The current political climate in the United States hasn’t escaped the notice of game publishers. Breaking Games recently applied for a trademark on the term “fake news” with regard to board and card games. No details on game-play are available yet, just a Fake News Game website to sign up for a mailing list. Partnering with Breaking Games, however, is Cards Against Humanity, so I wouldn’t expect anything easy-going.

Another game in the making is Alternative Facts from Frog God Games.

You win [Opinion Points] by assembling sets of matching Alternative Fact cards from your hand. A matching set is called a “Trick” in most card games, but we don’t like that word. It sounds deceptive. Instead, we call a matching set of Alternative Fact cards a “Truth.” A valid Truth can be made up of 3 or more identical cards — after all, the more you repeat something, the truer it is.

This one’s about half funded on Kickstarter but…

We began accumulating awards for Alternative Facts before even writing it, and expect to generate many more awards if necessary.

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With all Cards Against Humanity’s expansions and promos things were getting a bit messy, and customers were getting confused. The team behind the game has given the product line a refresh and consolidated things a bit in order to make purchasing the game much easier.

• Expansions 1, 2, and 3 are now available for $20 as the 300-card Red Box. 
• Expansions 4, 5, and 6 are now available for $20 as the 300-card Blue Box.
• An all new Green Box with 300 new cards. This is the largest expansion written, more than half the size of the main game.
  

The Bigger Blacker Box also got a refresh as the old one was too small to fit all the new stuff. The new BBB is $15 and large enough to hold the entire CAH product line.

There’s also a new product tossed into the mix, a set of 50 blank cards called Your Sh*tty Jokes for $5.

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Pressman Games is releasing The Oregon Trail Card Game as a Target exclusive next week, but like Codenames Deep Undercover, Ticket to Ride First Journey, and Machi Koro: Bright Lights, Big City, the game has been showing up on shelves in some stores. The Oregon Trail, based on the video game, contains a laminated card where you can list the names of the members of your party and a card where you can transfer them to the tombstones when they invariably die on the journey. Fix a broken wagon wheel, obtain 200 pounds of rabbit meat, and try to ford a river by discarding sorely-needed supply cards or hope you roll well on a die or everyone in the party will DIE.

Codenames Deep Undercover is described as an “Adults-only” version of Codenames, geared towards the Cards Against Humanity crowd (with agent names like “Motorboat”, “Keg”, and “Commando”). Ticket to Ride First Journey appears to be a kids-friendly version of the popular rummy variant.

According to images posted on imgur, Codenames Deep Undercover retails for $19.99 and the new Machi Koro retails for $29.99.

Image from reddit user dwboso. Full gallery of The Oregon Trail images can be found on imgur.

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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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In role-playing games there’s something about a contemporary or near-future setting that has grabbed me over the past few years. “It’s our world, but different.” Now, there’s an Urban Fantasy setting for the Savage Worlds game system up on IndieGoGo with an interesting twist: the Greek Gods and Titans do battle in a game that seems part Jason Bourne, part Shadowrun. Olympus Inc. is a licensed Savage Worlds product with reward tiers beginning at $15. Pop on over to their IndieGoGo page and download a sample chapter.

More roleplaying goodness! With just a few days to go, Infinitas DM looks like everything I wanted a roleplaying game app to be. It’s a tabletop game platform somewhat similar to Roll20, plus intergrated campaign management. Right now, Atom Switch Inc. is coming down to the wire: just over $4000 left to make their modest funding goal. A pledge of $5 (five bucks?) gets you the finished app, hopefully at the end of the year. (Honestly, I think they underpriced their pledge tiers.)

Ghostbusters: The Board Game II? What? Didn’t the Ghostbusters board game just get released? Anyway, if you liked that and have $125 to blow on a Ghostbusters board game based on the not-so-great movie Ghostbusters II, um. Go ahead, ’cause apparently nearly 3000 people liked Ghostbusters II enough to pony up the cash, so yeah, it’s funded already.

Speaking of the 80’s, It’s The Goonies Adventure Card Game! In this game by Albino Dragon, you’re just a bunch’a rag-tag kids trying to find the treasure of legendary pirate One-Eyed Willy while evading the Fratelli criminal — you know what, it’s The Goonies. Just get it already. It’s funded nearly five times over which is even more amazing than the time you ate your weight in Godfather’s pizza, right?

This week in Popular Card Game Coattail Riding/Parody/Marketplace Confusion, our Cards Against Humanity winner is Cards Against Technology, where a Canadian (!) ran out of Cards Against Humanity cards so he made his own. “Imagine playing Cards Against Humanity, but with unlimited possibilities to choose from making the game almost different every time, and funnier, and less boring as time passes depending on who you play with.” Typos and Arial instead of Helvetica on these cards. Plenty of ® and ™ symbols in the text so these guys don’t get sued. Only $273 of $1500 CAD pledged.  Runner-up: Deck a Celebrity, where the judge pulls out a topic card (“AIDS!” she cries out.) and players have eight quotes from celebrities to best match the topic. (“If he invited you out, he’s got to pay.” -Beyonce was the winning card. Tee-hee.) It’s more Apples to Apples than CAH. They’ve pulled in $2,462 in pledges, but they wanted $15k. Nice KS intro video and better card design, though.

