Kickstart Your Week! Climate Grifters

 

Grifters

 

How do you make a quick buck in the world of Coup and The Resistance? Why, you steal it of course! From the government or from each other using teams of specialist con artists, hackers and other nefarious personalities. To do this you’ll need to build an effective team of Grifters, but also use them at the right time. New specialists can be hired and doing so makes them immediately available in your hand to be played. It’s like a deck builder without a deck.

You can commit a single card into your hideout for an action, or a team to complete one of the jobs set out in the centre. But once they’re committed you’ll need to wait for them to become available again, a kind of cool down period, tracked by moving them through the spaces on your player board. Once a specialist is committed, it’ll be a few turns before they are available again so make sure you’re getting the most out of playing them this turn!

I very much enjoy Coup (see our review) and The Resistance (wait, how have we not reviewed this yet!?) so I’m very interested in this new game. The combination of “hand building” and a cool down system is innovative and the setting is a great fit to the other games of the universe. I think Grifters will be a great game and you can definitely trust me on this… right?

 

Grifting ends March 24^th.

 

 

Evolution: Climate

Moose stared morosely down at the watering hole, picked clean of food by nippier species. He could see them down there, lounging content with food while his own species starved. That does it. It’s time to be a carnivore. He shrugged out of his hard shell and leapt down towards the unsuspecting masses below. He’d evolved, and it was time to feast before they did too.

Evolution is fascinating game (you can check out our first impressions here) that does an impressive job of modelling natural selection and how an ecosystem develops and changes over time. Evolution: Climate is a new expansion that gives you all something else to worry about: the global temperature. When the world is hot, large animals suffer, when cold the smaller animals struggle, and food becomes more or less abundant. New traits, added to the game, help your creatures to mitigate the effects of temperature, becoming nocturnal, say, to avoid the scorching desert sun or growing big fur coats to… you know what fur coats are good for!

The game is available as either an upgrade kit for owners of the original base game, or as a standalone game for players to enjoy straight from the box. Featuring more stunning watercolour artworks by Catherine Hamilton (artist for the original game) and a pile of stretch goals to upgrade your game further, including events and special scenarios to mix up gameplay, this is a great chance to expand or start your Evolution collection.

 

The climate changes March 23^rd.

 

Other Great Games

 

Riftwalker – Exploring the realms of Storm Hollow, shifting them to increase their power, and then bursting them to release their magical energy and to create points. The central mechanic is a match 3 game with the central set of cards that all players will be manipulating for their own purposes. Each realm has abilities associated with it you can use to give you an edge and finding the best combinations is the key to winning. Ends Mar 21^st.

 

 

Kingdom Builder Harvest – A new expansion for Kingdom Builder featuring another new terrain type: farmland! Building on farmland requires substantial legal wrangling however, so it doesn’t appear in the terrain deck. Instead you can only grow into it by building in the spaces next to it. Grain Silos replace castles on these hexes, which offer end game bonus actions before scoring takes place. Worth a look for fans! Ends Mar 18^th.

 

 

Overlords of Infamy – A light, silly game of worker placement and tile laying in which players are attempting to become the most nefarious bad guy by completing quests like stealing all the bacon or blanketing the region in glitter. Much like Lords of Waterdeep, the key is collecting the resources necessary to complete these quests, but watch out for the local hero who’s out to make a mess of everyone’s plans. Ends Mar 23^rd.

 

Queen of the Hill & Little Monsters – These two different themes for the same game, a simple push your luck card game, and it is up to you whether you want the kid friendly Little Monsters or the slightly under clothed Queen of the Hill anime style. The game itself is just about trying to gather the most points without hitting a trap. Ends Mar 23^rd.

 

 

Squadron Strike: Traveller – A game of ship-to-ship combat set in the Traveller RPG universe. This system features a fascinating system of tilting boxes and various other plastic pieces to enable the game to simulate the altitude and pitch of your ships as well as the usual 2D position. Ends Mar 21^st.

 

 

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Images from Board Game Geek users T Worthington, domcrap, corduroy, davricle, Wanderer999, Ad Astra News as well as the relevant Kickstarter project pages.