Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
The Arrival – Martin Wallace
Martin Wallace is a widely-liked designer. He’s designed a great variety of excellent games, such as Brass, Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, (two of my favourite games) and a lot more as well.
Cryptozoic Entertainment has announced that they will be bringing one of his latest games to a wider distribution.
The Arrival came out at Essen last November, so it is technically a 2016 game. But its release has been limited, until Fall 2017.
In The Arrival, 2-4 players vie to bring the island now called Ireland (then called “Erin”) out from under the cruel rule of the Fomori. Each player is a warlord trying to increase his/her dominance over the island and beating the Fomori back. But spreading too quickly can increase corruption, which strengthens the Fomori.
What I find really interesting about this game (or the sound of it, anyway, since I have not seen it or played it) is that when the game ends, there are two possible ways to score it: Fewest Corruption if corruption has spread so badly that the Fomori control more of the island than all of the tribes, or most Fame points if the players control more of the island than the Fomori do.
It sounds like players have to walk a fine line in gaining their fame points, because if they do too much too quickly, the Fomori will end up controlling more and then Corruption will be the deciding factor.
And vice versa.
I’ll be interested in seeing this when it comes out.
It will be coming your way in Autumn 2017.
The $40 MSRP is kind of attractive too.
Dude! Take Your Turn! 
Hmm, this sounds interesting. I have encountered the word Fomori before in other games, and assumed it was invented for them. It makes me happy that there are other instances of it cropping up, and thus an assumption there is history. I should probably look it up. Will need to keep my eyes peeled for this one
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Thanks for the comment!
It does help that Wallace is a great designer. 🙂
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Fórmhóraigh – see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fomorians
Mildly annoying that the game description from the company says ‘then called Erin’ – 1) no, at that time it was called Éiru, and 2) it downplays the fact that we still call it ‘Erin’ in the living Irish language (Éireann/Éirinn depending on its grammatical case). Not a huge thing except you’d think it would at least respect the culture whose mythology it is ripping off.
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Interesting insight. I didn’t know any of that.
Thanks for mentioning it, and for stopping by!
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