn, is split into three Areas: one large area and two smaller ones. In addition, there is the Tower of David, which is made of only one Area. To control an Area you need to have more squires than any other player. To control a district you need to have more squires in the three areas of the district than any other player. 

You can place your Baron in an Area only if you have placed at least three new squire in the same area; the Baron prevent other players to place squires in the area. Going first offers in that way the possibility to secure just one area and could be sometimes enough to justify a race for the first Office. If you need extra squires you can hire mercenaries but the cost is high and it's an option seldom used.

The squires stay in place until the end of the game and could be removed only with event or action cards, causing a progressive contest for area and district control.

The third phase is collecting: first the player controlling the tower of David can move one squire from the Tower of David to any other Area in the city that is not blocked by a Baron; this could be enough to get control of an area and/or a district and is something important you can easily leave behind in the deploy phase in the first plays. After that are assigned the district privileges and finally the areas revenues. 

Privileges and revenues are all about getting money (used for bidding), prestige (used to build the Castle tower that is, actually, the way to score and win) and squires.

The third phase end with the tower construction: to rise a floor has an increasing cost in prestige points and be the first one to build a specific floor is more expensive: a simple rule to prevent early run. The winner is the player with the highest tower at the end of the game (prestige points are used for break-even) and it is not so easy to focus on that during the game: money and squires are only the way you can get prestige and prestige is the only thing you need to construct floor.

At the end of second, third and fourth turn there is the event phase: an event card is revealed usually causing some major change in one or more district. It is important to know what the event cards are doing before playing (are just 4 and only 3 are used during the game).

The action cards concern mostly in getting money and squires or moving squires and are usually useful. 

The game works really well and the fight for prestige and area control is tense. Is not really nothing new but a nice mix of known mechanism with some clever idea. The graphics and material are good and the rules are well written. Jerusalem passed the "Take Two" test. 

* (0:29) September 15th is the deadline for Tracy Hickman’s Dragon’s Bard offer.  If you want to join in, be sure to get the discount code here and enter it here.  As mentioned in the show, alternate pricing options can be found here.  We also talk a bit about why the interview took us all a little by surprise.

* (4:37) Our community has started an Alliance guild on the Argent Dawn server of World of Warcraft.  Details can be found on the forum.

* (5:39) Pondering RP in an MMO.  Maybe it’s a bad idea, or maybe we just don’t know how to approach it.

* (11:25) Homebrews and house rules.  Why we love making homebrews, the role of house rules, and finding the line between the two.  A challenge to write your own homebrew if you never have before.  And yes, the Midna group is real.

* (30:05) Using group collaboration to design character, setting, and even a rules system.  We discuss the pros and cons, offer some approaches for trying this out, and debate whether this is a good idea for various styles of GMing.  Just how hard should someone be willing to work to improve a hobby?

Hosts: Chad, Dan, Pat, Wayne

What is your Cult of the New Score (CotNS)?

OK, last week, I posed a question to you to look at how many of the most popular games (based on the number of BGG ratings) you had played and owned. I thought that this question might be an indication of how well rounded of a gamer you were.  However, as I admitted in the article, this measure is completely arbitrary and there are all sorts of biases that affected the final score.  Despite all these shortcomings, the question certainly generated a lot of conversation – and this interest has pushed me to try to look at a related, yet different, question – do you qualify for membership in the “Cult of the New”?

I am not sure who originally coined the term “Cult of the New” to describe those gamers who spend most of their gaming time trying to find and play games that are new to them.  They are the antithesis to the “Defenders of the Old”.  Given the chance to play 10 games in a day, a Cult of the New member would likely choose to play 10 different games with as many of them being new to him while the Defender of the Old would stick to his favorite classics – and likely play some of those classics more than once in that 10-game span!

