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.