Mystic Merlins, the inventor of the board game Crop Circles, has a new games out called The Corn Queen: Mystery Adventures Board Game Featuring Stonehenge. But don’t worry, the game still features all the same healing powers and cool mystical symbols that Crop Circles does.

There are no rules listed for The Corn Queen. BGG’s entry on Crop Circles reads as follows:

Players begin by building Stonehenge using nicely-produced blocks, but this is just the start of the strategy. The first player, as a druid or as an alien, to place their altar in the center of the stones (and not having it removed by a competing Merlin card) can collect the Sun Circle and the Heal Circle. Bring these Circles to the Eastern Ley Line, declare the Summer Solstice, and win the game!

It includes Planet counters, start counter, UFOs, crop circle cards, Andromeda counters, Yule Circle counters, Zenith Circle counters, Lunar Eclipse Circles, Star Circle counters, Circle and Night dice, and much more.

Each Crop Circles game also comes with a treasure hunt entry form, so you can join in an ARG looking for treasure somewhere in England.

From the heavily trippy website, which calls the game “THE GAME WITH HEALING ENERGIES”, it seems that Mystic Merlins is a true believer.

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James Woods, an althlete from Savannah, GA, created the Woods Pyramid Game. It’s two pyramids, base to base, with ten rows of spaces, each containing a stone. On your turn, remove any number of stones from a single row. Object of the game? Don’t take the last stone.

According to this article in Savannah Now, he invented the game after looking at the Pyramids while stationed in Egypt.

“You had stones that weighed 20 tons and stones that weighed 2,000 pounds and they were build with no mortar and .500th’s of an inch between them,” he marveled.

And to seal it off …

The game was so popular that in 1999 Woods applied for a patent.

(NIM games)

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Time Magazine ran an article on Irvine Fenkel of the British Museum and his obsession about the Royal Game of UR.

It’s packed with information about the game of UR, and includes details of how he tracked down information about it from an old woman in Israel who used to play a descendant of the game in India.

I could have left it at that, and so could the article, but the article ends with Irving declaring that he also loves Monopoly, and that,

the idea [in Monopoly] of renting out a square was the last “momentous” innovation in board games.

Ahem. Anyone want to enlighten this gentleman?

(article, image)

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Alton, IL: Man shot at a dice game is now recovering. (source)

Allentown, PA: During a game of dominoes, a guy punched his opponent in the face and then slashed two onlookers who tried to break up the fight with a knife. (source)

Qatar: A worker stabbed his manager who was playing a game of carrom. (source)

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In this case, a 9 year old sports star, Gianni Patino. And the board game is Soccer Tactics World by Stein Thompson Games. Gianni was recently selected for a prestigious Barcelona youth football club so he should know what makes a good game. By coincidence, Dice Tower host Sam Healey agrees. Sam asserts in his review that while at first glance a simple roll-and-move game, Soccer Tactics actually does a good job of simulating the sport by forcing players to temporarily retreat in order to gain ground later.

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Blue Dragon launched as an online RPG at the end of 2006. A manga adaptation and an anime adaptation were announced at the same time, although the anime has been taking its sweet time.

Guess what comes next?

It will be produced by Konami Digital Entertainment.

(source)

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Not to be left out of the fuss over Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, Steve Jackson Games is selling a Munchkin-themed 4e greeting card. Inside the card are four alternative messages to announce your game group’s intentions regarding the new D&D. And each one of the selections can be used to convey a unique advantage in the next game of Munchkin.

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Last month Bonhams of London held an all board game auction; this month it was Ritchie Auctioneers of Toronto. This Parkins & Gotto Games Compendium (right) sold for $9000.

According to Forbes, the market for board and card game collectibles is on the rise, partly due to nostalgia, and partly due to the simple beauty of some of the available items.

This barleycorn chess set (left), available at Christie’s, goes up for auction on July 8 and is valued at a bargain £400 – £600.

And there’s always a slew of expensive games, mostly Chess sets, available on eBay.

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