So, what would be a good way to measure your willingness/ability to play new games?  As with the Populist Gamer Score, the choice of list is perhaps the biggest (and arbitrary) determinant of the survey.  For this question, I have chosen to use the list from the Fairplay Scoutlist from last year’s Spiel fair in Essen.  This list of 100 games represents the “most popular” games released at last October’s fair.  I am making the assumption that the sorts of gamers that went to Essen and then logged votes at the Fairplay booth are similar to the sorts of gamers who would read websites such as BGN.

I would like to take a minute to thank Kathrin Nos, who is part of the Fairplay staff (as well as being a SdJ jury member) – she assisted me in obtaining the full list of Fairplay results.  Only the top 30 games were published on the Fairplay blog, but I was able to extend this list to the top 100 games from Spiel ’09.  For those of you unfamiliar with the Fairplay, it is a magazine published in German about boardgames.  At each Spiel in Essen, Fairplay has a booth where anyone can come and vote for their favorite games of the show.  The rankings are posted on a magnetic board, and a few times a day, the Fairplay staff come and re-organize the game rankings.  The Fairplay board is a good way to see what everyone else thinks are the hot games of the show, and the final results are a pretty decent snapshot of the fair buzz.

So, I want to use the Fairplay Scoutlist from the 2009 Essen show as the basis for determining how strongly you are a part of the “Cult of the New”.  I wanted to use the list from this past Essen because of a number of reasons.  First, the list was generated 10 months ago – at this point, most folks who were interested in looking at any of these games should have had a fair chance at acquiring it or coming across it.  Second, the list is generated by gamers who are hopefully similar to the readers of this column.

The scoring system for this scale will be a little different than the Populist Gamer Score – while there is still an emphasis on game ownership, it has a much lower overall effect on the CotNS than the PGS.  The reason for this is that actually owning the games isn’t as important as playing the new ones to determine how willing you are to try new games.  That being said, ownership still plays a role in the score, especially because one of the hallmarks of a Cult of the New gamer is his willingness to buy all sorts of new games in the hope that he will get the game to the table at some point…

Without further ado – here is the scoring system for the CotN – in order to calculate your score, you’ll need to evaluate the list of 100 games twice. First you should consider whether you have played the game or not.  Make note of which games you have played more than once.  There are a few re-releases on this list which made the Fairplay Scoutlist (Ra, a la Carte) – you should count plays of the newly released versions.

Games Played

3 points per game that you have played once

4 points per game that you have played more than once

Next, you need to look at your game collection and see which games you have owned (now or previously).  It will also be important to note which games you own and still haven’t played! There are a few re-releases on this list which made the Fairplay Scoutlist (Ra, a la Carte) – you should count plays of the newly released versions.

Games Owned (at any point)

3 points per game currently owned and not yet ever played

1 point per all other games ever owned (played or not)

 

If it helps, here is a Excel spreadsheet (with my scoring contained within) that you can use to calculate your own score.

 

So what is the rationale behind this scoring system?  Well, first and foremost, the emphasis should be on the number of new games played.  A small bonus is given for playing the new games multiple times - but the bonus is not large because the CotN member generally wants to play as many new games as possible.  Ownership of games is not as large a component of the final score here because you certainly don't need to be a collectory of games to want to play as many new ones as possible.  That being said, there is a strong bonus given for owned games (that are not yet played) as this is one of the cardinal signs of belonging to the CotN -- the fact that you go out any buy so many new games that you can't play them all!  For the purposes of this survey, that sort of game is worth just as much as a new game played just once.

 

Here is the final Fairplay Scoutlist from 2009 – it is in order of final ranking.

