Wednesday evening, I made my way past an indoor train on my way to where the Asmodee press event was not. After gawking at the option to stay in an actual train (they made the cars into hotel rooms) I was carefully directed to where I was supposed to go. I was glad I came as I got a chance to look at several brands in the Asmodee stable all at once. 

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Tree Society

Publisher Next Move was showing off Tree Society. It has players taking fruit cards from a tableau to build up their personal area. Fruit cards are the primary way to score points but they also serve to grant additional powers. Powers include the ability to sell an extra fruit, grab extra fruit from the stock, extra coins, making it cheaper to build cards, or even just flushing the market to get a fresh set of options. Once a player has fruit cards, selling them nets a player coins, the value of which is tracked on a board and is adjusted whenever a fruit is sold. Players can then use coins to purchase and upgrade cards representing one of six different merchant families (only 4 of which are used in each game – thus adding variety.) Each family has their own thematic specialty The merchant family cards have three upgrade “slots” granting increasingly useful actions. The last upgrade causes the card to be flipped over and is worth 1 to 3 “Banners” which are victory points and trigger the end game. Once a player has 6 banners, the game ends after one more round. I’m a sucker for a nice tech tree and I like the idea of juggling the fruit market while also trying to grow one’s capabilities through the merchant upgrades. The game plays 2-4 players and should be out around September 20th.

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle Earth

Repos Production was showing off The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle Earth and it has the dubious prize of being the only game I had previously played. This is a variation of 7 Wonders Duel with fun thematic and mechanistic changes. There is obviously a tableau of overlapping cards. As players draw cards into their hand, the cards underneath are revealed. Players play cards into their own area by paying for them with resources showing in their personal area. Missing resources can be played by spending cards in hand. Anyone familiar with the 7 Wonders line will recognize the color-coded cards. Grey for resources, green for “technology”, blue for “points”, red for “armies”, and gold for “monies.” Resources, money, and technology cards are similar to previous games – with sets of similar green cards earning a technology token that is flipped to gain its ability. The main changes from a typical 7 Wonders game lie in the red and blue cards. Here, the red “army” cards are used to place armies on a simplified map. If one can place an army piece in each area of the board, they win the game. Of course, your opponent is trying the same thing and army pieces can fight to eliminate each other. Rather than building expensive wonders, players can build (expensive) specific LotR locations which grant an immediate bonus but also build a difficult-to-eliminate fortress on the map board. My favorite bit are the blue “Ring” cards. There is a very cool tracking board consisting of a clear, black rider slider on top of a clear, hobbit slider. When a ring is played by the good guys, the bottom slider is moved along the track to represent their journey to Mount Doom. When the bad guys play a ring card, they move their upper Nazgul slider closer to the hobbit player. Thus, when the hobbit moves, the Nazgul moves as well (but doesn’t get closer.) Essentially, the players are both trying to move X spaces but the way the sliders work you get a very cool visual of the hobbits racing to Mount Doom while the Nazgul close in from behind. The game is 2 player only, of course and should release at Essen 2024.

River of Gold

Office Dog was showing off River of Gold, a spiffy looking mix of building and area control. One has to note that the game board includes accents of gold ink – props to the artists. Players take the role of a clan trying to establish themselves along the river through trade and construction. At the end of a player’s turn, they roll a die which will affect their choices for the following turn. The Divine Favor resource provides a small way that players can adjust their die in a pinch. On their turn, players use their die to deliver goods, sail along the “river” on the board, or construct a building. The value will determine how many spaces they move on the river, the location on which to build, or to which customer they deliver goods. Customers grant an ability, either a one time bonus, ongoing power, or endgame scoring. The game comes with a mini expansion that provides each clan with two distinct options for an asymmetric game start.

