While most game developers struggle to monetize even three percent of their users through direct payments for virtual currency, new numbers released today by Offerpal Media at the Game Developers Conference show that alternative payment methods enable developers to monetize significantly larger portions of their user base. Derived from a study conducted by comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, as well as from Offerpal’s own network-wide monetization performance, the numbers verify that social gamers are enthusiastic about alternative, or indirect, payment methods as a way to earn virtual currency for free rather than having to pay for it directly.

According to the comScore study, 53.3% of the total respondents reported that they would be “very likely” to complete a marketing action such as filling out a survey, watching a video, shopping at online retailers or signing up for a subscription in order to get points for the games they play on leading social networks. By comparison, only 22.8% of the respondents reported that they would be willing and are able to buy the points using cash payment methods such as credit cards, PayPal, bank transfers or mobile billing.

Now Z-Man Games has added Taktika to its already packed 2010 release schedule. For a description of the game, let’s turn to Mary Prasad’s summary from her 2008 article on flicking games – that is, games in which you flick the pieces with your fingers or thumb to make them move:

This is a two-player game in which each player has an army of 10 brown or natural wood wooden disks. Each army is composed of three different units: four infantry, four archers, and two cavalry, and each unit type moves and “kills” in a different manner. The table top forms the battlefield. The winner is the player who “kills” six of his opponent’s units. Four special disks are included for optional scenarios.

No release date was announced for the new version from Z-Man Games. This game has been added to Gone Cardboard.

A new board game that pits 17th-century Colonists against New England’s Indian tribes is sparking a 21st-century skirmish between the publisher and Native American leaders.

The game, called King Philip’s War, allows players to defeat Colonial or Indian forces in “a momentous example of New England frontier savagery,” says Multi-Man Publishing, a military game company in Millersville, Md.

That quote comes from the opening paragraph of Multiman’s webpage for King Philip’s War, which is designed by John Poniske, and the full paragraph makes clear that the “savagery” took place on both sides of the battle:

King Philip’s War 1675-1676 was a momentous example of New England frontier savagery. A loose coalition of angry tribes inspired by King Philip (the Wampanoag sachem, Metacomet) burned and sacked settlements throughout the colonies of Massachusettes, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and the then separate colony of Plymouth. Ultimately, more than 2600 Colonials were captured or killed. Twelve Colonial settlements were completely destroyed and six more heavily damaged. Boston itself very nearly came under attack. At the same time, countless Indian villages were burned and 6000 Indians were slain or captured, and sold into slavery. In all, 1,200 homes were burned, and vast stores of food destroyed. Metacomet himself was eventually ambushed, beheaded, and quartered.

For more details about King Philip’s War – which is currently in preorder status – visit the Multiman page linked to above.

Breakthrough includes two nine-panel, double-sided gameboards, with the countryside and beach battlefields on one board and the winter and desert battlefields on another. This expansion includes fifteen scenarios from Borg and Jacques “jdRommel” David that have never previously been offered in print, including Operation Crusader, Operation Amherst and two versions of the battle for Sword Beach. (Days of Wonder already provides an online Memoir ‘44 scenario application; search for “breakthrough” to see the scenarios currently available for download.)

To use Breakthrough you need to own a copy of Memoir ‘44. The press release from Days of Wonder notes that “[v]arious expansions, depending on the scenario being played, are highly recommended to fully enjoy this expansion, although players can substitute game pieces if they don’t own a specified expansion.” For a taste of which expansions you could use with Breakthrough, click on the image after the jump.

Days of Wonder expects to release Memoir ‘44: Breakthrough, with rules in English and French, in April 2010 in Europe and in May in North America. This game has been added to Gone Cardboard.

Kakuzu includes the familiar 9x9 playing grid and twenty double-sided number grids that follow the Sudoku pattern of having the numbers 1-9 in each row, column and 3x3 square without any of the numbers repeating. To start the game, all of the numbers are hidden under stones. On a turn, a player draws a number from 1 to 9 from a cloth bag, then reveals the number hiding under a stone. If the player finds the correct number, she keeps the stone and takes another turn; if not, the next player goes. Thus, memory becomes a Sudoku game mechanism alongside logic and deduction.

In addition to this title, Riedel notes that Old Town Solo, Schinderhannes Solo and Ostfriesenlauf Solo will soon be available in tin cases.

Hansa Teutonica—Unassuming Turned Contender

The first nominee is a game that I dismissed out of hand after reading about the game and looking over the components.  It seemed dry, bland, and uninspired.  It appeared to be just like a thousand other games, with nothing to distinguish itself or make it worth further investigation.  Hansa Teutonica was not at the top of just about anyone’s radar going into Essen 2009, but it took the board game community by storm at BGG.CON 2009, and has many clamoring for a reprint now.  While I find the rules and components to be underwhelming, it turns out the game itself is surprisingly good.  I have played the game nine times now (at all player counts from 2 to 5) and Hansa Teutonica is solidly my surprise hit of BGG.CON (just as Planet Steam was my surprise hit of the convention in 2008).

It’s an addictive game.  I find myself always wanting to play again so I can try a different strategy or try to refine the same strategy to get it to work.  You have so much control over the way the game plays out from beginning to end that you feel as if you should be able to accomplish what you set out to accomplish.  And yet there are so many different ways to score points that it’s easy to get distracted during the game by a short-term opportunity, at the expense of your long-term objectives.  The game has a very nice flow to it as the turns move quickly, with each player only adding a few grains of sand to the eventual beach of the game on any given turn.

One of the most remarkable things about Hansa Teutonica is how much interaction there is.  It’s a German-style game with plenty of wooden cubes and an overused theme, but multi-player solitaire this is not.  It’s an in your face, almost viciously contentious battle for control of the various trade routes and city guilds across the board.  The game’s displacement mechanism is reminiscent of, yet superior to, that employed in Endeavor, as it does not punish the defender for getting in the way, but rather rewards them and punishes the attacker, while somehow still retaining a significant incentive to attack.  I’d be remiss not to mention the fantastic use of a technology tree in this game, which provides a delicious tension between developing each skill a little bit for flexibility and control over your board position, versus developing fewer skills more fully for bonus points.

I should also mention that the game scales reasonably well from 2 to 5 players, but I enjoy it best with 3 or 4 players.  I was not particularly fond of the two-player and five-player versions.  The added chaos of 5 players and the extra time between turns made it less enjoyable, although it was still surprisingly not bad.  The variant two-player rules felt too restrictive to me, limiting where you could place, which discards the very free-form nature of the game; plus it adds an extra layer to think about with moving the special marker around, and you really don’t need something extra to think about and plan for in this game.  While the game works with 2 and 5 players, I think the sweet spot is in the middle, and I especially thought the two-player design diverged a bit too much from the regular game for my tastes.

All that being said, this game is bound to disappoint many because expectations are being raised too high during the time it will take for a widespread reprint to become available.  I, and many others at BGG.CON, were pleasantly surprised by Hansa Teutonica because there were no expectations.  Now that the game is being talked up by so many people, I don’t think it will impress people in the same way that I found myself impressed and caught off guard.  Hopefully people can enjoy it for what it is and not set the bar too high in the intervening months, but knowing how much I tend to anticipate unavailable games and how often they disappoint, and having seen the impact of delays on countless prior releases, I have significant trepidation over how well Hansa Teutonica will be received by the wider market.