1. Vasco da Gama
2. Pony Express
3. Machtspiele
4. Macao
5. Magister Navis (Endeavour)
6. Vor den Toren von Loyang (Gates of Loyang)
7. Dungeon Lords
8. Egizia
9. Rise of Empires
10. Funkenschlag – Fabrikmanager (Funkenshlag: Factory Manager)
11. Hansa Teutonica
12. Carson City
13. Automobile
14. Last Train to Wensleydale
15. Cyclades
16. Mr. Jack in New York
17. A la carte
18. Dominion: Seaside
19. Ra
20. Die Tore der Welt (World Without End)
21. Im Wandel der Zeiten Würfelspiel (Roll Through the Ages)
22. Assyria
23. Schinderhannes
24. Caligula
25. Greed, Incorporated
26. Arena - Revolte in Rom II
27. Santa Timea
28. Battlestar Galactica
29. Tobago
30. Startspieler
31. Opera
32. Ad Astra
33. Der Heidelbär
34. Basketboss
35. Klimapoker
36. Stronghold
37. Peloponnes
38. Arg!tekt
39. Fzzzt!
40. Jaipur
41. Campanile
42. Numeri
43. Avalam
44. Shipyard
45. Attandarra
46. Alcazar
47. Galactico
48. Imperial 2030
49. Colonia
50. El Paso
51. Sumeria
52. Thunderstone
53. Langfinger
54. Martinique
55. Boochie
56. Lübeck
57. Gonzaga
58. Havanna
59. Savannah Tails
60. Seidenstraße
61. Pocket Rockets
62. San Francisco Cable Car
63. Morgenland: Das Kartenspiel
64. Atlantis
65. Erwischt!
66. Robotory
67. Horse Fever
68. Der Herr der Ringe - Abenteuer in Mittelerde
69. Day & Night
70. Carcassonne - Das Schicksalsrad
71. Ra - The Dice Game
72. Infinite City
73. Toc Toc Toc!
74. Strada Romana
75. Insula
76. Hotel Amsterdam
77. Albion
78. Car(d)cassonne
79. The BoardGameGeek Game
80. Darwinci
81. Beer & Pretzels
82. Krysis
83. Filipino Fruit Market
84. The Adventurers
85. Samurai - The Cardgame
86. Burger Joint
87. Psycho Pet
88. Würfel-Ligretto
89. Donna Leon - Gefährliches Spiel
90. Schwarzes Gold
91. Granada
92. Das Labyrinth des Minotaurus
93. Cir*Kis
94. Kazaam Dice
95. Fantasy
96. Chromimo
97. Identik
98. Bobby Sitter
99. Unter schwarzer Flagge
100. Maus au Chocolat

So, how did you do?   My CotNS is 201. 

Broken down, I have played 41 games on the list (21 of them multiple times).  I have owned 39 of them at some point, and 9 of them I currently own and still haven’t played!

Though I haven’t had the chance to run this by a lot of other gamers yet, I’m guessing that a score of 125 or better shows a pretty strong commitment to the newest games.  My score is likely a little higher because I was at Essen and had a good chance to run into a LOT of the new games there and then I had the opportunity to play a ton of games at BGG.con and Great Lakes Games in that next month.

Despite having all those opportunities to play games, there are still 9 games from last year’s Essen crop that I have in the basement, but I have yet to play!  Two of them I chose off of game convention prize tables over the summer, but the other 7 managed to come back crammed in my luggage from Essen…  I’ll have to bump those up to the top of the list in the next few months as very soon there will be the additions to the game collection from 2010 Essen!  With some diligence on my part, I’ll hopefully be able to hit the halfway mark of games played by the time I leave for this year’s Spiel fair...

So how do you score?

Me: 201

Larry Levy: 155 (22 games played once, 19 games played multiple times, and 13 games owned)

Joe Huber: 156 ("Of the 17 games I have owned from the list, I currently only own 7; nearly all of my score comes from the 41 games I've played (16 multiple times).  And of course I won't abide with owned but unplayed games."

Tom Rosen: 133

Greg Schloesser: 185 (12 games played once, 27 games played multiple times, 3 games owned and never played, 32 other games owned)

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor

 

Game name:  Magestorm Designer:  Piero Cioni Publisher: Nexus Games — October 2010
Featured at: Gen Con 2010Spiel 2010

Here's a description of Magestorm from the publisher:

In the world of Two Suns, the time of the Great Changing is coming… While armies meet in a mighty clash on the battlefields, powerful magicians with god-like powers enter the fray, pursuing their own mysterious goals.