Forest Shuffle: Alpine

Forest Shuffle: Alpine is a new mountain/arctic expansion to the Forest Shuffle tableau building game by Lookout Games. The new cards are shuffled into the draw deck and then some are removed, as normal. However, after removal the stack will be bigger than without the expansion, running about one more turn than the original game. The expansion adds in a few new things but also expands on others, adjusting some of the weaker strategies of the original game. There are now two new varieties of trees, making it easier to score 8 different trees. A Vulture card helps to expand the “cave” bear strategy of the original. There’s more birds – keying off previous bird cards and a bunch of new butterflies. Several different kinds of butterfly can combo to make an entirely new scoring path. Look for the game to be available at Essen 2024.

Monkey Palace

Monkey Palace by LEGO is a 2-4 player game of collecting building pieces and then using them to construct taller and taller towers on the game board. On their turn, players take an “income” of pieces (of various sizes: single pips, bridges, and extra tall pips) and then construct a tower starting from the very base of the game board. Single pip blocks can just stack up but the bridges obviously need something to span. Later in the game, players can bridge to previously built towers to help them get taller. If you create the tallest (so far) tower you can sometimes earn an additional gold pip to your top – also claiming the monkey card (granting a bonus.) Once building is over, a player will choose a card from the central tableau based on their building height – sometimes providing an instant benefit. Higher towers with arches will allow a player to choose more powerful cards. These are added to a player’s personal tableau – it is this tableau that determines the “income” of pieces a player gets at the start of their turn. These cards are also worth points, with the highest cost cards worth 10 points. However, these high point cards provide no income, so players must take a hit in income if they go with the high point cards. Games last around 45 minutes, ending when the stock of one type of building element runs out.

The Mandalorian Adventures

Released at Gen Con, The Mandalorian Adventures from Unexpected Games is a co-op game for 1-4 players that works through the first season of the popular show progressing through a series of 6 to 7 (replayable) scenarios. The game provides the expected sealed envelopes, of course, and a Guide Deck which contains cards slowly added to the game to unlock new content. The game board used is one of four maps, handily laid out in a mission book (rather than a map you need to put together each time.) Players use an action system triggered by playing cards. Actions include Attacking, moving, gathering Intel (look at enemy decks or move enemies), Planning (draw cards), as well as some mission-specific actions. Drawn cards can be used for one time effects such as causing damage, defending from attacks, or even granting an extra action. Players play their cards onto the stack associated with their chosen action. Cards are worth varying numbers of points – with higher value points typically being more powerful. However, if any given stack reaches a total card value of 5 or more, a bad-guy is typically activated. If the stack is greater than 5, a mission specific really bad thing usually happens. In either case, the stack is then wiped. Thus, a decent chunk of the game has players communicating in order go make sure stacks hit 5, and only 5, at the right times. It could be that a player will intentionally activate a stack because they are not anywhere near that opponent. Players know roughly who the next bad-guy activation will be because the type of enemy coming up is listed on the back of the card. There are 8 different possible characters in the game and players are welcome to use whichever ones they want, with the exception that some scenarios require the presence of one or two specific characters. This may be annoying or welcomed, depending on how much of a Mandalorian-lore stickler you may be.

Survive the Island

Survive the Island is a 2-5 game of take-that player interaction. It is a refresh of the original game with no mechanical changes, now with wooden components but still selling at a $30 price point. The object of the game is to get your people off of a central, sinking island by taking them by boat to one of the four neighboring “safe” islands. On a turn, players move their pieces and then choose one of the island tiles to remove (“sinking” that square.) The tile then grants the player one of several different abilities that can be used to help yourself or (hopefully) mess with the other players – the best of which is often getting to move monsters around on the island. The game comes with a new monster – a Kaiju which can move around on the land but also wade into the water and take out player rafts. The game should already be available in stores.

