The Asmodee train keeps on going. Let’s talk about Maestro Media and their base-building-attacking Clash of Clans, soon to be followed by a Clash Royal lane battler. They have a (sorta Unmatched-like) Disney themed battle game, Sky Arena Duel, a new TCG based on the Korean Summoners War app. Finally, they are rereleasing the fast-reaction Ghost Blitz with slighter friendlier graphics. Captain Games SRL has Tea and Rum, a worker placement/removal game where players specialize but still have to balance out which type of victory points they want to pursue. Office Dog is releasing a popular Japanese trick taking game as Schadenfreude where players are trying to be second in everything. They also were showing off a roll & write, The Lord of the Rings: Circle of Conflict, where players take on both factions (good & bad) and have a war with their left and right hand neighbors (good side vs bad side.) Atomic Mass Games has a boardgame intro to their Marvel: Crisis Protocol minis game entitled Marvel: Crisis Protocol Alliances that can play a co-op or verses mode. Libellud has the expansion Harmonies: Crescendo, with some higher scoring cards and a couple of new play boards. Days of Wonder showed off an upcoming Rocket Rollout – a racing game with bag building with dice but also a good measure of card upgrades as well. Lookout Games had the new stand-alone Forest Shuffle: Smoky Mountains that adds water and fish while Dragon Overload has players playing cards to control central areas. Play a card and your opponent gets to draw one from that area – but don’t double your opponent’s power or you will Overload and automatically lose that battle. Fantasy Flight Games had another Star Wars Unlimited release but will have the ICONS release next year as a friendlier intro to the card game. They also have a pirate-themed, Fantasy Zombicide: Dead Men Tales releasing in the spring. Bezzerwizzer Studio was showing the party game, That Tracks, where teams try to guess a topic based on the historical Google search frequencies. Neuroscape, from Neuroscape LLC, is a new TCG where players have separate decks (one for resources, one for cards to play) and two different health pools (you lose if either goes to zero…) Finally, I spotted The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth – Allies expansion by Repos Production, a small package expansion that gives each player a few selected faction-unique cards playable once per game.

Maestro Media

Clash of Clans: The Epic Raid by Ken Gruhl, Eric M. Lang

Clash of Clans, one of my most anticipated games from last year, is now out. You can find it in several flavors – the Village Edition targets the mass-market ($50-ish) with everything cardboard, including standees. The Core Edition is intended for the boardgame hobbyist ($80-ish) and adds in a mix of plastic pieces and some upgraded bits to give the game state more of a 3D presence.

The boardgame is thematically based around the mobile game Clash of Clans released in 2012. In it, players build up a base, fill it with troops, and then attack other (offline) players in order to steal gold and elixir. Gold is then spent in one’s base to build defensive structures while elixir is spent to build structures that provide troops for the attacks.

The boardgame follows the digital game with players using a worker-placement mechanism to build up their town and attack other players. Placement options include adding a building to their town, upgrading one’s town hall, raiding other players, and buying defenses (which are placed on or adjacent to a town tiles.) A town consists of connected square tiles (although corners are carved out to make room for defences.) These tiles form the heart of a player’s resource and point engine. Each tile has a cost, defense value, and some sort of ability – generating resources, granting new army units, and/or generating points.

Each player has a board to keep track of things. The board has three distinct tracks. The top shows your queued up armies that attack every turn (they aren’t used up). The middle has your town hall discs and shows what you gain when you upgrade a level. The bottom (orange) track is just the hint sheet to remind a player the turn structure: collect resources, build, raid, score, reset, etc…

The colorful main board is where workers are placed. There are purchases on offer in addition to other actions.

The digital game is all about raiding other clans, and that is still a big part of the boardgame. However, raiding in the board game doesn’t do significant damage to other players’s structures, it just allows the attacker to “steal” victory points that would have otherwise gone to the structure’s owner. There are two expansions available: the Dark Elixir Expansion brings in a new resource that is used (as in the app) to acquire heavier/more powerful units with some new synergies to explore. The Clan Wars expansion adds a team mode that brings player count up to 6. Teams can donate to each other and use special spell cards to modify tactics. Support units like healers and baby dragons also appear. Final scores are determined by the lower score between teammates.