Magestorm is the first board game in a new series where you will finally be able to play fantasy battles as you dream them to be! You will control the mystical powers of one of four different mages - the Firemage, the Airmage, the Druid and the Fate Guardian – and you will lead into battle one of the two complete armies included in the game – the human Kragis and the elves Láusjan. Victory can only be achieved by the perfect combination of magic-using and military skill...

With top-level components, fast-playing rules and incredible replayability, Magestorm is the portal to an exciting new fantasy universe.

Updated, Sept. 8, 2010: Nexus Games has published several previews for Magestorm, detailing both components and game play:

1. An overview of the game itself.
2. Descriptions of two of the army factions and the four mages.
3. Pictures of the components, and explanations of how they function in the game.
4. An explanation of how magic works in Magestorm, both conceptually and in terms of the game mechanisms.
5. An overview of the four mages in the game and the spells available to them.
6. Descriptions of the Kragis and Láusjans armies.
7. An interview with designer Piero Cioni about the game's development and future expansion plans.

The Messy Game Room Episode 17!  After a month long hiatus, the Messy Game Room returns Screaming for Vengeance!  In this month's show Mike and Marshall discuss:  The World Boardgaming Championships; Dixit; A Victory Lost; Blokus; Tumblin-Dice; Shadow Hunters; A Victory Denied; Dungeons and Dragons:  Castle Ravenloft; Descent; Long Shot; Unconditional Surrender; Weimar:  German Politics 1929-1933; Dragon Quest 9; Castlevania:  Symphony of the Night; Monday Night Combat; and more games, books, and music.

Game name:  Stronghold: Undead Designer:  Ignacy Trzewiczek Publisher: Portal Publishing — October 2010
Featured at: Spiel 2010

For now the Stronghold: Undead expansion has been mentioned only in blog posts by designer Ignacy Trzewiczek – such as this one from June 4, 2010. The gist of the expansion remains the same as in the base Stronghold game: The skeletons are attacking a castle and must breach the walls prior to the end of eight rounds or else the rising sun turns their bones to dust.

Update, July 28, 2010: Trzewiczek has passed along a somewhat more detailed description of this expansion, which is designed for only two players:

The brave defenders of the castle must now stand against the forces of the undead. Glory no longer matters in this game – instead, both opponents fight for time with the game lasting eight rounds. The Necromancer must defeat the men or else his army will vanish once the sun's rays hit his forces. In game terms, from the sixth round on, the invader's power starts to diminish, with the Necromancer needing to pay to keep his forces in fighting form. Defenders die on the castle walls; the Necromancer's power wanes as the battle continues – once dawn comes, who will still be standing or who will be dead?

The Stronghold: Undead expansion includes a new set of buildings for the castle, 24 new spell cards for the invader, new rules to track the fear level and leader board, and more.

Note that the cover image above – the unfinished one with all the white space – is only a draft for now. You probably already figured that out for yourself, though.

Update, Sept. 7, 2010: Trzewiczek has posted a teaser column of sorts about Stronghold: Undead on the Portal Publishing website, a column that details all that you won't see in this expansion.

Designer Ignacy Trzewiczek created a designer's diary extraordinaire on Boardgame News in 2009 with a 13-part explanation of how his Stronghold was created and developed. While Trzewiczek isn't going to such lengths with his 2010 release, the card game 51st State, he has been telling stories about the creative process in his bi-weekly column on BGN – check out "Lunatic", "Judging a Prototype's Potential" and "Fun With Playtesting" for examples in August and September 2010.

What's more, Trzewiczek has been posting additional details about the game play in 51st State on the Portal Publishing website. To date, he's published only two such articles:

• "51st State – Game system, first view" (link), which gives examples of how three different cards can be used three ways within the game to provide resources and allow various actions.
• "51st State – Game system: develop your state" (link), which shows how the systems within your newly-founded state can and must evolve during the course of the game, both to improve your network and to avoid being hamstrung by the scoring limits on various cards.

With six more weeks prior to the opening of Spiel 2010 perhaps Trzewiczek will end up writing a monster series of articles after all...

