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.

Two companies that typically go big on releases in the fall include the TLAs of AEG (Alderac Entertainment Group) and CGE (Czech Games Edition.) This year, AEG was showing off some previews of games coming later this year and next. Let’s Go! To France copies the Japan game of the similar name but removes two-city travel, adds in a little travel board, and generally edges the gamer-y-ness a little bit with more combo-opportunities. Into the Machine is a worker robot-placement game of upgrading your robot team to help them win a race. Mystic Lands, a successor to Mystic Vale, has gone all-in on making an impression with the art in its card-crafting game. Finally, Electrify has players running a steampunk city by constructing a victory point engine through constant action improvements.

CGE was showing off a prototype of a new tile-laying game, Wispwood, where players are trying to place tiles in their personal grid to match goals. However, at the end of each round, some of a player’s tiles are removed making it both easier and harder to reap those goal rewards. After that, we have a number of expansions and rereleases. SETI: Space Agencies adds some quickstart features as well as player powers. Galaxy Trucker: Do What? adds in missions and crazy VIP passengers, and Lost Ruins of Arnak: Adventure Chest is a big ol box containing one new expansion and room to fit everything that has come before. Codenames is getting a refresh in its art and base dictionary and there’s a new Hogwart’s themed game with special powers for each of the four houses. Finally, CGE is bringing some small German titles to the US in the form of Umami: The Forest Food Fest (players play out sets of cards to match the desires of forest creatures) and the classic Frank’s Zoo (a climbing/shedding game where players try to get rid of cards by playing animals that would likely scare off the previous animal card played.)

Alderac Entertainment Group

Let’s Go! To France

I’ve had a great time playing Let’s Go! To Japan. I’ve not personally been, but do enjoy many aspects of the culture and have a few local friends with connections to the country. It is on my bucket list to visit. Imagine my pleasure to hear there was an entire game dedicated to touring Japan. To make matters even better, it was supposedly a pretty good game. One Christmas present later and I was playing the game. Players draft cards from hands that are passed around and then place their chosen card on their tableau of days of the week. Once everyone’s schedule is full, the trips resolve and points are scored. While drafting moves quickly – everyone is doing something at the same time, I have found the scoring to be my favorite part. There’s a lot of friendly jocularity between players as we almost role-play our journey through the country. Our favorite country to visit is France, and I was very pumped to find out there’s a sequel to Let’s Go! and it is France.

Lots of variety in today’s rundown. Slugfest Games was showing off Positano, a pastel-filled bonanza of simultaneously bidding for draft order in three different areas, all in an effort to build buildings on the cliffside tall enough to look out over any towers in the way. Steve Jackson Games had a card-filled Munchkin Big Box on display with essentially 7+ expansions plus the core game for your Munchkinning needs. There were a couple small Car Wars expansions on display but also news of the upcoming roll-dice-to-take-a-tile game, Purrfect Potions. MindWare had lots of advertising around their new Qwirkle Flex – now with unique backgrounds to also score. I also looked at Ringer, which is sort of Uno-ish but with a die in the middle of the hollowed out center of the cards in the play pile. The Dice Throne people had a new entry, a collectible version of pogs called Slam Throne where the slammers have unique powers within the game. Finally, I hit up a launch party for The Sims Board Game. It has players moving around a board, spending “needs” to move around to collect icons and attract Iconic Sims for points. Players must head home if they need to refill all their needs again.

Slugfest games

Positano

Positano is a 1 to 4 player game about building apartments along the Mediterranean coast. Players will earn points for the best apartments, but only apartments with a view of the sea will matter. It is a drafting game where players bid for first choice. However, there are three areas for drafting each round and players use one card to bid for all three areas. The numbers for each area vary, but every card’s combined bids will equal 120. Thus, if you’re bidding high in one area, you’re bidding low in another.