Imperial 2030—Manipulation through Investment and Warfare: Refined

Imperial is another game that I originally wrote off before trying, writing in my report on Essen ‘06 that it seemed too close a sibling of Antike (which was a game I had tried and did not enjoy), but Imperial ended up being my Game of the Year for 2006.  The middle entry in Mac Gerdts’ rondel trilogy stands head and shoulders above its predecessor and successor.  The combination of the beauty and simplicity of the rondel mechanism, with the brutal machinations of a Europe where the Great Powers are torn in many directions by competing investors vying to manipulate the will of the governments and bend them to their financial purposes, is truly brilliant.

Imperial 2030 seemed like a risky proposition.  Attempting to design a follow-up to a game as well-received as Imperial seems like a daunting task, given the high standards to which it was bound to be held.  Imperial 2030 not only meets that lofty bar, but possibly exceeds its parent.  After only 3 plays of Imperial 2030, I can’t yet say whether I prefer it to the original, but I can unreservedly say that Gerdts has created a very worthy follow-up to his 2006 Game of the Year.  As a disclaimer, I should say that if you were not a fan of the original Imperial, then it’s unlikely that Imperial 2030 addresses your qualms.  However, if you did enjoy Imperial or admired it with some reservations even, then Imperial 2030 is well worth checking out.

I recommend starting with this video demo by Gerdts at Essen to get an explanation straight from the horse’s mouth.  I’ll summarize the high points for you here.  First, Imperial 2030 is a new map, and who doesn’t love new maps? They’re such a great way to get a new experience without having to learn a whole new set of rules (see, e.g., Age of Steam).  In particular, the new global map reduces the size of home nations so as to reduce the maximum number of factories and include more neutral territories and more water, giving you more territory to fight over and making naval convoys more significant.  Second (and perhaps more importantly), Imperial 2030 revises the rules for advancing extra spaces around the rondel so that it not longer costs a flat 2 million per space, but rather costs 1 plus the nation’s power multiplier.  This provides for a scaling cost that is lower at the beginning of the game (making it more feasible to do so early on) and higher at the end of the game for the high scoring nations (making it more expensive to skip from Taxation to Investor and back to Taxation in two turns).  Those are the principal advantages, but you’ve also got the introduction of the Suez Canal and Panama Canal, along with a new $30 million bond that allows country control to shift later in the game.  There’s truly a plethora of things in Imperial 2030 that make it potentially even superior to its progenitor, while still remaining perfectly true to the spirit of the game.  I hope to have the chance to play both games many more times as they each provide a nearly peerless experience when it comes to gaming.

Last Train to Wensleydale—Wallace Innovates Again

You might want to take my opinions on Martin Wallace’s many game designs with a grain of salt or two because my feelings seem to be inverted from the masses more often than not.  I have been disappointed with many of Wallace’s more recent designs, such as Automobile, Steel Driver, Brass, and After the Flood, so Last Train to Wensleydale is the return to greatness for Martin Wallace for me that Notre Dame was for Alea a few years back.  I’m a huge fan of some of his older designs, such as Liberte, Age of Steam, and Byzantium, and have been looking for a Treefrog game that I could enjoy without much luck until now.

Last Train to Wensleydale is fantastic because it’s a train-themed game that feels very different from most other train-themed games (I avoid using the phrase “train game” because of a mind-boggling level of debate over what qualifies as a “train game").  I enjoy Age of Steam, Railroad Tycoon, and Steam as much or more than the next guy, but it’s nice to have a break from figuring out those six-length deliveries for once.  And Wensleydale is so much more approachable and intuitive than the mind-boggling Chicago Express, another that I enjoy but have trouble wrapping my head around.  This is a game that focuses almost exclusively on its strong suit, which is short-term tactical decisions through the management of five different currencies, all of which can be used for multiple different purposes.  You have to balance your investment cubes (used for buying track and bidding in auctions), white influence (used for track building turn order and eminent domain to kick obstinate farmers out of key territory - I wonder how many other games feature eminent domain), brown influence (used for shipping turn order and purchasing trains), and red & green influence (used for connecting to major cities and selling track).  It’s a very tricky balancing act and you never seem to have enough of one crucial currency at the right time, and a surplus of another type that you don’t need and can’t use.

The game is not without its downsides, including an ugly game board (which is putting it rather mildly), a fiddly setup (add a bunch of small wooden bits to the board, only to have to remove many of them shortly thereafter), an anticlimactic final turn, and one potentially overpowered geographical area of the board (need further plays to evaluate, although the auction should help compensate by driving up the price of being the first with access to this area if everyone is aware).  However, despite all of that, Last Train to Wensleydale is a game that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed playing six times so far and that I look forward to exploring many more times.  I’ve taught the game to a variety of different people and have seen reactions across the spectrum.  As a result, I don’t think it’s a game for everyone as it’s somewhat quirky and kind of an odd ball game (what else could you expect from a game ostensibly about mango papaya cheese).  But if you’re looking for something a bit different and you enjoy some of Wallace’s quirky designs then be sure to check out Wensleydale.

Mr. Jack in New York—Subterfuge and Guile: Refined

2010 was apparently a year for successful follow-up games.  Like Imperial 2030 above, Mr. Jack in New York is another fantastic sequel vying for Game of the Year.  However, as with my caveat above, Mr. Jack in New York is an excellent stand-alone game that meets or exceeds the high bar set by its predecessor, but it doesn’t change enough to make it something you’re likely to enjoy if you didn’t enjoy the original Mr. Jack.  Having played the original Mr. Jack 49 times, I can say I’m a big fan of this Cathala-Maublanc team effort (not to mention the fantastic artwork of Pierre Lechevalier, who has thankfully returned for another round across the Atlantic).  I’ve had the chance now to play the sequel 5 times and I am fairly certain that it is a very worthy successor.

It’s clear that Cathala and Maublanc have learned a lot about the game system in the intervening 3 years since Mr. Jack was released.  They have tweaked that system just enough to create a stand-alone game worth owning, while leaving it still true to the original.  Mr. Jack in New York offers a new board and 8 new characters with all new special abilities (although some are especially reminiscent of special abilities in the original game).  The most striking thing about the new board and gameplay is that it is much more open.  There are fewer buildings and gaslights obstructing your path at the outset because the players build them over the course of the game with the new characters’ special abilities.  The game is much more dynamic than the original.  Where Mr. Jack feels static, Mr. Jack in New York feels fluid.  I don’t have sufficient experience with the latter yet to say for certain that it’s definitely an improvement, but I get that sense from my initial plays and I trust that the designers have learned more about the game system since its release (and particularly given their work on the excellent Mr. Jack Extension).  While this is not a game for people who didn’t enjoy the original (unless you simply had small nitpicks), for fans of the original, this is proving to translate remarkably well in its journey across the pond.

And The Winner Is...

Stronghold!  Poland caps off the Non-German three-peat, following on the heels of the award going to the Czech Republic and France.  Designer Ignacy Trzewiczek and Publisher Portal take home the top honors for 2009, ten years after the publishing house first opened its doors.