Reviewed game:  Gauss

I'm a big fan of abstract games and frequently seek out new games with novel mechanisms to add to my collection. Most of them have quite simple rules, so they're easy to pick up and play when you have only a few minutes or new players.

Gauss is a simple abstract game designed by Susumu Kawasaki (Traders of Carthage, R-Eco) that I saw at Essen 2009 at the Japon Games stall. The previous year, Japon Brand carried Kawasaki's Robotory which was subsequently published by Asmodee.

When first seeing Gauss, the name and the red and blue pieces immediately reminded me of the painted bar-magnets found in science classrooms. This association is helpful, as the movements of the playing pieces on the board are governed by the same rules of attraction and repulsion. It is quite difficult not to think of the snap of metal magnets clashing together when moving pieces in the game.

The board is formed of a central hexagon with 19 playable spaces, surrounded by an outer row of gutter hexes. During game play, players each take the pieces of one colour and take turns placing a piece within the playable centre of the board with the aim of forming connected groups of four or more pieces of either colour, which are then immediately scored and removed.

Each turn, the players contend with the laws of magnetism; similar poles repel, while dissimilar ones attract! As each piece is placed, players find the nearest piece along each of six straight lines traced out of sides of the played space. If the nearest piece is a different coloured piece placed by your opponent, it is attracted and moves next to the played piece; if it is one of your own pieces, it has the same "pole" and is pushed away until it hits another piece or the edge of the board. Groups of four or more are only scored once all of the affected pieces has been moved.

At first, this is all incredibly counter-intuitive. You're trying to form groups of four or more, but each move shoots your own pieces away while attracting those of your opponent. The edge of the board provides an extra barrier here, not only because you can't play pieces directly into it, but also because of the scoring rules. When groups are scored, pieces which are within the central board are "safe" and score points. Any pieces which are in the gutter when scored are "risked" and may count as negative points.

The game ends when each player has played all their pieces. Safe pieces of each player count for a point each and the number of pieces of each player still on the board and in the gutter are compared. If a player has more pieces in the gutter, the number of their risked pieces are subtracted from their total. The player with the most points wins.

During the game, players typically circle around each other's pieces, taking advantage of positions or breaking up the formation of groups. An opponent's pieces can be a useful backstop to keep your own pieces from flying away, and it's easy to block a group from forming by attracting one or more of the pieces away. The board itself can help as well, as you can often place pieces near one another without them interacting along straight lines, but very soon the board starts to fill up, forcing groups to form. One of the more entertaining moves is using repulsion to catapult one of your own pieces directly into a cluster, thus forming a scoring group.

It's almost inevitable that some pieces will be risked by each player, so as the game end approaches, both players will try to get their pieces out of the gutter to avoid losing points. The only direct way to do this is form groups and risk even more pieces, since your opponent will probably avoid attracting your pieces back into the main board. Games are frequently won or lost over which player takes the negative points, and the gutter can become an object of dread.

While Gauss can be a game of carefully considering options, I've found it easy to explain the handful of rules and then have it play in under 20 minutes, even with players who suffer from over-analysis. It's a pleasantly unique game and almost everyone wants to play it again, once they finally figure out or see some strategies, to grapple with the magnetism again. In all of these ways, it's a perfect lightweight abstract game.

It's currently difficult to get hold of one of the original copies of Gauss, but the game is going to see a wider availability when Spanish publisher nestorgames re-releases it before the end of 2010 in its portable games format.

To follow up on a June 2010 news item, the adaptation of Michał Oracz's Neuroshima Hex! to the various iDevices – Phone, Pod, Pad – is complete. Łukasz Łazarecki from Big Daddy's Creations says that the app has been submitted to Apple for approval, and he expects it to be available by mid-September 2010. For those who want a taste of what's coming, here's a promotional video from Big Daddy's Creations:

Geek Nation Tours has an interesting business model: Handling all the fine details related to premier gaming events so that you can focus on more important matters. In June 2010, I posted info about a Spiel 2010 tour with BoardGameGeek's Derk Solko. Now GNT is organizing a trip to AdeptiCon – which it describes as "the world’s largest wargaming tournament" in late March 2011. Here's part of the pitch from GNT:

AdeptiCon has a multitude of gaming experiences for the discriminating wargamer. AdeptiCon offers tournaments using a variety of different wargaming systems, a huge amount of seminars and shopping too. It is a spectacle to be seen and experienced...

