A Preview of the Waterdeep Expansion: Scoundrels of Skullport

Wizards of the Coast has given us a sneak peek at the upcoming expansion for the hit worker-placement game Lords Of Waterdeep. It's called Scoundrels of Skullport, and it actually has not one but TWO expansions in it! Plus, how sweet does that cover look?!

This preview talks about only one of the expansions: Skullport.

"Skullport includes a new resource: Corruption. Unlike Adventurers and Gold, having Corruption in your Tavern penalizes you at the end of the game. However, the Buildings, Quests, and Intrigue cards that produce Corruption also offer more plentiful rewards. Thus you must strike a balance between your greed and the potential harm of Corruption at the end of the game.

Each Corruption token in your Tavern at the end of the game is worth negative Victory Points. The exact negative value depends on how much Corruption has been collected throughout the game; the more corrupt you and your fellow Lords are, the more Corruption hurts your score."

This expansion also comes with new Quests, Intrigue Cards, and Buildings.

Once Wizards previews the other expansion, Undermountain, we'll be sure and bring you coverage. Thanks for reading!

Kickstarter Weekly—July 17, 2013

Here we go with another installment of Kickstarter Weekly, we've got lots to talk about so let's give in!

Currently Running!

Frog Flip - Sprocket Games

We gave you a sneak peek at this campaign last week, and the mini game designed by Jason and Claire Kotarski funded within the first 12 hours of the campaign—coincidence? Probably. They're looking to knock over some stretch goals, which will only add to the value of your pledge. Check out our review of the game here. The game costs you a pledge of $14; you can check out the campaign right here.

PigPen - Island Officials

Pigpen is a take-that, family strategy card game for 2-4 players. Players will take turns trying to build their pens, gather pigs within them, and also do what they can to destroy their opponents' pens! Designed by Kevin Kulp, and developed by (friend of the blog) Jason Tagmire, this one looks like another fun family game we are sure to enjoy! Stay tuned for our Double-Take Review of this soon! But in the meantime check out the campaign, and consider placing a $20 pledge to grab a copy of this one.

Incredibrawl - Vision 3 Games

Incredibrawl is subtitled "A chaotic, casual card game," and that is exactly what you'll get with a copy of the game (which is just a pledge of $25!). The game is very well suited for family play or casual play. We just reviewed this game here. They are two-thirds funded with 23 days to go (the campaign ends on Aug. 10, 2013). You can find the campaign here.

Casual Gamer Magazine Year 2

Casual Gamer has become a strong voice in the casual gaming industry, and they've launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund their second year. You can get a PDF subscription for $15 and a print-and-PDF subscription for $25. Check out the full campaign here.

NanoBot Battle Arena - Derpy Games

A fast-paced tile-placement/card game set in the epic battle arena of a petri dish. NanoBot Battle Arena claims to have a one-game (10-15 minute) learning curve and is for 2-4 players. You can take a look at the campaign here, and a pledge of $25 gets you a copy of the game!

This is just cool!

Darkling Plain: An Augmented Reality Miniatures Board Game - Nocturnal Media

Okay, Just watch the video. For $55 you get the full game board, AR app, and some army cards. They have a very high goal to get the game to market, but the game looks pretty well thought out and the AR just looks cool! You can check it out here.

Thanks so much for reading, please don't forget to take our reader polls, and don't forget to subscribe this week for your chance to win a free copy of Boss Monster! And as always look for us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube!

Podcast Poll #2, and Contest #3

We wanted to take a moment and let you know that you can still contribute to the poll we're conducting as we prepare to launch our very own podcast in mere weeks! And you can sound off in our second podcast poll as well! If you have friends who are gamers, and enjoy a good podcast, please share this with them as we've found the feedback here extremely valuable! If you have any other advice, requests, comments, opinions etc, please use the comments section below to sound off! Truly, we appreciate your feedback and your input, and will definitely put it to good use as we make this dream of ours a reality!