If you don’t know much about Stronghold yet then you should check out this video explanation of the game from the Geekdo booth at Essen 2009.  Or for a more stylized video about the game, check out this dramatic trailer on YouTube.  It’s basically a game about a siege, like Helm’s Deep in Lord of the Rings but without the license, where one side plays the invader and the other plays the defender.  I gather it has rules for playing with more than two players, but like Queen’s Gambit and War of the Ring, I imagine these might be fairly tacked on as the game lends itself to being a two-player duel.

I had read much of the buzz surrounding Stronghold back in October 2009 and been completely unmoved.  It was clearly one of the most highly anticipated games leading up to Essen, right up there with Dungeon Lords and At the Gates of Loyang (incidentally both duds in my opinion), but for some reason Stronghold didn’t appeal to me whatsoever.  Ignacy Trzewiczek’s Game Designer’s Journal on Boardgame News detailing the origin and development of Stronghold did not initially capture my interest in the way it captured the interest of so many other BoardGameGeek users (although revisiting after falling in love with the game has been a treat).  For some inexplicable reason, I was remarkably disinterested in Stronghold before actually trying it out, considering all of the buzz leading up to its release.

Despite all of that, half-way into my first play of Stronghold I was completely hooked.  I realized I was on the edge of my seat, anxiously planning my moves, and eager to see what my opponent would do next.  It was a remarkably tense, exciting, and engaging game.  It’s a highly asymmetric game, with one side playing the Attacker and the other side playing the Defender, and the two sides functioning extremely differently.  For the first game I played as the Defender and it was interesting to see how I was constantly afraid that the Attacker was about to break into the castle, while the Attacker was constantly afraid that I would rebuff him at every rampart.  We were both convinced that the other was winning and we were both nervous wrecks.  I knew from that first game that this has all the makings of a great game!

Stronghold is a fatalistic game about a siege where the Defender is doomed and the Attacker will inevitably breach the castle, so the outcome of the game is not based on whether or not that occurs, but rather based on how much glory each side earns over the course of the siege.  The Attacker begins the game with 10 glory points, but must give the Defender 1 glory point at the end of each turn in which he or she fails to breach the castle.  The Attacker can earn extra glory points by completing certain defined “glorious deeds.” The Defender begins the game with 4 glory points, which the Defender can give up in order to gain various one-time special abilities.  The game ends once the Attacker finally breaks into the castle, which leads to a few final points being awarded, and the winner being the person who has the most points.  While the Attacker will ultimately “win” the siege by breaking into the castle and the Defender’s troops are doomed, the game is nevertheless exciting and engaging.  If the Defender can hold out for enough turns, then he or she will earn enough glory to win the game.  This focus on lasting enough turns while the opponent is hurrying to breach the castle is the definition of tense.  It is truly a nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat affair that makes most other games look tame and dull by comparison.

The mechanics of Stronghold are very clever.  There are 6 phases in each turn: Supplies, Machines, Equipment, Training, Rituals, and Dispatch.  Each phase is represented by a card.  The Supplies and Dispatch phases are the same every game so there is one card for each.  The middle four phases can be very different from game to game, and there are five different possible cards for each of those phases.  The Attacker randomly selects two cards out of the five for each of those phases, looks at them, and then picks which one he wants to use for the given game.  The cards show different types of machines and equipment the Attacker can build, different training to undergo and rituals to perform.  This makes each game surprisingly different.  I’ve played Stronghold 10 times and am still seeing brand new game states and item combinations each time.

The second clever mechanic besides the variable phase cards is the hourglasses.  The Attacker draws a random assortment of fourteen units (strength 1, 2, and 3) from a bag each turn, and allocates them to a variety of tasks throughout the phases leading up to Dispatch (where the remaining units are sent marching towards the Defender’s castle walls).  These tasks include things like building catapults, ladders, and banners, or training as archers or artillery men.  For each action that the Attacker takes, the Defender earns an “hourglass” token per unit spent, which the Defender can use for numerous different defensive actions in a variety of the Defender’s buildings: Forge, Workshop, Scout Headquarters, Cathedral, Barracks, and Guard Tower.  For example, the Defender can train or move units, and build cannons or pots of boiling oil.  This means that the Attacker controls the pace and flow of the game, only giving the Defender hourglasses when he consciously decides that doing so is worthwhile, and potentially denying the Defender hourglasses at a critical moment in the game, which effectively paralyzes the Defender.  The Attacker is in the driver’s seat, dictating the terms of the siege, and yet struggling to overcome a defense that initially appears nearly insurmountable.

There is obviously a lot going on in this game, but it all makes sense and fits together remarkably well, which means that despite the game’s significant complexity you don’t need to constantly be referring to the rules.  The game just clicks and works in a way that most games this long and complicated rarely do.

Playing Stronghold always makes me want to play it again.  In fact, I’ve frequently played it twice back to back.  While playing as the Defender in one game, I’m coming up with all sorts of grand plans about how I would play as the Attacker and easily win the game.  Then I try to implement those plans and fail miserably.  This just makes me want to play the game again even more!  I’ll try a strategy focused on siege machines and a feint towards one side of the castle, and then when my plans come crashing down around me, I eagerly want to set the game back up and try again with the same or a different strategy.  It’s an addictive and engrossing experience that is hard to stop thinking about and pondering long after the game has finished and been packed away.  It’s that after-the-fact reflection that transforms a game from great into something truly special and worthy of being Game of the Year.

Honorable Mentions—The Next Five

Limiting myself to just 5 nominees was very difficult, and since it’s fairly arbitrary, I might as well mention another 5 great games from 2009 here.  In another year any of the following five might have garnered a nomination, but it was a competitive field and so these games just missed the cut.

