Dire Wolf was generating a lot of buzz about their new bag-building game, Invincible: The Hero-Building Game, based on the comic and Amazon series.* The procedurally generated Clank! Catacombs gets a Lairs and Lost Chambers expansion. Finally, the cute little denizens of Everdell reappear in the 2-player and/or solo Everdell Duo, which even features a co-op campaign. Oh, and I finally took a look at baby Everdell – My Lil Everdell.
Dire Wolf Digital
Invincible: The Hero-Building Game
Invincible: The Hero-Building Game is a cooperative bag-builder for 2 to 4 players (There’s a solo mode where you control two characters with one hand of cards.) Each player takes on the role of one of four teenage heroes from the Invincible comic (now also an Amazon cartoon.) The young adult superhero theme of the comics comes through in the game as players’ heroes grow in power throughout the game. Players begin the game with just a few powers and then draw cubes from a personal bag three at a time. These cubes are placed onto powers, activating the power when all its spaces are full. There are several colors and, of course, many of the spaces on powers are color-coded. There are six black cubes in the bag that act as any color. After placing their cubes, players may push their luck and continue to draw another set of cubes and place them until they draw a fifth black cube from their bag. That hero then crashes (too much power!) and is taken out of the fight for the round unless another player comes to rescue them. If rescued, the downed player may spend the rest of their drawn cubes but cannot draw any more. If a crashed player is not rescued by the end of the round, they’ll take more damage. Hero-building comes after the power activation phase. Once everyone is done drawing cubes, each completed power earns its owner determination points. These are used to play new powers from one’s hand, giving more interesting and more powerful options in the future. There are also some options to add more colored cubes into one’s bag. Play continues until the scenario is completed either by accomplishing the goals or losing due to the loss of too many bystanders or hero KOs. There are several scenarios in the box that can be played individually or played in sequence to reflect the first season of the Amazon series.
CLANK! Catacombs: Lairs and Lost Chambers
The newest expansion for the CLANK! Catacombs version of the game, Lairs and Lost Chambers adds a bunch of new content that is added en masse to the base game. Entry Passages add requirements to the placement of a room when you enter them. Pit Traps that can force you to take damage and get stuck or discard a card. Trophy items or monsters stick around in the game and help you (or even hurt you!) later on. Lost Chambers get marked by a cube and get some sort of effect. Finally, the Lairs cards – these mostly contain monsters which must be defeated in a very specific way (4 swords or 7 skill, for the Sphinx.) Basically, the Lairs and Lost Chambers! Expansion literally expands the game. It isn’t modular because the content tends to key off of each other. Thus, the game will run a bit longer and have some more complications – making the expansion best for more experienced gamers looking to change things up rather than used to introduce the game.
Acquisitions Incorporated was a huge, early influence on the idea of watching people sitting around playing Dungeons & Dragons as a form of entertainment. When the main players were starting a collaboration with Dire Wolf to make an “Acq Inc” version of the game it quickly morphed into a Legacy game and its release was touted by fans as one of (if not the) best Legacy games out there. Through a series of scenarios the main characters of the Acq Inc universe progress through the game, growing with power – but not without a hefty dose of the Acq Inc brand of corporate (and some lowbrow) humor. Recently, interest reached enough of a peak to give the game a second go-round. The new legacy game will, of course, feature more characters from the live play, new villains to defeat, new cards to scratch off and sticker, and even several games in the campaign that are purely cooperative in nature. After a hugely successful crowdfunding campaign the game should be showing up in early 2025.
Starling Games
Everdell Duo
(**Don’t zoom in on the rulebooks if you want to avoid spoilers…)
As its name implies, Everdell Duo is a two-player (or solo) version of the popular worker-placement, resource-gathering, tableau-building, cute-animal game of Everdell. Players are still playing their cute furry animals to gather resources in the forest and playing cards in their own tableau to build up their fuzzy empire. Everdell Duo can be played competitively or cooperatively as a one-off game or as part of a 15 part cooperative (replayable) campaign. In the cooperative game, players create their own little empire but are able to share a limited amount of resources. In the non-campaign cooperative mode, players go up against an artificial opponent with the option to try to complete the game satisfying specific conditions, like winning with no green production cards in one’s city. The Kickstarter campaign for Everdell Duo just recently completed, with availability sometime in the spring.
My Lil Everdell
It’s been out awhile but I’m not sure I had a chance to look closely at this kid’s version of a game popular for its theme, production, and gameplay. It retains the worker-placement and tableau-building elements of its big sibling but presents them in a bit more kid-friendly experience. An example of which is the additional cards added that can be given to younger players to give them a bit of a boost against more “seasoned” players. There’s still the core Everdell mechanics here, just scaled to an appropriate kid, or even intro non-gamer level.
Giant Everdell Cards
Do you know Dale someone who is starting to have issues reading the fine print? Everdell has you covered. Get them giant sized cards for the game of Everdell.They also work great for gamers who really dig the cute art…
*Quick age test… do you remember back when there still was a “curse of the superhero-themed boardgame”? We’ve come a long way…
Gen Con 2024 – Dire Wolf Digital, Starling Games
Dire Wolf was generating a lot of buzz about their new bag-building game, Invincible: The Hero-Building Game, based on the comic and Amazon series.* The procedurally generated Clank! Catacombs gets a Lairs and Lost Chambers expansion. Finally, the cute little denizens of Everdell reappear in the 2-player and/or solo Everdell Duo, which even features a co-op campaign. Oh, and I finally took a look at baby Everdell – My Lil Everdell.