Although gaming registration is still done with the AdeptiCon crew directly. Geek Nation Tours has secured guaranteed registration for those that book prior to September 30th 2010. That's right! Book with Geek Nation Tours and you will be able to pre-register for all events prior to them going public.

Head to the Geek Nation Tours website for more info on the trip.

Game name:  Leader 1 – Extension Designer:  Alain Ollier Designer:  Christophe Leclercq Publisher: Blackrock Editions — Oct 2010-Mar 2011
Featured at: Spiel 2010 Publisher: Ghenos Games — Oct 2010-Mar 2011
Featured at: Spiel 2010

French publisher Blackrock Editions has announced an extension for Alain Ollier and Christophe Leclercq's Leader 1, which was co-published with Ghenos Games in 2008. Blackrock promises more detailed information – along with images – in late September, so for now I'll leave you with this short list of what the extension will include:

• New riders
• New hexagon tiles: downhill, paved road, flat, false flat and more
• New tokens: start line, finish line, sprint area, wind, rain, heat
• New rules: timed races, weather rules, paved races, continuation of the pack
• Rule corrections

Update, Sept. 7, 2010: Anna Genovese at Ghenos Games has clarified that Ghenos is the lead publisher on this project and she says, "We would like to have the game for Essen, but I do not think we will make it." The latest that the expansion would be released, she adds, is March 2011. Time to do a few more laps while waiting for this expansion, race fans...

Game name:  i9n Designer:  Dirk Strothmann Publisher: Strothmann-Spiele — October 2010
Featured at: Spiel 2010

New German publisher Strothmann-Spiele is launching its introductory game – i9n – at Spiel 2010, and designer Dirk Strothmann describes the game as "a paperback computer board game without electronics". What does that mean, and how does it work?

Let's first cover the gist of the game: Players are trying to discover rich oil storages, and as in real life the supply of oil diminishes as the game progresses, making it more difficult to find oil but more profitable when one does. The locations where oil can possibly be found – 64 in all – are marked on a world map. The stock notes in the game each show 32 of these locations with the locations divided up by north/south, east/west, Atlantic/Pacific, pole/equator,  land/sea, and sun/fog; when you buy a stock, you'll get one that says "north" with those locations highlighted or "Atlantic" with those locations highlighted and so on.

The game also has twelve punchboards which are labeled the same as the stock notes. Here are two examples of those:

 
Punchcards for west and north

At the start of the game, these punchcards are paired – east with west, north with south – and one of each pair is secretly removed from the game, while the remainder are placed in the "safe". Each player secretly pulls out and examines two of these cards to have some information of where the oil wells will be located. These punchcards are then mixed, and one is placed in the "magic processor" to start the game.

On a turn, a player takes 1-3 actions depending on a die roll and uses these actions to move his explorer on the board; purchase, sell or trade stock notes; or drill to establish an oil well. (Presumably you can drill only where your explorer is located, but the rules don't specify exactly what the explorer does!) To drill, you take a stick and push it into the hole on the magic processor where you want to drill. If the punchcard inside the processor has a hole in that location, congratulations – you have yourself an oil well and mark it with your token; if not, then you've spent a stock note on your speculation and come away with a bit of knowledge.

Once the available oil wells have been claimed in the current phase, players add another punchcard to the processor without knowing which it is. Each punchcard halves the number of locations available for drilling: 64 in an empty processor, 32 with one punchcard, 16 with two, 8 with three, and so on. With all six punchcards in the processor, only one valid location remains. Once a player establishes an oil well in this location, the game ends and players score points for the value of their wells (1-6) as well as one point for each stock note that shows the correct half of the gameboard in which the final well is located. The player with the high score wins.