• Campaign Manager 2008 - An excellent addition to my list of Super Fillers for 2, joining the elite ranks of games like Hansa and Through the Desert.  Having only played the game 6 times so far, I don’t know the system or the cards well enough to fully evaluate the game, but I find myself thinking back on the game after it finishes, thinking about things I could have done differently and things I’d like to try in my next game, which is certainly a very good sign.  It’s particularly hard to judge after a few games because you really don’t see much of the game in a single play.  At the beginning of the game players select 15 cards out of 45 possible card to make up their deck for the entire game, and then you play the game itself by cycling through those 15 cards repeatedly (although perhaps the “game itself” is more the selection process upfront than the resolution process).  So you don’t see the majority of the cards in one game or the majority of the possible strategies because ideally you’ve selected cards that work together to form a single cohesive strategy.  There are many possible approaches that I’d like to try out, and hopefully further play will reveal tension between the various approaches that will make the decision-making enjoyably challenging.
• Macao - I was on the fence about Macao after my first play, but with 5 plays under my belt now I find that Macao is growing on me.  The luck of the dice rolling is not insignificant, but it is manageable, and the variety of the cards is very nice.  The number of factors to consider when selecting dice is also more numerous than I originally noticed, including not only quantity and timing, but also pairing up colors and the city quarters.  While Macao is very different from Feld’s two preceding Alea titles - Notre Dame and In the Year of the Dragon - it nonetheless feels very similar.  Fans of Notre Dame and/or In the Year of the Dragon are certainly more likely to feel right at home with Macao.  On its face Macao appears to be a kinder, gentler game than either of those, but underlying that I believe is a nasty engine that ruthlessly hands out negative points to unwary gamers.  The game has prompted many to trot back out the phrase that was used incessantly upon the release of Yspahan a few years back - “it uses dice, but in an interesting/unique/clever way.” Macao has the group collectively roll a handful of multi-colored dice, and then everyone individually selects which three dice they’d like to use.  You then get action points in the color of the die equal to its face value, but don’t receive them until X turns later where X equals the face value of the die.  This is very straightforward in practice because if you choose the red die showing a 2 then you get 2 red action points 2 turns from now, but if you choose the blue die showing a 5 then you get 5 blue action points 5 turns from now.  You need these actions points to build buildings (different color action points build different types of buildings) that give you victory points and money (used for purchasing victory points of course).  You can also use action points to advance on the turn order track (analogous to the Year of the Dragon turn order track), or to purchase chits representing various goods, or to sail your ship throughout Europe to deliver those chits for victory points.  Did you catch that?  You sail your ship throughout Europe.  It doesn’t make any sense.  It didn’t hit me until a fellow player pointed it out, but once she did I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Just look at that board.  You sail around to cities like Marseilles, Amsterdam, and Hamburg, and the space between them is all water. Is this some post-apocalyptic Europe where the entire continent has been flooded except for a few select cities?  I smell a last minute re-theme!  Regardless, as you’ve probably gathered from the general description above, the theme is irrelevant because this is a game about the cleverness of the interlocking mechanics, in the classic Feld mold.  Fortunately the dice rolling doesn’t interfere too much with your planning and decision-making, but rather provides a random element that players need to work around and adapt to.
• Power $truggle (also known as Macht$piele) - It looks like Valley Games chose exceedingly well at Essen this past year when buying the leftover stock of Power $truggle, Stronghold, and Hansa Teutonica for distribution.  None of these were games that I was particularly looking forward to.  In fact, when I saw the Valley Games booth selling these three games at BGG.CON, I wasn’t really tempted to buy any of them.  But over the past 5 months, I’ve happened to have the chance to try each of them one at a time every few months, and I’ve been repeatedly and consistently impressed.  I guess the Valley Games folks have an excellent eye for picking out good designs from the over 500 new games at Essen.  I suppose I’ve learned to trust them on the next game they decide to buy up and distribute, and trust my own instincts a bit less.  Despite garnering the #2 spot on the Fairplay list at Essen, I was largely unfamiliar with this game going in.  A friend purchased the game and taught the game, which is rare since I’m often the one to purchase the games, read the rules, and teach them, but I’m glad someone else discovered this gem for me.  I really enjoyed playing it, am very eagerly looking forward to playing it again, and think it could definitely have been a Top 5 nominee with more plays.  Power $truggle is a highly cynical capitalist game of bribery and backstabbing.  While most games with cheeky tones like this lack the mechanics and framework to actually work, this one is an exception.  A friend of mine named John Brier surprised me by comparing this game to Karl-Heinz Schmiel’s Tribune, but the more I think about it, the more I realize he’s right.  As he says, it’s a lot like Tribune in that you’re trying to complete 4 out of 6 victory conditions, and you’re vying to control various factions, each of which gives you a different special ability.  But as he goes on to explain, unlike Tribune, the action phase in Power $truggle doesn’t consist of boringly collecting numbered cards, but rather has a much more interesting array of options and decision-making possibilities.  Unlike Tribune, which I also found to be a surprising disappointment from such a great designer, Power $truggle was a joy to play.  The comparison is to say that despite the game’s similarities, where Tribune is flawed, Power $truggle is solid.  Part of what makes Power $truggle better is its thematic integration, with the event cards, available actions, and departments fitting well into the overall narrative of the game.  Beyond that though, the game also excels due to the well-tailored array of options during the action phase of the game, which is just wide enough to give you a feeling of openness and the ability to creatively devise and implement a long-term strategy, and implement it with a variety of short-term tactical possibilities, without feeling too overwhelmingly broad.  It’s hard to get that action phase menu just right; many games make the menu too expansive while others make it too confining, but Power $truggle nicely manages to find the Goldilocks equilibrium.
• Shipyard - Those Czechs sure know how to make board games!  I’m a fan of Rondels (e.g., Imperial) and this has 5 of them!  The more the merrier.  You have so many balls in the air to keep track of during this game, but it still manages to move at a decent pace (because of the Rondels). It’s a game that is complex and long on one level, but remarkably simple on another level.  As in any Rondel game, each turn is a simple matter of selecting one out of a few possible spaces and then executing a fairly straightforward action.  It’s only the sum of your many turns that weave an intricate tapestry of moves and alternative possible paths.  There are so many roads not taken in a game like this that you can easily ponder what you could have done differently for a long time after the game is packed up and back on the shelf.
• Tobago - Refreshingly unique and original, plus fantastic components and family friendly.  The treasure distribution rules in particular were very neat.  When I first heard about Tobago it was described to me as a deduction game that has the potential to win the Spiel des Jahres, which made me very disinterested because I neither like deduction games nor SdJ contenders generally.  Fortunately I gave Tobago a try and discovered that it’s certainly not a deduction game whatsoever, and while it may be an SdJ contender, it’s actually clever and fun (which may disqualify it from SdJ contention).  Tobago is a game where you take turns playing cards to narrow down where various treasures can be located on an island (e.g., within two spaces of a palm tree or not in a forest) or moving your vehicle around to pick up a treasure or amulet (used for getting an extra turn or avoiding the effects of a cursed treasure).  It’s a joint effort in a way to narrow down the location of the various treasures, but there’s no deduction in the game because you’re not determining a pre-existing location, but rather creating the location yourselves by playing cards that further circumscribe the possible locations.  Once the treasure is ultimately picked up, you deal out a number of treasure cards (ranging in value from 2 to 6) equal to the number cards used to determine the treasure’s location, plus two.  Each player gets to look at a number of cards equal to their contribution to determining the treasure’s location (plus 1 for the person who picked up the treasure), and then all treasure cards are shuffled (including 1 card that no one got to look at).  Treasure cards are publicly revealed one at a time and offered to the latest contributor first, moving up the chain. Each player can take one treasure card per contribution, and given your limited secret information, you have some idea what the value of the possible treasure cards will be.  You may have also seen a “curse” card, which terminates treasure distribution when revealed, so you’ll want to take whatever is available and run for the hills if you know a curse is coming.  It’s a push-your-luck system that somewhat rewards greater and later contributions, but has enough of a random element to keep it light and family friendly.  The beauty of the game components definitely contributes to the experience in no small way, but the mechanics alone are also worth admiring.

That wraps up another great year of games.  2009 proved once and for all that the German monopoly on good board game design is over.  The Czech Republic, France, and Poland have seen to that, along with many other countries around the world that are delivering solid designs these days.  Regardless of where it happens to be from though, Stronghold simply excels and richly deserves recognition as 2009’s best game.  It was a year where many hopes were dashed with numerous top game prospects failing to live up to expectations, but you’d never know it looking at this list of ten.  If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that I shouldn’t be too quick to trust my instincts about a game before trying it because I’m a surprisingly poor judge of what I’m going to enjoy and what I’m going to dislike until I actually have the chance to sit down with a game and experience it for myself.  I’ll certainly remind myself to keep an open mind and try as many possible new releases to see what really works in practice, not just on paper (or the screen).  Rather than trying to judge what games are worth trying from just reading about them, perhaps I’ll let others like Valley Games sift through all of the chaff to find the wheat, or the noise to find the signal if you prefer.  With that being said and having tried most of the notable releases from the past year, these are the ten games that I think mark 2009 as another in a long line of wonderful years for gaming.