Bounty Hunters

Bounty Hunters is a lightweight card drafting game by Zygometric. This is a 20 minute (or so) game of card drafting for 2-6 players. As a drafting game it is simultaneous play, as all players draft from a hand of 5 cards at the same time. After playing a card, the hand of 4 is passed and each player draws a new card to bring hands back up to 5 again. Cards come in various colors. Green cards have targets to acquire (you’re a bounty hunter, remember.) The red cards are the bounty hunters, contract cards provide extra points if you capture specific targets. Some, more powerful cards, require a player to spend credits before they can be played. These are gained through cards or any card can be discarded instead of played for two credits. Target cards have three color-coded values that must be exceeded to be captured. The bounty hunter cards, of course, also have the same colored values. If the total value of the bounty hunters exceeds the target values for all three colors, the target is deemed captured. This provides points and will trigger the game end when one player has captured four bounties. In a cruel twist of fate, bounty hunter cards are worth negative points – with more powerful cards worth more negative points. Thus, a player better not start to collect another bounty near the endgame unless they’re sure they’ll have enough time to put down cards to capture it. Bounty Hunters seems to do a nice job of capturing the flavor (maybe even theme) of the Mandalorian shows without going into too much depth, making it a nice introductory game for non-gamer fans of the show.

Star Wars Shatterpoint

Star Wars Shatterpoint by Atomic Mass Games was on display. It is a miniatures-based game that seemed to lean heavily into powerful, individual units rather than fielding squads of troops. It looked to have all the standard miniature trappings – a hex grid, distance markers, lots of dice, cards, etc… As I don’t have room in my life for another miniatures game at the movement and limited time at the press event, I have no other details beyond the photos.

Altered

Altered is a new trading card game by Equinox. Rather than based around combat, players take on the role of a hero and their companion. Starting on either end of a central board, players move their hero and companion towards each other, winning the game when they meet. Each board location has one or more symbols dictating the type of environment (mountains, water, forest.) Players alternate placing cards (spending power) on either the companion or hero sides of the board. These cards will have values for each of the three environments. The sum of these values (by color) are compared to the sum of the values of the opponent. A player needs to exceed the opponent in any of the colors represented by the environment(s) of their hero (or companion if you’re comparing the companion side.) Thus, if a hero is at a mountain/water location, the controlling player can exceed their opponent in either mountain or water values in order to advance. If exceeded, your hero/companion moves forward one space towards the middle. Note, you are only comparing colors for the area in which your piece is located, it may be that both players will “win” a side if they manage to advance in their desired color. I find it intriguing that players are not attacking each other’s characters directly, and may not even be competing for the same value on a given turn! The other interesting mechanic is that every played card lasts for a single turn (there are obviously exceptions or this wouldn’t be a trading card game.) At the end of the turn, cards go to a reserve where they can be played again at a later turn. In fact, some cards have different power costs (or abilities) depending on whether they’re played from one’s hand or from the reserve. A player can only hold two cards in reserve, any extra are removed. Cards played from the reserve are marked such that they cannot go back to the reserve again but are removed entirely.  Each named card can come in different configurations (mechanics and powers.) All with a similar theme, of course, but the costs and spread of abilities may be different. However, the designers have created a card-balancing strategy that will hopefully make every named card “balanced” across its different types. Specific cards have a QR code that can be scanned to give a player access to a bit of lore about that card. However, there is an entire rabbit-hole of additional features. Scanning a specific card will add it to your personal Altered account. You can then keep track of your collection online, but ALSO you can “sell” your virtual card to someone else. You will no longer be able to use that card in tournaments but you keep the physical card! The purchaser can now use that card in tournaments but can also go online and have Equinox (relatively inexpensively) print up a physical copy of that card to put in their physical tournament deck. I like how good that should be for casual players, they could sell “valuable” cards but still keep them to play with their friends. We’ll see how this thing goes.

More photos from the event with little explanations, the event ended before I could scope them out in more detail:

Botanicus by Hans im Glück

Fairy Ring by Repos Production (2-4 players, 40+ min)

Inori by Space Cowboys (2-4 players, 30 min)

More stuff for Arkham Horror the Card Game by Fantasy Flight Games