It's our "Golden Episode", and we have a show that's (as always) packed with the gaming goodness you've come to expect!  Among other things, we discuss game mechanics new and old, those we love and those we hate, and offer up reviews of Innovation and Heroes of Graxia.  Hope you enjoy!

 

Game On! with Cody and John is sponsored by Myriad Games, on behalf of friendly professional game stores everywhere, we're a proud member of the Pulp Gamer Media Network!  Check out more great shows at http://www.pulpgamer.com.

As detailed on its publisher page here on Boardgame News, Valley Games has a half-dozen games in the pipeline that are due to be released in the next few months. Valley Games' Torben Sherwood has passed along the following status updates for these titles:

• Master Builder is due in port this week [i.e., the week of September 6].
• Two by Two and BUGS are due to arrive in mid-September 2010.
• Crows and Liberté are being released at Spiel 2010 in October, with the remaining copies delivered to North America a couple weeks later or so.

These games have been updated on Gone Cardboard.

 

Game name:  Omega Designer:  Néstor Romeral Andrés Publisher: nestorgames — September 2010

Néstor Romeral Andrés has released another design through his own nestorgames, and while the game officially bears the title of Ω, we'll call it Omega so that it shows up in expected places on Gone Cardboard and elsewhere.

Romeral Andrés describes Omega as a design "born as an experiment on complexity and intuitive arithmetic [that] feels like a cross between Hex and Go." Omega is played on a hexagonal board ten spaces long on a side that can be sized as desired using spacers included within the game. Each player is a different color – white, black, red, blue – but on a turn a player places one stone of every color in the game onto the board. The game ends when not enough spaces remain for each player to have another turn. Each player's score is the product of the size of each group in his color, and the player with the highest score wins.

Notes Romeral Andrés, "You will soon realize that you don’t need to calculate your score during play (multiplying your group values), but to use an intuitive strategy instead. How? You must figure it out by yourself."

Game name:  Small World: Be Not Afraid... Designer:  Philippe Keyaerts Publisher: Days of Wonder — 2010

Days of Wonder will release a new smallish expansion for Philippe Keyaerts' Small World before the end of 2010. Here's a description from the publisher of the Be Not Afraid... expansion:

There are many frightening inhabitants of Small World, but to survive you must Be Not Afraid...! This new expansion for Small World includes a nasty lot of five new Races including Barbarians, Homunculi, Pixies, Pygmies, and greedy little Leprechauns. You'll also get five new Special Powers which allows you to leap over regions to conquer new lands. Be Not Afraid... requires the original Small World board game to play.

I've seen an estimated release date of November 2010 listed by retailers, but nothing official from Days of Wonder yet.

Update, Sept. 7, 2010: Still no official release date info, but Days of Wonder has posted a few images from this new expansion. Take a look:

Barbarians (above) and Homonculi (below) – gotta love the little men inside my head...

Game name:  Aether Designer:  Touko Tahkokallio Publisher: Onni Games — October 2010
Featured at: Spiel 2010

Finnish publisher Onni Games has two new titles in the queue for 2010: One is the Finnish-language trivia game Arvuutin, about which I'll say no more as my Finnish is a bit rusty these days; the second game, though, is Aether and it will include rules in English and German, in addition to Finnish. (As I mentioned in the Toscana game announcement the other day, I need to add a set of Scandanavian and Finnish flags to the rules section. So many new games from this part of the world!)

In Aether, players try to use the basic elemental powers to claim aether, the fifth element in Greek philosophy and an element not subject to transformation, unlike the other four in our physical world. To set up the game, players place a number of colored tokens and four randomly chosen element tiles behind their individual screen. The hexagonally-divided game board is seeded with aether tiles and a number of randomly drawn element tiles.