Sean D. MacDonald has followed a similar path with his trick-taking game The Crow & The Pitcher, the theme of which comes from a fable attributed to Aesop in which a thirsty crow fills a pitcher with pebbles one by one until the water in the pitcher rises high enough that the crow can drink. (3-4 players, ages 12+, 30-40 minutes, $15)

In MacDonald’s game, the card deck consists of 27 stone cards (nine each in three colors), 9 drought cards, and 12 pitcher cards; the stone and drought cards are shuffled together and dealt evenly to each player. The game lasts nine or twelve rounds depending on the number of players, with a new pitcher card being revealed each round. The lead player plays a card, and the other players must follow suit, if possible. Add the stone cards of the suit led, disregarding those equal or higher than the value of the pitcher. If the sum of those cards equals or tops the value of the pitcher, the player with the highest valued stone card takes the trick; if the sum doesn’t “fill the pitcher,” then the player with the lowest valued stone card takes both the trick and the pitcher.

Once a player breaks the drought suit by playing one, drought cards can be led on a trick, with the highest drought “winning” the trick. Once the round ends, player total their points, with stone cards being worth 1-3 points (with lower values worth more than high ones), drought cards being worth negative points, and pitchers worth -5 points. Thus, if you contribute the least to filling a pitcher, then you’re punished by taking home the pitcher.

MacDonald is taking preorders for The Crow & The Pitcher through his own NoMADS Games on a standalone website, which includes preliminary rules for the game. (I say “preliminary” because a number of questions about what to do in certain circumstances aren’t answered. Presumably those few details will be clarified prior to the game’s release.)

Each player has a fleet of nine ships, with three each of small, medium and large ships worth 1, 2 or 3 points when captured. Players start the game with their fleets in opposite corners, with the ships face-down to show that they are shielded. On a turn, you can either unshield a ship (by placing it face-up) or move an unshielded ship in the direction it faces. After moving, you reorient the ship or shield it.

You destroy an opponent’s ship by landing on it, but you can destroy a shielded ship only if it’s smaller than your attacking vessel. Of course if you plop a ship down where it can attack the enemy once it unshields itself, then you’ve pinned that piece. Destroy eight points of ships to win the game. Complete rules are more pics are located on the Star Fleet Scramble page on the nestorgames website.

As further evidence of the game’s imminent release, in February 2010 NG International posted the ten scenarios included in the game, along with the dates and locations of these French and British conflicts and a download (PDF) of the first scenario, “Battle of Maida.”

Now in mid-March, NG has released the sixth scenario, “The Road to Namur.” You’ll need Adobe Flash Player in order to view this scenario, which is posted online instead of available as a download.

1. Camel Drive, by Hans Reinhard Gottwald
   
2. Die Staufer, by multiple Hippodice finalist Andreas Steding
3. Midgard Marauders, by Yort Watson

• Archipelago, by Brett J. Gilbert
• Babylonische Träume, by Monika Lehmann & Dr. Georgios Nomikós
• CALC-IT by Jörg Domberger
• Jukers, by Brett J. Gilbert
• Monster, by Tobias Thulke
• Takla Makan, by Bernd Eisenstein

Given that a number of the winners and finalists have self-published in the past – Steding, Eisenstein, Glumpler, Risthaus – and given the strong representation of established German publishers in the jury – Ulrich Blennemann (Phalanx Games), André Bronswijk (Pegasus Spiele), Moritz Brunnhofer (Hans im Glück), Stefan Brück(Ravensburger/alea), Peter Eggert (Eggertspiele), Thorsten Gimmler (Schmidt Spiele), Wieland Herold (Jury “Spiel des Jahres"), Uwe Mölter (Amigo), Walter Scholz (Zoch) – don’t be surprised if one or more of these titles appear in print down the road. That’s one of the goals of the competition, after all!

The first game came about after a discussion with her ten-year-old daughter about an elementary school lesson on the slave trade. While her daughter had all the facts memorized, Brathwaite was dismayed to learn that she didn’t grasp what the Middle Passage was like for the Africans who were kidnapped and shipped across the Atlantic. So she did what any game designer worth her salt would do: She made a game out of it.

Brathwaite assembled a collection of tiny wooden figures, then had her daughter group them into “families.” After her daughter was finished, she picked them up by the handful and placed them on a makeshift boat. Her daughter was confused: Why would she take the parents but leave the baby? Why wouldn’t brothers stay with their sisters? “No one wants to go,” Brathwaite explained. That’s when it started to click.

The second game, titled Train, had players moving people tokens from point A to point B – only to discover midgame that they were sending the passengers to Nazi concentration camps.

BGN’s Jeff Allers wrote a bit about Train in his June 2009 Postcard from Berlin, saying: “Although Brathwaite’s idea is well-intentioned, it has not convinced me that it works successfully as a game. Not only would the determinism of the theme (i.e. lack of choices) be frustrating, but I could hardly imagine a player wanting to continue once their role as the Gestapo was clear and the pawns suddenly took on human faces.”

Anthony Burch at Destructoid expressed similar reservations about Train, but his opinion changed after attending a talk by Brathwaite, as he describes in a March 2010 article. An excerpt:

After figuring out where the trains are going, you can choose to stop playing or, as some players did, try to actually rebel against the rules and sabotage the game by intentionally trying to draw derail cards....

Brathwaite briefly relayed an anecdote wherein a player reached the end of the board, found out where she was going, and then went back and started loading another train without saying anything. When asked what she was doing, and if she understood what was going on, she responded that she did – she just assumed that she was playing as a conductor or something, and that he probably had kids to feed, so why not just keep going?

From later in the piece:

As described by Brathwaite, the act of play didn’t lead up to an ultimately bullshit “gotcha” moment like I’d assumed. The Auschwitz revelation is but one aspect of an entire experience designed to make players question the way they follow rules, and how they’ll behave once they understand what’s going on, and how complicit they’re willing to be.

Train‘s spontaneous popularity resulted in a lot of backlash: people have told Brathwaite to stop making games, and that she should be punched in the face for creating Train.

Perhaps part of this reaction came from the fact that Train isn’t “fun,” by any stretch of the imagination. “Why do games have to be fun?” Brathwaite asked. Schindler’s List isn’t fun. “No other medium is like, oh, it’s gotta be fun.”

Read the entire article for a compelling description of Brathwaite’s unfamiliar approach to what a game can be.

Rattus is themed around the Black Death, with player cubes dying off again and again as the plague travels throughout Eurasia. One face-down rat token starts on each region of the board. On a turn, a player adds one or more cubes to one region, with the upper limit of new arrivals being the number of rats in the area; optionally takes one of the six special characters; optionally uses the powers of any characters he holds; then moves the plague figure to a new region of the board, most likely spreading more rats along the way.

