With the holiday season right around the corner, I know my gaming will be more sporadic. Thankfully, I was able to get some good gaming in the other day.
Betrayal Legacy
Rob Daviau takes his legacy talents to everyone’s favorite haunted house in Betrayal Legacy, due out at the end of next year. According to W. Eric Martin’s BGG preview, it “marries the concept of that first game — exploring a haunted mansion — with the permanency and multi-game storytelling exhibited by Daviau’s Risk Legacy and other legacy games … consists of a prologue and a thirteen-chapter story that takes place over decades. Players represent families, with specific members of a family participating in one story, then perhaps an older version of those characters (assuming they lived) or their descendants showing up in later stories.”
Source: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/70874/betrayal-legacy-coming-rob-daviau-and-avalon-hill
Controlling Ants in Micropolis
W. Eric Martin also reported on his BGG blog that Bruno Cathala and Charles Chevallier (who worked together on Abyss and Kanagawa) have created Micropolis, a “game in which you control ants in a shared anthill and dig new tunnels each turn to work toward whatever goals your antlike mind might perceive.” It will play 2-6 and is scheduled to be out early next year.
Source: https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/70730/new-game-round-ants-invade-micropolis-gangs-ravage
Messaging in Decrypto
Iello will release Decrypto in early 2018. According to Dice Tower News, “Decrypto places two teams pitting against each other to correctly interpret the coded messages their partner is trying to send them while at the same time cracking the code of the opposite team.”
Source: http://www.dicetowernews.com/iello-sending-coded-messages-via-decrypto-spy-game-in-2018/47912
Unrivaled Results
The first-ever Unrivaled Tournament Series was recently completed in Las Vegas, with over $100,000 being given to winners. ICv2.com reports that the top four finishers of six games claimed prizes, as did the stores associated with them.
Source: https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/38949/unrivaled-tournament-store-winners-received-114-000
Legacy Gaming
Speaking of Rob Daviau and legacy games, the Mechanics and Meeples blog offered the first part of its series about legacy games. “Though Legacy games are an innovation new sort of game that seems on the verge of taking off and becoming a new category of play …they’re also part of an evolutionary stream of game development that involves a number of other games.”
Source: http://www.mechanics-and-meeples.com/2017/11/13/a-legion-of-legacies-part-one-legacy-play/
Designing
Grant Rodiek reflected on the game design process and offered advice to would-be designers. “Design small. Every new designer fails this miserably. They always start big. ALWAYS. Design small. Smaller games have fewer rules to write, require less content, take less time to build and prototype, less time to update when you test, and are easier to wrangle testers. Design small. Make a game with 10 tokens, 5 cards, and a 8.5 by 11 board.”
Source: http://hyperbolegames.com/blog/design-bug
Upcoming Board Game Conventions
January 11-14. Midwinter Gaming Convention. Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
January 12-14. OrcaCon. Everett, Washington.
January 13-14. Congress of Gamers. Rockville, Maryland.
January 19-21. Cascade Games Con. Bellingham, Washington.
January 19-21. HexaCon. Denver, Colorado.
January 26-28. EsCon. Escondido, California.
January 27-29. Protospiel Minnesota. Bloomington, Minnesota.
January 27-29. PAX South. San Antonio, Texas.
February 16-18. Con of the North. Minneapolis, Minnesota.
February 19-25. PrezCon. Charlottesville, Virginia.
February 24-26. Great Plains Game Festival. Lincoln, Nebraska.
February 24-26. IndyCon. Indianapolis, Indiana.
March 16-18. MeepleCon. Las Vegas, Nevada.
March 22-25. AdeptiCon. Schaumburg, Illinois.
March 23-25. ConnCon. Stamford, Connecticut.
April 27-29. QC Game Fest. Davenport, Iowa.
April 27-29. Gaming Hoopla. Mundelein, Illinois.
April 27-30. Kingdom-Con. San Diego, California.
May 4-6. Heroicon. Decatur, Illinois.
May 11-13. CMON Expo. Atlanta, Georgia.
May 18-21. Geekway to the West. St. Charles, Missouri.
May 25-28. KublaCon. Burlingame, California.
June 14-18. Origins. Columbus, Ohio.
July 5-9. Dice Tower Con. Orlando, Florida.
August 17-20. GenCon. Indianapolis, Indiana.
Visit casualgamerevolution.com for more convention listings.
