Introduction
Paragraph 1: Number of new products etc.
New board games: The editors' favorites
Cyberion
Like last year, the latest title from the Oniverse makes it onto the list. In 2022, rockets were sent into the vastness of the Oniverse. In Cyberion we are back on the ground. The factory of dreams has been sabotaged by the “evil cogs” and is on the verge of collapse.
Regardless of whether you are playing solo or in pairs, it is the player's job to repair all damaged machines. From the first impression after skimming the French rules, the game seems to fit in perfectly with Stellarion. With a display of five of the total of 25 machines and five of the total of 50 robots, the robots must be used so skillfully that all machines can be repaired.
In the first part of each turn, you can assign the specific robots required by machines to them, discard robots for their abilities, or improve those abilities by using repaired machines. You can carry out all actions as often as you like and in any order.
If you don't manage to repair at least one machine in a round, you have to discard a valve token. If you don't have any left, you lose. If the stack of robot cards has been played through for the second time and not all of the machines have been repaired, you also lose.
Of course there are also some expansions to the game. Cyberion includes five. In terms of game mechanics, it seems to be the logical progression after Stellarion. The mechanics surrounding discarding or inserting cards have been retained and new elements have been added. The structure of the game alone almost gives the impression of a trick-taking game.
The game from inPatience will be available from the publisher at the trade fair in Hall 5 at stand 5K121 for €24. It is recommended for ages 10 and up and can be played with 1 or 2 people in 20-40 minutes.
Chrono Fall: At the End of Space and Time
Like inPatience were too Ornament Games, the publisher of the next exciting novelty, already in ours “Inside” series presented. A detailed game overview can be found in the article about the publisher.
In Chrono case The players have to prevent the impending collapse of the space-time continuum. To do this, they collect resources on distant planets that are needed to build the Protector. This is a space station. The technology installed there is the key to victory if you have enough knowledge.
How little time remains becomes clear when the rifts appear. They are harbingers of the impending end and block the important hyperspace tunnels that the cargo spaceships have to fly through in order to get to Earth.
If the Rifts weren't enough of a threat, there are also other dangers visible on the Chrono-Matrix. Here the players can influence the future, but this influence on the already troubled space-time continuum also comes at a price. It was experimentation with time that led humanity to this situation in the first place.
There will “only” be a prototype of the cooperative game on display at the trade fair. Ornament Games can be found during the trade fair in Hall 2 at stand 2E136. The release of the upscale connoisseur game is planned for spring 2024. Chrono case can be played with 1-4 people aged 14 and over. A game lasts between 45 and 150 minutes.
Time division
Again a German publisher and again a time travel theme: at Time division It is a purely 2-player game that will be published by HeidelBÄR Games. At three different times (ancient Egypt, the Middle Ages and the 80s), players try to play their cards more cleverly than their opponents.
Each era consists of two phases: “Drafting” and “Playing”. When drafting, both players decide on three cards each and divide them between themselves, the opponent and a neutral stack. This continues until all 18 cards of the age have been dealt.
Now the second phase follows. Here a trick is played in each round. Whoever plays the card with the higher influence gets to decide which card is activated and which card is moved into the sphere of influence of the player who played the corresponding card.
The individual eras can be played separately or one after the other. The playing time varies between 20 and 60 minutes. The game is recommended for ages 12 and up. The game is available for €30.
The HeidelBÄR Games stand can be found in Hall 2 with number 2B102.
Rats of Wistar
Now the Grand Austria Hotel has actually been overrun by rats. After Virginio Gigli with first advice has already published an accessible connoisseur's game with a rat theme in 2022, the other half of the team behind Grand Austria Hotel is now launching a connoisseur's game with rats as protagonists.
The clever rats, embodied by the players, have escaped from the Wistar Research Institute. They are now building their new home on a farm. As the head of one of the four rat families, the players try to determine who is worthy of leading the entire colony.
Players have five days (rounds) to prove their skills. Each round, everyone places their three “Chief” rats on the action wheel to trigger actions. The strength of the actions is determined by the number of your own workers in the area in which the action is located.
Players collect resources to excavate rooms and provide beds to house guest mice.
The explorer rat can discover new rooms on the farm grounds. The last possible action is to pick up an invention from the face-up display. These cards initially go into your hand and can be played via bonus actions on the action wheel.
After the five rounds and a total of 15 main actions, the game ends. Whoever was able to collect the most points wins the game and can lead the entire rat colony and perhaps soon fly to the cheese moon. 1-4 rats aged 13 and over can take part in the competition. The five days pass in about 90 minutes.
The game will be available to buy at the Cranio Creations stand for €60. The Italian publisher can be found in Hall 3 at stand 3W124.
Comet
After last year's new release from Funtails only took nine months to become my most played game, expectations for this year's new release are correspondingly high. With top games like Glen More II: Chronicles for the connoisseur players or Feed the octopus In the party game area, Funtails show that quality and fun are standard here.
Visually and thematically, the game definitely looks good and with a little good will it can also be assigned to the time travel theme that I love so much.