If the plague figure – being the personification of death – stands on a region that contains both rat tokens and player cubes, the rat tokens are revealed one by one. Each rat token has a limit value showing the number of cubes (1-6) that trigger an outbreak and symbols that show who dies in the event of an outbreak. Those symbols are M (meaning the player who has the most cubes), A (meaning all players) and the six symbols that represent the special characters; if you hold the special character shown on the token – or have the most cubes in the event of an M, or exist at all with an A – you lose one cube for each matching symbol. If rats and cubes remain in the same area, you keep revealing rats until one group or the other dies off. Whoever has the most people on board at game’s end wins and gets to bury the dead.

No info on a release date from Z-Man at this time. This game has been added to Gone Cardboard.

The online version of Web of Power – which is turn-based and not real-time – was implemented by MaBi, the programmer behind the online gaming site MaBiWeb and the online versions of Schacht’s Hansa, Patrizier and China. The English rules are available on Schacht’s site for those not familiar with the game.

In December 2009, Struijf appeared in Google’s New York office to give a 30-minute talk that he dubbed “a creative journey” which covered the game’s three-year-long development cycle. Well, the YouTube description says “30 minutes,” but the video actually lasts just over an hour. What is Google learning from game designers? Take a listen to find out…

Glory to Rome needs playing card decks which take a few months to produce, especially as we weren’t happy with the company we used last time around and so are looking for a new printer.

and

Iello is not publishing a version of Glory to Rome. Our understanding is that the game in question may share some of the same mechanics, but that is true of many games, and we wish Carl Chudyk the best of luck with the project.

As I noted in the original news item, “Iello rep Patrice says that the publisher is working on a new version of the game with a different title ... and will address the presence of somewhat more imbalanced cards in the most recent version of the game to increase the strategic potential of game play.”

Carter also noted on BoardGameGeek that CGF’s version of Zombie in My Pocket should be available again “in a few weeks” as the company needs only to print rulebooks in order to assemble the games.

These games have been updated on Gone Cardboard.

To start with the fresh blood, Railways of the World: The Card Game – designed by James Eastham and Steve Ellis – streamlines the game play of the company’s Railways of the World by putting everything on cards and putting those cards in player’s hands. (2-4 players, ages 8+, 30-60 minutes, $35) Starting from a central pentagonal city board, players use track and city cards to build a railroad network and deliver goods, upgrading their engines as needed in order to get goods where they need to go. The game includes two sets of rules, one for families and another for experienced players (who may or may not be part of the same family).

Fred expects to debut Railways of the World: The Card Game at the Origins Game Fair in June 2010. For a better idea of the game play, check out the two sides of the player aid reprinted below:

As for the new editions of old games, Glenn Drover’s Railways of Europe should be available before the end of March 2010. This item is a straight reprint of the 2008 release Rails of Europe – an expansion for Railroad Tycoon / Railways of the World – with the name change being the only difference between the two. (2-5 players, ages 13+, 90-120 minutes, $35)

Coming in Q3 2010 is a new edition of Eddie Robbins’ Baltimore and Ohio, which Winsome Games first published in 2009 as part of its annual Essen Set. To use FRED’s description, “It introduces some very clever stock market mechanics and a new streamlined way to show track ownership.” (3-6 players, ages 16+, 180 minutes, $60)

As previously announced on Boardgame News, FRED will debut Richard Launius’ Defenders of the Realm in June 2010 at the Origins Game Fair. Here’s a brief description of the game:

Like Launius’ Arkham Horror, Defenders of the Realm is a cooperative game that pits players against an onslaught of outside forces. In this fantasy world, with artwork by Larry Elmore, players take on the role of one of the Realm’s eight heroes, such as an eagle rider, a rogue, a sorceror or a paladin. To win the game you must defeat the four Generals who are leading armies against your stronghold of Monarch City. If one General makes it to Monarch City – or any five minions inhabit the area – all players lose the game. You can also lose if one General brings its entire army onto the board or if the enemies can taint your homeland to a certain degree.

For more details on the game play of Defenders of the Realm, head to this Feb. 2010 news item on BGN. I plan to post more images from the game in the near future. (1-4 players, ages 13+, 90 minutes, $75)

The second edition of Xavier Georges’ Carson City, which FRED is handling with original Dutch publisher QWG, should be in U.S. stores before the end of March 2010. (2-5 players, ages 13+, 90 minutes, $60)

Other games on the way from FRED, with little info other than titles for now, are Glenn Drover’s Ages of Rome, Charon, Inc. and Bridgetown Races, a Carey Grayson design which is described by FRED as “a tactical racing game where players try to cross all eight bridges first using eight different forms of transportation.” Here’s a pic of the prototype for those who want to start speculating about the details of game play.

These games have been updated on Gone Cardboard.

Always on the lookout for games of similar ilk, I was intrigued to hear of a new game from Conquest Gaming LLC: the recently released, medieval-themed wargame Warlords of Europe. (2-4 players, ages 9+, 180-240 minutes) The game features a theme untouched by the Gamemaster series, with excellent production values and what looks to be interesting and unique game play. To find out more about the game, I got in contact with designers Russ Rupe, Ken Griffin and Kyle Battle. Here’s what they said:

Ryan: Tell me about the history of Conquest Gaming. Warlords of Europe is your first professionally produced title after self-publishing all of your earlier games. Why did you decide to make the next step?

Ken: The inception of Conquest Gaming occurred in 1997 during a conversation that Kyle and I had one night after gaming. We had been gaming buddies for a couple of years and during a discussion we both realized that each of us had the desire to create our own games in general, and a medieval combat game in specific. Thus was born Warlords of Europe. Kyle and I decided to start a company and shortly after invited Russ to become a full partner. It was through this synergistic partnership that Conquest Gaming was created.

In Game Trade Magazine #116, we wrote an article – reprinted on our website – that more fully describes how Warlords created Conquest, not the other way around. While we knew we could have published Warlords as an expansion to Samurai Swords, Warlords was so good that we decided to wait until we could do it right. Doing it right took a long time, a lot of money, and a monumental effort. We believe Warlords is done right, and was worth the wait.

Ryan: You’ve noted that Conquest Gaming design team are big fans of the Gamemaster series from Milton Bradley. Warlords of Europe is published in that same vein, correct? What similarities does Warlords of Europe share with the Gamemaster series that will perk the interest of fans of those games?

Ken: I grew up in the 1960’s and 1970’s playing Risk and collecting military miniatures. The Gamemaster series was the next evolutionary step after Risk. What was so cool about Axis and Allies, Shogun, Fortress America, and Conquest of the Empire was the fact that it gave playing with miniatures a purpose: Achieve victory in a game using the toy soldiers. How awesome is that!!! They combined the passion of playing games with collecting miniatures. It is in that same vein that Warlords of Europe

Russ: Warlords uses a few mechanics that will be familiar to MB’s GM fans: area movement with some units having a range of two and “blitzing” capability; combat rounds with lots of dice rolling; territories providing economic value. That said, there are a number of innovations that we feel GM fans will appreciate.

Ryan: Obviously, your goal is to go beyond a simple rehash of previous MB Gamemaster games. How does Warlords of Europe differ from any of the other MB Gamemaster titles to create an unique game experience?

