You’ll also have to secure coal, build trading stations in different regions and compete to make the fastest Atlantic crossing. The result is a set of simultaneous arms races, with players adding newer, bigger, faster and more expensive vessels throughout the game and older ships disappearing from the board as they’re rendered obsolete. The action takes place across multiple regions, with players buying ship cards and deploying them to various oceans. An economic game of rival shipping lines, Transatlantic sees players battling to build prestigious and profitable fleets in the age of mighty steamships. I hadn’t heard anything about Transatlantic before heading to Essen, but the buzz in the halls and the long queues of people waiting for a demo suggested it was worth checking out. Stefan Feld and Michael Rieneck, Queen Games, 2-4 players, 75 minutes, age 14+ It all adds up to a hostile and unpredictable universe-and one that I could happily spend hours exploring. You’ll distribute planets randomly across the board and place impassable black holes at different points throughout the cosmos, restricting movement and ensuring that players start butting heads against one another from the word “go.” There are also a variety of factions to command, from hyper-aggressive warriors to peace-loving diplomats and technologically advanced cyborgs. The most striking thing about my brief demo was just how much variety the game packs into its setup. You’ll add new cards to your deck as you colonise worlds and research technologies, becoming steadily more powerful as the game progresses. But they also serve to boost your firepower in battle, which makes for some tricky decisions about which ones to play and which to keep in your hand for use in combat. You start the game with a handful of cards that let you move your ships or populate planets. As you play, you’ll explore new worlds, develop powerful technologies, and fight to snatch territory from your rivals.
MERLIN SEASON 6 2017 SERIES
The third in a series of deck-building board games by Martin Wallace, A Handful of Stars casts players as leaders of civilizations fighting for control of a war-torn galaxy. I’ll need to play quite a few games of the new release to see exactly how different its approach is, but on first inspection there’s enough here to make me very excited. I enjoyed Season 1 immensely, but with hindsight I can see that its storyline, while twisty and engaging, often felt like it was running on rails. And where Season 1’s characters were carefully designed to perform specific in-game tasks, the new game offers players the chance to build their heroes from scratch, starting out with a blank, RPG-style character sheet and customising their abilities as they go. The board starts out largely empty, with players adding new areas to its map as they explore. Where Season 1 took place in a present-day setting, the new release is set in a post-apocalyptic future where sea-based colonies of survivors battle to preserve the remnants of human civilization. Now the game’s creators are back with Pandemic Legacy: Season 2, with some big changes to discover. Cities fell into anarchy, characters suffered trauma, and secret components and rule changes were revealed at key points in the unfolding narrative. In 2015, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 took the core of the best-selling cooperative game Pandemic and added a story-driven campaign mode, creating a game world that changed permanently in reaction to player choices. Matt Leacock & Rob Daviau, Z-Man Games, 2-4 players, 60 minutes, age 14+ Given that it’s the highlight of the global gaming calendar, I headed along for a barrage of board games and bratwurst.
Where gaming events in other countries, like Gen Con in the US or the UK Games Expo, incorporate celebrity guests, panel discussions, and side attractions, Essen is focused squarely on the games-everything from light and fluffy family favourites to impenetrable brain-melters. Tens of thousands of visitors descend on the International Spieltage fair, where publishers from around the world debut their up-and-coming releases over four frantic days of dice chucking, card shuffling, and cube pushing.įor gamers, it’s an enthralling, bewildering, almost intimidating spectacle. Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage at .Įvery October, the German city of Essen becomes the epicenter of tabletop gaming geekdom.
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