In this engine builder, players try to save as many extinct animals as possible. So if you've always wanted to own a Dodo, you've come to the right place. The animals can be found on maps. These can be used in different ways.
Animals that you want to save can be hatched in a nest. How far away from the safe cave this happens is determined by the nest value of the card. You have to sacrifice other animals so that you can move and save the animals that are currently on the board. Rescued animals then support your own efforts with their special skills. Your own hero card also has abilities and sets a victory point requirement for the end of the game.
This is triggered when the eponymous Comet hits. The impact is indicated by a card in the draw pile. Whoever was able to collect the most points with their animals after the final moves wins the game and can take many unique animals with them into the present.
The game will be offered at the fair for €40. Funtails can also be found in Hall 3 at stand 3R124. You will definitely be able to test the game there. This only requires 2-4 people aged 12 and over who have between 45 and 75 minutes.
Sky team
The 2-person game Sky Team took off at this year's GenCon and was able to convince players. The Canadian game publisher Le Scorpion Masqué is supposed to have the game back at SPIEL, and as a fan of airplane/airport themes, I obviously have to check it out.
In Sky team 2 people play the pilot and co-pilot of an airplane. The goal is to work as a team to land the plane at different airports around the world. The two pilots have to silently assign their dice to the correct spaces in the cockpit in order to maintain balance, control the speed, extend the landing gear, etc. Care should be taken to ensure that the aircraft does not spin too much over the airport overshoots or even collides with another aircraft.
The game will also be released in German next year. When and from which publisher may be revealed as part of the game.
Le Scorpion Masqué will be in Hall 6 at Stand 6F300.
after us
after us is another title that caused quite a stir at a trade fair, the UK Games Expo. Catch Up Games is known for good games that are easy to learn and don't always take themselves too seriously. Reason enough to take a closer look at the game.
In the year 2083, humanity has already been extinct for several decades. Nature has now reclaimed the land and the great apes are gradually developing further. Gathered together in hordes, they managed to use items that humans left behind. As leaders of the horde, we must lead our fellow primates to collective intelligence.
The mix of deck building and resource management game comes with an interesting system in which we have to build a series of cards in order to close boxes and thus acquire new resources, victory points and special abilities that should help us win. If you combine the cards cleverly and are the first to collect 80 victory points, you win the game.
The game will be in German at the fair Pegasus Spiele appear. You can test and purchase this in Hall 44,99 Stand 3L3, 100L3 & 102P3 for €102.
The English version of the game is available at Catch Up Games in Hall 6 at stands 6F400 & 6F406.
Genpei
Genpei is a Kickstarter-Project that was successfully financed last year. The latest title from the Spanish publisher Invedars is scheduled to be officially released at SPIEL. After following the project with great interest during the crowdfunding phase, but not supporting it, I am now very excited to see how the game ultimately turns out.
In Genpei, the emperor has died and we are fighting for the support of the five houses that hold the greatest power in Japan and decide the future of the country. Genpei relies on rules that are easy to learn, but should have great depth.
On your turn, you play one of the two cards from your hand. If you play a clan card, it activates the clan marker on the corresponding clan wheel. You place the marker on one of the two adjacent fields to carry out the corresponding action. If you draw a card during the action, the clan marker for this card is also activated. If you act cleverly, you can carry out a chain of further actions.
The person who receives the support of the most houses and the Emperor's House becomes the new Emperor of Japan and wins the game.
Genpei can be played by 1 - 4 people, will be available at the Invedars stand 3S102 in Hall 3 and is expected to cost 29 euros.
Satori
And we continue with games that have an Asian theme. As a person with an Asian immigrant background, I often quickly become weak when playing such games. This is also the case with Satori by Paco Yanez, who is known in Germany for his games One more goes! (Zoch) or Sencha (Taverna Ludica Games). It will be distributed and exhibited at SPIEL by the Spanish game publisher Perro Loko Games.
Satori is a worker placement game that can be played by 1-4 people in which we compete to advance on the spiritual path. We build new temples, recruit the wisest monks, and help build the great pagoda to transform the town of Koyasan into the heart of Zen Buddhism. In classic worker placement style, we take a believer and place him in a temple. These can either contain resources or various actions. Alternatively, we can also take our monks to the mountains, which will then make it possible to combine additional actions and progress on the spiritual path.
Satori will be available to test at Perro Loko Games in Hall 4 at Stand 4J111 and is expected to cost 55 euros.
Next stop: Tokyo
Nachdem Next stop: London was already very popular at SPIEL'22 last year and made it into the 3 nominated games for the Game of the Year Award 2023 this year, the successor Next Station: Tokyo is in the starting blocks this year. The game can already be played on the board game arena and promises similar fun to its predecessor. In terms of gameplay, the process remains the same, but there are still numerous changes, such as a ring track route and other ways to collect points. In terms of play, it seemed a bit more demanding than its predecessor, but I think it is still convincing in terms of its breadth.