Russ: Here are a few of our specific innovations for Warlords:

• We tossed out the script. (Why must Germany kill Russia every game?)
• Terrain type is tied to several things like economic value, the type of dice a defender rolls, and the number of peasants to subjugate.
• In the starting setup, you begin with a castle and a small army and go through a brief, almost “exploration” phase of the game fighting peasants as you build yourself up and maneuver your forces into strategic positions before you come into conflict with other players.
• Three types of event cards which you are given/buy/earn that play a significant role in the game.
• Unit quantity limits. (It was expensive to outfit a knight, and not yet considered proper to outfit the bulk of your army as archers.
• Finally, the castles are a recruitment point and an economic center, and they form a defensive bastion.

Ryan: What if someone is a fan of another genre of board game? How would this release potentially appeal to them? Why is it worth a broader audience taking a look at Warlords of Europe?

Ken: When playing Warlords you will find excitement, tension, conflict, resolution, and the thrill of winning just as you experience with other games regardless of their genre.

Russ: What Ken said. And for the more Euro-gamer crowd – I’m one of them as well – although Warlords has a lot of dice rolling, a lot of event cards, a longer play time, and some degree of player elimination, I would encourage you to give it a try anyway. I recently played a game with a few Euro-centric gamers, and we finished in just over four hours with teaching, which is only two Euro-games long. We had two players on the brink of elimination but not out yet, and lucky dice/cards are never a substitute for solid strategy.

Ryan: The playing pieces look very solid, with a high “toy” factor. Tell me about that.

Ken: Going back to what I said about combining miniatures with the objective of winning a game, certainly high quality game pieces were needed to make that combination work.

Russ: We communicated extensively with the factory on the sculptures. They did a bang-up job making into reality the game pieces that we’ve been imagining for over a decade. The plastic is not as brittle as many games we’ve played, which seem easily breakable, so we believe they will be as durable as they are attractive.

Ryan: The first print run of Warlords is limited to 2,000 games. What do you feel the prospects are for an expanded print run? And speaking of expansion, is there anything planned to expand the base game to five, six or even seven players?

Kyle: I know 2,000 doesn’t sound like a lot, but actually for our publishing demographic, it’s about right. Many games never see a second print run, so obviously we’re hoping for a high demand for Warlords that we will be excited to meet with additional print runs. We’re off to a great start, selling a ton in the first three weeks.

As for expansions, if Warlords does become a hit – and right now I’m not even sure what that threshold is – we will certainly be ready to expand on Warlords. By design, the game lends itself well to both expansion and extension, and we already have several ideas in the back of our minds. We routinely tested with five and six players, but keeping a reasonable MSRP limited us to a four-player set.

Russ: Regarding new Warlords material, several great ideas came up so late in the development phase that we had to go with the game as playtested for over a decade rather than potentially mess it up with inadequately tested content.

Ryan: Fast forward one year, and assume Warlords of Europe is the sleeper success of 2010. What can we expect to see next from Conquest Gaming?

Ken: We have been working on games and gaming ideas for twelve years, and we are confident we have other games people will enjoy playing as much as we have enjoyed creating them.

Kyle: That would certainly mean we have had another print run of Warlords and are looking seriously at expansions. We also have about a dozen other games in various stages of development with a couple that are essentially ready to publish. The last thing we want is to be a one-hit wonder.

We have an interest in a wide array of topics. Basically if it makes a good wargame we are interested in it – and that covers just about every time period. However, we also have some lighter games, as well as a children’s game we are working on. We would like nothing better than to be able to bring these to gaming tables around the world. Our hope is that people enjoy playing our games as much as we do! If we accomplish that, we will have accomplished our mission.

Russ: If this turns out to be the case, look for three otherwise ordinary guys dancing the happy dance on a street corner outside a gaming convention being held in a city near you.

Whitcher goes on to write, “Besides our usual playtesting, we will have Alex Yeager of Mayfair Games presenting a game design exercise on Friday, and on Saturday Ben Clark of ImagiGrafx will speak on short-run game production for those interested in self-publishing.”

For more information on Protospiel, a history of the event from past attendees, and resources for game designers, visit the Protospiel website.

As it turns out, the final title appearing under the Warfrog label is the two-player game Gettysburg, due out in March 2010. (English rules (PDF) for Gettysburg are available on the Warfrog website. Wallace discusses how the game deviates from history in a Jan. 2010 interview with Kris Hall here on BGN.)

In addition to becoming the main name, Treefrog will operate under a different production model than it has since its debut in 2008. Previously each Treefrog game appeared in a limited edition of 1,500 copies with wooden bits, then if interest warranted, Wallace licensed the game to another publisher.

Starting with its 2010-2011 line-up, games from Treefrog will appear in editions of 3,000 copies, with 1,000 of those copies being signed and numbered and having custom-designed wooden components to replace some of the bits found in the “regular” edition of 2,000 copies. Subscribers to the Treefrog line will receive the limited edition copies, which will not be sold in stores, while the regular games will be distributed to stores, with games being reprinted from Treefrog on an as-needed basis. (For cost info on a Treefrog subscription, visit the Warfrog website.)

Age of Industry will include maps of Germany and the U.S. region of New England. Wallace has posted a long description of the game, along with details of how it differs from Brass, on his website, with complete rules to follow once they’re completed.

At the Spiel game convention in October 2010, Wallace will debut London, which covers the history and development of the city from after the Great Fire in 1666 up to about 1900. (3-4 players) Presently Wallace has only a short description of the game on his website, but he went into more detail during his interview with Kris Hall:

As with a lot of games, London is about scoring the most VPs. Players select action tiles and lay them out in a line. At some point a player will choose to “run” his city. He moves from left to right along the row of action tiles he has selected. These allow different actions to be performed to generate money and VPs. Some tiles have an entry cost which must be paid before the action can be performed. If the player cannot pay the entry cost, then he does not perform any more actions. It’s important to make sure that your action tiles are in an efficient order. Tiles are purchased with cubes, which come in three colors and represent different sections of the population. Blue cubes represent business men and tend to be used to buy industry tiles. Purple cubes represent members of the political class and tend to be used to buy tiles that operate in the political sphere. Yellow cubes represent scientists and men of culture and are used to buy tiles linked to these areas.

You have to be careful when you run your city as each cube you have in hand represents somebody who is not employed, which results in taking a poverty point. There is also a map which you get to build on. The number of tiles you can have in your line is limited at first. To be able to extend your line you need to buy land on the board. Land also gives you VPs. I’ve tried to pack as much history into the game as possible, so certain events are represented and there is a degree of progression with the tiles, so that later on poverty can be tackled with sewers and better housing. I’ve even managed to get the underground railway in.

While Wallace announced in 2008 that the five-year plan for Treefrog included a three-player-only game each year, no such game will be part of the 2010-2011 line-up.

The final game in the current Treefrog subscription package is A Few Acres of Snow, due out in March 2011. As with Waterloo and Gettysburg, this title will be a two-player-only wargame, with the focus on the struggle between Britain and France to control much of the territory that today makes up Canada. Once again, Wallace gives a few details about the game in the Hall interview:

My intention is to take the long view rather than focus on the final war. That means I can take a few liberties and allow for the possibility that the French could convince more people to migrate to New France. It is also the case that the armies on both sides were very small compared with European forces. The British finally won at Quebec but it was not guaranteed; previous battles show that the side with the larger force does not always win. What I want to do is somehow connect military operations with economic developments. You will have to wait to see if I’m successful.

