The siren song of pre-orders, begging for your wallet to open up and dispense your hard-earned shekels within.
Fog & Friction (Pondfoot Games) £2k of £14k, ends 31 May 2015
Another WWII card game? Why not?! Fog & Friction gets you into the battles of the Western front with a nifty two-battlefields-at-the-same-time mechanic that forces you to balance your efforts to keep your opponent guessing where the damage is coming from next. The artwork is period-evocative, and because the designers are based in the UK, the Commonwealth are not given second-shrift by the over-abundance of Yanks running around the game like they saved the world by themselves. Flip over to their campaign page and shoot off a few bucks. Half of our forum crew are already backing them, so you’ll have plenty of folks to play and discuss with.
Trenton 1776 (Worthington Games) $14,000 of $2500 goal, ends 21 April 2015
The Worthington Gang is back with another battle from the American War of Independence, and this time it’s Washington’s iconic river-crossing-to-surprise-the-drunk-Hessians-on-Christmas campaign. And let’s face it, the Battle of Trenton was pretty much the high-water-mark for the historical “good things that have happened in New Jersey” list. It’s part of a series that Worthington kicked off with New York 1776, and expect more to come. So march on over to their Kickstarter campaign and fire off your pledge to snag one while they’re hot.
GARPA AT SEEEEEEAAAAA! OK, not just afloat, but there’s a pair of naval-heavy games for you this week to go with some gargantuan aircraft and more RPG hi-jinks.
Captain’s Sea (GMT Games) P500 – Made the cut! P500 price $45, MSRP $65
A ship-to-ship combat game with a mixture of a square grid (!) and octagonal counters (!!) that covers the actions of the fledgling US Navy in the early 1800s. Battles include US ships against both British and French opponents, and focus on commanding a single ship through skillful maneuvering and solid crew allocations to weapons and rigging. Flying monkeys and subsurface atomic bombs round out your arsenals (just kidding!). Sail over to GMT while it’s still ‘officially’ on p500, but know that you’re going to get it, since it made the cut and is going to head to production sometime soon.
Harold Buchanan gives us the low-down on the next COIN game from GMT, and turns the tables on our interviewer!
We had a chance to chat with Harold Buchanan, Designer of GMTs Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection. This one takes the COIN system to the American Revolution. This is Harold’s first game, but he is well supported by series creator Volko Ruhnke and series developer Mike Bertucelli. Örjan Ariander is designing the ‘bots’ that control the factions not represented by a player in the game. Harold is also an expert on the period and has a degree in Finance and Game Theory from MIT. He resides in San Diego, California where he lives with his wife of 22 years and has 3 kids in college, so he needs all the help we can give him with pre-orders.
Playtesting!
GrogHeads: Do we really need another American Revolution Game?
Harold Buchanan: Are you kidding me? Absolutely! I love 1776 and played it a lot in my youth. I love the Area Status Chart and how British pieces in a Region reduce reinforcements to the Patriots! A game ahead of its time in incorporating regional politics. Then came We the People/Washington’s War with its breakthrough card driven mechanics. I enjoyed it as an elegantly playable innovation and really enjoyed timing the game end through the use of the “War Ends” cards. Plenty of room exists for new and different approaches in it.
Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection looks at the same war as so many other games have but from a different angle: it identifies the four factions critical to the conflict and plays off how they interacted politically, economically and militarily. The game is driven by a detailed set of historical events cards on the topic. Grab three friends and give the conflict a look from a new perspective. It may change the way you think about the American War of Independence.
Given the Patriots won the Super Bowl I am considering adding another card to the mix—the Pete Carroll event card. If you are the Seahawks and you are winning the game during a Winter Quarters Round you must first roll a die: 1-5 you do something stupid and the Patriots win and 6 you actually get to win.
Gimme a G! Gimme an A! Gimme an ARRRRRR! Gimme a P! Gimme an A!
Click images to enlarge
Theomachy (Petersen Games) $46k of $20k, ends 2 March 2015
Sandy Petersen, the brains behind Cthulhu Wars, is back with another supernatural smack-down. Theomachy pits the multiverse of gods against each other (and the Cthulhuians, too!) Ever wonder what would happen if the Egyptian and Norse deities clashed? Well, you can dig out your vintage-1981 Deities & Demigods book, or you can hop on the Theomachy train and battle it out in this interesting card game with equal parts strategy, poker-style bluffing, and drop-dead-gorgeous artwork. Power struggle? Well yeah! That’s pretty much the point, isn’t it?
