Today we put two big box retailers (the boxes to their games are big) into one big box article. Cephalofair was showing up the latest of their upcoming Gloomhaven RPG and they had a small side table showing off their micro (size, not content) game Gloomhaven: Buttons and Bugs. Meanwhile, in the Chip Theory booth, I snapped photos of some of the bling for the upcoming Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era. Play a card game version of an old-school fighting arcade game in Neon Reign, complete with a neon palette. The solo 20 Strong series keeps going strong with three new fairy-tale themed games – Tanglewoods Red, Gold, and White. We end with a brief survey of a few games in the kid-friendly Chip Theory Kids line.

Cephalofair

Gloomhaven: The Role Playing Game

Appearing soon in Gloomhaven: The Role Playing Game Core Rulebook and Gloomhaven: The Role Playing Game Deluxe set, this is an RPG based in the setting of the Gloomhaven and Frosthaven settings. Many familiar classes, enemies, and other story elements appear – often in some expanded form. Gameplay is reminiscent of the boardgames, players manage a hand of dual-use cards that also govern their initiative order. From a birds-eye view, it looks very much like a standard game of Gloomhaven. Where the RPG side of things provides deeper story ideas, backgrounds and maps of areas, players can create characters from scratch rather than use preset ones from the boardgames. The tactical combat remains very similar to the boardgame but layers of RPGs are placed on top. The Core Rulebook contains everything needed for play (for both players and GM) whereas the Deluxe Set comes 

Gloomhaven: Buttons and Bugs

In a “Honey, I shrunk the adventurer” moment, you just walked into the wrong shop in Gloomhaven and have been miniaturized. You are now stuck as a tiny creature until you can convince the proprietor to reverse the curse. A miniature adventure deserves a miniature game, and Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs is a miniaturized (rules, not box & pieces) version of Gloomhaven that is played as a solo game. Even the play time is miniaturized, running about 20 minutes per session.  Everything about the game is slimmed down to make a faster playing game on a smaller footprint. Rather than a whole deck of cards, a player starts with just 4 cards to use. When used, however, they are flipped over to show a new card on the back. That means you better get what you need done in nine rounds. There is no longer a map. Well, there is still a map but it is now shrunken down (by the same magic, perhaps?) to a single card. Monster and hero attack decks have gone away. Instead, dice provide randomness (+,-,x) cross referenced with a table so one can see the possibilities as they start to come up. The entire solo game runs through 20 different scenarios. Both the attack table and a player’s cards can be improved as they level up during the game. For those needing variety, there are a total of six heroes (from previous games) available to use. The game was released last spring and I’ve had some good times with it. In terms of value per gram (or mL), it’s very close to the top of my collection.

Chip Theory Games

The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era

The epic adventure game, The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era is nearly complete and will be fulfilled by the end of the year. (There’s a late pledge option still available until September 6th.) It combines much of Chip Theory’s strengths: A huge game with unique characters, each with different development tree options, tactile high-quality poker chips, and custom dice for tracking abilities and combat, and epic storylines. We didn’t discuss the game in any depth this year other than to point out that it should satisfy gamers with high expectations of the production values. However, I did cover the game in more depth last year, and a summary of that is included below: 

Elder Scrolls: Betrayal is a grand adventure game with players journeying around a large map broken into regions, as is found in the videogame The Elder Scrolls. Each region has its own gazetteer containing backstory, items that can be found in shops, questlines to pursue, etc.. The game also contains Guilds – an important feature in the videogame – and a player’s guild will affect many aspects of the game, particularly which questlines are available in any given area. At the start of the first game session, players pick a region to explore and join a guild. These two will determine how the session will play out. Thus games with different guilds will have a somewhat different feel to them. Players start out by picking a race, class, and a legendary item. Each of the three bring a different ability to the table. Race will provide the basic setup stats and a special ability. However, the intent is not to lock things down into specific race/class pairs; the races, by design, are different but lean more towards generalists so they work fairly well with other choices. Players also start with one Skill which can be upgraded over time. Players can get more skills by finding trainers in their region. Class abilities are actually powered by player misses. The more often they miss the more often they can use their abilities. If a player accomplishes a special class mission, they get to upgrade their class by flipping it to its other side. Players are given a mat with empty slots except for a few starting attributes but the mat is then slowly filled up with upgrades as the game progresses. A typical game goes over the course of three play sessions (2-3 hours if its a faster game), at which time your mat is probably full. Interestingly, a mat can be filled from either side (right or left) so at the start there isn’t an issue but towards the end of the game players must decide just how much they want to emphasize each attribute. Players ramble around the map, occasionally encountering battles. These range from open fights to more involved dungeon or cave delves. At the start of the encounter a hex grid play area is set up, possibly with chained rooms with doors to open. Players spawn on a set point and must accomplish the specific mission. This could be killing all the monsters but might also include finding particular treasure inside. If an encounter gets too hairy, players can bail if needed but will only keep a portion of the awards (experience, etc…) found inside. There are side quests. While the final boss is set, side quests are scaled to the party level to always provide a challenge. One final note, lockpicking was rather infamous in the videogame. It is still present in the boardgame. Players roll 3 dice and attempt to match symbols on the top of a card, but players may spend fatigue (one of several reducible traits) to adjust the dice rolled. If you are familiar with the Cloudspire line of games, TES:BotSE will clock in around the same size and heft – the now “standard” Gloomhaven-style brick.

