Kickstart Your Week! Epic Battlecruiser Missile Crises
Epic Card Game
Once upon a time, a little deck building card game called Star Realms was released. Unlike the big lumbering deck building behemoths of Dominion or Thunderstone, Star Realms was small, Star Realms was cheap, Star Realms was fast. There was no slow drawn out build up, no exhausting resource gathering. Battle was joined from the first hand. Light frigates darting out of the darkness chipping away at your opponents’ health. Then the military might of your empire was slowly brought to bear, bigger and more powerful ships entering the fray until the table in front of you was filled with the ruined hulks of destroyed ships. Until, finally, your opponents’ shields fail, his ships shatter, and you strike the killing blow.
Then, the creators of this game decided: we should do this with Fantasy too! And so Epic Card Game was born. Epic borrows many elements from its predecessor, from four factions that can be mixed or played separately in your deck, to immediate combat being launched from turn 1. But this time they aren’t content to show the deck builders how its done, this time they are making a Trading Card game. This time, they are going after Magic: The Gathering.
Well, sort of. There will be no random booster packs. No hard to get cards. Expansions will be optional. Instead they want players to focus on building a deck from a limited pool of cards, an approach regularly taken by Magic tournaments attempting to address the “I can afford better cards than you so I win” gameplay that can be present. Rather than building a deck as the game is played, Epic has players build decks before the game begins proper. This can be either well in advance, from the entire set (if everyone has their own set). Or you can get together with friends who don’t own the game, and play with sealed, drafted or pre-constructed decks, as their known.
But you don’t need to be an expert in the terminology of trading card games to be interested in this game. Indeed, it is the perfect way to try out that style of gaming, coming in at a crazy cheap $15 for a set. Star Realms, their previous game, won the Origins fan favourite award this year (see our coverage here), so you can be sure its coming from a group with the right pedigree! Go check it out!
There will be an Epic ending on June 30th.
Eminent Domain: Battlecruisers and Exotica
Building space empires is a classic theme in board gaming, always guaranteed to garner interest. Eminent Domain made full use of that, with its mix of deck building and board exploration. You can now get hold of the Exotica expansion, including cool new things like Exotic planets, asteroids (that you can throw at each other! The asteroids, not the cards…), recon abilities and mining. But the real reason to look at this Kickstarter is the stand-alone game Battlecruisers, set in the Eminent Domain universe.
In it, each player has a hand of identical cards, from which they will select a single one to play each turn for its ability, which are revealed simultaneously. However! If two or more players chose the same cards, they both suffer a negative effect. What do you think your friends are going to play next?! Do they know what card you need to play and will they use that against you?? The players can use them to gather victory points, or to blast your opponents. Last player standing, or the first to some victory threshold wins!
Battlecruisers looks like an exciting, light card game. Its super quick, but has lots of variety. Each game is played with a different set of cards from the total collection. There are 21 different sets defined in the rulebook, and you can happily make random sets, extending the lifetime to crazy levels. Definitely worth looking at, and if you’re a fan of the Eminent Domain series, the new expansion will surely be on your list already!
Battlecruisers will be locked in combat until July 1st.
13 Days
On October 14th 1962, American spy planes discovered the presence of Soviet nuclear ballistic missiles on Cuba, initiating the tensest moments of world history: the Cuban missile crisis. Over the next 13 days, America and the Soviet Union came within hours of all out nuclear war. Fortunately for the everyone alive today, diplomacy was able to pull us back from the brink and now we can play board games about it! Take control of either the Americans or Soviets in the ultimate battle of wills. Will your side come out on top in the eyes of the world? Or will you turn crisis into all out thermonuclear war?
Victory will go to whichever player is seen to have dominated their opponent, by having overall control of the different regions on the board, both territorially and within the media. Hearts and minds boys! Each round players will chose a secret objective, you will know yours but not your opponent’s, that will reward prestige to the player that dominates particular territories. Except, you will know the three cards they had to choose from, so from the distribution of their influence, you may be able to guess what they’ve gone for. That’s already awesome. But it gets even better. Because dominating regions will drive players up the Defcon tracks towards nuclear war. Whoever triggers nuclear war loses. So as the nukes fall on their people, the winner can at least claim the moral victory.
The first thing gamers will say when they see this, is Twilight Struggle. Or “Oh God, history”, if you’re less of a gamer. And the comparison is well deserved, this is Twilight Struggle Lite, taking a similar approach with historical cards, a tug of war type victory track, even the board looking like a scaled down version. For the unitiated, Twilight Struggle is seen by many as the best board game ever made. Its quite possibly the cleverest, but with a run time of 3-4 hours and a great deal of complexity, its not the most accessible. 13 Days offers a taste of that struggle in a much more manageable package (for context, the rulebook of 13 Days is a 5th the size of Twilight Struggle!). Absolutely worth backing!
The 13 Day struggle ends July 2nd.
Worth a Look
Ether Wars – Competing to control the Ether, a precious resource that can be obtained by controlling regions of the planet. Controlling with dice shaped minions. Ok, your minions are custom dice. There are asymmetric race abilities, resource gathering and combat elements. They are combining a lot of systems into what looks like a high quality package. Ends Jun 29th.
Town Center: Beaune/Turku – Town Center (Grrr… Centre!) is an intriguing game of town planning…! Players draft cubes whose placement in your town can trigger building cascades according to the different cube colours and positions, creating a fascinating 3D spatial puzzle as you try and trigger these cascades. This Kickstarter funds an expansion (set in the designers home towns…) with new maps to play, as well as an opportunity to pick up the original game. Ends Jun 29th.
Pillars of Eternity: Lords of the Eastern Reach – A card game based in the Pillars of Eternity video game world. Players must defend and build their capital city, sending adventurers to dungeons for loot, or attacking other players’ cities. Looks well polished and great for fans of the games. Ends Jul 1st.
Spheres of Influence – A light war game aiming to dramatically improve on the Risk formula. Making a game that is of a sensible length, with a more dynamic map and unpredictable player action order. Sounds really interesting and well worth a look for gamers who wish Risk worked. Ends Jul 2nd.
Cosmic Kaboom – A dexterity game that gives you the opportunity to destroy planets! What, you want more? Seriously, just go check it out! Ends Jul 2nd.
Commissioned – A historical co-op game set at the dawn of Christianity. Journey around the ancient world in a scenario based game, collecting elements of the New Testament, or spreading the religion while trying to escape persecution by the Romans. It may not be to everyone’s tastes but they are pursuing the historical, rather than religious, element here, which certainly sounds interesting to me. Ends Jul 3rd.
Random Musings
A little while ago, Weykick created a magnetic football, or rather “Foosball”, game in which players have a magnet under the table that they use to control a player on top of the table. Turning the classic footballers on sticks game into something more like air hockey with a ball. Which proved quite successful, and does look a lot of fun! They are now on Kickstarter to produce a 6 player edition of the game. Which costs $200… plus shipping. Now, don’t get me wrong, its not a rip off (technically), you would be getting a hefty hexagonal wooden table to play on plus the stand and everything you need to play. I’m just wondering who has space for something like this? The original 2 player game is more reasonably priced and targeted at kids (or nearly kids…) and makes sense. How many families can get 6 players together often enough to make this worth while? I do feel like Weykick may have scored an own goal with this one.
Image credit goes to board game geek users truekid, Kermit2005, megalomane, anglmortis, zefquaavius, ScottE, JoshLamont, shanniganz, Krspond and William Hunt
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