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Paper Money #31: Posthuman Studios’ Rob Boyle

Purple Pawn - 45 min 9 sec ago

Ben and Rett sweat it out in the summer heat to cover this week’s news, preview important GenCon releases, discuss why brick and mortar retailers aren’t using the Internet well, and chat with Rob Boyle of Posthuman about the transition from design studio to stand alone business (and get a rundown of their upcoming releases).

Show Links:

Purple Pawn – http://www.purplepawn.com

Posthuman Studios - http://www.eclipsephase.com

Next Show: August 13th, GenCon wrapup.

Categories: Game News

Blockers (aka Uptown) from BriarPatch

Purple Pawn - 2 hours 48 min ago

Blockers from BriarPatch is a reissued, theme-less version of the already essentially theme-less tile-laying game Uptown. Uptown was originally designed by Kory Heath and published by FRED Distribution.

Interestingly, Blockers was trademarked by FRED, and its used by permission by BriarPatch. Which leads me to believe that FRED did the un-theming and then pass it on to BriarPatch be published.

Categories: Game News

Bohnanza for the Younger Crowd

Boardgame News - 3 hours 17 min ago

Game name:  Bohnanza: Fun & Easy Designer:  Uwe Rosenberg Publisher: Amigo Spiele — September 2010
Featured at: Spiel 2010

German publisher Amigo Spiele will release Uwe Rosenberg's Bohnanza: Fun & Easy in September 2010. What's different with this version of Rosenberg's classic Bohnanza card game? Shortened game stages, special event cards, and a lower barrier to entry, according to the publisher's description. Oh, and the familiar bean types have been replaced with rocker beans, skater beans, burger-eating beans, etc. Is this one Bohnanza too many? Has Rosenberg's Bohnanza gone the way of New Coke?!

(This title was previously listed as Bohnanza Youngster.)

Categories: Game News

Amigo Teaches Pillow Fights to the Youngsters

Boardgame News - 3 hours 40 min ago

Game name:  Kissenschlacht Designer:  Liesbeth Bos Publisher: Amigo Spiele — September 2010
Featured at: Spiel 2010

In Liesbeth Bos' Kissenschlacht – aka, Pillow Fight – youngsters learn how to conduct pillow fights, a skill that will serve them well in later life once they start attending sleepovers.

The box bottom serves as the bed, and each player has a catapult of sorts that they'll use to launch their four pillows onto the bed. Place a pillow on the bed, and you can place one of your three figures on the corner of the bed as a bedpost; if an opponent knocks down this figure, then you'll need to remove a pillow from the bed and launch it once again. Be the first player to land all four pillows on the bed and you win.

Or keep playing until someone gets hit in the eye with a pillow and starts crying – that's the outcome that I always remember...

Categories: Game News

New White Dwarf, Daemon Princes

Games Workshop's Blog - 5 hours 53 min ago

It's new White Dwarf day! It never fails to amaze me what a difference a new copy of White Dwarf makes to the office - we'll all be chatting away, catching up and the like, when Nick appears from the...

Categories: Game News

Weekly Game Criminal Roundup

Purple Pawn - 7 hours 9 min ago

Claredon, Jamaica: One man killed in an armed robbery of a Dominoes game. (source)

Memphis, TN: Shooting (no one hit) and a gun butt at a dice game. (source)

Shanghai, China: Couple try to break up neighboring Mahjong club by breaking hot water bottles (injuring themselves in the process, and then demanding that the club pay for their medical bills) and then pouring gas on themselves and – unsuccessfully – trying to set themselves and the house on fire. (source)

Edmonton, Canada: One man stabs another several times with scissors after a game of Mahjong. (source)

Queens, NY: One elderly man bites off the tip of the thumb of another elderly man in an argument over the game of Go. (source)

Lanarkshire, Scotland: Man stabs himself, stabs his father, and stabs his step-mother to death (not in that order) after his step-mother plays board games with his father. (source)

Salem. MA: Man assaults another with a knife after losing money he “jokingly” bet in a card game in his house. (source)

Los Angeles, CA: City police attempt to crack down on three-card monty dealers. (source)

Categories: Game News

Fancy Nancy Games

Purple Pawn - 8 hours 11 min ago

Fancy Nancy is a children’s book series written by Jane O’Connor and illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser. Licensed games are by University Games (including its subsidiary Colorforms) and BriarPatch.

University Games’ offerings include:

• Fancy Nancy Big Easy Colorforms Game: Despite the over-sized floor mat game board, this game is not recommended due to the awkward components.
• Fancy Nancy Tea Party: Spin the spinner, collect items for a tea party.
• Fancy Nancy Dress-Up: Promoted as a “role play” game, actually you spin the spinner to collect clothes for your dolls
• Fancy Nancy’s Double Dress Up Game Tin: No idea.

