Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Kennerspiel Winner Wingspan Taking Flight in Digital Form
It’s just day after day after day after day of great news coming out this month.
Today’s monthly email from Jamey Stegmaier at Stonemaier Games contained another great announcement, hot on the heals of the Viticulture one.
In what almost seemed like an aside, Jamey revealed that MonsterCouch studios is going to be developing Wingspan for digital platform(s) with a release date sometime in 2020.
It’s even available to add to your Wishlist on Steam!
Wingspan was designed by Elizabeth Hargrave with art by Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo, Natalia Rojas and Beth Sobel. It won this year’s Kennerspiel award so you know it has to be good!
I’ve played it, and it is definitely good.
Briefly, Wingspan is a tableau-building card game about birds, where you are trying to make the best bird habitats around. I love how the action system works.
If you want to find out a bit more about how it plays, go to the “New to me” post for January and it has a complete description as well as my thoughts.
The idea that I will be able to play this on my iPad or on Steam next year makes me very happy. Note, though, that Steam is the only platform that’s been announced. No word yet on mobile.
Here’s a screenshot from the MonsterCouch page, but check out their page for more. It looks pretty good already!
I’ll keep an eye on this one.
What do you think? Are you salivating as much as I am?
Architects of the West Kingdom Getting More Stuff
It’s been a week of news last week, so why not start this week with another excellent tidbit that I can’t wait for?
Shem Phillips, co-designer of one of my favourite games (Architects of the West Kingdom), has announced that an expansion will be coming for this terrific game.
Architects of the West Kingdom: Age of the Artisans will add new Craft cards, new apprentices and buildings, a dual-layered Guildhall board and components for a sixth player (and apparently it’s orange!)
Shem announced it on Twitter with a link to the cover photo, but no other information has been revealed.
It’s official – an expansion for Architects is coming!https://t.co/CbKt3jaQc1
— Shem Phillips (@garphillgames) August 3, 2019
They’re not even sure if this is going to Kickstarter or not, but rest assured of one thing.
However it comes out, I’ll be there on the first day.
What do you think of all this?
Is it in your Top 5 games played of all time?
Or is it just another boring Euro?
Let me know in the comments.
Epic Spells Wars Moves into Deckbuilding
Fans of the Epic Spell Wars series of card games designed by Matt Hyra and published by Cryptozoic Games have another reason to be excited this Fall.
Cryptozoic has announced the there will be a new deckbuilding version of the classic card game coming out later this year.
Epic Spell Wars: Annihilageddon is being shown at GenCon this week and will have a full September release.
![1. ESW-DBG-Beauty-Shot-[COMPRESSED-FOR-WEB]](https://dudetakeyourturn.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/1.-esw-dbg-beauty-shot-compressed-for-web-1.jpg?w=698)
In the game, you are trying to become a more powerful wizard and cast nasty spells to take your opponent(s) down to zero hit points.
Just like the card game editions of this zany and chaotic world, death doesn’t mean the end. If you die, you will get a Dead Wizard card that may give you more benefits…or more bad things to happen.
The game plays 2-5 players and it looks like it’s going to be a madcap affair.
What do you think of this development? Are you in for another deckbuilder?
You can wait until September to decide, but then maybe you should check it out?
Viticulture Coming to Digital via Digidiced!
Wow, it’s a busy week for digital boardgame news!
First Through the Ages, and now Viticulture news!
Yes, Digidiced (developers of many great digital apps such as Castles of Burgundy, Patchwork, etc) have announced that they are doing the digital adaptation of the Stonemaier class game Viticulture, the worker placement wine-making game designed by Jamey Stegmaier, Morton Pedersen, and Alan Stone.
I haven’t played this game in 3 years, but it’s not because I don’t like it. It’s just that every time it has come out, I’ve already been involved with something else.
To have it on my iPad will be heavenly!
I’m already tired (another news post is coming in an hour!), so let’s blurb this puppy from the Digidiced web page.
• 1 to 6 players
• Play in single-player with challenging computer opponents, against your friends in local multiplayer, or face players from all over the world in online mode!
• Learn the rules with our Interactive tutorial or even watch games of the top players on your device!
• Take your time in asynchronous game mode with push notifications and never miss a turn.
• Family friendly – non violent theme
• Easy interactive tutorial to learn the game from scratch
• Analyze your best games or learn tricks from the best with playback
• 3 different computer opponents
• uses the newest rules of the board game
Asynchronous online multiplayer play is a must, but Digidiced has already proven that they’re good at that so I have no doubt that it will be done right.
I am so excited about this one.
It’s going to be released on Android, iOS, and Steam, at least for now.
Since everybody’s going to the Switch nowadays, is that in the future?
Who knows?
More news as it comes, but since they didn’t release any pictures, here’s an old one of one of the games I played.
Are you a Viticulture fan? Looking forward to this?
Let me know in the comments.
Through the Ages expands through even more ages!
Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization, developed by Czech Games Edition for most digital platforms, is widely considered to be one of the best digital board game app out there. I have to say it’s one of my favourites as it’s almost flawless (yes, my review of it is, oh, two years or so late. So sue me).
CGE is not sitting on their laurels, though.
News arrived this week (Editor – Late to the party again, eh?) that the expansion to this wonderful game, Through the Ages: New Leaders & Wonders, would be released on digital platforms and actually before the tabletop version!
