Quinns: Oh gods. I may have had too much to drink last night. It’s cool, though. As long as I remain perfectly still I’m pretty sure I can make it through the news without one of my internal organs making a brave attempt to escape my body.
Details are beginning to emerge regarding Keyflower: The Farmers (pictured above), which we haven’t covered, but which is an expansion to Keyflower! Which we also haven’t covered.
It might be a long week.
SO, Keyflower emerged last year to gentle acclaim. Imagine the polite clapping heard during professional golf. Players all represent settlers in virgin territory, and seek to expand a little hex-based village in front of them using their secret supply of workers and resources, stowed behind a little screen.
The unique selling point appears to be a wallet-bustingly quaint theme. Growing a unique town! Advancing through the seasons! Your player screen being designed like a tiny cottage, with a hearth and furniture on the inside! Sooo cuuuute.
EDIT: Proud SU&SD commenters have since informed me that this is a RUSE and the game is incredibly cutthroat. Interesting!
Arriving in just a few months, Keyflower: The Farmers is looking to make the cute side of Keyflower even cuter, with 18 new village tiles, rules for harvesting wheat, and more than 60 wooden sheep, pigs and cows.
You’ll be placing these animals in “fields” of your village. This next bit is pretty cool!
What counts as a field is simply any enclosed patch of grass within your village, adding a lot of nuance to the design of your town without almost any additional rules. Always nice to see this kind of visual design.
Let’s continue the quaint theme. It might make me feel better. Or distract me from the fact that I’m typing with painted nails and can’t remember who did them.
The peerless BoardGameGeek News Blog has posted a ton of video previews from Indiana’s GenCon gaming convention, though this is the one that caught my eye. Lewis & Clark is a gorgeous looking game that earned a lot of praise during the event, and again looks like a combination of a strong theme and intelligent design.
Players are all racing across America, trying to be the first to reach the Pacific coast. You’ll be managing your expedition’s resources and a hand of cards that can all be played for a useful effect, but must be paid for using other cards in your hand.
The rule I really like, though, is that an expedition that’s too laden down with supplies will travel impossibly slowly. So, presumably there’ll be lovely opportunities for players to race ahead, spooking their friends, only to come splashing to a halt further down the river as their expedition faces starvation. Fun!
Next up is a Kickstarter that’s probably a bit too quaint. Let’s see.
Oh, god. Might be sick.
Belle of the Ball is “a fancy schmancy card game” set in “the magical Victorian isle of Ludobel”, which is a sentence that’s quadrupled my hangover in and of itself, full of such whimsical characters as “Capable Canklerack, Pantspantspants Patchpaw, Fffffff Flippinbird, Gigglelack Lololol” ok yep gonna be sick brb
Back! Right, so the the actual game of Belle of the Ball is something that we’d probably be all about on a day where I’m not made up of 60% poison. Players are all competing to throw the perfect party, which means inviting the correct guests as they queue outside the building. Are all the players throwing seperate parties in the same house?
The next part does actually sound pretty fun. You want guests who share interests with your existing guests, with grumpy guests accumulating regret points, though they can be thrown out of your party. HOWEVER, in the right circumstances regret points can be used to make a party even better. I think I’m currently full of regret points, so if Dice Hate Me Games could email me letting me know how this works that’d be great.
Now! Now, here’s a Kickstarter that looks decent, is from a respected publisher and that’s already crushed its funding goal, so you really are just paying for a preorder (and there are still some cheap “Earlybird” pledge levels left!). Templar is a game of panickedly hiding your medieval order’s treasure in an abbey as the king and his spies roam the building.
It’s a unique premise, there’s a nice, big board, great art, and – as always with Kickstarter – I’ve got absolutely no idea whether it’s good or not. Pre-order at your peril. Paul and I do love hiding our treasure together, though, so the warier among you can expect an early SU&SD review.
Enough of these quaint games! TO WAR!
It’s no secret that Paul and I are big fans of S.W.A.T. team-style dungeon crawler Descent, and even bigger fans of the new, beauteous, re-thought 2nd edition.
This week Fantasy Flight announced a new suite of small Lieutenant expansion boxes, allowing you to replace the game’s villains – previously sad, cardboard discs – with the same lovely miniatures used by the game’s heroes and monsters. But wait! It’s not as much of a ripoff as it was in first edition, because now buying a lieutenant pack means new powers and rules for them, as well as the opportunity to crowbar them into other adventures to make the most of your choice.
I might have to spoil myself and buy an Alric Farrow. I mean, the mid-size and large-size expansion boxes Fantasy Flight have been putting out are awesome, but what I like about these is that as the Overlord, you wouldn’t have to tell the players that you’ve bought it. Just at the right moment, pull him out from where you sellotaped the miniature under the table. A SURPRISE PURCHASE! Joy.
AND FINALLY!
An Adventure Time spinoff of Munchkin has been announced. Adventure Time is great! If you haven’t watched it yet, find the time. Munchkin, however, is a gaming institution that fills me with as much dread as Monopoly, so I feel a bit like someone offered me a delicious cheesy pizza covered in buffalo anus.
Ooh, a pizza might be just what I need. Until next week!
