Restoration Games was in full bloom on the Gen Con exhibit hall floor. A raging battle between film monsters was in one corner of the booth showing off prototype bits from the upcoming Battle Monsters, a wargame based on the Legendary-owned IP of classic monster films (Kong, Godzilla, etc..) Return to Dark Tower: Expeditions is an expansion to the base game adding new heroes and a sort of extra questline that is independent of the main game objective. Thunder Road: Vendetta – Interstate of Decay will be an expansion that introduces a replayable campaign where players can upgrade their cars between races. Finally, there is the Unmatched line of fighting games. So, so many more boxes of Unmatched. Battle of Legends Volume 3 is out, Bruce Lee is coming back in a box with Muhammad Ali, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-op box is due out soon, and the popular London-themed Cobble & Fog box is coming back into print. The last of the character design contest entries will be released in a Stars & Stripes box. Finally, we now know there will be some sort of Hellboy themed release next year.

Battle Monsters

Front and center (metaphorically, it was really on one of the exposed corners) was a busy area where Restoration Games was showing off a prototype for the upcoming 1 to 4 player game, Battle Monsters. It just completed a crowdfunding campaign, so don’t look for it to release before Q3 or Q4 next year (2026.) It’s a Restoration Games take on the old MIlton Bradley Battle Masters game from the early 90s. It was a wargame collaboration with Games Workshop so had a theme leaning towards GW’s Warhammer Fantasy Battle but with much simpler mechanics.

I had a great chat with the folks at Pinnacle Entertainment Group about their upcoming Doom Guard boardgame. On Kickstarter for another day or so, it is a cooperative game of superheroes (and villains) banding together to defeat threats to the entire planet. The base game has players fighting Cthulhu through a campaign for fairly short (60 min or less?) scenarios, although you could also play scenarios as one-off things. There are two expansions that add in another campaign: one campaign fighting the legions of hell and another campaign repelling an alien invasion. One juicy teaser before the meat of the article, it looks like Pinnacle is also planning on creating a similar game based around the Deadlands (old west + magic) roleplaying game setting.

First, a bit of background on the theme. Doom Guard is a boardgame that uses the backdrop created for the Necessary Evil RPG back in the early 2000’s. Aliens invaded the Earth and killed all the superheroes. Players were supervillains who had to band together to kick the aliens off the planet.

Thunderworks Games and Dead Alive Games both had several more light to medium-weight games to show off. Most of them were card-based in some way.

Thunderworks has Fliptoons which is a sort of deckbuilder but players flip up cards in a 2×3 grid to see their results. Citizens of the Spark is a bit deeper. Players claim cards from the center, place them in their own area, and can then use the card abilities which are more powerful if a player has more of that type of card. Emerald Skulls is a push your luck die-rolling game as you place rolled dice on a skull from teeth up to forehead. Finally, there will be two expansions for Tenpenny Parks launching this fall. One entitled Innovation with more “stuff” and the other expansion a two-in-one, Winter Lights and Spooky Nights. Each of those have a bit of a holiday theme. Other news includes a big-box Cartographers Adventures game and a smallish box that’s kind of a mashup of roll player and a Call to Adventure-style game.

Meanwhile, the Dead Alive Games booth had the tick-taking game Lunar Skyline. It’s trick, as it were, is that all cards have two suits, you just have to follow either one. Kittens in Space is a shedding uno-like game where players can manipulate which of four piles their opponent can use on any given turn. Cat Rescue, a game of cat tile placement with “tile pushing” is back in a second edition which now includes rules for competitive play. Finally, an expansion for Lunar Rush, Innovations, adds in a fifth player and five asymmetric factions to your Lunar Rush game.

Thunderworks Games

Fliptoons

Fliptoons is a sort of mini-deckbuilding game for 1 to 4 players, coming out September 16th. The cards in the game are cartoon actors and they are played out on the table as part of some sort of production, attempting to earn fame (VPs) for the studio (player.) To start their turn, a player will shuffle their deck and then deal it out into a 2×3 grid.

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.