According to CGE, the digital release of the expansion will hit all platforms (Google, iOS, and Steam) on September 12 with the price of $4.99 US (what, no Steam increase? That’s cool).
Tabletop gamers shouldn’t worry, though, as it will be released for that version a couple of months later for the nice price of $24.95.
This expansion is going to include a bunch of (Editor – Duh) new leaders and wonders that will give players a lot more options.
Stonehenge (taken from the trailer, posted below), for example, is a new wonder that will give you science equal to the cost for each level of it that you build. That is seriously cool!
There’s also going to be a bunch of new military cards that you can seed into the Event deck (or aggressions you can inflict on your opponents), so the possibilities will be endless!
Ok, not endless, but pretty damned variable!
Not much else has been said about it, but here’s the trailer. It looks very cool and will be a first day digital purchase for me.
Join me and try to build your civilization up enough to master all others in this great game.
And maybe you could hit me up for a game?
The wait for September just got longer…
New to Me – July 2019
July was vacation month. I was off the entire month and was away from my normal game group for half of the month.
Thus, it’s not surprising that I only played two “new to me” games in July.
But tell that to the rabble normal people in the cult!
You’d think I had killed John Wick’s dog, the reaction was so negative.
I seriously thought I was going to lose my position.
But then I showed them this and they all calmed down.
See? The Oregon Coast is calming even if you’re not actually there!
My position in the cult is safe…for now.
Even with only two new games played, one of them was so good that it really counts as two or three games just by itself, so I’m definitely coming out ahead.
So, without further adieu (all of my adieu was spent to get a gorgeous jewel for an Afghan warlord anyway), let’s get this thing on the road!
Ascension: Delerium arrives on the App!
The first day back at work after a month off is always going to be hard. I wouldn’t know normally because I’ve never done it until this month.
While it wasn’t too hard to get back into the swing of things, it was kind of depressing to be going back to it after enjoying myself for so long.
What could make a day like that better?
How about news that the next Ascension digital expansion was released today by Playdek!
Ascension: Delerium is a new set for the digital Ascension app (it came out on tabletop in 2018) and while I’ve only played it a couple of times so far, it adds some interesting wrinkles.
Raiders of the North Sea digital releases July 30!
The July vacation continues (what, you didn’t think I was avoiding posting for some other reason, did you?), but I couldn’t let this one pass when I heard about it.
Raiders of the North Sea is one of my favourite games of all time, and the news that it was coming out on digital at some point was really exciting!
But then all went dark and we didn’t hear any news.
Until yesterday, that is.
I haven’t been keeping up with things as much as I normally do while I’ve been away, but I think this is a surprise announcement.
Dire Wolf Digital announced that it will be coming out on Tuesday, July 30. My brain is a bit vacation-addled, but I think that’s next week!
Woo!
It will be very neat to finally be playing this on my mobile devices and perhaps even on Steam (not sure if I’m going to double dip or not yet).
It will be coming to the following devices, though: iOS, Android, Steam, and Nintendo Switch.
No word on pricing yet. It’s available to wishlist on Steam right now if you want, but no price listed there either.
I’ll try and get a review up fairly quickly next week (along with some other stuff since I’ve, you know, been away for almost a month).
What do you think of this game? Will you get it on one of your digital devices?
Any other thoughts?
And now, back our regularly scheduled Oregon Coast sunset.
See you next week!
Fluxx Returning to Mobile Platforms July 18
When I first bought an iPhone way back in the day (maybe it was 6 or even 30 years ago?), one of the first boardgame apps I saw and downloaded was the Looney Labs insane card game Fluxx.
I know Fluxx gets a bad rap, and I would sometimes say rightly so, as being an insane card game that can just go on forever.
The basic rules are that you draw a card and play a card. The game isn’t won until one of the win conditions that have been played is satisfied (so actually there are no win conditions until somebody has played one). So it could be quick or it could take hours.
The thing about Fluxx is that some of the cards you play adjust the rules. Maybe you’ll play a card that will limit players’ hand sizes. Or maybe it will be “draw 1, play 2” cards. These rules stay in effect until they are removed.
You can also play victory condition cards that will change what you’re trying to do, or what have you.
It’s a chaotic game, and I found it fun on iOS when it was produced by Playdek. At the time, it was only out on iOS.
It was a casualty of the iOS “App-ocalypse” when suddenly all apps had to be 64-bit or they wouldn’t run under the new operating system. It disappeared from the app store without much fuss.
It didn’t seem like it was that big of a seller for Playdek so nobody expected it to come back.
Playdek has now announced that we were wrong to doubt them.
Fluxx will be back in the App Store (and also on Google Play for the first time) on July 18!
New to Me – June 2019
June was a very slow month for new to me games. Only two! And one expansion.
Man, were they great ones, though. The expansion is to my favourite game of all time (at least for now) and I got another COIN game in!
I think the low number is mitigated by the fact that one of the plays was of a 2010 game.
That’s almost elderly in this day and age!
When I presented it to the Cult of the New to Me, I thought there might be another revolt. I’m not really living up to my cult leader status with only two new to me games played
I didn’t need to worry, though. This was their reaction.
I hesitate to tell them what July’s probably going to be like, though. They may just be being lenient on me this time.
So, without further adieu (all of my adieu disappeared into the desert during a clearing operation anyway), let’s get started!
Dude! Take Your Turn! 