While Titania will see release in English from Rio Grande Games at some point in 2010, Drachenherz will not, as Rio Grande’s Jay Tummelson says he is “not likely” to pick up the game. (Canadian publisher Filosofia, on the other hand, has released the game in French as Coeur de Dragon.)

For those curious about the game, here’s an overview: Each player has an identical deck of cards and starts the game with five cards in hand. On a turn, a player plays one or more cards with the same image onto the space on the communal gameboard that shows that image, then she refills her hand to five cards. The gameboard has arrows that indicate which cards trump what, so by playing cards you can possibly claim items already on the board. The third dragon hunter played defeats the dragon, for example – assuming a dragon is present – while the second knight played protects the princess and a third boat collects certain characters who have already done their job and been removed from the board.

I’ve seen comparisons of Drachenherz to Reiner Knizia’s Lost Cities in terms of the games’ simplicity and hand management challenges. Tric Trac has posted a demo video that’s useful for those who speak French or can suss out gamerese.

Flinke Stinker combines memory and racing, with players trying to move their skunks down the path as quickly as possible by using track cards, while avoiding the clothespin-adorned puma that won’t be deterred by your aroma as he chases you. Overtake a fellow skunk, and you can use your natural talents to give them a taste of victory and shoo them backward a few spaces. Reach the final tile first, and you win.

Flinke Stinker should be available in May 2010. The game page on the Zoch website doesn’t include rule downloads at the moment, but Zoch typically makes them available prior to a game appearing for sale.

• Alfredo Nevarez at Thought Hammer for once again donating the funds raised at the BGG.con Midnight Madness drawing, funds that amounted to $400.
• Ted Alspach of Bézier Games, who donated a case of Beer & Pretzels (12 copies) and a case of Rapscallion (30 copies!) – if the word “rapscallion” somehow makes it into modern Army slang, we’ll know who to blame.
• Steve Jones at Blue Panther LLC, who donated a half-dozen games, including Pulling Strings and Duck Duck Boom.
• All of the individual donors of both money and games, of whom I once again forgot to ask permission to use their names in a follow-up post, so I won’t call them out by name in case they wish to remain anonymous.
• All those who renewed their BGN membership during the drive to take advantage of my offer to redirect $10 of each such payment toward Games for Soldiers.
• Dan Yarrington at Myriad Games in Salem, NH for once again handling the order and kicking extra bucks into my account to purchase another eight decent-sized games.

Why did I choose these games? For all sorts of reasons – they’re portable, they involve betting and feature push-your-luck mechanisms, they feature in-your-face combat, they have simple rules, they’re fun. Not every reason applies to every game, except for the last one, of course.

Ideally these packages will help spread the joy of modern games to new players, with the games being passed along from unit to unit until the pieces disintegrate or disappear, with soldiers creating substitute Fits pieces out of pretzels and Giants being permanently sidelined due to a regrettable token-flinging incident. And perhaps a soldier or two will return home and teach games to their friends and family, and some day, randomly, I’ll sit down at a table with one such person and we’ll play a game together. After all, isn’t it a small, small world…

What’s more, the party game Activity – a game nearly two decades old, with fewer than 200 registered owners on BGG – has now sold more than five million copies. That’s an amazing amount of activity going on under the gaming radar!

How do you catch the crooks? When one of your rabbit inspectors lands in a search area, you can turn the two face-down tokens located there face up. Plop another rabbit into a second search area which turns out to have a matching crook, and you can claim the two of them. Depending on the number of players, the first person to capture three or four pairs of crooks wins. (2-4 players, ages 6+, 20 minutes, €15)

Has the recession affected your venture?
There seems to be a growing audience for affordable parlor games. And I remain surprised that it took only seven weeks to network and raise the $20,000 needed to self-publish the game. I pre-sold 500, manufactured 2,500, and have sold over 900, mostly through the website. I’m in a few independent, local stores. The next goal is to find a distributor and get into more retail stores.

As Innes explains on the Anomia Press website, “In the spring of 2009 I started Anomia Press and set out to raise enough money to pay for the first printing of Anomia. I used Facebook, Twitter, email, and this website to appeal to the hundreds of people who had attended play-test sessions [since 2004]. I asked everyone to pre-purchase copies of Anomia to help subsidize the first printing.” In-your-face marketing at its finest.

Oh, and as for how to play the game, here’s a description from the publisher:

Draw a card from the center pile and flip it over. Does the symbol on your card match one on another player’s card? If so, you must quickly face-off with the other player by giving an example of the person, place, or thing on their card before they can do the same for yours. [Categories include restaurants, radio stations and shampoo brands.] If you blurt a correct answer out first, you win their card and drawing continues. Sounds simple, right? Wrong!

Wild cards allow unlike symbols to match, increasing the number of things you must pay attention to. Cascading face-offs can occur when you hand over a lost card revealing a new top card on your play pile.

On a turn, a player rolls eight dice; each die has the numbers 1-5 and a worm, which is worth 5. The player chooses one die, then puts aside all dice with that face. The player then stops or rerolls; in the latter case, the player then chooses a die that doesn’t match any already set aside and sets those dice aside.

This process continues until the player chooses to stop or the player can’t set aside any dice, has set aside all dice without claiming a worm, or has set aside dice totalling less than 21. In the former case, the player claims a worm tile (numbered 21-36) that matches the total of her dice and adds it to the stack in front of her. If her total exactly matches a tile on the top of another player’s stack, she can steal that tile. In the latter three cases, the player loses her turn, along with the top tile of her stack, if any. The game ends when no tiles remain to be claimed, with the player holding the most worms winning.

Heckmeck Barbecue converts the row of tiles into a gameboard, with spaces numbered 23-36. (2-5 players, ages 8+, 20-30 minutes, €20) Each player has ten wooden plate discs, and the dice are now numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, worm and 6, with the worm still worth 5. Game play is roughly the same, with a player rolling dice, setting things aside, and needing a worm. If a player stops voluntarily, she can place a disc on the number on the board matching her total, earning worm tokens at the time, If another player’s token is in the spot, she replaces it with her own, stealing worms from the opponent. If she already has a disc on the spot, she places a second disc to lock in the space, earning worms once again.

If one line extension is a somewhat more complicated version of the original game, then you might expect a second line extension to be simpler – which brings us to Heckmeck Junior. (2-5 players, ages 5+, 15-20 minutes, €9)

This game does away with the dots on the dice, replacing them with hamburger components; the worms are still present, but on two sides of the dice this time. Game play is the same as the base game, with players setting aside all of the same type of ingredient. All sides of the dice have one item on them, except for the side with two buns. When a player stops, whether voluntarily or because she rolls items already set aside, she sums the burger elements on the dice, then claims a tile matching this number. Players can still steal tiles from opponents, but they no longer lose a tile when they bust. Complete rules in English, German, French and Italian on the Zoch website.

Small World, Ca$h’n Gun$ and Time’s Up are also mentioned in the article, and Bruno Faidutti, Tric Trac’s Monsieur Phal, and Jungle Speed co-designer Thomas Vuarchex are all quoted. The article mentions that Jungle Speed, which was introduced in 1996, has annual sales of 200,000.

(The “golden arches over Catan“ image comes from Filosofia, which publishes the French edition of Settlers for Canada and Europe. You can download this article from a news link on the Filosofia website.)

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