As a themed variant, A Game of Thrones Catan plays a lot like the original. Terrain tiles produce resources that players can trade and use to build roads, settlements, and keeps. Subtitled “Brotherhood of the Watch”, though, the board in this version represents an area of land that belongs to the Brotherhood and is known as the Gift. Toward one end of the board is the wall. Behind it, miniature figures representing Wildlings slowly gather, eventually breaking through to fill sections of the Gift (making tiles unproductive).

Through the game, the players also have the opportunity to call on help from characters of the A Song of Ice and Fire fiction series, each with a special ability, such as trading resources or chasing off Wildlings.

One way to win A Game of Thrones Catan is, like in the original, be the first player to 10 victory points, mostly acquired through improvements in the Gift. Should the game, however, end prematurely with the Wildlings breaking through the wall three times, the winner and new Lord Commander is the player with the most guards remaining.

A Game of Thrones Catan, produced by Fantasy Flight Games, is now available at retail for $80.

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Fantasy Flight Games has announced a new Catan game based on George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels. A Game of Thrones Catan: Brotherhood of the Watch will have players settling and developing the Gift, an area of land donated by the Starks, while at the same time placing guards at the wall to defend against a raid by the Wildlings.

As in the original Settlers of Catan, players will gather and trade resources (lumber, brick, wool, grain, and ore), lose resources to the robber (a Wildling character), build roads and settlements, purchase development cards, and earn victory points. Ten victory points earns a player the win and title of Lord Commander. Or should the Wildlings manage to breach the wall three times, the position of Lord Commander immediately goes to the player who’s contributed the most guards.

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CMON is developing a miniatures board game based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire series (that’s the novels, rather than the A Game of Thrones television show). To make that game, CMON is of a fashion borrowing the A Song of Ice & Fire license from Dark Sword Miniatures, which has been producing related minis for some time (in PR terms, they’ve entered a partnership). CMON, though, is working on a complete tabletop game, which the company promises will handle scenarios ranging from small skirmishes to large-scale battles with hundreds of figures.

IDW Games has licensed three early video game titles from Atari: Missile Command, Asteroids, and Centipede. IDW says the line of board games will be “fun, intense and fast-paced.” The first out will be Centipede this fall.

IDW is also publishing a game based on the original 1968 Planet of the Apes movie. It’ll be a cooperative adventure game in which players take on different aspects of Colonel Taylor’s personality trying to figure out the history of humanity.

WizKids has renewed its Star Trek license with CBS Consumer products. And with that renewal came several new product announcements. The company is launching two new products for Star Trek: Attack Wing—Card Packs that have just new cards and tokens for existing ships, and Faction Packs that include four ships at reduced cost. WizKids will also be offering unpainted Star Trek minis, an expansion for Star Trek: Frontiers, more Star Trek Tactics ships, and Star Trek characters for HeroClix.

Fragor Games has secured a license from Aardman Animations for a Wallace & Gromit game.

Cubicle 7 is releasing its licenses for the Yggdrasill, Qin, Kuro, and Keltia roleplaying games back to French publisher Le 7eme Cercle. Cubicle 7 said that the extensive work involved in translating the games prevented a reasonable economic return.

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I had talked about Game of Thrones Risk after Toy Fair, but I wasn’t able to post any pictures. Now, with the game coming out in July, pictures are starting to pop up.

Retailing at just a smidge under $75, the game will come with:

• 2 separate game board maps: Westeros and Essos
• 315 Army Pieces represent noble Houses: Stark, Baratheon, Lannister, Martell, Tyrell, Targaryen and Ghiscari (generic soldier army piece represent 1 unit)
• 7 Seats of Power represent noble houses
• 7 Player Boards represent noble houses
• 188 Cards include Territory, Objective, Character and Maester cards
• 63 Special Unit tokens
• 75 Gold Dragon coins
• 9 Dice

That’s a ton of stuff packed in there, and worth the price of admission. There will also be two new ways to play that feature the warring of the noble houses and Daenerys’ rise to power in Essos.

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USAopoly surprised me at Toy Fair. I mostly know them for their licensed versions of Monopoly, Clue, Risk, Yahtzee, etc…, but a handful of original titles filled their booth this year. Before I get into those, I’m going to post a gallery of all the licensed products that are new.

OK! There’s a lot of material to cover above.