BriarPatch’s offerings include:

• Fancy Nancy Acting Fancy: An acting game. One of BriarPatch’s new “Games to Go” series.
• Fancy Nancy Flip Five: A memory game with set collection.
• Fancy Nancy Going Places: Spin the spinner, move, and collect the items.
• Fancy Nancy Hide ‘n Peek: Another memory game. Pick a card and find the item in the 3D house.
• Fancy Nancy Posh Bedroom: Another set collection game with dice rolling, but also some “take that” mechanics.
• Fancy Nancy Positively Perfect Parfait: Spin the spinner, collect parts of your ice cream sundae.
• Fancy Nancy Card Game: This might be the same as, or similar to, the University card game tin. Pass cards until you collect an entire set of accessories.

Categories: Game News

Jerusalem

Purple Pawn - 9 hours 22 min ago

Jerusalem, designed by Michele Mura and published by Abacus Spiele (and ElfinWerks), is a medium-length auction/area control Eurogame, though the box makes it look something like a wargame. I can also assure you that it is not the first game themed about Jerusalem.

Full rules available in several languages here.

Categories: Game News

Castle Winterhawk

Purple Pawn - 9 hours 53 min ago

Ever since 9th level (in 1983), I’ve been wanting to build that keep. Now I can do it without spending a fortune in gold pieces.

Winterhawk Watchtower is the first in a series of component models for the paper miniature Castle Winterhawk. As we’ve come to expect from Fat Dragon Games, the electronic download includes more than just a basic pattern. There are options for different window styles, options for snow or ivy-covered walls, options for plain or grid-marked floors, options for walls that are 3D thick or 2D fast-build style, and options for adding floors.

Categories: Game News

Tweet My Magic

Purple Pawn - Fri, 07/30/2010 - 2:39am

Up for a little extra chaos in your multiplayer Magic game? This weekend Wizards of the Coast invites players to participate in a Twitter-based shared experience. From the first moment of July 31st at the International Date Line, until the last of August 1, Wizards will tweet a new rule or effect every few minutes. Get together any time with Planeswalkers decks, align with one of the five teams (Ajani, Jace, Liliana, Chandra, or Garruk), and follow @TweetMTG for the specifics. Some tweets will benefit or affect only specific teams, while others may throw a wrench in to everybody’s works.

No tournament, just some random fun.

Categories: Game News

I am a gaming hypocrite

Tabletop Gaming News - Fri, 07/30/2010 - 1:18am

Quite often on this site we come to a point in our discussions where we marvel at Games Workshop’s ability to survive despite the bewildering actions of their management and their curious pricing. Yet clearly the company is doing something right as they have managed to turn themselves around in the last few years and [...]

Categories: Game News

Pentactic – Another Take on the Pentominoes Game

Boardgame News - Thu, 07/29/2010 - 11:35pm

Game name:  Pentactic Designer:  Néstor Romeral Andrés Publisher: nestorgames — July 2010

Pentominoes have been part of the common vernacular since Martin Gardner wrote about them in 1957 in his "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American. U.S. publisher Kadon Enterprises was founded on Kate Jones' Quintillions in 1979, and that game has remained in print for more than thirty years.

The latest ludic take on pentominoes is Néstor Romeral Andrés' Pentactic, published through his own nestorgames. The game board in Pentactic features three playing areas: 8x8, 7x9 and 6x11. In the basic two-player game, one player controls the pentominoes and the other controls a set of eight stones. The stones player removes a pentomino from play, then players take turns placing pieces on one of the playing areas. The stones player must place each stone in a different row and column to try to block the plays of the pentomino player. When no more pentominoes can be placed, the pentomino player subtracts the number of unplaced stones from the number of unplaced pentominos for a final score. The players then switch sides and play again; the player with the lower score of the two matches wins the game.

Additional rules cover solo play and games that can be played with multiple Pentactic sets.

Categories: Game News

Muppets Games

Purple Pawn - Thu, 07/29/2010 - 10:54pm

A sneak peak from the publisher, USAopoly, at upcoming games with The Muppets themes:

I love the Muppets.

Categories: Game News

Larry Levy: Gulf Games Goodies, Part 2

Boardgame News - Thu, 07/29/2010 - 9:50pm

Gulf Games Goodies, Part 2

Last week, I talked about some of the new games I got to play at the most recent Gulf Games that I really enjoyed.  Here are some other new games I tried out, most of which were also well worth playing.

Deeku:  This was the other Kenichi Tenabe design that Joe Huber showed me.  It’s a 2008 game themed around rebuilding castles in 17th century Japan.  The rules are short and the game plays very quickly.  Players place or move their pieces on the locations and if they have a majority there, they can rebuild the castle.  Gameplay is interesting, but it’s pretty abstract and that’s usually not my favorite kind of game.  Additionally, it seems that one of the major skills is searching the semi-random setup for efficient ways of moving and gaining influence and that’s just not something I find that enjoyable. It’s a solid game and I’d have no trouble playing again, but I don't think this will ever be a favorite of mine.  I liked Inotaizu much more.

