Two publishers getting their fair share of buzz were Dire Wolf with their Lightning Train and Devir’s Ace of Spades. Dire Wolf was showing off the Clank! Catacombs: Underworld expansion where players can climb (or fall) down into a new area of particularly juicy loot and danger. Dire Wolf’s Lightning Train is a bag-building pick-up-and-deliver train game where chips are drawn to provide ways to lay track, delivering goods, and other special powers. Dire Wolf is also getting into the role-playing business with the Tales of Xadia RPG, based on The Dragon Prince animated series. Meanwhile, Devir had players using their actual phones to take photos of VIPs in Red Carpet after having maneuvered the VIPs and their entourage into advantageous positions. Transgalactica was a big space/building/exploration worker-placement game with lots of bells and whistles using two types of workers – captains and crew. Finally, Devir’s Ace of Spades is a small 1 or 2 player game of defeating a deck of monsters – doing damage depending on how good of a poker hand a player can create.

Dire Wolf

Clank! Catacombs: Underworld

A new expansion to Clank! Catacombs, Underworld adds a new area to explore. Chutes (and ladders) are added to the standard Catacombs tiles, providing a way down into the Underworld (and possibly back up.) Note, there is a toll for those entering the Underworld. Players will want to collect Undercoins, a new resource. Players must pay a toll of 1 coin every turn they spend in the Underworld. Don’t have a coin? That’s +2 Clank! at the start of each of your turns. Coins are also required for some special tunnels on the tiles.

The Underworld always has a main pentagonal starting tile, with cool loot there just waiting for you to find. Players drop down into the Underworlds and can progress through the dungeon made of trapezoidal shapes. Once there, you will be tempted to try to get to Kerberos (see his three heads below) as you try to collect even more Underworldly loot. Kerberos guards artifact enhancers, which can multiply the value of your best artifact. There’s also a room to pick up an Imp Assistant worth points depending on your Secret Tombs. However, collecting tombs while you have an Imp removes cards from the Dungeon Row – which can trigger the Dragon to attack. Note, I was told (but can’t confirm elsewhere) that while a player is in the Underworld, the (overworld?) dragon is not triggered. It sounds like that will help provide the time-factor needed to get deeper into the lower levels.

Lightning Train

Lightning Train, a 1-4 player bag-building train game (out in October) was getting a lot of buzz at the Dire Wolf booth. Players draw tokens from their bags to interact with the game map. It’s a pick-up and deliver train game, so players are trying to connect cities that have goods to cities that want those goods. The goods then get “delivered” (along the shortest path) and any player owning the track on which the goods travel is rewarded.

Some chips in your bag let you build stations – for future good/demand production, others represent contracts on the board, indicated by the colored areas (and matching colors on the chips.) Perhaps the most important “chip” in your bag is the Lightning Train chip. It acts a little bit like a worker-placement mechanism on your personal player board. It is also the only chip in your starting bag that lets you gain new train chips.

Train chips (not Lightning Train, just regular train chips) are, of course, very important – they are what is used to lay track on the game board. However, they are no longer in your bag and you’ll need to find ways to get more. In addition to chips acquired from your personal board, there is a central chip market where players can get all sorts of stuff. There are icons for laying track, forming contracts, initiating deliveries, straight-up granting money (for more purchases). One can even buy a Lightning Train (just a symbol, not a chip) for use on a turn. There are also special powers, such as stuff needed for building tunnels on some tracks on the board.

The Dragon Prince: Tales of Xadia

Dire Wolf, having gone from digital games into tabletop games, is now going into tabletop role-playing games. Tales of Xadia is set in the world described in the animated series The Dragon Prince from the late 2010s. The setting is full of the typical stuff – humans, elves, dragons, and magic, with humans unable to use regular magic so some turn to dark magic with the traditional “bad things happen.”

The role-playing game is based on the Cortex system, first seen in some of Margaret Weis’ rpgs. It leans more towards story and characters than crunchy combat-type rules. Player abilities are represented by dice, with strong abilities perhaps a d10 while weak ones might only be a d4. Players usually take two dice (from traits/abilities, etc…) and add them together to measure success. Rolling a 1 means something went particularly wrong in an attempt. Players also have access to “plot point” tokens which can be used in story-related ways but are often used as a way to add additional dice to a specific roll.

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Devir

Red Carpet

In Red Carpet (out this fall), two to four players are paparazzi, vying for the best photos of those celebrities walking down the red carpet to the gala. However, try to avoid getting their entourage in the photo, no one wants to see them. Players use cards to take various actions, physically moving the little standees (VIPs and minions) around on the carpet while simultaneously trying to set up one’s tripod for the perfect shot.

During the game cards are flipped to reveal the arrival (and placement) of two celebrities along with their entourage. Players meanwhile have a hand of five cards and take turns playing three cards to perform actions. They then set aside one card as a vote for particular celebrities, and discard the last one.

Cards let players move their tripod around along the edge, manipulate the people on the carpet, and possibly even manipulate the overall vote. People on the carpet can be moved forward along the carpet, they can be spun in place (you want VIPs facing you, entourage facing away), and one can even “pull” a celebrity one space closer to the edge – hopefully where your tripod is waiting for a good shot.

When it is time to take a photo, a player literally puts their phone (on 2x zoom) on the tripod stand and checks out what they see in the photo. They earn 3 points if the VIP is facing them, 2 points if they are not blocked (no other figures overlap the outline), 2 points if the photo is “straight on” (not at an angle), however players lose 1 point for every entourage in the photo that is facing the camera. Each celeb has brands they sponsor, earning 1 extra point for any matching brand in the photo. There are three categories of celebrities, and the winner of each category gets their points multiplied.

Transgalactica

Transgalactica is a big space-themed game based around worker placement to manage resources (energy helps you move, minerals help you build.) Players can also opt to fiddle with a slight bit of engine building and area control, if they choose. Players are aliens trying to expand out into the galaxy. The five colors of aliens each have their own specialties and asymmetric starting conditions.

Players have captains and regular crew. Only captains are allowed to be placed on some (diamond) locations. When a player puts out a worker, other players may also copy that effect, but only if they use a captain.

At the end of each round (there are 4), the player with the strongest military gains a point, while the weakest military loses a point.

Obviously, there’s a lot going on on one’s player board. The left-hand area of the board is a bit of engine building as you collect as income things located there.

Players will be scoring throughout the game, but there are a good amount of points on offer in the final scoring phase. The board adjusts (flips, I believe) to more players by having more planets to explore in the central area.