Kickstarter Weekly, Oct. 21, 2013

Last week was a busy one here at TOG! Essen was in full swing (and we weren't there), but there have been lots of goings-on over on Kickstarter, and we're here to highlight a few campaigns this week, and also hear from you about the games you're backing! So let's get started!

Featured Campaign!

Brew Crafters: A Board Game About Making Beer - Dice Hate Me Games

There are some games that thematically aren't what you'd call my (Jeremiah's) cup of tea... or beer, wait, how does that work? Anyway, we've been blown away by some great games that didn't necessarily have a theme that we fell in love with. (Heartland Hauling, and Viticulture come to mind) But at the end of the day, superb gameplay won us over. The buzz around Brew Crafters has been solid and positive for months now, and it's finally on Kickstarter. This Euro style board game packs an American theme, and the classic Dice Hate Me Games visual design that we've grown to love.

They should hit their funding goal TODAY they're so close!

A $60 pledge get's you a copy of the game sent to your door and the campaign closes on Nov. 24. You can get more details about the game, and upcoming stretch goals, right here!

The Great Snowball Battle - Game Salute

This fast playing card game for players ages 8 and up, is the age old classic battle of every winter, a snowball battle! The game looks simple but fun, and thematically it's something I (still Jeremiah) love! Winter! I know, I'm weird. The funding level was super low, so they've already pushed past it, and are looking to add some interesting stretch goals!

You can grab a copy of this game with a $15 pledge, and the campaign ends on Nov. 22, get the full details on the campaign page!

Get Lucky - Cheapass Games

To win this game you're going to have to get Lucky, Doctor Lucky that is. This new card game is based on the original board game Kill Doctor Lucky, which won the Origins award for best board game in 1996. Players take on the roles of folks who -for whatever reason- want to kill Doctor Lucky.  The card game boasts, faster, more streamlined play, and better, more character driven mechanics.  Three stretch goals have already been achieved and there's still plenty of time for more to be unlocked!

You can get in on this one for $20 and the campaign ends Nov. 17. You can find the campaign here!

Kings of Israel - Funhill Games

Players are working cooperatively as prophets in ancient Israel, trying to lead God's people through turbulent times, removing sin and false idols and such. At first look, the game play looks a little Pandemic-ish, but I will say the cards, and artwork look awesome, and everything seems to be historically accurate, there are even companion bible studies available for the game. We're really intrigued by this one!

A pledge of $45 scores you a copy of the game and the campaign ends on Nov. 26. Check out full details right here!

Thanks again for checking in with us here at TOG! We know there are plenty of awesome games being funded on Kickstarter, and we only have room/time to write about 4 of them. Let us know what you're excited about and backing in the comments below!

And we'd love it if you subscribed to the blog via email over on the right!

AND! Don't forget about our contest! We're giving away a copy of Pixel Lincoln: The Deck Building Game, for details tune into our latest podcast episode!

IOS Board Games: One on Sale, and One Free!

Apple announced some new iPads yesterday. What better way to celebrate buying one than by getting some cheap games for it?!

Kingdom Builder—the clever game by Dominion designer Donald Vaccarino, is on sale for $4.99 (normally $6.99). And the abstract game Hive is FREE (normally $.99). They're not huge savings, but if you just dropped some bones on a new iPad, every little bit helps! Who knows when these will go back to regular price, so grab them now!

Thanks for reading! And don't forget to subscribe to the Theology Of Games Podcast on iTunes. We're giving away a copy of Pixel Lincoln, and the details are in podcast #3! Bye!

Last-Chance Kickstarter Project: Buccaneer Bones

Hey, we just found out about a neat-looking project, but it ends in just 48 hours! So we're going to give it its own post. It's a push-your-luck dice-roller, and it's only $9 shipped!

The game comes with:

-    4 Player Maps

-    4 First Mate Pawns (Plastic)

-    24 Ship Markers (Uria Stone Plastic, similar to Backgammon tiles)

-    12 Treasures (Uria Stone Plastic, similar to Backgammon tiles)

-    6 Bones (Dice)

-    Rule books in four languages (English, French, German, Spanish)

You roll dice, and try to get to islands and plunder them. And there are some special powers that activate depending on which island you're on. It's not deep. It's not strategic. It's not Tigris & Euphrates. BUT IT'S ONLY $9 SHIPPED. That's a great deal, even if you only use this with nongamers or teenagers or at an after-school program or whatever. Plus, they're only $3,000 away from adding two players to the mix. Check out the campaign, but do it soon, because there's only ~38 hours left!

Thanks for reading!