Numeri:  This is a redesign of a 1973 Rudi Hoffman game (which also had another version, 1998’s Fröscheln).  This is part of Schmidt’s EasyPlay line and it certainly is that.  Each player has pieces numbered 1 through 5 which move on a linear track.  On your turn, you roll a die (which has an asterisk in place of the 6) and move the piece of that number to the first open space on the track (you choose which piece to move if the asterisk comes up).  On a 3-5, you can move two of your pieces if their numbers add up to the roll.   Additionally, if you get three in a row, you take another turn.  About half of the spaces have a value and to get your score, you multiply the number of your piece by the value of the space it’s on and add them all together.  Some people won’t like the arithmetic necessary to determine the scores, but outside of that, this is an appealing family game.  It’s very easy to understand, plays fast, and even has a reasonable amount of decisions.  It’s also a quintessential Hoffman design.

Perpetual Motion Machine:  Ted Alspach's latest non-Age of Steam game has little to do with breaking the laws of physics but instead is a nicely constructed cardgame.  Each player has a display which shows different Poker melds (like 3 of a kind and Straight) and when you play a meld of the appropriate kind, you get to place one of your cubes next to that category on the display.  As you place cubes, your abilities in the game increase.  Abilities include things like your hand size, the number of cards you can draw from the stock, and the number of cards you can choose from the display each turn.  The object is to be the first player to place all of your cubes.

The game has a sound foundation and makes a nice, if slightly long, filler. However, my game had 4 players and there's too much shuffling with that number (Ted admits the game plays best with 2 or 3).  We also felt it took a little too long to get to the interesting part, where the players have more abilities.  Perhaps the game would move more briskly if some of the in-between levels (where there’s no advancement) were omitted.  But I still think this a good solid effort by Ted and the game was one of my prize table picks.

Pictionary Card Game:  This is a party game by Brian Yu, Dale’s brother (although I don’t hold that against him), which will soon be published by Mattel (Brian is one of Mattel’s in-house designers).  It takes the basic idea of Squint (a Charades style game where the presenter uses pre-printed cards instead of gestures to try to convey the clue), uses more detailed cards (like stick figures or a drawing of a house or airplane), and has teams trying to guess the Pictionary-type subjects.  It’s not a startling advance in party games but it was good fun and a fine alternative for folks who like the idea of Pictionary but who just can’t draw.

Ad Astra:  This is the Faidutti/Laget game that has been called “Settlers in Space”.  The main mechanic is that players each have a set of actions and place them secretly in a central display (kind of like a one-dimensional Inotaizu, if you remember my description of that game from last week).  Everyone gets to perform the actions, but the player who placed it gets to do it best (a la Puerto Rico–sort of).  This seems like an interesting concept, but I didn’t like the way it worked with five players, which was the number in my game.  Not only were there a large number of actions between the ones you placed, but we found it very difficult to guess what actions others would be placing.  There was also a great deal of groupthink, so you’d see four “move” actions in a row, for example.  Basically, with five, the action mechanism seemed to lead to limited control and much accidental assistance and the game suffered as a result.  The ideas in the rest of the game are quite good, though, and the game is well regarded, so I'd like to try this again with 3.  Not only will we all be placing a greater percentage of the actions, but we’ll each be placing 4 of them instead of 3, which should also help with the control issues.

Islas Canarias:  This is a Colovini game that doesn't feel at all like Colovini, but sadly it displeased me as much as most of the rest of his designs.  The basic idea seems reasonable:  each player has an island with its own unique mix of terrain features.  Each turn, you can play a card which lists the rules for building a house of a specific color.  First choice might be next to a river, second choice might be next to a blue house, and so on.  So you have some choice about how you populate your island, which is fine.  But then you each contribute a card to the incoming “ship” and these also get built, sometimes in what seems very arbitrary ways.  Additionally, advancement in this game is often punished, as a set of pirates attack the players who have the most number of houses of a certain color (and who very well may not be winning the game).  The whole thing became more and more random the longer we played (which, unfortunately, was quite a while) and we were all happy when it was over.  I do like a few of Colovini’s smaller games (like Corsari), but for the most part, his tastes and mine are not well aligned at all.  Thus, avoiding Leo is usually my best course of action.

Categories: Game News

A Manual of Thievery

Fantasy Flight Games - Thu, 07/29/2010 - 5:50pm

The rules for Cadwallon: City of Thieves are now online

Welcome to Cadwallon, a city of vagabonds and outlaws of every kind. Your tiny gang has been chosen to relieve the fat merchants of the city from a portion of their “excess” wealth. But there are many factions within the Guild, and yours is not the only band working in the district tonight! In fact, your...

Categories: Game News