Hot on the heels of Dale Yu’s review of Not Alone: Remastered Edition from Geek Attitude Games, you get to see it again here as I was given a rundown on the new title by the folks at Luma Imports. We also discussed the new release of the popular two player card game, Compile: Main 3 by Synapses Games. Of course, I also had to stop to look at the great art in Postcards it seemed to manage to perfectly fit the cycling around France vibe.

Not Alone: Remastered Edition (by Ghislain Masson)

Published by Geek Attitude Games, Not Alone is a 2-7 player game of one vs many. A central board displays the crew’s piece on one side of a track while the hunter’s piece begins on the other. Each side attempts to play cards to move their piece to the middle star space for a win.

The basic turn consists of the crew (hunted) choose a card from their hand, which will determine what they plan to do. The crew start with a hand of five cards, but can take actions to purchase higher value (6+) cards during the game. Next, the hunter then places their token on a card on the board indicating where they will “hunt”. Players reveal their card and place their character on that card in the central display to indicate their choice. Any player who chose the hunted tile is wounded and blocked from using that location’s ability. A hunted player can take up to three wounds, after which they must “give up”, which lets them recover health and their hand of cards but it also allows the hunter to move their token an extra space.

Every card/location grants a special ability and can only be used once before they are discarded. Players have to “give up” (mentioned before) or use their “1” card to get previously played cards back. Played cards are kept face-up and are common knowledge, providing the hunter with useful information when they are picking where to attack.

Other basic cards let players purchase the higher value cards, move the crew marker forward on the track, or simply give the crewmember more options in future rounds. While the crew move forward on the track once per turn for “free”, two players must both choose the “4” card in order to give the crew token an extra boost space.

In addition to their three health (“Will” in the game) each player has a special ability they can trigger at the right time in turn sequence.

All this is great for the crew, but the hunter also has tricks up their sleeve. (If they have sleeves?) The hunter has their own deck of cards and some special tokens they can use to be a pain in the backside to those poor crewmembers. This includes things like blocking multiple locations in a turn and other nasty effects. The game ramps up near the end, as once the crew token reaches the spaces marked with a planet symbol, the hunter is allowed to start playing additional annoying things each turn.

This new “Remastered Edition” has fancier components, some improved wording on cards, and a completely new set of 10 location cards with slightly more complex interactions. While it was available at Gen Con, the new edition should be appearing elsewhere on shelves in October.

Compile: Main 3 (by Michael Yang)

Published by Synapses Games, Compile: Main 3 is the third (surprise!) in the Compile series of 2 player card games of AIs competing to be the first to complete their three protocols. The new release has 12 new protocols, all of which can be mixed and matched with previous sets.

Compile: Main 3 adds in a bit more intricacies when compiling and brings in more content to mix it up with the Control Card (I’m told not everyone always uses this card which allows players to shift and manipulate opponent’s protocols.) Some cards in the new set will trigger in specific ways, depending on who currently possesses the Control Card. Discussing the game at the booth I heard that the designer was especially pleased with this release as he had more time to work on the set. The initial release was quickly followed by Main 2, so all of Main 3 had more time to “simmer”, as it were. During the development of the 2nd box, the designer needed to do a lot of playtesting so they developed a solo mode to help. This mode is also included in Main 3. The BOT (literally – Basic Oppositional Terminal) can be played over the course of 12 scenarios that get progressively harder.

Postcards (by Eric Dubus and Simon Kayne)

I hadn’t seen Postcards, also by Synapses Games, last year so the game caught my eye – my wife is a big Francophile, and I’m always looking for a good spouse game.

This cute game about exploring France on a bicycle, sending postcards back to one’s friends. Travel, set up camp, stamp a postcard to send it off, then move to a new location.

The art gives a superb feeling of the casual beauty of biking around some of the best France has to offer.