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Back in October I posted about the Crabs Adjust Humidity: Omniclaw Edition, the collection of 5 volumes of the 3rd party Cards Against Humanity expansion. Vampire Squid Cards was kind enough to send me the boxed set and I had a chance to bring it to a holiday party and see how the cards stack up.

This boxed set makes a horribly-fun game just as horrible.

There’s some great cards in this set, and there were plenty of times were drinks were spilled, or spat out, while trying to read the cards people played. The Omniclaw Edition contains 560 cards, and no rules. It’s meant to supplement Cards Against Humanity, but this edition contains enough to play on it’s own. Keep in mind, there’s no blank cards in here.

It’s got a hefty price tag of $50, which is double what that CAH base set costs with only 10 cards less. Still, if you’re a fan of the game you owe it to yourself to grab these and expand upon all the horrible and offensive.

A copy of Crabs Adjust Humidity was provided free for review by Vampire Squid Cards.

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There are only hours left in the Braille RPG Dice kickstarter campaign by 64 Oz. Games. Backing at $10 gets you one 3D-printed polyhedral die, while a $50 pledge will be rewarded with a full set of seven dice (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, and percentale — that’s a d10 marked in tens). This the company’s second kickstarter, following up on their “Board Games: Now Blind Accessible” braille-printed transparent sleeves for several popular hobby games. Stretch goals for Braille RPG Dice include allowing 64 Oz. Games to purchase a CNC router and a plastic thermoforming machine, which will be used on future manufacturing projects.

I’ve played several social bluffing hidden role games, but Secret Hitler looks like it’s a game that I’d want to bring out more than any other. Just launched, the game takes place in 1930’s Germany with two teams, the Fascists and the Liberals, trying to take control of the government. Similar to Werewolf and The Resistance, the rounds move rapidly. If I had a regularly-meeting large game group — you’ll need between 5 and 10 players for Secret Hitler — I’d throw down a $25 pledge to get a game of this as a reward.

Oh man, I am a sucker for a well-designed playing card deck and this week, I’ve got three that I’d like to showcase. First up is the Red Scarab and Blue Scarab decks, from Scott King. The Red deck is shaded line art on white while the Blue deck is more painterly on black. Jackson Robinson (from the Wasteland 2-inspired deck) has a set of limited edition Black Diamond Tally-Ho decks available. These cards are black with foil print. And lastly, Elite Playing Cards has a glamorously golden deck called Bicycle Chic.

Oh yeah, board games! Do you like Catan? Game Night Geek, LLC., offers up a Magnetic Catan Border. It’s six pieces of oak plywood (other types of wood available for upgraded costs) connected by those strong neodymium magnets to keep the tile island of Catan together while playing. It’s one of those so-simple-why-didn’t-I-think-of-it game accessory. But someone did, and these are rather affordable, starting at a $12 pledge level.

I’ve been using black foamcore to create custom component storage for some of my boardgames. However, these lasercut MDF Board Game Inserts by The Game Doctors are awfully tempting… What you do is pledge 10 Euro or more in shipping windows (all full right now, but they’ll be opening more slots as the campaign goes on) and when it’s over, you convert those pledges into whichever types of game insert you desire. I’m looking at the “Card” design to store my ever-growing Android: Netrunner collection (14 Euro + 5 per 10 additional dividers) or “Robi” for the Robinson Crusoe box (16 Euro, includes space for the Voyage of the Beagle expansion) or maybe “Dead” for my Dead of Winter game (18 Euro).

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This is basically what you expect it to be, a version of Cards Against Humanity for people in the Information Technology field. Cards Against IT is available for free from Varonis Systems…as long as you give them your email address. They’ll then mail you a link to a print-and-play PDF, along with purchase instructions if you’d like a pre-printed version.

I have no idea how long this has been around, but it just popped up in a Facebook ad. Some of the example white cards show were: “a 1000MW laser,” “Clippy,” and “A TOR Exit Node.” Confused? This edition probably isn’t for you.

Oh yeah. Varonis mentions that Cards Against IT is totally safe-for-work.

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Cards Against Humanity has announced this year’s holiday promotion, the Eight Sensible Gifts for Hanukkah. For only $15 you’ll get 8 mystery gifts through the month of December. Simple and easy.

They also claim this is the last time they’re doing a holiday promotion, so get in while you can…until, you know, they decided to do one next year anyway.

Make sure to watch the whole video on the site.

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Vampire Squid Cards has just announced Crabs Adjust Humidity: Omniclaw Edition, a boxed set of all their previous Crabs Against Humidity releases. The box contains all 560 cards from Volumes One through Five of the unofficial Cards Against Humanity expansions. There’s even space in the box to hold future expansions.

I personally have never used any of the Crabs Against Humidity sets, but this may be a reason to give them a shot.

You can snag the Omniclaw Edition for $49.95.

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