Monopoly

The Legend of Zelda version is new as of last year, and has been an excellent seller. New to the scene are Mass Effect, Pokemon, Jurassic World, Doctor Who: Villains, Firefly, and Penny Dreadful.

Yahtzee

There’s Back to the Future (the Flux Capacitor case lights up!), Firefly, The Legend of Zelda, and new versions for The Avengers, Age of Ultron. These I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of, but the dice come in either an Iron Man or Ultron head.

Clue

Doctor Who. It rhymes.

BANG!

It was really cool to see that there’s a Hereos of the Storm version, and a comic book Walking Dead version. Also, Halo.

Munchkin

A Walking Dead expansion for Munchkin Zombies was shown, as well as Adventure Time Munchkin. I actually took a copy of the latter home from a Steve Jackson party, and it’s pretty sweet. USAopoly did an excellent job of capturing the feeling of the show and fitting it in with the equally zany world of Munchkin.

Puzzles

Two beautiful Legend of Zelda puzzles. One is of the Hyrule Map, and the other is a colorful piece from The Wind Waker.

Risk

I wasn’t able to take pictures of either Risk title I saw, but they’re both very exciting. The first is an Avengers: Age of Ultron version that comes with little painted miniatures of the Avengers. The packaging said something about “collect them all,” but the rep showing me around didn’t know what that was about. It could be a pretty interesting mechanic if there were an element of randomness to the figures in the box.

The second, and by far one of the most exciting licensed products, was the Game of Thrones version of Risk. This thing was huge. It comes with 2 giant boards depicting Westeros and Essos, and the game is played over both maps at once. The pieces were amazing in their detail, and the box was minimal and beautiful. This is one I’d go out of my way to purchase.

 

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OK. That horizontal line above is where we break from the licensed copies of classic and well known board games and get into original titles USAopoly is putting out.

TacDex – $9.95

TacDex is a newer game to the USAopoly line, and is a War-style card game developed by Richard Borg. Already having a Pirates! deck, they’ve now added a Super Mario Brothers deck, Walking Dead deck, and Halo deck. I was told you can mix and match the decks, if so desired. Right off the bat I’m interested because of Richard Borg’s involvement.

Rollandia

Rollandia is a really cool looking game where you’re rolling dice to try and build your castle. You need to roll groups of numbers to build each piece, and there’s a component of using your already-claimed numbers to effect other players. The whole look and feel of the game caught be totally by surprise after seeing such a huge amount of licensed Monopoly, Clue, Yahtzee, etc… games. Nothing against those, but it’s always nice to see new and innovative titles hit the market.

Nefarious – $29.95 – Ages 13+

Rollandia was really cool looking, but one look at Nefarious and I had already moved on. In Nefarious you’re playing evil scientists trying to take over the world. You do this by inventing devices, performing espionage, and doing research. Visually stunning, designed by Donald X. Vaccarino, and slick looking game play make this one to keep an eye on.

Pass the Blame : The Party Game for Irresponsible and Telestrations 8: After Dark  – $29.95 and $19.95 – Ages 17+

Two adult games following the new trend in the wake of Cards Against Humanity. Both party games involve compromising situations and foul thoughts. Pass the Blame has situations cards that players must write excuses for. Not as filthy as Telestrations After Dark, but it can get a bit dicey. Telestrations After Dark has you playing a game of Telephone, but with sketches. One player sketches a phrase, the next guesses what the phrase is and tries to draw it again, and so on. This one is a bit more intentionally dirty with terms like “doggie style”, “human centipede”, and more.

Wonky

Wonky comes with a box of mostly-cube-like pieces and cards that tell you what color cubes to place and where. Players have to follow the directions on the cards and build a tower as high as they can without it falling. A quick, easy, family game.

Tapple

A word game with an interesting twist. A card is drawn with a category, after which each player takes turns naming something in the category and tapping down the letter the word started with. Once a letter is tapped down it can’t be used again. Players who can’t think of a word are knocked out.

Lift It

This one had a pretty cool hook to it (pun intended.) Lift It has you trying to build certain structures with the pieces provided, but you must do in within a time limit, and by only using your hook on a string to pick up and place pieces. Some challenges are even cooperative, where 2 players need to each hook pieces and work togehter to build something. I gave this a shot, but was met with an almost insurmountable challenge trying to get my shaky, carpal tunnel ridden hands and wrists to do as I asked.

 

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