Clash Royale – David Gordon and Ryan Rodrigez

The digital sequel to Clash of Clans is Clash Royale. It pretty much unseated the previous game, so all the in-crowd is now playing Clash Royale. In the game, players attack each other’s castle by playing a troop card from their starting deck of troops. The troops march down a lane towards the enemy castle. When they meet in the middle, some are defeated and the victorious troops continue on their way, possibly encountering more enemy troops. Get enough of your troops far enough to damage the enemy castle for the win. Why talk about Clash Royale? Well, Maestro Media is working on the boardgame translation that will have a strong sort of tower defense feel. Like the digital game, there will be a deckbuilding part and then will have a lane battling part. It will play 1v1 or 2v2. The game should be demoing at Essen. Expect a crowdfunding effort later this year or early next.

Rewind: DuckTales – Lucky Dime Heist (2026) by Nate Weisman

Rewind is a series of games that run a little like Unmatched, in that two teams (1v1 or 2v2) maneuver around an environment and take actions via cards from a deck personalized to each character. Each “episode” has different objectives, with the example shown to me based around a king of the hill type design.

After a Kickstarter of a series of four Disney cartoon franchises (Duck Tales, Gargoyles, Goof Troop, and Darkwing Duck) the games will be released (at Essen) individually in boxes that look a lot like a VHS case. (Thus the “Rewind” title…) The series should continue to expand, beyond just Disney licenses.

Sky Arena Duel: A Summoners War Card Game by Richard Garfield

Summoner’s War Sky Arena is a very popular mobile game in Korea based around 1v1 monster battles. Sky Arena Duel is Richard Garfield’s take on moving the game into a card-based form, again a monster battler game between two players. However, I think the game will have several monsters active at a time. Players begin the game with a preconstructed deck of 30 cards (each box contains two decks) and will play out their deck in three phases, 10 cards at a time. There’s a strange mechanic whereby your opponent can (at some point in the game) call out “shift” and all the monsters on the play field will move one space to the left or the right.

Ghost Blitz – (originally from Zoch Verlag) by Jacques Zeimet

Ghost Blitz has been around awhile. Players flip two cards, showing some items, and then race to grab the correct wooden item. If there is an exact match on the card to one of the wooden items (green bottle, say) then grab that item. However, if there is no match, grab the item that is not shown at all on the card (neither shape nor color). For example, a card with a blue ghost and red bottle would mean grab the grey mouse (grey and mouse not being present.) The game has been very popular in Germany but never seemed to take off in the US. This new edition comes on its 10th anniversary. It keeps the theme but changes all the graphics to be a more friendlier (and less “scary”) take on the whole ghost business.

Captain Games SRL

Tea and Rum by Fabien Gridel

Tea and Rum is a worker removal game for 2-4 players. Workers are placed, but trigger rewards when they are removed. There can be more than one worker per place, and the rewards actually scale (in your favor) the more workers that are present. Players can hire captains, build buildings (instant or sometimes ongoing rewards), fulfill contracts (by spending resources), and go to the market (where resources can be exchanged.)

The game actually has two different victory point tracks. Red is acquired by heading down the path of a Pirate King, while Blue is earned as players strive to be a good governor. There is a victor in the game for each color. There is a twist. A player must have their two scores within 10 points of each other at the end of the game. So get out there and major in one but don’t entirely ignore the other. (Unless you want to be special and try to win both!)

Players pursuing blue VPs can keep their victory points hidden, but they must also choose and satisfy a “quest” or they are ineligible to win in blue.

Look for the game to come out in October of this year.

Office Dog

Schadenfreude by ctr and Studio Turbine

Schadenfreude is a popular Japanese trick taking game, released at the 2020 Tokyo Game Market. It plays 3 to 5 players and will be released in English in October this year. The “trick” to this taker is that the second-highest card played wins the trick. They keep the winning card, but players are trying NOT to win points. However, duplicate cards (like your 2nd “4”) are cancelled out. The game ends when someone hits 41 points. Scores are calculated and, you guessed it, the player with the second highest score wins the game.

