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A Gaming Life
AEG & The OP team up for future Smash Up expansions
Being as much of a Smash Up fan as I am, you know I couldn’t pass up commenting on this one.
Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) and The Op (formerly USAopoly) are teaming up to bring new licensed factions to the hit card game (and one of my most-played) Smash Up.
Typically, factions in Smash Up are themed but a bit more generic, like Ninjas or Samurai or Truckers, maybe Time Travellers.
With this agreement, that will change for next year.
From the post:
“In joining forces with The Op, who celebrates 25 years of co-branded products and partnerships this year, Smash Up designer Paul Peterson is confident that fans will embrace what is to come of the collaboration. “The Op has consistently put out some of the highest quality games in the industry,” says Peterson, known best for his work on Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering. “By pairing with the design team from AEG, the Smash Up game we are building together is going knock the fans’ socks off!””
I’m not familiar with most of The Op’s catalog, so I’m not quite sure what those factions might be.
Looking at their site, I see Dungeons & Dragons Clue and a bunch of Disney games. There’s Harry Potter (though I would think it would be hard to differentiate that from the already-existing Wizards faction, since a lot of the cards in that faction are basically a parody of Harry Potter).
There’s Game of Thrones (also already parodied), but there’s also Bob’s Burgers, The Simpsons, IT (now *that* would be an interesting idea), Rick & Morty, and Super Mario, and that’s just the first three pages of their “All Games” page!
This could be extremely fun or it could be a disaster. We’ll have to see what happens in 2020.
However, I’m of two minds about the whole thing.
The licensed properties could be very good assuming they all are done in the Smash Up vein, with Smash Up art and all of that. I hope the licensing doesn’t go to their head.
On the other hand, I will miss the more generic imaginative factions that Peterson and crew have been coming up with over the past few years. The new World Tour: Culture Shock expansion factions (review coming once I play with it some more) just shows that ingenuity and I hope that the licensing doesn’t affect that.
I trust Peterson and the others at AEG that make Smash Up possible.
Yet I’m still holding my breath a little bit.
Here’s looking at 2020 and some more craziness!
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