01 Dec
Posted by David Miller as Card Games, Modern Board Games, RPGs
CMON announced this week a deal with Steve Jackson Games to produce board games based on the latter’s Munchkin property. The first title is planned for Fall 2018, inspired by CMON’s adventure game, Arcadia Quest.
Osprey is doing a card game based on characters from the 2000AD comics. The core mechanics for Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth will be derived from the company’s The Lost Expedition. Additional elements will track radiation and psychic abilities. And the game will play in competitive, cooperative, and solo modes.
Following up on its recent release of The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31, pop culture company Mondo is planning two more movie-tied titles: Jurassic Park and Fight Club. In the Jurassic Park board game, one person plays InGen, creating dinosaurs and developing the park, one person plays the park visitors, sending individuals around to various attractions, one person plays the velociraptors, sneaking around to kill other players, and one person plays the T-Rex, a single figure stomping everything. The only thing revealed so far regarding Figh Club is that it’ll be a card game.
Cubicle 7’s Call of Cthulhu license from Chaosium will expire at the end of December. The company, however, plans to port Cthulhu Britannica, World War Cthulhu, and The Laundry to new RPG systems.
17 Oct
Posted by David Miller as Card Games, CCGs, Miniatures, Modern Board Games, RPGs, War Games
Kickstarter is looking for a Games Content Strategist to work at its office in Brooklyn, evaluating games projects, writing about them, and promoting them through various online outlets.. The company is also looking for a Games Intern for a 3 month research project. There’ll be a lot of detail work online and either previous academic study of games or 3-4 years of professional experience with games is required.
Recruiter Aardvark Swift is searching for a Marketing Manager to work at The Pokemon Company in London. The successful applicant will familiar with media for 4-14 year olds across Europe.
Steamforged Games (Guild Ball, Dark Souls) is looking to fill two positions: Commercial Brand Coordinator and Retail Support Manager, both in Tukwila, Washington. The former will focus on marketing, the latter on retailer account management.
Esdevium Games, part of the Asmodee Group in the U.K., has openings for a Finance Manager, an HR Officer, and a Sales and Customer Service Account Handler. The last of those is about sales to the hobby channel.
University Games, located in the Mission area of San Francisco, needs someone to fill the dual role of Receptionist and Office Manager.
The Stars Group is working to develop a state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence that could learn to play a variety of games. Toward that end, the company is recruiting for a Poker AI Research Engineer and a Graduate Poker AI Research Engineer.
Cubicle 7 needs an Office Assistant in Swindon, U.K. to help with customer service, order handling, and administrative tasks.
Tabletop Tycoon (Game Salute, Myriad Games, Ship Naked) is staffing up in Londonderry, New Hampshire. The company has job openings for an Account Manager, an Assistant Account Manager, full and part-time Fulfillment Staff, and a General Manager. The Account Manager and Assistant Account Manager will be responsible for sales and logistics for Ship Naked. Fulfillment Staff will handle packing and shipping. The General Manager, who will run everything, is expected on-site 7:00 AM-7:00 PM.
24 May
Posted by David Miller as RPGs
The Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay license has landed with Cubicle 7 Entertainment. The company announced today plans for a new edition that “takes its direction from the first and second editions of the game.” Other than that, the company only said the game would be released this year.
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.
The thing about these dice is you probably don’t need them. On the other hand, if you’re a fan of the games they go with, you’re really going to want them.
Available now from Q-Workshop are BattleTech Dice with individual sets at $15 for Houses Kurita, Davion, Liao, Marik, and Steiner. Each set with two house dice plus one die for each of four combat commands.
Coming soon from Q-Workshop are dice sets for Cubicle Seven’s roleplaying games, Doctor Who, The One Ring, and Lone Wolf.
And direct from Games Workshop, a set of Ultramarines Dice, 20 for $20.
Decades after Hobbits were replaced with Halflings, Dungeons & Dragons is finally going to see supplements based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings novels, all licensed and official. The Middle Earth series of titles will launch this summer from Cubicle 7 and Sophisticated Games, which also produce The One Ring Roleplaying Game. That game will continue on its own.
14 Jul
Posted by David Miller as Card Games, Modern Board Games, Other, RPGs
Fifty years after the game’s first release, Flying Buffalo is bringing back Nuclear War. The classic card game has players attempting to eliminate each others’ populations. Fallout from a nuclear warhead, however, can be unpredictable. And any player wiped out is given a last chance to launch all their remaining cards, thus possibly setting off a chain reaction where everyone loses.
Exploring the collapse of society in a more nuanced fashion is the story game, Downfall. This one sees players building the setting together, in particular its cultural landscape. Then they choose a flaw—like conformity or greed—and narrate how, despite heroic attempts, that flaw becomes the seed of catastrophe.
For those contemplating the aftermath of cataclysm, there’s Conflicted. As much a discussion tool as a card game, Conflicted presents morally challenging situations for preppers. How far are you willing to go to survive?
World War Cthulhu: Cold War is a 1970s espionage setting for the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. It’s as if the cold war and potential for mutually-assured destruction weren’t scary enough.
Slip Cup is a cup insert that keeps the ball out of the beer in Beer Pong. Sized to fit most 16 and 18 ounce disposable cups, Slip Cup has tabs to keep an on-target ball from bouncing out, and is short enough to hold that ball while leaving room underneath for the penalty beer. A numbered pack of 20 (enables a variety of new games) can be had for a pledge of just $5 plus shipping. I’ll leave you to decide if this project is part of the apocalypse theme.
Last up and definitely off the theme is Hocus. It’s a card game derived from Texas Hold ‘Em Poker but with a fantasy theme that allows a player to cast spells to play cards to the community, the pot, or a personal pocket. Several hands, each with their own community, pot, and pockets can be played simultaneously.
Cubicle 7 is working on a dice game based on the hugely popular “Doctor Who” sci-fi television show. Dalek Dice is a stand-alone strategy game from the point of view of the exterminating extraterrestrial cyborgs.
The game’s summary is scant, at best. However, it seems that the goal of the game is to kill all the humans. The way to win is to kill more humans than your opponents.
And, apparently, you have to watch out for the Doctor because “he has a way of foiling your plans.”
The game was designed by Marco Maggi and Francesco Nepitello, who created the One Ring role-playing game and the Hobbit Tales card game.
The game is scheduled to launch this June for $15.
21 Dec
Posted by David Miller as Card Games, Modern Board Games, RPGs
Five-and-a-half years after being acquired by the Rebellion company, Cubicle 7 will once again be heading out on its own. The company has been purchased by a management team led by CEO, Dominic McDowall.
At one point, Rebellion had also acquired Mongoose Publishing but that company too separated.
Cubicle 7’s announcement of the move stated:
Cubicle 7’s customers will be unaffected by this change, there is no impact to the company’s release schedule, licenses, Kickstarters, or existing customer pre-orders.
Cubicle 7 will be starting pre-orders in the next few weeks for Rivendell, a sourcebook for The One Ring. One of the biggest additions to the game is the ability to play as a Ranger, something fans have long been asking for. Though they are included, both Rangers and High Elves are not recommended to be allowed into a brand-new company. Loremaster discretion should be used.
A full preview of Rivendell is up on the Cubicle 7 blog.
Rivendell is 144-page, hardcover, full-colour supplement written by Francesco Nepitello, with additional contributions from Amado Angulo, Shane Ivey, Andrew Kenrick, Marco Maggi, Thomas Morwinsky and James M. Spahn. It is lavishly illustrated by Jon Hodgson, Jan Pospíšil and Jeremy McHugh, with fantastic maps of Eastern Eriador created by Paul Bourne.