The Lord of the Rings: Circle of Conflict by Stephen Buonocore and Geoff Engelstein

I didn’t get a huge number of details on The Lord of the Rings: Circle of Conflict but it has a strong roll and write vibe. Players draft dice to fill in their boards.

Each player has both a Free Peoples and a Shadow section of their board. Your Free Peoples board attacks the player on your left while your Shadow section is fighting the Free Peoples board of the player on your right. There’s a little board between each player to kind of track how each fight is going. There’s a secret movement aspect where your Shadow board is trying to figure out what’s going on over on your neighbor’s Free People’s board. Players can win by completing the victory condition on either of their boards.

Not a new game, but ya gotta love that dice tower in Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship.

Atomic Mass Games

Marvel: Crisis Protocol Alliances – Night of the Goblin by Will Shick

Marvel: Crisis Protocol Alliances is much like Crisis Protocol, it uses the same dice, but leans more into the boardgame side of things. Two to four players (in this game, Night of the Goblin, everyone is a Spider-character) move around the board completing missions – typically rolling dice (it uses the same dice as Crisis Protocol.) It can be played cooperatively or in a vs mode. The game has a series of scenarios that ramp up in difficulty.

One of the ideas behind the game is to use it as a gateway game to the miniatures-based Marvel Crisis Protocol. (I have down here that the miniatures click together – I think that means you put them together when you first play the game.)

Libellud

Harmonies: Crescendo by Johan Benvenuto, Mathieu Rivero

Harmonies: Crescendo is a new expansion for Harmonies releasing in October at Essen. There are new cards for everything, giving players new ways to score points, which ends up ramping up scores a bit.

One new feature is the ability for more than one cube to be on a stack. If I recall correctly, some of the new objectives encourage much higher stacking than others in the past.

A couple new base boards to play on, one has a blocked center while the other has a center section where tiles only score if they are also by some water.

Days of Wonder

Rocket Rollout by Mark Elsdon, Søren Brandborg

Rocket Rollout is a dice/bag builder releasing in March 2027. The overall goal is to race your rocket around a track on the central board. I don’t have a lot on it, but players have a personal board to upgrade and/or track things, so players upgrade the dice in their bags but also upgrade their rocket (drivers, etc…) but tucking cards under their player board.

Players have to balance out several things at once (weapons, cargo, shields) as they activate combos and other fun things between their board and dice. “Bad things happen” during the race as you progress, so part of your time is mitigating the negatives. and the game does have a small catch-up mechanic.

Lookout Games

Dragon Overload by Jay Bendixen

Dragon Overload is a two player card game where players play cards to compete for control of several central areas. The deck has 5 suits of cards, numbered 1 to 9. Players play up to three cards to each possible area, looking to have a higher total.

When you play in a territory, your opponent also gains the top card from the draw pile next to it. Up to three times per game, a player may also place one of their cards face-down. Raw strength is not always the answer. If you ever have more than twice the power present on a location than your opponent, your dragons rebel causing an “overload” and you automatically lose that location.

Forest Shuffle: Smoky Mountains by Kosch

The newest stand-alone Forest Shuffle is set in the Smokey Mountains of the Eastern United States.

Promo card at Gen Con: Atagahi Lake – a mythical lake in the Smokey Mountains.

As the area is known for hiking and fishing, fish and water-based animals have been added to the game. When a tree is played, a player may also place a riverbank underneath it. Riverbanks are new locations that can hold fish and/or plants.

There are a few “big” creatures in the set that score 10, up to 30 acorns if a player manages to satisfy all the conditions.

Fantasy Flight Games

Star Wars Unlimited by Jim Cartwright, Tyler Parrott, Daniel Schaefer, Jeremy Zwirn

The 9th set in Star Wars Unlimited is Homeworlds. The “bigger” news is the release of the ICONS series next fall (2027.) This is designed to be a new entry into the card game with straightforward card mechanics and plenty of recognizable characters. There will be some reprints of some past common and uncommon cards but the rares in the set will be new. While the ICONS set targets newcomers the decks and cards are designed to still be competitive with the current game.

