Sails of Glory is getting a reprint in the spring, along with a new series of 12 ship-packs that will be released in May.

The Sails of Glory Starter Set is a complete game for 2-4 players, including four ships – two French and two British. Each ship is complemented by a specific maneuver deck and the ship log. The set also features a complete rulebook with Basic, Standard, Advanced and Optional Rules, counters and accessories to start playing out of the box in few minutes.

The initial reprint will consist of the Starter Set, 8 different Ship Packs, and several Accessories.

Age range: 13+, Playtime: 30+, Players: 2+. SRP: $89,90 (Starter Set), $17,90 (Ship Pack).

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ZooBooKoo’s Concertina series of board games, Insect Alphabet Line and Jungle Number Line, are spin-and-move games meant to teach letters and basic counting at three educational levels (3, 5, and 7 years-of-age). Fortunately, folding up in to a CD-sized package, they won’t take up a lot of room while they sit on the shelf.

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Today, January 29th, Wizards of the Coast has announced two formats for their Kaijudo collectible card game.  This will be part of their Kaijudo Organized Play program, and will add an Open format, and a Standard format.

Standard will be their rotating format, with cards leaving the format on a yearly basis.  The card pool will consist of the last two year’s blocks.

The Open format will be the Kaijudo version for all cards ever printed, complete with asterisks, and exceptions already in place.

It’s great seeing another game being given corporate backing for organized play.  I am surprised to see a Restricted list, as opposed to a flat out ban list.  At this point, I would think that having players track what is restricted, and what isn’t, would be more of a headache than just banning the card outright.

For more information, check out the Kaijudo announcement, found here.

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Coming in February from archival record label, Numero Group, is Warfaring Strangers: Darkscorch Canticles, a “harrowing dive into the Stygian caverns of the American hard rock underground”. Following in May, the company will release a limited-edition double-LP version with a weird-fantasy adventure board game included in the album.

The game, Cities of Darkscorch, appears to be based on someone’s 1975 Dungeons & Dragons campaign—a fantasy world infiltrated by modern rock bands.

Roleplaying as any of Darkscorch Canticles’ sixteen determined bands, one to six players traverse the broken roads of Darkscorch—battling such forbidding quartets as Grimsword, Narcissus, Ass-Centaur and 97 more—to collect city banners from such pits of hard rock competition as Afterdath, Wizard’s Wellspring, and Throk,. Along the way, players may augment their bands through the use of fate cards with new artwork from the demented minds of John McGavock McConnell and Eliza Childress. The ultimate goal is Numenor, victory, and a record contract penned in brimstone, VD, and pot smoke.

Cities of Darkscorch comes with fate and foe cards; 4, 6, and 20-sided dice; and wood player tokens that double as 45 RPM adapters.

An even more limited “Supa Edition” is also scheduled for May release with a bonus 7 inch record, a custom-printed guitar pick usable as another player token, and a full-color sleeve that serves as a game board map expansion.

[via exclaim.ca]

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Not another competitive cooking show on TV, Chef Showdown is a fast-action matching game from Educational Insights.

Players race to put their chef tokens on showdown cards that match the ingredients of cards in their hands. But it’s not about who’s chef gets there first. Because players are encouraged to knock each other’s chefs off the showdown cards, what’s important is who’s chefs are left standing when the timer runs out. The winner is the one who’s collected the most cards.

As the designer, Kim Vandenbroucke, explains:

Chef Showdown came about because… I wanted to make a speed visual dexterity game, but I also wanted it to have a revenge factor with quick short rounds so you could yell at a player for stealing something from you. When I started I didn’t know what kind of theme it should be but I found the kawaii-style foods really fun and cute and it just kind of grew from there.

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In Brooklyn, a group is experimenting at combining yoga with Dungeons & Dragons. A dance instructor develops a series of poses to represent character actions, while an artist serves as dungeon master narrating progress and interpreting the group’s dice rolls.

[via Geekosystem]

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As part of author Patrick Rothfuss’ Worldbuider’s charity fundraising project for Heifer International, a bunch of games from Cheapass, Paizo, and Fantasy Flight are being auctioned off and added to a prize pool.

Funagain is running a sale on Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game. Items on sale are 35% off.

Enter for a chance to win a free Gen Con badge and place in the Ascension World Championship by liking and commenting on the game’s Facebook page.

In honor of Dungeons & Dragons 40th anniversary, Pelgrane Press is selling 13th Age PDFs for 40% off. And the company is also running a caption contest, where the prize is a Limited Edition 13th Age Bestiary.

Lock in a subscription to Palladium Books’ The Rifter before the price goes up and get a free gift for your commitment.

Father Geek is giving away Chaosmos, Gumball Rally, and Jericho from Mirror Box Games.

