Dude! Take Your Turn!

Labyrinth: the War on Terror Coming out of Steam Early Access November 12

Two news posts in one day?

That’s what happens when two of your favourite app companies come out with news on the same day (yesterday, of course).

Playdek announced yesterday that Labyrinth: the War on Terror will be leaving Steam’s Early Access and also coming to mobile on November 12!

This incredible card-driven game designed by Volko Ruhnke has been in Early Access on Steam since the end of March 2020 and it is finally ready to emerge like a beautiful butterfly.

In the game, players are either the US or Jihadist extremists, trying to exert their influence and get various countries on their side (or under Islamic Rule if you are the Jihadists).

It’s a card-driven game similar to Twilight Struggle where you have a hand of cards and can play cards of your own faction for either the event or some other action. If the card is your opponent’s faction, you can only do some other action and the event itself will actually happen, if possible. (Unlike Twilight Struggle, it is very possible you will have an opponent’s event card that can’t happen so you’re safe to play it).

I’ve been really enjoying this since it came out and I can’t wait to play it on mobile. I linked above to my Early Access look at the game from back in April and the game has only gotten better.

Playdek has once again hit it out of the park with this one.

You can still get it on Steam at the Early Access price, and it’s even on sale during Steam’s Digital Tabletop Fest! It’s 25% off until October 26, so get on it quick.

Amazing what kind of news gets me to actually post again!

Yes, I am working on other posts (including the next installment of the Top 200) and I know it’s been a while, but I couldn’t let this one pass without commenting on it.

Acram Digital announced yesterday that they will be releasing a digital version of the classic board game Concordia!

The game was published in 2013 and designed by Mac Gerdts with artwork by Marina Fahrenbach, Mac Gerdts and Dominik Mayer

This is amazing, as it’s one of my favourite games and it will be so nice to be able to play it on my iPad or Steam.

Screenshots are from the Steam app – come on, Acram, would it hurt to have your screenshots on your web page be downloadable?

(Edit: I spoke too soon, as I completely missed the Press Kit. Whoops! Apologies to Acram)

What is Concordia?

Boardgame Geek Top 200 – Play or Played – #160-151

Another week, another “wow, I haven’t played many games” post. It’s almost like I’m failing as a “gamer”.

Is that possible? Should I really feel bad that I haven’t played a bunch of games?

Maybe, if I’m actually writing about them.

Am I not fulfilling my blogging mandate as far as games posting?

Am I desperate for content because of COVID?

That may certainly be true.

But given the times, I don’t really care.

That’s been the weird thing about this COVID time where I’m working from home so I rarely leave the condo where I live.

I’m finding I don’t care about a lot of things.

But I do care about giving you some quality content, so I hope you enjoy this post even though I don’t have a lot to say about the games included.

In lieu of actual, you know, humour content, how about some dinosaurs?

Maybe next week will be better (I think it will? Not sure, actually)

Anyway, without further adieu, because it’s Friday and really, who cares anymore?

Oh, before I forget, this list is taken from the BGG Top 200 as of September 20 the order may have changed since I did this.

Let’s get started.

App Review – Wingspan

Wingspan is probably one of my favourite games. In fact, if I had played it before I did my Top 25 games of all time, it probably would have been on there.

I mean really, how can you go wrong with a game where the box cover has a bird that looks like an Olympic Ski Jumper?

But I digress.

Anyway, this tableau-building game designed by Elizabeth Hargrave with art by Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo, Natalia Rojas and Beth Sobel and published by Stonemaier Games, is a classic.

It’s easy to teach but it also has some nice depth to the decisions as well, especially when deciding how to deal with the cards that you are drawing.

I could do a review of the game itself, but this is actually a review of the new Steam app version, developed by Monster Couch games.

This is the first boardgame app that they’ve developed, though they do have a number of other video games that may or may not be good (sorry, I haven’t played them).

Boardgame Geek Top 200 – Play or Played – #170-161

Yes, there is a shower of toads raining down on Vancouver right now. Yes, Hell has frozen over and the devil is ice skating.

Sorry, fans, I don’t have any pictures of Tom Ellis on skates, but that looks like it could be ice if you squint and stuff!

That’s right, this post is actually coming out a week after the last post!

I know you’re all amazed, right?

I know I am.

As I stated last week, this list is locked as of September 20, but thankfully nothing changed anyway. These 10 are in the same position now as they were when I started this last week.

Maybe that says something about doing these in a timely manner?

Hmmmm…maybe.

Or maybe not.

Anyway, I know you’re probably bored by now so let’s get into the next batch of 10!

And find out just how lame I am because I have not played many of these.

Fantastic Factories: Manufactions Now on Kickstarter

I know I already told you it was coming (and judging by the hits on that post over the last couple of days, you’re all looking for it!), but now it’s here!

Yesterday, the expansion to the wonderful tableau-building card game Fantastic Factories, designed by Joseph Z Chen and Justin Faulkner and now published by Deep Water Games, finally hit Kickstarter after a month or two of anticipation.

And wow, what a campaign it is.

Not only are you getting the Manufactions expansion set, but there’s also a second expansion (a bit smaller) called Subterfuge that adds a bit more player vs player action to the whole game.

All pictures in this post are from the Kickstarter page

Yes, that’s right. Two expansions! And a bunch of promo cards as well. And maybe even a playmat if you like!

