Gone Cardboard News: Money, Gem Dealer – Coming in September; High Society in 2009

FRED Distribution has passed on images for the first titles in its Gryphon Games line: Money and Gem Dealer, both due out in September 2008, and High Society, which is now scheduled for early 2009. Gryphon games will be 6"x8" with a bookshelf look and perhaps 8-10 titles in the series once it’s complete. “They’re not all going to be card games,” says FRED’s Keith Blume. “But they will be family-friendly games that you can get into in five minutes and play in 20-40 minutes. That’s the ballpark we’re shooting for.”

Money, as you might expect, is all about the bills. Blume says that the money cards will be Lost Cities-sized to give you more grip on the geld.

Gem Dealer is a new version of Reiner Knizia’s Attacke, which FX Schmid released in the early 1990s. Instead of colorful battling knights, you now have colorful non-battling gems. Gem cards come in five colors, and the game play resembles a simplifed Taj Mahal (which was published years after Attacke) in that players compete to have the highest bid in a color round after round. You draw cards only when you drop out of a round, so you have to decide when to go all in and when to hold off. Win a round, and you get a gem; collect four out of the five gems, and you win.

Paul Niemeyer is providing the artwork for the first three Gryphon titles, and he’s put an interesting spin on High Society, which has previously been set in the 1920s and modern times. With this edition, we’re apparently stepping back to the mid-1800s; I say apparently because Alphonse Mucha’s work makes an appearance in the stained glass image on one of the treasure cards. Never mind the anachronism, says I – give me more Mucha in games, please! And who wouldn’t want a statue of himself to decorate his lawn?





The disaster tiles return in new forms as well in order to keep all the high mucky-mucks in line and not let their statues go to their head.





The retail prices of these games have yet to be determined. These games have been updated on Gone Cardboard.

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Good news but Urgh! The artwork is… well, all I have to say is that I love my Ravensburger first edition High Society, with the classy “ligne claire” style. Why a new edition with another publisher always means a new artwork? And I think I will not change my Goldsieber Money! either… what a boring cover!! Posted by Javier Barón on May 8, 2008 at 01:20 PM | #

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