Having sold more than 20 billion trading cards since 1998, Konami is going back to its roots for inspiration on the latest release. Duelist Pack-Yugi contains cards used by Yugi Muto in the original animated series. There’s “Summoned Skull,” “Dark Magician Girl,” “Mirror Force,” and the limited release “Marshmallon.”

But top Duelists in the United States already have enough to keep them busy this weekend, when the National Championship tournament will take place at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh. Last Chance Regional Qualifiers are on Friday and side events are open throughout the weekend. First through fourth place winners in the National Championship will receive travel and accomodations to the World Championship in Tokyo. If you can’t make it to Pittsburgh, check the Yu-Gi-Oh! site for live coverage on Saturday.

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If you use miniatures for your roleplaying games, I’m sure by now you’ve at least seen those hex and square grid battlemats. Y’know, the one’s you can roll up but require water-soluble markers. Longtooth Studios offers an alternative in the form of white, rigid, dry-erase boards scored with 1 inch grids. Their Battle Graph Boards are also modular, connecting to each other like puzzle pieces, and thus allowing you to add to the table only what’s needed for the encounter.

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TremorWorks has made their line of RPGs based on their HDL Universal Tactical Role Playing System available as PDFs on their online store (they should also be available soon on several of the big PDF download sites as well). For those not familiar with HDL, its a fairly clever set of mechanics focused on speeding up task resolution while still allowing for a level of tactical gamin (it also has a neat card mechanic for character abilities that I find charming). Three settings are currently available: Demongate (an anime inspired setting with a high school for demon hunters), Perfect Horizon (a sci-fi setting with a heavy influence from Japanese cyberpunk) and LUCID (a game based on supernatural beings manipulating reality through dreams).

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The Pittsburgh Post Gazette pumps family game night with Cranium Balloon Lagoon, Cranium Hullabaloo, and other mainstream games. (source)

The Morris Daily Herald pimps the Steel & Stone Gaming Guild, along with Race for the Galaxy, Dungeons and Dragons, Bridge, Risk, and any other game. They’re pretty open. (source)

Express India pimps mainstream American board games and the Indian celebrities who play them. (source)

The Simple Dollar podcast pimps board games, mostly Euros. (source)

The Sporting Blog pimps Strat-O-Matic Baseball. (source)

Southern Oregon’s Mail Tribune pimps the designer of This Big!, a new game from Gamewright. (source)

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Upcomingcons.com is a new site hoping to bring together a comprehensive list of hobby conventions for anime, gaming, sci-fi, and comic fans.

Among other things, it has a roommate finder feature. They also offer convention management software for sale.

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Kolonists from GetIfun is a knockoff of Settlers of Catan for the IPhone. There are no dice rolls – I think you choose which resources you collect each turn on your turn. The game is slightly themed with an ancient Roman theme of some sort.

I imagine that they are hoping to avoid any problems with the Catan IP owners, but the island and card graphics all look pretty similar to the classic board game, IMHO.

Apparently, the game has a few stability issues to work out.

(source)

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Following on Alea’s heels, Ystari is bringing out a box of expansions for it’s line of games. Ystari Box will contain expansions for five Ystari games:

• Caylus Magna Carta: new king’s favors, new set of prestige buildings, components for a fifth player
• Amyitis: two additional characters
• Yspahan: deck with mostly new abilities
• Sylla: deck with new characters, projects, and events
• Metropolys: new goal cards, and an additional expansion from Rio Grande’s edition of the box

Some people are already unhappy to buy five expansions when they only want one or two, but each of these expansions is pretty small on its own. IMHO, they should be offering these as bonus toss-ins to the game, like the Carcassonne River expansion.

(source)

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When you’re good, you’re good. You may remember us bringing you the rumor of a third title in Fantasy Flight Games‘ Living Card Game series and speculating that it was probably utilizing the Games Workshop intellectual property (we even talked a little bit about the fan favorite, Battlecry CCG that used the fantasy license). Not content to let us revel in idle speculation, FFG announced the newest LCG yesterday – Warhammer: Invasion. The newest LCG features the Warhammer Fantasy races currently available in the Warhammer: Age of Reckoning MMO and seems to feature a basic resource management plus monsters approach to gameplay. Its interesting that the game is lining up with the MMO rather than taking advantage of the larger Warhammer Fantasy universe (though the artwork released to date does look original). The game will ship with materials for up to four players (decks, player boards and various chits) and will retail for $39.95 (US) with an October release date.

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