Fantasy Flight Releases the Trollfens Expansion for Descent 2.0

By Firestone

Fantasy Flight has released another "small" expansion for its hit dungeon-crawler, RPG, board game Descent—this time you'll be taking a trip to the dangerous Trollfens...

The game comes with two new Heroes—Roganna the Shade, and Augur Grisom— and two new Classes—the Stalker and the Healer.

For monsters, you'll see Plague Worms, Harpies, and Bol'Goreth, a huge troll who will get his own miniature in an upcoming Lieutenant Pack.

There are also five new quests that you can add to your campaign, or play as one-offs. Finally, there are some new terrain tiles that add a swampy terrain that can hold both treasures and dangers.

Chime in! Have you played Descent? Are you excited for this? Is Fantasy Flight coming out with too many expansions too quickly?

Rudiger Dorn is 'Walking' Back With a New Design!

By Firestone On my very first game night, almost 10 years ago, I played a game called Goa, designed by Rudiger Dorn. It was complex and confusing and I'd never played anything like it. I instantly fell in love. So I have a soft spot for Dorn and his games, and the announcement of a new game—Istanbul—fills me with joy.

Part of the reason is that I just like getting new meaty games from some of the classic designers (Dorn, Wolfgang Kramer, Reiner Knizia), but also because this game looks to use Dorn's "walking" mechanism.

Here's the description from Boardgamegeek.

"In Istanbul, you lead a group of one merchant and four assistants through 16 locations in the bazaar. At each such location, you can carry out a specific action. The challenge, though, is that to take an action, you must move your merchant and an assistant there, then leave the assistant behind (to handle all the details while you focus on larger matters). If you want to use that assistant again later, your merchant must return to that location to pick him up. Thus, you must plan ahead carefully to avoid being left with no assistants and thus unable to do anything...

In more detail, on a turn you move your merchant and his retinue of assistants one or two steps through the bazaar, either leave an assistant at that location or collect an assistant left earlier, then perform the action. If you meet other merchants or certain individuals at the location, you might be able to take a small extra action. Possible actions include:

• Paying to increase the your wheelbarrow capacity, which starts the game with a capacity of only two for each good.
• Filling your wheelbarrow with a specified good to its limit.
• Acquiring a special ability, and the earlier you come, the easier they are to collect.
• Buying diamonds or trading goods for diamonds.
• Selling special combinations of goods to make the money you need to do everything else.

When a merchant has collected five diamonds in his wheelbarrow, players complete that round, then the game ends. If this player is the only one who's reached this goal, he wins immediately; otherwise ties are broken by money in hand."

Dorn has used this mechanism, of leaving pieces behind in order to move, to great effect in other games—Genoa, Louis XIV, and Goa all use this, and they're all terrific games. So Dorn returning to put a new spin on this is exciting news. And in the meantime, if you get a chance to play Genoa, Louis XIV, or Goa, YOU SHOULD DO IT. You'll be glad you did. In the meantime, keep an eye out for Constantinople Istanbul.

Thanks for reading! Have you played any Dorn games? What was your impression? Share your thoughts!

Last-Chance Kickstarter Project: Burning Suns

Hi Faithful Readers, Sorry we haven't been posting much this week; it's been crazy and busy around here—but jeremiah and I got to hang out for a few days! Today I wanted to give you a heads-up on a cool-looking project called Burning Suns, from SunTzuGames—it ends in just 48 hours. We featured it a couple of weeks ago in a Kickstarter Weekly, but today it gets its very own post. Burning Suns is a tactical, 4x game for 2-5 players, ages 14 and up. The time to play is approximately 40 minutes per player.

The game comes with over 700 empires. 700!! You can customize the race you play, and you'll have different strengths and weaknesses depending on what you play. I would love to find out how they were able to keep all of those empires balanced.

There's a market that lets you hire mercenaries, or build buildings, or buy other resources. There's warfare and negotiation and politics and dice, and everything you's expect from a 4x game. It comes with plastic ships, some of which hold dice that you use to track hits. It's elegant and simple and looks totally cool. There's a bunch of other stuff, and this just scratches the surface.

One of my favorite things about this is that they're looking for help from the community: SunTzuGames wants people to come up with tournament, co-op, and solitaire rules you can use with the game. That's a great way to involve people, get them invested in the product, and get the best game you can get.

£55 (or approximately $89) gets you a copy of the game, and all stretch rewards—and that includes shipping across the pond to the US. Check out the campaign while you still can—only two more days. Thanks for reading!

Some iOS Board Games on Sale (And Free!)