Village Romance: The Duel
The Game of the Year winner 2023 will get a 2-person duel variant. For me, Dorfromantik was more of a solo game than a cooperative board game. It implemented the high score hunt from the video game well and was also able to score points with new, initially secret, unlockable material. Now I'm curious to see how a duel variant plays. So the complete opposite. A cooperative game becomes competitive.
The Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game
A game I don't know much about yet, but I like Lord of the Rings and I find the adventure book idea interesting. The book serves as a game board and contains various game boards on which we move the companion miniatures.
Cascadia Landmarks
I recently played Cascadia and found the approach there very interesting: I take a terrain and animal combination and place it in my world. Graphically, the game was also largely convincing; there were only deductions for the somewhat pixelated animal tiles. The first expansion, Cascadia Landmarks, is now being released. It includes material for two additional people and new game material. New animals are not introduced, but new scoring cards, completely new score cards and landscape tokens are. If you create a habitat from 5 tiles, you can take a matching token and place it on the tile you just placed.
I recently played Cascadia and found the approach there very interesting: I take a terrain and animal combination and place it in my world. Graphically, the game was also largely convincing; there were only deductions for the somewhat pixelated animal tiles. The first expansion, Cascadia Landmarks, is now being released. It includes material for two additional people and new game material. New animals are not introduced, but new scoring cards, completely new score cards and landscape tokens are. If you create a habitat from 5 tiles, you can take a matching token and place it on the tile you just placed.
Star Wars Unlimited
It all started with Magic the Gathering, followed by the far too complicated and fiddly trading card game Star Wars, which Decipher wasn't really able to make a success of. This makes me all the more excited about Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars Unlimited, because the world of trading card games has changed. A generally uncomplicated introduction and long-term fun through fine-tuning options are standard today. Games like Disney Lorcan, Pokémon or the Commander decks from Magic the Gathering show how it is done. Ultimately, I expect something similar Star Wars Unlimited - and the information published so far suggests that the game could be a success, at least in the medium term.
Yes, the big innovations are missing, but sometimes it is Star Warslicense that makes the trading card game so attractive. Fans will overlook minor weaknesses at the start, giving the creators time to make improvements with each new wave of content. At the start, the basic data seems to be right anyway: It's about duels, organized play, cool illustrations and lighting the fire for collecting. The latter is controversial given the ongoing loot box debates, but the luck factor is part of a trading card game. Yes, the modern format of the living card games also ensures fun and the defined content avoids any risk. But: As a fan of trading card games, the feeling of pulling real treasure out of a booster is hard to beat.
Star Wars Unlimited will therefore be one of my top titles at SPIEL'23 in Essen. I want to try out the game, analyze it and get a first impression of what the future community is like. With Disney Lorcan effect Star Wars Unlimited a strong competitor who has already established itself on the market. Will there be enough money and the number of trading card fans for two new big trading card games? We will find out exactly that by 2024 at the latest.
Europa Universalis: The Price of Power
I just mentioned it. I love licensing. One board game is particularly interesting because of its magnificent template: Europa Universalis – The Price of Power. A board game to a grand strategy video game? Can this even work given such a complex gameplay template? It must! If the author Eivind Vetlesen manages to turn the video game series Europa Universalis into the board game Europa Universalis, everything that other authors and publishers can even remotely imagine can work out in the future.
What even die-hard fans usually don't know: Europa Universalis' move from a video game to a board game was originally the other way around. The digital global strategy game from Paradox Development Studio, released in 2000, has its origins in the board game of the same name by Philippe Thibault, which came onto the market seven years earlier - in 1993. The game back then was solid, the “new edition” is likely to be much better given the significantly increased experience of authors and publishers in the wargame genre. The fundamental question is not whether the video game Europa Universalis can be turned into a board game, but rather how well it actually works.
Donut shop
An outing: I not only like licensing, but also donuts. After all, that suits the land of unlimited possibilities. A new game from Jeffrey D. Allers, the author behind culinary board games such as New York Slice, Piece o' Cake or Citrus, fits perfectly into the most-wanted list: Donut Shop.
The name obviously says it all for this board game with the simple title. As a salesperson in a bakery store, you push the sweet squiggles over the counter and arrange the display beforehand. The game principle sounds simple and probably is, it's the presentation of the board game on the table that makes you want to play. Small 3D structures, sixties-style cards, lots of color - it all looks like a board game that you would like to take out of the shelf to keep yourself entertained for around half an hour. The only downer is that the title isn't scheduled to appear until next year. We can be even more excited about the prototype.
Sail
Sail by Akiyama Koryo and Korzu Yusei is a pure two-player game about pirates. Admittedly: On the table, the board game will have the charm of a fairly dilapidated pirate ship, but the idiosyncratic style is still worth seeing.
The premise: You navigate your ship through turbulent waters, but it's best to stay away from the sea monster. The idea plays with old legends about captains, boats and octopuses - the whole thing is immersed in a visual mix of colorlessness and color madness. The game promises a crisp strategic trick in short games of around 20 minutes. Ultimately, it's a race against time - or against the Kraken.
