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. Read more »

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."

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. Read more »

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.

Publisher: Lookout Games — October 2010

Featured at: Spiel 2010

Lookout Games' Railroad Barons – previously listed on BGN as Konzern – is an 18xx card game from designer Helmut Ohley, who is co-designer of another 2010 release from Lookout (Poseidon) and whose design history has consisted solely of 18xx titles to date. Railroad Barons breaks from the expected 18xx model by (1) playing in 45 minutes, (2) being for only two players, and (3) being a card game, although Lookout's Hanno Girke says that it plays much more like a board game. Here's a translated description of the game blurb from Lookout:

Railroad Barons belongs to the family of 18xx games, but raised to the meta-level. Individual companies are no longer the focus, with the businessmen trying to add more and more new railways to their portfolios – which is why Railroad Barons comes without a large game board and route tiles.

Girke says that Railroad Barons will be completely bilingual in English and German.

Publisher: Aqua Games — August 2010

Featured at: Spiel 2010

It must be something in the water – or rather, the wine. At Spiel 2010, What's Your Game? will release Vinhos (described here), eggertspiele will release Grand Cru (described here), and new Finnish publisher Aqua Games will be on hand with its already available debut game, Toscana. Toscana focuses more on market manipulation than the cultivation and processing of grapes, and the player with the most money wins in the end.

Each player starts the game with two boxes of red wine and two boxes of water in storage, two winetasting tiles in hand, and one worker in the fields. The game lasts seven rounds, with players taking three actions in each round. The possible actions are: Read more »