Fantasy Zombicide: Dead Men Tales by Raphaël Guiton, Jean-Baptiste Lullien, Nicolas Raoult

After leaving CMON, the Zombicide IP is now with Fantasy Flight/Asmodee. After a huge crowdfunding drive ($4 million) last spring, Fantasy Zombicide will be back in 2027 with a pirate theme. The game is set in pirate-filled islands but players must still fight against those zombie hordes.

The pirate theme comes across in several ways, fire cannons, swing on ropes, etc… Rather than tight quarters where zombies spawn when doors are opened, here most rooms are smaller and don’t have doors at all, monsters will spawn in from designated areas (including wading up out of the sea!)

Players will be able to establish some safe(r) zones in taverns. Rope zones can be used to move multiple spaces on one turn. As play progresses through quests, players can lean into being a Noble Heart or a Scallywag which will change the available upgrades, story paths, and events within the greater storyline.

Bezzerwizzer Studio

That Tracks by Matt Fantastic, Trisha Loter, Andrea Pincumbe, Blaise Sewell

That Tracks is a party trivia game for two teams of at least 2 players per team. Rather than come up with specific trivia facts and dates, players are actually trying to guess the time period of certain popular pastimes, using trend data from Google searches. There are four trendlines shown, with their corresponding Google search term.

Players/teams are given one minute to match trends up with the corresponding term. Players have the option of doubling-down on one of their guesses to get double points if correct. I believe the opposing team can challenge a guess and score a point if the challenge is correct. In any case, the game lasts 6 rounds and a winner is declared.

Neuroscape LLC

Neuroscape TCG by Connor Hair, Alex Meader

Neuroscape is the brainchild of a couple of guys working in the TV/Movie industry out in L.A. It’s a trading-card game with a cyberpunk theme. The game was released last year as part of a kickstarter that raised $570,000. Rather than continue everything on their own, they’ve joined up with Asmodee to help them distribute the game going forward. The second print run (of the initial KS) is out and is functionally the same as the original but has some cosmetic differences.

The game is set up as a two-deck system per player. The RAM deck are your resources while the Cyberdeck is your main deck of interesting cards. Players have two actions per turn, they can install a RAM (increase your available resources) or draw a card then then do that again (ie. you can do one of each or two of the same.) Players then play out cards from their hand as normal. Because you pick which pile to draw from, it makes for some interesting consequences. Players are never starved for resources (“mana” in other games) because you can always choose to draw from the RAM deck. Once you get things rolling, you aren’t overwhelmed by resources since you don’t have to keep drawing from the RAM deck.

Yes, the table pictured above is actually a huge monitor, hooked up to the cool red/blue buttons to track the two types of health. This bad boy in the photo is all the electronics they used to get the table up and running… (Yes, it had last minute bugs which were solved… :)

When playing a character, RAM is assigned to that character while it’s on the board. Kill off my big guy? Well you just opened up for me a big pile of RAM to reassign on my next turn. (Yes, you can force-quit a character to free up the RAM, if needed.)

Players also have two different health pools. Red is your bioframe (biological) while blue is associated with your implants (tech.) Lose either one and you’re out of the game. Thus, different decks will tend to emphasize attacking one or the other. (Yes, this does mean some specific types of decks will naturally be better against other specific types of decks.) One faction in the game is Wonderland, a flex faction that, while a bit less powerful, can change which type of damage they want to be doing.

The next set release (the first expansion) is, I believe, called Class Wars. It leans into that flex idea of switching between damage types when needed. For example, a slum kids faction is good at swapping back and forth.

Repos Production

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth – Allies by Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala

The expansion, The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth – Allies is a small package of cards that introduce special ally cards and a new resource, Power tokens. At the start of the game, each faction randomly draws three cards, from a set of 7. Players also start with a Power token and can gain more when drafting specific cards from the table. These tokens are used to trigger the entrance of one of their ally cards. This usually has an immediate effect as well as some ongoing benefit. Since cards are hidden until played it introduces hidden information as well as new, asymmetric capabilities to the game.

Yes, you saw a K-Pop Demon Hunters game up there. KPop Demon Hunters: Battle for the Spotlight is a new title in the Love Letter line of games.