On a turn, a player places one of her element tiles on the board in an empty location, then has the option of placing a token on the tile just placed. If placed on a blue tile, the token represents a water elemental; on a green tile, it's an earth elemental; and so on. The strength of that elemental is equal to the number of adjacent tiles of its element (including the one underneath it) minus the number of enemy tiles adjacent to it. Earth weakens water, water weakens fire, and so on. Before placing a tile, the player has the option of swapping tiles for a new set at a cost of one colored token, thereby reducing your opportunities to claim spots on the board.

Once the board is filled, players determine who wins the points for each of the aether tiles, with the player having the most elemental strength (even of different types of elements) adjacent to the aether winning the tile. In a tie, players split the points of an aether tile. Players score an additional three points for each token not placed or sacrificed to enable a swap, and the player with the most points wins.

If you want to try Aether now, you can visit the online browser version of the game, which allows you to add 0-3 AI opponents in case you don't have enough humans on hand to play.

Game name:  4 monkeys Designer:  Toni Serradesanferm Publisher: Homoludicus — October 2010
Featured at: Spiel 2010

Spanish publisher Homoludicus will publish a new game in October 2010 from designer Toni Serradesanferm. The Spanish edition of the game is 4 Monos, while the international edition – with rules in English, French, German and Italian – will be titled 4 Monkeys.

In 4 Monkeys, you are a monkey in the NASA laboratories and want to demonstrate that you are the smartest monkey in the training program, which means that you deserve to be the next monkey astronaut and go into space! You have your own maze of cards with symbols and colors. On the table, there are different tiles showing many different combinations of colors and/or pieces. Each monkey must manage its cards to fulfill as quick as possible the requirements of the orders on the table.

The game, which was a finalist in the Game Design Contest of Granollers 2010, will be released at Spiel 2010 in Essen, but for now you can watch the game in action in this video:

For those who do know Spanish, you can watch a game demonstration of 4 Monos in that language courtesy of Spanish blog 5mpj (5 minutos por juego = 5 minutes per game). The ilustrations and design for the comercial edition are made by Bascu. Homoludicus is the second Spanish game publisher going to Essen, after Gen-X Games. Good luck!

¡Nos jugamos!

Game name:  Munchkin Zombies Designer:  Steve Jackson Publisher: Steve Jackson Games — April 2011

U.S. publisher Steve Jackson Games is working all the angles with its Munchkin series of games, and in April 2011 the publisher plans to release Munchkin Zombies, which like many other Munchkin spin-offs will work as a stand-alone game in addition to being an expansion for any other stand-alone Munchkin game.

Monica Valentinelli at Flames Rising has published a long preview of Munchkin Zombies based on a playing of an early version of the game at a distributor's demonstration day for retailers. An excerpt:

In Munchkin: Zombies you play…a zombie! Immediately, I was struck by how disgusting and wrong the cards were. Class cards cover all the different zombie types from your favorite movies, books and world myths. There are Strong Zombies, Fast Zombies, Plague Zombies — even Atomic Zombies! There’s also also the chance you can pick up different types of zombie Mojo, too, which functions as a special ability.

Game name:  Verona Designer:  Petra Chvala Publisher: Czech Board Games — October 2010
Featured at: Spiel 2010

Czech Board Games has released a bit of information about its 2010 release – Petra Chvala's Verona. Here's a translated description of the game from the publisher:

Welcome to the town that inspired Shakespeare to write Romeo and Juliet – the most famous tragedy of all – and us to create a board game. You will find yourself in the times of the Renaissance, in which Verona has become an important center of commerce and culture, but also of corruption and intrigue. The city is so rich and powerful that both the Government of Italy and the Holy Roman Empire emerged from this site. Its ruler, Prince Escalus, is weak and influential families will fight for control of the government. Who will come to power? The fight is just beginning.

Players compete against one another through auctions and by estimating the planned implementation of intrigue, and secret and public duties. Whoever plans best and rises to an economic and military power will win the game.

Czech site Deskové Hry has published an interview (in Czech) with Verona's designer Petra Chvala, with a couple of prototype images accompanying the text.