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And don't forget to enter to win our third contest as we celebrate our Blogiversary! This week we're giving away a free copy of Boss Monster: The Dungeon Building game! Simply subscribe to the blog and you're entered to win!! (Again this contest is only open to those living in the US and Canada—sorry.)

Thanks, as always, for reading, and thanks for all the feedback! Don't forget to look for us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube!

Fantasy Flight Introduces Multiplayer to Star Wars: The Card Game

By Firestone In their continuing effort to get me to deposit my paychecks directly into their bank accounts, Fantasy Flight announced yesterday that the new Star Wars: The Card Game expansion, Balance of the Force, includes two new multiplayer options, and new objective sets.

Expansion designer Nate French says, "[This] was a project that grew in the making. The original vision was to allow two to three light side players to join forces against a single powerful dark side player. It was an exciting vision for the product, but as we started developing it, we began to realize that the game’s multiplayer format also held the potential to bring even more to the game.

“Instead of only allowing the light side to play as a team,” we asked in early development talks, “why not enable team play for both light side and dark side?” Once that question was on the table, everything else fell quickly into place.

To enable a single player to take on a two or three player team of opponents, Balance of the Force introduces the concept of the challenge deck scenario to the Star Wars: The Card Game experience. A challenge deck scenario is a powerful, self-contained, narrative-based deck that is piloted by one player against two or three challengers. Balance of the Force contains two challenge decks, Jerjerrod’s Task and The Hunt for Skywalker.

Each challenge deck presents a story-based scenario, in which light and dark side players work against each other to accomplish specific goals.

As we developed the challenge decks, we also implemented a number of new rules that enable teammates to work together. We invented a “common reserve” that enables players to pass one card to a teammate each round, and we introduced support attack and support defense mechanics that enable a player to assist his teammates in combat, as well as a number of other innovations to promote teamwork and camaraderie.

Working together with other players and trying to figure out the best common strategy for the team proved to be quite engaging, and we really wanted to capture this experience for the broader card pool. The result was the new two-versus-two format. Balance of the Force introduces a new rules set for both playing and deck-building in this format. Playing two-versus-two is an excellent way to rediscover the card pool, as a number of existing cards take on an entirely new meaning in a multiplayer environment.

Is this exciting to you? Is it enough to make you interested in the game if you weren't before? Fantasy Flight is saying 4th quarter of this year. Stay tuned...

And make sure you sign up to follow the blog.-------->  We're giving away a copy of Boss Monster on Saturday!

Blogiversary Giveaway #3!

We've definitely had a lot of fun the first two weeks of this month, giving away some great games to our great readers. It's like Christmas in July here on TOG, and we're loving it! This week is no different, and we are beyond excited about the game we're giving away! Well, what is it?

This week we're partying, like a boss.

A Boss Monster that is!!

That's right: This week's giveaway is a free copy of the Kickstarter smash hit Boss Monster: The Dungeon Building Card Game!

In December we interviewed the guys of Brotherwise, creators of Boss Monster, and they have joined in the party this month and generously supplied us with this copy to give away as a part of our month-long blogiversary celebration! So, how do you enter to win this prestigious award? It's simple: Just subscribe to the blog, and you're in! Already subscribed to the blog? Well, you're in!

While it's not required, we would appreciate it if you shared this post with your friends, family and all those folks you have contact with via social media! We're super excited to be able to give away all of these great games this month, and the more you share our contests with your social circles, the more prizes we'll be able to give away!

There is a little bit of fine print: Once again we can not offer this to folks who live outside of the US or Canada. All of our funds are going towards producing the new podcast, and can't squeeze the extra funds to ship the boss too far.

You can order a copy of Boss Monster right now, right here. And it will be on store shelves the week of July 29. Or you can enter here to win it a few days early from us right here at TOG! You can find out all things Brotherwise at bwisegames.com

Thanks so much for reading our blog; it truly is awesome that you read, and we hope you understand that giving away a few games every now and then is just a very small way of showing how much we appreciate your readership!!

Don't forget to check us out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. And don't forget to subscribe!!!

TOG Visual - Michael Coe and Dungeon Heroes!

