Freshly Added to BGG - August 19th, 2023

Another Fantasy special today, not because of my particular inclinations, just because Fantasy titles abound in comparison to any other kind of titles...

Let's start with the least Fantasy of the selection, Manifest Destiny. The first thing you find out from the BGG description is that they wanted to call their game Lewis & Clark, but probably found out that some issues would arise with Cédric Chaboussit's hit title. So, we are left with a much less transparent title -at least it is totally opaque to me. But that's not all. Lewis & Clark, alongside their precious ally Sacajawea, are not so much concerned with finding the Pacific ocean this time: no, instead, they need to deal with mysterious monsters that have invaded the land. This adventure and exploration game is played through two chapters (which is a rather short campaign), but should be extended with four more thanks to additional expansions. The KS campaign is planned for Q1 2024. Also take note of the designers team, both with quite a lot of games under their belt. They have already paired up for the silly Rock Paper Wizard and the well-regarded Mind MGMT.

The next item may rejoice the Critical Role fans (if you don't know what Critical Role is, don't worry, me neither): Caper Cards: Bells Hells is a cooperative deduction card game where your goal is to assemble the Bells Hells party to pull off a heist of some sort. The game is made of 36 cards and plays within 20 minutes. By the designer of Flamecraft. I have no idea about future availability, but at least US gamers should be able to acquire it from the publisher's website.

Another franchise-based game, this one based on the much more obscure Cursed Empire by Chris Loizou, Battle Mages is a card game about, surprise, mages battling each other. That's about the whole extent of what is known about the game.

If you enjoy AI-generated art (I believe it's the case here, but that's a personal assumption), tactical combat with miniatures, and games that look more like a designer's notional wish than an actually upcoming production, then Veil Between Cursed Lands is probably your grail. This time it's not mages or wizards fighting against each other, but wardens. Each warden is apparently endowed with a specific set of skills and items, and spend points each turn to perform actions (all of which being aimed to wiping out the opponent, of course). To break the monotony associated with the genre, they boast an entirely novel 'combo system', such that whenever your dice roll makes your weapon attack successful, you gain additional Combo points to trigger class-specific ability. Way to raise the stakes of your rolls (or phrased differently, to make things even more swingy).

With utterly different aesthetics, Ethos is a wood-crafted game about exploring the world of Ethos in order to defeat the Three Beasts. Cooperative at heart, the game also claims to be inspired by Tarot. To the very least, it's intriguing, but your curiosity won't be quenched further, as this is all I know about it for the moment.

Time for an interlude! A musical one even. Monster Rock is a game designed by Amanda Milne, part-time designer and part-time publisher (notoriously enough of AuZtralia), who paired up this time with Martin Wallace for an adventure deck-building game in a Fantasy world. The main pitch is a bit off the charts: the adventuring days are long past, and monsters of yore are now regular citizens of the big Paradise City, ruled by the almighty King Richard. But now the King wants to subjugate the people with an army of robots, and it's time to stand up! How to unite such diverse people as those populating the city though? You got it: with some good beats of rock'n'roll! And here you are, trying to gather fans for them to become your followers in the upcoming revolution, adapting your band to a diversity of audiences. But beware, for the King spies are on the lookout for attempts of sedition! I have no clue how it plays, though, nor how it will be released.

And here comes Evenfall, another games about sorcerers -Witches, this time- battling for supremacy! The World-Tree has opened, allowing access to places of secret power, and it befalls to you and your cohort of fellow witches to seize them in order to ensure the rule of your Clan in the upcoming era of magic and wonder. If the silk-screened meeples hadn't already given it out, yes, it's a worker placement game, and you couldn't make it more euro in the description: "Manage your resources, execute your actions in an efficient order, and discover card and action synergies that generate victory points." Rahdo already loves it - the game even made him forget all about Midhalla. From the sound of it, I bet the solo mode will be AI-driven, but in truth, I know nothing. It will be distributed through regular retail.

The next game, Ratyl, is an odd one. It's a dexterity game about a society of rats, left stranded on a planet by humans centuries ago, who have now developed technological advances and human-like sentience. Ruled by a monarchy of cats to keep their numbers in check, some of the rats decide to oppose their feline overlords, exasperated by the newly decreed prohibition of all remnants of love towards the humankind. The game features tossing plastic pieces into a grid (as you can see on the picture), all of this being embedded within more usual board game mechanics such as drafting and hand management. Coming to KS.

We lacked so far a dungeon crawler, which is a shame when doing a Fantasy Special. So Vanaheim comes to save the day, a rather mysterious print-on-demand card-driven rogue-like game fueled with dice rolls and apparently vaguely inspired by Norse Mythology. The goal is to descend through the five levels of Vanaheim to fight the Fire Drake at the bottom of it. And, yes, you got it, today's real theme is "games with an awful lack of info about them". Some games are more freshly added than others apparently. Available from the Game Crafter.

Which is not the case of Horrified: Greek Monsters, who got added to the database in a full blaze of marketing glory. Featuring a Siren, a Gorgon, a Minotaur, Cerberus, and some others, Horrified: Greek Monsters is, as you guessed it, a Greek mythology-inspired re-implementation of Horrified. This time Pandora's Box has opened, monsters have escaped from it (well, that's not really the actual story, but who cares), and it's up to you to defend the island against their roaming threat by defeating them all. Apparently you can play as a modern tourist, which fits the whole Greek theme I suppose. The game targets a wide audience and will be accordingly released through traditional retail channels.

Let's breathe a bit before coming to grips with the next title: Dungeons & Dragons: Onslaught – Nightmare of the Frogmire Coven: Maps & Monsters Expansion. Ouch, that's a lot of modifiers. This one makes me actually laugh, because it looks like straight out taunting. Earlier on this year, WizKids released D&D Onslaught, a tactical miniatures game of dungeon exploration, with no solo option. This is now fixed with this expansion featuring six inter-related scenarios, one of which being compatible with solo play. I feel they just wanted to make their point: "Sure, we could make the whole system soloable, see, we even added one scenario to prove it. We just didn't want to develop this option, on purpose." Message received!

And I'm glad to end the post with a PnP from a 1PG community member, Michael Sewall (aka The Crazy Scotsman). It's a dice manipulation and allocation game called D6 Starfighter. Rules and cards are available in this thread. You play as a starfighter pilot tasked with defeating weird Numeral aliens thanks to the power of mathematics. Each enemy needs to be dealt an exact amount of damage to be defeated. You may even play it online.