Kickstart Your Week! Manga, Aliens and the Titans

Mangaka artwork

Mangaka

Not every game needs to be strategic battle full of difficult decisions, tension and occasionally the glory of destroying your enemies. Some games reward different skills: dexterity, clever word play, or just plain creativity. Mangaka (which literally means Japanese comic – ka) is one such game. You will all be taking the roles of struggling comic book artists, desperately chasing fame by drawing comics that fulfil the criteria the deck of theme cards has chosen for you. Maybe it will be “Robots”, “Television” and “The Desire to be a Parent”. Perhaps “Giant Monsters”, “Military Hardware” and “Forbidden Love”.

The game steps up the challenge over 4 rounds, with players having more and more panels to complete, allowing you to tell increasingly complex stories. Of course, not everyone is a talented artist, but that doesn’t matter. The game rewards you for telling stories, how well you capture the theme cards you have and for finishing the comic in time. Because, you see, the game has a time limit for each round, representing “the harsh deadlines comic book creators are operating under”. It seems a victim of the comic book industry made this game: another rule offers bonus points if players can capture a certain style of comic (sci-fi, sports etc) to satisfy the “endlessly changing desires of your readership”!

Mangaka content

Many people may be intimidated by the drawing a comic thing, but as I said before, its creativity that’s being pushed, not artistic talent! Part of the fun is having your friends try and guess what themes you were trying to capture in your comic after each round. I hope the Trend cards are explained well, so that people unfamiliar with the various breeds of manga aren’t at a disadvantage. If you’re not sold on it yet than just think: most games have you building something, a village, a castle, an industry. But you always destroy them at the end. With Mangaka, you can take home a series of comics that you have created, a permanent reminder of a unique night of gaming!

Mangaka will be furiously sketching until May 25th.

 

Project ELITE cover

Project: ELITE

When Earth has been invaded by a horde of plastic alien monsters, who you gonna call? Well, Project: ELITE obviously. As the kickstarter joyfully exclaims, the game contains over 80 miniatures! So as usual, its already smashed its funding goal. They are some quite nice miniatures: detailed sculpts, featuring some impressive looking bosses, and some really impressive mega-bosses you can add on. The basic aliens are all the same though; some variety there would have been nice. But, while I have a huge amount of respect for the sculptor’s work, here we are interested in the game.

Project ELITE hero miniatures

So, what is interesting about Project: ELITE? Why am I spending my time writing about it? Well, in Project: ELITE, you play in real time. Each game round, the team has two minutes to perform as many actions as they can, by rolling dice as quickly as possible! Hopefully you already have a sense of the chaos that will ensue here. Each of the 4 dice players are rolling have symbols representing different actions, like a running man for movement, or gun and tool symbols that can be used to activate weapons. However, on one side is an alien face, meaning you have to move one of the aliens a space closer. Every time any player roles one!

The board is covered with small arrows that show how the aliens are allowed to move between spaces, forcing them to flow down towards your helipad. If they get there, you lose! The game would be easy if you just had to sit there and shoot, but of course, each mission has a set of victory conditions, rescuing civilians or setting explosives to detonate that force you to move about the map. Cleverly, damage taken when an alien moves into your space leads to you permanently losing dice, really upping the stakes.

This real time, dice rolling, mechanic has been used to great effect in games like Escape: The Curse of the Temple! This is the first application to a combat game, and it looks a lot of fun! The only oddity is in how the aliens will ignore characters that aren’t directly in their path, but maybe the heroes being ELITE explains that, the aliens can’t spot them until they are right on top of them. It’s a miniatures game, so it’s a bit pricey but worth checking out.

Project ELITE will be rolling dice like crazy until May 25th.

 

Titan Series

The Titan Series

Within the nightmare realms of Tartarus, beneath even the lowest circles of hades, the Titans of gaming were sealed away by the all powerful Game Publishers. Now, Calliope Games (publishers of the excellent Tsuro) are threatening to release them upon the world! All together now:

ReleaseTheKraken

Man, we do some cutting satire on this site! More seriously, Calliope Games is commissioning 9 of the world’s… well ok America’s best game designers to put together a series of gateway games, all on different styles of games. Zach and Jordan Weisman (HeroClix, Mage Knight) are making a worker placement bidding game, Paul Peterson (Smash Up!) has a dice rolling risk management game, and Richard Garfield (Magic: The Gathering, King of Tokyo, Netrunner) is working on a party word game!

Also confirmed are Paul Peterson (Guillotine,Smash Up!), Eric Lang (XCOM: The Board Game, Quarriors), Seth Johnson (HeroClix), Mike Selinker (Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, Axis & Allies, Betrayal at House on the Hill) and lots of others! Which is awesome, but no details on their games yet. In fact there are almost no details on any of the games and with 3 years to wait for the final games (Calliope are planning on releasing 3 each year) this is a long haul Kickstarter. Its great to see a publisher throwing effort into producing a raft of gateway games, and they have definitely put together a great team of designers, but it sure would have been nice to have a preview!

The Titan Series will be imprisoned until May 30th.

 

Worth a look

 

Lord of the Dead artLord of the Dead – Control an evil necromancer or the force of villagers arrayed to fight him off in an old school hex and counter game. A 2 player combat game that fits in an envelope. Pick up for nostalgia or a taste of old school gaming. Ends May 25th.

 

 

Dragon Punch logoDragon Punch – 10 minute street fighter style fighting game that doesn’t even need a table to play. Simultaneous card play, attack upgrading and even a spatial element from a hand of just 7 cards. Hotter than a fireball to the face! Ends May 28th.

 

 

Cauldron Box ArtCauldron – A game of brewing potions and passive (or just outright) aggressive player interaction. Collecting ingredients allows you to brew potions to earn victory points, but to cast spells you’ll need to spend those victory points. Balance investment and keep a beady eye on your opponents’ plans to win. Ends May 28th.

 

 

The Foreign King box artThe Foreign King – Become the most influential family of the world’s most exciting country: Belgium! Neat looking area control game set during the foundation and industrialisation of Belgium. Ends May 29th.

 

 

Requiem Vampire Knight box artRequiem Vampire Knight: The Game – Skirmish battle game across a randomised battlefield of potential resources and/or abilities. Set in the Resurrection comic book universe featuring a ton of amazing art by the artist from the comics. Ends May 29th.

 

 

Gamboni King of NY coverGamboni: King of New York – Fight for control of New York as one of the 5 main mafia families. Build businesses to earn money, attack other players an their bosses, or rat out your opponents to the FBI. Seems nicely thematic and I love the use of poker chips as counters to track everything! Ends May 30th.

 

 

Gruff Monster GoatsGruff – Play as a shepherd (wait for it…) leading a herd of mutated monster goats trying to kill your opponent. Build a thematic deck based on your chosen goats and duke it out. Featuring evolving goats, lovely artwork and the phrase “a herd of mutated monster goats”. Ends May 31st.

 

 

Random Musings

 

Alewood Drinking Gun

Drinking games won’t really rate amongst games on this site. While drinking with board games is a common feature of my life (I don’t have a problem!), drinking games exclude some people which I feel goes against what board games should be about. With that disclaimer out of the way, I do want to mention Alewood, or more importantly, the measuring gun. In a wild west themed drinking game, the gun measures the number of bullets being fired in a fight. The more you drink, the more shots you’ve taken at your opponent. Plus the array of slots makes it adjustable for different drinks and glass sizes. Can’t deny it’s a really clever idea!

 

 

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