Neon Reign

Neon Reign is a boardgame that attempts to conjure up the feeling of playing an arcade-style fighting game. It runs about 20 minutes, can handle 1 or 2 players, and should be out in December around PAX Unplugged. In the game, two players are given identical decks of cards and then draw 7 into their hand. These cards represent the joystick and buttons on the arcade machine. The attacking player can play up to three stick/button cards – often seeking to trigger a Combo on their cards. Then the defender plays cards in order to mess up the attack. They may “break” combos by dividing their opponent’s cards into separate piles or play blocks/throws that remove some of the opponent’s cards completely. In the game, players take on the role of unique heroes. These come into play as an attacker accumulates stars as they play cards. Charge up with enough stars and you can pull off special, powerful moves. Cards are an important resource to manage, you need to skip a turn in order to draw back up to 7 cards. The solo version of the game can be played against any of the game’s characters using a special solo deck. The deck will govern when the opponent attacks, heals, recharges shields, or accumulates stars.

20 Strong – Tanglewoods

20 Strong is a line of solo card and dice games that use a specific set of 20 six-sided dice. The idea is for gamers to buy a base game using the 20 dice and then they only need to buy new decks to get a completely new game. So far, all the games have a combat theme. There are 17 attack dice of various colors. Each color has a different ratio of “hits” and “misses” on the die but every die has one “critical hit” face. The three other dice are for tracking statistics like player health, strategy rolls, and a “dice return” which governs the rate at which used dice get returned to be used again. Last spring, the first trilogy of games were sent out to crowdfunding backers. I was one of them and found two of them I liked and the other was just OK. Each game came with a few hero cards (with unique powers) and a deck of enemies to conquer – usually requiring a player to roll enough “hits” to banish a monster before it retaliates. Dice used in a combat are then set aside and can only slowly be added back into a player’s pool. The three games primarily differed in how dice were managed (earned and lost), the way enemies were encountered (linearly, braching, etc..) and how the final “boss encounters” ran at the end of a game. Many of the hero cards in each deck are “universal” and can be used when playing in any of the other decks. (The non-universal heroes generally have a close tie-in with the mechanics of that particular deck.)

The newest 20 Strong crowdfunding project, Tanglewoods, ended early July and was focused on three new decks with a fairy tale theme. (All photos are of pre production materials.) The three decks are identified by color: Red (Riding Hood), Gold(ilocks), and (Snow) White. They can even be combined in series to form a campaign game. There are a few overarching features in the Tanglewoods set that are different from the three previous ones. They tend to use currency and have merchants (at the start and/or at locations in the game) that allow players to buy dice (used and banished), items, and upgrade current items. Characters are two-sided and can sometimes flip back and forth between them (Hansel to Gretel, Bo Peep to her Flock, etc…) Instead of a purely card-based progression, the Tanglewoods games have cards set out to form maps that a player will journey through. In Red, the player is trying to get through the maps to arrive at grandma’s cabin in order to eliminate the wolf. Players go to locations where they can fight the wolf’s minions – weakening the strength of the wolf at the final boss battle. The maps have day and night sides with the options on the night side much worse. In Gold, the player is defeating a series of three bears. Players draw cards that add to the map in order to fulfill specific directions. When defeating an enemy, the map flips to the night side. The three bears are not just there for the fighting, a player has to play at the merchant for the “privilege” of adding bears into the encounter deck. This makes the merchant interactions different as you can’t spend all your money on upgrades, those bears have to be bought sometime. White has you progressing through three castles in a quest to meet and defeat the evil stepmother. A castle is actually a grid of opponent cards that a player fights through. A player need to get from an upper corner to the opposite, lower corner in order to get to the next castle in the list. There are lots of things that can go wrong – many keyed off symbols on the cards. Extra opponents might be summoned, cards can be added to the castle, a burglar will steal your gold or one of your dice, wind can come along and exhaust your best die, and there’s even an apple you can find that will flip the map to the other (day/night) side and allow a player to switch two of their stats. Killing monsters actually adds a bit to what you fight at the end of the castle, but your dice are also limited by the number of bad guys in the final fight. In the campaign of all three decks, players gain prizes when completing a deck and special campaign enemies will appear at times. Undefeated campaign enemies will come back around again at the end of the game. The final fight is actually against the friendly merchant and features a two-part fight where your opponent transforms halfway through the game. As for future 20 Strong titles, I seem to recall a few teasers for well-known IPs but I have nothing in my notes so I suspect that news may still be embargoed. At least you know more are planned!

Chip Theory Kids

Chip Theory has recently started a label for games targeted at kids. Their penchant for high quality components means the games came in a robust tin and have magnetic pieces. The first few leaned heavily into puzzle-ish games – Tangram Adventure, Sudoku Forest, Pixel Party, and  Neighborhood Hide & Seek (which uses magnets as part of a sort of hidden location mechanic.) At Gen Con they were showing off a few more games, not in tins, that were much more on the gaming side of things. These are not original games but ones that have been localized in English. Woodland Rush has one player flipping over activity cards, trying to accomplish as many as possible before time runs out. Bear in Mind is a Knizia game but I have to apologize because I don’t have any more specific information. Octo Grabbo has players flipping a seashell and then rolling a die to find out what special pieces they will be fighting over using the chopsticks provided in the game. It reminds me a bit of Chopstick Dexterity MegaChallenge 3000 – which is a good thing. I think my notes say that the games should be available just in time for Black Friday shopping.