Mortality is an LDS game that incorporates LDS teachings into roll and move mechanics.

Which is a shame, as there are some quite decent LDS games out there, but this doesn’t appear to be one of them. You just roll and move, occasionally using “wisdom” cards you’ve acquired to move if you have them. You win by gaining the most “testimonies”, but it’s hard to see how that’s much different than gaining the most money and/or points.

And what’s up with the winner “finishing mortality”? Uh, does that mean dying?

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The IGAs are an annual strategy board game award selected by a group of folks from around the board gaming community, many of them well known to those in the hobby.  The strategy board game awards are selected yearly across two main categories (strategy and historical), with specific IGAs given in these categories.  This year’s strategy winners are:

• Multiplayer Game: Agricola – The game of dirt farmers in medieval Europe continues to wow gamers worldwide and was a pretty clear shoe-in for this award.  I won’t lie, this game saw more than five plays at my house within its first week on the market – its a great game and totally warrants the award.
• Two-Player Game: 1960: Making of the President – Popular for its strikingly similarity to Twilight Struggle from a mechanics perspective, 1960 is a game representing the election between Nixon and Kennedy.  I won’t lie, given the choice, I’d rather play Twilight Struggle, but in a pinch, this one is a fine game.

Seems odd that all of the winners are published by Z-Man games, but Zev & company have been putting out some great titles lately…  Congratulations to all of the winners!

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Timber Tom is an “adventure strategy” game in which you simulate great-grandchildren trying to find gold buried  in four places in the wilderness by their crazed great-grandfather.

As you roll the dice, select your movement direction, and pick the cards, you can also plant trees to obstruct the other players and chop them down with axes and chainsaws.

Cute meeples.

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Wargame Vault, due to launch officially on October 1st, has opened for customers a bit early. The retail site for downloadable wargames is the latest venture of OneBookshelf, proprietors of DriveThruRPG and RPGNow. OneBookShelf purchased the store from Mongoose Publishing, which previously ran it under the name Wargaming Online. Wargame Vault launches with over 1,000 products, including maps, printable paper miniatures, board wargames, and miniatures rulesets. For ease of navigation, the site allows you to browse products by combat type, product type, time period, publisher, and price.

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Vehicular Homicide is the revised and retitled version of Diecast Mayhem, a miniatures arena combat game by Radioactive Press. The game is intended for use with common diecast vehicle toys instead of custom miniatures, thus making it particularly easy for new players to pick up the game. Using these rules, players can design there own vehicles—including automobiles, tracked vehicles, walkers, hovercraft, and aircraft—and arm them with weapons and other special attachments. The final survivor in head-to-head combat is the victor.

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Monte Cook, the man who needs no introduction, has announced that they will release a small, PDF sourcebook on October 1.  The Earthblood sourcebook introduces forms of magic, abilities and feats based around drawing power from the land itself.  According to Monte:

Earthblood is an 11-page product with a new fun tool for both DMs and players to play around with called Earthblood–it’s literally the power that runs through the earth itself, and your characters can tap into it with new feats, spells, and magic items. It’s a great way for DMs to explain why there are so many subterranean creatures in their campaign, and a fun excuse to put more weird stuff underground. And best of all, it’s free.

In addition, Malhavoc Press (Monte’s game company) will put everything on DriveThruRPG and RPGNow on sale at a 25% discount.  Might be a good time to pick up some great expansions for your D20 based game…

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Bezzerwizzer is a trivia game from Danish citizen Jesper Bulow.

Released locally in 2006, Mattel, which currently has no trivia game offering, has picked up the game with the aims of competing with Hasbro’s Trivial Pursuit this Christmas season.

The game comes with 5,000 questions in 20 categories. Your markers let you change categories and answer questions that your opponents fail to answer correctly.

I can only presume that they will change the the name to something more appealing to the English-speaking public before releasing it

(source)

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No Stress Chess from Winning Moves is a chess game that comes with a deck of cards that help you learn how to play Chess.

The rules include several levels of mastery, which mirror what I see as levels of game worth in the world of board games.

In the first level, you flip a card, and that’s the piece you can move. The first to take off his opponent’s king wins. This level is simply to learn how the pieces move.

The next level includes holding a hand full of cards, which is seems like a chess version of the game Battle Cry. It’s not exactly Battle Cry in that in BC a piece on the left flank really can’t hit the right flank, while in chess many of the pieces can cross the entire terrain in one go. Here you’re learning strategy, but limited to the piece combinations you can actually achieve.

One or two additional levels remain until you get up to full chess mastery. I have no idea if this teaches good chess, but comments indicate that younger kids enjoy playing and progressing through the levels, and so end up playing regular chess, eventually.

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Conversation cards have seen use since well before Jane Austen* came on the scene, and they’re still around. You can pick up boxes of cards on different subjects from Table Topics. While not strictly a game, they can easily be turned into one by stealing the mechanics from Balderdash, Wits and Wagers, or Family Feud.

Particularly practical are the versions that come on napkins, which could be useful at a party when you’re sitting with a bunch of strangers.

* Actually, the game called Conversation Cards that Jane Austen played would have been a slightly different party activity: if I’m not mistaken, each player got several cards with words on them and you had to construct a story.

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Paul Newman passed away at the age of 83. One of the greatest actors and philanthropists of his time, I remember him best for some of the best movie gaming scenes ever made:

• The Hustler / The Color of Money – The two definitive billiards movies, TCoM is one of my favorite movies of all times, with wall to wall gaming quotes: “Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.” “For some players, luck itself is an art.” “The balls roll funny for everybody, kiddo.”
• Cool Hand Luke – “Take a buck.” After “losing” a fight, Paul’s character plays in a poker game where he gets his nickname. “Yeah, well, sometimes nothin’ can be a real cool hand.”
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – The opening scene is a tense poker game, where Sundance (Robert Redford) is accused of cheating before Butch (Newman) walks in from behind and calls him by his name. His accuser suddenly changes his tactics. “I didn’t know you were the Sundance Kid when I said you were cheating.”
• The Sting – A slew of great games are played, including cribbage and poker. “-Your boss is quite a card player, Mr. Kelly; how does he do it? -He cheats.”

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