By Firestone So, given a choice, I'm ALWAYS going to choose a face-to-face game over a digital one. In fact, I have some great games on my iPad, but I almost never play them. But I have friends who love playing iOS games, and some people don't have a gaming group, so it's this or nothing. Whatever your circumstance, if you're interested in iOS games, you might want to jump on these deals...

First, we have Ghost Stories. It's a very challenging co-op where you're trying to keep evil spirits from taking over your village. You move around, defeat demons, and use the powers of the townspeople to help you in your quest. And right now it's FREE. You should definitely be aware that it has some occult undertones. There are ghosts and spirits and demons—but you are trying to defeat them, and not use them. There are also some eastern religious concepts in the game, too, such as "chi." So research it on the Geek, or watch a video. Shoot, for that price you can download it, play it, and if it's not for you, delete it!

Then we have two classic games on sale for $.99 each. First is Puerto Rico, the classic euro that's still near the top of the Boardgamegeek rankings, even after all of these years. And the other is San Juan, the card game spinoff, that is also a terrific game—and a clear inspiration for Race For the Galaxy.

We have no idea how long these prices will last, so jump on them! And then let's play a game together!

Thanks for reading! What do you think about these games? Did the tone/subject of Ghost Stories bother you?

Rob Daviau Announces a New Legacy Game!

Rob Daviau is the genius designer behind some of the most innovative and genre-stretching games of the last few years—including Heroscape and Risk: Legacy. Well now that Rob's left Hasbro and branched out on his own, he's teaming up with Plaid Hat Games to announce the newest Legacy design: Seafall.

According to the announcement on Plaid Hat's site, "SeaFall is a 4X game (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) set in an age of sail world that is reminiscent of our world.  In SeaFall the world is just starting to claw its way out of a dark age and has just begun to rediscover seafaring technology.  Players take on the role of a main land empire who each consult with a consortium of advisors to discover new islands, explore those islands, develop trade, send out raiding parties, take part in ship to ship combat, and more...Just as in Risk Legacy, SeaFall will evolve as player play it.  Players will become personally invested and the game will remember their grudges.  The narrative will swing as players open up the world.  Unlike Risk Legacy it does all of this without being tied to the Risk license and gameplay engine.  SeaFall will be a medium-heavy weight gamer's hobby game with original game play systems.  Expect the epic.  The game is slated for release in 2014."

I (Firestone) was able to get on the playtesting team for this, and I'm SUPER excited. Sounds like a blast! Have you played Risk: Legacy yet? What would you like to see in this new game?

Thanks for reading!

A Podcast Update!

Hey gang! In case you missed it, last week we uploaded our second episode of the Theology of Games Podcast! In this episode we talk about the spectacle that was GenCon, a few games we're looking forward too, and we do our first ever Double-Take review on the podcast! Our featured review game for this episode is Railways Express, from Eagle Games!

Now, for some more news, we're getting ready to record the next episode, and one of the segments we're excited about is our "Mailbag" or "Tweet" bag, or whatever we should call it segment, where we answer questions from readers and listeners just like you. That is, of course, if you're the type of reader or listener who writes us and asks a question to be answered on the show!

So, have a question about gaming? Faith? What kind of razors we use to shave our heads? Fire away! You can leave them here in the comments, or post them on our Facebook page, or Tweet 'em at us! Also, if you have a question and wish to remain anonymous you can email them to us at TheologyofGames@Gmail.com and request anonymity, which we would be glad to grant you! We can't stress enough how much we enjoy and appreciate our interaction with you, so we hope you'll join us and be a part of what we're doing!

If you haven't given the podcast a listen here are some links for ya:

You can find the podcast right here.

And you can subscribe using this RSS feed - http://theologyofgames.libsyn.com/rss

We plan to record this week, and this podcast will feature our first "on air" interview as well! We're a little excited about the whole thing!

Thanks for reading (here), watching (here) and listening (here)!

Vikings: Warriors of the North—Essen Release

By Jeremiah

Well we all know my obsession with pirate-type games, and vikings are pretty much pirates of the frozen north, so this one looks right up my alley.

Essen, the BIG con over in Europe, is coming up soon, and like any major con we're seeing an influx of games that are releasing around that time.

Rebel.pl has announce that Vikings: Warriors of the North, a 3-4 player adventure/area control/battle/card-driven/dice-rolling game will be available at Essen. The game looks to be thematically what you'd expect from a viking game: sailing to islands, looting, pillaging, stealing daughters to take back to port with you. Wait, what? Okay, maybe this isn't one for me...

Have you been checking out the news on the latest releases scheduled to make their debut at Essen? What are you looking forward to the most? Let us know down in the comments!

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And it would be even better if you tuned into our podcast!