Paul: Push, PUSH. I can see the head! We’re almost there. Any moment now!
Quinns: AAAAAA at last! After so long! Is it a girl? Is it a boy?
Paul: IT’S NEWS.
Quinns: I… hmmm. Oh! A new version of the Avalon Hill cool-as-cucumber classic History of the World? What a fascinating way to start the week!
Quinns: Good morning sweet shut-upsters! Today is the start of a very solitary couple of weeks on the site. Paul and Matt have gone overseas to run our board game lounge at the yearly Game Developer’s Conference, and then they’re making a top-secret visit to a board game publisher. Like a lighthouse keeper I will be maintaining a lonely vigil. And maybe talking to myself and going a bit mad. We’ll see.
Speaking of maddening things, our top story this week is the above header image that was tweeted by BoardGameGeek. Looks boring, eh? WELL, you’re actually looking at a prototype of Monolith’s next project, Batman: The Board Game, and judging from the dice and stamina crystals it’ll be an evolution of Conan, a miniatures game that this site loved to pieces.
This adaptation makes perfect sense! Conan’s brutal choreography and breathless heroism would be perfect for Batman. But there’s a problem that has me finding this announcement to be bittersweet.
Monolith’s Kickstarters for Conan ($3.3 million) and then Mythic Battles ($2.6 million) have shown that they know how to run an exciting Kickstarter. Clearly, the page for Batman is going to make millions of dollars. But in addition to the sexism that’s run across their games like an oil spill, in this pundit’s opinion Monolith’s been botching the post-release support that I’ve come to expect from expensive games.