The Manufactions expansion adds buildings that can produce vitamins, which are a new resource that can help you with other buildings that are in this expansion.

Subterfuge will give some player interaction as you can sabotage other players’ buildings so they can’t produce the next turn.

It all looks really cool, actually.

I don’t have the base game, though I do love playing it. Thus, I went for the whole “buy everything!” pledge which will cost about $130 CDN. But it will be worth it for basically a game, two expansions, promos, and the playmat.

I’m not usually a playmat kind of guy, but there doesn’t appear to be a pledge level where you can buy everything but the mat.

My wife and I really enjoyed the game at Dice Tower West, so buying the whole thing was a no-brainer. I was going to buy the base game itself until I received the announcement of this Kickstarter.

Why not support a couple of great guys (I’ve met Joseph once at Dragonflight and he facilitated a great playthrough of the game) via Kickstarter rather than buying it online?

Sure, we’ll have to wait until June 2021 (at least) to play it, but it will keep.

I am very happy to support Joseph and Justin with this pledge.

If you like tableau-building card games at all, you can’t go wrong with Fantastic Factories. I should probably write a review of it anyway.

Two expansions that add to the experience?

How could I refuse?

Check out the Kickstarter campaign that hit over $100,000 in 9 hours and is well on its way to become a smashing success (it already is, but it has 27 days to become even more of one!).

I hope that we can actually be gaming face-to-face by the time I receive this. I really look forward to playing it again.

Have you backed this one yet? Have you played it?

Let me know in the comments.

Boardgame Geek Top 200 – Play or Played – 180-171

This post has been a long time coming.

Sorry about that. Life has a way of getting away from you sometimes, doesn’t it?

Especially in these chaotic times.

I swear that 2020 has been…well, let’s say “challenging.”

However, I have made promises to people that I wouldn’t give up, and I’m not going to!

When will the next post in the series show up?

Hopefully not too far away.

In this post, a couple of games shifted or jumped into the top 200 since I did the previous post, so I’ll mention them here.

To prevent that from happening again, since I’m being slow at doing these posts, all future posts in the series will now be written using the list of games as of September 20, 2020. If a game has moved position, I may mention it. If something new jumps on, I won’t be mentioning it though.

Why it took Clio to actually show me that this is the best way to do it, I don’t know. But it did.

With that being said, and because you’re probably already turning blue from holding your breath, let’s get this thing started!

Evolution App Goes Asynchronous!

Evolution is a really vicious card game where players are adapting their animal species with card play. Food is scarce and it’s very possible, if you don’t play your cards right, that some of species will go extinct. Players may take all of the food, leaving your species hungry.

Or they could develop predators and then look out! You’d better evolve some defenses or you may die out as well.

Designed by Dominic Crapuchettes, Dmitry Knorre and Sergey Machin with artwork by JJ Ariosa, Giorgio De Michele, Catherine Hamilton, Kurt Miller and Jacoby O’Connor, the game is published by Northstar Games.

As is the app!

I’ve only played the game once and it intrigued me. When the app became available, I bought it and played a couple of games, but the multiplayer wasn’t asynchronous (and it may not have even launched with online multiplayer, I don’t quite remember) so I didn’t really play it much.

It’s been sitting on my iPad for a while now, though, and North Star Games continued to develop it, adding stuff all the time.

They kept on saying that asynchronous multiplayer was coming, but considering the history of many game apps that promised the same thing and then didn’t deliver, let’s just say that I was skeptical.

Thank you, North Star, for proving me wrong.

With today’s update to the app, asynchronous multiplayer is alive and well on Evolution!

I haven’t played it yet, so I can’t comment on how smooth it is, but I just wanted to do this post to acknowledge the fact that North Star followed through on their promise.

I am getting a game set up with some friends today and I look forward to taking advantage of this.

And learning this intriguing game even more.

Time to play some games against the AI to actually relearn this!

App Review – Roll for the Galaxy

Until news of the app version for Roll for the Galaxy came out, I hadn’t actually played it in quite a while.

I do remember really liking the game, though. As I said in my Top 100 BGG games post, it’s a game that somehow I won a lot and I wasn’t quite sure how.

I even really enjoyed the app in the beta version that was out earlier in the Summer by Temple Gates Games.

In fact, not a lot is going to be different in this review than it was in that post, but I do want to do a full review of the app now that I’ve been playing it a while.

Yes, this is a screen cap from the beta, but why upload another picture of the home screen when nothing has changed really?

So let’s do it!

Fury of Dracula coming in late 2020

Nomad Games has had great success with app versions of board games such as Cat Lady and, of course, Talisman.

They are now working on an app version of the classic deduction 1 vs Many game, Fury of Dracula. In this game, up to 4 players are trying to find and defeat Dracula (also played by a player).

The app will be coming to Steam and is already available to put on your wishlist. It will also soon after be coming to iOS and Android.

To follow the developments on the game you can go to Nomad Games’ Fury of Dracula page here.

There you will find developers blogs and more information about the game and how it will run.

All screenshots are from the Nomad Games press kit and obviously are not necessarily final as they are still working on the game.

From the screenshots, it already looks amazing with the typical Nomad Games polish. I’m sure they will improve as Nomad keeps working on the game.

So what’s coming in the game?

Let’s take a look.