Who knew that gaming tables was going to be such a competitive market? The folks at BoardGameTables.com have been making high-end, custom-built wordwork gaming tables for the past year and a half, but they’ve recently launched a massive campaign for a low-cost gaming table. How low? $500 for a 3×5 table. They’re getting the price down to that point in two major ways: the tables are all standardized, so there’s no customization, and they’ll be mass-producing the tables, letting the economies of scale bring the overall price down. The Duchess is $499, $739 with topper to convert it to a normal table.

A boardgame based on Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn novels is up on Kickstarter! A $50 pledge (plus shipping) gets you a copy of the semi-cooperative game. The game is designed by Kevin Wilson (one of my favorite game designers). Check out Mistborn: House War from Crafty Games.

Miniature wargamer? Laser Dream Works is presenting 3D printer-ready models for historical (17th and 18th Century) terrain. The main item (at $45) is a fortress based on Fort Ticonderoga in New York state. The Vauban Fortress is scales from 28mm to 10mm sizes. Already unlocked: battle-damaged walls, outer fortifications, and Spanish-style turrets. They’re so very close to unlocking a five-pointed fort and a shore battery made of curved walls, but they’re in the final week of the campaign, so act soon!

Summit has an interesting theme: mountain climbing. In the game, you’re racing up (and back down) a mountain, laying down tiles to create trails and hazards. But you don’t want to sprint up the mountain: you’ll have to keep track of your food, oxygen, and health while making sure you’re not overburdened or too slow to ascend and descend. You’ll have to watch the weather, balance your load, and survive the perilous trek. The base game is yours for a pledge of $37 (US, approximate: $49 CAD). Summit also comes with a cooperative/solo expansion, which is available at the $49 level ($64 CAD).

If Cards Against Humanity is dirty words Apples to Apples, Drawing Without Dignity is potty-mouth Pictionary. This week’s Marketplace Confusion/Parody/Coattail Riding spotlight product is for 17 and up (really? 17?) and it’s pretty much Pictionary where you’re drawing things like “sperm donor”, “yellow snow”, and “carpet muncher”. A $25 pledge gets you a box with 100 cards (5 clues per card), a one-minute timer, a six-sided die, a pad of paper, and four miniature golf pencils. Drawing Without Dignity has a week and a half to go and is nearly a third of the way funded: take a look at the campaign.

Hey, remember last time when we featured an 18-card CAH “expansion” called Bad Apples? You’re probably wondering if they funded. Nope, but it’s because the creator cancelled the funding with just two dollars to go! Well, they went ahead and relaunched the campaign again (the third time), and it still didn’t fund, only getting $500 of the C$750 requested.

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Oh, I love the illustrations in Space Race: The Card Game. Journey into the Cold War and the dawn of space exploration. A bit of role selection and card combinations await in a really interesting game engine for 2-4 players with a playtime of 30-60 minutes. There’s less than a week left and it’s already funded. A pledge of approximately $33 will get you a copy of Space Race.

Cyberpunk RPG + Powered by the Apocalypse? That’s my song. The Veil, already funded, is another Apocalypse World-based roleplaying game set in the near future. And oh, does it look so pretty. About $10 gets you the PDF, about $28 gets you a physical copy of the book, too.

Dice boxes: You can get the cheap-looking laser-cut ones that look like puzzle pieces on the edges, or you can plunk down a bit more to get something that looks well-crafted, like Steven Parker’s through his Elegant Dice Boxes campaign. $40 on up gets you a sweet box for storing your dice. (Look at those joins!) Stephen is running this to acquire additional equipment for his wood shop to expand the business.

Have you ever wanted to carry your board games around but oh no you’re a clumsy oaf? Well, now there are two — yes, two! — competing Kickstarter campaigns about game bags going on right now! The Gamefolio System lets you either pack games into a big bag ($99) or toss those pesky game boxes away and shove all your components into smaller bags that fit into the bigger bag ($155). The Game Canopy has a smaller bag for $87 or a bigger bag for $117. They all are interesting but a huge upgrade from ol’ reliable Frakta from IKEA ($3 and about $114 to $151 of games). The Game Canopy design looks really slick. (Psst: Guys, let me know if you want a product review.)

This week’s Marketplace Confusion/Parody/Coattail Riding spotlight is called Bad Apples, which shows that at least the people behind this 18-card “expansion” know where Cards Against Humanity originally came from. Yep, eighteen cards with a C$227 goal, which makes me think that even if they do get printed and sent, they won’t be the same quality as the original CAH cards. Fun: This is the second time they’re running this campaign after the printer increased their print quote (?); this second campaign has nearly the same funding goal and the same reward tier.

Q: What about last week’s Diabolical Kittens? Did that fund? A: Nope. Just C$282 of C$8,000 were pledged.

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