Dire Wolf Digital
Invincible: The Hero-Building Game
Invincible: The Hero-Building Game is a cooperative bag-builder for 2 to 4 players (There’s a solo mode where you control two characters with one hand of cards.) Each player takes on the role of one of four teenage heroes from the Invincible comic (now also an Amazon cartoon.) The young adult superhero theme of the comics comes through in the game as players’ heroes grow in power throughout the game. Players begin the game with just a few powers and then draw cubes from a personal bag three at a time. These cubes are placed onto powers, activating the power when all its spaces are full. There are several colors and, of course, many of the spaces on powers are color-coded. There are six black cubes in the bag that act as any color. After placing their cubes, players may push their luck and continue to draw another set of cubes and place them until they draw a fifth black cube from their bag. That hero then crashes (too much power!) and is taken out of the fight for the round unless another player comes to rescue them. If rescued, the downed player may spend the rest of their drawn cubes but cannot draw any more. If a crashed player is not rescued by the end of the round, they’ll take more damage. Hero-building comes after the power activation phase. Once everyone is done drawing cubes, each completed power earns its owner determination points. These are used to play new powers from one’s hand, giving more interesting and more powerful options in the future. There are also some options to add more colored cubes into one’s bag. Play continues until the scenario is completed either by accomplishing the goals or losing due to the loss of too many bystanders or hero KOs. There are several scenarios in the box that can be played individually or played in sequence to reflect the first season of the Amazon series.
CLANK! Catacombs: Lairs and Lost Chambers
The newest expansion for the CLANK! Catacombs version of the game, Lairs and Lost Chambers adds a bunch of new content that is added en masse to the base game. Entry Passages add requirements to the placement of a room when you enter them. Pit Traps that can force you to take damage and get stuck or discard a card. Trophy items or monsters stick around in the game and help you (or even hurt you!) later on. Lost Chambers get marked by a cube and get some sort of effect. Finally, the Lairs cards – these mostly contain monsters which must be defeated in a very specific way (4 swords or 7 skill, for the Sphinx.) Basically, the Lairs and Lost Chambers! Expansion literally expands the game. It isn’t modular because the content tends to key off of each other. Thus, the game will run a bit longer and have some more complications – making the expansion best for more experienced gamers looking to change things up rather than used to introduce the game.
Clank! Legacy 2: Acquisitions Incorporated – Darkest Magic
Acquisitions Incorporated was a huge, early influence on the idea of watching people sitting around playing Dungeons & Dragons as a form of entertainment. When the main players were starting a collaboration with Dire Wolf to make an “Acq Inc” version of the game it quickly morphed into a Legacy game and its release was touted by fans as one of (if not the) best Legacy games out there. Through a series of scenarios the main characters of the Acq Inc universe progress through the game, growing with power – but not without a hefty dose of the Acq Inc brand of corporate (and some lowbrow) humor. Recently, interest reached enough of a peak to give the game a second go-round. The new legacy game will, of course, feature more characters from the live play, new villains to defeat, new cards to scratch off and sticker, and even several games in the campaign that are purely cooperative in nature. After a hugely successful crowdfunding campaign the game should be showing up in early 2025.
Starling Games
Everdell Duo
(**Don’t zoom in on the rulebooks if you want to avoid spoilers…)
As its name implies, Everdell Duo is a two-player (or solo) version of the popular worker-placement, resource-gathering, tableau-building, cute-animal game of Everdell. Players are still playing their cute furry animals to gather resources in the forest and playing cards in their own tableau to build up their fuzzy empire. Everdell Duo can be played competitively or cooperatively as a one-off game or as part of a 15 part cooperative (replayable) campaign. In the cooperative game, players create their own little empire but are able to share a limited amount of resources. In the non-campaign cooperative mode, players go up against an artificial opponent with the option to try to complete the game satisfying specific conditions, like winning with no green production cards in one’s city. The Kickstarter campaign for Everdell Duo just recently completed, with availability sometime in the spring.
My Lil Everdell
It’s been out awhile but I’m not sure I had a chance to look closely at this kid’s version of a game popular for its theme, production, and gameplay. It retains the worker-placement and tableau-building elements of its big sibling but presents them in a bit more kid-friendly experience. An example of which is the additional cards added that can be given to younger players to give them a bit of a boost against more “seasoned” players. There’s still the core Everdell mechanics here, just scaled to an appropriate kid, or even intro non-gamer level.
Giant Everdell Cards
Do you know
Dalesomeone who is starting to have issues reading the fine print? Everdell has you covered. Get them giant sized cards for the game of Everdell.They also work great for gamers who really dig the cute art…*Quick age test… do you remember back when there still was a “curse of the superhero-themed boardgame”? We’ve come a long way…
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About Matt J Carlson
Dad, Gamer, Science Teacher, Youth Pastor... oh and I have green hair. To see me "in action" check out Dr. Carlson's Science Theater up on Youtube...