The Rock Father is giving away The Game of Life from Hasbro.

At Toys “R” Us through the end of the day, Lego Ninjago are 20% off and Angry Birds games are 25% off.

Makobi Scribe is giving away Clue, Monopoly, and The Game of Life from Winning Moves.

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Recall that story about the operators of YouRather.com deciding to fight back against Spin Master over the phrase, “Would you rather…?“? Well, after publishing it, I was contacted by the operator of a similar website that also had a run-in with Spin Master. Rrrather.com, however, decided to avoid the confrontation simply by varying the wording of its questions and avoiding the use of “…?” at the end of each.

But that doesn’t mean that Spin Master hasn’t actually sued anyone. In fact, the company filed suit Thursday against its own former attorneys, Howard & Howard. Spin Master’s claim of malpractice asserts that Howard & Howard failed to renew the trademark for Would You Rather…?, allowing it to lapse weeks before the trial against Zobmondo Entertainment. Spin Master further claims that while the firm did eventually register a new trademark, Spin Master’s case against Zobmondo required such restructuring, and its future position has been so weakened, that Howard & Howard should compensate Spin Master at least $3 million.

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The race for the presidency of FIDE (the World Chess Federation) is heating up with controversy and negative campaigning. In his effort to unseat incumbent Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, former World Chess Champion and Russian political activist, Garry Kasparov, has been accused of buying votes.

According to a contract discovered by The New York Times and confirmed by an attorney for Kasparov’s campaign, the challenger has entered in to an agreement with Ignatius Leong of Singapore for a payment of $1 million in return for the votes of 11 Asian Chess federations. Half that money is clearly conditioned on delivery of votes but the attorney, Morten Sand, claims that all funds are for the “explicit purpose of chess development and programs” and that “no money can or will be allocated to individuals for personal use.”

Ignatius Leong is actually the current general secretary of FIDE under Ilyumzhinov. His agreement with Kasparov represents Leong switching sides in the election.

Payments under the contract, $250,000 annually for four years, are to be made by the Kasparov Chess Foundation to the ASEAN Chess Academy, an organization aimed at teaching Chess to children but owned by Mr. Leong. Further, the agreement calls for the opening of a FIDE office in Singapore headed by Leong and additional payments (to be negotiated separately) should Leong deliver more than 15 votes.

But the intrigue doesn’t end there! Regarding how a draft of the Kasparov-Leong contract made its way to The New York Times, Mr. Sand suggested that it was the work of FIDE officials:

On the opening day of the 2013 FIDE World Cup in Tromsø, Ignatius and I understood that high FIDE officials possibly had access to the draft Agreement now circulated. I sent it to Ignatius in July, using his FIDE email account. The only way to get possession of this draft is through the administrator of the mail account in FIDE. There can only be political reasons for why this is now made public in such a way.

FIDE Executive Director Nigel Freeman then responded to this accusation by releasing the following official statement:

The statement of Morton Sand is entirely false. It is obvious that there is an attempt to drive the discussion away from the substance of this issue, i.e. whether such contracts are ethical or not. For the leaking of confidential documents, Garry Kasparov’s team should perhaps look amongst themselves.

Following that, another spokesman for Kasparov said via Twitter:

How do you know it’s false? If you have reviewed the logs for his account, why not make them public?… Unless of course you’re just saying it’s false as an excuse to put inappropriate campaign news on the official FIDE site. Again.

Ilyumzhinov has also taken to the FIDE website with an open letter calling on Leong to resign.

Not that Ilyumzhinov is any stranger to controversy either. He was largely unknown in the Chess world before being helped in to the position of FIDE president by the previous holder of that position, who himself resigned after being convicted in the Philippines of financial irregularities involving the 1992 Chess Olympiad in Manila. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is the former president of the Russian republic, Kalmykia; claims to have been abducted by aliens; alleges that Chess was invented by aliens; and was a supporter of Libyan dictator Qaddafi.

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A March 25th trial date has been set for claims and counterclaims over the rights to produce a Dungeons & Dragons movie.

In tentative oral rulings issued January 17th, U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee denied certain of Sweetpea Entertainment’s motions for summary judgement.

I think there is ample evidence for a jury to decide whether or not there has been contributory infringement.

At the same time, Judge Gee said that she would be granting Sweetpea’s motion in regards to Hasbro’s claim of direct infringement. Sweetpea had asserted that there could be no direct infringement because the script that it had offered was rejected by its partner, Warner Bros. Pictures.

The judge also indicated that she would probably deny Hasbro’s motions for summary judgement on Sweetpea’s counterclaims for trademark infringement, while granting Hasbro’s motion with regard to Sweetpea’s claim of copyright infringement.

[via Law360]

UPDATE: Changes, based on corrections at source, made 1/28/2014.

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