One of our first stops at Origins was the Gamelyn Games booth, where we had a little chat with Michael Coe, founder of Gamelyn Games and designer of Dungeon Heroes, a fun little 2-player dungeon crawl with outstanding components.

We'll be writing a full-out Double-Take Review of Dungeon Heroes very soon, but until we do you can get a good feel of the game from watching the video. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umrpX-fUfaA&w=560&h=315] We'd like to thank Michael for sharing some time with us, and look forward to reviewing Dungeon Heroes soon!

Thanks for reading and watching!

Don't forget to subscribe to the blog for a chance to win free stuff!

And don't forget all the internetie things you can do to keep up with TOG! Facebook! Twitter! Instagram! YouTube!

CarmaRace—Kickstarter Preview

Even though we already had a Kickstarter Weekly post this week, we wanted to give you a quick preview look at a campaign being launched by Board to Death TV. That's right, some board game reviewers decided to try their hand at design, and CarmaRace was born.

CarmaRace, from first glance, looks to be a humorous card-driven board game. You're moving on the board as a hitchhiker, and the cards you play affect your movement, as well as your opponents.

Here's the catch: When you play a card that hinders your opponent, that opponent can then take that very same card into their hand. So, yes, what goes around, comes around! The luck you're pressing in this game is in the form of your opponents' good graces! Yeah, good luck with that...

The game looks very well done—we've included some preview art in this post—and they'll be launching the campaign July 18, and early birds can get a copy starting at $45. You can check out their launch event on Facebook here.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to look for us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube!

TOG Visual—Darren J. Gendron Talks Scurvy Dogs!

Well, you know I (Jeremiah) have a thing for pirate games, so when we saw the large Scallywags International banners unfurled in the exhibit hall, we made it a point to go and see what was going on. Darren J. Gendron of Scallywags International (which does much more than board games!) sat down and chatted about the high seas and pirates of days gone by! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8bCvvfvuZM&w=560&h=315] Thanks for reading the blog, thanks for watching the videos, and thanks for making our 1-year blogiversary celebration so awesome this month!

Subscribing to the blog get's you entered to win free stuff, and of course there's those Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube things that you can like, follow and subscribe to as well!

Podcast Poll—And Blogiversary Giveaway #2: Sunrise City!

We're working away in the background to prepare, produce, and, of course, launch our very own podcast, but we thought we'd pause and get some thoughts from you! If you could take 5 seconds and fill out our poll, it would be much appreciated.

So, we'd like to know...

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We're also happy to announce the next game we're giving away! Clever Mojo Games has graciously donated a copy of Sunrise City! We'll give it away on Saturday, and all you have to do to be eligible is subscribe over on the right---->. One other thing we have to mention is that this contest is only open to those living in the US. We're really sorry about that, but we just don't have the funds to mail a copy of a game around the world. If we pick your name and you live outside the US, the only option is for you to pay shipping. Otherwise we're picking a new name. Also, if you've already won something in this round of giveaways, you're not eligible to win again this round. The chances are small, but still...

Spiel des Jahres 2013—And the Winner Is...

By Firestone The winners of the coveted Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) and Kennerspiel des Jahres (Gamers' Game of the Year) have been announced. To celebrate, let's set off some fireworks...

In a delightfully surprising move, Hanabi won the SdJ award—the other nominees were Qwixx and Augustus. Hanabi is a co-op card game where you're trying to put on the best fireworks display. It's also one of my favorite games of the last year.

The Kennerspiel award is for a deeper game, though it's still aimed at families, so it kind of straddles the line between light and meaty. Winner Legends of Andor is als0 a co-op game—but one I've not yet played. The other nominees were The Palaces of Carrara and Bruges—I've played Bruges and it's a solid middle-weight Feld game.

Keep an eye out for our review of Hanabi later this week! And we'll have a Bruges review up soon, too. Thanks for reading, and make sure you sign up to follow the blog via email----->. This week we're giving away a copy of Sunrise City from Clever Mojo Games!